A N T H R O P O S • M E T R O N
Ash 7, 121 Age of Steel
Servants went about their business at all hours of the day within the walls of Manse Michaelis, the family's trusted retainers and hirelings dutifully enacting the will of their masters. Pre-dawn fog still clung to the ground when one faithful man set about his business, clutching in his hands beneath his greatcloak an inscrutable list of ingredients and materials he was to gather. The lamps were the only source of light when he drove his carriage out beyond the estate's walls, and the cold of an Ash morning seeped into his bones. He did not know why the young master requested such strange things, but the address he was given was that of a reputable chemist's shop well known and praised by the city's foremost scientific authorities, alleviating the most severe of concerns.
Proper chemistry, as opposed to the world magic of alchemy, had only recently come into vogue by the timescale of the world, but it was a field of study which Zaichaer had eagerly adopted. Every effect once thought possible only through magic reproduced by a purely scientific process was hailed as a breakthrough in human ingenuity and will, another break in the chains binding mankind to the tyranny of the divine and the capracity of the arcane. Still, to the common man there was much in common between the two disciplines, requiring the usage of the volatile, the mysterious, and the unknown to create the surreal. But this particular servant was a Michaelis man, and banished such superstitions from his head as he ventured forth into the slowly waking city.
Nonetheless, his curiosity was aroused when he had finally collected the desired materials. Iron and glass he at least knew and understood, though the young master's purpose for them entirely eluded the man. Far too little of the metal had been requested to make much of value, and the intricate shapes of the glasswork with their peculiar slots were as mysterious as the mystic tools of a runeforger as far as he was concerned. But they both paled in comparison to the little glass vial and its cork stopper, carefully sealed inside of a wooden box packed full of linen to ensure that it would not be jostled by the carriage's motions. The man behind the counter at the shop had warned him to be exceedingly careful with it before claiming that the clear liquid suspended inside of it was a liquid death, its potency merely diluted, and that even a single drop could cause excruciating pain.
He drove the carriage far slower on the return journey.
Anton had woken early as well, though not nearly so much as those who served him and his family. Still, he did his part to try and make his dreams a reality, pouring over the manuscript and checking the designs over and over again. The library was far too enclosed, and filled with far too many valuable tomes, to actually conduct the experiment within, so he had decamped to a now seldom used stone hall in one of the oldest areas of the manor. With its high celings, sturdy construction, and distance from anything particular valuable, it was the closest he was likely to get to ideal. If all went well such preparations would be unneccessary, and it was a rather small experiment, but it was impossible to be too careful.
It took a team of men to bring in the materials he had requested. The coal filled brazier was first, brought in by two men who then proceeded to light it, the fire swiftly warming the stone chamber. Two more brought in a low table, and then another three carefully manuevered the glasswork he had ordered. Modern techniques had far outstripped the crude and bespoke pieces that the original experimenter had had to use, but the principles were identical. By far the happiest porter was a single servant holding a small disk of iron, the man placing it upon the table with a flourish before making way for the last delivery. The final man to enter the chamber walked with slow, deliberate steps, holding the oaken box in his hands as far away from him as possible as if it were a hand grenade. The oil of vitriol, only relatively recently given the more proper name of sulfuric acid, was the key to the entire experiment and by far the most dangerous component.
Before they could begin however, a curiosity had seized the lordling, inspired by more modern research. It was said that accounting for the invisible gases produced in any reaction, the total mass before any experiment should be the same as the total mass afterwards. Deciding that two proofs were suerior to one, Anton endeavored to augment his work. A set of scales were quickly put to use, every component of the assembly dutifully weighed and the resulting number notated by one of the literate retainers who had been effectively deputized as his lord's assistant. The all too dangerous acid, naturally, was weighed while still safely resting in its box.
At last all was ready, the young scientist opening the box to reveal the upright vial of acid still in its padded container. The time for the final preparations had at last come, Anton once more giving into his stolen curse and let himself see. Compared to the real thing now laid out before him, the drawings and figures and descriptions were muffled songs played behind a closed door, the constancy and the threat of the iron and acid now fully revealed to him. Carefully, so as to not crack the glass, Anton deposited the iron disk within the chamber, doing so with an elaborate flourish of his own - for he was not alone. The walls of the stone chamber were filled with milling servants, the employees of the estate far too curious at the strange exploits the heir so often secluded himself in. This was far from his first such endeavor of course, but those had been conducted with Stefan and so a certain amount of decorum was expected. Now however there were no such concerns, and they freely gossiped among each other about just what they were due to see.
"As you can all see, sulfuric acid does not react with glass," Anton announced as he freed the vial from its confines, projecting his voice throughout the room. "This makes it the ideal container not only for the substance in transit, but also to contain the reaction itself." With a bow, carefully maintaining the vial in an upright state, he began to work. The cork stopper was removed from the slim container, bringing it towards the lip of the beaker in which the iron rested. "The acid shall be poured upon the iron, and then the connection between the two glass pieces sealed shut, at which point any resultant gasses shall be purified by the filter in the adjoining piece before eventually flowing into the container above the brazier. As any one knows from a cold Frost day, hot air has a tendency to rise, and the same is true of these particular vapors."
With that, a hush fell over the chamber as Anton began to decant the acid into the beaker, his other hand ready to seal the assembly as soon as the vial was emptied. The acid let out an immediate hiss as soon as the first drops fell upon the iron, their songs resounding into a chaotic dueling medley as they melded with one another. The stream of acid played their sonorous song of death as it fell and bounced and bubbled and melted upon the singular strain of iron. A green crystal began to form where the acid touched the metal, the paired strains mingling together to form two new songs altogether. The first remained upon the floor of the beaker, the hard ring of iron married to a strange sound, as if the acid's foreboding melody had been transposed to a major key. The second ascended into the glass array, a single note of such lightness and purity that the blind man's arcane sight was blinded anew until he adjusted to its soaring harmony.
"The green product you see remaining upon the glass is the green vitriol, which you may also know as copperas," Anton explained as the acid continued to eat its way through the rest of the iron. Its proper name was iron sulfate, but he decided to keep to the common names for his audience. "Those of you with children may have purchased green vitriol for your wives after childbirth, a substance of death transformed into that of life." Waxing poetic and listening to himself talk were two of his favorite pasttimes, but for once it had a practical purpose. The isolated hydrogen was still flowing into the other chamber, the swirling gas pushed upwards by the heat of the brazier below. "The second is the target of our investigation, a particular form of air known as hydrogen. It is far lighter than ordinary air, and the balloons and airships of the Air Defense Corps often make use of it."
When the reaction had finally seemed to cease, and the pure note that denoted hydrogen in his arcane sight had settled into the upper area of the beaker, he finally slid the trap shut, keeping it in place. The volatile reaction having finished, the last step was to simply measure the materials anew. Despite knowing what the answer should be in advance, Anton could not help but smile when he saw that the sums were nearly identical, more or less. The difference was no doubt due to the crude nature of the experiment performed, an amount of gas having no doubt escaped from the assembly.
With a smile on his face, Anton let out a breath he did not know he was holding in. It had worked.