Solo Sweet Oblivion

[Alses]

Timestamp: 31st Day of Spring, 513 A.V.

Springtime, and the kariino trees were in full and glorious bloom, every weeping branch bedecked in drooping pink and purple blooms, their subtle scent fragrancing Lhavit's pleasant boulevards and parks. Every time the wind blew it carried away a sweeping train of delicately-pink petals that fell in great comet-trails into the Misty Peaks and the Unforgiving beyond that, or else tinted the waters of Port Tranquil with a floral sargasso that stayed for weeks.

For Alses, the first time Port Tranquil drowned in pink was the signal to commence creating batches of sweet, sweet oblivion: kariino extract, those bottles of purple liquid which were an ever-present help in times of nocturnal trouble, when Nysel sent memories to plague her. The recollections of times on a silvered isle where the city was half-submerged and swimming was just as common as walking were the most common, but only just, with memories of fantastical soaring towers and arcane paraphernalia coming hot on their heels.

Unfamiliar words and concepts, opulent banqueting halls a thousand miles away and over half a millennium old – for no such things, at least not on such a grandly flamboyant scale - existed now, she was sure, with gem-dripped people she knew as friends talking and laughing in palatial gardens of aching beauty, then just as suddenly, a segue into another memory, the kiss of a knife at her neck and the stink of burning flesh in the night from a reflex fireball, and then pressing on their strange and unsettling heels would come strange discoveries made in secret and whispered about in cold metal halls, and before that, a nameless, spine-trembling fear as shimmering whorls and sleets of moving colour, impossibly defying the conventions of light and shadow, rippled through a forest towards her even as she brandished a crude staff high and shouted defiance in an utterly alien language.

There were more, but they were rarer, more plebian than the grand events she generally experienced. Some were simple civility, albeit a civility alien and strange to her. Others were murders, deaths in a variety of different ways that saw her abruptly jerked awake in the darkness of the night and groping for the purple bottle always at her bedside. Still others were of a shabbily pastoral nature, people wearing animal skins and cowering in rough-and-ready wooden huts whilst the world outside shrieked its outrage at the invasion of its primal nature.

Decidedly strange, to wake from a night of disjointed recollection as hale and whole once more, celestially beautiful and serene in total contrast to the charged moments from a thousand scattered lives she relived over and over.

With a sigh, and a crackle of celestial bone, Alses rolled over and let the duvet slide away from her perfect form, leaving her naked and radiantly bathed in Syna's abundant morning light. She feasted, and richly, chuckling with unalloyed delight, perfect and pure, as she drank in the dawn, instinctively taking in the infinite energies of the sun and converting them into the essential djed every living thing needed to survive.

It couldn't last, though, however perfect those moments of glorious communion; soon enough she was sated and fulfilled, wiping away the last vestiges of hunger and thirst that had carried over from her irritating mortal chain, sustained by the mantling corona of light that Syna lavished on every living thing whilst She shone in the sky.

There were things that needed doing – there were always things that needed doing – and staying abed or prancing naked about her room wouldn't see any of them done. Spring was a vital season, the only time the kariino trees burst forth into sweet profusion, and they had to be harvested and gathered in and processed before the season ended, if she wanted any sort of relief from the night in the near future.


A


Alses took a deep, deep breath of fresh mountain air, still cold but nowhere near as bitter as the true hammer of winter, enjoying her first real walk through the Respite gardens she'd more or less ignored over the winter. With everything sheltering under the snow or the fleeces she'd strung all around the more delicate trees, there hadn't been a great deal for her to do, aside from occasionally replacing the glue bands around the treetrunks.

Now, though, the first spears of green were making their way through the dark soil, pale and wavering right now, true, but they would only grow stronger as time went on and they drank in Syna's infinite energies, nourished by Her and by Semele's rich earth. A gust of wind hurled a fistful of flowers into Alses face, and after spitting out a few petals, she recalled herself to the pleasant task in hand, heading over to where the kariino trees grew thick and plentiful, their weeping branches almost touching the still waters of the Respite's ornamental pond and their buttressed roots sinking deep into the rich, claggy soil there.

Tahala had given her one of the Respite's old sheets, fit more-or-less for rags, but it served her purpose admirably, spread out on the ground under the trees to catch the blossoms as Alses picked them en-masse.

Hugely undignified, of course, but it got the job done, and quickly at that – Alses generally leapt to catch the branches at the highest point and then let gravity do the rest, pulling her back to Mizahar in a rain of pink and purple flowers that rapidly began to mound up on the spread sheet.

Alses frowned at the nearest branch, calculating, then jumped, hands locking tight around the smooth bark of the tree and hanging there, for just a split-second, before gravity overcame the force of her leap and dragged her back to earth, her hands tearing blossom after blossom free from their delicate moorings.

Landing was still a problem, though, no matter how acrobatic her leap; this time she landed heavily and awkwardly, her ankle giving way and dumping her unceremoniously in the pile of kariino blossoms.

“I hate collecting these things,” Alses growled, eyes shut as she massaged her ankle until the throbbing ache went away. She hadn't landed on it too heavily, thankfully – and for that she blessed the natural grace of all her kind, before standing up once more, resolute. It would perhaps have been more convenient to make use of Tanroa's Blessing, but she knew from hard experience that she'd manage to overbalance and dump herself on her behind more than once before she had the thousands of blooms she needed to make any sort of sizeable batch of kariino extract – and sizeable it had to be, so she could make enough to see her – and the rest of the Respite – through the year. Better, in light of hard experience, to wait, and cure herself of a thousand niggling aches and pains than just the one. Even if it did hurt.

Methodically, Alses made her way around the garden in the first flush of Spring, tearing down curtains of kariino blossoms and filling her sheet to bursting with pile upon pile of flowers, eventually collecting what might just have been about enough, barely able to tie the sheet together into an impromptu sack to lug down to the still-rooms of the Respite's prodigious kitchens, leaving a trail of escaped kariino blooms all through the building.

[Alses]

With a sigh of relief, Alses shrugged the bulging sheet-bag off her back and let it spill open, releasing another wave of blossoms onto the already-prodigious piles in the still-room, the air heavy with their scent. Faint with just one tree's blossoms, but many? It filled the air, saturated the nose and plated itself on the tongue, leaving an odd taste at the back of the mouth from its sheer presence.

In the relative quiet of the room, packed as it was with all that a novice philterer might require, Alses put her hands on her hips and heaved a quiet sigh. 'It'd be nice not to have to do this all the time,' she thought, slightly sadly. 'Some days, it'd be nice to simply do nothing, and not have to worry about the consequences. One day, I'll be able to have a day where the most important thing I have to think about is...is...which colour of the rainbow I'm going to slide down.' Another sigh, sitting pensively on one of the tall stools and kicking her heels absently. 'But not today.'

Not today indeed.

Sweet Oblivion, that was the goal for now. By the time she'd be finished, every single bloom in the room would be gone, the air would be full of purple smoke and somnolence would whisper on every breath of wind.

So.

People generally made kariino into a tea, and that was fine for the milder application of its soporific effects, but to really make the most of the flowers, insuration followed by multiple distillation was necessary – and since she was making enough to last the year, a bit of dessication and concentration would be involved as well, turning the end mixture through application of heat and silica liquor – which she might also have to make, depending on whether anyone had made off with her supplies - into deep-purple bricks that, kept away from moisture, would preserve the sleep-inducing qualities of the kariino right through until the next spring bloom, if not longer.

Out came the insurating flasks, bulbous, bulky things on tripods, their glass gleaming smugly as she ladled in copious amounts of the flowers, making a carpet of kariino petals on the glass, mounding it up until the flask was at least half-full before carefully, carefully pouring in a measured amount of water – a quarter-flask, in this case. The insuration for kariino extract was a hot reaction; it had to be, to liberate the essential volatiles from the flowers with any meaningful speed, but it did mean that a weather eye had to be kept on the vessels, lest they shatter spectacularly from the beating heat, ruining bells of work in a single, expensive instant.

Alses, however, was an old hand at making Sweet Oblivion by now; her hands were confident as she built up the fires beneath the flasks. Some kindly soul – and she suspected it was Cook, since she'd had to tell him what she was using the still-room for and for how long – had seen to it that a brazier was already alight for her when she arrived that morning, which meant she wouldn't have to brave the main kitchen to retrieve a flame, and nor would she have to faff around with flint and steel. 'Syna bless the thoughtful,' she thought, even as her deft fingers held a bundle of birch twigs in the leaping flames, rolling them over and over until a healthy flame danced and snapped on the end of her impromptu torch, greedily gobbling up the wood even as she poked it into a wigwam of larger logs. They caught quickly, thanks to the prudent logpile management of the Respite's kitchens, which ensured that not only was there an ample supply of them for various cooking tasks but also that they were tinder-dry and so not likely to fulminate, to smoke and fume and drive the prospective cook – or philterer, for that matter – from their work area.

Alses perched, pensive, on a tall stool in front of the brazier and flasks, relaxed and breathing deeply. The heat from the brazier prickled and tightened her skin, the smell of woodsmoke tickled her nose and the snap and crackle of the flames as they ate their way through the fuel filled her ears.

Pushing them away, drowning them in a still ocean of serenity and peace, that was getting easier and easier as she practised, dropping herself away from the world and then arcing back, calmed and centred and ready to synchronise with the auristic notion of everything all around her – but this time, a silver thread of thought wound its way through her quasi-meditative state, disrupting her calm.

'Do I really need to See for this?' the rebellious thought skipped through her brain, prompting second thoughts and further consideration, even as condensation began to cloud the flasks' curving sides and send faint rivulets of moisture running down to rejoin the main mass of liquid and flowers that was churning and roiling under the thermal influence of her fires.

'I already know how this works, after all,' she reasoned 'And it's not a complex philtre by any means.'

If there was one thing she'd learned from her overgiving experiences with madam instructor, it was not to use a lot of magic without need. Philtering was a delicate, fiddly discipline; everything had to be monitored and checked continually to prevent disaster, either for the philterer or the unfortunate recipient of the philtre. To add in the complexities of auristic endeavours to that was a difficult proposition at the best of times, and not something to be undertaken lightly. It was all fine and good for a first-iteration creation, like when she'd made chilblain salve; there, auristics gave her an edge, an extra, deeper understanding of the mechanisms she was employing in the philtering process, but kariino extract...that was easy, made so by dint of practice over several years.

Suddenly decisive, Alses let the growing synchrony fade and die away to nothing more than the mantling flare of light and sound which always augmented her vision these days, turning her attention back once more to the simple mundanity of Mizahar and the philtering reactions going on in front of her, oddly hypnotic and soothing.

There was no time to simply sit and contemplate the insurating flasks now, however, no time to watch the crystal beading of condensation on the sides of the glass, to follow the rivulets of slowly-darkening liquid as they vaporised and rose, condensed and fell again, a repeating cycle that saw the volatile compounds in kariino concentrating more and more and more into the liquid, leaving the flowers a wilted, colour-drained mess floating in a sea of pale-pink fluid.

Nothing like the rich tyrian purple shade of the final product, of course, but the first step in achieving that refined, potent extract.

In any case, the philtering reactions waited for no man – or woman. Not even an Ethaefal. Whilst her insuration reaction was bubbling away merrily, she turned her attention to the next step in the long chain. In its current configuration, the kitchen still resembled an overgrown alembic, condensing horn and all, and that suited Alses' purposes right down to the ground, since it was distillation on a grand scale that was going to be necessary to produce large batches of kariino extract.

With a sigh, Alses knelt beside the pot-bellied monstrosity, practiced hands undoing the wing-nuts and swinging wide the door, leaning away to escape the fug of stale fumes that always washed from its interior, no matter how well-scrubbed it was after use. Innumerable thousands of philtering reactions and brewing processes had sunk into and stained the metal and glass of its construction, and Alses had no desire to breathe in a lungful of air contaminated with the culmination of years of use.

[Alses]

All too soon, it seemed, the first batch of insuration reactions were done, the liquid running down the sides of the flasks a uniform and rather pretty shade of pink, not getting any deeper and richer after she'd watched them for five chimes. That meant they were ready to be poured into the main still for more vigorous distillation, extracting and concentrating the useful compounds under reducing heat until what emerged was a richly purple, viscous liquid that promised sleep merely on its fumes.

Alses grappled with the tongs for several chimes before achieving a stable, steady grip on the smooth glass of the flasks. She didn't particularly begrudge the time, since it was always better to ensure a good grip rather than see an expensive piece of glassware slip from her grasp and scatter itself in glittering, useless shards all across the floor, with all the consequences that would bring.

With slow and measured pace, insurating flask held firmly, Alses turned like an automaton from the workbench and padded towards the yawning belly of the still, a cavernously-hungry maw eager for the pale-pink liquid.

The gentle 'clink' of glass against metal brought a small smile of relief to Alses' face, the insurating flask now resting on the lip of the still's mouth. Squinting, and careful not to twist too hard, lest the tongs snap the glassware, and wishing that the whole thing cooled down faster so she could give it some support with her hands, Alses carefully, carefully tilted the flask until a thin stream of fluid arced into the still with an almost-musical cascading cadence of notes.

Against the sheer volume of the kitchen still, the amount of liquid she'd poured in looked very small and insignificant indeed – to an observer, idly watching, it would seem an amount hardly worth firing the still up for. This was only the start, however; there were several more flasks waiting to be poured in, for one, and for another, the production of Sweet Oblivion in any real quantity demanded a continuous-batch distillation process as the most efficient method of work.

With that in mind, and conscious of the fires burning, unattended, under the flasks behind her, Alses quickly repeated the process with the others, until the still's belly shimmered darkly with a pale-pink solution. No time to admire the shine, though – working methodically, Alses racked the insurating flasks against the wall to cool and set about preparing the second set. This was one of the largest philtering operations the Respite conducted, mostly because the kariino blossoms were only available in Spring, and so Alses had no qualms in using every scrap of glassware the Towers Respite possessed, and indeed was not above borrowing some extra pieces - admittedly always with the threat of violent death if they were broken, but she was careful.

Whilst the first batch were cooling gently against the wall – cold water on the hot glass could cause them to crack and shatter, she'd been advised, so it was best to let them cool naturally – the second batch were quickly prepared under her practised hands, growing faster and faster as the motions came back to her after a year of disuse, the sequence of actions growing clearer in her head as her brain dusted off the old memories and brought them to the fore once more, a clear and calm voice guiding her through the steps to a (hopefully) successful conclusion.

Kariino flowers in their hundreds tumbled into the fresh flasks, followed by measured amounts of crystal-clear rainwater, collected on the roof of the Towers Respite and filtered through screen after screen of cheesecloth and activated charcoal to make it as pure and clean as possible. Back onto the fires they went, fogging and condensing as the vapours began to rise, dragging out the essential volatiles from the flowers floating uneasily in the water, pulling colour and vitality out on curls of steam, prodded and poked and pushed by lancing thermal fingers, reaching and reaching.

No time, no time...with the insurating flasks on the boil once more, Alses could turn her attention to the still and its firebox. When she opened it, she was met with something of a surprise – the firebox was already chock-full of logs, and ones of a type she was unfamiliar with to boot.

No – that wasn't quite right; they were nokkochi logs, but they'd been slathered with some glutinous paste that made them look...unusual, to say the least. Alses squinted at a scrap of paper stuck into the tarry substance, straining to read the small, spiky letters that marked it out as a note from Cook.

'Sweet Oblivion takes too many normal logs. Had a chat with Tian J'net about it. Paste is an accelerant, she'll teach you when you're ready.' It was unsigned, but it didn't need to be. Alses rocked back onto her heels as she contemplated the brief, and annoyingly cryptic, message. What was an accelerant? Evidently something that was supposed to be helpful, but what exactly did it do?

Well, logs were meant to be burned, so perhaps it had something to do with fire? Would it catch more easily? Only one way to find out.

Flint and steel met in a shower of sparks, and Alses found out that yes, an accelerant – whatever it actually was – did make it considerably easier to light a full-fledged fire – bright white flame leapt almost instantly from the glowing contact points where the sparks had met paste-daubed logs, greedily flashing into high life, expanding rapidly over the entire stack of logs in the firebox with a gobbling roar and wall of almost indescribable heat that made pearls of perspiration bead themselves into existence even on Alses' fire-opal skin, which was generally used to heat of one kind or another.

“Syna's burning light...” Alses breathed, gazing into the blazing furnace that now roared underneath the still, the flames still the brilliant, hard white of overloaded senses screaming, the base of the still vessel already glowing red and edging towards brilliant orange under the tsunami of relentless heat.

A trickle of vapour caught her attention, snapping her head to the right as she stared at the distilling horn rising majestically above the pot-bellied still, darkening with purple vapours already. Her mind scrambled to provide the logical answer – the extra heat of the accelerated logs had caused the distillation to run much faster and hotter than was usual – but she still gaped for a few seconds at it, hurriedly recalculating her progress even as she scrutinized the purple gas even now making its way down the distillation coils, forming a bruised cloud inside the distillate flask rather than condensing out as a liquid as it was supposed to.

Troubling – Alses curiously touched the purple-filled flask and jerked her hand back with a startled oath, instinctively sucking on her fingers; the glass was hot, far hotter than it should have been. That, too, Alses thought with a scowl, was probably also the result of the accelerated flames forcing the distillation to run at a vastly increased rate – the vapours were concomitantly hotter, and the distillation coil on its own wasn't able to cool the gases down enough.

Mouth set in a tight, displeased line – hiding her worry – Alses considered an unpalatable thought; the only practical method for cooling it down was probably going to be ice, and that meant a trip down to her least favourite room in the entire Respite, all the while worrying about her philtering reactions.

Alses wasn't working with anything flammable, explosive or poisonous – except in truly vast quantities, of course – or else she'd never even consider deserting her flasks for so much as a moment, but perhaps, just perhaps, she could manage to collect a bowlful of ice-shavings to sit the endpoint flask – and maybe even the distilling coil – in.

[Alses]

There were swirls of pale-purple vapour leaking under the door of the still-room when Alses returned, her hands chilled to the bone from the box of ice shards she was carrying, the rest of her still shivering from the foul temperature the blue-hued room with its mountains of ice gleaming against close-hewn granite walls. Not skyglass, not down there, no – the natural warmth of that celestial material would defeat the whole purpose of the chamber, and mean that there was no ice for drinks – or as in this case, philtering reactions – in the height of summer. That would never do, of course. Thus, granite, and far too many stairs to get to the place, buried far away from sunlight and warmth and all good things.

Pale purple wasn't a good sign, and Alses pushed the door open with some trepidation, but no hesitation, never any hesitation – havering outside would only make things worse, and whatever runaway reaction that was going on could only get more out-of-control the longer she waited.

The sight that met her as she dumped her ice cargo down on a nearby table wasn't the most encouraging; the whole still-room was socked in pale-purple fog, drifting in banks around the silhouettes of the benches and the kitchen still in the middle of the floor, the flames beneath that glowing brightly in the foggy murk.

'Bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger! I never should have left it all alone!' chanted her despairing thoughts even as she hurried to find the source of the gases and – hopefully – fix whatever had gone wrong whilst she was getting the ice.

Squinting, to see through the twists of purple vapour and the diffuse glows from all the fires, she espied the problem with a heavy sigh of relief - off to her left, one of the insuration flasks was spewing clouds of purple vapour into the air, curling and twisting in the stillness, the only sounds the roar of the still-fire and the hiss of escaping gas, heavy in the air. Whilst expensive to replace, they weren't anywhere near as valuable as a full-fledged still, and with luck, something could be salvaged.

Alses stifled a chemically-induced yawn, her brain seeming full of cotton wool and drifting purple mist even as she dipped a rag into a water-butt and clapped it in front of her nose and mouth. Kariino extract wasn't poisonous by any means, especially in such a dilute form, but there was quite a bit of it in the air, and drowsiness wouldn't help. Fortunately, the gas was hydrophilic, water-soluble – hence the drippy rag – and that should keep her alert enough to fix the problem (whatever it was) and get the windows open before she got too sleepy.

'Windows first,' she decided, feeling her eyelids grow heavy and her thoughts slow – anything to clear the air – and in short order the ones overlooking the gardens were thrown wide, spilling billows of pale smoke into the clear, still air over the Respite's manicured grounds, clearing the atmosphere admirably inside the room.

Better able to see, Alses hurried over to the source of the fumes, still sending up a plume of somnolent, vaporized kariino extract, wafting the gases away from herself as much as possible and throwing a tactical ladleful of cold water on the fire underneath, adding yet more smoke and steam to the atmosphere but – blessedly - causing the jet of kariino volatiles to waver and sputter, crumble and stutter and fall in on itself as the energy that drove it was abruptly removed.

In very short order indeed, the emissions had been curtailed and Alses could assess the damage at her leisure. She'd originally planned a very careful exercise, involving a lot of tapping at the flask, to find out where it had cracked without shattering the whole thing, but closer inspection showed her that wouldn't be necessary.

A second, closer look now the jet of sleep-inducing gases was well and truly stopped, confirmed it; the cork which stoppered the flask-neck had cracked and crumbled, the edges of the wide fissure in the material stained a rich purple with kariino deposits.

Alses caught herself yawning again, unreasonably sleepy, and chanted a litany of damnation against kariino in all its philtre-purified forms. 'Cold water, Alse,' she thought grimly, steeling herself and reaching for the ladle again.

Chill rainwater was, thankfully, an effective counter to the soporific gas still drifting faintly through the room; sunbeams streaming in through the wide-open windows still lit a million motes afire with vaguely-purple light, and there was fuzziness amongst the rafters still.

A generous measure of the icy liquid went over her head, pouring through her crown-of-horns and sending a wave of jewelled gooseflesh racing across her skin. A convulsive shiver racked her frame as the water soaked into her clothes and plastered them against her figure, but the creeping poison of sleep was no longer haunting her quite so strongly, chased back to the recesses of her brain by the plummeting temperature of her skin and the nipping fingers of the mountain breezes chasing around the still-room.

Moving quickly and with the surety that came only with practice, Alses moved to check on the other flasks and their fires, building up one, curtailing another – robbing Peter to pay Paul, one might say – until tranquil conformity reigned again, insuration continuing at a steady, predictable rate. All the other corks seemed to be holding up well under the pressures of kariino extraction, but she resolved to keep a weather eye on them nonetheless – and to never leave the room again whilst philtering.

At least it hadn't been the still which had gone – the vaporous extract there was far more potent, and therefore a great deal more trouble to deal with if it got where it wasn't wanted. The amount reacting away over the accelerated blaze would have surely filled the room with powerful knockout gas, enough to overwhelm most people very quickly. The only benefit – if such it could be called – was that gaseous kariino was somewhat unstable and decayed rapidly into harmlessness when not associated in solution.

Regardless, Alses counted her blessings and thanked Syna and Tanroa both for her luck, hurrying over to lay distilling coil and capture flask in a bed of shaven ice.

Four burned fingers – where she'd tried to grasp the coil's glass tubes – quickly taught her the folly of trying to do it unaided. True-blue light burst over her fingers as she dipped them in water, taking the edge off the pain and squelching blisters before they could form, and then Alses turned to the rest of the still-room, hunting for implements.

After several chimes of fruitlessly opening up cupboards and drawers, to an increasingly loud litany of 'Where are they? Where are they? I've seen them somewhere, I know it, I just know it...' Alses gave up her hunt and made do with two pairs of salad tongs, liberated from who-knew-where the gods alone knew when and hanging from the drying-chains overhead for, possibly, years.

In truth, they weren't the ideal tools for the job, the metal skittering along the glass with a horrible scringeing noise that set her teeth on edge, but eventually they caught securely and with a musical chime of flexing glasswork, a few bitten-off swearwords and the rattle of protesting wing-nuts on the condensing horn end of things, Alses lifted the whole assemblage up slightly and slid it into the ice-box with a relieved sigh, closely watching the roiling purple vapour as it spiralled down and into the collecting flask for the changes she hoped would come with the colder temperatures.

[Alses]

As Alses was scrutinizing the first beads of deep purple liquid settling into the bottom of her ice-packed flask - the water vapour uncurling harmlessly in wisps of steam from the release valve at the top of the condensing horn - and starting to relax ever so slightly, the door behind her burst open and in came a human whirlwind in the form of Cook. Rotund and short in physical stature but a league high in personality and energy, he commanded respect and no small amount of fear from anyone with half a brain – and that company did, the occasional evidence to the contrary, include Alses.

Evidently, the sight which met his eyes even as Alses turned around to face him wasn't quite the scene he'd been expecting, for he paused to collect himself before speaking, and when he did, the words were unusually hesitant, his tone quite quiet.

“Ah...everythin' aright here, m'girl? Only one o' me staff said as there were huge billows of smoke a-pourin' from here into th'gardens...” he tailed off, and then recovered. “Jus' thought I'd come and check up on ye, just in case somethin' had gone awry.”

Alses hid a smile; it was sweet, it really was, to have someone concerned for her health and wellbeing. “Everything's under control, Cook,” she replied smoothly. “One of the corks for one of the insurating flasks split and jetted out quite a lot of kariino fumes. Only once-distilled, so it wasn't too potent, but we didn't want to work in a room full of sleeping gas, however mild it might have been.” She shrugged, purposefully nonchalant. “The windows were the easiest way to get rid of it, and the mountain winds will have dispersed it into total harmlessness by now.”

“Aye? And how did ye come to let so much gas escape afore puttin' the fire out? I knows ye, Alses, ye're far too careful t'let that happen normally; what distracted ye?” Cook's eyes were hard and flinty; Alses had to work not to quail under their gaze.

“The accelerated logs you put in the still,” she said, tapping the glassware now resting in the ice. “They burn far hotter than any wood has a right to.”

“Slower, too,” nodded Cook. “Powerful philtered paste, that stuff, but I don't see what that has t'do wi' your lettin' a flaskful of kariino run amok.”

“The distillation went a lot faster than I'm used to,” Alses admitted, a dull flush colouring her fire-opal cheeks. “And since it's running so hot, the distilling coil on its own wasn't enough to condense the vapour.” She shrugged. “To keep everything on schedule – and because I didn't want the gas escaping – we needed some ice to cool the coil and collecting flask both. I thought we'd be safe leaving to retrieve some; I didn't count on a cork failing at just the wrong time.”

Cook harrumphed, evidently not happy. “Ye should never leave a reaction alone; ye know that, Alses. Ye were damned lucky 'twas only a cork, rather than a flask! An' had ye been workin' with anything truly dangerous, that could've spelled the end o'you and anyone who happened t'be passin' by to boot! Gods above, m'girl, sometimes ye're the portrait-girl fer overconfidence.”

She looked away, throat dry. “Sorry, Cook,” she all-but whispered. “It won't happen again.”

There was a long silence; she didn't dare look at him. “See that it doesn't,” he said eventually. “I'll be checkin' in on ye regular-like from now on, until I thinks I can trust ye not to be an idiot again.”

The sound of the heavy door swinging shut behind him, and the pitter-patter of shoes on skyglass steps sounded very loud in Alses' ears. Her fingernails bit into the flesh of her palms, her knuckles whitened and she bit her lip, ashamed, but Cook had the right of it – that was what rankled so much. She'd disappointed him, too, and that hurt as well.

She knew it was a bad idea to leave reactions unattended, and it wasn't as if she couldn't have just damped the fires under the flasks whilst she was away; kariino extract wasn't something like zujin or bulboru or any of the more advanced preparations that needed very specific, constant conditions for successful completion, so why had she thought it reasonable, acceptable to swan off?

'Pride, that's what it was,' came her rebellious thoughts, needling and pricking at her already-deflated pride. 'Hubris. Overconfidence'

With a scowl, Alses turned her attention back to the reactions in hand, watching richly-purple vapours swirl and roil and turn, oh-so-slowly, into tyrian liquid, thick and viscous, rolling languidly down the spiralling glassware.

There wasn't much time to spend in gloomy self-recrimination and staring at liquids for too long, however; the still was hungry for freshly-insurated kariino condensate after all, and as she'd seen to her cost earlier, philtering reactions continued without regard for anything or anyone else.

Soon enough, she'd settled into a easy routine, moving around the still-room with the easy efficiency which spoke of long practice, schlepping from log-box to insurating flasks to still and back again. It was hard work, ladling hundreds of kariino blossoms into glass flasks, adding in enough water to steam off the volatiles, monitoring the temperatures and reaction progress of insuration and powerfully-accelerated distillation all at the same time, but it had to be done. Cook, true to his word, made appearances at various points throughout the afternoon. He didn't say anything, and in a way that was worse; Alses felt keenly the bonfire of his wary disapproval and had to fight to keep things on the straight and narrow with her philtering; there could be no further mistakes.

The chief worry, even with Cook's occasional, unnanounced presence, was - now that the rest of the flasks appeared to be behaving themselves - the accelerated distillation process, running hotter than she was used to. Heat was good, of course, driving more volatiles into vapour form at a faster rate, making the whole thing work faster, but the gases evolved were then also hotter, and she had to worry about contamination from unwanted substances as well, the unwanted components of kariino blossoms that had to be filtered out or released by strategically-placed escape valves.

Fortunately, whatever Tian J'net had done to the logs still produced relatively normal fire; it still responded to being starved of oxygen and so she was able to achieve a crude form of regulation using the emergency overpressure valve and the firebox air inlets, continually watching the rising vapours for colour changes. Pale pink vapour escaping from the valve meant the heat was too great, pouring down the distilling coil: too little. It was a continual and delicate dance that needed constant monitoring even as she was ferverishly processing more and more of the piles of kariino blossoms to feed the still's voracious appetite for single-distilled condensate and then, later, the double-distilled concentrate until eventually, blessedly, as the ruddy rays of a mountain sunset lanced in through the windows and splashed the room with bloody smears, the last pile of flowers had been turned into a drained and dripping mush, the last flaskful of pale-pink liquid had been converted to a far richer-purple fluid and an entire forestful of collecting flasks shone smugly tyrian on a workbench, ranged in serried ranks along the surface.

It was a hot and sweaty Alses who stretched – in a fusillade of bony cracks – and admired the fruits of her labours – thick purple liquid, the triple-refined essence of kariino. Sleep in fluid form, Sweet Oblivion, so very, very seductive.

Alses raised a heavy flask as though in toast to an unseen partner. “Here's to sleep,” she murmured, with a fey smile. “Dreamless and deep.”

[Alses]

There was one further thing that needed doing before she could call it a day, however – some of kariino's largesse had to be further processed, into the deep-purple bricks that stored the precious essence for the later seasons. She never knew exactly how many kariino flowers would come tumbling down each year, so it made sense to process about half of every batch she made into the fragrant bricks which then got stacked high in one of the Respite's storerooms until they were needed.

Making those bricks wasn't difficult, by any means; one simply poured the liquid into a shallow metal container and stood it in a drying oven for several bells, slowly driving off the moisture until all you had left was a pile of deep purple dust which could easily be shaped and pressed into a brick-shape for ease of storage. It was, however, somewhat time-consuming – although it still didn't take as long as it would just using the natural action of sunlight.

With a heavy sigh, Alses raised herself from the stool and set to work. The drying oven was essentially a large iron box set into the skyglass outer wall of the still-room, able to be packed with wood or coal, heating the iron to red-heat and producing a scorching cube of dessicated air, perfect for drying liquids fairly rapidly in. Of course, it couldn't be run at anything like the maximal temperature for producing dessicated Sweet Oblivion, since common wisdom and experimental testing had shown the active ingredient to be completely destroyed at very high temperatures.

Alses had, however, come up with something of a workaround, a little innovation of which she was quite proud. Adding anything to the philtre was out of the question, she'd been told quite firmly by Cook and Tian J'net both – not until she knew a lot more about what she was dealing with, what compounds and reactions were poisonous and which weren't. A general rule for a philterer dealing in potions was simply: 'don't mess with the recipe'. They'd been painstakingly worked out – often with deaths and diseases resulting along the way – until something that was safe had been arrived at, and since they were often hideously complex mixtures in the first place, adding another ingredient meant a lot of expensive testing that very few people had the resources, time or inclination to do.

So.

Since that was out, Alses had turned her attention to the limiting factor of water evaporation. As the water was driven off, the air inside the oven became more humid, the amount of water evaporating from the mixture then seemed to drop – which seemed sensible and logical – until the air-vents were opened and the moisture-rich air replaced by fresh, drier air which then needed to be heated up and then the whole process continued.

Even as a novice, an outsider looking on, that was wasteful and inefficient to boot. She'd raised this with Tian J'net, who'd frowned and said they generally used the hot air for other philtering processes – at least in her laboratory. She knew of some who simply vented it and accepted the losses.

After some considerable thought, Alses had remembered water-glass, or liquor silica as it was sometimes known. A curiosity in many ways, Tian J'net had shown it to her one rainy day, dipping a block of the stuff into water and watching as it greedily drank it up. Experimentation – by dint of throwing some granules in a furnace and heating it – had shown the stuff well able to withstand common furnace temperatures – common, that was, for philterers – and paved the way for Alses' more efficient dessicant method.

It was very simple: the drying oven's floor was covered in a coating of liquor silica beads, and as the heat drove water vapour out of the Sweet Oblivion solution, the beads drank it in and kept the evaporation process rapid.

Having been shown Alses' method, and taking note of the increase in speed, Tian J'net had of course gone one better, managing to dope the clear gel beads with some philtered compound – the nuances of which entirely escaped Alses – that changed colour when they were saturated with water, from blue to pale pink and back again when dried out.

It was a useful measure, Alses admitted, to tell anyone at a glance when to shovel in a few more beads of the stuff, or conversely when they'd been re-dried and could be reused. Not particularly important for her, since the merest touch of auristic power, properly wielded, could easily tell when the beads were saturated or not, but Tian had pointed out, in quite strong terms, too, that most people weren't wizards of any flavour – herself included, a point which Alses had had to concede.

Still, regardless of Tian's improvements, Alses was still very proud of her contribution to dessication, especially when it resulted in material benefit for her.

Grimly concentrating on the task in hand, Alses focused fiercely on scattering the hard blue granules of liquor silica into the iron belly of the drying oven, the pang-pang-pang-pang of them rolling and bouncing on the floor and off the walls dinning on her ears and starting the first inklings of a headache. As she worked, methodical and careful, Alses laid the pride of her little discovery against Cook's disappointment earlier, and found it helped somewhat. Triumph versus defeat, success versus failure, and so on.

Wavering spirals of heat were shimmering and crazing the air before Alses judged the oven to be hot enough, the heat of it tightening the skin on her arms and causing pearly drops to bead her forehead. Careful to keep her fingers clear of the hot metal, Alses slid the first of many drying trays, glimmering darkly with purple liquid – into its gaping maw, firmly shutting the door behind it and all-but collapsing into a nearby chair.

This was the easy bit – it wasn't even philtering, not really, and all she had to do was change out the drying trays every two bells, occasionally feed the fire and even more occasionally add in a few extra beads of liquor silica. Catnaps, in a comfortable chair in front of the oven, would see her through until morning, when hopefully she'd be done at last with this particular batch.

Of course, the whole thing – hopefully minus the mishap with the insurating flask's cork – would be repeated in a week or two, and again a week or two after that, until all the kariino flowers the trees on the Respite grounds could produce had been turned into something more useful.

For now, though, Alses settled in to wait, her face lit by the glow of the drying-oven fires and the setting sun both.

END

[Elysium]

Alses

Philtering	+5
Observation	+3
Climbing	+2
Acrobatics	+1

Recipe: Sweet Oblivion

How to Collect Kariino Blossoms

Philtering: How to Distill Kariino

Philtering: lnsurating Flasks

Philtering: How to Use an Accelerant

How to Resolve a Philtering Reaction

Philtering: Kariino Bricks

Philtering: Uses of Liquor Silica

Notes

As always, brilliant job Alse. By the way, your Auristics is Expert now! Congrats. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me.

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