The Cat Magician labelled every bottle in his workshop. Moonlight tonic stood beside bottled thunder; three drops of dragon laughter rested safely behind a lock. The only bottle without a label contained a violet mixture that changed colour whenever no one was looking.
He called it his masterpiece. He planned to pour one careful drop onto the living reels and create a bonus no magician had seen before. But on the morning of the demonstration, the bottle was gone.
A trail of impossible luck
A silver paw print shimmered on the floor. The Cat Magician followed it through the enchanted hall, where strange things were already happening. A bell rang and produced a shower of mushrooms. A coin bag sneezed. Three pumpkins rolled into line and opened a door to midsummer, although snow covered the valley outside.
“Someone has used my potion,” he declared. The Owl Orb blinked but said nothing.
The trail led to the smallest reel in the hall. It had always been considered ordinary: five plain columns, a quiet lever and no special tricks. Now it purred. Each spin rearranged not only the symbols but the rules written on the paytable beside it.
“Magic that follows every instruction is only machinery wearing a hat.”
The Cat Magician tried a freezing spell. The reel turned the ice into diamonds. He tried a reversal spell, and the symbols began reading his incantation backwards. Finally, annoyed beyond dignity, he pounced on the lever. The missing bottle dropped from inside his sleeve.
No thief had taken it. He had hidden the potion from himself the night before, worried that someone might copy the recipe, then forgotten the hiding place. The silver paw prints were his own.
The ingredient he forgot
The potion had spilled only once, while the Cat Magician leaned over the ordinary reel. Yet that single drop was enough. It had mixed with the reel’s patient wish to become interesting.
He searched his notebook. His written recipe listed starlight, echo dust and a whisker freely given. One ingredient was missing: surprise. It could never be measured or poured deliberately. It appeared only when a plan went wrong in exactly the right way.
He left the small reel as it was. From then on, it became the workshop where new potion effects were tested. Some altered wins, some opened strange rooms, and some merely made the Cat Magician’s hat sing until sunset.
Eventually, he placed a label on the violet bottle. It read: “DO NOT LOSE.” Beneath it, in smaller letters, he added: “Unless absolutely necessary.”