Veylin did not sit idle while waiting for word from the council.
He took Ola and Leo to the Arcane Way again.
Unlike their last leisurely visit, he had a very clear goal this time.
"My lord, look at this!" Leo pointed to a glass jar on a stall, with a heart still beating inside.
The stallholder was a masked gnome. "An animated heart," he explained. "Implant it in a construct, and it will develop rudimentary emotions. Only three hundred gold suns."
Veylin took one glance and lost interest.
He had little interest in crude alchemical creations like this.
He entered a shop called Underground Roots, which specialized in plants and creatures from the Underdark.
The shop was dimly lit, and the air smelled of damp earth and fungi.
"I need a batch of plant seeds that can grow without light in very humid conditions," Veylin told the tall, thin half-elf shopkeeper behind the counter. "Ether concentration requirements are fine, but they must have high commercial value."
The half-elf shopkeeper looked him over, then dragged a heavy wooden chest out from beneath the counter.
Inside the opened chest were assorted seeds and spores, sorted into small cloth bags of different colors and materials.
The shopkeeper introduced several staple ingredients used in common magic potion recipes, and Veylin bought some of each.
These were all intended for the magic potion garden beneath Minas Tirith, built around the primordial blood crystal vein.
Next, Veylin and his companions visited the central building of the Arcane Way-the Tower of All Magic.
Inside the towering white spire, he went straight to the department responsible for biological modification.
"I have some crocodile eggs containing dragon blood, and I need to increase their degree of draconic transformation," Veylin told the mage receiving him.
He had tried it