Solo Vitriol in the Morning

[Alses]

Timestamp: 41st Day of Spring, 513 A.V.

Slightly apprehensive, nervy and unsure of herself, Alses hovered, torn with indecision, on the threshold of the Starry Chalice, havering over whether to move on inside or not. The sun was at her back, yes, but Syna's infinite energies were still far from the planet and weak by dint of the journey. Dew beaded the skyglass still, its gentle heat not sufficient, at this time of year, to completely drive it away when it rolled in with the mists off the high peaks of the untamed Unforgiving. In the still-weak dawn light, just touching the higher awnings and banners, the dewdrops gleamed hard and cold, a carpet of diamonds in the chilly air.

It was too cold to be standing around outside. Mind made up in no small part by the low temperatures - Winter's last, spiteful gasp - she darted into the lily-scented interior, finding it much as usual, with philterers dancing carefully through the narrow mazes of shelves and endless racks and ranks of bottles, the occasional spiralling spire of smoke and scented fumes billowing up into the rafters, mixing and commingling into a shimmering fug that perpetually shrouded the upper beamwork.

Tian J'net's magisterial armchair-throne, from whence she surveyed her chemical dominion, was the only oasis of space in the crowded, interesting shop, and thus the place that Alses made a beeline for, taking care not to disturb the apprentices padding about their business, armoured in leather and glass goggles and heavy gauntlets.

The philterer wasn't occupying her overstuffed throne, but Alses had little enough time to ponder her location, for in a clatter and rattle of rings along a metal pole, the curtain covering the entrance to the mystical back rooms and laboratories of the Starry Chalice was swept aside and through the darkened opening thus created sailed Tian J'net, a wide smile parting her lips as she saw Alses waiting, uncertain and nervous – or as outwardly nervous as a celestial Ethaefal got, anyway.

“Morning, Alses,” came the breezy greeting, the philterer sweeping a foreshortened bow in the cramped confines of the Chalice proper. “Raring to go?”

“I-”

“Good, good.” That was Tian J'net at her finest, energetic and mercurial, already sailing back towards the mystical laboratories beyond the curtain. “This way, this way.”

Beyond the curtain was an Aladdin's cave of philtering excellence – a large and high-ceilinged room, with wide aisles between workbenches and incomprehensible towers of equipment, large skylights pouring down plentiful light and vast racks of shelves holding all manner of ingredients. Philtering apprentices moved carefully and with purpose here, intent on their tasks, tincturing, decanting, heating, cooling and other, more arcane processes Alses had no clue about.

“Few safety bits and pieces, before we continue,” Tian said briskly, turning to a rack of garments nearby and busily selecting several. “Apron. Heavy leather, treated to make it corrosion-resistant – we work with a lot of corrosives here – and it'll stop most things, long enough for you to get out of it.” Tian pointed towards one of the regular recesses set into the walls on each side.

“Those are the water washes. Basically a barrel of water on a tilting platform with a bellpull release. Get splashed with some of the nasty philtres, run there and give yourself a good soaking before anything else. They can save lives, and certainly beauty.”

Alses nodded intelligently; it seemed to be the correct response, for Tian J'net continued deeper into the laboratory.

“See the ventilators, up there?” Tian pointed, evidently proud, and Alses squinted upwards, eyes confused by the oddly-strobing light – sunlight, she knew. “I had our local animator do those,” she announced. “Whatshername, you'll know who I mean, of course." Tian seemed to take it on trust that every wizard in Lhavit knew everyone else. Alses, to whom this was news, filed it away under 'interesting'. "The fans are invaluable for getting rid of some of the fumes, they don't need paying and they don't ever stop. No idea how it was done, but it was worth every kina. Stops us choking on the smoke from our philtering. Ah, and here we are.”

'Here' appeared to be a small clearing, recessed off to one side from the main laboratory and bordered on three sides by arcane equipment. She had to take it on trust that things would soon be explained.

In front of them, seemingly the centrepiece to which they were drawn, a tall, teardrop-shaped skyglass creation bulked large, surrounded by a boil of piping and – were they bellows? Perhaps.

“This is called a Mason furnace,” Tian intoned, slapping one meaty hand on its tapering, shimmering side. The noise echoed dully; the teardrop-shape was obviously hollow. “Bit of a complex bit of equipment, but essential for making vitriol in any real quantity. I worried about gettin' one, since they're expensive, but it's been worth it in the long run. See that pipe at the top there?” She pointed imperiously to an arcing curve of metal that ended in a broad nozzle, positioned directly over the tapered tip of the furnace.

Alses nodded. “We see it,” she agreed, curiosity piqued.

“It's part of a water pump. The furnace has to be constantly cooled by water flowing over it once we've got it up to temperature, and there's a secondary system – here-” she pointed at a boil of coppery pipes in the approximate midpoint of the teardrop, penetrating the pearl-gray skyglass and sealed tight with some sort of putty “-which turns the water into a sort of fine spray inside.”

“Is that good?” Alses asked, curious. Tian nodded.

“Aye, it is. 'Tis part of how we turn yellow sulphur and nitre into vitriol. Now-”

Alses coughed. “How does it work?”

Tian closed her eyes for a moment. “Rather like a perfume bottle,” was her eventual reply. “The bellows over there-” she pointed to a fine specimen of the breed that Alses had missed in the boil of piping “-force air along this pipe-” her fat fingers danced nimbly through the coiling copperwork “-which blows across the top of that water pipe. The conflict of the two changes the pressures in the pipes, draws up water and blasts it into a fine mist inside the furnace, which is perfect for us. It's called the Venturi Effect, after a wealthy gentleman dabbler.”

Alses blinked. “I...see,” she said, in appropriately mystified tones. Tian picked up on it, for she sighed and cast about for a demonstration.

“Stay here,” she urged, and then vanished into the nether reaches of the laboratory, hunting high and low for Syna-knew-what.

Alses used the time to examine the furnace and its attendant apparatus more closely, marvelling at the pipework and examining the firebox underneath the flared base of the teardrop, curious to see the whole thing in operation.

[Alses]

Presently, Tian returned with a large flask mostly full of water and a length of flexible cabled tubing – this she demonstrated by bending it this way and that – with which she intended, presumably, to demonstrate.

“Watch,” came the terse instruction, as Tian dipped one end into the water and sucked on the other. After a brief moment, she took the tube out of her mouth and let it dangle to the floor; water began to pour out, siphoning from the flask and out onto the floor.

“Brief demonstration of the art of manipulating pressure,” Tian pronounced. “Sucking in lowers the pressure in the tube, and as we all know Nature abhors a vacuum, so the water rushes up to fill the gap. Then it's just a matter of gravity keeping the flow going, see? But that's not important, just the bit about the pressure.”

Tian moved back over to the pipes, tapping them to get Alses' attention back on topic. “See the air pipes from the bellows? They narrow just before they meet the water pipe, which enhances the effect. Understand now?”

Alses nodded, uncertainly. “I...think so,” she said, turning to the slowly-trickling siphon and back to the hulking mass of the furnace, trying to interpret the one in the context of the other. Tian gave her a chime or two, and then turned back to the work at hand, opening the thick, near-transparent door set into the side of the furnace and beckoning Alses over to have a look.

Inside was cavernous and quite dim; there wasn't a great deal, in truth, to be seen, and Alses had to take Tian's word for it that about two-thirds of the way up there were the spray nozzles, which were apparently essential. She presumed this would be explained, in the fullness of time.

“See this?” Tian was holding out a crumbly yellowish rock. To Alses' untutored eyes, it looked like nothing particularly special, the sort of rock she'd have ignored without a second thought if she'd seen it on an amble around the city. “Yellow sulphur. We've got a lot of it around the city, actually, mostly in the old volcano mouths and around the hot springs. It's crystalline – look at the structure – but the main use for us is in making vitriol. Useful stuff.”

“How do we turn a rock into a liquid?” Alses asked, curious. “Surely it won't melt?”

“Actually, it melts quite easily,” Tian replied. “Just a bit above the boiling point of water, according to the mercury. Burns well, too. Bright blue, Ivak knows why, and molten sulphur is bloodred. Vitriol isn't just liquid sulphur, though – there're other ingredients too. Come over here,” she instructed, imperiously, sailing over to a nearby workbench and gesturing grandly at the unprepossessing powder heaped in neat piles there.

“Nitre,” she announced with a grin. “Or saltpetre, if you're not lucky like us.” Alses cast her a questioning glance, but there was no real need; Tian was already explaining herself. “We get this stuff from the caves in the Misty Peaks,” she said. “Masses of it there, ready for the taking. Saltpetre's very similar – possibly the same stuff – but it's made from waste, plant and animal waste, all mixed together and left to rot.”

Alses blinked. “That sounds rather more like how to make compost,” she observed. Tian laughed, a rich rolling sound that touched a smile to Alses own flawless, puzzled face.

“Saltpetre's a byproduct you might get, I suppose. Comes out in white powdery flowers at the edges, according to Zachary. He's an old philterer – some of his books are in the Bharani Library, I'm told. We don't bother with saltpetre, not much point, really, when there's so much nitre on our doorstep, but I'm tryin' to be thorough here.”

Alses nodded her thanks, and then asked: “What do we do?”

A grin, wide and white. “We burn the sulphur and the nitre together in the furnace,” she replied, “And then we start squirting vaporized water into it. They tumble around together, react away, and when we're done we have vitriol by the carboy just waiting to be tapped off. There's a valve on the side, see?” She pointed to a small contraption half-hidden in the maze of pipework that Alses had completely missed.

“Is that it? It sounds very...” Alses cast around for a suitable word “...simple.”

Tian nodded happily. “Aye, simple but oh so very useful. Everyone uses the stuff – the tanners and the dyers, cleaners, etchers, the Catholicon healers...I could go on, but we'd be here for ever.” She tucked her hands behind her back and stood away slightly, nodding at the reagents and Alses, who took a few moments to catch on.

“Off ye go, Alses. Same amount of sulphur and nitre together in the bottom of the furnace, and then we can get cracking.”

The sulphur and nitre thudded in easily enough, sending up puffs of yellowish dust that Tian warned – sharply – not to inhale. “Not that sulphur's particularly dangerous, mind,” she added, with a smile, “But it pays t'be cautious, especially if you're trying out a new reaction. No telling what you might breathe in.” A sudden, impish grin. “When I was a student my master had me working with ergot derivatives for the Catholicon. That was...an interesting experience. Saw giant bouncing rabbits everywhere, for a start.” With a convulsive shiver, a slow roll of flesh, Tian brought herself back to the here-and-now, eyes sharp and hawk-like as she watched Alses' progress.

“Always open the furnace door first,” she admonished quickly, almost as soon as Alses had started to move. “Say you're working with dangerous substances and you open the door with gloves smeared in the stuff? The next poor soul who comes along and is sloppy gets poisoned by a doorhandle. Not a very dignified way to go. Which reminds me: Clean your equipment regularly, wash your hands at every opportunity and always assume everyone else is a slovenly arse, for the sake of your own health. I tell all me apprentices that, and if you're ever workin' here – like now - I expect you to adhere to the same set of rules as they do.”

Alses flushed dull rubies, murmured: “Yes, Tian,” in an appropriately subdued tone, and padded off in search of rags and water. Fortunately, the lab had many of these and she was back in short order, carefully wiping down the furnace door and her own gloves before tossing the rag back into a bucket of water to soak.

Tian nodded magisterial approval. “Good. Good. Now, close and lock the door – it's not difficult, just twist the handle down until it clicks, that's it – and we'll start her up. Help me with these logs, would you?”

Tian's logs were nokkochi wood, pale and fragrant, but they'd been dipped in her (in)famous accelerant paste en-masse. Alses winced slightly at the sight; Tian caught it.

“Problem?”

“Just remembering the last time we used your pasted logs,” she replied uneasily. “We made Cook quite annoyed with me and nearly drugged ourself to sleep.”

Tian blinked; evidently this particular story hadn't crossed between the two of them. “Oh?”

[Alses]

“We were distilling kariino,” Alses admitted, busily packing logs into the ample firebox section. “The fire was very hot, and made the reactions run very fast. Also stopped the vapours from condensing, so we went to get some ice. Came back to find one of the corks in the insurating flasks had cracked under the pressure and there was kariino gas everywhere. Not our finest bell,” she admitted shortly, slotting the last of the logs into place with a satisfied grunt of effort.

“All fuelled up,” she reported, looking expectantly at Tian, who'd managed to procure a long taper – a twisted length of mordanted cable (whatever that was, precisely: Tian hadn't explained) wrapped and stiffened in flammable wax - from somewhere, already glowing with a bright yellow-white flame which she touched, expertly, to the assembled fuel. The accelerant caught quickly, leaping to its characteristic hard white flame, the burning light of every overloaded sense screaming at once, and Alses was quite glad to slam shut the firebox doors and cut off the glaring light and searing heat, the only signs of its presence the low roar of air being sucked in through the vents to feed the hungry behemoth and the bars of light spilling across the floor.

Tian sat down with a satisfied sigh, stretching out her legs and giving every impression of settling in for a bit.

“Is that it?” Alses asked, cautiously. Tian cracked open one liquid-chocolate eye with a grin.

“Aye, for the moment. I'll be doin' some of me own work in just a little bit, but you can take a half-bell or so now to just rest. Might behoove you to watch the furnace every so often, though, so's you can see the changes. Watch the sulphur melt into liquid, and the nitre sublimate. That's turning from solid into gas, by the way.”

Tian settled down effortlessly into inactivity. Alses envied her that, the ability to sleep at a moment's notice but swing into action in an instant if she detected any sort of problem. Alses had seen it before, the magisterial proprietor peacefully snoozing in her chair, only to leap into action at the faintest whiff of an untoward reaction or the first sounds of shattering glass, argument or concern, and it never failed to impress her.

It was oddly peaceful, in fact, tucked away in one corner of Tian's overstuffed laboratory, and this part of the philtering was pleasingly unlike work. Alses gloried quietly in the dull roar of the furnace, its dry heat and the slow progression of the philtering reaction underway inside the Mason furnace, the dancing blue flames shimmering over a pool of bloodred liquid, fumes spiralling up to the higher reaches and dancing a dervish there.

“All right, that should be enough.” Tian's voice, right in her ear, caused her to start, and it was only the purest good luck that saved Tian's eyes from inadvertent ruin at the hands of her crown-of-horns.

“It's all burned, hasn't it?” she asked, completely unperturbed at the sight of a shining horn about half an inch from her eyeball, bending further down to peer into the bowels of the furnace for herself. That seemed to be another rule, albeit an unspoken one: never trust another's work.

Well, perhaps a more charitable rendition would be: Always check. Always be careful.

Either way, Alses, in her role as dutiful, stupid student, was only too happy to stand back and let the experienced philterer – philtress? an idle part of Alses' mind asked – take the lead.

“Looks about right,” Tian grunted, straightening up in a crackle of bone and marching over to the boil of apparatus off to one side, the site of the water pump and bellows both.

“This is where you come in,” she announced. “Stand here,” came the instruction, positioning Alses directly between the bellows – pulley-assisted, she saw with a mild jolt of interest – and the long pump-handle.

“You're going to hate this bit,” she pronounced gleefully, her eyes alight with unholy fire. Alses shivered.

“You're going to be working the pump and the bellows. See the observation port there?” Tian's stubby finger pointed out yet another feature Alses had managed to miss, a small window of near-transparent skyglass set into the curving side, just above the place where the pipes penetrated. “When the bellows start to spray in water, you'll start to see a lot of acrid white fumes forming. After each spray, give it a chime or so and then spray again. Keep going until the air inside is clear, then give me a shout. Oh, and you'll also need to work the water-pump.”

One finger tapped a clear glass gauge with a broad red line drawn across it. “You need to keep the water line at least on the red,” came the instruction. “The reaction between water spray, nitre gas and essence of vitriol is hugely exothermic, so we need to cool the furnace by pouring water down its sides – that's why it's shaped like a teardrop.” A mildly sadistic grin. “You'll build your muscles, at least, doing this,” Tian said with a grin, “And that frees me to work on the more complicated orders I've had backing up for Zintila knows how long.”

A pause, and then: “Get to it!”

Stifling a heavy sigh, Alses stepped up to the bellows and began the first part of what would be bells upon bells of back-breaking work. The bellows, at least, were a welcome surprise. The intricate pulley system that had been rigged up around them – probably the result of apprentices trying to find any possible way to make the job easier – made them a breeze to operate, something that Alses would soon be thanking her lucky stars for.

The first tentative compression send a feeble mist of water droplets curling into the furnace and caused nothing else, none of the fumes Tian had mentioned should be evolving about now.

'Should we say something?' Alses worried, briefly, but it was a hallmark of her new-found confidence that, hot on that worrisome concern, came the decision to continue regardless – perhaps one spray simply hadn't been sufficient to start off the philtering reaction.

A second depression of the bellows, the pulleys creaking and groaning as ropes snapped taut and others relaxed, pulling wide the mechanical lungs with a wheezy inrush of air and then forcing them shut with an audible whistling hiss, saw the desired results begin, as tiny tiny droplets of water danced in the viewport before curling into thick, lazy, smoky white curls of gas. They were oddly hypnotic in their dance, as whorls and eddies of rising air batted them hither and yon and further water sprays pitted and scarred the roiling medusa's maelstrom of smoke-snakes before bursting and blooming into even further tangles of fumes.

“What is that white stuff?” Alses called, curious.

“Hmm?” came Tian's distracted reply; if Alses had turned around she'd have seen the more experienced philterer frowning at a broad cabinet of ingredients, hands dancing over and into the serried ranks of boxes with a surety and grace that spoke of absolute familiarity and expertise. “The fumes? Oh, that's oleum – a sort of halfway house between the gaseous essence of vitriol and the liquid oil we want.” A brief glance towards the furnace, taking in the still-dry sides, and then a sharp: “Remember the coolant,” recalled Alses to the other part of her task; she set to with a will, sending water gushing along the pipes to pour in an unceasing waterfall over the sides of the furnace, an oddly soothing, rippling cascade that bent and refracted the dim skyglass glow into a jewel-like radiance.

[Alses]

Alses' world had narrowed to just three activities, all underpinned by the hungry roar of the furnace, the wheeze of the bellows and the trickling, rippling sound of tumbling water.

She'd settled into a rhythm, now – four presses of the pump-handle, black iron digging into her celestial flesh, up and down, hidden pipework and mechanisms pulling water up from Syna-knew-where and into the copper pipes, the pressure surging along to fill up the reservoir for the bellows and then onwards and upwards, against the dragging pull of gravity, to cascade over the furnace in a cooling wave, and then whilst the pressure was still high enough to buy her a couple of ticks of grace, she had to move over to the bellows, a press or two sending a fine spray of atomized water into the fume-wreathed interior of the furnace, then a quick peek into the observation port – yes, still smoky – and back onto the pump before the water dropped below that baleful red line on the glass pressure gauge that glared, accusingly, at her.

Time and again, she blessed her celestial constitution, the reason of the gods who had ordained her body on high, frozen forever in the instant of physical perfection. Muscles slid, bunched and relaxed smoothly, silkily, under her skin, each one working in rippling, instinctive harmony with every other to produce the maximum effect for the minimum effort.

Despite her essential hardiness, though, and all the advantages of her race, it was still hard, unremitting work, repetitive and mind-numbing even as the continual motion sapped her strength and sent a million million needles of pain to pierce her working muscles.

Tanroa's Blessing helped, true, but Alses knew that that was a one-off affair, and thus she had to wait until the burning ache in her bones and the shrieking from her muscles was truly unbearable before relenting and allowing the cool true-blue flash to dazzle, momentarily, before fading and taking all the pain and exertion with it.

Blessed relief – but not for long, alas, for the furnace and the reactions going on inside its shining carapace continued on unabated and unstoppable, for as long as there was fuel to burn and reagents to react. Thus it was that, with no small sense of relief, for her arms were beginning to burn once again, Alses noticed that no longer was their a unfurling medusa's rose of white fumes writhing in the sight of the viewing port. The sight was so unexpected, after bells of fighting paleness, that she had to check again, jolting out of the rhythm that had mindlessly occupied her.

No, no, it was definitely clear and free. “Tian?” Alses called; the portly proprietor set down her own, vastly more intricate work, and bustled over in a billow of conflicting scents.

“What is it?” she asked, already bending to scrutinize the furnace's innards.

“No more oleum fumes,” Alses replied with a tired sigh and a small smile, surreptitiously massaging her arms, feeling the muscles melt like butter under the gentle pressure.

“So there aren't,” Tian concurred after a moment. “Well, you've made your first batch of oil of vitriol, then. All we have to do is tap it off. Carboys are-” Tian pointed down one of the long, stock-lined alleyways that demarcated different areas of the large laboratory “-down there, about halfway. You want the yellow skyglass ones. Six should do.”

Alses padded obediently off down the narrow aisle, looking for something yellow about halfway down. She'd no idea – beyond the obvious inference that it was a container of some kind – what a carboy was, after all. When she found them – the only yellow (or rather, predominantly yellow, this was skyglass after all) things for a goodly stretch of the overstuffed shelves, she couldn't quite believe her eyes – the containers were enormous.

It was difficult to even manoeuvre one down the narrow corridor, let alone two, and so it took several trips before the last of the yellow-gleaming vessels rested smugly beside the furnace tap.

Without ceremony, Tian nodded her thanks and began to draw off a colourless, odourless liquid from the furnace. There was rather more than she'd first thought – Alses watched as one carboy after another was quickly filled and then switched out for an empty one in an obviously-practised manoeuvre, a tilting of the carboy onto the rim of its base and then a quick rolling motion to move it out of the way with the minimum of effort.

Tian stood up with a sigh of relief, hands at the small of her back, and then moved as if to wipe away the sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead, before remembering herself and stepping over to one of the many water butts stationed around the lab. “Can't be too careful,” she intoned, turning a near-mistake (Alses was canny enough to spot that) into a teaching tool. “Might've splashed the gloves with vitriol.”

Face now glowing cleanly, water still dribbling down in rivulets, she clapped her hands together briskly and pulled one of the carboys over to a workbench with a grunt of effort and a grinding crunch of glass and dirt as it scraped across the ground. The sound set Alses' teeth on edge; she winced, but fortunately it was over quickly.

She brought herself back to the present with a quick shake of the head – now was no time to be drifting – and watched owlishly as Tian carefully decanted a small amount of the oil of vitriol out into a shallow dish, and then added a few drops of a deep, viridian green liquid.

There was a flash of light and a brief fizzle, and then the previously-colourless liquid bloomed into a deep red colour. Tian beckoned her over with one imperious finger – it was amazing how so much could be conveyed by simple economy of movement.

“See the red? I added what we call an indicator into the mix – it's a complex mixture of compounds that changes colour depending on whether something is corrosive or caustic in its essential nature. Red is for corrosives, the deeper the shade the stronger and more concentrated the corrosive. Blue is for caustics, and the same rules apply. Water – pure water, that is - produces an odd, unsettled purplish colour.”

“What's the indicator-” Alses used the term with care, filing it and its meaning away in the back of her brain for later retrieval “-made of?”

“Lichens, mostly,” Tian replied, after a brief moment to rack her brains. “There's a few which change colour, probably because of corrosive or caustic elements in the rock they grow on. Oh, and oil of hydrangea, since they have the same property. Surely you've noticed,” she continued, seeing Alses' mystified look. “In some parts of the city the flowers are bright blue, and in others they're red. We sweat the compounds out of the roots and flowers in wood alcohol, then blend it all together with the lichens. A bottle of it is expensive stuff, because it takes for ever to gather enough lichen, but you only need a drop or two a time, and it's very sensitive.”

Alses nodded. “What are you using it for here?” she asked, curious – turning the oil of vitriol red couldn't have been the only reason.

Instead of answering straight away, Tian flourished a long spear of glasswork at her – Alses swayed backwards to avoid wayward glass. “This is a specialised piece of equipment called a burette,” the philterer intoned. “Very precisely made, and therefore expensive – I had this flown in from Wind Reach's master glassworkers. Philterers use equipment like this to do a procedure called a titration, and that coupled with a bit of mathematics lets us work out the concentration of our oil of vitriol, understand? And we need to know that so we can adjust it to a standard concentration based on what the vitriol is for – cleaning, reagent work, fertiliser...the uses are endless, and they all work best with slightly different concentrations. No rest for the philterer,” she added with a faint grin.

[Alses]

“Observe,” came Tian's cool, measured tones, even as one hand pointed to a small lectern with an open book on it. “Reaction tables. Quite a lot of our work is based on these, in some form or another. Most of the information dates back to before the Valterrian, you know, back when the principles of philtering were more fully understood, when there were the laboratories and funds to really study the discipline. They were able to work out – don't ask me how, I've no idea and nor does almost anyone else – how much of something will react with something else. The older editions have all sorts of other information no-one understands any more, since a lot of the reference texts were lost, but this is a cut-down version, for the practical philterer.”

Tian grinned, pointing at one specific line of spidery writing about two-thirds of the way down the page. “That's the one we want. Neutralisation of oil of vitriol with caustic soda. Both nasty compounds – the soda on its own can clean drains – so we need to be careful.”

Alses squinted at the writing, reading off a long list of useful information – ratios (whatever they were), saturation points, colour changes and so forth.

“What's a ratio?” she asked; it seemed to be an important piece of information, given how often the text referred back to it.

Tian blinked. “Expression of a relationship between two things,” she eventually said. “If I have one standard unit of oil of vitriol, then I need two standard units of caustic soda to neutralise it. Which is easier to write as 1:2, like in the table. It's shorthand, really. Mathematical shorthand.”

“What's a standard unit?”

Tian paused and then turned to put the burette down – carefully. “Take a seat,” she sighed. “Should really have done the theory before the practical, but I've never really been one for classroom learning. Standard unit is...is...it's an abstract, all right? It's a way to standardise reactions. Now, I know that the caustic solution – which we'll be putting in the burette – is made of half caustic soda and half water, and thanks to the scale on the burette-” she tilted it so Alses could see the finely-engraved markings, the work of a master glasscrafter “-I also know how much of it I have in there. The volume. Some very talented philterer and mathematician worked out the principle of the standard unit a long time ago, well before the Valterrian, but it was used so extensively it easily survived the disaster. He – or possibly she, no-one knows which - worked out that if you multiply the concentration by the volume, it gives you what he called the standard unit. By itself, it's an arbitrary number and not very useful, but if you do the same process with everything, you can compare it all.”

This was about as clear as mud, and Tian knew it; she cast about for a scrap of paper and a quill, but quickly gave up. “It's all a bit impenetrable,” she admitted with a sigh. “Everyone has trouble with it. I'll try and show you the practical example whilst I'm working this one out,” she said, nodding to the beakerful of fresh oil of vitriol.

“Now, observe the technique,” she commanded. “Burette is clamped securely – use cork-cushioned clamps, since bare metal will scratch the glass. When filling, put it on the floor – you want the filling point below eye level, just in case something splashes. Use a funnel, if you can.” True to her words, the portly philterer was carefully pouring another colourless liquid into the burette, obeying her own instructions. “Then lift it carefully back up to your work surface. Beaker under the burette, obviously. Hand on the opposite side to the tap, fingers reach around the burette to turn it. More control, see?”

Alses didn't, but nodded anyway. It seemed to be the appropriate thing.

“Now, we open tap, like so-” a thin stream of liquid poured through and into the beaker “-then stop and swirl.” A paler colour washed through the bright redness of the indicator, before the crimson glow redoubled. “Rinse and repeat, until we hit the equilibrium colour.”

This took a while, and each time the process was the same, a brief drizzle of caustic soda, a swirl, and a careful scrutinization of the resulting colour. The red grew paler and paler, until at last Tian stopped and invited Alses to take a closer look.

Almost all the colour had vanished, but there was perhaps, just perhaps, a hint of muddied green at the very edges of sight. Tian harrumphed, obviously slightly put out by this result. “I'll have to keep tweaking,” she said ruefully. “That green colour should be a lot stronger. I've been trying to make the neutralisation point more obvious,” she admitted, by way of explanation. “Thought I'd done it a while back, with a new lichen added in – it gives that green colour, but it's just so faint. Haven't been able to strengthen it yet. Soon, soon. Now, would you read off how much caustic soda went in, please?”

Alses looked and did as she was bid, interested to see how all this useless information equated to something practical.

A busy period of scribbling followed, before Tian presented her with a sheet full of calculations.

“So. First, you work out the standard unit amounts of the caustic soda, since we know how concentrated that is. See there? Fifty percent? So that means fifty measures in a hundred are caustic soda and the rest is water, all mixed together. Percents are easy for the lay person to understand, but they play merry hell with philtering work. So we use a different measure instead, standard concentration. To work it out you have to divide the percentage number by the standard weight – that's how much a single instance of pure caustic soda, in this case, weighs, don't worry about that, we have tables and tables of that sort of information. Now we can work with some more standard numbers – we multiply our concentration by the volume used, see? That tells us how much caustic soda we'd have in that volume if we could somehow separate it from the water. Then,” Tian continued, finger moving steadily down the cramped columns of figures and arcane notations – Alses' face took on a slightly panicky cast.

“Then we work out the standard unit amount of oil of vitriol we have. Our table tells us the ratio is one to two, oil of vitriol to caustic soda, so we halve our standard unit amount from the caustic soda to get the amount of oil of vitriol we have.”

Alses nodded feebly.

“Finally, we can work out the concentration of the oil of vitriol. We know the standard unit amount, and the volume, so all you have to do is divide one by the other – like that, see? And there you have it.” Her face took on a slightly devilish grin.

“Of course, that's in standard unit concentrations, not percentages. So, we simply invert the first bit – up here-” her quill moved “-and it gives us the answer. Seventy percent, which is about what I'd expect.”

Alses sighed. “We really don't understand how it works,” she admitted. “I can add and subtract and multiply and divide, my old master schooled me in the basics, at least, but all this is beyond me.”

Tian sighed. “It is a bit complicated,” she admitted. “Or rather, it looks that way at first. I can't think how else t'show you, though.” The ever-present smile slipped, for just a moment, from her face. “[/colour][color=#FF40FF]Perhaps one of the professors at Alluvion can help you. Not to worry right now, though – so long as the amount of caustic soda you use to neutralise your sample is around about this value, everything's fine.” She clapped her hands, sudden and brisk. "Now, get back t'work! The Tower order's a big one in any case, and I thought I'd send you back to the Respite with a few carboys for Miss Chinsta. Get you out of those cleaning jobs you hate so much." There was a knowing twinkle in her eye there, even as Alses smothered a groan.

[Alses]

Alses put the mysteries of titration and advanced philtering resolutely out of her mind as she turned back to the furnace with a sigh. At least she knew the proper sequence of events now, the progression of the reaction from commencement to completion, the rate she had to work to keep everything ticking over, but still...a heavy burden of work nonetheless, under the watchful eagle-eye of Tian J'net.

Drudgery unceasing, the engines of tedium roaring in her ears – humdrumhumdrumhumdrumhumdrumhumdrum – a continual beating throb, she worked, methodical and unhurried now she knew what to do, pumping in water and watching the medusa-coil of boiling smoke that evolved, twisting and ravelling the strands of her personal djed as she grew more used to the whole procedure.

It was difficult, very difficult, to combine the strenuous physical activity of making oil of vitriol with any form of concentration – normally it required focus and calm, serene surroundings – or at least a body not involved in strenuous activity.

Time and again she lost her grip on the magic, fumbling the sparkling skeins of djed before she could weave them into a coherent pattern-work, before she could establish any filters or funnel the djed out in hungry, grasping tendrils to interweave with the ambient djed of the world, but she had time, as the reactions proceeded and she continued to work, grimly focused on the tasks at hand.

The trick, she discovered, after several bells of ferocious mental struggle, seemed to be disassociation, drowning so deeply in the magic the body became a distant memory, almost, mindlessly repeating the same set of actions as much of her mind was occupied with arcane matters, trying to pierce the jarring sequence of physicality.

Speed, too, that helped – the quicker she could spin up the sparkling threads of her auristic power, drawing them off from the reservoirs gathered close around her soul, the quicker she could then weave them into the warp and weft of the world, let them support themselves by sheer pressure of the ambient and devote all her energies to processing what sluiced in on wings of synchronising djed.

“You're slowing down,” came a voice, from a distance, tinged with scintillating purple-pink; djed flew away in tatters, ropes uncoiled, unfurled, vanished into the aether and collapsed back into her reserves, coherency banished with the interruption.

Grimly, Alses forced her shrieking muscles to ever-greater heights of effort, continually pumping water and operating the bellows despite the prickling pain which shot viciously up her arms and into her head, disrupting almost all of her efforts with auristics and leaving her with only the subconscious Sight, a talent so deep it needed no mental effort from her at all. She couldn't control it that well, in truth, and today especially it seemed to be leery; singing the life stories of the workbench to her left into her brain, the vegetative joy of green and growing things, the sharp change and the bite of the sawblade marking the transition from living tree to dead wood, then the numinous impressions of various philtered compounds that had been spilt on its surface down the years by a plenitude of hands, experienced and otherwise, a continually-unspooling reel of information and impressions totally useless to her current endeavour – all she could tell about the Mason furnace and the reactions going on inside its shining carapace was that the furnace was made of skyglass and that it was hot, both observations she could have so easily made with her mundane senses.

Having signally failed to employ auristics in any coherent fashion, thanks to the intrusive and intensive, back-breaking physical labour she had voluntarily – voluntarily – subjected herself to, Alses turned her attention with grim determination to simply getting the job done.

The next batch did not take long to mature; her grappling with the intricacies of auristics whilst she worked had caused her to lose track of time, but soon after she'd pulled herself ruthlessly back to the mundane shallows of Mizahar, the coiling snake-like morass of white oleum gas had dissipated and yet another load of oil of vitriol was ready to be birthed from the swollen belly of the furnace.

She knew where things were this time, thankfully, so there was no need to bother Tian, who seemed wholly engrossed in a tottering tower of glasswork filled with rainbowed fluids and stinking of toffee, for some reason. Alses couldn't help a stab of envy as she passed with a heavy carboy, though – where she laboured and struggled with industrial quantities of ingredients, products and equipment, the master philterer concerned herself with minuscule quantities and laboratory apparatus.

Then again, her philtre was probably far more difficult than oil of vitriol, and therefore much more liable to go spectacularly wrong should one make the tiniest of mistakes.

And so it went, throughout the long afternoon, the muffled chiming of the bells the only punctuation of the outside world into the pungent, dimly-lit philtering lab, the only marker of the passage of time in the apparently-endless round of pumping, filling and draining, all of it underscored by the continual rippling gurgle of water cascading over the skyglass and the dull roar of the fires.

Dully-gleaming yellow carboys mounded up in ranks beside the apparatus, Alses' arms began to feel like strands of sodden spaghetti only nominally under control, and the stocks of sulphur and nitre dropped lower and lower until, at last, she was scraping the bottom of the barrels.

“Oh, don't bother with the dregs.” The voice, coming after bells of more-or-less silence (well, as much as silence existed in the busy hum of the Starry Chalice's lab – the chatter of apprentices, the ring of glass on glass, the sound of boiling liquid and much else besides notwithstanding) gave her a shock; she jumped and the last lump of sulphur dropped from nerveless hands.

“You've done very well,” Tian continued, absently wiping her face with a damp cloth. “Very well indeed, actually. Making oil of vitriol like this is hellish, that's mostly why I had you do it, to be honest. I can't abide making it, and it is a useful learning tool.”

Alses could only muster up a weak and wavering glare, feeling uncomfortably starved of sunlight and dying for the soft embrace of the baths at the Respite or maybe even the Kinell Hotsprings (if she could even get out that far) where hot water from the volcanic depths of the earth would knead and press and work all the tension knots out of her poor, abused arms and legs.

She stared with a kind of weak loathing at the smug ranks of carboys, and collapsed gratefully into a chair that Tian thoughtfully placed behind her and pressed her into with a pair of meaty hands – although all she'd really have needed was a feather.

“Let me see...there's more than enough here to fulfil the Tower's order,” Tian mused, stalking up and down the bottles. “I'll send the rest to the Respite, courtesy of you. Might get you out of doing all the cleaning you so hate, eh?” there was a twinkle in the philterer's eye; she'd heard all about Alses' dislike of unnecessary cleaning.

The pride of an Ethaefal was to hold oneself above such menial tasks as cleaning, and Alses' irritation at Tian warred with new-found gratitude, both at the prospect of not having to go on hands and knees cleaning drains and sweeping corridors and at the fact that, relentless exploitation aside, she had learned something – many things, actually – of value.

Her throat worked silently for a moment before sound emerged – croaky at first, and then strengthening to the mellifluous tones that were more usual for her voicebox. “Thank you,” Alses managed, massaging her arms gently and wincing at the slow roll of pain that tumbled up them with every kneading press of her hands.

Tian evidently took pity on her, pressing a small jar of reddish-orange ointment into her hands. “Put a bit of that on,” she instructed brusquely. “Muscle relaxant. Should be enough there to last you a good while. Try and find out what's in it; if you do, and you're right, I'll see about teaching you how to make accelerants. Now, get to your bed or the baths or whatever it is you do to relax – you've more than earned it.”

Gratefully, Alses accepted the jar, murmured some platitudes and thanks on social autopilot, words she never remembered saying later on, and floated out of the Starry Chalice, feeling oddly light and buoyant without the weight of the apron and gloves and heavy boots and all the rest of the safety equipment, her mind mostly full of cotton wool.

As she meandered back through the streets of the city, footsteps slow and weaving, she doubtless appeared exactly as the stereotype of the Ethaefal: abstracted, distracted, head-in-the-stars, but in her current state she cared not a jot, focused on scented baths and luxurious, yielding bed.

END

[Elysium]

Alses

XP:
Philtering +4
Auristics +2
Observation +3
Body Building +1
Mathematics +2

Lore:
Recipe: Oil of Vitriol
Philtering: Mason Furnace
Ingredient: Yellow Sulphur
Ingredient: Nitre
What is Saltpetre?
Philtering: Carboy
Philtering: Oleum
Philtering: Burette
Philtering: Indicators
Philtering: The Venturi Effect
Mathematics: Ratios
Philtering: Standard Unit

Other: Alses has earned sore muscles for the following three days and a bit of muscle relaxant cream.

Notes: I was very intrigued by this thread - even more so, as Alses met her match in the realm of mathematics. I must admit that I've learned a great deal through reading your threads! This was very well-done and if you have any questions at all, please PM me!

and so, the journey continues...