New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
✦
At midnight, Marek suffered a rare bout of insomnia.
He almost never lost sleep.
The last time it happened was when he realized he had crossed into the alchemy world.
He disliked violent change.
He disliked losing control.
And now, once again, he had been forced out of the comfort zone he had built for himself.
When he went downstairs and passed the alchemy room, he stopped.
To his surprise, Vesemir had not gone to bed either.
The old witcher was extracting something from a bundle of plants.
No footstep escaped a witcher’s senses.
Without turning around, Vesemir asked, “Can’t sleep, child?”
“No.
New places make it hard for me to settle down.
I thought I’d take a walk.” Marek looked toward the workbench.
“What are you making?”
“A Wolf School fortifying tonic.
An old formula.
It strengthens the effects of physical training.
It works best when brewed a few hours in advance and drunk warm before training.
From now on, you’ll drink it every day.”
Vesemir said it lightly, as if it were nothing.
But Marek knew enough alchemy to understand what it meant.
The old man was staying up late for his sake.
“Thank you,” he said.
Then he turned around, went back to his room, lay down, and slept.
***
The fortifying tonic tasted far better than Marek expected.
It was sweet, almost like fruit juice.
Vesemir said they had changed the flavor years ago for Ciri, that little monkey of a girl.
Paired with cave fungi, it made the special breakfast of a witcher trainee.
Training began on the Trail.
The Trail circled the ancient fortress of Kaer Morhen and was filled with obstacles.
Witchers used it to practice running and breath control.
To Marek, it looked like an obstacle course with teeth.
It was useful for training running, jumping, crawling on all fours, climbing, and balance.
Its most obvious flaw was that the safety measures matched the fortress itself.
Meaning there were none.
Although Vesemir called it the Trail, witcher trainees had another name for it: the Killer.
Vesemir ran beside him the entire way.
The attention was so considerate that Marek almost felt embarrassed.
Making a man several centuries old run and leap beside him seemed cruel.
He soon learned better.
Centuries of experience counted for more than Marek had assumed.
By the time Marek was gasping for breath, Vesemir still looked perfectly fine.
After a rest came the first lesson in basic swordsmanship.
Kaer Morhen’s practice swords were longswords, hand-and-a-half blades with long crossguards.
Marek did not touch a sword at all during his first lesson.
Until lunch, all he practiced was basic footwork: hands on his hips, feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, one foot stepping forward, the front toe aimed toward the opponent while the rear foot turned outward at roughly forty-five degrees.
According to Vesemir, the stance helped a fighter keep balance in every direction.
Master the footwork first.
A sword would only get in the way.
After lunch, an ordinary witcher trainee would rest briefly and continue training.
At Marek’s request, however, Vesemir set aside three hours in the afternoon for reading in the library.
After that, training resumed until sunset.
By the time dinner was over, Marek was so exhausted that his whole body seemed to ache.
He washed the dishes, went upstairs, collapsed onto the bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
Vesemir checked that the boy had covered himself with the blanket before leaving the guest room with a smile.
He had found the day’s training interesting.
The boy lacked skill, but he was in unusually good physical condition and more resilient than Vesemir had expected.
On the Trail, he had run until he could barely breathe, stumbling with every step, yet he had not stopped.
Sword practice was the same.
Even drained of strength and swaying on his feet, he endured until the lesson ended.
Still, resilience had to be tested.
‘A child raised in peace will probably ask for more rest within a week.’
A month later, Vesemir admitted he had underestimated the boy’s potential.
Marek was a natural talent.
On the Trail, his progress was not shocking, but it was steady.
He could now complete his daily training without Vesemir running beside him.
In swordsmanship, he had learned the Plow guard and begun practicing the Ox guard.
The progress was not fast, but it could not be called slow either.
His learning was even more impressive.
Over several centuries, Vesemir had taught more troublesome boys than he cared to count.
Some had photographic memories.
Some could read at astonishing speed.
Some drew conclusions from the smallest hints.
But the focus and calm Marek showed while reading were rarer than all of those.
One evening after dinner, Vesemir expected another quiet night.
Instead of going straight to the library, Marek came to him and asked for help.
“First, I need to apologize to you, Vesemir,” the boy began.
“I still have some secrets I didn’t tell you.”
Seeing the seriousness in those blue eyes, Vesemir gave a warm, hearty laugh.
“Trust takes time, lad.
You don’t need to apologize.
I understand, and I never held it against you.”
His smile softened.
“But I am glad you’re willing to trust me more now.
So, what do you intend to tell me?”
“I’m an alchemist’s apprentice.”
“Yes.
I know that much.
And?”
“After a month of comparing what I know with the books here, I’m certain the alchemy I learned is fundamentally different from alchemy in this world.”
Vesemir raised one eyebrow.
“Strictly speaking, what I learned shouldn’t simply be called alchemy,” Marek said.
“It should be called Impossible Alchemy.
I want to see whether I can reproduce it in this world.”
In the alchemy room, Vesemir handed him the main ingredient for the fortifying tonic.
Marek dropped it without hesitation into the clear water boiling in the cauldron.
“The normal process of preparing an alchemical potion,” Marek said, “is some combination of extraction, grinding, mixing, fermentation, decoction, distillation, filtration, calcination, and similar methods.”
He began laying out the other ingredients.
“Impossible Alchemy works differently.
The alchemist holds the desired result in mind, and the boiling mixture reshapes the ingredients toward that concept.”
He glanced at Vesemir.
“So what we need is a heat source, a cauldron, a stirring paddle, and enough water to cover every material.”
Marek smiled.
“It looks like soup, doesn’t it?
Honestly, it isn’t that different.”
As he spoke, he tossed in the supporting ingredients one after another: longleaf plantain, white crape myrtle petals, verbena, dandelion, berbercane fruit, and more.
Then he began to stir.
Green, white, red, yellow, blue, and ocher herbs rolled through the water around the paddle.
The direction and speed followed no fixed pattern; they changed with the image he held in his mind.
“While stirring, imagine the finished product you want.
The clearer the image in your mind, the faster the result takes shape.”
He watched the cauldron.
“For example, I’m making the witcher fortifying tonic now.
I’ve drunk it for a month, so I understand its effect and can judge which parts count as impurities.
I estimate it will take about an hour.”
The paddle turned through the water again.
“Like this.
Add the materials, then keep stirring.
Stirring…
and stirring…”
By this point, Vesemir was beginning to want to stop him.
The main ingredient was correct, but there was too much longleaf plantain, too few white crape myrtle petals, and the ghost mushrooms needed only their caps.
The dandelion should have been root only, yet Marek had tossed in the whole plant.
The berbercane fruit had even gone in with its hard shell uncracked.
Still, Vesemir hesitated.
The boy had been steady for an entire month.
So steady that he often seemed unlike a child at all.
He should know what he was doing.
‘Forget it.
Even if this is a prank, all he’ll waste is a handful of ingredients.’
With that thought, Vesemir relaxed and let him continue.
An hour passed.
In the dim alchemy room, Vesemir watched Marek stir a chaotic stew while humming a bright, bizarre little tune from another world.
The mixture turned a muddy yellow and began to give off a sharp, unpleasant smell.
Then rainbow light burst from the cauldron and flashed across Vesemir’s silver-gray witcher eyes.
He froze.
He had no idea that by choosing to stay and watch, he had secured a place in every history of modern alchemy written centuries later.
The rainbow light was blinding.
At that moment, Vesemir, the first person in history to witness Impossible Alchemy, knelt before the cauldron, stunned into silence by that impossible miracle.
And the Sage of the Flame, who had brought forth this great wonder, smiled with saintly calm.
“Want to learn?
I can teach you.”
Those words marked the beginning of modern alchemy.
Excerpt from Greatness: A History of Impossible Alchemy
✦
✦
✦
Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.