It was perplexing to see the demon so fascinated, but there was no harm in a reply. "Something with such relatively small mass, the worst that would happen is that the vessel would crack and my counter might get eaten through by acid." Annoying, but not the end of all things.
Ariel felt a sharp quiver of unease in discussing anything with destructive properties, but curiosity won out. "A greater mass might do anything from explode to eat through steel. Depending on how it went wrong and how incorrectly it was mixed."
He turned to the lizard skin, now close to dry and showing what Ariel wanted it to show. "Look." The blotched skin of the lizard had gone almost completely grey - not desiccated, but grey, like a mummified corpse.
The notes he'd made were more sensical now. "The spell said that the skin would be drained of color, and it is up to the alchemist to give it new hue." He'd thought it was a bit of lyrical posturing at the time, but between the mixture and the grey skin, now he knew the next path. "This will take a steady hand."