Though Lucas expected Heisenburgle to explode at him over his laughter, the gnome just shook his head ruefully. "You have given me much to think about, but though your offer is more substantial than I ever expected it to be, I am still skeptical."

"Listen, man, I know we've had our differences," Lucas started, "But everything I've said is—"

"I have no doubt that it's true," the gnome interrupted. "You're far too smart to tell a lie this stupid. You'd make up something much more believable. I'm just not certain I'm ready to throw my life away on a vain, childish hope that I should have discarded years ago."

"I mean, a talent isn't everything," Lucas said with a shrug. It was weak bait, but he knew Hisenburgle too well at this point, and he knew the gnome couldn't pass it up.

"Everything? It's the only thing," the gnome exploded. "But the gods do things for their own reasons, and mortals are better off not trying to change them."

"Well, if that's the way you feel…" Lucas answered, letting it linger. The gnome hadn't said no. He certainly hadn't said yes, but he hadn't said no either, which was enough for now. The seeds had been planted, and now he would have to wait and see what blossomed.

Before he could wait, though, he had to endure another lecture. While Heisenburgle might be done pontificating, the long odds of his plan. He wasn't done expressing his frustration that he could be passed over for such a talent in favor of a wastrel like Lucas. He endured that lecture with only barely disguised annoyance until it eventually dissolved into paranoia.

Lucas had to suppress a yawn during that final lecture. Do not talk about any of this outside this room. Do not discuss your talent. Do not discuss the gods. It was a long list, and the only thing that didn't seem to come up again was exactly what Lwyn wanted. Lucas didn't bring it up again, though. Instead, he strolled out of the place, acting like he'd just been given the ass-chewing of his life, and returned to his room to find his meager possessions already waiting for him.

He flopped down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Heisenburgle would eventually want him on a night schedule, which would take days to accomplish. For now, all he could do was lay there and wonder if the gnome was going to help him and try to decide what was next on his to-do list.

Help is the wrong word, Lucas corrected himself. The only person Heisenburgle would consider helping, besides himself, is the man who's paying the bills for all of his experiments.

That gave him pause. There was always the possibility that the gnome was just doing this to pump him for information to give to his employer. Lucas didn't really care right now, though. As much as he didn't like the idea of anyone knowing about his cool new abilities, he'd kept all of the important things under wraps.

No one knew Danara was still alive or that he was going to kill Skylara. No one even knew what he was really capable of. Lucas had told Heisenburgle he could see the properties of reagents and potions, and he'd told him there were other upgrades he could buy. That said, he'd kept Empowered Alchemy, attribute boosts, and all sorts of other tricks to himself.

"So, what's the plan now?" he asked himself. "Keep working out, or learn some new recipes?"

The answer was obviously going to be both. Though he wasn't sure he could twist the arms of the kindly ladies who worked in the kitchens here to make him the high protein diet, he'd gotten used to in the Prince's love nest, and he doubted very much that Sir. Milen would be allowed to visit the research facility. Fortunately, there were plenty of bored guards to spar with and all of Lucas's other exercises to think of.

And I can finally experiment with attribute-boosting potions, too, he reminded himself. That was the most important part about being here, besides trying to get Heisenburgle and his anti-dragon arsenal onboard with his plan to take out Skylara. Each of those was a tall order, but Heisenburgle wouldn't object to making an experimental series of potions to test how much one point of strength or agility was really worth in the grand scheme of things.

He knew from his previous researches that even with fairly top-shelf reagents, +8 physical attribute potions were possible but pretty toxic. While Toxicity Tolerance made that doable, and Empowered Alchemy would let him tweak the bonuses up and dial the side effects down, that sort of maximizing and optimization could come later. What he needed to know right now was how much +1 was worth, not if he could get to +10. Would +1 strength let him pick up ten more pounds or twenty-five? More importantly, were those results linear or exponential.

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Lucas had no idea, but he waited until dinner to ask Heisenburgle about the topic. Even then, he let the gnome ramble on about the progress he was making on gathering starlight for some time before he gently steered the topic to enhancement potions.

What started as a discussion on the reasons why Heisenburgle would never use an Elixir of Superior Insight quickly broadened into a wider discussion about enhancement potions, elixirs, and flasks in general when the gnome declared that "The Prince's personal regime was not a topic of discussion."

That suited Lucas just fine. He wasn't sure that he wanted to boost his intelligence all that much, and he certainly didn't want to do it in a way that came with a crippling addiction. He just wanted to get stronger and faster so he could cut that bitch's head off.

Heisenburgle was as happy to expound on this topic as much as any other that he rambled about. He even recommended several books and scrolls on the subject as he expounded on early efforts to produce superior soldiers for the army.

"The cost was, unfortunately, more than the kingdom could bear, you see," the gnome explained. "Despite that, I was able to come up with a whole regime of potions to create sort of a super guardsman, if you will. Imagine being able to make every man in a unit stronger than an orc and more fleet and dexterous than an elf for hours at a time!"

Lucas did nothing to distract the man from such a discussion and listened attentively, learning that the cost was not just one paid in gold. The gnome didn't care that the toxicity of such a powerful elixir was fatal in some cases and simply said, "It almost certainly cost the trial subjects less than a year of their life, and almost all of them survived."

As depressing as that was, Lucas was confident that he could improve all of those traits, but when he inquired after the recipe, Heisenburgle said, "Oh, I'm sorry, but it's classified, its a fairly advanced potion recipe, and until the Prince releases it, his personal property."

Lucas pretended to be disappointed, but really, he didn't care. He had books to read that would get him started after a good night's sleep, and they would give him some kind of starting point, which was all he really needed.

I could probably just wander around one of Heisenburgle's labs and find enough promising ingredients to start from scratch, he decided. Still, there was some part of him that liked the idea of taking an existing recipe and improving it beyond what Thrzaelwick thought was proper.

So, that morning, after his normal exercise routine in the chill air of the courtyard, he at least flipped through the books that Heisenburgle had lent him. Notes on Bodily Perfection and The Corpus Compendium were both very dull, but they helped him to gain a few new recipes and familiarize himself with various ingredients and reagents that were considered to be the most effective. While he did that, he also learned that both strength and endurance were considered to be strongly earth-aligned traits.

Fucking earth traits, he thought to himself.

You have learned the recipe for Lesser Potion of Strength.

You have learned the recipe for the Elixir of the Bear.

You have learned the recipe for the Flask of the Tireless Sentinel

You have learned the recipe for the Potion of Finite Grace.

You have learned the recipe for the Potion of Trolls Strength.

The last one was more than useless to him. Not only did it make the user more susceptible to fire damage, but he'd seen troll blood close up already, and it was nasty stuff. It was basically like liquid cancer, as far as he could tell. Still, he took the time to read through it just for ideas as he pondered the elemental alignment of things and tried to decide why intelligence was apparently fire-aligned instead of air or water-aligned.

Lucas still didn't entirely trust such things. To him, it felt like they were throwing darts at a board. However, today, at least, it made his decision on which laboratory to experiment in that day that much easier. Though he usually chose the air lab out of habit, he decided that this time, it made more sense to go with the flow. He still hadn't forgotten Heisenburgle's crazy experiment with the potion of flying and longed to replicate something similar when he had the chance if only to verify that the gnome wasn't screwing with him.

During breakfast, Lucas ate and read, and then, when he was done with both and it was getting toward lunch, he decided to get his ass into gear. Hiesenburgle is definitely asleep by now, he thought, gliding past the guards like he owned the place.

Lucas was counting on having a little privacy all to himself, so he was surprised when he heard the sounds of talking from the lab below him. Lucas paused then to listen but was too far above to make out any of the words.

For a moment, he tried to decide if he should use his ring of invisibility to sneak up on whoever it was down there, but he decided against it. He didn't have a lot of trump cards in reserve, but that was definitely one of them, and it was dark enough here in the dim spiral staircase that if he moved slow and steady, he was practically invisible anyway.

So, Lucas crept down until he was only a dozen feet above them, and then he paused and willed himself to breathe slowly and deeply as he listened. He'd expected to hear the sounds of spies meeting up to discuss so nefarious deed, or perhaps even Lucas himself. What he hadn't expected was for two voices to be discussing alchemy.

"No, that's too much," one man said. "You have to lower the heat before it froths up."

"I'm trying," the other, higher-pitched voice answered. "But if we don't keep stirring the orc's blood, it's…"

Lucas chose that minute to barge down the stairs, making no attempt to hide his presence. He didn't know who was doing what, but if they were cooking something up, he'd rather surprise them by pretending to be clueless than by getting caught spying.

"Weird time of day for anyone to be down here," Lucas said, "Whatcha guys cookin'?"

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