Alchemy

Sherbert looked around for a full minute before opening the crooked oak door. He pretended to be a blind man twice when guards bearing halberds marched past him on their way to the walls. It simply would not do to have someone discover the entrance. He stooped his already bent back beneath the threshold, and barred the door behind him with a wooden beam. With his brand new oil lamp in his left hand, and a handful of parchments in the right, he descended into the dank cavern.

Sounds and smells came up to meet him, wondrous and foul alike. The experience would have been quite disturbing, but Sherbert was used to it. He adored it. As always, when descending into his sanctum, the wizened man felt at peace with the world.

He cast his frayed robes aside and stepped into a white lab coat. Then he looked up at his electric bulbs longingly. It had taken him three years to acquire all of them, but he still had no idea how he was going to get hold of a switch to make them work. Thus, he walked around his tidy workshop, lighting the torches in their sconces. He then set the lamp on the big bench, and bent over to examine a large transparent tank, not unlike a fishbowl. A clear mauve liquid dripped from a distiller into the bowl. Otherwise it was unremarkable. Sherbert looked disappointed. He continued methodically along the bench to the next container. This one was a dull brass colour, and bore four runes on its side. A simmering brown fluid bubbled in its interior. Again, Sherbert sighed and moved on. He stopped before a plain pweter box standing on four legs, two pipes protruding from its bottom. Grey gas swirled inside the box, and heady coloured vapours wafted from it's depths. The old man's insides gave a violent lurch. He felt butterflies fluttering inside his stomach. Giddy with excitement, he knocked over a jar full of coins, which burst into flames as they collided with the table, scorching the surface of his workbench. He didn't care. Nothing mattered more than the contents of his small pweter box.

Throwing all caution aside, he plucked the pipes out of the container and snapped open the latch that held the box's wooden base in place. A compact red and white precipitate fell out of the box, and the rest of the solution evaporated into violet clouds. He grabbed the shining stone and held it up to the nearest torch.

A wide grin spread across his lined face, and Sherbert began to cackle like a crone. He bent over and fell to his knees, holding the precious rock to his chest and still laughing heartily. First he felt his hands go numb. They weighed down on his knobbly wrists. Then a searing pain spread through his forearms and he felt the blood thicken in his veins. It dawned on him. He looked down at his fancy rock one last time before his heart, choked with gold, stopped beating. "It works! I've made The Stone!" were Sherbert's last thoughts.