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.'

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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.

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