“C’mon, stay on…” grumbled Makhus, struggling to get a seal to stick to a flask. The Necrobeast Serum was damn-near free of all animalistic traits, he just needed this one seal to stick to subtly modify a filtering column’s glyph...

A banging on the lab door pulled his attention from the monotonous struggle.

Frustrated, the alchemist looked up and exclaimed, “What is it?!”

The door cracked open. Sigmund peeked through. “They’re back,” he said calmly. Couldn’t be the home invaders in that case, so…

“Zelsys and Zefaris?” Makhus questioned. His mind flooded with myriad considerations, thoughts and worries. What happened while they were gone? What injuries had they sustained? What rewards had the dungeon’s arcane workings bestowed? Artifacts? New traits? Lost knowledge?

...How long had they really been down there? Makhus had been on an educational expedition through an inactive dungeon, that much was true, but it was a perilous and exhausting ordeal even still. Hours of travel through black-stone halls that translated to mere minutes on the surface due to that particular dungeon’s time dilation. It had supposedly been a prison meant to allow prisoners to serve their sentences without being thrust into a world that had left them behind.

He received a nod, followed by, “Zel’s lost an arm, Locust Queen bit it off. They have it in Fog Storage, though.”

The faint sound of running water splattering against the inside of a copper bathtub could be heard from upstairs.

Sig’s eyes drifted to the flask that the incomplete Necrobeast Serum was contained in. Before the historian could ask about it Makhus already answered with: “Shit, alright. I’ll have it ready by tomorrow. Tell them both to come down here as soon as possible. I need to take blood samples, make sure they didn’t get parasitized.”

An affirmative grunt, and Sig was away.

Makhus took a deep breath, sighed, and crumpled up the seal that wouldn’t stick. A new piece of seal paper, cut to the exactly correct dimensions with a razor - twenty-two and a half centimeters tall, seventy centimeters long. Enough for five seals - one had no chance of lasting all the way through the process.

Then came the ink, mixed from ethanol, a bare minimum of liquid Aether, and a mixture of other essentia. He lacked the materials to make the specific seal properly, and pure Aether could work as a stand-in in simpler cases like these.

Still, he used a bare minimum, only three tiny drops - the smallest amount he could spare, even though he had more than twice the necessary amount to complete his contract with the governor. It was precious beyond precious to an alchemist, and he wouldn’t risk running out until he had a method of making it himself.

A few gestures copied from his predecessor’s notes, a few murmured incantations read word for word from a slip of paper, and the ink turned an off-cyan shade. Now just to make the seal. Normally an excruciating practice in calligraphy, but Makhus had translated his swordsmanship to a calligraphy brush - just as he could recall and replicate particular techniques, he could recall and replicate particular sequences of brush strokes.

All it took was a little essentia from his bodily reserves, easily replenished.

“Purgation Arts: Fivefold Bestia Purgation Seal Creation…” he uttered, gesturing using his left hand with each word. They were simple gestures, just touching the tip of the thumb to portions of other fingers on the same hand, but a single sequence could be prolonged and painfully complex to remember. Still, it was the only option he had - his predecessor’s notes had specific gestures for a few common acts of aethermancy, but they required the flexibility of double joints.

Five identical brushstroke sequences performed in a few short seconds, and a previously half-full inkwell now laid mostly empty. Makhus caught his breath, cut the seals apart, and stuck one of them to the piece of glassware. This one stuck.

Two pairs of feet stomped down the stairs, and the door to the lab swung open. The sound of a bathtub being filled once more filled the lab, alongside a tolerable but all the more odious smell.

“Right, pull the blood and let’s get this over with. I’m itching to get myself clean,” Zef said, stepping ahead of Zel with an arm held out. Zel just sauntered over to the table nearest to the door, knowingly smirking and looking Makhus in the eyes as she did.

The alchemist just had to look at the stump. Smooth, covered in one huge scab - probably covered in an entire first aid kit’s worth of wound sealant powder right after dismemberment. He walked by Zel, making his way over to a cabinet to get two syringes, cotton swabs, medical tape, and clean needles. Finally he spoke up while he rummaged through the drawers, “I really shouldn’t be surprised that you’re trying to play off a lost limb. Pull it out of Fog Storage, I need to clean it in case necrosis has set in. Hopefully your Tablet’s time dilation factor is enough to have kept it fresh.”

By the time he got both syringes and turned around, the limb was already a third of the way out the Fog Vortex. It was deathly pale, but… No discoloration, no rigor mortis either by the looks of it. The arm-cannon and its harness still weakly clung to it as if it had been severed moments ago.

“It’s still warm,” Zel laughed to herself, pulling the severed arm out the rest of the way and hefting it onto the table. Makhus left examining it for later, setting down one of the syringes before he approached Zel and held out his hand as a wordless prompt for her to hold out hers.

She did just that. A moment to find a vein, and he stuck the needle in. There came a small flash of light, and an electric shock shot pain up his right arm. Makhus twitched, but he maintained enough control to not accidentally yank the needle out.

“...What-” he questioned as he began pulling on the plunger, ever so slowly. Zel interrupted with an apologetic, “Sorry for that. Must be residual charge. I uh… Picked up some fulgurkinesis, tell you about it later.”