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In another moment, they arrived at the doctor’s door. Beethoven knocked, and the door was promptly opened by a diminutive figure clad in a coarse grey jerkin and a leathern apron. This was Flapdragon, the doctor’s peculiar assistant.

Blear-eyed and smoke-grimed, with a lantern jaw, the dwarf looked as though he had spent his entire existence over a furnace. In truth, he had. He was little more than a pair of human bellows. In his hand, he held the halberd that had wounded Anthony.

“So, you’ve been playing the leech, Flapdragon?” Beethoven called out.

“Aye, indeed,” replied the dwarf, grinning wildly to reveal a set of wolfish teeth. “Master ordered me to smear the halberd with the sympathetic ointment. I did as he said: rubbed the steel point, first on one side, then the other; wiped it, and smeared it again.”

“Which put the patient in exquisite pain,” Beethoven replied. “Help me get him to the laboratory.”

“I don’t know if the doctor wishes to be disturbed,” Flapdragon said, hesitating. “He’s deep into a grand operation.”

“I’ll take that risk,” Beethoven insisted. “The youth will die if he stays here. Look, he’s fainted already!”

Urged by Beethoven, the dwarf set the halberd down. Together, they carried Anthony up a wide, creaking staircase to the laboratory. Doctor Morehouse was engrossed in his work, pumping bellows at a roaring furnace topped by a large alembic, his focus so intense he barely acknowledged their entry.

“Place the youth on the ground and prop his head against the chair,” Doctor Morehouse barked without turning around. “Bathe his brows with the decoction in that crucible. I will attend to him soon. Beethoven, come to me tomorrow, and I will repay you for your trouble. I am busy now.”

“These relics, doctor,” Beethoven said, glancing at the bag from which a bald head protruded, “I ought to take them back with me.”

“Leave them—they are safe with me,” Doctor Morehouse snapped impatiently. “Tomorrow—tomorrow.”

With a reluctant shrug and a furtive glance around the laboratory, Beethoven departed. Following his master’s instructions, Flapdragon bathed the sufferer’s temples with the decoction, then turned for further orders.

“Begone!” the doctor roared, so fiercely that the dwarf darted from the room, slamming the door behind him.

Doctor Morehouse then returned to his work with renewed fervor, completely absorbed and oblivious to the presence of the wounded stranger sprawled on the floor. The shadows cast by the flickering flames danced eerily on the walls, deepening the Gothic atmosphere of the chamber. The alembic bubbled and hissed, filling the room with an acrid, metallic scent as the alchemist labored, seemingly lost in a world of his own creation, where the lines between science and dark art blurred beyond recognition.

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Revived by the stimulant, Anthony’s eyes fluttered open. As his gaze swept around the room, he wondered if he was dreaming. The chamber was a labyrinth of arcane and macabre paraphernalia: bolt-heads, crucibles, cucurbites, and retorts lay strewn about in chaotic disarray. In one corner, a massive terrestrial globe stood next to an astrolabe, both overshadowed by a heap of disused glass vessels. Nearby, a black, sinister-looking book fastened with brass clasps was surrounded by a ram’s horn, forceps, a roll of parchment, a pestle and mortar, and a large copper plate engraved with the enigmatic symbols of the Isaical table. The bag containing the two decapitated heads lay ominously, one head protruding, its lifeless eyes staring blankly.

A table at the far end of the room held a large open tome with parchment leaves covered in cabalistic characters, each referring to the names of spirits. Two parchment scrolls, marked with ancient Chaldaic script, lay weighted by a skull. A grotesque brass lamp, its twin snake-headed burners casting an eerie light, illuminated the room. From the ceiling hung a huge, scaly sea monster, its fins outspread, jaws agape with tremendous teeth, and great goggling eyes staring down. Nearby, a celestial sphere dangled. The chimney-piece, intricately carved and projecting far into the room, was cluttered with hermetic instruments. Above it hung dried bats and flitter-mice, interspersed with the skulls of birds and apes. A stone-sculpted horary and a large starfish adorned the mantle. The fireplace housed the furnace, its flames dancing beneath an alembic connected by a long, serpentine pipe to a receiver.

Two skeletons occupied the room, one standing behind a curtain in a window’s deep embrasure, its polished bones gleaming in the moonlight. The other sat near the chimney, its fleshless feet dangling into the furnace’s smoke.

Doctor Morehouse continued his work, pausing occasionally to throw various roots and drugs onto the charcoal. Each addition produced flames of different colors—blue, green, and blood-red—that cast a kaleidoscopic glow over the room. The objects seemed to shift and morph in the flickering light: cucurbites became bloated toads, bolt-heads transformed into serpents, worm-like pipes turned into adders, alembics resembled plumed helmets, and the symbols on the Isaical table and parchment scrolls glowed and changed like living fire. The sea monster appeared to bellow and struggle against its hook, skeletons seemed to mockingly wag their jaws and raise bony fingers, blue flames flickered in their eyeless sockets, and the bellows took on the shape of a monstrous bat. Even Doctor Morehouse seemed to transform into an archfiend presiding over a witches’ sabbath.

Anthony’s mind reeled. He pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to block out the horrific visions, but the phantasms persisted, and he imagined he could hear the infernal din surrounding him.

Suddenly, a triumphant cry pierced the air. Uncovering his eyes, Anthony saw Doctor Morehouse pouring a bright, transparent liquid from the alembic into a small phial. Securing the bottle with a glass stopper, the doctor held it up to the light, his face alight with rapture.

“At last,” he exclaimed, “the great work is achieved. With the birth of this century, I first saw light, and the elixir I hold in my hand shall allow me to witness centuries yet to come. Composed of the lunar stones, the solar stones, and the mercurial stones—prepared according to the instructions of Rabbi Ben Lucca—by the separation of the pure from the impure, the volatilisation of the fixed, and the fixing of the volatile—this elixir shall renew my youth like that of the eagle and grant me longevity surpassing any patriarch.”

He held the sparkling liquid aloft, gazing at it as if it were a holy relic. “To live forever!” he cried, his voice trembling with awe. “To escape death’s jaws as they gape to devour me! To be free from all accidents! It’s a glorious thought! But the rabbi warned of one peril the elixir could not guard against—one vulnerable point, akin to Achilles’ heel. What is it? Where can it lie?”

He fell into deep, troubled thought, the room around him pulsating with the dark energy of his achievement.