Brewing Bad Ch. 112-113

Ch. 112 - Making Magic

Though he’d taken the challenge to cover up for his own goals, Lucas thought that it would be an easy win to shove in Heisenburgle’s smug face. He was sorely mistaken. Though he made a few batches of Blue that night, that was just because he’d already started preparing reagents. Once that was done, he tore into the texts that the gnome recommended on the subject, and though he would never admit it to Heisenburgle, he had a hard time making heads or tales of them. 

Hobskin’s Treatise on The Distillation of Celestial Solvents was supposed to be the easiest of all of Hessienburgle’s texts on the subject, but it was denser than any instruction manual he’d ever read. The tome was two inches thick and characterized by passages like “Some works of alchemical excellence are too dense and reinforced to ever be separated and enhanced without energies from the heaves themselves” and “Our goal is not to use liquid sunlight to purge the poisons of this mixture, but to annihilate them as if they’d never existed at all. ”

That flowery language toned down a bit as he got to the particulars of the recipe, but as Lucas started to skip ahead, Heisenburgle called out, “Careful, if you skip to the recipe itself, you’ll find it is quite impossible to make without the requisite grounding in philosophy…”

Lucas ignored him, though he did worry for a moment that the gnome might be right. 

If this is like the elemental shit he was on about before, I might be fucked, he realized. 

Still, he pushed those doubts down and reviewed the potion recipe, which didn’t seem to be that hard at all. Besides condensed moonlight, it required the purest of water, the essence of firefly, refined phosphorus, and ground teeth of a nocturnal prowling carnivore. Lucas hadn’t checked, but if the book considered them to be reagents, then alchemists almost certainly felt the same way, which means Heisenburgle considered them to be worth stocking. 

Harvesting the moonlight, though, was another matter. There was no diagram of what the machine to do that should look like, only that, “Even on the night of a full moon, mirrors should be about the size of three average drawing-room windows. Too much more than that will boil the mixture into uselessness, and too little will fail to catalyze properly, resulting in a failed batch.”

To Lucas, it seemed like they could have just said that you wanted so many square feet of exposure per dose per hour, but the author was as immune to sense as Heisenburgle was. “It's fine,” Lucas said finally. “It all looks pretty straightforward to me. I’ll talk to the craftsmen tomorrow, and they can get started. We should have some moon goo in a week or two, no problem.”

The gnome answered, rubbing his hands together. “Oh, will we now? I can hardly wait,” he cackled. “I think this is a show I shall savor!”

Lucas let those words roll off his back as he started sketching ideas for how he was going to make his mirror. The size, he decided, wasn’t the issue. It was how the ability to throttle the amount of moonlight that he needed. He cast a look at Heisenburgle’s harebrained contraption and quickly decided. There’s no way I'm making any Rube Goldberg device like that.

The man had almost two dozen mirrors, many of which were on poles, so he could independently adjust them, one at a time. Lucas had an entirely different plan, and in the morning, he went to talk to the blacksmith about making an oculus and the glassblower about making a couple of lenses. 

Both of the workshops were staffed much better than he’d expected. The blacksmith, in particular, was a world away from the others he'd seen in Meadowin and Lordanin. It was practically a machine shop, with different people working on different things at the same time. Looking around, Lucas saw a peddle-powered drill press, a lathe, along with several forges and drop hammers. It was pretty fancy, and he could see why the gnome kept it secret. One of the smiths near the back of the shop even seemed to be working on making a horse leg. 

“Hey, don’t you guys usually make just the horseshoes?” Lucas laughed as he pointed it out to the head smith. 

The man crossed his arms in annoyance and said, “And ain’t you supposed to mind your own business?”

“Yeah, man, sure, whatever,” Lucas agreed. He quickly changed the topic, brought out his sketch of the aperture he wanted, and showed the man how it worked. It looked just like a camera shutter with five leaves that opened and closed smoothly, but of course, he couldn’t use those words. 

Things went back and forth for a while, but it wasn’t until he laid several pieces of paper atop one another and then showed the way they would fan out and create an opening that the man finally got it. Then, after a few questions, the guy seemed to get what he wanted, and as he scratched his neck he said, “Yeah, I could see it. This will actually work pretty well on something else I’m working on, too. I should be able to get it to you in a week or so, alright?”

Lucas shook on it and went off to the glassblowers. He’d expected this to be much easier than explaining a complicated moving part. He just wanted a couple of bent mirrors and a couple of focusing lenses to go with them. The lens, at least, they had no problem with. Heisenburgle already had a whole setup for that, and Lucas didn’t even want to know how much it cost. The curved mirrors, though, threw the old man running the place for a loop.

“You want any old mirror, but you want it bent?” the man asked, not quite believing what Lucas was requesting.

“I mean, ideally, I’d want something parabolic,” Lucas said, “But that’s probably asking a bit much.”

“Para-what now?” the chief glassblower asked. 

“I want a mirror that’s curved, like a kite shield, you know?” Lucas said, pointing at his drawing. “The angle lets you create sort of a focal point.”

Focal points at least, they understood, even if Lucas probably didn’t. Curving glass to create what he was asking for was an entirely different story. He tried to explain to them that they could just beat it out of metal and polish that, but the man was pretty skeptical of that, too, and Lucas wasn’t about to explain to him how a solar thermal power plant worked. 

So, in the end, they met halfway. They used steam to bend wood and make a frame, and then a few days later, they attached three-inch strips of mirror to it, creating a curved-ish mirror with flat spots. It wasn’t ideal, but after some thought, he decided that it would probably do.

After a little over a week, Lucas was setting up the whole thing on the roof of the main building, and after a week and a half, when his oculus was ready, he was finally cunning some tests. Heisenbugle watched all of this proceed, of course, tut-tutting away as he went. Still, he held off on the criticism until things were starting to take shape, and he could see well enough what Lucas was doing to mock it. 

“What in the name of the stars above do you think you’re making here exactly?” the gnome said, openly mocking him. “These lenses in front of these mirrors will only block what little light you’re gathering!”

Lucas only smiled. The gnome might know a lot about alchemy, but it was clear he didn’t know shit about science or how light worked, and Lucas was happy to teach him a thing or two.

At least, that’s what he thought at first. Every time Lucas tried to explain to him how something worked, the gnome would respond reasonably enough before giving a ridiculous explanation for why he shouldn’t do it that way. 

For starters, your mirrors are much too small and crooked. It’s like you didn’t read a single word of Hobskin’s wisdom! Separated mirrors will lead to uneven heating and an iron window?!” Heisenburgle threw up his hands in frustration. Don’t you understand how much you’ll taint the light with such heavy things?”

Lucas had expected objections, but these were entirely based on strange Alchemical philosophies that he’d need to study for a decade to understand. The gnome stayed up there for a while with him, drawing what he was supposed to get out of his reading, which was apparently three large rectangular mirrors to surround his vial with, but Lucas saw way too many problems with that. Those were mostly related to how inefficient and non-adjustable it was. 

“If I set my apparatus up like that,” he explained, “Then all I can do is start it and pray the reaction works. This way, I can adjust—”

“Exactly!” the gnome interrupted. “Celestial solvents are a way to beseech the Gods and grant you favor. If your mind is right and your philosophy is sound, then the Lord of Potions himself, the might Thrzaelwick, blessed be his name, will make up for any of your shortcomings.”

“So that’s why your starlight potions still aren’t working quite right?” Lucas thought. He considered saying that out loud but decided against it. 

Instead, he said, “Well, we will see. I plan to try in two more days, so we’ll see what we see.”

“But that’s not even the night of the full moon!” the gnome declared. “Did you really learn nothing?”

“I learned that the moon is up for a good chunk of the day when it’s full, and I’d rather have all night to work on something finicky like this.” Lucas shot back defensively. 

“Multiple attempts?!” Heisenbergle shouted in a way that made his squeaky voice that much more ridiculous. “With mirrors like this, you’ll be lucky to gather enough light throughout the entire night!”

Lucas shrugged that off, and eventually, the gnome left. He might not know what he was doing, but he was fairly certain none of the other alchemists did either. They were all just copying recipes off of each other and claiming divine insight for various changes and techniques. Given what he’d seen with the elemental alignment bullshit, he couldn’t dismiss all of that out of hand, of course. 

“But I can sure as hell test it,” he growled to himself as he stood up there alone in the cold. 

Two nights later, everything was in readiness. Lucas spent a few hours before moon rise creating half a dozen of the substrate potions he’d need for the experiment. He’d used water from distilled steam with Heisenburgle had also balked at, but otherwise, he’d stuck to the recipe for Concentrated Moonlight. 

He’d arranged his work area like a triangle. In the center, there was the clamp to hold the potion. In front of it, between the moon and the vial, there was an armature to hold the front focusing lens so that he could adjust it throughout the night., and behind it were the two curved mirrors, which aimed at their own focusing lenses before those beams of light went through his adjustable aperture. 

It was the maximum exposure he could give without using yards and yards of glass. “Alright bitch,” he told himself, “Let’s do this.”

Ch. 113 - Moonlight

Lucas started before Heisenburgle arrived. That wasn’t in an attempt to snub the gnome, even though he knew that was how the illustrious alchemist would take it. That wasn’t even because he wanted to use every last second of time after moonrise to get this new technique down. It was just that he knew he was going to fuck it up the first time, and he didn’t want Heisenburgle to see that. 

Lucas rarely got new techniques right on the first attempt, and there were too many unknowns with some crazy stuff like this. This wasn’t a case of heat X chemical to Y degrees for Z minutes. This was more like let magical potion A absorb amount of moonlight B, for time C until it started to sparkle just right. It was the closest thing he’d ever done to being crazy, and yet, for some reason, he believed it was likely to work. 

It didn’t on that first attempt, though. On his first try, Lucas had made the mistake of actually believing that the gnome had some idea what he was talking about when he said that with the amount of reflective surface he was using, it would take all night. As a result, he had the throttle wide open, and though the vial started to glow brightly immediately, it still erupted into smoke. Before he could even get to his shutter to throttle it down, the vial shattered, sending glass everywhere in a bright flash of light. 

You have failed to make Concentrated Moonlight but deserve acclaim merely for the attempt. +15 exp. 

“Son of a bitch,” he cursed, kicking himself for his mistake as he ignored the taunting message.

Of course, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Lucas sighed inwardly as he threw away the bottom of the vial and reinserted the next one into the clamp. Lucas did that with all of the focusing lenses turned away, and he was just turning those back into place when Heisenburgle arrived. 

“Good!” he grumbled. “If you’d started this abomination without me and denied me my entertainment, I would have been extremely offended!”

“Me? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Lucas lied. “Just getting everything all set up.”

Working under the gnome’s gaze was like being put under a literal microscope, and he criticized everything Lucas did, noting immediately that he wasn’t providing the potion enough light. “It will never reach fulminating incandescence like that!” Heisenburgle insisted. 

Lucas ignored him. He’d just seen his first vial fulminate pretty incandescently and knew that starting slow was definitely the right thing to do. So after he oriented his front focusing lens and verified the thing wasn’t about to explode, he started to open the aperture that the light of the rear focusing lenses was throttled by a little at a time. 

The results were pretty instantaneous. Once the potion clamped at the center of the whole assembly received enough light, it started to glow, almost like a lightbulb. It was definitely putting out more light than it was receiving, and it glowed almost as brightly as the moon. 

That shut Heisenburgle up. For the first time all evening, he was quiet when Lucas reached that threshold, and instead of engaging in his favorite sports of shit-talking and second-guessing, he merely polished his spectacles and got as close as he dared as he examined the reaction. 

Lucas would have loved to have gotten it right on the first try as far as his gnomish taskmaster was concerned. Nothing would have made Heisenburgle more bewildered than that. Sadly, after a few minutes, Lucas learned just how finicky the whole process was when the vial’s liquid started to boil. He toned down the light right away, but it was too late for that. After he’d fucked it up and let it get too hot, it glowed a dull gray smokey color instead of the pleasing amber color it had before. 

Despite your best efforts, you have failed to create Concentrated Moonlight. Maybe you should check the recipe again. +12 experience. 

“See!” Heisenburgle crowed. “I told you. This equipment is entirely insufficient for the forces you seek to master!”

Lucas ignored them and noted the vial was so hot that he couldn’t touch it, and instead, he had to release the clamp and let it fall into the snow. That made him frown. There’s no way that a little moonlight is generating all this heat, he thought. It’s gotta be some kind of exothermic reaction. 

In theory, that made the problem easy. He just needed to use an ice bath or something similar. However, the fact that he was already doing the experiment in a place where it was cold as shit didn’t bode well for that solution. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said before running down to the kitchen to borrow a small glass of the right size. 

When he returned, he packed that with snow and put the bottom of the vial in it. He wanted to submerge it, but he expected the light-based properties of the experiment wouldn’t allow for it. 

“What are you doing?” Heisenburgle asked. “You’ll contaminate the experiment!”

“I’m just making adjustments,” Lucas answered, double-checking everything. “That’s the whole purpose of the scientific method. You try something, you check the results, then you switch it up until you get what you’re looking for.”

“Scientific? Is that an alchemist? Should I have heard of him? I don’t recall such a name in my library.” the gnome complained. 

“Something like that,” Lucas agreed as he stepped back and started the process again. 

This time, things went better. He had to refresh his glass with more water regularly. The potion’s heat wasn’t quite enough to make it boil, but it did make it steam in the chill night air. Heat wasn’t the problem this time, though. It was the clouds. 

After thirty minutes of cooking, the potion was steadily brightening, but as soon as the first cloud started to cross the moon, it began to dim. Lucas responded by opening his throttle wider. But that created additional complications as the light shifted from moment to moment. 

“There, you see!” the gnome complained. “This is clearly a sign of the God’s displeasure. There is no way a Celestial Solvent can be viable after a disruption like this.”

“If they want to be displeased with me, they’re going to have to try a hell of a lot harder than this,” Lucas growled as he white-knuckled his way through the constant changes. 

Up until now, he’d just left on about half strength, but now he was having to swing the thing all the way open to back to the halfway point, over and over again. He should have just started over. He knew that. This was a pain in the dick that would end in tears. Still, he wasn’t about to give Heisenburgle anything else to smile about, and he forced his way through. Honestly, in the end, when he saw the pop-up that his efforts had succeeded, no one was more surprised than Lucas. 

You have created a new potion +58 experience.

You have created Concentrated Moonlight.

You have created one of the four Celestial Solvents and unlocked a new achievement! 

Lucas cut the light to what he’d been making then, even as Heisenburgle sputtered, “No, it’s too soon. You’ll ruin it!”

The gnome didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t see the little pop-ups Lucas could, or if he could, it was in some completely different fashion. 

Even as he did, though, the thing kept glowing, maintaining its faintly amber hue. It was like a liquid incandescent lightbulb, and as Lucas picked it up and held it, he decided it was certainly the most magical thing he’d done in his time here. He’d blow off that Owlbear’s head, and he could turn invisible at will, but he’d accomplished those tools by using magical tools other people had made. This, though, was a magical tool he’d made by himself, and it was gorgeous. 

Concentrated Moonlight: Catalyst Strongly purifies up to five other reagents. Reacts badly with any evil aspected ingredients.

Lucas was surprised to find that the part of him that was excited to show Danaria was even bigger than the part of him that realized he could probably now make the Potion of Greater Communion. He tried to tell himself that it was because he was still worried about what actually making that thing might inadvertently trigger, but that didn’t feel right. He was just getting more and more hung up on the other woman as time went on, and he was going to have to come to grips with that somehow. 

As he tried to process that, though, Heisenburgle interrupted. “It can’t be. Let me see!” the gnome snarled, waddling over to him through the half a foot of snow that covered the rooftop. “There's no way that an uneducated human like you with a half-baked contraption could distill moonlight in a single evening!”

Lucas tried not to do more than smirk as he handed the gnome the bottle, but he failed. “What can I say?” he answered with a chuckle. “Call it beginners luck.”

The gnome gave him a murderous look before he turned his full attention to the bottle. He shook it more than once like he expected it to dim or go out, but instead, it continued to glow with its own calm inner light. 

“Well, then, you are very lucky,” the diminutive alchemist agreed, handing the vial back to Lucas. “I wouldn’t call this best I’ve ever seen or the brightest, but I think that it will… Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” 

“What’s it look like?” Lucas asked. “I’m making another one. We’ve still got plenty of—”

“Another one?!” the gnome erupted. “You can’t just make another one! To make multiple celestial solvents at once is to spit in the face of the gods themselves!”

Despite his big words, the gnome didn’t actually stop Lucas. He was too eager to experiment for that, even if he knew the experiment was wrong. Instead, he just stood back so that if the Gods decided to smite Lucas for his insolence, he wouldn’t be in the crossfire. 

If anything, round four went even better than round three. There was less cloud cover, and Lucas was able to track the bright, gibbous moon across the sky with his mirrors, adjusting them every few minutes for optimal light gathering. The second potion took just under an hour to make, and by the time it was done, Heisenburgle was sputtering. “Inconceivable!”

You have created Concentrated Moonlight and gained +42 experience.

Lucas tried to make a joke about it, but the gnome just slammed the door and left him to his own devices, which made Lucas laugh. “Inconceivable!” he joked, doing his best Heisenburgle impression as he tried to decide if he wanted to make a third or even a fourth potion. 

There was still plenty of time to do it that night, of course, but he decided that two was enough. He only needed one for the recipe and one to show Danaria, after all. “Anything past that is just showing off,” he told himself as he started to back things up. 

It was only when he’d folded the mirrors and brought them inside so that wind wouldn’t damage them that he turned to leave and noticed the footprints edging around the periphery of his work area. They were much too small to be his and much too large to be the gnome’s. Suddenly, Lucas thought about Heisenburgle’s bouts of paranoia and his habit of throwing glitter dust around to make sure that invisible minders weren’t watching him. 

Son of a bitch, Lucas thought, quickly turning his head and pretending he hadn’t seen anything. So the Prince really is watching us, huh? Wheels within wheels within wheels. 

Lucas tried not to let that revelation. He told himself that it wasn’t a problem and that he hadn’t revealed any of his own plans, but still, he worried, and before he locked his door and went to bed that night, he paced every inch of his room to make sure that he was really alone before he dared to close his eyes.