It was up to Hansel and Victor to carry Shi back with them, and to clean up all the things that had scattered from the upturned table at the shop. Ling took them to a hatch in the floor that tunnelled down to a large basement. It was a laboratory, filled to the brim with alchemical substances and appliances; flasks and beakers, stoves, tongs and goggles.
“So, Elizabeth is back and the government has kicked Silver from his home,” said Ling, after hearing the story that brought them here. “And the fifth initiate was secretly Elizabeth’s adopted daughter who stole a philosopher’s stone – I trust you know about the stones?”
“We know enough,” they replied.
“Nonsense! One can never know enough about anything! That’s what Silver told me once, a long time ago, and he was right, especially when it comes to alchemy.”
“If I may ask,” said Sam. “How were you able to bend wood and stone without any instruments? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Ling smiled, there was a flash of ancient wisdom in her eyes. “Tell me, dear Sam, what is Alchemy?”
“Well, our research tells us that Alchemy is the art of liberating parts of the Cosmos from temporal existence and achieving perfection which, for metals is gold, and for man, longevity, then immortality and, finally, redemption. I always knew Mr. Silver was referring to the quest for the philosopher’s stone, or the Grand Elixir. But until then the art of alchemy merely involved combining or separating different substances to create new ones.”
“Pure ones,” Ling pointed out. “Silver taught me the exact same thing, word for word. You are smart. I like you, young Sam. Alchemy – True Alchemy – is about manipulation, not only of inanimate matter but also of living beings. If you become practiced enough there is no limit to what you can do.” She picked up a rough-shaped rock and laid it in her palm; the edges began to transform, as if they were melting, to then reform in the shape of a perfectly smooth stone. “Thus, obtaining perfection!”
Another piece of the puzzle clicked for Victor. “I understand Mr. Silver’s urgency then. Information on skills such as this would go a long way in the wrong hands.”
“How observant of you! As if the world weren’t chaotic enough without monsters running amuck, people are coming left-right-and-centre to steal Silver’s secrets. Even encoded they are dangerous lessons; I told him not to write them down but the old fool is stubborn. ‘You forget things when you live forever’ he used to say. Well, with all this having happened I suppose he’ll intend on going through with his plan.”
“Plan?” said Gretel. “What plan? How are we supposed to get the academy back and secure all those secrets?”
Ling leaned forward and lowered her voice. “By finishing what he started eight hundred years ago. By finding The Source.”
“You mean The Truth? But I don’t understand; I thought The Truth was not absolute, it’s an immeasurable quantity. People go their entire lives looking for answers but die having not been satisfied.”
“Haven’t you been listening, boy?” Ling snarled. “Alchemy is the key to The Truth. Yes, in a lifetime it could not be found, and in ten lifetimes still it may elude you, but if you were to transcend life, how far would it then be from your grasp?”
“Transcend life? Like a Vampyre?”
“Yes, in a way. But Vampyres are hideously ugly, and not too bright either. The basis for the procedure is the same, but the finer details are much more complex. Anyway, though he didn’t intend on it, Silver has gotten all of us into quite a pickle. No matter how good we are now there is no going back. Our only option is to run away, and even then our lives will remain in perpetual danger. Only The Truth can set us free.”
“But, I still don’t understand how.”
“Well, it quite simple in theory,” Ling explained, picking up a pen and paper. “Silver took the same basic concept of Alchemy and applied it on a grander scale.” She drew three horizontal lines and pointed at the bottom one. “This is the physical world, where you and I live and breathe. It is quite easy to understand; it is locked in a temporal sphere and is dominated by rules like gravity.” She pointed at the middle line. “Only in the etheric world can some of those rules be broken. Here you are still bound by time but there is only one rule – equivalent exchange. You cannot create something from nothing, or make something cease to exist without releasing energy. You can see this place after years of training and meditation, but only with a philosopher’s stone can you live there.”
“So, Blood Wraiths and Ghouls are constantly living in the etheric world? I thought those monsters could cast illusions and perform alchemy naturally? Why don’t they need the stone?”
“Because they come from The Nether, where the stone was forged from a substance known only to that place – Alkahest. But back to the three planes of existence.” She pointed at the gap between the second and third lines. “Beyond the etheric realm lies an eternal purgatory. Normally, when someone tries to reach higher than the etheric existence, their soul dissipates and they die.”
“Like a Wraith straying too far from its tomb?”
“Yes, like that. The process of crossing this purgatory gap requires a catalyst of great power; say, something strong enough to keep a being alive through the ages. You all thought that the philosopher’s stone was used to make gold and the Grand Elixir was used to grant eternal life, but that’s not all. The Stone is just a means to an end; to allow us to recreate a human being so that they can perceive the Spiritual realm. Some say that this realm is heaven, where our souls go when we die.”
“The academy taught us that the human soul is a myth, and that we should never believe in things that we don't understand.”
“That all depends on how you might define a soul. To the uninitiated, the soul and body are two separate entities, but we all know that is bogus. In terms of reaching the spiritual realm, one might say that man does not embody the soul, but rather, with the help of the philosopher’s stone, that he becomes a soul. I’m sure you’re all aware that by definition we Slayers are hardly human anymore.
“To be perfectly honest we don’t know all that much about the Spiritual Plane ourselves, but we do know that everything that has ever existed started there. The Spirit Plane has no temporal or special boundaries. It exists everywhere, and all at once.” She placed a dot on the centre of the third line, and then began to draw circles around it, like ripples in a pond. “This is the fundamental key to learning alchemy; any action performed in any of these planes will inevitably have a re-action.
“When I manipulate the light that is cast off this stone, for instance.” She lifted the smooth stone again and they watched as is shimmered and gradually disappeared. “I just manipulated the etheric energy surrounding this stone, but the action created a reaction that rippled down into the physical world, so that to your eyes the stone appears invisible. Now take the same idea and expand it to a world without time or space. Technically there are five planes that exist in total, but we’ll worry about when the official training starts. In the Spirit Plane a single thought could ripple its way down the ladder of existence so that on the Mental Plane – within purgatory – it is two times more potent, on the Astral Plan beneath it might be four times more potent, on the Etheric Plane sixteen times more potent, and thus on the Physical Plan, right here and now that would make it two-hundred and fifty-six times more potent.”
“Power like that…” she stopped and smiled, and wonderful light in her eyes. “Power like that belongs to gods!”
“Oh my,” Victor suddenly exclaimed. “If I’m understanding this right, then I’d say Mr. Silver intends on using the Spirit Plan to eradicate all monsters from existence!”
Sam gasped. “Could you imagine it? A world without monsters? It would be – well it would be near perfection!”
Miss Ling nodded. “Ah, perfection! Now you’re beginning to see what it means to practice Alchemy, and achieve perfection in all things!”
“There is one more thing, though,” said Victor. “You each have a philosopher’s stone, which you said was the catalyst for crossing purgatory, so what stopped you from doing it?”
“An excellent question! The Truth is we don’t actually know – yet! Silver is the only one among us to ever reach as far as the Astral Plan. He described incredible things from that place – god-like things! But somehow, or for some reason, he was forced back into the physical world, as if some invisible tether still bound him to it. I came here, returned to my homeland, to find the answer to this riddle, but so far I have been unable to figure out why we cannot cross the Astral Plane.”
Ling then stood up and brushed her hands together. “But seeing as the answer probably isn’t here I might as well resign and head home with you guys! But not yet – there is some unfinished business that must be attended to first.”
“Like what?” Victor asked.
“Housework – for starters, cleaning my lab!”
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