A couple of weeks later, Emily finds herself back in her workshop on board Elisime, halfway through another attempt at refining Via’s suggested concoction into something usable for a mechanic.

  The workspace has been rearranged from her usual machine-working setup, with all of the work surfaces surrounding Emily in a loose circle as opposed their usual even rows. There are several cauldrons bubbling away as Emily grinds the heads of three stalks of the salvianross Via provided, adding a few drops of water and a sprinkling of burnroot ash as she mushes the violet petals of the flowers into a thick paste.

  She uses a drop of water mana to scoop the paste into a glass beaker before clamping it in place and casting a simple fire spell underneath, sparking a floating flame and supplying a low heat.

  Via silently watches from the entrance as Emily turns away from the heating solution, stepping to the next surface to stir a bubbling cauldron before slitting her palm open and adding several drops of her own blood to the mix. She leaves a small churning tornado behind to stir as she returns to the salvianross, adding several drops of choker venom as the first bubbles begin to form, turning the deep purple paste a vibrant lilac.

  Reducing the mana-flow to the flame below, Emily leaves the beaker to simmer and strides over to another cauldron, lifting the lid and checking the contents' colour, nodding in satisfaction when she sees the dirty-grey sludge within has several black and blue streaks drifting through it.

  “Shouldn’t you finish separating that concentrate first?” Via asks as Emily lifts the cauldron from its heater and pours the contents into one end of a long set of glass heating tubes.

  “Not if I want the greatest boost in potency,” Emily replies without breaking her focus, weaving together several fire and water spells, heating some segments of the intricate glass pipe system and running cool water over others.

  The grey sludge, filled with traces of Mensacus’ liquid malice, flows quickly through the apparatus, with the colours mixed within it separating off along different paths and pouring out into several waiting vials. She keeps going until the caldron is empty, at which point she grabs the vial filled with a few drops of a ghostly grey liquid that defies gravity, attempting to float out from the top of the glass before she adds a cork stopper.

  Emily takes the liquid mental mana extract and returns to the simmering salvianross, using a wave of wind to force the grey drops down into the beaker. In an instant, the lilac paste separates into a heavy, dark slurry and a thin, translucent liquid glowing with power.

  “Wow,” Via mutters, stepping closer and breathing in the sickeningly-sweet scent emanating from the beaker, shivering as she does. “You’re a braver woman than I if you’re still seriously considering consuming that.”

  “How so?” Emily questions while taking her refined concentrate to the cauldron, preparing the body of a new brew.

  “You saw the result of a treatment gone wrong.”

  Emily’s hand pauses for a moment mid-pour as she’s reminded of the poor souls locked in the deepest parts of the healing complex, most of them bound and gagged to keep them from becoming a threat to themselves.

  “Though God’s Fruit is sacred, it was feared before it was revered,” Via continues solemnly as Emily blinks away the recent memories and continues working. “Before our faith was rewarded and the plant’s true value was revealed to us, consumption of the vibrant flowers was one of our worst punishments. Hunters who turned their backs on their clansmen, and leaders who put themselves before the clan alike, were forced to eat a handful of heads and succumb to their madness with the gods as their witness.”

  “Well, the whole point of this is to create an equivalent dose of your normal healing potion, so if it works as I’m hoping, I shouldn’t be sent straight into madness,” Emily says as the last drops of salvianross extract vanish into the crimson brew. “And if I am? I’m sure my children will find some way to restrain me.”

  She sprinkles a pinch of powdered ellelite bones into the caldron and gives it a final stir before covering it again and blasting it with fire mana, vaporising the contents near instantly. She draws the resultant iridescent mist into a single vial, compressing it in on itself until it resembles a multicoloured cloud trapped within the glass.

  “Will you test it on another before yourself at least?” Via asks quietly, staring at the softly glowing vial in Emily’s hand with a mixture of awe and apprehension.

  “I don’t have a subject with similar conditions to me, so it would never be a valid test.” Emily shakes her head, gazing into the vial with satisfaction and a hint of machina-fuelled excitement pushing against the edge of her emotional dampening. “Unless I want to fry my apprentice’s cortex for unreliable data, I’ll just have to take a leap of faith.”

  ***

  With the experimental healing draught ready to test, Emily says goodbye to the fields of salvianross stretching out below them and sets the ship back into motion, heading southwest towards the burning mountains looming on the horizon. Via chooses to come with them, both to supervise them through the ash-covered rocky peaks, and to observe the effects of Emily’s refined brew.

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  “You’re certain you want to take it in the mountains?” the Lebard alchemist questions as they sit on the bridge watching the grass below them quickly fade away in place of bare stone and dry earth.

  “We both know there’s a high chance I’ll lash out in some way, even if this goes well, so where else would be better for a storm?” Emily replies.

  “We could have isolated a chamber within Health Spring for you.”

  “I’d rather not be confined. If I start to panic and retain any form of lucidity without full clarity, then find myself trapped… that would only lead to disaster.”

  Not to mention, I’d rather my children outnumber any Lebard mages near me if I'm vulnerable.

  It doesn’t take long for the ground to rise up to meet them, growing into a towering peak that they pause above. The air in the bridge remains cool despite the heat and ash rising from below and obscuring their view.

  Emily leads everyone to Elisime’s landing elevator, and they feel an intense, dry heat wash over them the moment it drops out of the ship. The floating platform lowers through a thin cloud of ash that blocks the view below until they almost hit a jagged ridge of black rock that rises from the murk.

  “I’ve never seen stone this dark,” Virgil comments, as they step off the platform, crouching to sweep away some of the ash clinging to the ground and finding the rock underneath to have an inky hue.

  “I have,” Emily says as she does the same, chipping off a small piece of stone to inspect. “Never in this quantity, though.”

  “It’s plentiful in the mountains.” Via gestures towards the steep slope of dark stone dropping away on one side of the small ridge. “We use it to make some of our tenting fabric. It’s good at keeping heat in.”

  They turn their attention away from the stone underfoot and scramble away, clambering up over the uneven rocks towards the ridge of the depressed bowl at the centre of the mountain that’s spewing ash and mana. The energy in the air leans towards fire, but there’s also a large amount of earth and wind present, both twining with the heat to stoke its embers.

  As they reach the top, they step into a thick black cloud that blocks their vision completely, forcing Emily to keep track of her party through her other senses as they descend. She conjures masks of churning protective winds for Dante and Virgil, trusting the others to handle themselves, and pulls her scarf up from around her neck, pressing her nose and mouth into the fabric and inhaling a clear, floral-scented breath.

  Emily steps out confidently into the open air with Via and Mensacus hot on her heels, plummeting through the haze towards the searing heat that quickly grows more intense, coming up in waves of mana that roll over her skin. Virgil grabs his son and follows them, while Pod climbs down the rocks jutting from the wall, following closely behind Silica as she gracefully scrambles down.

  The thick cloud of ash finally thins as Emily catches herself on an invisible platform of air mere millimetres before hitting the bubbling pool of magma that comes into view. The glowing pool spans over a hundred metres, and the heated rock walls touching it are lined with forming veins of fire crystals.

  “It’s beautiful,” Virgil mutters behind her as he touches down on the liquid rock itself, using a thin layer of fire mana that resonates with the mana rising from below to keep himself on the surface.

  “It’s quite intense,” Pod says from his place standing on a red-hot rock beside Silica, breathing through a half-mask air filter and sweating enough to have a thin mist of steam rising from his exposed skin.

  “It’ll be perfect for deepening my connection with fire.” Emily breathes in the dense fire mana surrounding her, feeling heat pool in her chest, and looks over at her apprentice. “We’ll stay in the area for a while, but once my healing attempt is done, you’ll be free to explore the less extreme parts of the mountain range. I want to sample some metals from the region to see if the elemental balance has had an effect on their properties.”

  Pod’s eyes widen a little at the idea, and he nods enthusiastically.

  “I think I’ll stay here while you do your healing thing,” Virgil says, unable to tear his gaze away from the glowing pool of heat as he drops down to sit on it. “I want to see if I can make one of these elemental connections; I can almost feel the fire here talking to me.”

  “I’ll stay too,” Dante voices while taking a seat beside him, half focused on maintaining a matching barrier of fire mana to keep himself safe. “Good luck.”

  Emily nods and turns away, looking up at the occluding cloud blocking her view of Elisime. She raises her arms and turns her mana to wind, letting it flow out and form into one of her well-used air current control spells. A powerful, twisting gust forms with her at the centre, sweeping up the particulate filling the air and clearing a tunnel of empty space to the ship far above.

  She lifts herself on another gust, approaching the same level as the lip surrounding the volcano’s mouth before metal begins to seep from her skin. The glistening silver mana flows with Emily’s will and forms into a web of struts that reach out and burrow into the surrounding rock, all connecting below her feet where a circular platform grows. As the liquid metal hardens into place, its surface writhes, forming into runes and connecting geometries, engraving a spell into the structure as it’s made.

  It takes a few minutes, but she completes the platform by injecting dense wind mana into the array, lighting it up with a soft green glow and letting it take over control of the air, stabilising the wind tunnel she made.

  Emily drops down cross-legged at the centre of the platform, while Pod, Mensacus, Silica, and Via take up positions at the edge, surrounding her but keeping tens of metres between them just in case. She sends a set of commands up to Elisime and shuts her eyes to meditate and refill her reserves using the thick atmospheric mana rising from below. The ship’s engines hiss, and it drifts aside, clearing the sky directly above her while opening the cargo hatches and preparing to deploy her army if it’s needed.

  “If I rise without saying anything, assume I’m hostile, but don’t interfere unless I attempt to leave the bounds of the platform. Understood?” Emily asks the moment her reserves refill in a cold, commanding tone without a hint of emotion, opening her eyes and casting her gaze across her watchers.

  Receiving four firm nods before holding her son’s gaze, she takes the yet unnamed experimental potion from her belt and raises the still-corked vial to her lips.

  ‘If the potion causes me to seize, The Clock will activate. But, if the potion runs its course successfully and I don’t tell you to stand down immediately, activate The Clock for me, even if I resist,’ she tells him through their mental connection, getting a burst of loyalty and agreement in response before she severs the link, leaving her mind isolated and empty.

  Emily pops the cork and lets the multicoloured mist flow into her mouth and nose, immediately feeling an odd mixture of numbness and tingling spread with it. She shuts her eyes and places the vial back into her belt before relaxing her hands in her lap and wai-

  ***

  Emily wakes to a disquieting absence of sound.

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