Dark Aeons by Z. M. Wilmot
Chapter Thirteen
And then began the long days of brewing and mixing. The professor set Henry to work making the mixture of powdered gold and diamond, assuming the proportions to be half and half, as no fractions were mentioned with regards to said mixture. As the young man did so, Reinhouer prepared the second mixture, that of charcoal, black powder, wyrdroot, cinnamon, and sycamore leaf. Henry’s mixture, being more easily made, naturally was completed first, and young Devalier moved then to assist the professor.
His workload eased, Reinhouer went again over the recipe in his head, and realized with a start that he had forgotten to get sugarcane and evergreen needles. He left Henry to his work and drove to the market, picking up pure sugarcane there, and stopping by every fir tree on the way and stripping them of their needles. He hurriedly then drove back to his home, to find Henry had finished the second mixture and had mixed the two together – three-fourths of it being powdered gold and diamond, and the remaining fourth the more complex mixture. He had divided the large sum of materials between the three cauldrons, and like the instructions had mentioned, it glowed a dark pulsing red. Reinhouer was both pleasantly surprised and slightly disturbed that the mixture did as was advertised. As he approached it, he saw too that it gave off a feeling of “both hot and chille,” and the professor indeed felt slightly uneasy, yet grateful that it had worked. Though his work investigating the nature of the Parallax had shown him a great many strange and unnatural things, something clearly of an almost unexplainable nature functioning in his own dimension did not sit well with the logical man.
“So, it worked, I see,” Reinhouer said. Henry, grinning unabashedly, nodded. “So then onto the next part…” Reinhouer looked at each of the cauldrons, and sighed. “Henry… you do realize that the recipe calls for an equal amount of water to be added to each of the batches?”
“And… oh. That won’t fit, will it?” Reinhouer shook his head, and Henry sighed. “Well then, I guess we’ll have to scoop half of it out.”
“Maybe more,” said the professor. “We need to add half as much evergreen needles into it as well,” Reinhouer gestured to the bags of needles lying on the floor, “and then canes of sugar.” He smiled crookedly. “I just hope that you just add one sugarcane to each batch… that instruction made little sense…”
As Reinhouer mused to himself, Henry took all of the buckets, pots and pans into the kitchen and surrounding rooms, and slowly and painstakingly began to measure out slightly more than half of the mixture from each cauldron, scattering it among various containers all over the room. Upon completion, he used what few items remained to pour carefully measured amounts of water, mixed with half the volume of pine needles. Once that was done, the pair mixed that with the previous mixture in the cauldrons, and were both startled to see that the water was instantly soaked up by the powder, and that the evergreen needles sank out of sight and were not then to be found again.
The next step was, of course, to extract all that they could from a cane of sugar and mix that in with the rest of it – being careful, of course, not to spill “one droppe or graine.” Reinhouer did the extraction, and Henry waited to his left with bated breath. The professor wrung out every last bit of sugar from the first cane, letting it fall into the powdery mixture. Henry mixed the mixture for the last time, and both were disappointed to see no discernible change.
“Do you think it worked?” whispered Henry, not quite sure why his voice was so low.
Reinhouer shrugged. “I cannot tell; the instructions regarding the sugarcane were at best imprecise. We can only hope. But we still have two more steps.” He handed Henry a piece of paper. “Now we chant.” After a few practice runs, the pair intoned the chant together over the mixture. “Vorkari iette tekkilo iaten potenti affus faliel horvanus est tore mananum.”
The two men jumped back in surprise as the glow of the powder began to change, from a dull throbbing red to that of a colour that neither of them could ever hope to put into words.
“Well,” swallowed Henry. “I think that worked.”
“I would say so,” whispered Reinhouer breathlessly. “Let us prepare the rest.”
He and his young companion finished preparing the rest of the mixtures, and then tried to find a place to make more batches. They failed in their mission, and deemed it necessary to go forth and purchase three more cauldrons the next day (as now the shops were closed). Neither was able to sleep well, and so they both sat up into the wee hours of the morning, laying out plans for what they thought was to come. In the middle of their discussion, they took a break to drag the cauldrons outside and hold them before the light of the moon – it wasn’t the waning crescent, but it was still moonlight. Both men were disappointed to see no other change, and dragged the cauldrons back inside and resumed their discussion.
“But there have been other waxing crescents in my life, professor,” the young man eventually brought up, “why would they – or it – choose this one to act?”
Reinhouer leaned back. “That is a question I do not know the answer to. Perhaps they will not act this time. It’s just… I have a bad feeling about this one. Maybe it’s because you just recently came to me, or maybe I just have some extrasensory perception of my own, from my many dealings with the Parallax.” He sighed. “I did mention before that things can be ‘touched’ by the Parallax, yes?” Devalier nodded. “People are no exception – it is why those born near bridges demonstrate extrasensory perception, and why the wood in this house will help keep out the beings of the Parallax.”
“That I never understood,” interjected Henry. “How does the wood protect us?”
Reinhouer grimaced. “Sebastian and I… we used the machine a few times before he himself went through, placing various pieces of wood in the Parallax, exposing it to the air there, and then drawing them back in. Somehow, the air of the Parallax fundamentally changes something about the object… as far as we can tell, the wood gives off some kind of interdimensional radioactive signal that repels the beings of the Parallax. We both observed these beings stay far, far away from here after we rebuilt the house from these touched planks.”
Henry sat up straight. “You’ve seen these beings?”
Reinhouer smiled cynically and nodded. “Aye, that I have, but only at a great distance.”
“Good god, man, why did you not mention this before?” Devalier was sitting at the edge of his seat, all of his attention fixed upon professor Reinhouer. “What do they look like?”
“I have mentioned it before – I even told the grant committee once. It’s hard to say what they look like, Henry; like I said, I saw them only far away. It is also worth noting that more than one species inhabits this dimension, with different forms; it is undoubtedly as difficult to classify all of the beings in their dimension as it is to classify all of the beings in ours.”
“Fine, fine – but what did those you saw look like?”
The professor sighed. “I don't really remember. I’m old, and my memory isn’t as good as it used to be. Korig and I never saw enough of them to make any observations about their appearance; they were merely large blurs in the distance. The distance combined with my poor eyesight made them hard to make out.” Reinhouer smiled slightly. "I was old then, too."
“You’re still spry enough to take down two cops,” muttered Henry.
Reinhouer chose to ignore the youth, and they moved on to other topics. After a time, the need for sleep finally overtook them both, and they each bid the other a good night and departed to their own bedchambers for a night’s sleep.