Then, the worst of it passed whilst his tattoos turned blood-red a third of the way from his wrists to his elbows. He was still far, far more heated than he would’ve liked to be, but there was no turning back now. In his current headspace, Makhus was absolutely certain it would be better to just use Sensory Enhancement at its full potency to burn the excess Rubedo rather than try to perform Rubedo Purgation on himself.

“S.S.S.S. Arts: Sensory Enhancement!” he murmured, blinking a few times as his pupils dilated and even the slighted of ambient noises filled his ears. The alchemist could feel the slightest brush of his clothes against his skin, even the air escaping his nostrils as it moved his facial hair.

He took a deep breath, steadying himself as much as his pounding heart would let him, and pulled the stopper out of the bubbling, cloudy solution. With his right, he grasped the dropper-topped flask of Rubedo and cautiously started dropping the liquid in, watching the solution so cautiously he forgot to blink. Even as he felt his eyes drying out and growing achy, he unconsciously didn’t blink.

Drip… Drop… Drip…

Drop… Drip… Drop…

Drip…

Droplet after droplet, until the cloudy solution slowly began reacting properly and turning a uniform blood-red. His eyes felt full of sand by the time it was done, but it was fine. He just willed his pupils to constrict and took care to blink more often than usual, allowing the effects of Sensory Enhancement to run their course on the rest of his senses.

Finally, he could get to working with the Heart. Of its four necks, one had nothing more than a black quartz stopper, held in place by a silver clasp. Out came the stopper and into the heart the blood-red liquid went, sloshing about as it surrounded the rings and the black core. Somehow, he could see both the core and the rings through the opaque liquid with perfect clarity.

Next, came the meticulous process of adding ingredients and adjusting the tangle of glassware until it was just right. When he was certain it was light, when he had triple-checked everything, that was when Makhus finally started the burner and opened the valves. Brass rings turning, churning the solution, their glyphs glowing. At first slowly, then faster and faster. And within the core, a spark of light. Outlandish refractions of the liquid’s real colour, which tickled behind the eyes when gazed upon. It sparked with each revolution of the rings, faster and faster as the fluid separated out into black and green liquid, climbing the Heart’s crystalline walls through two of its necks into the rest of the alchemic apparatus.

Each revolution of the brass rings was a flash of light from the black core, and Makhus knew it would soon be time for the next step.

Step by step, minute by minute, hour by hour, Makhus immersed himself in the steady progression through the numerous steps of this opus. To think that, centuries ago, this liquid was considered the elixir of immortality, yet here he was, a self-taught fraud of an alchemist, making it to help some politician cope with overwork.

The rest of the process wasn’t as difficult as it was meticulous. Perform a step, watch for the reaction, adjust the array as necessary. Over. And over. And over again. The liquid held concentrations of essentia well beyond the saturation point of water and ethanol, forced into a stable solution by the Heart’s machinations.

Before he even noticed time pass in this windowless workplace, he peered at a clock and saw that it was getting close to evening, just as his work on the first dose was reaching the halfway point. Even knowing how time-consuming this was did nothing to alleviate that feeling of vanished time. How many cups of spiked tea had he downed? Six? Seven? Enough that, were he using Daytime Dust on its own, his mouth or nose would’ve been dyed yellow by now.

At this point in the process, it was stable enough that he could afford to take a break, to turn off the burner and actually eat something. In fact, if he wanted to, he could just leave the Heart sitting for days and resume the process as if nothing had happened. Thus, Makhus made his way out of the lab and up the stairs, hearing the muffled sound of Sigmund speaking to some customer or another on his way to the upper floor.

Another piece of chicken, a pear, some bread. Simple, but good, even if the fruit was almost sickly-sweet. Then it was back to the lab. Back to work.

Some two-thirds into the process, he had to take another swig of liquid Rubedo to make absolutely positively sure he wouldn’t make a mistake during a crucial step. He could put up with the unpleasantness of drinking more Rubedo far more easily than he could deal with a ruined first batch.

With Sensory Enhancement at its full capacity, he could hear not just everything in the lab, but even a good deal of what was going on upstairs. If he really listened, he could make out the weird noises that Sigmund was making in the backyard. Sounded like he was doing some sort of exercise, even this late after they’d closed. A little while later, he could make out the beardo’s stomping footsteps as he went upstairs.

When at last the alchemic apparatus fell silent, when the Philosopher’s Heart grew calm and motionless, that was when Makhus finally took it and poured its contents into a separate containment flask. The Philter ran the entire spectrum of colours before the colour faded and it became transparent. Barely-visible iridescent threads swirled about and glistened within it as the sign that the final stage had been successful. It didn’t look like much, but its appearance fit its purpose - to force a body into balance, to bold-facedly rip someone from the downward spiral of constant stress with no rest.