Drawn to the Light [Solo]

[Hilana Chenzira]

Glade 9, Year 123


[Closed]

Hilana made her way to the alchemy shop and laboratory where she had endeavoured to undertake lessons, as arranged quietly by Sentinel Phocion. She was only an apprentice, and while she had the funds to set up a lab in her two-bedroom apartment, she didn’t have the space. Further, fumes happened, and she wouldn’t risk her snakes and their respiratory systems from her playing with this sort of thing. She had learned the basics of safety, but there was still a great deal she didn’t know, and further, she was not advanced in the arts of Scrivening or Negation. Her odds of doing something disastrous and damaging the whole building were certainly high. It was far better to practice her experiments and her lessons under the eyes of those who knew far better than she did what she was doing, and she could watch, observe, and practice.

Her pythons didn’t accompany her today for the same reason she hadn’t taken them hunting with her yesterday for the reagents she had stuffed in her backpack. Digestion was a sensitive matter for snakes, and it was best that they were left to process their meals without becoming accidentally stressed out. And if there was a lab accident, the girl preferred her darlings were not injured. And from yesterday’s trip, she had accumulated multiple bottles and jars of ashes, all collected from various shadow creatures that were around the kingdom within a few hours’ ride. She had over two dozen labeled containers, and in her notebook, the details of whereabouts it had been dispatched, and what element had been used to reduce them to this state of effluvia. She had used all four of those that were accessible to her without attunement, and Garr had been able to take others out with lightning.

She bowed her head and shoulders in greeting to the master Alchemist, and she looked her over. “I hear jars in that bag of yours,” she remarked. “Did you have success with finding the ashes?” The Moonborn Re’hyaean asked her, raising an eyebrow. Slender and willowy, she wore a form-fitting tunic and leggings, and Hilana’s own freer attire made her sigh. She was going to have to get her seamstress to put together an outfit for the purposes of her training and education when she was here. The girl was colourful enough that she looked like she should have been on a stage dancing to music, but she’d interacted with her enough by now to know that it was just her style. Had she told her to dress differently, the young woman surely would have.

“I did, Domina, yes,” Hilana beamed brightly as she was wont to do. “I’ve got about two dozen samples of different creatures that were dispatched yesterday. I took the notes as you asked, about what they looked like and what element I used.” Her paedagoga nodded with some approval, satisfied that her efforts had been effective. Two dozen different samples in multiple containers would allow them opportunities. The girl was productive, at the very least. That did have to be said for her. As she got better, efficiency would follow.

Clelia motioned the girl towards the large tables. The Vastiana knew the drill, however, and first dipped her hands into the basin to clean them off. The Master ran a tight ship, and she expected proper precautions and procedures to be undertaken. Hilana may have been a frolicking dirt child in many other aspects of her life, but she wasn’t one in here. It wasn’t tolerated; she had learned that the first day. Domina Clelia had high expectations, and she was in many ways sterner than Sentinel Ævril, but Hilana didn’t mind that either. She knew she was here because it was arranged by the Sentinels, even if no one really understood why, but Deus Avaerys and Domina Varvara had told her to strengthen her alchemical skills, and Hilana was not about to turn down any assistance, guidance, and education that she could get. With her hands dried, the girl shifted her rucksack and set it on the stool, pulling out her notebook and containers, jars and vials of various sizes and materials. Clelia wanted to see what differences, if any, the container might have on the properties of the ashes. These creatures were nothing mundane, so it stood to reason that they might well be influenced by different variables. As such, Hilana had three containers for the remains of the first ten shadow creatures, and the last fifteen were just in various jars. Everything had been labeled and lined up, and Clelia took up the leather-bound notebook and flipped through it. While the herbalist didn’t seem to be a studious sort to look at her, she was a willing and eager student, and she followed instructions to the letter. “Let us start with sample one. Hog shaped, destroyed by fire. We will begin with the sample from the clay jar.” Hilana produced the three containers, and opened the clay container, unhinging it, and using a long-handled spoon to put some of the samples on the glass dish in order for them to study the ashes under the aura glass.

“We are going to do a few things, Miss Chenzira, with the first handful of samples. We will study them and see if their properties are any different from normal ash from a brazier, and then we will introduce the agitation rod and look again,” Clelia instructed her. “This is technically an unknown substance, and it is best to understand what it is to the greatest extent of our ability so that we can try to predict how it will react when we introduce it to the acid and to the clay,” Hilana nodded, and she peered at it through the aura glass. “That is interesting, isn’t it? The rod, now,” the Moonborn instructed her discipula, and Hilana carefully took up the agitation rod and began to manipulate the bowl of ashes, stirring it until Clelia had had enough and gestured with her hand.

They looked through the aura glass again. “Ah, you see the difference? Good. Our first little jar of acid, Miss Chenzira…” There was a reason that they had yet to use the ashes in another solution, inasmuch as they might like to, it was because there was so much to discover about it. While Clelia could and did use Semblance to understand more, Hilana wasn’t quite there yet. As such, the aura glass, along with trial and error for some things like this, were necessary. The Master Alchemist was a thorough teacher, and she liked to let the Vastiana make mistakes so long as she didn’t damage equipment or look like she was going to blow something up. She had some of the basics; she needed to learn to think on her own and see what all she could come up with. This was the girl’s project. While Clelia was aware of the creatures and had heard the girl grumble and complain about them, she had very little to do with anything and everything outside of the city. She relied on suppliers who dealt with all of the logistics necessary for those beyond the walls to get her the goods she needed, and if those materials didn’t show up, that was her supplier’s problem. Unlike Hilana, she was less inclined to go chase the source herself.

Frolicking dirt child indeed…

Hilana moved the cylindrical glass container over. It had a measurement of the alchemist’s acid in it, already prepared and primed, and when Clelia nodded to her, the girl tipped her glass dish of activated ashes into it. They watched the results for a minute before the apprentice picked up the agitation rod and began to stir it. “Now, let’s do it again,” she instructed her, when the rod was removed and they were watching the acid-ash mixture to see what came from it. “This time, we will add the activated ashes to the primed alchemist’s clay. That will of course have to rest, but we shall see what results we get from it.”

The girl repeated the procedure, working the ashes with the agitation rod before leaving those for the moment and adding a fist-sized amount of alchemist’s clay to a Lyrethillium mortar that had been scrivened upon with sigils of catalyzation. The clay was activated and primed with the agitation rod, and at Clelia’s approving nod, Hilana transferred the activated ashes to the bowl. She used the accompanying pestle to work the ashes into the clay, stirring and kneading it, trying to mix it as thoroughly as possible, noting the way the colour of the clay changed as the ashes were mixed in. They had another look with the aura glass, and when Clelia was satisfied with the girl’s efforts at blending the two substances, the mixture was placed in the stoneware box, and the lid placed on top of it to seal it.

The process was repeated, over and over again, with the different samples from the different containers. The goal, after all, was for Hilana to understand more about what these creatures were, how they could be dealt with, and what, if any, benefit she could derive from them going forward for different uses. They were susceptible to magic, but reports said that they were much harder to kill by mundane means. Could that trait be isolated? Could these shadow creatures help her attune to that element? Hilana had so many questions, and hopefully, these experiments and observations would help answer them.

[Paragon]

P A R A G O N

Alchemy was not an exact science. Experimentation was key, especially when dealing with unknown substances. The Void was not a place many in the current era of Ransera had traversed, if any. Before the advent of the Eclipse, it was a place referred to mainly as a matter of cultural habit across the world, spoken about but with very little knowledge of where or what it actually was. Now there were voidspawn crawling out of the shadows of the people that lived and breathed in the prime material realm. Creatures that needed to be studied.

Agitating the ash with the acid and the agitation rod caused a curious phenomenon to occur. The ash became a thick pasty grey liquid that jolted and writhed before swirling with a kaleidoscope of prismatic colors.

In each case, the result was the same. Following enough stimulation, the ashes would eventually solidify into a hard black lump that shone like polished obsidian. Peering at it through the aura glass would reveal an unsettling revelation…there was no aura. The black stones were a void space in their aethereal vision. A blank spot in the web of aether that flowed all around them at all times and in all places. Upon closer inspection however, it would be revealed that aether was flowing into the black stones…but not out of it.

[Hilana Chenzira]

One by one, each of Hilana’s 45 samples were transformed into hard lumps of obsidianesque stone. The array of colours that they had displayed was breathtaking. “Interesting,” Clelia remarked, and Hilana lined up each of the stones in numerological order of their sample number as they went. But under the aura glass, they had no aura whatsoever. They were like black holes. Hilana frowned, peering at them, and even activated her Semblance to scrutinize them to try to glean what she could. “What do you think, Miss Chenzira?” the Moonborn looked up from her own aura glass goggles, and over at the young Vastiana.

“There’s nothing there. Not like there was before with the ashes,” Hilana was surprised. “They have no aura, but look... it’s like the stone is trying to drain my aether,” the girl stared, moving her hand away after a few moments. She shook it to rid herself of the resultant feeling of pins and needles in her digits. Both of them looked at the stone with Semblance, and their observations under even more advanced arcane scrutiny were recorded in Hilana’s notebook.

“They have seemingly no aether of their own, no aura, but they are trying to accumulate aether.” Clelia looked them over. The Re’hyaean watched as Hilana made her way through each of the samples, making notes on size, weight, and any differing physical features like jagged edges or fractals. They would check back constantly to the sample list to see if there were any differences relative as to what they had been, and with what element they had been dispatched with. They had used a rather uniform sample scoop in order to prepare the ashes, and so any resultant differences were subsequently noted and recorded.

With the initial observations recorded, the experiments could begin on the stones. A couple of them were tested with the alchemist’s acid to see if they would dissolve back down, and they were checked under the aura glass again to see if there was any change in the stones before being scraped with a file, and then a normal chisel, to see if it weakened them. Others that were not treated with the acid were tested with a mallet and a few chisels, the first of which was plain, and the next two were scrivened for sharpness and durability. Clelia was also curious about the strangeness of the aether absorption, and as such, supplied a small piece of aetherite of a minor grade beside one of the stones so that they could see what the ‘voidstone’ did. The Moonborn didn’t bother to correct Hilana just yet on the fact that that was a name for Voidrillium; she was content enough to let the girl hold onto the name she had come up with for now while they were figuring out just what it was. They would watch the result of the stone with the aetherite, and check back with the aura glass and Semblance.

One by one, Hilana put them into sealed, scrivened containers. Would they go inert if they had no aether to siphon? A few more she could play with yet: one of them received a steadily channeled stream of aetheric fire that Hilana manifested; more still with water and air, all the while being scrutinized by both the girl and her paedagoga, who was a Master sembler herself. She had been somewhat amused when her young student had shown up with her second Cardinal Rune about a month ago. It added another layer to her education, and while Clelia had only been tasked with instructing and supervising her alchemical studies, she found herself guiding her through the auras while they were working on more experiments, and explaining things to the girl that way, too.

Hilana tried encasing three of the stones within quartz by forming a Lodestone around the voidstones, and filling them with little amounts of aether and studying them before putting them away in their isolating boxes. “Use the basilisk hide glove and pick that one up,” Clelia instructed her when they were at the final stone. The girl pulled the glove on, the sturdy gauntlet tasked with scrivening and negation to ensure its protective coverage and neutrality, and picked it up. “Hold it between us.” The Vastiana did so, and Clelia focused on the girl before attempting to push amusement into her symphony, watching her and the stone with Semblance to see if the stone could absorb the enchantment rather than affecting the target.

The last stone was finally put away when Clelia called an end to the experiment. It was late, and they had been at it for hours. “Go home and rest,” she advised her student. “We will continue this evening.” She set up the runeforged Mnemonosyte to record from a distance to see if anything happened while the lab was empty for a few hours before shooing the girl away.

“Yes, Domina. Gratias,” Hilana smiled at her. Rest, schmest. She would go home and take a couple bites out of her magma bloom petals, get some breakfast, and go to work. Clelia shook her head. There was something to be said for enthusiasm, she had to admit as she watched the girl gather her much lighter rucksack, and slip away into the ever-present light of the Sceptre of Avaerys.

[Paragon]

R E W A R D S

Name: Hilana
XP: 10 XP, can be used for magic.
Requested Lore: +6 Lores


Note(s): Hilana has discovered that the substance that comprises the shadowspawn has the touch of the Void. They lack an aetheric signature of their own, registering as a hole in the weave of the aether flux that encompasses all things. That in and of itself is a marker for the touch of the Void. She has also discovered that the shadow creatures are actively draining away aether from all sources that they touch.