Lucas started before Heisenburgle arrived. That wasn’t in an attempt to snub the gnome, even though he knew that was how the illustrious alchemist would take it. That wasn’t even because he wanted to use every last second of time after moonrise to get this new technique down. It was just that he knew he was going to fuck it up the first time, and he didn’t want Heisenburgle to see that.

  Lucas rarely got new techniques right on the first attempt, and there were too many unknowns with some crazy stuff like this. This wasn’t a case of heat X chemical to Y degrees for Z minutes. This was more like let magical potion A absorb amount of moonlight B, for time C until it started to sparkle just right. It was the closest thing he’d ever done to being crazy, and yet, for some reason, he believed it was likely to work.

  It didn’t on that first attempt, though. On his first try, Lucas had made the mistake of actually believing that the gnome had some idea what he was talking about when he said that with the amount of reflective surface he was using, it would take all night. As a result, he had the throttle wide open, and though the vial started to glow brightly immediately, it still erupted into smoke. Before he could even get to his shutter to throttle it down, the vial shattered, sending glass everywhere in a bright flash of light.

  You have failed to make Concentrated Moonlight but deserve acclaim merely for the attempt. +15 exp.

  “Son of a bitch,” he cursed, kicking himself for his mistake as he ignored the taunting message.

  Of course, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. Lucas sighed inwardly as he threw away the bottom of the vial and reinserted the next one into the clamp. Lucas did that with all of the focusing lenses turned away, and he was just turning those back into place when Heisenburgle arrived.

  “Good!” he grumbled. “If you’d started this abomination without me and denied me my entertainment, I would have been extremely offended!”

  “Me? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Lucas lied. “Just getting everything all set up.”

  Working under the gnome’s gaze was like being put under a literal microscope, and he criticized everything Lucas did, noting immediately that he wasn’t providing the potion enough light. “It will never reach fulminating incandescence like that!” Heisenburgle insisted.

  Lucas ignored him. He’d just seen his first vial fulminate pretty incandescently and knew that starting slow was definitely the right thing to do. So after he oriented his front focusing lens and verified the thing wasn’t about to explode, he started to open the aperture that the light of the rear focusing lenses was throttled by a little at a time.

  The results were pretty instantaneous. Once the potion clamped at the center of the whole assembly received enough light, it started to glow, almost like a lightbulb. It was definitely putting out more light than it was receiving, and it glowed almost as brightly as the moon.

  That shut Heisenburgle up. For the first time all evening, he was quiet when Lucas reached that threshold, and instead of engaging in his favorite sports of shit-talking and second-guessing, he merely polished his spectacles and got as close as he dared as he examined the reaction.

  Lucas would have loved to have gotten it right on the first try as far as his gnomish taskmaster was concerned. Nothing would have made Heisenburgle more bewildered than that. Sadly, after a few minutes, Lucas learned just how finicky the whole process was when the vial’s liquid started to boil. He toned down the light right away, but it was too late for that. After he’d fucked it up and let it get too hot, it glowed a dull gray smokey color instead of the pleasing amber color it had before.

  Despite your best efforts, you have failed to create Concentrated Moonlight. Maybe you should check the recipe again. +12 experience.

  “See!” Heisenburgle crowed. “I told you. This equipment is entirely insufficient for the forces you seek to master!”

  Lucas ignored them and noted the vial was so hot that he couldn’t touch it, and instead, he had to release the clamp and let it fall into the snow. That made him frown. There’s no way that a little moonlight is generating all this heat, he thought. It’s gotta be some kind of exothermic reaction.

  In theory, that made the problem easy. He just needed to use an ice bath or something similar. However, the fact that he was already doing the experiment in a place where it was cold as shit didn’t bode well for that solution.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said before running down to the kitchen to borrow a small glass of the right size.

  When he returned, he packed that with snow and put the bottom of the vial in it. He wanted to submerge it, but he expected the light-based properties of the experiment wouldn’t allow for it.

  “What are you doing?” Heisenburgle asked. “You’ll contaminate the experiment!”

  “I’m just making adjustments,” Lucas answered, double-checking everything. “That’s the whole purpose of the scientific method. You try something, you check the results, then you switch it up until you get what you’re looking for.”

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  “Scientific? Is that an alchemist? Should I have heard of him? I don’t recall such a name in my library.” the gnome complained.

  “Something like that,” Lucas agreed as he stepped back and started the process again.

  This time, things went better. He had to refresh his glass with more water regularly. The potion’s heat wasn’t quite enough to make it boil, but it did make it steam in the chill night air. Heat wasn’t the problem this time, though. It was the clouds.

  After thirty minutes of cooking, the potion was steadily brightening, but as soon as the first cloud started to cross the moon, it began to dim. Lucas responded by opening his throttle wider. But that created additional complications as the light shifted from moment to moment.

  “There, you see!” the gnome complained. “This is clearly a sign of the God’s displeasure. There is no way a Celestial Solvent can be viable after a disruption like this.”

  “If they want to be displeased with me, they’re going to have to try a hell of a lot harder than this,” Lucas growled as he white-knuckled his way through the constant changes.

  Up until now, he’d just left on about half strength, but now he was having to swing the thing all the way open to back to the halfway point, over and over again. He should have just started over. He knew that. This was a pain in the dick that would end in tears. Still, he wasn’t about to give Heisenburgle anything else to smile about, and he forced his way through. Honestly, in the end, when he saw the pop-up that his efforts had succeeded, no one was more surprised than Lucas.

  You have created a new potion +58 experience.

  You have created Concentrated Moonlight.

  You have created one of the four Celestial Solvents and unlocked a new achievement!

  Lucas cut the light to what he’d been making then, even as Heisenburgle sputtered, “No, it’s too soon. You’ll ruin it!”

  The gnome didn’t know what he was talking about. He couldn’t see the little pop-ups Lucas could, or if he could, it was in some completely different fashion.

  Even as he did, though, the thing kept glowing, maintaining its faintly amber hue. It was like a liquid incandescent lightbulb, and as Lucas picked it up and held it, he decided it was certainly the most magical thing he’d done in his time here. He’d blow off that Owlbear’s head, and he could turn invisible at will, but he’d accomplished those tools by using magical tools other people had made. This, though, was a magical tool he’d made by himself, and it was gorgeous.

  Concentrated Moonlight: Catalyst Strongly purifies up to five other reagents. Reacts badly with any evil aspected ingredients.

  Lucas was surprised to find that the part of him that was excited to show Danaria was even bigger than the part of him that realized he could probably now make the Potion of Greater Communion. He tried to tell himself that it was because he was still worried about what actually making that thing might inadvertently trigger, but that didn’t feel right. He was just getting more and more hung up on the other woman as time went on, and he was going to have to come to grips with that somehow.

  As he tried to process that, though, Heisenburgle interrupted. “It can’t be. Let me see!” the gnome snarled, waddling over to him through the half a foot of snow that covered the rooftop. “There's no way that an uneducated human like you with a half-baked contraption could distill moonlight in a single evening!”

  Lucas tried not to do more than smirk as he handed the gnome the bottle, but he failed. “What can I say?” he answered with a chuckle. “Call it beginners luck.”

  The gnome gave him a murderous look before he turned his full attention to the bottle. He shook it more than once like he expected it to dim or go out, but instead, it continued to glow with its own calm inner light.

  “Well, then, you are very lucky,” the diminutive alchemist agreed, handing the vial back to Lucas. “I wouldn’t call this best I’ve ever seen or the brightest, but I think that it will… Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “What’s it look like?” Lucas asked. “I’m making another one. We’ve still got plenty of—”

  “Another one?!” the gnome erupted. “You can’t just make another one! To make multiple celestial solvents at once is to spit in the face of the gods themselves!”

  Despite his big words, the gnome didn’t actually stop Lucas. He was too eager to experiment for that, even if he knew the experiment was wrong. Instead, he just stood back so that if the Gods decided to smite Lucas for his insolence, he wouldn’t be in the crossfire.

  If anything, round four went even better than round three. There was less cloud cover, and Lucas was able to track the bright, gibbous moon across the sky with his mirrors, adjusting them every few minutes for optimal light gathering. The second potion took just under an hour to make, and by the time it was done, Heisenburgle was sputtering. “Inconceivable!”

  You have created Concentrated Moonlight and gained +42 experience.

  Lucas tried to make a joke about it, but the gnome just slammed the door and left him to his own devices, which made Lucas laugh. “Inconceivable!” he joked, doing his best Heisenburgle impression as he tried to decide if he wanted to make a third or even a fourth potion.

  There was still plenty of time to do it that night, of course, but he decided that two was enough. He only needed one for the recipe and one to show Danaria, after all. “Anything past that is just showing off,” he told himself as he started to back things up.

  It was only when he’d folded the mirrors and brought them inside so that wind wouldn’t damage them that he turned to leave and noticed the footprints edging around the periphery of his work area. They were much too small to be his and much too large to be the gnome’s. Suddenly, Lucas thought about Heisenburgle’s bouts of paranoia and his habit of throwing glitter dust around to make sure that invisible minders weren’t watching him.

  Son of a bitch, Lucas thought, quickly turning his head and pretending he hadn’t seen anything. So the Prince really is watching us, huh? Wheels within wheels within wheels.

  Lucas tried not to let that revelation. He told himself that it wasn’t a problem and that he hadn’t revealed any of his own plans, but still, he worried, and before he locked his door and went to bed that night, he paced every inch of his room to make sure that he was really alone before he dared to close his eyes.