Brewing Bad Ch. 180-181

Ch. 180 - Watch Out

Mage ambushes aside, on some level, Lucas felt safest when he was riding down a dark road at night. Given the number of monsters in this world that was crazy, of course, but he believed it just the same. Out here he might get attacked by a goblin or a giant spider; a freaking owlbear might even try to bite off his head again, but that felt far safer than being around people. 

Monsters didn’t have any agenda, being getting fed, and these days it felt like everyone had an agenda. The entire city of Lordanin was in a furor right now as they prepared for a funeral fit for a King. Lucas saw those preparations as he skirted the city that night.

Inside those walls, everyone of any importance is fighting like rats for the top spot, Lucas told himself. He was frankly glad to be nowhere near it. The most important thing that happened in Meadowin was his cooking; aside from that, only rumors reached them, and these days rumors about his upcoming wedding dominated the community nearly as much as the royal funeral. 

Even in that village, though, he worried, and not just because his tailor was a literal assassin; things between the two of them were strained, and every time Lucas visited him, the man gave him a look like he was trying to decide if Lucas was a liability or not. 

Of course, that paranoia didn’t leave him in other circumstances.  Standing in a room, even alone, he always had to worry that someone might be lying in wait for him. Riding through the woods at night, though, no one on foot was going to be able to keep up with him invisibly on foot. Plus, whenever he stopped to listen, if he didn’t hear hoofbeats, he could be nearly positive he wasn’t being followed. 

It was in that mindset that he made his way to the frozen-over pond where he’d found the moonflower last year. While he remembered the area it had been in, he still had to use superior forger. To search for a large patch of marshy plants. He tethered the horse well away from the pond and approached it invisibly, just to be sure he wasn’t being followed, but there were no soldiers waiting to murder him. There was no Heisenburgle either, which annoyed him. 

Did that asshole put a time in the letter in code somewhere? He wondered as he looked idly at a large white flower near the shore. While he’d actually enjoyed the evening ride, the idea that he might have done it for nothing annoyed him. 

As he tried to recall the exact wording the gnome’s warning was hidden in, Lucas suddenly put two and two together. According to his talent, there were no moonflower blossoms here, but he was looking at one right now. 

“Ah, I see,” he said, fading into view as he waded through the mud to reach the flower. “Not a meeting, a dead drop.”

Lucas pulled up the flower and found it to be nothing but a facsimile made of cloth attached to the top of a small chest that had been hidden amidst the reeds. It was sealed with a bit of pitch, but when he used his knife to pry it open, it gave easily enough. 

Inside were a handful of very expensive and familiar reagents, including minotaur horn, iron root, and behemoth teeth, along with the ground earth titan dust, the bottled skyfire, and pretty much everything else he needed to create a few of his high-end boost potions across the board. 

While that was awesome, since he felt intensely vulnerable with only the low-powered potions he had on him, it was the note contained within that he was really interested in, and as he cracked it open, he sat down on a tree stump to read it. 

‘Dear Lucas, I trust you will forgive me for my previous missive. Allow me to congratulate you on finding this one, as we dare not meet. By now, I’m sure you have already learned that, to my great shame, we have killed my patron, Prince Raston. I never even considered that magic might be at play in his longevity, or that his life would be the price for obtaining my boon. I will have to live with that, but if you wish to live to live long enough to enjoy life with that woman you’ve been working so hard to hide you must no one thing: no matter what the Baron who would be our next King has told you, no matter what assurances he has given you, they are false. He has already demanded that I produce your formula in sufficient quantities to guarantee the whisperer’s needs, and though I can delay for a time, I am certain he means to eliminate you after that is done.’

Lucas paused for a moment, sitting there and taking that in as the shadow of paranoia that had haunted him for the last week basked in the knowledge that it had been right the whole time. “So the prick really is out to get me,” Lucas said to himself, not really surprised to say the words, or hear them. That had been his instinct. Only his desire to return to a life that resembled normal stopped him from believing it. Fortunately, the gnome had his back. 

‘While I hope you will not use this information to cause further chaos in an already precarious time, I have given you what you will need to do whatever you see fit in thanks for saving my life in the ashen gardens of the River Palace. Still, if you would use your funds to flee to a new city and begin anew, I think it would be in everyone’s best interests. Sincerely, your friend, Heisenburgle the Black.’

Lucas was almost touched by the gnome’s message. It was probably the nicest the old alchemist had ever been to him. Even after all that, though, he wasn’t going to be able to honor that wish. “There ain’t no way I’m running away from all of this,” he said to himself as he appreciated the dark and starry sky. “If that prick wants to stab me in the back, he’s going down.”

Lucas had naively trusted that the chemical leash he’d held over the man’s head for so long, combined with a newly found, and deeply twisted sense of goodwill, would be enough to make them uneasy allies, but that was not to be. He’d been planning to fuck Lucas over just like he had everyone else, and it would be the last mistake of his wretched life. 

He spent the whole ride back trying to decide what he was going to do with the man. While he didn’t consider himself a murderer, a two-faced prick that fancied himself a grand chess master playing with other people’s lives was definitely going to have to die. 

The only question was how. Was he going to poison him with a Skylara-level overdose? He certainly still had a few vials of ultra-pure, high-test bliss lying around. It would be a good way to go, too. The only problem was that it would implicate him. A knife wound, on the other hand, could belong to anyone, so long as he didn’t leave a murder weapon at the scene that a mage might use to find him. 

“Well, then I guess I’m choosing violence,” he said to himself as those pieces fell into place.

Even with the decision made, though, he kept his own counsel on this issue. Even after he made himself a full strength set of potions he could probably use to take out an army, he kept his mouth shut and waited. As long as he kept it a secret, he could still change his mind, and even though he wouldn’t, that was comforting. So, instead of running his mouth while he drank with his friends or confiding to Danaria while they spent time together, he made potions and put together his own plans. 

Eventually, he decided not to tell anyone at all, though that was because of shame more than anything. He didn’t want to be known as a murderer, and he was fairly sure that even if Duke Torvin moved into the castle sooner than expected, he could take him out. In the townhouse he’d been staying in for the last two weeks, it would be easy. 

Despite Heseinburgle’s warning, Lucas pushed it off for the better part of a week before he worked up the nerve. Only the rumor that the dukes and counts had apparently agreed on who the next King would be, and would be announcing it soon, drove him to action. 

If I kill the prick after he’s coronated, it will rile the city up infinitely more than if I do it before, he resonated. As much as Lucas would have loved to keep putting this off, he was out of time and out of reasons not to. 

Once that was decided, scheming and plotting gave way to action, which started innocently enough. One day over dinner, he casually mentioned to Danaria that he had a meeting in the city and wouldn’t be back until morning. 

“Not something too sinister, I hope?” she asked with a smile. 

“Just taking care of some business,” Lucas answered, lying with a straight face. He could have told her and everyone else around the table, ‘I’m off to kill a bad man before he destroys everything we’ve worked so hard for,’ but that wouldn’t have helped anyone. Instead, his lie faded into the rest of the conversation.

It was only when he was leaving that anyone challenged him, and that challenge came from his favorite dwarf. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Kar’gandin said as Lucas mounted his horse. “Keep it quick and quiet and come right back, ye hear? We need to focus on building, not breakin’ things.” 

Lucas nodded and told him that he wouldn’t, even though that was a lie. The dwarf obviously knew something was up, and though Lucas couldn’t figure out how, he spent the entire trip into town pondering what it might have been that tipped his hand.

While he never did figure it out, when he reached the inn at the edge of the Garden District and checked into a room after he stabled his horse, it must have vanished, because the man at the counter didn’t do more than glance at Lucas and his silver before he gave him a key to his second floor room.

He had no actual business to attend beyond changing into another outfit and waiting for it to get dark enough to explore the rooftops of the city in private. Once those things happened, Lucas left his room behind, while there was a theoretical chance that tonight wouldn’t go the way he hoped, between the fact that he’d recently faced down a dragon, and the fact that he could turn into a super human for a few minutes if needed, he was pretty much the opposite of concerned.  

Ch. 181 - Drastic Measures

When Lucas arrived, he did not enter the city in the usual way. Instead, he reined his horse in at an inn a few hundred yards outside the gate that was popular with travelers and a little cheaper than the offerings inside the walls. There, he tossed the boy a couple of coppers and told him, ‘I’m not staying the night, only meeting a few friends for drinks, so keep the saddle handy,’ before he walked toward the inn.

Lucas expected he’d be back in three or four hours, but any longer than that would see sunrise, and the streets fill with people. Both factors would make moving around invisibly that much harder, so he needed to hurry. 

He never entered the Golden Dragon’s Flagon, though, not even to create an alibi. Instead, he walked right past it and started toward the gate on foot. Then, when he could no longer trust distance or shadows to hide him from the watchmen, he simply focused on his ring and vanished in plain sight. From there, all he had to do was walk in on foot, right between the two guards who were nattering on about how dull the night had been, and what they planned to do when they got off shift. 

If he’d arrived during the day, the anonymity of the crowds might have been enough, but he didn’t want to chance it. The more people who saw him anywhere near Lordanin, the greater the chance that this would all come back to bite him somehow.

Even if he hadn’t planned to kill someone, he planned to kick several hornets' nests tonight. He had to; it was the only way to answer the question, ‘What will you do about whoever replaces Lord Torvin?’ While Lucas could easily stop the man from becoming King Torvin thanks to the gnome’s warning, there was no telling if he’d be as lucky next time, so his best bet was to make sure no king followed at all, even if that caused a little chaos and unrest. 

There’s other ways to govern besides kings, he told himself as he walked slowly and carefully and avoided tripping or kicking anything that might reveal him. 

After that heart-pounding moment where he waltzed between the guards like he didn’t exist, Lucas made for the nearest alley, and from there to the nearest rooftop so he could drop his magic and reassess things. While using imbued alchemy so frequently had increased his mana pool, invisibility was a thirsty spell, and using it for nearly a minute had drained just under half of his mana. 

He’d accounted for that and brought a couple of mana potions with him just in case, but still, it was best to use them as little as possible. Lucas made his way across the blue-tiled roofs of the Garden District, taking a circuitous way that avoided the widest streets. Then, when he reached the Torvin estate, he drank a Potion of Lesser Physicality, and after that bitter draught’s warmth spread to his limbs, he scaled the building toward the fourth floor where the old man slept. 

The potion didn’t provide much of an advantage, but these days, with all his other bonuses, he didn’t need as much. He wasn’t fighting Skylara here, he was just flashing up the well-dressed stone walls of a rich man’s home, and taking out someone defenseless. Those weren’t thoughts he was proud of. In fact, he felt shame at the very idea. Still, that wouldn’t stop him. 

Lucas reactivated his invisibility just before he reached the first window to peer inside, but it wasn’t the right room and contained only a study. So, he had to circle the building on a ledge to the other side before he found the old man snoring soundly in his bed. That was almost enough to make Lucas act rashly and move straight toward him; only his misgivings at going further down the road of a murderer delayed him long enough to note that the two of them weren’t alone. 

Over the last few days, Lucas had become so obsessed with the idea that killing the gray-haired man in his bed would solve everything that he was surprised at how terrible the idea made him feel now that he was in a position to do just that. He was so distracted by those feelings that he nearly didn’t notice the problem with the scene until he moved to climb invisibly through the window. 

It was the yawn that tipped him off. That simple sound froze the blood in his veins as he looked for where it came from and found nothing. It took several seconds for him to figure out why. 

While Lucas was invisible, the room he was looking at was at least partially covered in an illusion. He couldn’t see where the real world ended and the fake one began, but he could hear someone breathing over the sound of his pounding heart, and as he studied the scene, there were other telltales.

The first thing he noticed was that while there was snoring in the room, it wasn’t coming from the place where the man looked to be sleeping. Likewise, no matter how long he watched Duke Torvin lie there in bed, he didn’t seem to move. He just lay there. The curtains on the war window didn’t move either, even though they should have given the weather. That gave him enough information to trace the bounds of the spell in a rough sort of way.

Does this dude’s paranoia know no bounds? Lucas asked himself, suddenly rethinking his whole plan. There could be anything hiding back there. 

For just a moment, he remembered Brog’s pet minotaur and wondered if maybe he should just give this up before he found something like that waiting for him. After all, there was still time to abort this shit and try again, but it wouldn’t get any easier when the Duke solidified power and moved into the castle. 

It was that final thought that finally forced him through the window. Right now, he was dealing with one sleeping man and probably a mage. If things got loud, he might have to add a couple of guards to the mix, but as it was… Well, he could work with this as long as he caught the mage by surprise. 

One slow step at a time, Lucas approached the sound of breathing, unsure of what he’d find on the other side. The answer turned out to be nothing, but only because the entire illusion burst like a soap bubble when he touched it. One second, it showed the perfect image of Duke Torvin’s bedroom, complete with the man himself sleeping in the bed, and the next, the room changed. The bed was still there, but the Duke was sleeping in a cot in the corner, at the furthest point from the windows, and there was a mage sitting there between them. 

No, not just any mage, the one who had hunted him last time. Lucas supposed he should have expected that much. Not only had this prick almost driven a dagger through his chest and dropped a building on him during their first meeting, but on their second, he blew up Lucas’ carriage. He’d been in bed with the Whisperers this whole time. Of course, he’d be here. 

The mage seemed surprised that his spell had failed, but thanks to Lucas’s invisibility, he couldn’t seem to figure out why, buying him the precious seconds he needed to avoid getting vaporized. The mage was on his feet in an instant, but before he had a chance to do more than draw his wand, Lucas grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and bounced his head off the nearby stone wall hard enough to make an audible thump. Then he did it again, and again. 

The first time he gasped, but couldn’t quite make himself cry out in pain. The second and third blows were quieter. They were wetter, too, making Lucas’ stomach twist into knots at the brutality of it. Though he knew he probably shouldn’t let go yet, he couldn’t keep it up and released the mage after the third blow, letting the man slide slowly to the ground only when his wand had clattered to the ground.

Lucas looked to the Duke then, and though the man had rolled over, he continued to sleep soundly. “This isn’t what I planned for,” Lucas whispered to himself. “I wasn’t looking for vengeance.”

No matter what he was looking for, though, vengeance was exactly what he’d found, he reflected as he looked down at the insensate body of the mage. He wasn’t dead yet, probably, even with blood leaking from his temple. He would be soon, though. He’d have to be. With this much magic floating around, he couldn’t exactly leave any witnesses, conscious or otherwise. 

On Earth, this would have been a lot easier. All that would have mattered was fingerprints and DNA, but here, now, he had no idea what they could use against him; all he could do was improvise. 

So, instead of drawing his own weapon, he used the unconscious mage like a hand puppet and dragged him over to the Duke’s bedside before drawing the man's dagger with his own hand and planting it deep in the sleeping noble’s throat. The idea that someone else was holding the weapon didn’t make the weight of the action any easier to bear, and the instant that the Duke’s eyes flew open, his panicked gaze doubled Lucas’s guilt. 

Unfortunately, there was nothing for it. As he’d learned in his brief war against the Beggars, the only balm for these feelings involved getting well and truly drunk. 

Instead of gloating or giving some speech about how he was not to be fucked with, Lucas only turned his back and let the old man drown in his own blood. Then, he threw the mage from the window, letting him flop limply on the street four stories below. He’d thought briefly about stealing his wand, or any other magic trinkets he might have on him, but decided against that. No matter how expensive or powerful some of those items might be, when it came to mages, he had no idea what they could trace, so it was safe to assume the answer was everything. 

As the alarm sounded below, Lucas drank his first mana potion of the evening, feeling the power flow through him before he faded from view once more. Then he retreated out the window just the way he came in and started down to the first-story roof. The mage’s presence might have changed the story he planned to tell, but he still had other places to visit, and only so many hours of the night to accomplish them before the sunrise complicated things even further.