Alnea tore himself away from his thoughts, subduing them into the depths of his Heart. Fascinating as the liquid was, just like the skin drying off to the side, it was not quite complete. At least not for the purpose he was preparing it for. Though the Red Tailed Scorpion’s blood was indeed a good carrier for the Mysteries of Fire, it was too inert by itself, while the two White Root Crystals that he ground earlier were far from enough to catalyse the blood and make it readily accept the Mysteries.
Then again, he had never considered to use the White Root Crystals as catalyst. They were there to stabilise the blood, and keep it from exploding. To excite the blood, he had prepared other catalysts. Like the saliva of a Fire Eating Rat, poison of a Flame Tongued Salamander, and fragments of a Red Obsidian. There was just one problem. Just like the blood, the catalysts were also in an inert state. Not as a mistake on part of the Lost City, of course.
In their native state, the three catalysts that he had bought were far too volatile to be stored safely. And if they could be stored, such volatile materials would not be appropriate for the use of a novice like him. Only when deactivated, could such materials be handled safely. And it was not like reactivating the materials was hard. All he had to do was mix the materials in the blood, and then heat mixture on a low temperature fire.
Unfortunately, Alnea did not have the means to heat the mixture. At least not in a way that he could control. He could have asked Yuri for her portable stove, but there was no way to control the fire on the stove. And he had no wish of exploding their only means of preparing some decent food in the wild. Fortunately, he had already expected his predicament, and as such, had prepared accordingly.
After carefully mixing all the catalysts into the bowl, and stirring the mixture until it took on a bright orangish hue, Alnea picked up one of the two vials containing the transparent liquid glowing in a silverish blue light, and brought its mouth close to the edge of the bowl. Then, ever so slowly, he removed the vial’s stopper, allowing the glowing drop of liquid to trickle down from the vial, and slide along the bowl’s wall into the orangish mixture.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then everything happened at once. Red, green, white, blue, orange, black, purple, all sorts of colours flashed in the bowl, as the mixture began bubbling, and squirming, teetering the verge of almost climbing out of the bowl. Thankfully, the bowl he had used was large enough to keep the mixture from overflowing. As for how long the bowl could do its job…
With how volatile the concoction he had made had become, it was only a matter of time before it would overflow, ruining both the materials and all the preparations he had done, not to mention the damage it would cause to the room. Thus, while the situation was not completely out of control, Alnea quickly picked up the second vial of Ornia’s Tear and brought it over the bowl.
This time though, he did not lower the Tear slowly into the mixture, as he had done before. Instead, he removed the vial’s stopper while it was still about a foot above the bowl, and tilted it slightly, allowing the drop of glowing liquid within it to fall into the bubbling liquid below with all its momentum. Yet, the reaction that followed seemed to sap all the momentum from the squirming liquid, calming it down. Not completely, of course.
After the second drop of Ornia’s Tear had done its job, though the concoction was brought back from the verge of overflowing, turning into a greenish black liquid, it had not reverted back to its completely inert state. Some bubbles would pop out from its surface every couple of seconds, releasing greenish fumes from its pockets of air, irritating his nose and tearing up his eyes.
Still, given his conditions, the greenish black liquid was already the best ink he could concoct. And he had no intention of letting his efforts go in vain. So, while the ink had not evaporated completely, he quickly emptied the bowl in a couple of vials he had prepared in advance. It was only a fraction of the six vials of blood and the other materials he had used, but in between the fumes flowing around his room and the thick layer of sticky black residue along the walls of the bowl, two vials were already a good harvest.
Done with the most tedious process, Alnea finally allowed himself to relax a little. But not for long. There was still one material he still had to deal with. So, after stretching out a little to get rid of his soreness, he walked into the bathroom to rinse the bowl once again, preparing it for the next material. The bark of the Red Oak Tree. Thankfully, just like the other materials, it was also in an inert state.
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After coming back to his seat, Alnea picked up the bark from the ground, and took out a small knife. Not the Golden Yearning, of course. It was hanging on the rack near the room’s entrance. Even if he had the dagger by his side though, he still would not have used it to deal with the bark. Despite it being in an inactive state, using an Oren Weapon to scratch the bark’s surface was too big of a risk. Similarly, his Carving Knife was not suitable to deal with the bark either. It had been infused with Oren far too many times.
It was for situations like this, that Wanderers always carried a set of knives to deal with all kinds of materials. The knife he had taken out, for example, was made from the teeth of an Ice Tailed Shark, making it perfect to deal with volatile materials of the Fire element. Even if he used Oren to sharpen the knife, as he scratched the bark’s surface, both the bark and the pieces that he scrapped off of it remained docile as ever, lying quietly inside the bowl.
After he had scrapped off nearly half of the bark’s surface, Alnea put it away in his storage pouch, before picking up the last two vials of blood and emptying them in the bowl, filling it a quarter way up to its rim. Moments later, the wood shaving in the bowl began soaking up the blood, taking on a darker hue. Or at least some of them did. It was not until he began sifting through the shavings with his hands, changing their positions every couple of moments, that they began to absorb the blood more evenly, turning into a thick slurry.
A couple of minutes later, when he felt that the wood shavings had become almost indistinguishable from the blood, he poured it over the Fire Eating Rat’s skin that he had set aside earlier, and spread it evenly over the dried skin’s surface, before setting it aside to dry once again. A process that he knew would only take longer than before. So, while the base he had prepared for his Glyph dried, he began cleaning up the mess he made in his room.
A trip to the bathroom for the dirty bowl and the mallet, a fate shared by the empty vials rolling around in his room, some dusting for the powder and wood shavings scattered around the placed he had worked, and a hard scrubbing for the blood stains his inexperienced hand had left on the ground. Then again, there were many things that he was not experienced in. Like taking care of his mess.
He could not even remember the last time he had cleared up his mess. But with some persistence, and a desire to stay in a clean room, he finally managed to tidy up his room. The only thing he could do nothing about were the green fumes hovering above his head. Left with no other choice, he had to open the window in his room, and let natural air circulation do its job. For the smell sticking to him though, he could only take a bath.
A quarter of an hour later, when Alnea walked out of the bathroom, he was greeted with air that was just as fresh as him. Letting out a smile, he closed the window, and sat back on his cushion, before checking the rat’s skin. A little thick and rough, but a little soft to touch. Although not as dry as a scroll, or a wooden table, for his purpose, it was dry enough. After nearly an hour and a half of preparation, he ready to finally inscribe a Glyph for the first time.
Taking a deep breath, and a few moments to readjust his Heart back to the peak of its Serenity, Alnea picked up the Red Tailed Eagle’s feather, and dipped its tip into the vial of ink he had set aside earlier, before brining it down to the Fire Eating Rat’s skin, sketching out the Glyph he had mastered. At the same time, he did not forget to channel Oren through the feather into the ink, and the base that he had prepared with over half a dozen materials, priming it to accept the Mysteries he was summoning. And accept, it did. Just not in the way he had expected.
The moment that Alnea completed the first of his strokes, and was about to proceed to the second one, the materials in the ink and the base that had been barely maintaining a balance reacted with each other and the hint of Mystery that descended on them. In just a fraction of a moment, before he could understand, or even notice what was happening, the Fire Eating Rat’s skin had already burst into flames. It was only when he reflexively retracted his hands that he noticed the flames. But… how?
He did not remember making any mistakes. Rather, he had followed all the steps exactly according to the example he had read in a scroll. Even the materials he had selected, down to the proportions he had used them in, was the same as that the Wanderer had recorded in his experience. Was there an error in the records? No, if that was the case, then his master would not have given him the scroll. Thus, the question came once again. What exactly went wrong? Where exactly…
While Alnea sat in a daze, protected from the flames by the thorns glowing on his robe, going over everything that he had done after walking into his room, the fire kept increasing in intensity, soon reaching a level enough to excite the potential of the fragments of the Red Oak Tree spread all over the rat’s skin. And so, while he was still lost in his thoughts, several bursts of red light filled his room, shaking his ears, along with the entire mansion.