Wim Luikens

Flucht’s seventh page

 

 

It is said that when Reinut the Great, reached the far end of the Great White Mountain Range, the spine of Jelin as people call it, extending from Jelin’s Edge to almost the banks of the Canlita Sea and right at the knee of mighty Comorego River, he stopped and declared his journey over. There amidst the Greywood Forest and the river, where Midlanor now stands, everything the Issirs had brought with them, was deposited.

Not much was left, that much is true and what they called the Grand Archive, the Lorians mocked as a glorified ancient warehouse. Midlanor, the city aimed to be the last and the edge of a great man’s empire, grew around the sturdy two-story dark-stone building. Eventually, the Issirs crossed the mountains and attacked the north adding more territory to their kingdom, making Midlanor more a city in the center of Kaltha, which was strangely what its name meant, in the old tongue.

‘In the middle’.

Flucht’s journal, was discovered in 178 NC, almost two centuries after the man died, rotting away under piles of old armour and rusting relics. Eelco Flucht, had been Reinut the Great’s quartermaster according to the old King himself, or the closest advisor according to the scholars that took it upon themselves to make sense of what happened. Two buildings shade the Grand Archive in Midlanor. The Seat of Uher on its eastern side, a church resembling a square barbican with large stained glass windows, and a round tower with no windows at all on its west, the famed Tower of Spears.

It was impossible to read for the most part, as it was written in an old style scripted shorthand, no one could initially figure out. The parts more easy to deduce too cryptic, or delving on matters very difficult to measure, even comprehend and especially after the older generation had passed away. It was eventually relegated to a mere curiosity.

Rogier Rosman, a self-proclaimed but popular Master Alchemist, working for the Order of the Golden Spears, is rumored to have made a critical breakthrough. It was neither in the theological field as his colleagues expected, nor in history, but in science of all things. Agents were dispatched to silence the curious man and prevent his findings reaching the light of day.

He fled, hidden by his supporters, the word was.

 

 

There, color is almost right, Wim Luikens noticed, bald spot on his head an angry red and sweating, thick glasses making his eyes look huge, as he measured his concoction again. The mixture appearing a thin yellowish-white in the glass tube as it slowly settled into liquid again. He’d used animal fat boiled with purple crystal, left to mature for three days and nights, to create a glycerin syrup, what cooks used for sweetener, according to the third page. In that he introduced green mold for another three days, after which he added in turn, two measures of spirit of niter and one spoon oil of vitriol. All instructions found in page number seven.

Hmm, it’s true then, just like diaphanous snow.

When the chemical reaction ends, wait for the color to turn clear, the page read, the scientist writing it two centuries in the past, precise in his instructions, his peculiar numeric-based shorthand that so confused historians and theologians, pretty clear to one of Rosman’s brightest student’s.

Infinity symbol, for as long as it takes.

A dot, for do not stir.

A minus before the Sun, for keep it from the heat.

Sighing deeply, Wim raised his head from his alchemy desk, towards the small window of his cell. The sun already up, a whole night spent watching the slow process unfold, but his body didn’t feel tired. Approaching the locked heavy door he knocked, to have the guard come to the small opening.

“Inform the Grand Inquisitor, if you please,” Wim said, his youthful voice at odds with his decrepit appearance.

“What should I say?” The Gold Spear’s soldier asked brusquely.

“I have it,” Wim said simply.

 

 

Maas Vellers, Inquisitor of the Order, the man standing next to the large office table, had clenched his square jaw so hard, his teeth grinding, Wim could hear bones crackling. Rinus Kelholt on the other hand, remained calm in his comfortable seat, hands crossed in front of him, gold and white robs giving his emaciated face a dignified posture.

“I can provide demonstration,” Wim added and made to produce the small vial he’d kept in an internal pocket of his tunic. Maas snapped violently his way and backhanded him hard in the face, almost throwing him down.

“That is enough,” Kelholt ordered, voice impassionate.

Wim tasted blood on his lips. He licked it slowly, savoring the iron in the taste. This time he brought the vial out carefully and showed it to the two men.

“What is this?” Maas growled, having already convinced himself that Wim was a charlatan.

Kelholt cleared his throat, his composure unchanged. Wim wasn’t fooled, as the old man was the worst predator of the two.

“I don’t see Uher’s Light, child,” The High Magister and Grand Inquisitor of the Order of the Golden Spears, said.

“It needs, some type of reaction. A stimulus, if you prefer,” Wim explained as fast as he could. “In order for it, to… produce what was described in the incident.”

“A prayer?” Kelholt chanced, only half-joking.

“Fire would be my first guess,” The young alchemist replied.

“Guess?” Maas crooked his mouth. Not very tall, but muscular and nimble, he could kill Wim with one hand. “He’s mocking us, milord.”

“What would be the second?” Kelholt probed, disregarding his man’s words.

Wim stared at the door behind him. It led outside Rinus Kelholt’s pretentiously austere office, the man being one of the richest in Kaltha, to what was essentially an internal yard of the Barbican. He took a step back, then another one, Maas narrowing his eyes.

“Ahm,” Wim started glancing, first at the fuming Inquisitor Vellens and then the remarkably serene, High Magister. “If your excellency kneels under his table. Take cover, is my meaning. I will provide demonstration.”

“Why would we…” Maas barked, but Kelholt, showing great agility for his age, pulled him back, just as Wim tossed the small vial towards the sturdy, iron reinforced door. He hoped for a flash of sorts, perhaps a show of lights with a bit of a bang.

Something to prove his value to the leadership of the Order.

Something to save his neck.

The small vial traveled the small distance fast, but not too much for his eyes to miss its flight, and broke on the hardwood surface of the door, creating a blast that knocked him clean off his feet and on the back wall of the office.

A very big blast.

The explosion was so huge and unexpected, its power so immense, Wim fainted on impact.

When he came about seconds’ or hours later, smoke and debris everywhere inside the room, deaf and bleeding from the ears, Wim realized there was no door anymore. No wall, but rumble and Maas was standing over him blood on his face, one hand bend the wrong way, bone protruding grotesquely under his skin, and murder in his eyes.

“Killed two people, you piece of shit!” The Inquisitor spat just as his hearing returned and smacked him hard enough to bang his head on the wall behind him and brake his glasses. Wim went down, another bleeding wound on the back of his balding head, too dazed to defend himself. Mass stooped and put a boot on his neck, unsheathing a dagger with his good hand, intent on killing him right then and there.

Wim coughed and tried to get away, tears in his eyes, when he felt the cold blade on his neck.

“Stop this nonsense!” A disheveled solemn faced Kelholt ordered, saving him at the last minute.

“He killed our people!” Maas protested vehemently, unwilling to spare him. His broken hand probably fueling his hatred.

Kelholt walked towards them and put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

His voice serene again and dignified, despite the smoke and ruckus all around them.

“It was unfortunate. But I saw it with my own eyes, child,” The Grand Inquisitor said, his conviction absolute. “That was Uher’s Light.”

 

 

Whatever his breakthrough may have been, it went out in the second month of winter of 183 NC, with a loud bang. It is said the light of Uher fell on the hapless man, turned night into day and leveled a city block, leaving nothing but rumble in its place. With him gone and his research pulverized or melted, depending on which report one reads, Flucht’s journal was lost as well, but for a few highly coveted pages, allegedly.

Rumored to be seven in number, only one of them whole.

Till this day, none has been retrieved.

Speculation on what was on it, on the very nature of the weapon as wild, as are its presumed many appearances, in the hands of despicable alchemists and their abhorrent deeds and experiments, in the massacres that followed.

 

 

Lord Sirio Veturius

 

Chapter III

The Magic of Science

Circa 221 NC

(Posthumous release)