For a moment, Heisenburgle looked like he was going to explode like a particularly volatile mixture. "Preposterous!" he shouted.

"You're just saying that because…" he calmed down then, but only so he could whisper the terrible words instead of shouting them. "You're just saying that because that's what you want to do. That's what this has all been about, hasn't it? You're just trying to enlist me in your insane vendetta! It's impossible!"

Even in the air laboratory, almost a hundred feet above the ground, Lucas had no doubt that his nasal voice could be heard echoing through the courtyard far below when he got worked up, so it was good that his paranoia had reigned him in, at least in part.

"Listen," Lucas said with a shrug. "You don't have to believe me. If you decide you want to follow through with this, you can just ask her. She'll tell you the same thing. Skylara has designs on becoming a deity herself, and even if she never figures out how to make the leap, apparently, she's really doing a number on the region's ecosystem."

"Eco-sys-tem?" the gnome pronounced the unfamiliar word.

"It doesn't matter," Lucas continued. "The point is Skylara will—"

"Never be defeated by a human… No, not even an army of humans," Heisenburgle insisted. "She is an army."

"I'll figure something out," Lucas said with a growing annoyance that was only partially concealed.

"You won't," the gnome answered confidently. "You won't. The gods above know that I've tried, but even as an engineering problem, it's just too difficult."

"Dragons aren't immortal," Lucas responded.

"They aren't," Heisenburgle agreed. "You could certainly kill a young one and probably kill an adult, hopped on your fancy potions."

"So I'll just make stronger potions, and with some poison, I'd—" Lucas started explaining his plan.

"It's an engineering problem, I wouldn't expect you to understand," Heisenburgle answered with a shake of his head. "Her scales are too thick. That ice troll's skull wrecked fine steel, and it wasn't half as hard as the scales on Skylara's underbelly!"

"There are other ways to poison her," Lucas explained. "When she was in her human form, I once drugged her so thoroughly that she almost overdosed on Blue."

"Well, be glad that you didn't go any further then," Heisenburgle said, "Because if you'd done enough to her unconscious mind to make her feel threatened, her transformation would have failed, and you would have unleashed her full animalistic rage."

Lucas thought about that for a moment. His Preferred Enemy gave him detailed knowledge of her weak points, along with her preferred method of attacks, but these were largely anatomical in nature. He knew where her limbs flexed and how fast she could fly. He knew how hot her breath was, but he knew very little about her magic, and his ability offered him no special insight there.

If he's right, that makes everything so much harder, he thought, feeling a sense of despair for the first time in days. Until now, he'd hoped that he could poison her or, at the very least, fight her as a human. She was freakishly strong, and her dress was basically armor, but it would still be much easier than the alternative. This was unwelcome news.

Still, he didn't give up, and the two went back and forth about it for the better part of an hour as Heisenburgle explained, in detail, everything he'd tried to do up until now. He told Lucas about the mechanical horse and the difficulties he'd had trying to scale it up or make it run for a sufficient amount of time on his current fuel. He talked about the length of time that he'd spent trying to improve materials for weapons to make the Prince's backup plan a reality, but mostly, he talked about the temperatures.

"The Prince doesn't want to kill her, you understand?" Heisenburgle repeated. "He just wanted her to know that we could so that her demands would become more modest. He sought to renegotiate the balance of power between her and him, but her fire makes that unlikely. There's just no way to survive it."

"Not even with alchemy or magical armor?" Lucas asked, feeling a little bit disheartened by all of this. He'd known it was going to be bad. He didn't know it was going to be this bad.

Heisenburgle spent a few minutes explaining a theoretical water-cooled armor he'd been working on and how that might be enough before his patron had withdrawn funding. After that, he himself withdrew himself to work on other things.

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For the rest of the evening, Lucas thought that condition might have been enough to kill the gnome's interest in the whole project, but it wasn't. Every morning, Lucas still worked on his combat drills and his blade work, and every night, Heisenburgle returned with more questions. Night after night, that elusive behavior continued, and soon, Lucas could see he was working on the courage to take the leap, even if he knew it was impossible.

"Talking with a god is impossible anyway!" the gnome said when Lucas finally challenged him about it. "What's one more impossibility stacked on top of another?"

Still, eventually, when the gnome finally decided he wanted to try it, Lucas was forced to give him the second piece of bad news. "Well, about that… I did kind of promise Lwyn that I wouldn't make her potion of greater communion for anyone else."

"You what?" Heisenburgle shouted again. "Then what in all the ekrestiated confrabulatory nonsense even led you to tell me about—"

"Look, I promised I wouldn't make it, but I didn't promise her I wouldn't help you, alright?" Lucas said, trying to calm down the angry gnome. "And I will help. You're always looking over my shoulder; well, now it's time to return the favor, alright?"

This pacified Heisenburgle, but not completely. The idea of this sort of role reversal was completely alien to him, and the first two times they tried it, the gnome gave up almost immediately. He wasn't hopeless like Adin. He knew exactly what to do, but he was allergic to being told what to do, and every time they'd finished preparing basic ingredients, the gnome threw up his hands and walked off.

It took Lucas longer than it should have to realize that it was the distilled starlight that was a problem. The gnome hated the idea of using Lucas' very unconventional machine to create that, which was pretty much the first step.

As a consequence, they wasted almost a week trying to make Hiesenburgle's version viable. Lucas didn't waste that time, of course. Even if the gnome was finding new and innovative ways to drag his feet, he worked on his own projects. He continued to dual guards and exercise every morning, and he was getting quite good. Even without potions, he won more often than he lost.

A victory against whatever guard happened to be on duty was nothing compared to his instructor, or even Skylara, of course, but the next time he saw Sir Milen, he wanted to be able to impress the man. His progress on his martial achievement was going up, too. He was still frustrated that it offered him no additional details, but as Heisenburgle continued to drag his feet, it reached 61%.

Of course, not all the delays were the gnome's fault. When he finally agreed to be reasonable and use Lucas' contraption, moonlight, and overcast sky spoiled the work for three nights running, and even when they finally succeeded in creating the glowing liquid, Heisenburgle refused to harvest more than a single vial a night, and no matter how much Lucas argued about how inefficient that was, he refused to budge.

"Whether this plan succeeds or fails, I shall very shortly meet my maker," Heisenburgle proclaimed. "And when I stand before Thrzealwick the wise, and he looks through my soul, I will not have it blemished with expedient shortcuts!"

Lucas had a hard time arguing with that. If the man was going to meet his maker, he supposed he had the right to do it on his own terms.

So, he tried to put up with it through all the failures. Still, even with his help, constantly telling Heisenburgle to add a little more of this reagent or a little less of that one and to keep the heat a little lower or stir a bit faster, it was tough. Many batches were ruined as a result. Lucas tried to be patient, but as it kept happening, night after night, he grew to hate how long it was taking.

I fucking hate this, he said to himself as he watched the gnome ruin another batch by being too slow to add the catalyst at the end. It wasn't almost enough to make him regret how hard he'd been on Adin in the beginning. Almost.

The only worthwhile part of the whole activity was that it helped him to understand exactly how big an advantage his talent was. He hadn't gotten a new update from anyone in weeks; as the weather started to warm up, he knew that his time was getting short, and his patience began to wear thin.

Eventually, as their efforts to make Heisenburgle's potion stretched into the second week, he might have gone crazy had he not noticed the bird pecking on his window one morning. That made him smile, and when he opened his window, the thing came flying in, it perched on his finger and sang him a song.

"Well, it's nice to see you too," he said with a smile, "but you should be careful. I don't want you coming around when—"

That got him an angry squawk, and he smiled as he immediately relented. "Alright, alright, I know I should have told you I was here, but it's not like I've had a chance. Look, I even tucked a note away there for you in the window."

That placated the bird that Danria was currently controlling. Well, at least he hoped it was her. He never said her name, though, in case this was a set-up. He just told her that things were going well and that this was a better prison than the last one without elaboration.

Lucas promised to do a better job at communicating with her and eventually sent her on her way. Even that small interaction buoyed his heart, though, and in the days ahead, he left her notes regularly that always disappeared within a day or two.

That was enough to fortify his patience and force Heisenburgle across the finish line. It took another week, but finally, one rainy morning, just before sunrise, he finally succeeded in performing every step with enough precision to avoid ruining a batch, and when he poured the catalyst in, it finally glowed and swirled like it should, as the two layers began to separate.

"Congrats, man!" Lucas told the gnome, but Heisenburgle ignored him.

Instead, he used the tongs to pour out his flask and separate the two liquids. It was only then, when that step was complete, that he said, "I suppose this means the Prince could finally execute you." For a moment, he seemed very sincere, and Lucas felt a jolt of fear, wondering if he'd just been played, but that was dispelled as soon as the gnome started to laugh.

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