Seer's Tears

Your job is to make other people feel good. If even for a moment. That’s a worthwhile goal, isn’t it?

You’ve come up with so many lovely little concoctions. You sit beside a young woman in your dark room. Her shaking, tense hands, violently gripping onto everything that she has and everything she now works to protect, start to loosen. Her grip doesn’t slip free, she doesn’t lose sight of the things that she needs to do, no—but for a moment, she’s able to realize that everything is secure right where it is, and she just has to hold onto it, not clutch it for dear life.

Another day, you meet a young man. He tells you that he just needs energy. Work has been so hard lately, with no sun to warm his back and the chill of winter biting through layer after layer of clothing. He has to work day in and day out, just to take care of his family, and he just wants to feel alive again. You return to him with exactly what he seeks—sunlight in a vial, the sickly dark fluid within practically vibrating it. For as sinister as it seems, it’s safe, and effective, and each time he sips from it, it’ll refresh him and he can keep working.

You don’t solve people’s problems, but you ease them. Isn’t that enough?

But one day, the opportunity arises to solve someone’s problem. A coven, the Ezwari Family, have commissioned you to look into… something. They gave you a few ingredients, and asked you, fully trusting in your alchemical experience, to reproduce Seer’s Tears. An ancient recipe whose exact form was lost to time, seemingly scrubbed from reality. Why, or by whom, is unclear.

The pay was immense. More than you could ever have imagined. For whatever reason, you believed you could do it. And you did, through a year of exhausting, relentless effort and research.

And there you were. Sitting across from a warlock, and beside another witch. For once, you were the one nervously shifting and twitching in your seat, eyes fixed unblinking on him. His… partner? Handler? Whatever she is, she watches him calmly, clearly confident in your work, for some reason. Why do these people think so highly of you? He decants a bit of the rust-colored, oily fluid into his hand, giving it a suspicious sniff. It almost sizzles, as if it were boiling, but he feels nothing.

So, as directed, he licks it from his palm, wipes it clean, and sits back. The two of you spend a moment staring at each other, as he seems to sink deeper and deeper into the seat… his eyes glazing over, before drifting shut.

An hour passes. You’re forced to make conversation with this woman. She asks you if you think you’ve done it correctly, and you nod meekly. She asks you if you would like to take it yourself, and you shake your head. She gives you a wry little smile, and tells you that’s a particularly suspicious thing for an alchemist to say. You just shrug, intensely uncomfortable as you are, and mutter something about being fine with the future where it is.

The conversation doesn’t make the time pass any faster. But then, you see his chest stop rising. Just as soon as you start to practically leap out of your chair, you’re brought to a skidding stop as something absolutely horrific unfolds before you.

He… throws himself forward, or so it seems. The moment between him being deeply, deeply asleep and him kneeling on your floor, sweating bullets and panting didn’t even seem to happen. He looks completely different than he did a moment before… how could he have sweat that much in just a second? How did he move so quickly that you didn’t even see it? What the hell is going on?

You stand there, dumbstruck, and she looks at him, awestruck. She leans forward, and says plainly, almost cruelly: “Speak.”

“Ezoth!” he all but yelps, through a haggard wheeze. "It... it was Ezoth, we—hkh..." He desperately rubs at his eyes, and for a moment you think you catch him convincing himself not to scratch them out. Tears cascade down his puffy red face, and you can’t be sure if it’s high emotions or if his eyes are just searing. “Gods, the SOUND… my head, I…”

And then, you notice it… his eyes are a ghostly white.

You can’t say anything. Your breath hitches in your throat, and the words get stuck there. The woman just stands up, smiling like a shark, and reaches out to snag his hand and pull him to his feet. She looks over to you.

“You’ve done incredible work. Your payment will be rendered soon. We’ll be in contact.”

You just keep standing there, as she struts out, a dead man walking in tow. You think maybe you muttered ‘okay’. You were supposed to help people.

Is this… help?