“If you’re not Lucian… who exactly are you?” Aurelia asked as Lucian held a lyre harp in one hand, and his Evercodex in the other. “Were you sent by the heavens? Have they been observing everything? Have they seen a future they want to prevent?”

  “I can’t talk about it,” Lucian said. “And as I recall, I said to stop talking about it.”

  This entrance to the Palace of Ten Thousand Poisons was a puzzle located in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Arshade’s slums. It was a music puzzle. He had to play a tune on a harp. It’d been no problem when he just had to press a few buttons, but… now, he scratched his head in annoyance.

  “You seemed to talk about it fine earlier,” Aurelia pointed out.

  “Probably because I was answering a yes or no question, not providing information,” Lucian said. “Ordinarily…” Lucian tried to divulge information about War of Four, but his throat seized up. “Ordinarily, something stops me from telling the truth.”

  “So… you’re an agent sent by the heavens, and they laid a restriction on you,” Aurelia mused. “Is that right?”

  “What did I say? Drop it.” Lucian looked back to the harp. “I’m trying to think. If you have time to yap, you should be writing in that booklet of yours.”

  Aurelia looked around for somewhere to sit in this dank hovel, but nothing seemed to meet her standard and she stayed standing.

  Lucian looked at his Evercodex, scratching his head. Why did I write down the button sequence? Who does that help?

  He strummed on the harp, but it sounded abysmal. He could remember the tune well enough, but no matter how many different ways he tried things, he couldn’t get it to sound like he needed it to. He cursed to himself, testing each string one by one. Then, he tried to emulate what he remembered without success.

  “This is torture,” Aurelia muttered.

  “Did I ask your opinion?”

  “It was an involuntary utterance of pain from the torture,” Aurelia said dryly. “What are you even trying to do?”

  “Play a tune,” Lucian said.

  “Then give it to me,” she said. “I can play a lyre harp.”

  Lucian paused, fingers hesitating over the stringed instrument. “You don’t know the tune.”

  “So, sing it,” Aurelia said. “Or show it another way. You clearly don’t know how to use that, and I do.”

  Lucian stubbornly persisted. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aurelia conjure ear muffs in a swirl of holy light. He frowned at her, while she sported a self-satisfied grin. He kept trying on the harp for a long while. It felt like he was regressing. When he felt his fury might boil over, he thrust the harp out toward Aurelia.

  “Take the damn thing,” Lucian said.

  Aurelia’s ear muffs faded away, and she took the harp and immediately assumed a practiced stance. She played a very pretty-sounding song, showing off her skill. Lucian glared at her until her golden eyes fell upon him. “How does it go?”

  “Like this.” Lucian gave her a series of do’s and da’s and di’s of various pitches, correcting her where he could. Even with her help, recreating the song was a very arduous task. It took a long time, but it didn’t feel like very long.

  “What if I raised the song up in pitch? I think it’d sound better,” Aurelia said, then proceeded to do so.

  Lucian sighed and shook his head. “It’s not about how it sounds, it’s about getting the right—"

  When Aurelia completed the revised tune, the harp began to pulse with light. Then, a slab on the floor began to resonate accordingly. Aurelia set the harp down, her lips pursed. Lucian waited for an ‘I told you so,’ but it never came. A set of stairs opened up. Lucian felt some déjà vu from his little journey with the Student Ambassadors.

  “After you,” Aurelia encouraged.

  Lucian eyed her until she relented and advanced right alongside him. He cast a spell for light. They descended right into the heart of the Palace of Ten Thousand Poisons. Lucian paused at the bottom. Despite the name, this place was more a complex of mazes and warehouses than a residence.

  “Here,” Lucian said, producing a potion from his satchel. “Partial resistance to poison.”

  Aurelia eagerly took it and swallowed it. Even though Lucian had his blessing that could neutralize poisons, he drank the same. Once that was done, he reached within the Inquisitor’s Mark with his will. He drew upon a power within called Bait. A pulse of energy erupted out, a little like sonar.

  No response. That meant there were no demons nearby outside of human hosts. Even still, he needed to be cautious.

  “Why have a base here instead of the Hells?” Aurelia asked.

  “Aisha’s grand plot was to poison that lake that we saw. It’s the wellspring for the main branch of the Lurund that passes through the Confederation,” Lucian said as he looked around. “She’s been collecting poisonous insects and ingredients for many years, attempting to create an ultimate poison.”

  “Did she succeed?” Aurelia asked.

  “She can, but… she probably didn’t,” Lucian said. “She didn’t have enough time.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t blab so much,” Aurelia said. “There might be things left behind, listening.”

  “I used an ability of my Inquisitor’s Mark when we arrived in that first building. At the very least, there’s no live demons around.” Lucian scratched his arm and said, “Still, you’re not entirely wrong. Keep an eye out. Let’s start searching.”

  His Inquisitor’s Mark was silent. That meant the ritual here was probably already gone. What about the rest?

  ***

  Everything was gone.

  Poison armaments, ingredients, books, recipes, monsters… he didn’t know whether they’d been moved or destroyed, but the Palace of Ten Thousand Poisons was empty. There was plenty of evidence that something malevolent was going on here, but none of the original stuff persisted.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Lucian exhaled, bummed. “They’re changing strategies. They’re changing up everything.”

  “Did you expect them to just stand there and take your abuse?” Aurelia walked up to a jar. She looked inside, then backed away with a squeak. A centipede crawled out, and she grimaced in disgust. “Can we go now?”

  “Would they really just give up everything like that?” Lucian muttered under his breath. He looked at her. “If you’re right, they killed the emperor to cause an early succession. Don’t you think they’d try something else here if that were true?”

  Aurelia shrugged. “I don’t know the Confederation as well as I know the Empire. I didn’t get any newspapers from here.”

  Lucian rubbed his hands together. Now that his knowledge was exposed, he lost one of his few advantages that he had.

  “I guess they made the right call, but… I prefer fighting dumb villains, like y—” Lucian interrupted himself.

  Aurelia glared at him. “Like who?”

  “Nobody.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said in satisfaction.

  Lucian chuckled despite himself. “One last place to check.”

  Lucian and Aurelia went to check out the main fixture of the palace. He opened the doors to the grand distillation chamber. It was a large and wide-open room with a great crater in the center. In War of Four, it was filled to the brim with a malevolent-looking maroon liquid. Now, it looked like an empty swimming pool.

  “There’s your blessing, looks like,” Aurelia said, pointing down to a pearl of light.

  Lucian stared at it. The player had to swim through poison in that basin, ordinarily. It required a bit of prep work to survive. But now it was just out in the open, untouched? Lucian didn’t think so.

  “Take cover for a bit,” he instructed.

  Aurelia looked curious, but didn’t ask any questions. Lucian crouched low and laid down on the floor. He cast Third Sanctuary on himself—the strongest protective spell he knew—and aimed toward the blessing. He cast out a simple fireball. It struck the ‘blessing,’ and moments later, a burst of dark magic erupted outward. It was the purest, most perfect darkness Lucian had seen yet. If anyone had tried to grab that, they’d have died.

  “State your name.”

  Once again, those damned words echoed in his head. Lucian knew that was a fake blessing, and he should have expected this. That damnable fear still seized him, and he crawled away from the edge of the poison pool with labored breathing. None of the dark magic even came near him—he’d taken the proper precautions, after all—but it was like his body stopped listening to him.

  Aurelia emerged from her cover and peered down. “A trap? I never imagined…” she looked back, then walked up to him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m fine. Fine. Just fine,” Lucian insisted, feeling rather the opposite.

  “Clearly. I can tell by your frenzied trembling.” Aurelia crouched down and studied him. She saw his shaking hands, his labored breathing, his sweats, his loss of function… “The soul wound,” she concluded.

  “Shut the hell up,” he lashed out, though his fury was mostly toward himself.

  Aurelia’s eyes scrutinized him further. “Focus on your breathing. Think about light, about brightness. Stare into your spell,” she encouraged.

  Lucian was about to lash out again, but instead he followed her advice. It worked bizarrely well. It was so effective he felt like she’d hypnotized him out of it. Eventually, he’d calmed enough to feel normal. Then, he slammed his fist on the wall.

  “How damn stupid am I?” Lucian shook his head. “I should’ve known this would happen.”

  Aurelia looked to have thoughts on her mind, but she refrained from speaking them. “I thought you tested this,” she said instead. “You could use dark magic fine.”

  Lucian shook his head. “No. I saw… I saw someone use it. An enemy. I got the same feeling then, too. I even wrote it down, that I needed to do something about it. Yet I came here. Christ…”

  “It’s a fear,” Aurelia said. “It’s only natural your mind would avoid it. Subconsciously, you don’t want to face your fear. Without even realizing it, you’d run from it at every turn.”

  Lucian ran his hand through his hair, feeling humiliated. “Get your booklet out.”

  “Fine. I’ll work on it while you sort yourself out,” she said brusquely.

  “No, get it out and write what I say,” Lucian said. “We’re going to leave a warning. If they killed the emperor like you think, they might still try and complete the perfect poison, might still try and use it for another purpose. We need to let the Confederation know exactly what they were doing here.”

  As Aurelia retrieved what she needed to write, Lucian lost himself in thought. The blessing… did the demons feed it to some random person? If that was the case, they probably killed the person right after. He cradled his forehead.

  Had he caused more problems than he’d solved?

  ***

  With the demons having self-deported, Arshade wasn’t quite as eventful as Lucian had been hoping. He looked around for any clue as to where Aisha might have transferred the poison, but he came up with nothing. Instead, his days were occupied with training alongside Brutus, petty politicking, and going around the capital for minor quests.

  As for the training…

  Lucian lashed out with his spear with what felt like the force of a thousand suns. Brutus’ guard, whose defense had felt so utterly invulnerable, shattered, and the spear twisted out of his hand and clattered to the side.

  “That’s it!” Brutus shouted. “That’s how you do it!”

  Lucian inhaled and exhaled quickly, exhausted. He had used Sétanta. He almost couldn’t believe it himself. He’d gotten so caught up in his idea of Lucian as untalented that he assumed he’d never be able to do what others could. He was wrong. It was his body that was lacking, not his mind.

  “Now, I’ve stayed late because I felt you were at the cusp,” Brutus said. “I need to go.”

  “Hold on,” Lucian called out. “The investigation. How’s it going?”

  “…we found an underground complex linked to Aisha teeming with remnants of poison,” Brutus said. “I don’t think there could be a more obviously exonerating discovery. Meaning… the Confederation will doubtlessly drop its accusation of murder.”

  “An underground complex? Any idea what she was using it for? Was it just a place for experimentation?” Lucian asked leading questions, hoping to figure out what they knew.

  Brutus shifted on his feet. “We found a disturbing letter with hints at a plan.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen it myself. I suspect it’ll be made public knowledge soon enough, if only to have the country prepared to tackle anything the demons might try. Now… I have to leave.”

  Brutus made to leave, and Lucian smiled proudly at his success as he got his stamina back. He walked up to Aurelia, who was staring off into space.

  “Probably leaving soon,” Lucian said, and she jumped a little. “Visit here wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped, but still pretty nice. I have a relationship with Brutus now.”

  “A rather one-sided and abusive relationship, from where I’m sitting,” she said simply, then resumed staring off into space.

  Lucian drank some water, eyeing her. “You’ve been quiet. Barely said a word the past few days. Plotting my murder?”

  She glanced at him. “Saw something that made me think about the past, that’s all.”

  Lucian had been thinking, too. He almost thought he was being too impulsive by bringing Aurelia along after her incident with that snoop, but she’d been quite an asset on this trip. Maybe being useful was her way of trying to earn more freedoms, but either way… she’d kept her word since she had that little cry in the Hells.

  When they got back, Theobald claimed that they’d jump headfirst into the most intense moments of the trial. On top of that, he’d probably find out whether or not Emperor Condar had died. Either way, it promised to be incredibly eventful.

  Rubbing his sore body, he thought there was a bright side. At least he’d be getting away from Brutus.

  ***

  “I’ll be escorting you back,” Brutus said with a smile. “And I’ll be in Verne until the trial ends.”

  Lucian stared. “What?”