Q. I've found several places now where I need to hold my breath for a long time underwater. How can I do that?
A. Those places would be: the pool in the Paper Garden, and the Arcade Crawlspace, Flooded. Both require that you hold your breath underwater for an extended period. You can use the same potion to get by both these obstacles, but it doesn't consume any one-of-a-kind items, so no reset is required in between. The recipe for a breath-holding potion can be found in the Study Room:

> recall breath-holding
"A POTION to HOLD ONE'S BREATH: By properly balancing the phlogiston of the lungs and
blood, one may retain breath for several minutes without discomfort. Prepare an exhilarant
environment; aroma is particularly important for this working. One will also need a paten of
exhilarant symbolism, prepared on the gestalt shelf. Place a measure of saline into the bound.
Begin with the simple sealing, followed by the Anodyne Evocation. Place a bit of elemental
wood upon the paten and ignite it. Conclude with an elementary binding."

For the exhilarant aroma, you may need to recall that lecture on aromas once more. I'm pretty sure you can figure out easily enough what goes onto the gestalt shelf. So then, here is how you make the breath-holding potion: Click here to show/hide ritual steps

OK, now let's use this stuff:

> go to paper maze
> drink breath-holding
> enter pool
> d
> clean slab
You brush at the mud, trying not to stir it up into the water around you. Letters come into view,
neat enough to read even in this murky light.

> read letters
A word is carved on the slab. You have never seen it, but you have an unspoken sense: it is a
word of emulgence, a word of blending. Like the blending of earth and water into mud.

You memorize the word of emulgence.

The instructions said we could hold our breath for several minutes. I think we have enough time left to do our second bit of swimming:

> n
> w (we're now in the Scaphe Arcade)
> d
> s

And we've found a new place that was previously inaccessible, the Observatory. Great stuff. In fact, if you now unlock that door to the east and exit the Observatory, you can get back in here at any time without having to swim for it :-)

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