Sechen did as Jame wanted, producing seven more nearly-identical slivers. She lined them up on the scale for Jame to inspect one last time, and he gave her the go-ahead to begin the reaction.

“As you can see, the cubes have grown to ten times their size, and have each absorbed a perfectly equal amount of mind mucus and ink-bee remains. Once they react with the horn they will begin to dissolve from the top down, so ensure you press the sliver through the cube until it strikes the bowl below. You will have approximately thirty seconds after the first sliver touches the first cube before it starts dissolving, and if you can’t be that quick, the experiment will be ruined and we’ll have to begin anew.”

Jame gingerly plucked the first sliver between two fingertips, smoothed it out, and offered it to Sechen. She took it with held breath, sneaking a glance down at the gelatinous cubes that were now black swirled with the colours of the mind mucus, and muttered a prayer to the eternals for success. Even though they would have brought her failure if they heard, it was a hard habit to break.

One swift motion later, the cube having about as much resistance as pushing a needle into a sink filled with water, Sechen felt the solid surface of the bowl. She looked over to Jame for what to do next, and found him pressing the next sliver into her hand.

“Thirty seconds is longer than you’d think, but not terribly long. Keep going.” He said.

Sechen nodded and focused on her work, planting slivers in all eight cubes exactly seven seconds before the first one started melting. She let out a sigh of relief and untensed all the muscles that had been bundled with anxiety, rubbing her right shoulder as she rolled her arm.

“What now?” She asked.

Jame didn’t say a thing, instead pointing to the bowl with a grin. Sechen blinked as she saw his expression and refocused on the bowl, staring in confusion at the slowly melting cubes until the show began in earnest.

The horn slivers burned down like candle wicks, bursts of yellow, orange, and red flickering in turn as they consumed the coppery material. As the flame-like burst reached the top of their individual cubes the inky black Issi started bubbling into a pool of dark iridescence; purple, green, and blue mingling together in a shimmering ooze that was suddenly shot through with the brighter colours of the mind mucus. As if they were responding to some unheard signal, the cubes suddenly burned down to their base liquid, creating a lazily spinning whirl of colour that filled the bottom of the bowl. The individual colours of the mind mucus seemed to shine brighter within the black-tinged colours, as if they were the centerpiece of this creation, and everything else was only there to support it. Sechen voiced her thoughts, and Jame nodded sagely.

“You have a good eye for this. Yes; the mind mucus is the centerpiece of this creation. And in case you were thinking each and every recipe is as simple as this one, I can assure you they are not. A wandering mind’s mucus is already so close to what I need it to do, so I’m simply damping some of the unwanted side effects and bringing others into the spotlight. The horn reacts with the crushed bees to darken the majority of the mind mucus, which as you should remember was overwhelmingly yellow, but now sits in harmony with the red and orange.”

Jame gingerly placed his hands on either side of the bowl, jostling it ever so slightly and watching for any sudden changes. “It’s extremely stable, which is what we’re looking for. Now we can move on to the final step; forming the pills. The method I’m using here is the pearl method, where I use an irritant and wrap the liquid around it until it’s formed into consumable spheres. We have enough liquid here for one pill after it’s been concentrated, which I’ll ask that you test and report back to me with your findings.”

“Won’t be right away, but if you’re fine with that, then sure.” Sechen said.

“We have plenty of time, and this isn’t exactly a pressing Issue. Take as long as you need.” Jame said. He pushed the box of sand over to Sechen, then pinched his thumb and finger together and looked at her through the loop they formed. “You’ll only need a pinch of sand for the method, and we’ll extract the grains before the pill fully forms, so you don’t have to worry about being precise. Give me a moment to prepare the instrument for this specific method, then we’ll finish and you can go to your meeting with the Emperor.”

The sand was silky smooth between Sechen’s fingers, and as she rubbed it away, she couldn’t detect a single trace of Issi from it. “Why doesn’t this stuff have any Issi at all?”

“Because we don’t want it to taint the final product. It took a long, long while to develop a sand that didn’t have any Issi signatures whatsoever, since it would normally transition to nothing Issi when everything else is removed. I'm not fully sure how I managed to create this, if I’m being honest.” Jame shrugged. “And yet here it is, and I can reproduce it with a fairly high success rate, so I’m not asking any questions.”

“Huh.” Sechen muttered, letting the sand stream out of her palm as she stared entranced at it. “It feels so weird. Like it should have Issi, but it doesn’t.”

Jame chuckled and set a device down in front of Sechen. It looked like a normal set of tweezers except they were made of gold, with black lines running down their length until they reached razor-sharp ends. Sechen picked up the tweezers and clicked them together once, the ends sticking together and not wanting to come undone on their own. She wriggled her pinky between the tines and pushed, feeling a magnetic resistance as she separated them.

“Magnetic tweezers?” She asked, raising an eyebrow in question. “That’s your ‘instrument’?”

“Selectively magnetic.” Jame corrected, leaning in close and pressing on a small rune near Sechen’s thumb. The resistance fell away, and Sechen winced as she almost snapped the tweezers. “Whatever you place on that rune will become attracted to the tweezers, and if that something is a pinch of sand, you can get it to hover where the tweezers won’t have to touch our mixture. Then once we have a sufficiently small pearl built up, all you have to do is quickly lift the tweezers to remove only the sand from the pearl. It will self-form after that, but it will take quite a long while to do so. Even after I subject it to safe acceleration Issi, it will take upwards of two hours to form.”

Sechen cocked her head to the side. “Two hours isn’t that long.”

“It is when you’re used to instant gratification.” Jame sighed. “We don’t know when the Emperor will call for you, so we should begin as soon as possible. Place a pinch of sand in one hand, and press a single grain of it to the rune on the tweezers. Let it gather up into a small orb between the tines, then open them wide enough that the tines can stretch over the mouth of the bowl. Don’t fear breaking them; the material is flexible enough that it won’t snap. What you felt earlier is one of the ratchets I built into these so you don’t have to worry about losing strength in your hand and mutilating the final product.”

“Smart.” Sechen said as she dipped into the box of sand with her finger and thumb, letting a few grains fall onto her other palm. She pressed one that had stuck to her thumb to the rune on the tweezers, and a thrumming rumble passed through her body as the sand in her palm danced towards the tweezers. She readjusted and spread the tweezers, pushing past the snapping points with grimaces and flinches, and found herself with a very small orb of sand hovering between the tweezers. She looked to Jame for confirmation, finding a nod in return, and slowly lowered the tweezers into the bowl.

The effects were instant, but not overly obvious. The constant swirl slowly shifted to have a new centerpoint, the grains now the eye of the storm, and Sechen watched with one raised eyebrow until she saw the first bits of the liquid sticking to the sand. It didn’t seem to be picking up speed, and after a handful of minutes of hovering over the bowl, Sechen finally saw the start of a small sphere peeking out of the whirl.

“Should I yank the sand now?” She asked.

“Let it sit for another two minutes. We don’t want the pearl to collapse as you remove the grains, but you also don’t want too much to pile on and make extraction impossible.” Jame answered, leaning in just as close as Sechen was. “Once it gets a half-inch out of the liquid, then you can safely remove the sand.”

With a nod, Sechen got back to waiting. The pearl slowly built itself up, and almost exactly two minutes later, she yanked the tweezers upwards. The sand popped out with the smallest resistance, and the pearl stayed motionless in the center of the whirl without the sand keeping it there.

“And that is that. Thank you for your help, and I’ll bring the pill to you once it’s ready.” Jame said happily, leading Sechen towards the door with an insistent force. “I hope you get whatever you’re looking for, and know that this door is always open to you. Just not at the moment, since I’m going to go help Vee with her crystallized greed.”

Jame pushed Sechen out into the hallway. “Thanks again, and good luck!”

She blinked in surprise and looked over her shoulder at the door that was shut in her face, swiveling around to see the empty hallways of Hoalt’s mansion. She started walking back the way Vault had brought her in, hoping her memory would serve her right and she wouldn’t have made the trek for nothing.

Her fingers twitched, and she smiled to herself. She hadn’t come here for nothing, even if Hoalt wouldn’t see her. With a crack of her knuckles, Sechen carried on.