“*snore*...then mix the… *grunt*...too volatile... *snort*”

The Guildmaster snored softly, asleep on his feet. He awoke with a start and turned to see what had disturbed him. “...Wha─?! Oh, it's you. Hm? Have you not yet learned to concoct potions in your sleep? Admittedly, the results are not always what one dreamed they would be.”

Severian cleared his throat and straightened his lab coat, putting in the minimal effort required to look presentable. “Now, might I deduce from your unrequested presence that you deem your skills sufficiently sharpened and seek further instruction? Or do you simply derive some perverted sense of enjoyment from my irritable reaction? Whichever the case may be, alchemy is certainly a discipline for the curious...and the curious of nature.”

“Should you continue down this path of mastery, the day might come when you, too, might join me in the...quest for...alchemy's...ultimate...” His head listed forward as he began to doze off again, requiring a prod to continue.

He snapped back to attention with a scowl, the lack of decent sleep doing no favors for his mood. “Whyever are you wasting my invaluable time when you know full well that pressing experiments demand my constant and undivided attention!? Do I appear as a kindly mentor to you? I have not the time to attend to the fumbling of inept initiates. I know not what ill-advised notion brought you to my desk, but I'll thank you not to interrupt my work again! I swear, the next competent apprentice I find will be the first...”

For the first time registering what had been said to him, he paused for in his tirade. “Eh? ‘The task is done?’ I'm sure I made not the slightest mention of any task. But now that you mention it, I do seem to recall dropping some niggling irritation into your ‘capable’ hands. Allow me then to assign you another of my dut─another task.”