RP:Fifty Shades of Green

Part of the I Got 99 Problems, and a Congenital Defect is One Arc

Synopsis: Knowing that they have to shrink to pixie size to travel to visit the Guardian of the Cocoon in Enchantment, and knowing that Josleen may need to be placed in an extended suspended shrunken state in order to enter the cocoon and be ‘resewn’, Skylei and Lydrain meet to experiment with several alchemical options, despite neither being alchemists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, chaos ensues with Lydrain and Skylei both turning fifty shades of green, in one sense or the other... One broken ceiling, a fit of size changing hiccups and a retractable beard later, the duo find a mixture that will fulfil their needs. Hopefully.

Academy of Magics

Lydrain sits in his office, looking over several books at once. he thought he was close to making a breakthrough in his research, but, then again, he had felt this way yesterday and the day before. Neither of his current problems seemed to have any recorded answers. He lets out a light sigh, 'Damnable wizards and their incomprehensible jibberish."

Skylei comes laden with potions and vials and all kinds of magical things! With three bangs on the door with an open palm, Skylei lets herself in before Lydrain has time to answer, “Lydrain! It has been far too long, friend.” That is all the sentiment that Skylei has to spare before she dumps the contents of her arms all over his books. Oops. “You got my letter I take it?” As soon as he has assented she would continue, “The thing is, Lydrain, I feel that I… we, I mean, could make some kind of concoction to make us pixie size without too much difficulty. But Josleen will need to be small for quite some time, and I’m not entirely sure how long it will be. So!” Skylei chirps, “I figured we could experiment. I assume you have some things here, I brought some… more unusual items.” Skylei has various kinds of minerals, herbs from Milous, Sage and the Venturil plains, some odd squishy things that smell like they came out of the sea, feathers – you name it, she’s pulling it out of various pockets.

Lydrain cocks his head to the side and then laughs, "You... are a genius Skylei. Of course Alchemy would lead to better fruit than what I've been trying to do. Reducing someone's size, without altering them completely, with magic, is a tricky business to be sure, but potions are.... well much more potent, errr... concentrated rather. Yes, I've got some things as well." He opens up a cabinet behind him and begins pulling out jars and vials and small pouches of things, some of them are even wriggling with something living inside of them. With a snap of his fingers the books fly off of his desk and back to their places in the shelves, only to make room for more potion ingredients, "I must admit, however, I am still rather novice in my alchemical knowledge... so this will require some rather serious trial and error."

Skylei is glad that Lydrain is pleased with the basic premise of the operation. At his protestations about his lack of alchemical knowledge, Skylei holds her hand up to stop him in his track, “Ah! But this is where I come in.” From within her coat, Skylei pulls a large vial. “This potion here is a basic wakened shrinking solution. It last for a maximum of a couple of minutes at a time. I propose we mix it with various other items to see if we can produce a lengthening effect. Of course, once we have a combination that works, we can mix it and produce it in the correct quantity. So, Lydrain,” Skylei grins at the dragon as she gestures to the wide array of other items, “I believe the gentleman should go first. Pick your mix and heat it as you wish.” Stepping back, Skylei would pour a small amount of the shrinking solution into a smaller vial and pass it to mage when he was ready.

Lydrain looks for a moment, and reaches for the basic shrinking potion. Pouring some of it into a beaker, he then snaps his fingers and a magical blue flame lights underneath it. Due to the magic used, it brought the potion to a boil relatively quickly. After it began to bubble, the Headmaster will put in a pinch of gravedirt, under the premise that the undead were constantly under the effects of some form of magic, to keep them functioning, plus a small dash of powdered crystal, which was symply being used as a magical catalyst. A puff of purple smoke exudes from the concoction as he lifts it off of the flame, and the liquid itself has turned a rather luminous shade of brown. He grins rather mischeviously at Sky, "Bottoms up." He then downs the unknown potion, hoping for the best, but praying that it won't be the worst.

Skylei pulls a face at the colour of the potion. “I bet it tastes like crap” she mutters as he takes a sip of the potion. This particular potion that Lydrain has managed to concoct has the effect to grow rather than shrink. And so, within seconds, Lydrain grows to triple, or maybe quadruple the size of his usual form, his head crashing into and, indeed, through the ceiling with the force of the rapid expansion. Skylei has to flatten herself against a wall so as not to be crushed by the hilariously bloated body. Fortunately, all that he had managed to do was to expand his physical form and, within minutes his form would slowly shrink back to the original. Even as that happens, debris from the chaos would litter Lydrain’s office and would continue to tumble down from the floor above with careless abandon, “Perhaps not the best one to start with.” Skylei cannot help but laugh, once she had seen that Lydrain was not injured. Edging around a fallen piece of ceiling and some cracked glass, Skylei would select her own mixture. A chalky white substance is added first, with a sprinkling of valerian leaf. This is heated on a hot flame for a few seconds before Skylei adds a small amount of tumbleweed. This substance is a pale blue-green and completely opaque. Raising her eyebrows to the dragon, Skylei downs the lot and awaits the effects.

Lydrain grunted when his head smashed through the ceiling, luckily there was nothing but an unused class room above his office. After the initial shock, he begins to chuckle as he slowly begins to shrink, "Well... this isn't that 'big' of a problem, though cleaning this up will be a headache." He laughs at his two horrible puns, and gets back to his usual size. He brushes some of the debris off of the desk, "Your turn, M'lady" He watched with genuine interest as she mixed her own 'poison', and waited with anticipation when she drank it. At first, nothing seemed to happen, at all, but, as this wasn't an exact science, Skylei hiccuped, and shrank five inches. Which was awkward enough in itself, but then she hiccuped again, and grew seven inches. Eventually the potion would wear out, leaving her, more or less, back at her original height, but perhaps with a newfound fear of hiccups. Doing his best not to laugh, and failing at that, he would then begin his own mixture, again. This time, he added in some powdered blue dragon scale (his own), plus a couple of other plants: small mushrooms, a root from a shrub, and shavings of bark from the Xalious tree. It turned a lovely shade of green, "Headmaster testing, stage two." This time he drank the potion much more cautiously, rather than just downing it.

Skylei tries to hold her breath to prevent those hiccups. At her smallest, she shrinks down to about two feet tall and at her tallest reaches a clean seven foot. “Stop laughing! It -hic- really isn’t funny!” Eventually the constant growing and shrinking becomes moderately painful and every time she hiccups it is followed by a small yelp as she grows and shrinks. Skylei definitely has a newfound fear of hiccups. As she finishes she’s a good two inches smaller than she had started at but, over the next few hours, her height would slowly even out until she stood at her proper 5’5. Lydrain’s second concoction has two effects. The first is that his body in its entirety, from his hair to his skin and even his eyes turn that lovely shade of green. The second is that his legs shrink. Nothing else. Just his legs. This effect would last for all of two minutes before his legs grew back to his normal size. As Lydrain totters around on tiny, green, baby legs, Skylei mixes up her second concoction. Her poisons of choice are nettles, lavender and the spleen of a large fish-y creature. Then she heats it to the boil. What had been a lovely sea-green coloured potion prior to heating turns a violent purple after the heat is applied. With a grimace, and still choking down hiccups, Skylei downs the lot with little of the caution Lydrain had showed.

Lydrain is rather taken aback, when he can no longer see over the top of his desk. He is almost distressed enough by this that he doesn't notice his change in colouration, and, perhaps he wouldn't have noticed, but his vision also changed colouration, and he was seeing the world in fifty shades of green. He pipes up, only for a moment, "Sky, did the world turn green? I'm assuming its just my vision, but I have to ask..." He waddles around, grabbing books and making an impromptu staircase so he can stand on his chair, to begin mixing his potion when Sky drinks the rest of her potion. This effect would be unnerving to say the least. First her face would begin to itch, with a rapidly increasing amount of irritation, and then the first hairs would begin to sprout through. It wouldn't take long before the halfbreed would have a beard that the Dwarven elders in Craughmoyle would be jealous of. Though, perhaps the most disturbing part of this transformation, is that eventually, as the magic was wearing off, instead of falling out, the hair would seemingly retract into her chin, which must be an unnerving feeling, to say the least. While her beard what still in blossom, the now lighter shade of green, Lydrain was looking over ingredients and muttering to himself, "All but that last one seemed to be staying in the same field of magic... but what are we missing...." He added a dash of powdered vampire's fang, the eye of a rather hard to find subsecies of newts, and some mint leafs, though that might have just been for smell. When all combined, the mixture looked like muddy water, but, as heat was applied to it, the colour in the beaker began to dissapate, until there was no colour left, nor is their any scent. He stares at the vial for a moment, and, as his normal height and colouration return, he says, "Third times the charm.... maybe." Then he downs the contents with he and Sky's measure of reckleness, waiting to see what happens.

Skylei squeals as the hairs push forth from her chin. Her hands run through the newly emerging beard and her eyes meet Lydrain’s filled with panic. What if it’s permanent? As he questions where they are going wrong, Skylei opens her mouth to give an informative answer. It is just at that moment that the hair begins to recede and Skylei is struck by a sudden wave of sickness, “No more fish. Fish are bad,” Skylei gags, as the beard grows back into her skin. It feels as though a thousand tiny needles are being pushed into her face at once and Skylei has to duck outside of the ruined office as nausea turns into a bilious fit and she vomits another fifty shades of green all over the corridor carpet. Disgusting. Once she manages to control her nausea and the beard has disappeared back where it came from, Skylei re-enters the room. There’s no sign of Lydrain. Did the latest potion turn him invisible? Feeling around with her hands for the dragon, Skylei finds nothing. How peculiar. Then she looks upwards. Plugging the hole in the ceiling is a newly inflated, weightless, Lydrain. His upper body is in the classroom above and this legs dangle comically from an inflated body trapped in the damaged floor. Laughing silently in spite of the bitter taste in her mouth, Skylei waits for her friend to descend. When he does, it is like a deflated balloon and he flies this way and that, knocking vials to the floor and spilling herbs all over the desk and books. Eventually a deflated Lydrain would fall to the floor, where his figure would slowly begin to fill out again. Stepping over the inflating body, Skylei would grab olive oil, snail slime and vinegar, mixing it with the potion and shaking it as though she were making a martini. The potion is a dull mustard yellow. She sips it this time, clearly still shaken by the beard.

Lydrain didn't even know how to react when he began rising into the air, other than a horrible pun, "Well.. at least things are looking up." He snickered at his own horrible joke... and then he no longer found his situation funny, as he was stuck, with sharp pointy things, mostly pieces of support and whatnot, jabbing him at his sides. Granted it didn't hurt, much, it was just really really annoying. He let out a slight call for help, though it probably just sounded like a muffled 'Oomph'. As he began to deflate, he would issue a sigh of relief, before he realized that he had all this extra skin, and nothing seemed to be filling itself in. He began to panic, if only momentarily, before his arm filled itself out. He let out an authentic sigh of relief, as the air got pumped back into him. Sky's potion smelled foul, something about the mixture of snail slime and vinegar, but it tasted suprisingly bland. The effects were almost immediate. Sky's vision would go hazy, at first, but after she blinks a couple of times, focus would come back, though, that couldn't be right, as she was standing near the desk a moment ago, but there Lyd was, laying on the 'ceiling' staring down at her... right next to... the desk... which would mean that the half elf was actually the one... on the ceiling. It seemed as if the potion simply flipped Skylei's center of gravity, which mean, had she been standing under the now open 'window', it would be very likely that she would have simply floated off into space.

“Urgh!” Skylei sighs, letting her legs collapse beneath her so that she is sitting on the floor, that is actually the ceiling. She feels dizzy and disorientated for a good few minutes before the world begins to tip again and tosses her back down to the floor, “This is ridiculous.” Skylei huffs. “There has to be a better way to do this.” Instead of tossing together a whole new mixture, Skylei debates back on their previous exploits. What could they combine to induce shrinking? Skylei gets up from what is now the floor, as her centre of gravity has re-righted itself, and picks up a combination of ingredients. The mushrooms that had turned Lydrain green and shrunk his legs and the chalk that had induced the hiccupping and continual height changes. “These maybe? And then what? And how to heat?”

Lydrain finally gets up from the floor, as his shoulders finally have enough of him in them to begin to move again, "I've done mostly flash heating, but what if we brought it to a simmer, and allowed the ingredients to fuse into each other. Since we are trying to go for length, we should also use something as a catalyst. We are trying to get down to pixie size, yes? Why not try pixie dust as well... " He facepalms himself, "That... is probably the smartest thing I have said all day..." He begins to clean off his desk, just pushing everything to the floor, so that he and Sky could intelligently go about this, "I am not sure why I as Headmaster, decided the foolhardy approach to potions was the best..."

Skylei uses language that only befits a pirate and that, if any of Lydrain’s students heard coming from behind his door, they would surely judge him for it, “Pixie dust. Pixie bloody dust. Why didn’t we…” Skylei basically face palms herself, “Don’t tell anyone that we didn’t come up with this sooner or we’ll be the laughing stock of the intellectual world and no one will ever listen to us again.” Once Lydrain has cleared space, Skylei chops the mushrooms so that their ingredients would be able to diffuse their magical properties more effectively. The chalk is already powered and is added into the potion first along with a small amount of pixie dust. Then Skylei would wait until the potion had come to a boil and then add the mushroom in small quantities. The potion would cycle through a number of colours. First green, then turquoise and then finally settling on a light sky blue. With a nervous glance to Lydrain, Skylei would split the liquid in two and offer the dragon one of the vials. “After three?” Whether he agreed or not, Skylei would down the liquid after a silent count to three.

Lydrain would simply nod, and drinks alongside Skylei. Their visions would both go fuzzy again, if only for a moment, and then they would be standing on the floor, ar, at least, they could assume it is the floor, with everything as large as it is, or, rather, how small they were, it was somewhat difficult to tell. The now miniature headmaster called out, "Skylei... are you alright?" With the increased distance, relatively speaking, it would be somewhat difficult for her to hear him.

“What!?” Skylei shouts, “I can’t see you?” It would take her a little while to travel across the floor so that she was alongside the dragon on sight of her tiny legs and the fact that it’s littered with what seem like giant potion ingredients and humungous portions of the ceiling above. “I guess we just have to wait it out then?” The pair of them would remain tiny for a good five or ten minutes, during which time, Skylei would entertain herself by attempting to climb atop an upturned vial. When she did eventually grow back to her usual size, the vial would be crushed beneath her behind. Awkward. Still, she’s too excited by their alchemical success to be bothered with a little bit of glass, “We did it! Now all that’s left to do is to tweak the numbers and make up a batch.” Skylei grins, “I’ll head up to Xalious and let Josleen know the good news. I think we should make preparations so that the trip can take place as soon as possible.”

Lydrain grows back to his normal size, without paying attention to his location. He was, unfortunately for him, underneath his chair at the time, so he hit his head and tipped the chair over. However, as dragons are known for their hard heads, he wasn't hurt, simply wounded pride. He too was overjoyed at their success, "Still can't believe... pixie dust... But, i digress, go go. We should be ready soon. I will speak to my alchemy proffessor here and see if there are any ways of easily prolonguing the effects of a potion. We should be ready soon, I hope."

Skylei nods. “Write to me, should you hear anything. Or write to Josleen. She’s more easily contactable than I am.” With that, and leaving Lydrain’s office without a ceiling and covered in a multitude of vials and ingredients, Skylei takes her leave clutching only mushrooms, a packet full of chalk and another of pixie dust. She doesn’t even offer to help clean up the chaos. Typical Skylei.