Late Frost, Year 124 of Steel
Tavárinoikos, inner Amforéon
Tavárinoikos, inner Amforéon
alchemy is a kind of philosophy:
a kind of thinking that leads
to a way of understanding.
a kind of thinking that leads
to a way of understanding.
A much younger Sivan had been a strange choice for Tavárinoikos, and a stranger choice for Tavári'nar Val'Gwairil, the elf himself, to accompany him on his last walkabout before his unfortunate, inevitable passing. He had left Sivan in the care of a friend, the alchemist dragon Jacun, and now he was back in the master's workshop, completing his education in alchemy, at least. It would be a step toward completing his education in artificing, as well.
First, mithril.
Then, IX.
Mithril ought to be the thing he built toward, given it was the gold standard of complicated magical creations, requiring several disciplines and he was only learning the part that required alchemy. But IX had proven more of a challenge. Under Jacun's tutelage, and now under the tutelage of various masters in Silfanore, he was about to achieve Master status. His trick for more efficient use of mithril was probably the reason they were imparting this sliver of lore with him.
When IX was up and moving, speaking, and cogitating in his strange way, Sivan would be able to set aside some of his shame for not being a better steward of his master's friend. His friend, too. A crackpot old mage and an ancient Awoken had been his first real friends. There had been none in Sol'Valen, nor in Dalquia. Instead, he had formed those first relationships on the road, and now he regularly traveled back and forth between the Kalzasern forge and the workshop of his erstwhile master with his partner in creation, his neighbor, a fae friend, and even if he didn't have a great deal of friends, he had them.
That was no small thing for him.
Alchemy, they said, was created to turn lead into gold, or to reclaim the immortality his people had lost. Those were some of its aims, to be sure, but he was in the process of creating mithril and evolving himself at the same time.
'As above, so below,' quoth many an alchemist. A better translation from the ancient text had been given to Sivan, however: 'That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above.' Semantics mattered, and masters of the art had philosophized about it for millennia.
Sivan was hardly so wise, but he did the Work.
Mithril, they said, was the perfection of Metal. Alchemy, they said, perfected things, including the Soul. But most of his work as an alchemist involved reducing the values of some things and imbuing them temporarily into something else. He had grown clever at using those temporary effects to create more permanent change. Mostly, he provided Torin with concoctions for his runeforging. The latter discipline effected more permanent changes, and Sivan's alchemical solutions made that easier, more elegant in the end. Perhaps it was how much work he had done with Torin that made the creation of mithril, a collective effort, feel more natural than he thought it might.
As he checked levels, adjusted heats, and prepared for next steps in the small workshop that had been assigned to him for his final project, he felt almost as though he could sense Master Jacun there present. He could sense the laughter that often hovered, unreleased, within him. He could hear him.
"All things are interwoven and unravel," he heard Master Jacun say. "All things mingle and fuse."
"All things mingle and disperse," Sivan replied to the memory. "All things moisten and dry."
So much work had gone into this: calculations, preparatory solvents and solutions, new pieces of the puzzle given to him when he had proven a new milestone had been reached, and finally planning the rest of it out once he knew his course. His course was set. He was sailing through a sea of creation.
"All things flower and bloom in the bowl-shaped altar. For each, the conjunction and separation of all occurs through method, measure, and the weight of the elements. There is no chain of being without this method. Inhalation and exhalation are the method of Aedrin. The order of the method is preserved through expansion and contraction. Simply, when all things unite and separate in harmony and no part of the method is neglected, then Nature is transformed. Nature rotates and cycles back upon itself. This is the chain of being and the nature of the Art for the whole cosmos."
Tavári'nar had died and his study of artificing had paused so that he could gravitate toward Jacun and pick up his study of alchemy. It had been four years since he showed up at the dragon's shop with a letter from his former master, and now he was in the workshop of his former master completing a magnum opus. This was moving so very fast when he thought about it. No doubt his magical training up until he first was accepted at Tavárinoikos and his work with his former master had prepared him to take leaps and jumps at points, but still, perhaps he ought to listen when people told him he was remarkable. Torin was beginning to internalize it. He could see Torin's soul alchemizing toward perfection. Perhaps he just needed better perspective on his own journey.
Sivan broke the seal on a lyrethillium vial, breaking the sigil of dormancy. It began to fizz, so he quickly, surely poured it into a waiting beaker to incite the reaction before the one substance devolved into chaos. He looked around and saw all the alchemical sigils he knew being used. One by one, he combined different things, then carefully washing the lyrethillium glassware and setting them aside to dry—Perxy helped, the air elemental having been warned to be gentle or risk their destruction.
The number of different processes slowly diminished as different parts finished, combined, changed, and then, finally, he watched with bated breath as a single drop of precious liquid gathered at the base of his pipette, swelling like the belly of a pregnant woman, and then dropping into a bowl etched with a latticed pattern of pictographs. At the moment of that droplet's contact with the greater solution, he felt a wave go through the aether of the room, passing through him and everything else and he wondered if the Work changed him, too.
No wonder these rooms were so heavily warded.
He watched as roots of pure light threaded through the solution, and then the roots were lines linking stars like maps of constellations. Then something happened that he had never witnessed in his four meager years of alchemy. It shifted. Even as a master sembler, he wasn't sure quite what had just happened.
It shifted. It changed. It almost seemed to open like an eye and for a moment he was certain that Lyren was staring at him from the Aetherium.
This wasn't just alchemy; this was Creation.
For a moment, he could only hear his blood rushing in his ears like the tides.
Then he heard cheering from without.
"Oh."
He was weeping.
"Oh."
Sivan had learned something that he couldn't articulate. Rather than unravel, he went through the process of preparing a seal for the vessel, scriving the sigil of dormancy upon it for he knew that this had to go to the next person in the chain rather quickly or all the moving parts would fall, one by one, into chaos. This was High Magic, according to the elves, and he had done it, even if he didn't know the full picture.
Awed into autonomous movements, he went through the motions Jacun had drilled into him and then it was ready to move.
At the door, he was greeted by Masters and apprentices alike. Another alchemist of Tavárinoikos held a piece of the mystery of mithril. It could not be trusted with everyone, but it had to be spread out or they risked losing it as they had lost so much over the eons.
"Quickly! Carefully!" and "To the aether forge!" were things he heard interspersed with congratulations. For Makers such as these, this was almost a holy thing. Had they peered into their creation and seen Lyren peering back as well?
This was the Arcane: magic achieved through sacrifice and scientific rigor, circling back and becoming esoteric once more.
Sivan smiled a wide, probably idiotic smile through tears, and nodded. Perxy came at his silent call. With both hands cradling what he had wrought, she whirled about him, buffering the lyrethillium glass from anything that might shatter it or knock it from his careful grasp.
"To the aether forge," he murmured to himself, his feet taking him in the direction of the various aether forges, knowing one of the people lining the halls would direct him to the correct one to complete the work. It shone between his hands, not metal at all, but pure as thrice-distilled water and nigh incandescent with potential energy. Now, it fell to another, to a colleague, to pick up the baton and continue the race. He had achieved a great thing, but he was still only a link in a chain. Back through Jacun and Tavári'nar along the lineages of their magical teachings, and forward to any apprentices he took.
This is the chain of being and the nature of the Art for the whole cosmos.
