Page 95 - Folio Only

“Your eyes, Father. They were all one color. It was frightening. And you
were making sounds like, like --”

“Ayitha. It's the language of the H’irath’. It's a secret language. You
shouldn't have heard it. I shouldn't have told you even that much. Oh,
Gemma my child, my child, can you forgive your father?”

“But what have you done?”

“I've partaken of the N’ariq. I meant only to have had the first dosage,
and I swore I would have no more. It was to get well, my Gemma. Just one
dosage, the alchemist said, to cure my fevers, so that I could take care of you.
You'd be all alone in the world without me, Gemma. I couldn't allow myself to
be ill. That's why I went to the alchemist the first time, a few months ago. I
told him I had fevers and needed a cure so powerful and quick that you'd never
know I had been ill, Gemma. He said he'd heard of a potion called Elisir
n’Arique, but he had never administered it himself, and warned me against it.
He warned me, Gemma. Ingest not of the N’ariq, for it contains Aquae Sanguis,
though it be a mere drop. A mere drop, yes, but a single drop of Aquae
Sanguis I have heard, can either cure you, or drive you mad. Just as on
Judgement Day our present invisible and internal souls will manifest through
our clarified bodies, that in this life are impure and dark, but the soul will then
be revealed and seen unto the outermost of the body, and will shine as the
bright sun! He told me I should visit a doctor, not an alchemist, but I'd been to
a doctor, and he had given me mere ineffective Vitriol. Pah! And I was
beginning to die, I know it, Gemma, and needed a reversal, a distillation of the
black bile within me, now, that afternoon. I would not have been able to make
the walk back home, Gemma. I would have collapsed right there on his floor if
he hadn't given me the N’ariq.

“'Just a single dose,' he said. 'There will be no more after that.'

“'But will it cure me?' I asked.

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