Chapter 59

Author's Note: I screwed up on RR and accidentally posted chapter 29 instead of 28.  So since they got 2 chapters today after I fixed it and added 28 in, you guys are getting 2 chapters too.

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The viscous liquid dripped into the vial while Myla counted. For a man Aldrick’s size, two drops per ten stamina should be enough. She’d watched him fight once and thought she had good estimates of his stats, but there was always a measure of guesswork in something like this. Four drops would probably suffice, perhaps five, but she upped the dose to six to be safe. Any higher and she’d risk the poison overwhelming him, which defeated the point.

There was always a chance it wouldn’t work. He’d exhibited some sort of temporary enhancement ability, which could either burn through the poison or make it even more effective, depending on how the skill functioned. If it suppressed the poison while it was active, then the crash afterwards might leave him significantly more vulnerable to it. If that was the case, the poison could very well kill him.

That wasn’t the desired result, but Myla considered it an acceptable risk. If all went according to the plan, she would drug him, abduct him, and interrogate him. The poison, derived from the milk of a sankapor viper, would leave him delirious and too scattered to think of lying when she asked her questions, and if necessary, she could dump him somewhere and let him wake up thinking he had a bad hangover.

Ideally, the rot he represented hadn’t spread too far and the inquisitors could scoop up any allies he’d made in one fell swoop. Then Aldrick could be disposed of without ever leaving the confessional. If she was lucky, all of the paranoia and extra preparations had been a waste of time. If not… it was important to keep up the façade that Aldrick was operating unknown to the church until they’d rooted out every last member of his cult.

Myla bottled up the poison. It was a cloudy white color on its own, but it wouldn’t be noticeable once she poured it into a drink. All she needed to do now was put on her seamstress outfit again, find him after one of his fights, and invite him out for lunch. He’d accepted eagerly enough the first time; she doubted it would be difficult to get him alone again.

And if for some reason it was, there were other ways of gaining access to his food and drink. [Disguise] was an extremely flexible skill, and she had plenty of practice with it. It was a point of pride to her that she’d gotten it all the way up to rank 3 without spending a single point of AP, though Master Lath had insisted that it would take many, many years of effort to reach rank 4 and that she needed to spend the 50 AP on the upgrade instead.

That still rankled, but she wouldn’t disobey his instructions. It seemed like a waste to dump a tenth of her total AP into one single skill rank, but those were her orders, and she trusted her master to know what was best. He’d created the path of the poisoner himself, after all. No one in the world knew its intricacies better than him.

She heard an inquisitor approaching a few seconds before a knock came at the door. Myla spent a moment cleaning up her workstation before answering the knock. “Yes?”

“Ma’am,” the inquisitor said. “I’ve handed off watch to Inquisitor Mekan.”

“Ah, that late already?” There were no windows in the workshop, not with so many of her mixtures and concoctions being vulnerable to light. She often found herself losing track of the time when she was working. “Very well. Anything to report?”

“He visited an alchemical weapons shop early in the day and participated in a round of gimmick matches where he allowed himself to be shackled while fighting challengers. There were eight fights, one of which had five opponents, and he cleanly won all of them. After that, he left with the half-sized manager to run errands. They spent the night in bed together again, this time engaging in sexual activities.”

The inquisitor’s mouth twisted in distaste at the end of his report. Myla could understand his feelings; to sleep with something that wasn’t even human was… disgusting, like lying with a monster. If the church had gotten its way, non-humans wouldn’t be allowed in Valtira, or any other human city. Soldiers should have been dispatched to drive the invasive species out of human-claimed territory decades ago. That hadn’t happened, unfortunately.

Regardless of her personal feelings, an inquisitor mastered herself and betrayed nothing on her face. This man hadn’t learned that lesson yet, apparently, and she made a mental note to speak with his master about putting a focus on increasing his control. If he wore his emotions so openly, he’d never rank up [Deception].

“Thank you. Where is he now?”

“As of half an hour ago, the human told the half-size that he had planned on picking up his new weapon today before meeting her at the fight club he works at.”

“Perfect. If there’s nothing else, you may go,” she said.

“Ma’am.”

If Aldrick’s tastes swung that way, she might have to reevaluate her plans. She’d thought he was quite smitten with her seamstress persona, but perhaps not. It wasn’t time to retire the disguise just yet, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he declined her asking him out for a lunch date. There was a hard limit to how much [Disguise] could alter her appearance, and removing over a foot from her height was well past that limit.

There were other ways to capture him without attracting attention from any of his allies or followers. They just weren’t as convenient. Regardless, she’d have him in a confessional before the end of the night and, if necessary, slipped back into his life without ever realizing he’d lost a few hours of it.

Myla returned to her workbench to complete her preparations.

* * *

It took all Luke’s willpower to get out of that bed in the morning when the alternative was snuggling with a still-naked Zea, which would inevitably lead back to sex again, and it was really, really good sex. But eventually, despite her pouting, he forced himself to get dressed.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asked.

“No,” came the muffled response from under the blanket. Her hand shot out and snagged the waist of his trousers. “Want you to come back to bed.”

“The sun’s up. I’ve got errands to run. I’m sure you do too?”

“No, I’m on vacation. I haven’t gotten laid in five years, you’re out of here soon, and I want all the dick I can get before that happens.”

She tried to pull him back onto the bed, but she was nowhere near strong enough to move him if he didn’t want to move. That meant of course that he feigned losing his balance and shuffled a few steps closer. Zea’s head popped out from under the blanket to regard him suspiciously as he sat down next to her.

He pulled her into his arms, blanket and all, and kissed her deeply. “You stay here and keep the bed warm for me. I’ll be back in an hour or two. And then, well, I guess we should figure out some definite plans and take advantage of however much time we have left.”

“Ugh. Fine. Hurry back.”

“I will,” he promised, kissing her again. Then there was some more kissing, and roaming hands, and it took Luke another forty minutes before he actually managed to get all of his clothes on and leave. It was totally worth it.

* * *

“I was wondering if I was going to see you today,” Donaley said when Luke walked in. “Usually when someone pays that much for a rush order just to get something a day or two early, they show up first thing in the morning to pick it up.”

“Yeah, I was, uh, going to, but… something popped up.”

“It’s fine. Been a slow day anyway. Come over here, I’ve got your mace all ready for you. You were wearing a back harness for the old one right? You got it with you?”

“I was, and no, I didn’t think to bring it,” Luke said. “I have had a very energetic morning, and it slipped my mind.”

“No big deal. Not to put too fine a point on it, but your old one looked like it was done by an apprentice anyway, and a beauty like this should have a master’s work to hold it. I’ve got a few adjustable ones if you’d like to buy something that’ll really show the old girl off.”

Apparently, maces were girls. Or maybe all weapons were female in Donaley’s mind. Luke would have thought as phallic as they all looked, it would have been the other way around. Or maybe it was like boats. He decided it was best to just play along until he was out of the shop and then promptly forget the whole idea of gendered weapons.

“Sure, I’ll take a look,” he said. He doubted he’d buy anything, considering he had a perfectly serviceable harness already, but it didn’t hurt to be polite.

Donaley pulled out a mace from under the counter and placed it in front of Luke. He grinned when he saw Luke’s jaw drop and gestured for him to pick it up.

“Holy shit, this thing is gorgeous,” Luke said, holding it in front of him. It was heavier than his old mace, but not by enough to make a real difference considering how much strength he had now. The haft was a few inches longer, but the head was almost a replica of the one Curt had forged. The real difference was that the metal looked like gleaming chrome with a red cast to it. If he really looked close at it, he could see the little veins of blood silver entwined in the living steel.

“You want to test it out?” Donaley said slyly.

“Hell yes I do. Do you have stuff around here I can hit?”

“Come with me,” the smith said. He opened a door Luke hadn’t seen before and led the way down a flight of stairs into a basement where a series of training dummies had been set up like a row of scarecrows. “Take a swing at that one all the way on the left. It’s reinforced with dead steel, so don’t worry about breaking it. Anything that comes off will grow back.”

“You’re sure this won’t break my weapon?” Luke asked, suddenly apprehensive. He could still clearly picture the last time he’d swung his old mace and bent it a full ninety degrees.

“It’ll be fine,” Donaley scoffed.

Tentatively, Luke moved into position, set his feet, and took a half-hearted swing. The metal rang out and the mace bounced back. He could feel the reverberations down the body of the mace, but they were not anywhere as strong as he’d expected. His old mace had practically vibrated out of his hands when he’d fought that high level goblin with the huge sword.

“Put some effort into it,” Donaley said. “I thought you were supposed to be strong. This’ll handle a full-strength swing from anyone under 50 strength without any problems. You’ll start to see some damage around 70 or 75 strength, but it won’t really break short of 85.”

Luke struck the black-plated dummy again, this time with considerably more force behind it. A crease appeared in the armor, but otherwise the dummy was unharmed. The mace itself didn’t have so much as a blemish on it. “Okay, time to test it for real,” he said.

He took hold of it in both hands, spared a moment to marvel at how well the grip fit him, activated [Power Strike], and struck the dummy so hard that it flew across the basement and broke apart against the wall.

“Oh shit, sorry,” Luke said. He looked over his shoulder and saw Donaley chuckling.

The mace itself had a crack running down the handle and seemed a bit crooked, but even as he watched, the crack was filled with something that looked like red mercury. It quickly hardened, and as it did, it jerked the body back into alignment. A few moments later, it was impossible to tell that there’d ever been any damage there.

“That is fucking awesome,” Luke said.

“Course it is. I made it, didn’t I? Come on now, let’s go look at a harness for you. Don’t worry about the dummy, I’ll put it back together later after it finishes repairing itself.”