Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 22

Cocobusi coughed into his fist as he collected himself, “I would not worry about any ‘shoulds’ regarding his license. I have it on very good authority that it was ripped to shreds, whether or not it was force fed to him and washed down with one of his ‘ethers’ is open to debate and interpretation. All I know is that our Guildmaster was shockingly calm and collected following such a blunder. Alas, this is hardly the first time such a thing happened, merely the most egregious in recent memory. Adventurers have been a boon to many tradescrafts and fieldscrafts, but far too many of your peers think these professions nothing more than a way to obtain quick gil and do not realise just how involved and demanding following both the blade and the smith’s hammer truly is. The majority has the sense of simply stopping one, or the other, but a few will do as this man has.”

“I almost regret joining the Adventurer’s Guild.” Muur groaned, rubbing at the skin around her horns to stave off a stress migraine. “Right, I’ll just conduct myself like a proper alchemist and hopefully you and everyone else will be able to stop associating me with those dunderheads.”

“That would be greatly appreciated, although–,” Rather than finish his sentence, he hemmed and hawed, seemingly unable to decide if he should speak or not, “As things are, I- am unsure you would even be accepted? Our guildmaster’s not one to suffer fools on the best of times, I would not be shocked to hear that he would refuse you out of hand… With that in mind… would you like to make an ether?”

Oh, she knew where this was going.

“I would be delighted to learn.” Muur replied with a crooked grin.

“Right, then allow me,” Taking the Ether, he placed it in Muur’s hands, “My brothers often tell me that some thaumaturges and wielders of magic have some form of ‘arcane senses’ that allow them to feel the current of aether. If you have one, I would advise you to try and use it to familiarise yourself with how an Ether should feel while I take care of installing the alembic and reagents.”

Turning away, he brought both arms to his satchel and– pulled an entire alembic out of something that would almost be purse-sized on her frame. 

“Huh, subspace pocket, neat.” Muur muttered, before focusing back on her task of ‘sense the aether in this funny drug’. Maybe it was because she was a lizard now, maybe it was just her, but she instinctively stuck out her tongue. 

There!

A sort of woody and… dark(?) taste danced across her tongue, her brain refusing to elaborate on what the fuck it meant by reaching for that word. It was even harder to describe beyond that, there was some kind of vaguely energising quality to it that reminded her of energy drinks. Now that she thought about it, there was a minuscule amount of coldness too, like a very sweet mint candy.

“They are called deephold bags, I wouldn’t expect that you’d know of them,” Tugging on lugs with one hand while pressing on buttons with another, Cocobusi slowly pulled the machine apart. There was no comparing it to the one in the lobby, like an old IBM next to a smartphone, “They are fickle things to craft at best, ruinous at worst, and to the best of my knowledge, are a wholly Eorzean creation.”

Alembic assembled, he pulled out more things from his bag. A piece of mistletoe, two small crystals, a purple one crackling with little jolts of electricity and a deep blue one that seemed perpetually wet, and finally a massive bat-wing. One far too large to belong to an actual bat, “We’ll be needing purified water as well, you have your own, correct?”

“Right here.” Muur said, plucking it from her tail.

“In that case, we can begin. First let me explain the ingredients. The crystals, as you might have surmised from the previous’ purification, only serve to power the alembic,” Taking both crystals, he inserted them into his workstation, “This is

Tinolqa mistletoe, a rather common pest from the Black Shroud. It parasitises the great trees of that forest and drains them of aether, potentially killing the smaller ones if not taken care of. ‘Tis fortunate that they are used in both Potions and Ethers thanks to the glut of aether they contain– along with some mild pain dulling and energising qualities. They’ve been a staple of lalafelin herbalism, which our branch of alchemy heavily relies on. This however,” Grabbing the bat-wing he offered it to Muur, "is an imp’s wing. It was harvested from a voidsent.”

Taking it in her hands, she had to suppress a shiver. It felt like something was breathing down her neck, but a glance at the reflections on the alembic’s sides showed nothing.

…Wait.

She recognized this wing. It was identical to what she’d torn out from that anorexic gargoyle thing during the vision in the wagon, down to the smoky steak smell lingering on her tongue.

“How common are they?” She asked with a tinge of worry. If this was an ingredient for something that got made in such huge batches…

“More common than one would like, less than one might fear,” He said with a shrug, “Voidsents are unfortunately a fact of life. Moreso since the Fall, numerous small rifts between the Void and our realm still linger, allowing smaller voidsents like imps to manifest into our realm. Other ingredients can be used for ethers, but the wings are by far the most common. Voidsent parts rarely, if ever, degrade over time which has led to something of an over-abundance of the things when they threw themselves at our city’s walls and its defenders.”

“Fair enough. I’ve only had the one encounter with them and they were obnoxious, them and the winged eyeballs could sure screech.” Muur muttered, noting to herself that all those visions were almost definitely some sort of astral projection. That would complicate things.

“Eyeball?” The lalafel seemed to think for a moment, “That would be an ahriman I believe. Far more dangerous, and rare, than imps. Unlike them, they require a rift the size of a hyur teen– or one as large as you, I supposed. Or a statue crafted in their image. The first is very rare, the second would require you to be mad enough to not only have one made, but also perform the dark rituals necessary to summon it.”

“Good to know, I only really had to tussle with the imps that one time.” The lizard woman hummed, she’d have to try and avoid (heh) those. “Anyways, back to business?”

“Yes. Now, the reason why this wing is used is both due to what it is and what it represents,” Pulling out a mortar and pestle, her impromptu treacher launched in an explanation, “To explain what I mean, you first have to understand that Alchemy is no monolith. There are dozens of schools all claiming the name, just as there are dozens of schools regarding wielding a sword. While the herbalism theory I mentioned before forms our foundation, it is Miqo'te Mysticism that our branch of the school is constructed from – you’ll have to grind the mistletoe to a paste.”

“All parts together until homogenous?” Muur asked as she set down the wing to the side to instead grab the plant, a knife and the mortar and pestle.

“What do you think?” He asked carefully, “Taking into account that these plants are parasites that drain others of their ether to grow fruits, would you make use of all of it?”

“Depends on the processes that follow. I presume the vines have a draining property that could conceivably be used to concentrate and purify something from the wing, but just on the face of it? I’d err on the side of caution and just use the berries which is where the aether must’ve been gathered, maybe the sap too if I can extract it from the vines without too much trouble.” The lizard replied with a shrug, already working on cutting each part and sorting them into piles, “The leaves I’m completely unsure on, I’d need to know more about their role in the plant’s life cycle to make a judgement either way.”

“You’ll be wanting the berries, yes. The leaves as well. The former is to be ground into a fine paste, the later stepped into the ether as the last step. They’re what gives it its colour,” He instructed Muur, who nodded as she shifted her work, putting the berries in the mortar and the leaves in a glass dish for later, “The leaves themselves are the part of the plant that possesses mild anesthetic qualities. They represent the mistletoe’s lifeforce. The steeping will not do much, beside colouring the drink and providing a soothing feeling to one’s overworked aether pool– Not that I’d know how that feels.”

“So technically an optional step, but it makes the product more visually attractive and pleasant to use without really raising the material costs.” The wannabe alchemist hummed in understanding, slicing the berries finely in the mortar so they wouldn’t burst and make a mess once she started grinding.

“Oh no, the concoction’s worse than useless without them,” Cocobuci told her without missing a beat, “It’s actively poisonous. But none of the alchemists I’ve met quite cared to figure out why. There’s been plenty of theories, such as the leaves serving as a neutralizing agent for the berries’ own toxins, or some sort of purification agent for the Voidsent’s viler nature. But to my knowledge, no one really delved into an in depth study of the method.”

“Sounds like a fun enough case study, even if it would take some guinea pigs to test the toxicity of various permutations on until we narrow down what is the source of the poison and what the leaves do about it.” Muur mused as she settled into a steady grinding pattern, leveraging her body weight with a bit of help from her tail to reduce the sliced berries to a homogenous paste. “Still, even if there’s no test animals, I’m sure some adventurers would be willing to repeatedly poison themselves for gil so long as we provided antidotes.” 

“Possibly, but you would need to secure a deal with a snake breeder for that many antidotes. It wouldn’t be cheap in the least,” Looking over Muur’s shoulders, as best as someone smaller than her could at any rate, he hummed appreciatively and handed her some kind of tea-steeper, “Not too thin. This ought to be enough, if the paste is too well grinded, contaminants will enter the potion. Transfer it to this and slot it into the alembic please.”

“The viscosity of a thick sauce and slightly grainy, got it.” The thaumaturge muttered to herself as she complied, using a small rubber spatula to scrape the paste off of the pestle and mortar and into the metal container. 

“You’ll want to slot this strainer in here,” He said as he indicated a small slot held in the alembic, then he pointed to a reservoir on the side, “Afterwards, place the purified water in here. A single bottle will give us enough for three ethers. Once both of these are in place–,” He unlatched a large section that looked to be a furnace of some sort, “we will be working on the wing. You’ve done some sort of medicine work, if I remember what you told me correctly, but I’d wager that this is the point that things will become… odd.”