The Alchemist

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And so it came to pass that on the fifteenth month of our quest we arrived in a small town on the outskirts of the Persian Empire named Azazel where it was said there lived a great alchemist who had fulfilled the greatest alchemical dream, and had realised the Philosophers stone. Balthazar was insistent that to have achieved such a feat was possible only through great personal insight and wisdom, for to command the power of elemental form and to have the ability to transform lead into gold, as the great power of the philosopher's stone was supposedly able to harness, meant surely an understanding, and indeed possibly a sympathy, of those mysterious and arcane powers which influence the unsuspecting mortal. I had been initially wary that the nature of alchemie as one of the Dark Arts would frustrate our search immeasurably, yet it seemed rather that the Alchemist Abd-al-Hazrad had gained a fame in this town through his heresies beyond the expected infamy customary to those individuals who practise the Dark Arts openly and unrepentedly. Just outside Azazel we chanced upon a group of travellers making their journey away from Azazel. Their manner seemed strange and Balthazar urged them to tell us of the city Azazel and of Abd-al-Hazrad, the alchemist whose presence we sought. The travellers told us many outlandish tales that night and spoke of the unnatural power wielded by the alchemist. They spoke of a fountain in the center of the town forged of solid gold, and of how the stones upon the ground were not of stone but rather were huge diamonds and emeralds, as large as the eggs of geese. Further they told us the tales of the founding of the city by the great Abd-al-Hazrad and how he had defeated a Djinn and raised the city from out of the bare sands of the desert through his arcane power alone, creating an oasis out of nothing to feed hid golden city of luxury, resplendent with all the precious bounties of the earth. Upon hearing these tales Balthazar grew visibly excited at the prospect of our possible encounter with a genuine 'power', as he termed it. Upon arrival in the town of Azazel both Balthazar and myself were struck by the atmosphere of placidity that seemed to pervade the very air which we breathed. All the inhabitants seemed to be unaware of hardship of any kind, and there was no crime of any sort noticeable to us, even amongst the vagrant classes that man is sometimes forced to travel amongst. In fact, there appeared only to exist prosperity in this town; the appearance of the city had not been exaggerated to us; O! to see the golden gleam of the city walls in the half-dying light of the dusk, as the sun slowly faded away into the hills of the barren desert as it was when we arrived there! still the image stirs within me a mixture of awe and splendor even when viewed through the imperfections and failings of memory. And O!, The Golden Fountain Of Azazel! merely the existence of such splendor makes a whore of the language of description. Even the cunning and style of the greatest poet would have been as nothing in the aching, glorious brilliance of the Golden Fountain, luminescent in the gleam of the red, dying sun; The water sparkling a myriad of colors as it flowed over the gleaming gold so that the colors of life seemed to be flowing away from the surroundings with the water into the fountain. I was too affected by the sight to voice my feelings, yet Balthazar had no such difficulty. As the sun finally died away and we stood alone in the darkening Square of The Fountain, Balthazar gazed around him and declared to me "Whether this Heretic knows aught of life is yet to be seen: what he knows of heaven is obvious, and is made visible to all. We must find this Abd-al-Hazrad and divine his purpose in acting against nature, for surely not even the Lord of Deceit could disguise his nature so completely to create paradise such as this." With these words Balthazar and I made our way towards the main town tavern, with the expectancy of procuring a lodging for the night. Upon our arrival at the tavern my astonishment knew no bounds as the innkeeper had already received word our visit and had not only prepared lodgings for us, but arranged transport for us to make our way towards the citadel of Abd-al-Hazrad in the mountains overlooking Azazel. Balthazar seemed unperturbed to discover how quickly news of our arrival had spread throughout the town, and merely remarked to me before retiring, that in a perfect town all irregularities must seem as cancerous growths upon the body and be both instantly identifiable and in urgent need of removal simultaneously. I was not sure of Balthazar's exact meaning in these words, yet I knew his mood well enough to sense an uneasiness within him which I was at a loss to either explain or remedy. I took my leave of Balthazar for the night to allow him the mental preparations of prayer and purification that would be necessary for the following day's encounter with Abd-al-Hazrad and his heresies. Weariness had not yet begun to settle upon me however and I decided to explore the town's beauty in the chilling sobriety that night often bestows upon a city. It is my own personal philosophy that a town cannot be judged to have any kind of soul until a man has walked the moonlit streets alone; it is only then, while the facade of civilization sleeps with the inhabitants, that the true beauty of a town can be experienced, for surely true beauty is neither illusory nor fleeting but rather evident even when unattempted. True beauty exists to me only in the concealed charms of night, where the hidden and the overt become entwined to become the truth of perception, rather than the illusion, and truly my friends there can be nothing more beautiful than the truth. Alas, similarly there can be nothing so grotesque as to see through the illusion of beauty that the ugliness of Evil sometimes garbs itself with. Such was the case with Azazel, to my horror and disillusionment. As I made my solitary way through the streets, the clear silhouettes of the dispossessed and the forgotten of the city could be seen in the alleys, in the doorways and in any position of possible shelter throughout the city. Alas, to them the golden finery of the paved cobblestones was nothing more than a cold and uncomfortable inconvenience; the emerald rooftops of the buildings spires nothing more than a lack of shelter against the rain. I inquired of the poor unfortunates that did not run from my approach where they gained the subsistence to survive. I was shocked to hear of them that there were no

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