Jane looked perturbed for a moment as she listened to Damian. Yes, she'd urged caution way back when he said this wouldn't be a problem, because she knew what she was working on was tricky, but he'd seemed so assured about it, she had let herself be convinced.
"I've been working on the Black Phase for several years now--that's why I needed the lab set up in the Death Chamber, the vibrations in the Love Chamber lab were causing interference." Jane paused, unsure how much Damian knew about alchemy. "It's a very difficult phase--the term "Dark Night of the Soul" might sum it up. But I was very near to completing it--I'd managed to decay it all down in a sort of embryo state, ready for the Fermentation Stage. But if what you were storing in there does what you say, it is very bad. Because my experiment is the concentrated essence of depression and despair, and it sounds like your thing could exacerbate it." Jane had pulled out her wand and was using it to take readings on the black vapor, trying to nail down just what they were dealing with. She certainly wasn't going to leave Damian to try to fix this on his own. He might be an expert on dark objects, but he was no alchemist, and that was now part of what they had on their hands. |