The instructor led me back to the room where I had initially met with the king, ushering me inside before leading the others down the hall. A relatively diminutive woman was seated at the table with two stacks of papers in front of her, silently staring with an eyebrow raised as I made my way to a chair. I returned the quizzical look, and we both sat in silence for a while before things got too awkward for my liking.
“Hello,” I said as I slowly extended my arm for a handshake. “My name’s Zach. Are you the one who will be teaching me?”
“Yes,” she flatly stated as she stared at my hand with what I could only describe as contempt. Confused, I withdrew my hand and glanced around the room in an attempt to avoid staring like an idiot. I sat quietly for a while longer as she rifled through the papers between us, but I could only take so much silence.
“Are we waiting for someone,” I asked apprehensively. She shook her head, but gave me nothing else to work with. “Then… What exactly are we waiting for? I’m told I have a lot I need to learn.”
“That is certainly an understatement,” she replied with clear exasperation. “When King Caran said you were uneducated, I expected to have my work cut out for me, but this… This is pathetic. You may as well be a newborn.” Her bluntness left me taken aback, and all I could manage to do was gawk. “Oh, don’t act so surprised. You couldn’t even fill one full page of your test.”
“Of course I couldn’t,” I said indignantly. “Are you not aware that I’m not from here?”
“And what of it? You’ve been here long enough to have learned more than this,” she stated. Looking through what I assumed to be my test papers, she began listing the various gaps in my knowledge. “Not one alchemy question answered, only a few regarding magic, and next to nothing about the gods… Was there no point where you were at least curious about any of those things?”
I took some time to gather my thoughts, trying not to let myself be overcome by anger. While I didn’t appreciate being berated, I had been in her position enough to have some sympathy for her. When someone with the amount of power that a king has tells you to do something, you do it, regardless of your own feelings on the matter.
“Look, I get that you probably want to be here about as much as I do,” I began. “But I don’t need you talking down to me. My focus was on trying to get back home, not discovering everything I could about this place. Realistically, I don’t plan to remain here for long, so we can probably stick to the basics if I absolutely have to learn any of it. So, what do you say we make your job easy and keep things simple?”
I tilted my head with a pleading expression, hoping that she would take the bait and go easy on me. With an exasperated sigh, my potential teacher set the papers down and leaned back in her chair, massaging her temples. She remained silent for a while longer, and I began to second guess whether or not she’d even be up for the task, but she ultimately managed to shake herself free from her thoughts.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” she finally replied. “I’ve been instructed to teach you to the best of my ability, so that is what I’ll do. However, I will give a choice of where we begin. Is there a subject that might particularly interest you?”
I mentally thumbed through what was covered in the test, unsure of whether or not there would be anything worth studying. Politics are certainly off the table, I thought. Same with theology, I don’t see that being much of a help. Biology could be interesting, but what good would that realistically do? That leaves two choices… I mulled it over for a moment longer, before finally reaching a decision.
“Alchemy,” I stated. “I already know enough about magic, and the rest will be worthless to me. That sound good to you?” She nodded in the affirmative, grabbing a select few papers out of the second stack, and stood up from her seat. I followed her lead and joined her as she exited the room, winding through several halls deeper into the building. I noticed that, unlike the seemingly random pattern of the castle’s passageways, these wound back and forth in a uniform zig-zag shape.
The reason became evident as we neared our destination, as the halls started to fill with a strange smell. What was initially a flowery scent slowly began to morph into the odor of various concentrated chemicals. Acrid hints of ammonia mixed with the unmistakable smell of sulfur, with undertones of alcohol and phosphorus, slowly growing more overwhelming as we neared the door at the end of the hall. By the time we reached the room, I was heavily questioning what safety precautions were in place, if any. Seemingly unbothered, my teacher opened the door and I was hit with an even stronger wave of the smells, causing my eyes to water and forcing me to pull my shirt over my nose and mouth to prevent myself from breathing too much in.
This seemed to be too much even for her, as she muttered something about runes not being powered under her breath, reaching for a plaque just inside the door. Her hand glowed a brilliant blue as she dumped some energy into the engravings on its surface, and I could feel a sudden change in the air pressure as the fumes were quickly evacuated from the room. I took a cautious step inside as I wiped the tears from my eyes, and was shocked by what I saw.
Contrary to my expectations, aside from the wood and stone construction of the building, the room somewhat resembled a pharmaceutical research lab. Everything was immaculately clean, and the walls were lined with shelves full of high-end glassware on one half of the room. In stark contrast, the other side of the room was full of drying racks with a multitude of different plants, and shelves of what looked to be raw chunks of various elements. Most of the materials were alien to my eyes, with the exception of the elements themselves. Looking around the room, I was hit with a warped sense of nostalgia as I remembered my numerous trips to monitor and guard different cookhouses over the years, but was quickly pulled from my thoughts by a hand waving in front of my face.
“Did you hear a single word of what I just said,” asked the teacher. I sheepishly shook my head and apologized for spacing out, netting me a disappointed sigh. “You need to pay attention, especially if you intend to keep all of your limbs while practicing alchemy. Even simple errors can rapidly become dangerous if you lose focus for even a second in the middle of a reaction.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “It won’t happen again. I just wasn’t expecting to be reminded so much of home.” Her air of frustration was shattered in an instant by my comment, being replaced with a look of confusion.
“I thought your world didn’t have magic,” she half stated, half asked. “How does an alchemy studio remind you of home?”
Hmm, so you know more than you let on, I thought. Interesting choice to still be so condescending if the king told you all about me. Not wanting to return to spacing out, I pushed my thoughts aside in favor of actually answering the question.
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“It doesn’t, but we do have chemistry, which is pretty much the spiritual successor to alchemy,” I responded. “Seeing all the equipment and compounds reminds me of the labs I’ve been in, other than the plants.” Just as quickly as her irritation left, it returned, leaving me slightly bewildered.
“Yes, I know what chemistry is, but it’s no successor of alchemy here,” she retorted. “It’s used as a precursor for alchemical processes. However, since you’re familiar with the subject, I’d like a demonstration of your skills before we begin today’s lesson.”
“Not happening,” I said with a scoff. As expected, she didn’t like that answer and her seemingly eternal frown deepened.
“And why is that,” she asked as she crossed her arms.
“Well, like I told the king, as I’m sure you know… I’m not here to share knowledge from my world,” I replied. “Even if I wanted to, though, my knowledge is quite limited, and I doubt you have the supplies here for any of the reactions I know of.” Unsurprisingly, that didn’t seem to be a satisfactory answer, and she pressed me harder for an explanation. Remembering that I had already confessed to killing nearly a hundred people, and it was unlikely to have been kept secret, I let out a sigh before elaborating.
“Drugs and weapons,” I stated bluntly. “All I know how to make are ways to kill or maim, or to get very, very intoxicated. Hence why I doubt you have the materials, especially in an unsecured lab like this one. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about synthesizing anything from scratch, though, only how to properly combine things. Now, is that a good enough answer for you, or do I have to explain further?”
She stared at me with a blank expression, rubbing her chin as she contemplated how to proceed. After what felt like fifteen minutes, but was probably just thirty seconds, she finally seemed to come to a decision. She wordlessly walked over the glassware and grabbed a large flask, gently placing it on an engraved steel plate embedded into a workbench in the middle of the room. After that, she walked over to the drying racks and retrieved a bundle of dried flowers with indigo colored petals, along with a small chunk of what looked to be pure sulfur, and set them next to the flask.
“Do you know what a mortar and pestle are,” she suddenly asked as she walked over to a set of cabinets and opened the doors. I nodded, much to her satisfaction, and she pointed to one of the shelves below a set of beakers. “Good. Grab one from there and grind the petals of those flowers into a fine powder.” I did as I was told, occasionally looking back to see her uncorking a bottle of clear liquid and smelling it before recoiling in disgust. By the time she found what she was looking for, I had managed to reduce the petals to a texture similar to that of confectioner’s sugar.
“Perfect,” she stated after a quick inspection of my work, then proceeded to pour a small amount of the liquid she procured from the cabinet. Immediately, I was struck with the smell of high-concentration isopropyl alcohol. She then took one of her papers and fashioned it into a makeshift funnel, and dumped the powdered flower petals into the alcohol. “We’re going to start with one of the most basic and common things you can do with alchemy; the extraction and crystallization of concentrated magic essence from the wakeright flower.”
I lit up with recognition at the name of the flower, brought back to my journey through the woods with Aniel and Oruan, and our mornings sat around a campfire while breakfast was cooking. Despite not actually being very long ago, it felt as though it had been years since we set out for the capitol, and I caught myself feeling nostalgic again over the comparatively simpler times. Not wanting to be reprimanded again so soon, I pulled my focus back to the lesson before I could get too distracted. Thankfully, my mistake went unnoticed, and I had only managed to miss the teacher grabbing a small wooden dowel to stir the flower-alcohol mixture.
“This reaction has a large amount of leeway, mostly dependent on how potent you want the resulting product to be,” she explained as she stirred the mixture thoroughly. Once everything was combined, she removed the dowel and loosely placed a small glass dish over the the mouth of the flask and briefly placed her hand on the engravings of the plate underneath. At first, it looked like nothing was happening, but after a while, condensation started to appear on the inside of the glass.
“Oh, cool, it’s a hot-plate,” I asked.
“Yes. Heating the alcohol helps leech out the essence and dissolve the petals,” she explained. “Once it reaches a boil, we will add the chunk of sulfur and heat it further, until it melts. When that’s done, it’s important to quickly remove the mixture from the heat and pour it into a thin layer to cool, or you run the risk of ignition.” While the instructions were straight-forward, I furrowed my brow in confusion, not quite able to understand how that would be possible.
“But… won’t the alcohol boil off way before the sulfur melts,” I asked. My knowledge of chemistry was admittedly limited, but as far as I knew, it was universally known that alcohol has a very low boiling point. She simply pointed to the glass atop the flask, and I leaned in for a closer look. I had missed them before with my cursory glance, but the glass had small runes of its own carved into the surface, presumably designed to produce a cooling effect and act as a condenser. “Okay, that’s interesting. How does the flask not shatter, though? I would think the temperature difference causes too much stress for the glass to handle.”
The teacher waved off my concerns, citing the way the glass was manufactured, so I just chalked it up to being some niche magical nonsense that I’d never need to understand anyway. Before long, the alcohol came to a boil, and she quickly removed the condenser to insert the sulfur, just as quickly covering it back up. Following that step, more power was added to the heating plate to boost the temperature. Initially, it didn’t seem like much was happening aside from the alcohol trying and failing to escape, but the solution gradually began to turn green as the sulfur melted. I was worried that it wouldn’t be properly incorporated due to the lack of a stir-bar, but the violent boiling caused that problem to resolve itself.
When the last scraps of sulfur finally vanished, she quickly removed the condenser and dumped everything straight onto the table. Nearly instantly, it hardened into a mostly opaque green sheet of glass and shattered into small pieces as it cooled and shrank. I picked up one of the smaller fragments and gave it a quick inspection, impressed that any of its ingredients actually managed to combine, let alone turn into something useful.
“Okay, now it’s your turn. Can I assume that was simple enough for you to understand,” she asked. I nodded my assent, and she grabbed three more batches of the ingredients for me to begin the process anew. “You can reuse the same flask. Anything left over from the previous run will just combine with the new batch.” I nodded again, and got to grinding the petals down.
I did my best to replicate the entire process, but the first batch was a resounding failure. While the hot-plate was easy enough to use after a quick explanation, I neglected to activate the condenser, not having realized she had done so while handling it during her demonstration. I apologized profusely for wasting the materials, but apparently they were in abundant supply, so the loss barely even qualified as negligible. With that hiccup out of the way, my follow-up attempts turned out like the example run, much to my teacher’s delight.
“Good job,” she remarked. “Maybe you won’t be such a pain to teach, after all.”
“I appreciate it, but didn’t you say this is one the easiest things to make,” I questioned.
“In a way, yes, but you’d be surprised by how many students I’ve had that take weeks to accomplish what you managed on your second try. Granted, you do have prior experience, but that just further reinforces what I said,” she replied. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gladly accepted her change of tune.
“Alright, so what’s next,” I asked. “That was fun and all, but I assume I have to learn more than how to make this stuff.”
“Today’s lesson is over,” she stated, leaving me quite disappointed. “It’s getting late, and I have to write a report on how it went. The next lesson will likely take place after your recruitment intake process is over, so I will see you then.” With that, she unceremoniously turned around and left the room. I contemplated trying the reaction a few more times on my own, but decided against doing so unsupervised in the event that I was too slow to remove the mixture from the heat and blew myself up. The idea was shortly replaced by my stomach’s sudden pleas for food, and without anything else to distract me, I gave in and left for the mess hall.