The wooden door shook in its frame as heavy knocking echoed through my laboratory. I tore my eyes away from the simmering flask in front of me. “It’s not yet done! Give me more time!”
“I do not have any more time!” came the angry, muffled voice of my benefactor. The knocking paused for a brief moment, replaced with a fit of coughing. As soon as it ended, the repeated hammering of my poor door resumed. “You promised me it would take two months! It’s been two years!”
My eyes darted back to the flask. Bubbles had begun to form on its surface. Acting fast, I poured in a portion of pulverized calcite, holding a cloth in front of my face to protect myself from the quicksilver fumes. If I let the elemental aspects of fire and earth fall too far out of balance, the solution could be permanently ruined. The bubbling faded, returning to a simmer. “I have almost perfected the formula! You will have your immortality. I just need—”
“No more excuses!” cried the voice, almost feverish. Another fit of coughing. “Open this door or I’ll have it broken down!”
I gave no reply, adding another piece of wood to the fire to keep it burning hot. That precocious ignoramus knew nothing of alchemy. He had gotten it in his head that his noble blood gave him the right to barrage me with verbal abuse, demanding I rush my work to satisfy his own impatience. Did he not know I was the foremost practitioner of the Arte throughout the whole of the continent? If he had not promised me riches worthy of a king—but no, I told myself, it was the knowledge that I was after. To be able to work on a project as monumental as this, and given free access to any facilities and reagents I asked for, was an opportunity nobody with any sense would dream of passing up on. I would unravel the secrets of the world, and I wouldn’t let some dying man’s lack of patience stop me. Once I had completed the formula, perfected this magnum opus, I would be near equal to the divine Hermes Trismegistus himself.
I had made so much progress just in the past few days alone. The first part of the four-step formula was already well known throughout the alchemical community, but I had long since reached a level that most others could not even imagine. The secret was in phosphorus—a new reagent, discovered only years ago, and notoriously difficult to work with. Once I had found the method of stabilizing it, it proved effective in achieving the process of leucosis: turning the inky black substance into pure milky white, something never previously achieved with any consistency. The mixture I had been working on the past week was my best yet; it was nearly transparent, with not a hint of the metallic quicksilver base still visible.
The knocking suddenly ceased. No doubt that haughty fool had run off to find some guards to break the door down. I was nearly out of time. I had to find a method to trigger xanthosis—the yellowing—as fast as I could. But how? Most theories centered around the process of putrefaction, but letting it rot would take days at a minimum. I needed something different. Acting quickly, I grabbed my copy of the Hermetica and began to frantically flip through it, hoping to find some wisdom of the Trismegistus that might prove useful. It was only as I reached the nineteenth book when a passage caught my eye:
“And, spoke Hermes, upon imbuing the salt-petre with the essence of Fyre in powdered forme, and seeing the mixture of quicksilver thereforth, the flame shalle be a great Yellow,”
Saltpeter imbued with fire? It was my best chance. I quickly grabbed my mortar and pestle and poured a portion of the powdery salt inside the bowl. Hopefully it would be the right amount. I just needed a way to imbue it with fire—it couldn’t be simply burning it, since that would just render it inert. It had to be a specific reagent: “fire in powdered form” must have been referring to something, but I wasn’t sure what. Could it be phosphorus? It was certainly flammable, but I didn’t have time to stabilize it. There had to be something better. But what? I rifled through my stock, trying to find something that would work. Suddenly, it came to me: brimstone! Saltpeter and brimstone could be mixed with charcoal to make black powder—powdered fire—and as long as I left the charcoal out, its explosive properties could be muted. Brimstone even had a yellow tint to it; it was by far the best option. I quickly crushed the brimstone into a powder, mixing it with the saltpeter in a ratio of one to four.
FOOM!
I whipped around in surprise, my heart racing in panic. The flask had ignited, sending a plume of flame shooting up to brush the roof before dying down only slightly. Damnation! A thousand curses upon my foolish mind! In my haste to find a way to trigger xanthosis, I had forgotten the simple step of maintaining the solution’s elemental balance. The fire had burned too hot, causing the mixture to boil and allowing the now-unstable phosphorus to erupt into a blaze. My hands shook with barely-contained frustration. Such a reaction was irreversible—a week’s worth of work had been ruined in a single instant of absentmindedness. I would need to redo the process entirely, but—
Bang! Bang! came the sound of feverish knocking on wood. “Last chance, alchemist! Open this door, in the name of your Emperor!”
I was out of time. By the icy fires of Hell, what could I have possibly done to deserve this? If that damnable cretin who called himself a monarch had not chosen now, of all times, to demand I rush my work, I would not have lost my focus and ruined the elixir. Perhaps I even could have been lucky enough to find a path to xanthosis on my first attempt. My rage boiled hotter than the burning flask in front of me, filling me with the urge to scream out in frustration, yet I had no choice but to suppress it. Perhaps I could salvage the remains of the solution into something that at least looked successful, and use it to stall for time. I gave no reply to the ultimatum from beyond the door, dousing the fire beneath the flask with a bucket of water and pouring the remaining calcite into the inferno to stop the blaze.
It worked—in a sense, at least, as the mixture was no longer on fire—and yet, the remaining solution was tainted with imperfections, filled with clumps of burnt material errantly floating around the cloudy liquid. A pungent smell, so intense that it nearly upended the contents of my stomach, emanated from within the flask. I would have to improvise as best I could. A loud thump rattled the room—it appears the door did not have long to live. I grabbed some spare neutralizing agent I had left sitting in my alembic from a previous experiment and poured it into the mixture in a desperate attempt to stabilize the concoction, then very carefully added the brimstone-saltpeter combination. Thump. I jumped back as the reactive reagents caused a minor explosion, a faint speck of hope left in my heart—but alas, as the liquid settled, there was no change from before apart from the cessation of any smell. Thump, and with it the crack of wood. I would have to talk my way out of this. I turned towards the door as a final crash caused it to shatter in place.
Two moronic brutes in my patron’s employ stormed into my laboratory. They were no doubt left dumbfounded by the marvels of science on clear display within, as they merely stood in place on either side of the doorway. Behind them hobbled a man whose very presence in the world of the living must have been a miracle arranged by God himself, for there was little other explanation for why a shambling corpse such as himself had not died years ago. Atop his pallid, drooping skull lay the neatly polished Reichskrone, supposedly marking this buffoon as King of the Romans—perhaps a fitting title, as the true Romans were nearly as long-dead as he was. He collapsed to a knee as he entered, fouling my pristine stone floor with a coughing fit that stained them with blood. He struggled back to his feet and locked eyes with me, assaulting me with the intense, maddened gaze of a fool who was unable to accept that his time was up. “You’ve had enough time. You promised me an elixir of immortality!”
“And immortality you shall have, my liege,” I said through gritted teeth, doing my best to mask the pure disdain I felt. If I could just buy a bit more time, I might be able to figure something out. “I have reached the final stage of the process. I’ll have the completed product finished by…—”
I trailed off. The buffon had lost focus on my words, no doubt from his condition fogging his mind—if any part of his mind even remained in the first place, that is. His gaze seemed to be intensely focused on a random spot off in the distance behind me. I sighed in annoyance, shaking my head slightly. At least it would give me a moment to stop and think. However, before I got a chance to do so, I noticed a smile creep across my benefactor’s face, and he slowly opened his decaying mouth to speak. “It’s… it’s real! You’ve done it!”
“Hm?” I instinctively turned around to search for the subject of his gaze, only to be met with a sight so wondrous that I even called my own sanity into question for the briefest of moments. The solution in the flask, which had only seconds ago looked so hopelessly unsalvageable that even an unenlightened layman could have identified it as a failure, had undergone an impossible transformation. The liquid gleamed with a brilliant, pure golden luster, an example of xanthosis so pure that even the Trismegistus would have wept upon seeing it. I became aware of a smell of faint sweetness in the air, replacing the earlier pungence completely. The ambrosic mixture bubbled slightly, simmering under the remnants of heat that still remained, and emanating from the top was a faint yellow flame, just as the Hermetica had described. I had done it! By some miracle, I had done it! I did not fully understand how, but allowing it to burn must have triggered a form of putrefaction, allowing the brimstone to properly infuse—something I never would have thought to try with intent. How beautiful the nature of alchemy, that such a foolish accident could reveal a solution that had eluded the greatest minds of three continents for centuries!
So enthralled was I with my unprecedented success that I barely noticed the shambling corpse beside me begin to slowly lurch forward, moving towards the glowing flask with a look of near-madness in his eyes. I only realized what was happening when I felt myself being shoved to the side by a strength that I would not have expected from one who looked so undeniably weak. I stumbled, barely keeping my balance as the decrepit simpleton rushed past me. Desperation clouded my voice as I spoke with haste—I could not know whether the elixir would work while it was still this hot. “Stop! Give it time to cool! You’ll burn alive!”
For the briefest moment, my benefactor stopped, turning back to look at me. In his eyes, I saw a near-imperceptible flash of reason, of lucidity, but only for an instant. Then, the last remnants of the man I had once called a friend—all those decades ago, before he had taken the throne—flickered away once and for all, replaced by the pure madness of a desperate, dying fool. Angrily, he spoke in a voice so loud that I would have thought his vocal cords might crumble to dust with the exertion. “You think I am so simple as to turn my back and let you steal it for yourself? I am king of Germany—holy emperor of Rome! In the name of Christ, eternal life is mine by right! Guards!”
I felt a strong grasp forcefully twist my arms behind my back, restraining me in place. A sword appeared at my neck, the cold steel pressing uncomfortably against my throat in a crude threat on my life. It seemed the brutish mongrels he had brought with him held as little respect for me as they did for my door. I felt a slight pang of fear—not for my own well-being, but for what damage these barbaric savages might wreak on my poor laboratory without me around to stop them. I was unable to do anything but watch as the madman’s face twisted into a cruel, triumphant smile, and he turned around to hobble towards my stove. He lifted the still burning flask with a shaky hand. I could see his flesh blister at the touch, and yet he didn’t seem to notice or care. He brought the flask to his mouth, and—before I could speak—poured the boiling golden liquid down his throat.
I held my breath in anticipation as the empty flask fell from his grasp, shattering on the stone floor with a satisfying crash! Would the elixir truly work? I saw the poor, maddened simpleton’s hands shoot to his throat as he let out a gasp of pain. Wisps of red-tinted smoke drifted from his orifices, filling the room with the unpleasant odor of burnt flesh. He looked directly at me, his imperial crown clattering to the ground as he stumbled, and I saw great pain behind his eyes. By all rights, he should have been deceased or at the very least unconscious by now, and yet—and yet, he hadn’t died! His skin began to glow in a faint red hue; iosis, the final stage in the process, had unmistakably been achieved. An uncontrollable grin began to spread across my face, and I would have danced in joy had there not been a sword at my throat. How glorious this day was! How unimaginable! Had such a feeling of triumph ever been felt before, in all of human history?
I felt the grip of the brute behind me tremble and weaken as the red glow of my dear benefactor’s skin gradually grew brighter and brighter. The sword at my neck clattered to the ground as its wielder rushed to the side of his monarch—a task which he quickly abandoned, as the heat had grown so intense that it could be clearly felt from the other side of the laboratory. I could not allow myself to grow complacent just yet. From what I had surmised from the sparse references I could find in the Hermetica, the process of iosis was extremely volatile; it was not a good idea to remain here while it progressed. I took the opportunity to slip free without much effort, as the slow-witted hirelings were much too preoccupied cowering at the sight before them to worry about my whereabouts. I darted out the splinters of the door and safely behind a turn in the hallway as a loud hum began to resonate throughout the walls. The red light had grown as bright as day by this point, and I was forced to shield my eyes even without a direct line of sight to it as it continued to intensify. The hum grew louder and louder, the heat hotter and hotter, until finally an ear-splitting BANG rattled through the whole of the castle, shaking the ground and throwing the paintings from the walls. And then, at last, silence.
After a brief moment, just enough to ensure there was no aftershock, I indulged my gnawing anticipation and returned to the room. The heat had faded entirely in less than an instant, though pleasantly warm ash still floated around the air. All features of the room—regrettably, including my alchemical equipment and reagents—had been incinerated, the walls and floors coated in a thin layer of black soot. Though there were no bodies, the fate of the two hapless guards my patron had dragged into the room was painfully obvious. However, it was ultimately of no concern to me. I rushed towards where the hubristic, dying man had last been standing, my heart pounding in my chest, and began to brush away the powder coating the floor. I found what I was looking for almost instantly.
It looked almost like a perfectly smooth ruby at first, though even an untrained eye would have been able to see the lack of imperfections in its translucent form and know that it was something far greater. As I picked it up, it almost seemed to melt in my hand like some form of viscous liquid, though it never separated or lost its shape. A faint, yet steady pulsing flowed through its form: the feeling of a heartbeat. I had promised that old fool immortality, after all.
Things had progressed far beyond even my wildest of hopes. Yet, there was one test left before I could truly claim victory. I sifted through the burnt fragments of my cupboards until I found what I was looking for: a lump of bluish-gray metal, covered in the charred remains of wood, yet still pure enough for my purposes. I placed it on one of the few surviving counters and, with trembling hands, gently placed the red substance on top of it. I closed my eyes as a bright white flash sparked up, and it took a while for me to calm my breathing enough to dare to open them again.
But when I did, I saw the beautiful, undeniable luster of pure, glittering gold.
The magnum opus was complete. I had created red mercury—the philosopher’s stone.