Chapter 4: Experiments
The witchdoctor slowly opened her building door in the middle of the night. She stepped onto the cool sand, making sure she made no noise. Sestiva crept behind buildings and hid in the shadows. A cool breeze blew through her red hair as she silently made her way to Avery's Court. It was easy to sneak around at night, considering that there was no late night patrol like other places had. Occasionally, a creature of some sort would step into the moonlight and slink back to where it came from. She had made it. She stood in front of the Witchdoctor's Sanctum for a minute, and then went inside.
It was warmer inside the Witchdoctor's Sanctum. There were embroidered pillows scattered on the floor. Potion shelves lined the walls. The shelves were quite full. There was not a single space left. Since there was no space, Sestiva would have to replace all the potions she took with her own. She quietly went back to her small building, opened the door slowly, and grabbed a leather bag to put the potions in. She silently shut the door and skittered back to the Sanctum. The red-haired witchdoctor grabbed a few potions from the lower shelf and put them into their bag.
Sestiva came out of the Sanctum and started off to her cave. She struggled to climb up the steep hill due to the extra weight from the potions. After coming through the vine covered entrance, she carefully placed down the bag, and went down the narrow corridor to her potion room. The witchdoctor grabbed more than what she needed. She came back down the corridor, hands full of potions. She placed the potions down, opened the bag, and got out Vadima's potions.
She carefully poured a little bit of Vadima's potion into hers, that way they could be the same color and Vadima wouldn't notice. Sestiva ran back to the Sanctum, put her potions on the shelf, and came back to the cave. Sestiva retrieved some more of her potions from the back, and was ready to begin. She opened a green colored potion and a pink potion and poured a little bit into one of hers. The moment they merged with the other fluid, there was a shower of sparks and a small inferno came up and out the top of the potion bottle.
"Oh my God – IT'S ON FIRE!" Sestiva screamed nearly dropping the bottle and jammed a cork in the opening, and set is aside. She went ahead and grabbed for the next bottle. "Ow! Crap. The flesh on my hands is gone! It stings! It burns! What am I going to do? Oh, crap. What if Helen finds out?" Sestiva thought for a second. She had to go back to the small building and bandage them.
Once again, she ran down to the small building grabbed some bandages and came back up. Sestiva winced in pain as sand landed on the burn and the burn rubbing against the bandages. She bandaged her hands and went right back to work.
This time she mixed a blue and red colored potion with another one of hers. She was about to pour some of It in when Sestiva stopped herself.
"I shall not burn my flesh off again. I do not want it to explode in my face either." Sestiva said to herself.
The liquids merged and I gave off a huge amount of light. Sestiva put a cork in the opening as fast as she could, trapping whatever was in there. The light died down, and Sestiva looked closer to see what was inside it. It looked like a stationary orange cloud giving off light.
"It's a gas? Why would a gas give off light?"
Sestiva set that potion aside with the other one. She brought out an orange and a yellow colored potion. The liquids merged again and ice started forming and rising continuously out the top.
"This could be really useful."
Her hands still burned from the inferno. She broke off some of the ice coming out the top and let it melt in her hands. It felt a whole lot better than having to work all day with burnt hands.
This will be the last one. Sestiva thought.
She grabbed a purple and a grey and combined them with hers. The new creation spouted smoke and the rest of the liquid boiled in the bottle. Sestiva coughed for a while then, put a cork in the top of the bottle and put it aside with the others.
"So, I got one that is an inferno, one that was a cloud of gas that produces light, one that produces never-ending ice, and one that produces unlimited smoke."
She thought about telling Helen about her new potions, but she knew she would get mad at her.
Helen set that thought aside, and brought her potions to the back. Helen would get suspicious if she saw abnormal potions, and question her, so she had to put the potions somewhere she wouldn't find them.
I could possibly put them in the back of the shelves, but she would be able to see the difference in potions. What if I hid them? I'll hollow out some of the wall, and hide them there!
Sestiva looked around for a bit. She needed something sharp, like a knife. There was a knife sitting on one of the lower shelves. She picked it up, and started pounding the wall with its sharp side. At first, it was only scratches, then it cut deeper and deeper into the rock. As soon as she cut all the way through where she wanted to be, she started hollowing out the dirt behind it, making it rectangular. She scraped the remaining dirt off the rock, and put the potions in. The witchdoctor also made sure it was behind one of the shelves so it wouldn't be obvious. She gently put the rock back in place. She came out of the corridor. A voice disturbed the silence.
"What happened to your hands?" Helen questioned, giving the witchdoctor a look of suspicion.