My sweet Perenelle,

I am not an expert in warding as you are, but I know the basics of the Art, and I must say that I am terribly curious what your questions have to do with establishing a masking ward for the stone. I suspect (possibly only with the help of our long association) that you have something particularly devious in mind.

But yes, you are entirely correct that the stone's effect on the local ether is largely blood-aspected. I have attached a list of the breakdown from the differential etheric anemometer to this letter, so you can peruse the other aspects.

As for your other questions — the conversion is indeed instant, to the limit of my measurements. In unrelated news, our bathtub is now made out of gold. And the stone's ability to handle contamination is very good as well; you may remember the treatise I wrote on the differences between chemical and alchemical water? It is alchemical water that the stone acts upon, and therefore it is not the precise amount of contamination, but rather the conceptual links to a particular kind or category of liquid — and the conceptual association between "water" and "sea water" is strong enough that the former subsumes the latter.

I did follow your suggestion, and used the last of our bank funds to purchase another set of reagents. Normally, I would worry about the lack of money — but I find that taking a bath now sets my monetary woes at ease. Hopefully you are right, and this is all that is necessary to conceal the stone for the time being, but I fear it will not be.

The rune on the wardstone labelled "emergency aspectual homoginization barrier array ground-state overflow" has started to glow (blue, if that matters). It is remiss of me, but I had not actually previously read all of the labels that you so carefully placed to explain the reading of the wards to me while you were away, and I find myself now in the uncomfortable position of having to admit that I have no idea what that means.

The use of the word "emergency" makes me doubt this is a good thing, however. Isn't the aspectual homoginization barrier array the part that prevents the exact boundary of the ward line from being obvious to divinations?

In any case, I must confess that I miss you also, and not only for your academic expertise. Once we do have this whole business sorted out, I propose that you and I brick up the entryway and stay in the house for a while — not for long, a few decades maybe.

The quill is delightful — and, indeed, I am using it to write this letter — although it did take some getting used to, in order to speak as I would write.

Lovingly yours,

Nicholas

My most brilliant and frustrating Nicholas,

Well. First of all, the good news is that the wards are not going to explode, or anything like that. The bad news is that they will soon start leaking blood-aspected ether, which may make the idea of hiding in the house until I return a somewhat more dicey prospect.

The aspectual homogenization barrier does — as you say — prevent the boundary of the ward line from being obvious, but it also masks what magics are being performed in the house by "smoothing" the background ether of the house with that of the surrounding countryside. The ground-state overflow alarm indicates that the reservoir used to hold aspected mana while it undergoes natural decay into unaspected mana is approaching capacity, and has started shorting through the ground state of the barrier array. (Hence the name.)

So I am afraid it may soon be quite obvious that you have succeeded.

Luckily, my (brilliant) idea for a long-term protection for the stone does turn out to be possible. Allow me to lead into the idea a little, lest you think me more reckless than usual:

The primary goal of any set of wards (or general protections, for that matter) rests on a contradiction; how can access to the item or location to be protected be assured to one group, but not to any other? It is the necessity of permitting access to the protected item or area that opens up exploitable holes in any ward scheme. It is possible to work around this with sufficient cleverness, for example by setting up dynamic wards that can switch between several different premeditated tradeoffs, but those complications themselves introduce points of vulnerability.

Actually, on that note, you should probably turn our wards up to their highest level before they start leaking, in case any of our enemies are unusually prepared. Move the sliding block at the bottom of the main face of the wardstone all the way to the left. If it is still necessary by the time I return, I will knock and you can turn it down again to let me in.

Anyway — the point is that the very strongest wards are those that do not permit an exception. I am sure you must recall the "silver sphere" ward formulation? It achieves such extreme durability by prohibiting absolutely everything. Obviously, such a ward is useless for our purposes — but not entirely so.

The core of my brilliancy is the observation that we wish to permit access to the Elixer for ourselves, but that we don't actually need access to the stone. I have enclosed a self-charging self-anchoring wardstone (of my own design) that forbids absolutely everything — except water. Having only one principle exception, it should be extraordinarily durable for its size, as well as quite subtle and difficult to detect from any distance.

Before putting the stone in it, take the wooden demonstration copy, charge it, and try pouring some Elixer through it. If it passes through unhindered, then it is safe to emplace the stone in the proper stone copy. The stone will be sealed away, but water (and the stone's Elixer-producing properties) will flow through unhindered.

Now I am sure you have spotted the obvious objection — that someone wishing to prevent us from accessing the Elixer could simply take the entire warded container. Usually, wards must be anchored to an area to prevent this, but even this is not sufficient in the face of something so precious as the stone, because we may at some point wish to change houses.

And so this is where the final piece of my plan comes together: drop it into the ocean. People could engage in a seige of any location we choose to put the stone — but nobody has the military and tactical might required to police the shore line of every ocean in the world. Furthermore, sea water is actually quite close to blood, and so if you dropped it in a random spot, the chances of anyone even finding the stone to attack the wards is almost negligible.

And thus is our immortality ensured.

Your exceedingly clever wife,

Perenelle

My most devious and cunning Perenelle,

You are mad.

Utterly and totally. I have ... numerous objections to your plan. Such trivialities as "what would living in the Elixer of Life do to all the sea-creatures" are comparatively mundane. (Also, we now have a pet fish. He seems fine.)

My main objection is — this would render not just ourselves immortal, but also everyone. Everyone. Including those scurrilous bandits who seek to take the stone for their own. In the course of devising a protection to keep it away from them, you have given them the very thing you sought to protect!

I have turned the house wards up, so I am safe for now. The ground-state overflow indicator has turned red, which I take as a sign that I did so not a moment too soon.

You know I love you, and have only the utmost respect for your expertise. (And your occasional bouts of adventure-prone madness.) Which is why I beg of you to offer up some other plan, some other device, that might protect the stone in a more conventional way.

Your dutiful husband,

Nicholas

My dearest Nicholas,

No.

But perhaps I could offer you some answers to your objections. I would invite you to consider: what has the goal of your great project been? Has it been to lord your power and prowess over lesser mortals? Or has it been to become immortal?

Because if you have completed the pinnacle of alchemy for the purpose of rubbing other people's noses in their inferiority, I shall be quite disappointed.

If you truly wish to be immortal, however, I guarantee you that — in my professional opinion — casting the stone into the sea is the surest way to ensure that you continue to have access to the Elixer for the forseeable future. Every (useful) wardscheme has weaknesses. Trying to use less extreme methods would merely condemn us to a lifetime of hiding and playing keep-away, only to eventually die when we are not quite clever enough.

And what kind of immortality would it be, if it depended on our continuing to outsmart the entire rest of the world? It would merely be a long life, not an infinite one.

I think perhaps I should draw your attention to two additional benefits:

A) If Cesare becomes immortal because of you, he's literally never going to be able to live it down. He would be furious.

B) We had previously decided against having children, once it became clear that your project would come to fruition, out of the fear of necessarily outliving them. Even if we could have supported our children, then their children might die away, and so on. But the stone has proved productive beyond your wildest speculations — it produces enough Elixir to supply everyone. There is no need to leave any possible descendants of ours behind.

I know you have dreamed of being a father — well, a nice side effect of this plan is that it makes this possible without tragedy.

Your potentially-impregnable wife,

Perenelle

My darling Perenelle,

You do raise some excellent points.

I ... must admit that there is sense in what you say. But I still find myself reluctant to cast away the product of so many years of work.

Also, what about the gold? Yes, bathing a base metal in the Elixir will turn it to gold with no need for the stone's direct contact, but if everyone in the world can do this, then the gold thus produced will be effectively worthless.

I don't know, my dear. This whole thing is quite troubling. Producing the panacea was supposed to be the last step, not an opportunity for more bafflement.

With love,

Nicholas

Dearest Nicholas,

Of gold, I have this to say: so what?

We will have each other, and we will have our health. We will have our house, and as many healthy children as we like. We will have all my existing business arrangements.

I have supported our lifestyle thus far on my warding income; I so no reason why that cannot continue to be the case, especially now that we are so close to fixing my arthritis.

Also, we will have the respect and gratitude of the whole world. Do you think people will be miserly with us, when we have freely given them something so precious?

Well, I am sure some people would object. The world does not lack for idiots. But I am quite sure that the bulk of society will be grateful to us, and that therefore you probably will not want for any additional reagents for future research.

I do think you should sell the golden bathtub first, however. There's being generous and stoic, and then there's being silly.

In any case, my buisness is nearly wrapped up. I am to set out from Vienna in two days, so I should be home sometime on the 4th.

With love,

Perenelle

Dearest Perenelle,

I am quite sure you will have noticed by now, but I have accepted your advice.

If you have not yet done so, I would suggest that you go and have a drink of the Elixir that now runs in the world's rivers instead of water.

Whatever my second thoughts, it is done, and the world is changed. I have no idea what will come next, except that I will see it by your side.

I eagerly await your return.

With love and fond wishes,

Nicholas