Chapter Text
"There, on the third shelf. Those samples are old enough to be utterly inert."
Dead substances, kept in the type of phials and containers she would use when she practiced medicine independently. Perfect for his student as she familiarized herself with a new form of medical equipment. As said student approached the table they would be using, she placed a rack of stoppered test tubes down with an unimpressed glance aimed toward him.
"And you just happen to be so flush with unique samples that you can just let them go bad?"
And Vlad couldn't help the chuckle in his response,
"The price of immortality." Lisa rolled her eyes and scoffed. A charming response from the woman who seemed to exist without fear—something so novel for a creature such as he that it was a struggle to focus on lessons. But of course, Lisa could be counted on to direct them back to their studies. She was ravenous for new knowledge, and Dracula was starting to delight in the exuberance she emitted. It made small and basic concepts new, fascinating all over again to a being long since resigned to an eternity of boredom. All of it, all of her, so utterly charming…
With a twist of a valve, Dracula released a small stream of gas and lit the burner, glancing back at Lisa and gesturing at a spare lock of her hair before she moved too close to the flame. Cursing, Lisa shoved the strand back over her ear—tugging on the dense waxed linen of her newly adjusted smock. Clothed in plain white, buttoned up to her throat with her thick yellow hair put up, Lisa was dressed as if this session would involve anything dangerous—to familiarize her with the uniform she must wear whenever she worked with her patients' samples or mixed their medicines. All that was missing were the proper tools.
"The burner will give a strong, consistent flame so long as it has fuel. To control the fire, you must control the gas that feeds it." Tapping the valve with a claw, Dracula gestured for Lisa to give it a turn. The flame climbed higher, burning brilliant gold around its blue heart. "You'll learn how to gauge the strength of the flame by its color—too cold, it won't reach the sample. Too hot, you could make it boil over. If the fire spreads out of control, the gas must be sealed off and the flame smothered with sand." Or else a cold canister of a denser gas, but Dracula doubted Lisa would be able to procure such a thing once she left him.
"How do you get the gas to fuel it?" Lisa asked, eyes glowing with the burner's light as she eased the valve back down and reduced the flame to a sedate reddish-orange.
"I get it through a series of pumps and pipes that draw it from the earth. You will be given a magically enhanced burner at the end of your training." Her face scrunched at that, eyes cutting back to him.
"Why give me something magic if you promised to train me practically?" Clearly, the wonders of manipulating the forces of nature for her convenience were far less impressive than a pipe of flammable air. What a marvelous woman that he had the pleasure to teach.
"Because you wished to know how the world works. And the magical burner will function as this one does—just without the need of pipes to receive its fuel. Now," From the series of cabinets behind the table, Dracula retrieved two cases. One large and brass—hinged and bolted; the other stitched from cured leather fresh enough that it still carried the scent of the animal's soul—able to be carried about beyond the castle and passed off as a work of excellent mundane craftsmanship. With the flick of the clasps, Dracula opened the brass case first. Black velvet, soft and dense as a cub's fur, cradled a series of thin glass reeds, arranged from longest to shortest.
"These glass droppers are how one moves liquid samples. The liquid is drawn up into the glass, and held in place with suction as the sample is moved between vessels." At a gesture from him, Lisa took one of the glass phials and pulled out the stopper. He demonstrated its use, sucking a small measure of the sample up into the pipe before covering the top with the pad of a finger. From vial to beaker, Lisa watched the clear liquid move, her own lips parted slightly as she glanced at the dropper.
"And… And now me, yes?" Her hand started to lift.
"No. You will be given a few, but these are only to be used as a last resort. If I was to draw it up too far and into my mouth, I would not be harmed—no matter what substance I may be tampering with. You, on the other hand, are human. Diseases of the body's fluids could easily kill you if ingested—not to mention the bacteria in your mouth could infect the sample."
"Bacteria…?"
"Remember our time with the microscope? Of our two scrapings, your mouth carried living creatures inside it, while mine had none."
"So," her eyes flicked up to his own mouth as she asked, "what would you have me do instead?"
And setting his own dropper aside, Dracula took up the leather case. In their own bed of velvet, was a new set of droppers. Cast in thicker shapes—more like that of miniature bottles than reeds. And instead of an open end, each one was topped with a kauchuk bulb.
"These are yours. Take care, this substance is not only difficult to shape into anything more complex than a machine belt, but it's also incredibly noxious to process. If you puncture or tear it, you'll have to return to me to have it replaced—and I will be very unimpressed."
He handed one of the smaller models to his student, who handled it as though it were a particularly sickly infant. Perhaps he may have oversold their delicacy—after all, Dracula mused as he guided her hand to the bulb and gave it a gentle squeeze; she doesn't have any claws. After a moment of his cold touch on her blood-warmed hand, Lisa drew up a measure of a sample from a different phial and dropped it into a new beaker. Her smile at seeing such a simple transfer was unearthly—nigh on radiant as she looked back down at her new tool.
"And now what? Once the subject is in the proper container, how do we place it over the flame?"
And with tongs and a stand, Lisa set her first sample over the burner. Her hand hovered over the knob, moving the fire higher or lower at his instruction with careful precision. And in her eyes burned a light far greater than such a controlled flame could muster. Any possible doubts about this woman's passion for knowledge were killed when she barged into his house and scolded him into becoming his student; this was her passion for humanity laid bare. As he explained this process and that, she would comment and question about how such methods could aid against certain ailments. About how a strong fire which needed no wood could ease the lives of the elderly, the ill, and the frail. She was a mortal Prometheus—and she seemed intent on giving such a fire as science back to the same humans that had extinguished it.
It was almost sad to see such devotion spent to a hopeless cause such as humanity. But while she was still his student, all he owed her was his knowledge. Such critiques would be naught but chaff.
Something new stung his nose, cutting him off mid-sentence as he noticed a thread of smoke curling out of the beaker.
"Lower the flame." Lisa obliged, and yet at the edge of his hearing he could detect the rattle of glass minutely trembling against its wire stand. The flame was a low red, almost too cold to reach the sample—
"Step back."
"Why? What's happening?"
There was a whine like an approaching wasp, like the whistle of an arrow.
"Step back!"
"Dracula?!"
The glass cracked.
"Lisa!"
He swung his arm before her, his cape flaring out and catching the initial burst in its enchanted folds. The rest of his body followed, bending down to more fully shield his student as glass scattered over his back and a dense plume of pungent smoke rose. With a snap of a clasp Dracula freed his cloak, letting it drop over Lisa's head and envelop her completely.
"Stay there! It will keep you safe—this sample was something magical…" He could smell it—dense and harsh as ozone amidst the scent of burning sap and green wood the smoke emitted. He must have misplaced this sample amidst the mundane ones years ago—foolish mistake, he scolded himself, cutting off the burner's gas flow and circling the table to reach the lever for the laboratory vents. As he passed the smoke drifted in a lazy cloud around his face, pressing its lightning burns and wet-firewood into his nose before he could throw the switch and feel the subtle hum as another engine sparked to life.
Old air was drawn out, the smoke slowly dissipating while fresh air was pumped in. He could still taste its pungent aroma in the back of his throat, but a few unnecessary breaths of clean air eventually chased it away. Letting the machine rumble on in the background, Dracula returned to Lisa and lifted a corner of his cloak. Her hair had come down in a twisted mass, eyes huge as she tried to peer around the fabric to see the results of the blast.
"What happened? Did I keep the flame too high?"
"No, this was my mistake." He drew the cloak off her, pinning it back into place while Lisa wrestled with the dislodged pins in her hair. "I put a magic sample amongst the mundane, and forgot about it some time in the last few decades. Its reaction to fire was a purely supernatural one—you couldn't have known."
"Is there a way to tell? Can it be taught?"
"Yes and no. There are signs one can know to look for, but the ability to sense magic is innate. If I had held the sample, I would have known at once it was something unusual. You, my student, were not born with such talent."
Her brow furrowed, and for a moment he thought it was in anger at being denied such a poisoned blessing as magic. But the fire in her eyes did not dim as they met his own.
"Will you teach me the signs then? If such things exist, I should at least know when they're before me."
And the corner of his mouth twitched. Magnificent, marvelous woman. I should have been teaching you years ago.
"As you wish, my pupil."