As tempted as Lucas was to try to make a batch of Blue with his brand-new catalyst right now. He decided to wait. He was exhausted, and he was going to have to figure out what to tell Heisenburgle if it actually worked. “If I actually succeed, there might be fireworks or holy light descending from above, and I’m not sure if I want to explain any of that to Heisenburgle,” he told himself.

  Lucas considered just making the stuff on his own during the day while his lab partner slash prison warden slept but decided that would certainly trigger the gnome’s paranoia, along with anyone else that might be lurking. Privacy was pretty much impossible here, so, in the end, he decided that all he could do was act like it was just another day at the office, and if shit spun out of control, well, he’d baffle them with some bullshit.

  It’s not like Heisenburgle can make blue without me, he reminded himself. His efforts have been lackluster at best.

  The question of why exactly that was still made Lucas wonder. It seemed like the gnomish alchemist could make anything but the Celestial Solvents on the first try. It wasn’t like Adin, where the man couldn’t follow simple instructions. Heisenburgle had the skills, the experience, and the methodology, but something else seemed to be lacking, and he couldn’t begin to guess what that was.

  “Charming attitude, probably,” Lucas decided eventually.

  Still, despite doing his best to play it off, he spent the whole day on pins and needles. When it finally came time to set up the batch of blue to test his new glowing catalyst on, he was dreading it and dragged his feet at every stage of the preparation.

  Heisenburgle, on the other hand, barely noticed. Instead, he was still fuming about Lucas’ success the previous night. Instead of helping, he kept bringing out new books to explain why what Lucas had done shouldn’t have been possible.

  “You didn’t even offer up a prayer to the God of Alchemy or the Goddess of the Moon!” he exploded as Lucas was beginning to boil the goblin bile.

  “Was I supposed to?” Lucas asked, genuinely shocked by the idea that prayers would affect the outcome of any chemistry project. He supposed that he probably shouldn’t be. I am trying to make a potion that allows me to communicate with a Goddess, after all.

  “Of course you’re supposed to!” the gnome yelled. “Next, you’ll tell me you don’t even offer up prayers or sacrifices when you gather… By the great cauldron, you don’t do you?!”

  The gnome seemed genuinely shocked at that one, so Lucas lied and said, “Of course I do. Most of the time, anyway.”

  Even that answer infuriated Heisenburgle, and for a moment, Lucas thought he might actually leave the room and let Lucas conduct the experiment alone. That would have been the optimal outcome, of course, but it was not to be. As much as the gnome might hate his amateurish ways, he was simply incapable of watching a new alchemy experiment.

  Rather than depart, he simply stood near Lucas’s left elbow and complained about his lack of piety while he went through every step the same as always. He mixed the reagents, heated them appropriately, and made sure that everything was done exactly as always. It was utterly routine.

  The only suspense finally came when he took out the bottle of Concentrated Moonlight. When he popped that, a brief shower of sparkles came out, surprising him. “Man, I was joking about fireworks,” he said to himself as he tilted it up and poured it into the mixture.

  For a moment, nothing happened. It was just a swirl of white that was quickly lost in the midnight blue fluid and quickly disappeared. It took longer than any of the catalysts he’d used so far to see a reaction, but eventually, there were little sparks of lighter, glowing blue. They weren’t floating up to the top, though. They were sinking down to the bottom.

  Over the next few seconds, the potion started to split apart into two completely different layers. One was a viscous black tar, but increasingly, the bottom one was looking more and more like what he would expect from a high-quality batch of Blue. Lucas smiled tentatively at that. He saved his real feelings of triumph for the moment he got the message that told him he’d done it.

  You have created a new potion +104 experience.

  You have created a Potion of Greater Communion.

  You have created one of the Seven Forbidden Potions. You have unlocked an achievement.

  “Fuck yeah!” Lucas exclaimed without thinking. He quickly realized his mistake and followed that up with, “This is progress. I think we might have actually done it.” Lucas’s enthusiasm waned when he read what the potion actually did.

  Potion of Greater Communion (fatal) (1 dose): Poison 30. This potion will kill the imbiber. He will come back to life only by the grace of the Goddess herself if she judges them worthy.

  “It is promising,” Heisenburgle agreed, leaning in to watch the potion as it continued to break down. “I think that once the separation is complete, and we remove the layer of waste, we should proceed to test the remainder on live subjects, assuming it doesn’t break down like last time.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Lucas nodded, trying to appreciate the colors, but he wasn’t really listening. His mind was a world away. Fatal? He balked silently. Fatal, and she wants me to drink that shit? He supposed that he could simply pass, of course, but that would defeat the entire point of the thing. Somehow he’d finally made the potion that he’d been working on for years, and the product would fucking kill him.

  The top of the Potion of Greater Communion was an inky black that was only getting dark, but beneath it, the blue was more vibrant than ever. It wasn’t just small bits of it that were glowing. The whole thing was a swirling oil sheen, like a lava lamp made of liquified peacock feathers, and it glimmered in its own light whenever he moved or blinked. As magical as the shit he’d made up until now, this was another level.

  After staring at it for too long, while his thoughts raced, he finally separated the mixture by pouring the black residue into a small flask and setting it aside. He’d thought that the Potion of Greater Communion label would follow the blue flask, but instead, it followed the flask of black goo, which made Lucas a little nervous. In its place, a new label appeared to cover

  Water of Life (pure) (30 doses): Euphoria 20, poison 1, mana regeneration decreased by 300% for one hour. Increases fertility by 100%. It is not addictive if used less than once a month.

  Holy shit, it really is a fertility party drug, Lucas thought. It’s just like Heisenburgle said. I thought it was making that part up.

  Lucas was silent as he studied the contrast. He’d started with the different herbs that an old alchemist had used to get high. He’d mixed them together to make something that could get you really high, but the whole time, he’d been using the wrong catalyst. Now that he was using the right one, well, it separated the mixture completely into its two purest forms: life and death. The results were staggering, but he couldn’t tell that to Heisenburgle.

  Instead, he just poured the liquid death into a vial while he tried to figure out what to do with it, and he poured a few doses of the larger, sparkling blue into a few other vials so that they could use them on their test subjects in the basement. Heisenburgle was as happy as Lucas had ever seen him, but after they got downstairs and none of their pet addicts perished, he was positively jubilant.

  “We must celebrate!” he insisted as they went to breakfast.

  Heisenburgle insisted on flutes of champagne to toast their success. Lucas drank but ate sparingly. Instead, conscious of just how much the next step in his plan would cost and how nauseous the lesser potion had made him, he stuck to dry toast and tea while Heisenburgle lavished rare praise on him.

  “With this breakthrough, we might be able to secure the piece for decades!” the gnome said. “I’ll write to the Prince immediately and let him know what you’ve done.”

  “Maybe we should wait a little longer,” Lucas suggested. “You know, to make sure it's repeatable? I’m just concerned that the final product will separate and decay like the last batch, you know? We could send a letter today and go back upstairs tomorrow to find nothing but an oily mess. Who’s going to explain that to him then?”

  The gnome gave that some thought before he finally replied. “Very well. That would be prudent, but only a single batch more, then we tell him.”

  Lucas realized only belatedly that the schedule he’d proposed would use up the other Concentrated Moonlight he’d made, which annoyed him. He’d meant to give that to Danaria, not using it to make more drugs. The thought made him clench his fists under the table, but he pushed his annoyance down. That’s okay, he told himself. I’ll just make more when the full moon is up. If I’m still breathing.

  “Sounds good,” Lucas said, still worrying about everything that was about to happen.

  In theory, if the gnome reported to the Prince he was done, then the Prince would release him from his enforced captivity and let him go home faster than anyone expected. That would, however, mean that he would have no way to fend off Skylara any longer, and he was fairly sure that she would send for him to celebrate the minute he made it known that the good shit was finally done.

  The very thought of spending the weekend with her in some chateau turned his stomach. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he agreed with whatever Heisenburgle said, and when the man called him out on his listlessness, he just shrugged and said, “Sorry man, I’m tired. That’s all. I just can’t do the night owl thing as well as you.”

  “For the first few years, I had difficulty adjusting as well,” the gnome agreed, “But after a few decades, it becomes second nature. It’s so much more productive for alchemy, I find.”

  Lucas let him blather on for a while about the dynamic polarities of potions. Then, eventually, he excused himself and went to his room.

  “Am I really doing this?” Lucas asked himself. “It could be suicide. Well it is suicide, but it could be like for real, suicide.”

  That Goddess did seem awfully interested in me, though, he reminded himself. She even told me that I could ask her for a boon, so I don’t think she means to kill me permanently, just for a minute or two. Even so, it was a hell of a risk.

  He’d closed and barred the door to his room. He’d considered leaving it unlocked in case he needed help, but that was stupid, though, whatever happened next he was pretty sure that he was going to live or die on his own. So, he’d prefer to do that undisturbed.

  He’d also checked the place for invisible spies and found none. Now, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at the dark potion in his hand. All he had to do was pop the cork and chug it, but even so, something about the situation made him hesitate.

  It felt like a weighty decision, even more so than last time, which made sense since it said fatal right there in the description. Even without that, the darkness of the liquid seemed to make it very clear this was dangerous. Lucas sat there for more than a minute, considering his options before deciding that he really didn’t have any other choice.

  “Well, you only live once, or I guess, in my case, twice. Let’s see if the third time is the charm.” he said softly, “Bottoms up.” Then, without any more delays, he chugged the bitter fluid.