9 The First One
Days blurred into weeks. The life of a junior Spagyrist was an interesting and fulfilling one for Saiph. He found himself earnestly craving more knowledge and techniques to further his craft. Spagyric wasn't just a means to an end- it lifted his spirits and imbued a higher sense of purpose into him.
Mr. Mayers was benign and thorough. Saiph felt like he always knew what he should know and didn't know what he hadn't a need for yet.
The intro book he had read was indeed crucial for a majority of the things that he had learned; it was certainly not a waste of time to read and memorize it so thoroughly.
The first few chapters covered basic knowledge and other such things, but the middle third of the book covered different Spagyric techniques that could actually be used to brew simple potions using a lot of the Flora Magicae listed in the latter third of the book.
Most of these techniques were to be used by official Mages and Saiph understood very little about them, but the few mortal ones that could be done by the teacher-student duo were done.
...
The first potion that Saiph had to brew was called "Fred's Potion of Minor Rejuvenation." It wasn't in any of the books he had read, but Mr. Mayers had known it by heart and carefully instructed him how to brew it.
Rejuvenation potions in general were supposedly some of the easiest to create and brew, since a lot of normal plants and Flora Magicae possessed the qualities of energy and wellbeing. Compared to creating lightning in a bottle, it was clearly far easier to merely make someone feel more awake and a tiny bit healthier.
The first step in creating the simple potion was to obtain the core ingredients, those being some Dog-Back Elder Knot, Shrill Golten Floret, and Han Root.
Mr. Mayers already had all of those growing around the premise so that was of no issue. Water, the universal solvent and core of this particular potion and most others, was also easily acquired.
The first step of the process was to shave the 'fur' of the Knot off. The process was tricky since the bristles would pierce through most gloves. No One Survives trying to skin an Elder Knot, according to Mr. Mayers. The old man had prepared a set, however, for this specific process, that worked wonders for Saiph.
After the 'fur' was removed, the raw sapwood was put aside in a bowl to collect the oozing sap.
Next, the Han Root was turned into juice by means of a grinder and set in a different bowl than the Knot. The pulp was kept in since a lot of the nutritional value in a Han Root comes from its pulp.
Prior to starting the experiment, Mr. Mayers had instructed Saiph that Dog-Back Elder Knots and Han Roots have a reaction ratio of 4:5, so Saiph measured and set out 4 grams of Knot and 5 grams of Han Root.
The Shrill Golten Floret was a bit more interesting. The flowers of this particular species of Golten Florets looked wilted and dry, but not quite dead.
The small, golden petals of each floret were crushed by Saiph into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle then hydrated with a bit of water. The murky, viscous result resembled muddied water, slightly.
Now, all the ingredients were set. First, Saiph collected the sap from the Knot and mixed it into the Golten Floret paste. The amount of them didn't matter as long as the paste was in clear excess.
The two reacted and vapored off some form of gas. The gas was white and looked like fog. It was also clearly less dense than air and floated off.
Luckily, Saiph had prepared for that and had placed an upside down flask of sorts just above the reaction area to catch the smoke. He then flipped the bottle around and corked it, disposing of the remains of the reaction afterwards.
Next, the total 9 grams of Knot and Han Root were grinded together. By themselves, they didn't react, so all that was left remaining was 9 grams of pulp. Saiph then added about 60 milligrams of water to the pulp.
The 69 grams of watery pulp was taken and thrown inside the corked bottle with the vapor. Still, the 3 reactants had yet to actually react. That was to be expected, though. Saiph had heard as much from Mr. Mayers when he initially went over the experiment.
The key was the same key as most reactions stipulated: heat. The flask was put over a small fire and left to cinder. The gas sat at the top of the flask so things had to be shaken around a bit, but in due time, the process started.
WHOOSH
The entire interior of the flask burst into flames and a loud burning roar erupted out of it. Saiph dropped the flask out of shock and fear and cowered slightly as he watched the whole thing go off.
Only a few seconds had passed and the reaction was already completed. All that remained in the flask was an opaque green liquid.
Saiph sighed in relief and fell back into the nearest chair. He had done it; he was officially a Spagyrist, albeit not a very qualified one.
He sighed and got up to inspect his new creation. He reached over to grab the flask and recoiled in shock.
It was freezing! Saiph had never felt such a cold object before in his life. Orion was very stable in its temperature fluctuations so there had been no time before that Saiph had ever felt anything even around freezing.
Later, he found out that the final reaction was endothermic from Mr. Mayers, which means that the reaction makes the things around it cold.
To be met with such success in his first try, Saiph felt very blessed and grateful to Mr. Mayers for his successful instruction. He gifted the old man the rejuvenation potion back in gratitude and since the ingredients and supplies were his in the first place.
...
In his many weeks working with Mr. Mayers, Saiph wasn't always met with such success. Fred's Potion of Minor Rejuvenation was a very basic potion and in hindsight Saiph agreed with his mentor's decision to let that be his first one to attempt.
He tried out increasingly bizarre and eccentric potions as he progressed in the field, some of which had a set rate of success even if it was done completely perfectly by a grandmaster. At times, the reaction just wouldn't catch. There wasn't anything anyone could do about it.
Mr. Mayers considered himself at the peak of mortal Spagyric, at least on Orion. Even he wasn't able to make some of the stranger potions with a great success rate. But, Saiph still watched him try many times.
Saiph, with his help, became a Spagyrist that was qualified to set up a small shop like Mr. Mayers himself owned, at least on Orion, which was admittedly a small world almost completely focused on farming. The old man considered Saiph to be pretty intelligent and good with his hands, so there was a bit of lingering hope that one day Saiph really would see himself to the top of the Tower and carry on his legacy one day.
Soon, the day came. The day that every single 10-year-old on every world inhabited by humans looked forward to: the day when the Academy would send out their escorts to round up all the children of age to go through the admission process.
