After leaving the palace and turning in a copy of her paper for The Covenant's review, Emily returns to Elisime and sets course back to their desert facility. She takes out her communicator and calls Dante as the ship cruises north.

"Hey."

"Emily! You're back!" Dante barks on the other end of the call. "How was The Abyss?"

"Interesting. It's given me several new paths to follow to continue my research."

"Nice. Are we still on for a trip to the Lerus Isles?"

"Yes," Emily replies, scanning through her communicator to send a message to Virgil at the same time. "I'm on my way to drop off my harvest from The Glade and check on my factories now. When will you be ready to leave?"

"Dad's currently meeting with the king about something, but he told me it shouldn't take more than a few weeks to deal with," Dante explains. "We'll be ready whenever after that."

"Okay, we leave in a month then."

Emily ends the call and returns her focus to Silica, watching her play with conjured orbs of sand and trying to connect with the element.

A day later, upon slipping into a familiar sandstorm and arriving at their growing Modo facility, Elisime touches down, and Emily leaves her troops to unload, packing the fresh stock of materials into several waiting warehouses. She makes her way to the grand gathering array at the centre of the compound, setting a hand against one of the large metal arcs supporting her Universal Transmitter and connecting to the signal dish with a stream of machina.

There are several abnormalities in the dish's readings from the past few months, but none stick out as anything more than cosmic background radiation, so Emily dismisses them and begins addressing a list of issues on the base that need her attention. After a few days of maintaining her existing production and shifting around the ammunition lines to better fit Arthur's repeat orders, Emily finds herself in one of her subterranean alchemy labs, looking at the strange creature she found in The Crystal Waters.

The creature shrivels under the light of her lab's artificial lights as she removes its terrarium from her Dimensional Factory, and its oily-black limbs retract into its slick shell that slowly lightens the longer she looks, turning a chalky grey. Emily casts a small sound barrier, covering the workbench, before she shatters the weakened magical binds sealing the terrarium shut and tips out the small, shelled creature.

The specimen doesn't make any move to escape despite meeting fresh air, so she first inspects it from afar, circling the table and making note of the wound she caused, already healed without a mark. Then, she reaches out and gently scrapes away some of the pale mucus covering the beast, filling a few vials to test further whilst checking what the system has to say about them.

¯¯¯¯¯

[Blending Mucus]

[Rank:] E

[Description:] A viscous secretion to help the host blend in with their surroundings.

[Effect:] Apply a thin layer to create a colour-shifting anti-perception barrier.

_____

"Oh?" she mutters with a raised brow, immediately drawing parallels between the creature's natural defences and the potion she brewed from a shadow boa's flesh. "This could be a useful potion ingredient. Maybe I can use it to help mix conflicting materials… I'll have to test its reactive properties."

"Does that mean you want it alive?" Mensacus asks with a disappointed tone, drawing Emily's focus to her children, who are poking at her specimen.

"Yes," she says while batting Silica's paw away from the cowering creature, ignoring the hungry look in her eyes and feeling a little glad the fox is still too apprehensive to risk putting her ears near it. "Why? You're not normally this interested in my alchemy."

"It just looks tasty," the chimaera responds, knowing better than his sister not to touch the subject but still devouring it with his eyes. "And smells delicious."

Emily sniffs the air, trying to discern which scent is drawing her children in and finding nothing but a slight saltwater tang that was ever-present in The Crystal Waters.

"The salt?"

"No. The life."

Emily frowns, shutting her eyes and focusing her magical senses on the specimen instead. It takes a few minutes, but she's faintly able to detect an undercurrent of death magic lingering on the unidentified creature.

"Ah, I see," she mutters, opening her eyes and seeing the beast cautiously reaching out to feel around with its dark, fleshy tendrils. "Then yes, I definitely want this subject alive."

Her son's disappointment is palpable, and Emily finds herself discomforted when he begins to sulk with his sister, curling up beneath the workbench she's trying to use and letting his tentacles splay across the floor.

"I will need to test its regeneration, though," she sighs with a quick glance to The Clock in her arm before she reaches out and splits the test subject in half with a flick of her wrist.

The shelled insectoid writhes in pain, but the sound barrier around it protects them from its ensuing shrieks as Emily takes its rear half and tosses it under the table for her children to share, watching with rapt fascination as the severed flesh bubbles and bleeds, shifting in unnatural ways to try and block off the wound.

Its regeneration is definitely magically enhanced: that looks similar to Silica's healing. Is this also a creature sustained by magic…

***

The familiar chime of a communicator call rings out from Emily's belt, filling the elevator, so she pulls out the small tablet and immediately answers it.

"Hey, Virgil. To what do I owe the pleasure?" she asks, fairly certain he isn't calling to ask about their departure for the Lerus Isles tomorrow, since Dante was in contact about it earlier.

"Hey, Emily. I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" a friendly, but noticeably apprehensive, voice asks from the other end.

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"Not at all, I'm just on my way down to check on my ectolyte farm."

"Oh? Dante showed me the bestiary entry you wrote about them, but I can't see why you're cultivating them. Is their mucus really that useful, or have you hidden the beast's real use from the rest of us?"

The playful lilt to his voice doesn't do anything to distract Emily from his clear avoidance of why he called, but she doesn't question him, letting him get to the point himself.

"You could say that," she hums as the elevator pauses and the door opens, letting her out into the tunnel connected to the prison cells she converted into a farm. "I didn't hide their real use, as you put it, but I did obscure the details on the most useful effects of their nature a little. I mentioned that they're parasitic, feeding on the life force of a host they bind themselves to, but not that they employ death magic in much the same way as my son to do it."

Emily arrives before a locked door that slides out of the way to reveal a chamber with rows of lined-up prisoners, bound to simple metal seats. Most of the prisoners are pale and near-lifeless, with small insectoid parasites half-embedded in their chests and wrapping their bodies in thin, vein-like tendrils that dig into their flesh. The prisoners without ectolytes feeding from them look haunted and drained of resistance, making no sound, despite the horrifying fates they can see waiting for them thanks to the wendigos prowling between the confined rows, checking on the feeding parasites.

"In using death magic to sustain, heal, and replicate themselves," she continues, stopping to prune the limbs of a tangled ectolye to help it more effectively cover its host. "Ectolytes make a perfect food source for my son and his creations. They refine the life force they consume, converting unawakened fodder into an eventual higher-quality meal."

"Goddess," Virgil mutters with a slightly unsettled tone. "Please remind me never to do anything that puts me on your bad list. I like to think I'd make poor parasite food."

"I don't think there's such a thing," Emily smiles, tossing the slimy, offcut tendrils to one of the nearby wendigos to snack on. "Anyway, enough about my children's diets. Why did you call me?"

"Right, well, it's nothing big, but would you be willing to come offer your expertise on a little problem we're dealing with in The Dome before we head off?"

"Why are you the one asking? If it's in The Dome, that doesn't sound like your problem."

"It's not, per se, but it does affect my territory. As for why I'm the one asking you for help? I'm the only one here dealing with the issue with a personal connection to you, so they thought it would be best for me to call instead of bothering Arthur and getting him to."

"Right…" Emily hums unimpressed, still waiting for any hint of what the problem is. "And are you going to tell me what exactly you need, or do you not trust my communicator network is secure?"

"I trust your work," Virgil replies firmly. "That's kind of the whole reason I'm calling you, but, well, I'm honestly not sure exactly what it is the others want you to do. I feel like I'm not the best person to explain…"

"Fine. Will I need Pod and my kids, or shall I warp over alone and leave them to finish preparing Elisime for departure?"

"Your son might be helpful. Thank you, Emily."

"Don't thank me yet," she replies, immediately sending out a flood of commands to prepare her forces for her early departure. "If you're being needlessly cryptic and wasting my time for no reason, you'll become the target in the weapons test I was waiting to do with you."

***

Emily, Mensacus, and Silica step through a gust of rippling spatial winds, appearing on the northern edge of Chroni, just outside the city's walls. Emily bends the transport spell, forming it into a fast breeze that carries them up and over the city in a blur of motion as they seem to stretch between two points before setting down on one of the walkways connected to The Dome.

They enter and head to a transportation circle, jumping to the information hub where they meet Virgil in the flesh.

"So?" Emily greets him, unsmiling.

"I'm still not the best one to explain it," he replies, gesturing for her to follow him into a transportation room. "Come along. I think you already know Jenny, but I'll introduce you to the others, and they'll bring you up to speed. Why I'm even assigned to stuff like this I'll never know…"

They move to a plain corridor lined with unmarked doors that Emily doesn't recognise and make their way along it until they stop before one of the closed rooms with nothing differentiating it from the rest. Virgil raises a hand and knocks firmly on the door as he injects mana into it, unlocking the spells keeping it shut and alerting everyone inside to their presence.

Emily scans the room he leads them into with a raised brow. Jenny and two men she doesn't recognise, one fourth circle and one third, are standing over three people bound to chairs with metal shackles. There are work tables spread around them, scattered with various powders and liquids, which she can't identify at a glance, and the materials used to make them, which she can.

"Are you trying to poison them?" she asks as Jenny sets down the needle she was holding to one of her prisoners' necks and turns to face her.

"Not quite, but I can see how it would look like that," Jenny replies, raising her now-free hand to rub at the shadows beneath her eyes as she flashes a tired smile. "Thank you for agreeing to help, Emily. I wanted to get this dealt with quickly and quietly, but with the new cases that keep popping up, this has grown into a problem far larger than the one his majesty entrusted to me."

"I agreed to have a look. It would help if someone actually told me what it is I'm meant to be looking at," Emily says dryly, watching Jenny's head snap to Virgil with an incredulous stare.

"You haven't informed her?"

"I told you I couldn't do it right!" the fiery mage argues, throwing his hands up. "I'm meant to deal with catching perpetrators, not this alchemy business. I'd have just complicated it if I tried."

Emily half ignores their argument as Jenny begins muttering under her breath about working with idiots, turning to face the other two mages who are looking at her with a mixture of exhaustion, relief, and apprehension.

"Hello, Emily," the familiar-looking fourth circle man with clear blue eyes and a messy blonde bun says, offering a standard mage's bow in greeting. "Aaron Salvia. It's a pleasure to finally meet you: my son holds you in very high regard."

"The pleasure is mine," she says, returning his bow. "I'm grateful for the support your family has shown me."

"Please, think nothing of it. This here is Dom Tagete, another of our country's finest alchemists."

The stern-looking man beside him bows in greeting, dipping his head lower than both Emily and Aaron did.

"He's a man of few words, but his work speaks for itself. Now, it looks like it falls to me to explain what we're dealing with here," Aaron says, casting a final glance towards Virgil, before shaking his head and turning towards their prisoners. "A few months ago, Chroni had a little outbreak of violent episodes, with a worrying number of commoners being arrested for starting fights for seemingly no reason. Well, no reason other than the large quantity of magical substance traces present within their bodies. We've been trying to identify what they're taking so we can track its creation and the ones distributing it, but none of our detection spells are working, and none of our test subjects have recovered their minds enough to help. We're seeing dozens of new outbursts across the country every day, and the number just keeps increasing. We're struggling to keep word from spreading."

"So, you want me to help identify the potion affecting them?" Emily asks, stopping before the bound prisoners, all three of them unawakened men.

"Yes, if you can. Subject UP103 here experienced their first violent episode, what we're calling the trigger, four days ago, and has since been in and out of consciousness," Aaron explains, gesturing to the first man who is slumped forward in his chair unmoving. "Subject UP106 had his trigger approximately six hours ago and, when awake, is in a constant state of aggressive hysteria. He's sedated currently. Finally, subject BC26 is an unrelated criminal we're using to test our current theory serum on. We've crossed out most combinations of common toxins, with nothing from desert choker venom to red-ringed eel extract appearing even remotely similar. Though, we've been able to replicate some of the secondary symptoms, such as the dark rash spreading from the subjects' extremities."

Nodding along, Emily reaches out and sets her hand flat against UP103's forehead, releasing a flood of machina into his body and scanning for all abnormalities. She's immediately drawn to the subject's brain, finding a maelstrom of chaotic activity, with signals firing and fading with no appropriate response, absorbed by the magical concoction still clinging to the host's system.

"Fascinating…" she mumbles, raising her left hand to chew on the tip of her metal thumb. "How did you recreate the rash?"

"A high concentration of goblin blood brewed with acridine, rockthawn, and powdered fire and wind crystals," Dom answers her without missing a beat.

"Goblin blood? Have you considered plants fertilised with it?"

"I wasn't aware there were any," Aaron says, pulling a communication crystal from his robes. "What do you need? I'll ask for it to be brought here immediately."

"Well, let's start with deturan root…."

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