The Black Pawn • The first book of the Black Academy Series

10. Stage Three

SHE WAS STUCK. Her notebook was open beside her. Her pencil sat in the middle of the page. Rubbed-off words still left their impressions on the delicate cream pages. It was the third stage. She was in the remedy and poison-making class. They had been tasked with identifying the 4 liquids in front of them. Once identified they had to create a poison for the liquid if it was a remedy and vice versa if it was a poison.

She huffed as her hands got intertwined in her hair. Her eyes were red because of her lack of sleep. She had taken Stella to the room and then ended up talking the whole night. She had understood that two of the liquids were poisons and the other two were remedies.

She knew their names but there were about seven different poisons she could make for the remedies she had and twenty different remedies she could make for the poisons she had. This was utter nonsense.

"Students, be careful you only have another hour to complete this stage." Mr. Porter said as he circled their tables. During other Selections, Victoria Casella never sat in, but now she was sitting at the front of the class sipping tea.

What in the hell is she doing here?, Azalea frowned, she shook her head a second later, Get a grip Az, you have to make four— Things! now. FOCUS!

She picked up her pencil and set it onto the paper and scribbled down directions for 2 simple remedies that would cure the poisons and 2 simple poisons that would counteract the remedies on her table. She set to work. Her tongue was bitten down upon as she wrote down everything. She opened up the pack of ingredients and set to work.

The sound of a pencil scratching on paper filled her senses as she focused on making the four liquids. Murmuring the ingredient names under her breath she set to work.

"Dried Rose?" Azalea asked herself as she grumbled under her breath, "That doesn't make me skeptical at all."

Plucking out the petals of the Rose she added them in, hearing a hiss in the liquid held in her glass container. She mixed the mixture with a glass ladle. Next, she picked up some wolfsbane and added it to the mixture.

She continued, in 10 minutes she was done with her first poison. Then another 10 minutes she was done with a remedy. She was blowing through the potions fast. It might have been a surprise that she had been scratching her head over what to do a few minutes ago. But, then she realized what the challenge was.

Half the ingredients for the remedy and poison she had left to make weren't there. They were supposed to know which things would be good replacements for the ingredients they were missing.

"Dammit, this just got harder."

Everybody's eyes followed her figure as she made her way over to the back. Anna had taken a little bit of everything hung on the racks and Elizabeth had thought ahead.

Clinking filled the room as she rifled through the vials sitting in front of her, finding Terala roots and Entham twigs. She let out a small, 'Aha' when she found a vial of black rose petals. The white ones worked fine but the black ones had poison in their petals which could be paired nicely with any poison.

She made her way back to her table, setting the new vials back on her table and setting to work on her changed recipe for poison and remedy.

•

8 bodies fell to the ground, broken vials of poisons lying on the floor beside them. They had failed, that was the least that could be said. It was a custom at the Black Academy, if you failed at the Poisons and Remedies stage the worst five would have to drink their poisons.