Jonathan

The next day, Jonathan was woken early and, after the standard procedure, he followed his next teacher, Mage Samuel Kyreikon to another room.

There were many strange apparatuses in the new room, a kettle was boiling over what seemed to be a glowing stone plate.

As Jonathan saw this, he asked: “I assume that this stone plate heats the kettle. How does it work and how common are these?”

Mage Kyreikon answered promptly: “These stones have been developed by me and I have not spread the idea. They work due to a difficult heat spell in a chamber beneath the plate that heats the air in this chamber up. Because of this and the uniformity of the stone the plate gives out an even heat, if difficult and time-consuming to adjust.”

Jonathan thought for a moment and then answered: “I have a few ideas on how you could reduce the loss of heat as well as how to increase the uniformity of the heat. But I do not know much about magic and its possibilities, so I cannot say how feasible these ideas are.”

Samuel laughed and said: “Just say it. I am always open to new ideas and even if it does not work out, it might give me more ideas. You are from a world with no or little magic, right?”

Jonathan nodded as he heard this, and the Alchemist continued: “This gives you a unique perspective and the people in your world will have done many things differently. Maybe simple things from your daily life could be useful, things you do not even consider worth mentioning. So tell me everything!”

Jonathan was slightly shocked that this nice, if somewhat strange mage now seemed to become a bit manic, but he did not show it and instead answered: “Have you considered putting water into the container? It will take more energy to heat up, but it also heats up more uniform, especially if you manage to create a current. To combat heat loss in the container you could put isolation around it, a material that generally does not goes hot in the sun. A pretty effective isolation is the total absence of air, which might be difficult to achieve, but it works. Also, try to put pressure on the water. It increases the amount of heat it can take before boiling. For regulation purposes, you could physically put the container and the stone plate away from each other and use small tubes, filled with water beneath the stone plate, connected to the tank. Around these tubes could be another series of tubes in which a coolant, for example, colder water, is and which comes from a second tank. You could try to cool this water and put it back into the second tank. I am not sure of the engineering behind such a construction, but this would likely work.”

Samuel thought for a while and answered: “Your ideas seem fascinating. I would like to understand how these ideas of your work, but we have other things to do right now. So, let’s start with the basics of alchemy.”

He went to a cupboard on the wall and took out some containers, which he placed on a table near the kettle with the boiling fluid inside, which Jonathan now realized was water.

Mage Kyreikon showed Jonathan one of the containers, which was filled with a red powder: “This is one of the basic ingredients in alchemy. Almost always this or something similar, maybe of higher quality, will be the base of your alchemical solution. This is powdered crystalized mana. You should know the following. There are three types of mana in solid form. The first, and most common, is this. Crystalized mana is produced through a fairly simple, but complex and time-consuming spell, which practically eats mana. Due to that, crystalized mana can be fairly cheap, especially if it is of lower quality. Lower qualities can form if elemental magic is included in the casting. If they are light blue, they are perfect, every other colour means that they have an impurity. Be careful about certain water element affinities, those can look quite different. But there are a few ways to discover these. The second type is mana crystals, which form pretty regular in nature, in areas where there is much natural mana. Also, some types of monsters produce them, even if those are generally smaller ones. Here the quality is indicated by the size. The larger, the higher the quality. Those are much more powerful than crystalized mana and are generally used to power enchantments, which is nearly impossible with crystalized mana, because of reasons that are not perfectly understood. The last, and rarest type of solidified mana are mana stones. These are extremely rarely used, generally in powerful artefacts. The same as mana crystals, these can be charged again, but they do not disappear if they are empty for a time. There are documented cases of these stones being empty for more than a thousand years, much beyond that is often pure speculation! How exactly they form is unclear, they are sometimes considered relicts of the gods. They are often found in dungeons, which I do not understand and which are a topic for another time.”

Jonathan asked a few clarifying questions, after which Samuel continued his explanation about alchemy: “When creating something with alchemy, you must first decide what it will be. This here will be a simple solution, which is often used to create temporary enchantments. For this, we only need these crystals…”

Samuel Kyreikon explained how exactly this worked, as well as a few other things. At the end of the lesson, Jonathan was able to somewhat replicate this enchantment base, he still could not work magic, but he had hope that this would change tomorrow.