While Robin was busy cooking sweet potatoes, back in Ekkinshire Kingdom, Old Albus had finally finished sorting out the archives once more.
"Phew! Thank goodness. You know, it's probably best I did this anyways. There were quite a few misplaced documents." Albus muttered to himself as he finally made his way out of the newly cleaned, dusted, and sorted archives room. He shut and locked the door behind him.
"You really need to be more careful, old friend." A baritone voice startled old Albus, making him jump, and clutch at his heart, as he whirled about.
Sitting on the couch was an rather dignified looking young mage with pale green eyes. He nodded a greeting with a friendly smile. Albus sighed with relief.
"Magi Gregory Lawson!" Albus scolded half-seriously with a chuckle. "You would do best to make your presence known without nearly causing me to have a heart attack!"
"What a shame. I always did enjoy seeing you jump like a startled dormouse." Magi Lawson joked in return. "I stopped by Jasmine's place, but it seems she's out at the moment."
"Yes. She's on a journey currently." Albus sat down in the leather armchair at his desk. "So what brings you around here? I thought you were still in the middle of some rather crucial research, if I understand correctly."
"I was." Lawson nodded. "I'm here because I noticed a large spatial disturbance…a fluctuation in this area. Since I was in a rather critical point of my research, I couldn't come right away. Was that disturbance a result of you or Jasmine's studies?"
Albus chuckled. "Oh. That. Well, you could say it was, yes. The results were somewhat successful, and somewhat unsuccessful."
"What were you studying that required such a large mass of the spatial element like that?" Gregory Lawson asked, curiosity gleaming from his eyes.
Albus looked at Magi Lawson. "You…probably came straight here from your experiments room, didn't you?"
"I did. Guilty as charged. But what does that have anything to do with this?" Lawson admitted good-naturedly.
"If you had come here via carriage instead of teleportation, you would have immediately picked up on the results of my experiment." Albus chuckled. "The hero summoning. I managed to recreate it."
"The hero-wait, you mean!?" Lawson started up from his chair, shocked and surprised. "You summoned the hero? Is he back?"
Albus shook his head. "Calm down, Lawson. The prior hero did not return here..."
Lawson sat back down in his chair. "Phew! Albus, if this is some form of a joke, then it isn't funny."
"...It was the hero's son that was summoned, instead." Albus finished his sentence, with a bemused expression. "When will you ever learn to stop interrupting me, I wonder?"
Lawson's face blushed as he cleared his throat. "Ahem! Er…his son, huh. My apologies, Albus. It seems I really do need to work on my patience."
Lawson's eyes wandered around the room until they found their way to a certain bottle filled with neon pink liquid. "This is…?"
Albus followed his gaze to the bottle. "Ah. That." His aged face wrinkled further in a grimace.
"It's a failed attempt by Magi Jasmine. She was trying to create an antidote potion to counteract that 'lovelorn' stuff that's going around. She ended up creating a reverse version of the potion, instead."
"Reversed?" Lawson looked surprised. "How?"
"I wouldn't drink it if I were you." Albus snorted. "I don't have the spryness to run away until I can find the holy spring water necessary to detoxify you."
Lawson shuddered. "Surely not?" He asked.
Albus shook his head. "It's already happened once before."
Lawson looked serious. "I think that this definitely shouldn't stay here. Do you mind if I take it to my teacher to see if he can find a safe way to dispose of it?"
Albus shrugged. "The farther away it is from me, the better. I know you're a responsible man, so do take care not to drop it anywhere."
Lawson gingerly cradled the vial in both hands before he placed it inside his spatial bag. "This isn't coming out until I reach my teacher." He said solemnly.
"Good." Albus chuckled. "So, it's your turn now. What have you and your teacher been up to recently?"
Lawson brushed his fingers through his hair as he recalled. "My Teacher has been busy enough that even I don't know what he's doing, actually. I've been studying some remnant plant debris of the extinct plant, Sylphiun. I managed to recreate some seeds, but I've yet to discover the proper climate to grow them in."
Albus nodded. "Seeds are indeed an important progress. But, er…why Sylphiun?"
"It was a medicinal herb. Teacher thinks it might help in finding medicine for diseases that normal clerics can't cure." Lawson replied.
Albus raised an eyebrow. "You say that, but why do I also recall it was used as an aphrodisi-"
"That was only when it was used incorrectly." Lawson scowled. "You make it sound like I'm trying to start a drug chain. Come on, Albus, you know me. I'm only interested in science, knowledge of the world, studying the cosmos!"
Albus waved a hand. "Calm down, Lawson. I know you're not like that. But precautions should be placed to prevent others from taking advantage of your hard work to do evil, don't you think?"
Lawson listened quietly.
Albus sighed. "We always want our work to bring benefits and not harms. But often enough, hidden dangers follow alongside the benefits."
"I see…all right, Albus. I'll discuss with my teacher how we can prevent the plant from being used for evil purposes, as you proposed." Lawson stood up and looked at Albus with curiosity. "You always opened my eyes to new things, Albus. Why did you decide to leave the council's researchers?"
"Their direction of studies and mine diverged at a point. It happens all the time." Albus shook his head. "Our viewpoints differed too much. If I had stayed, I wouldn't be able to spend my time half as leisurely now."
"In that case, I bid you good day." Lawson nodded a farewell.
"Give my greetings to your teacher for me, eh?" Albus said as Lawson reached the door.
"I will, thanks." And with that, Lawson left.
~~~
Robin took the sweet potatoes out of the coals, and places them on a nearby banana leaf. The skins had blackened under the direct heat of the coals.
"They're all burnt. How are they going to taste good?" Gerard sounded disappointed as he looked dully at the blackened roots.
Robin chuckled. "Well, you can try to eat the skins. It won't harm you, or anything; just taste bad. But it isn't the skin that's the meat of this sweet potato."
Robin cut an x mark into the sweet potatoes and peeled back the skin, revealing the steaming yellow starchy goodness underneath. She scored a few lines into it, sprinkled cinnamon dust on top, and then placed some butter along the scored lines for it to melt into the potato.
"This is good to eat now." Robin placed a portion aside for Ella, gave one to Briar, and started munching on her own sweet potato. Usually, in a tropical area, with the heat, Robin wouldn't be able to enjoy it like this. But the batkin caverns were deep and cool. So it was just the right temperature to enjoy having a warm sweet potato snack.
Ella eyed the sweet potato with interest. She sniffed it, and took a small nibble. Then she took a larger bite. Robin was right. This was a filling starchy plant which could be used to substitute for meals. With the tropical climate, these could probably be grown year round as well.
"This is most pleasant." Ella agreed.
Gerard had eaten his potato so quickly that he was now blowing his mouth, huffing and puffing to try and dissipate some of the heat in his mouth.
"Careful. They're very hot." Robin chuckled, as she held hers with a banana leaf, and used two sticks like chopsticks to pick out bite sized pieces of the sweet potato.
Briar observed Robin's interesting use of tableware. "Japanese?" She asked.
Robin blinked. "Um…not really. One of my swordsmasters was. I developed this habit under his tutelage. How do you know about the Japanese?"
"This is a land where heroes are sometimes summoned. I happened to encounter two who were in fact Japanese. One of them was my teacher. The
other was my good friend." Briar smiled nostalgically.
Robin blinked. "Oh…that's true enough, I suppose."