Mitre sat down upon the Crystal Throne. Aleister expected something out of the ordinary to happen, but nothing did.

“How dull,” Aleister said. “Please tell me something is going to happen within the next half hour.”

“It will still take a few weeks for anything to happen,” Gilmore said. “Same process as before.”

"Weeks?" Aleister asked in a raised voice. "Then, why even invite me here today?"

Gilmore said, "It's the beginning of a ceremonious occasion."

Aleister rolled his eyes.

“Is that not good enough of a reason?” Syn asked, not visible to him.

“No, and I have some questions, like how are you able to read my mind, and why are you doing the talk directly into my mind thing again?” Aleister asked. “In the Throne Room again too.”

“You could not look more annoyed and when I talk to you normally, it isn’t only you that is able to hear me. Anything or creature on the Ethereal Plane can too. Now this doesn’t matter in most situations, but I do not wish to be seen or heard in this room or Crystal Lake,” Syn said in a careful voice. “Why exactly is beyond your understanding, but you should understand my reasoning at the least.”

Aleister flexed his arms out and cracked his knuckles. He wanted to know what exactly was present here that made her almost sound...afraid. He felt goosebumps appear throughout his body and shook just a little.

Noticing this, Gilmore asked, “Is something the matter?”

“No, I just thought of something.” Aleister motioned towards the exit but still turned around and asked, “I don’t need to stay here, do I?”

“You can go, but make sure you come back to this room every day.”

“Why?”

“You will find out soon enough,” Gilmore said.

Aleister clicked his tongue and headed back to the manor. There was only so much time in the day for him to waste, especially since he needed to brew a batch of actually finished potions for the next week. The problem he encountered, though, was that the creation of potions required more than just herbs. It required extra ingredients, like animal or demonic beast parts. But since he didn’t have the gold to cover those costs, he researched and improvised.

Syn offered her help and narrowed down the entire journal from its over five-hundred pages to just about fifty. Not all of them were helpful, or even remotely plausible potions for him to create right now, but it was better than nothing. He eventually settled on a dark sight potion. The effects would allow the user to see around one-hundred feet around them in dimly lit areas and half of that in complete darkness for one to four hours.

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The flux root concentrate still comprised the base of the potion. Now he just needed to finish it. He ground up some leaves of brittlebush into a coarse powder and then added a dash of grapeseed oil. With a fork, he whisked them vigorously until they emulsified into a foamy yellow paste. He added that paste to a small pan and lit up a weak fire underneath it. As soon as the first bubble popped, he turned off the heat and transferred it into two different flasks. Everything so far was simple. Now was where the trouble began.

The first problem was the fact that he was still a novice at Gynmish and used a translation dictionary for most of his process. A problem came about when it came to the translation of one ingredient. The handwriting of the author was subpar at best, and with the rest of the scribbling—some words blended together. He was only to tell that it was some type of sage. This was a problem because he knew that at least ten different variations existed, and he only had access to two of them at the current moment. Each of them had different properties, but they were still all sage, so it shouldn’t be a problem if he used the incorrect one. Or so he hoped.

Not wanting to let the solution cool down, he shattered both of the frozen sage leaves. He added the pygmy sage in the first flask, and in the second flask he added the tiger sage. Upon seeing the results, Aleister made incoherent noises. The colour of both of the liquids did change, but instead of the sky blue described in the book, one was a dark magenta, and the other was a suspicious yellow-green.

“Maybe these variations will provide extra benefits,” Aleister mused.

“And what if they are actually harmful,” Syn asked.

Aleister mocked her and said, “Oh, so now you decide to speak up and give me your opinion.”

“Your welcome,” she said, returning to reading her book.

He shook his head, labeled both of the flasks, and continued his process. He needed to test the final product to make sure it worked as intended, anyway.

For the next step, he grabbed the dish of rain moss he put underneath a lantern. The heat, moisture, and honey he drizzled on top created a bumpy off-white and marigold mold that had a sour odor to it. Using a thin knife, he scraped it off into a separate dish and then split it in multiple sections. One part went in to the two flasks. Aleister pressed the flat edge of the knife across the moss and collected the liquid that oozed out. The potency of the moss essence made it, so he only needed to add a few drops. The flasks both hissed and let out a thin vapour as he stirred the ingredients together.

He poured the solutions into their own separate mesh sleeves, letting the liquid separate from the pulp and solids. An hour passed by as he cleaned up all the used tools before flipping them upside down over a towel to dry out. Noticing that no more liquid dropped, he avoided squeezing the bags as the remnants would contain too many impurities and instead placed them into an empty bag.

The extracted liquid was a concentrate of the dark sight potion. He lined up twenty-four vials of the unfinished fluxroot potion. In the first twelve, he added ten drops of the pygmy sage solution, and in the last twelve, ten drops of the tiger sage solution. Each one was then closed off with a cork and given a good shake to combine, bringing an end to this three-hour process.

Aleister let out a deep breath as he slouched into his chair.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Syn asked as she stood behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“Not for you, maybe! For me it was nerve racking,” he said with a groan. “Also, I just realized yet another problem. I made potions that allow you to see in dim light and in the dark, but I can’t even test them properly because I can already do that.”