Revival: Of Cethore ✔

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen: Let Me Get Back To You On That

It was a beautiful day for the firearms class to be having an experiment in the tower. Oh, yes, it was raining, and the wind was blowing into the room through the shutters, and nothing wanted to stay in its place. But did that keep the good professor from running the difficult and potentially deadly exercise? Of course not, for he was too lazy to come up with something better to do, and admittedly so.

It was good that the students were not frivolous in preparing for this exercise. They had all spent the past few weeks going studying the items they were to be using, how to handle them, and how they react to each other.

If only their preparations were able to keep them from disaster.

Samari found herself running around with the group leader, Addiv, in an attempt to keep everything experiment going smoothly--and to salvage those that did not.

"Brenda, what did the recipe call for?" Addiv questioned a girl whose beaker was bubbling and steaming.

She recited, "Two daches of ground curry leaves."

Wafting the steam towards him, his nose cringed from the smell. "Well, you put steelite instead." He looked at her work desk to see what had happened. Gingerly, he held up a mortel that he found. "Here's your curry leaves."

She took it from his hands, feeling the powder between her fingers and sniffing it. Shock covered her face as she realized her mistake.

Addiv sent Samari to get a base to stabilize the reactive liquid as he began to lecture the girl on being careful in the lab. She returned quickly with a beaker of water.

She was about to grab the temperamental beaker when Addiv called out, "Ah, gloves, Samari, gloves! It is hot!"

Her face turned red as she moved to put on the enchanted gloves. With her hands protected, she grabbed the beaker and poured the bubbling liquid into the water, slowly enough that the reaction would quell smoothly.

Acid into the base, never the other way, she remembered.

Once the act was done, she brought both beakers back to the front table where the piles of faulty experiments were piling up.

She sighed. Books made the experiment seem a lot easier than it was, it seemed. The ticon in what she had thought were ordinary ingredients was quite violent and temperamental, and it did not naturally agree with most other ticons.

Most of the failures were not dangerous, and those that were dangerous were taken care of quickly. The experiment was a tricky one. Even one bit of a different kind of ticon could cause the balance to shift, making the product unusable. It didn't help that the ingredients they were working with were so potent, or that the minas sometimes slipped out bits of their own ticon.

Not that I have to deal with that. Though it does make me suitable in dealing with those messes, she reminded herself. She pushed aside her thoughts before a knot could form in her throat.

As her eyes scanned other tables to be sure things were still going smoothly, there was a sneeze behind her, followed by a loud pop. She jumped at the sound, then whipped around to see the cause of it.

By the ten, why is there fire?????

On the table, the mixture had spilled and caught on fire, burning on the stove top. The two who had been attending to it fell backward, panic spread on their face.

"Samari, get the salt!" Addiv ran to the table, throwing off other ingredients before they were caught in the flames.

Samari paused for only a moment before obeying his instruction. She dashed to the main table and grabbed the bag of salt, spilling some in the process, before getting it to the firearm mage.