Jeb looked at the Professor’s hand.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Professor Quicksilver sighed slightly. “Jeb, what is different about this Brew compared to others that you have made?”
“I managed to get both the Ale Essence and the Eyebright Essence to align!” he replied proudly.
Quicksilver stared at him, nodding slightly. He did not say anything, though, clearly waiting for Jeb to connect the pieces himself.
Jeb thought about the implicit question. Why would aligning Essences make something unsafe to drink.
As though asking had been the catalyst, understanding dawned on Jeb. “Oh!” he replied, “aligning Essences is one of the fundamental ways to change Essence,” he said excitedly.
“And?” his Professor prompted.
“And slight variations in Essence can produce very different effects,” Jeb replied. “I don’t see why this would be an issue, though. I still followed the directions for making Eyebright Ale.”
“Did the directions say anything about controlling the Essences while you Brew?” Quicksilver asked.
Jeb shrugged. “I don’t remember anything, but it may have just been implicit.”
“It was not,” Quicksilver assured him. “Or, at least, it would not have included also controlling Essence of Ale. What should you do, since you do not know the exact Essence makeup of this Brew?”
“The first answer that comes to mind is feeding it to someone,” Jeb replied, “but I have to imagine that is not the correct answer.”
Quicksilver chuckled, “for liability reasons, you are correct. How else could you test this Alchemical to see if it is safe to consume?”
Jeb spoke through his ideas. “For many Alchemicals, the reagents themselves are toxic in small quantities. Since that is not the case here, I only need to worry about Magical dangers.” He paused, curious what Quicksilver would say.
“You are neglecting second order interactions between matter and Magic,” his instructor prompted.
“That’s still a Magical danger,” Jeb argued.
Quicksilver waved a hand, ceding the point.
“Magical dangers are either due to the nature or duration of Essence,” Jeb recited. Seeing his Professor nod, he continued, “I do not know the exact spectrum of Eyebright Essence, but I do have a barrel of Eyebright Ale here, which has it. If the nature remains unchanged, it should behave the same way in an Essence Meter. I do not know how to test the duration, however,” he admitted.
Quicksilver smiled. “I was wondering when you would decide to use an Essence Meter! There are, of course, no truly permanent Alchemical effects.” He began walking out of the Brewery as he kept his explanation going.
“Alchemical effects described as permanent are either capable of pulling and reforming Essence when consumed or decay so slowly that they will outlast the person who has consumed them. Despite the fact that these modes will operate in the same way, they have fundamentally different causes, and as such, are measured using fundamentally different methods. However, you are supposing that the only Essence in the Eyebright Ale will be Eyebright Essence, is that correct?”
Jeb noticed that they were back in the same laboratory he had been using to concentrate Ale Essence. Taking the hint, he filled a small bottle with Distilled Ale Essence and slipped it into a pocket. Professor Quicksilver nodded and continued walking, which Jeb took as his cue to keep speaking.
“I believe that the only Essences in the beer will be Eyebright Essence and Ale Essence,” Jeb amended, “and I believe that they will remain separated.”
“Why do you suppose that?” Quicksilver seemed to be having fun with the question and answer routine, and Jeb remembered how much his Professor enjoyed this pedagogical tool.
“I believe that there will be no other Essences because I did not notice any other Essences in the Brew,” Jeb said. Holding up a hand to forestall the obvious next question, he continued, “although that does not preclude other Essences, it does mean that it is unlikely for there to be any Essences in this Brew that are not in the Eyebright Ale which we know is safe to consume, other than Essence of Ale, of course.”
“And?” Quicksilver prompted.
Jeb realized he had only answered half of the Professor’s question, “and I do not think that they merged because it felt like there were still two distinct Essences in the beer when it had finished brewing.” A part of him expected the Professor to reject his argument, based as it was on something as nebulous as feel. However, the rest of him remembered the frequent lectures Professor Quicksilver had given about Alchemists needing to trust their own intuition. With that in mind, it was no real surprise when his Professor nodded and opened a new door.
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The room behind the door was dimly lit. A large Essence Meter took up almost the entire space. Enchantments were visible by the glowing runes that seemed to appear and disappear at random. Jeb realized that he had never seen a working Essence Meter before, only the partially disassembled versions that Professor Quicksilver had been working on. The working version was a beauty to behold.
It was a seamless blend of Alchemy and Enchanting. The longer that Jeb looked at it, the more certain he was that this apparatus blended more than just those two Schools of Magic. He caught the faintest hint of a Glyph flashing somewhere within the instrument, and a faint song seemed to spiral around it.
Quicksilver beamed at Jeb’s expression. “I was hoping that you would enjoy this. A poet might compare you, or at least your Class, to this instrument.”
Jeb nodded, immediately seeing the parallels. Shaking the excitement away, he picked up the container of Eyebright Ale, looking for a place to pour the liquid out. Quicksilver held out a hand to stop him.
“The Essence Meter will need to be reconfigured to perform both analyses for which you have expressed interest. Would you prefer to begin with testing the duration or the Essence makeup of your new beer?”
Jeb shrugged. “Is the system already configured to run one of those?” Seeing Quicksilver shake his head, Jeb continued, “I think that I would like to start by measuring the composition of the brew. If it is markedly different than Eyebright Essence, it doesn’t really matter how long of a duration it has, because I would need to do more testing on it to make sure that it is not dangerous.”
Quicksilver gave an approving nod and began configuring the instrument. At times, it almost seemed as though his hand was disappearing, slipping between a fold in reality that Jeb could not see. A few minutes later, the Essence Meter was humming and glowing a bright golden hue. The Professor let out a small whistle of appreciation and stepped back to rejoin Jeb. As he did, the instrument pushed out three plates with small depressions.
“Put the Eyebright Ale and the Ale Essence in those two wells,” Quicksilver instructed, and Jeb hurried to do so. When the three samples were all loaded, Jeb began to bob from foot to foot, waiting for light to begin pouring out of the instrument. Instead, however, a small piece of paper ejected itself from the instrument. Quicksilver ripped it off, quickly glanced at the page, and then handed it to Jeb.
Jeb looked down at the page, curious what it said. Try as he might, though, he was unable to understand the meaning behind any of the shapes or lines printed on the page. Quicksilver was already busy at work reconfiguring the Essence Meter, so Jeb waited until he was finished to ask his question.
“Hmm?” Quicksilver asked, clearly not expecting a question
“What does this any of this mean?” Jeb asked again, gesturing to the page.
“Oh!” Quicksilver leapt back. “I had forgotten that we do not introduce readings from Essence Meters in the introductory course any longer.” Giving Jeb a sheepish grin, he explained the meaning of all the different parts of the page. In short, the Essences were, as Jeb had thought, still separated. They were far more concentrated than he would have expected, though. The Ale Essence was almost as strong in the Brew as it was in the Distilled Ale Essence.
“As I mentioned before,” Quicksilver segued into his lecture on the new experimental setup, “there are two ways that an Alchemical can be functionally endless.”
“It can either absorb new Essence or take a long time to decay,” Jeb parroted back.
Quicksilver nodded. “This configuration will hit the sample with Essence twice. The first time, the sample will absorb the Essence as normal. The second time, however, tells us about its duration.”
Seeing Jeb’s dubious expression, he continued, “if there is no new absorption, then the sample remained full of Essence, and we can extrapolate its lifetime with a few more runs. If, once primed, it absorbs other Essences, we can see that it will continue to self multiply.”
To demonstrate, Professor Quicksilver put a small drop of the old Eyebright Ale into the chamber and then explained the readout. To Jeb’s relief, his new Brew decayed just as quickly.
“So there is no harm in drinking the newest batch?” Jeb asked to confirm.
“It would appear so,” Professor Quicksilver replied. “We have not tested for Magical and physical interactions, but that requires far more effort than is worthwhile to teach you at this time. I can tell you that, having tested those Essences before, there will not be any relevant interactions.”
Jeb smiled and poured the two of them each a small glass of the beer. It tasted far better than any of the previous batches had, and Jeb almost reconsidered his dislike of the Brew. The Ale Essence seemed to chip away at each of the flavors within the beer, making them all sing just a little bit more together. Of course, Jeb knew that he had also gotten better at the physical mechanism of Brewing, which helped as well. The Eyebright had been steeped exactly as long as it needed to, not a scant second longer.
The two of them began to walk back to Jeb’s plot of land. As they did, Quicksilver encouraged Jeb to consider what he wanted to work on next. When they arrived at the field, Jeb found an answer.
The barley growing there had clearly suffered a little from inattention. “As much as I like having these fresh plants,” Jeb said, “I don’t know if I have the time to take care of them the way that they need. Are there any Alchemicals that I could make to help with this?”
Quicksilver shrugged. “There are, though it requires a fair amount of effort to ensure that you are using them at the right times and in the proper quantities. What you are looking for, I believe, is a custom set of Enchantments. I am sure that you can figure out most of what you need to know about Alchemical Brewing from what we’ve just done, and of course, my office is open should you have other questions. However, selfishly, I would also prefer if you focused your attention on growing plants more effectively. For all that none of the plants you have requested are particularly limited, you are depleting our stocks more quickly than we had predicted. I am certain that Professor Bearson would be willing to work with you on a project to automate much of this work.” Having spoken, Quicksilver stepped through a fold in the air and left Jeb to his thoughts.
Jeb quickly watered and checked on the barley, doing his best to make up for the neglect it had faced over the past few days. Once he had, he set out, hoping to find Professor Bearson’s office.