It was well past nightfall by the time the riders reached the tower in the woods. Between Claudia’s urgency and the relative nearness of the laboratory, they pushed their mounts into the dark, using the torchlight from the tower as a beacon for their direction. When they arrived at the gates, they were open, but no one was present to meet them or offer aid in stabling their horses. Stalls were empty, and there were plenty of supplies and food for the group, but not a soul was around aside from the riders themselves.

“Stay with the men, get the horses some feed and rested, we’ll probably ride out at dawn,” Claudia said as she led her horse to an empty stall after dismounting. “Based on the glyphs carved into the gates and perimeter wall, we should be pretty well warded for the night.”

Rosa looked concerned. “And we’re just staying out here for the night as well? Is there not enough space in the tower?”

“Roth isn’t one to entertain guests.” Claudia stowed most of her equipment but took the bags and saddle off her horse for the night. “Even meeting him the first time, he took every precaution to not be found unless he allowed it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he throws me out after we’re done talking.” Looking back at the other riders and up at the clear night sky, she added, “Besides, the sky is clear and the air is clean.”

“I never liked the Arcanist. He was effective in what he could do, but there was something about him that never settled well with me.” Rosa found some feed and motioned for the others to settle in. “The sooner we can get out of here the better.”

“I shouldn’t be long, Rosa,” Claudia said as she walked towards the reinforced tower door, “but I promise nothing.” Claudia lifted the heavy iron knocker and rapped twice on the door. Beyond the barrier, gears clanked and turned with a muffled strain before the entry opened, the door opening inward enough to welcome its visitor to push inside. No light came from the interior, inviting Claudia into a cold black that trusted she could make her own way towards her ally and goal. She turned to Rosa, offering a confident glance that conflicted with the worry on spymaster’s face, and stepped into the darkness.

Only a couple paces inside, the door shut behind her with a definitive, low boom. Metal, stone, and wood clicked and clacked in unseen concert to lock the entry once again. By the time the gears had ceased, Claudia found that she could make out the slightest definition in the stonework on the floor before her. No torchlights to be seen, her eyes had adjusted on their own, but to a level she had never before been accustomed. Another gift from my passenger, she thought. At least it’s silent for the moment.

Through the darkness, Claudia navigated the halls and steps up the tower. As she proceeded, she heard the familiar commotion of laboratory equipment and frustrated lamentations of a scholar that complained to no one other than himself. At last she came to a door near the top of the tower, the cracks in the doorway were lined with the flickering lights hidden beyond. Claudia took a deep breath and straightened herself, knocked twice, and entered.

The laboratory of Arcanist Roth was everything Claudia had come to expect from what she knew of the man outside his own domain. Shelves were piled with books, scrolls, jars, and other containers of varied colors and substances. The workbench against the wall was filled with numerous devices and tools, many of which were in the middle of performing some unknown action to some unknown purpose. White crystals clutched in gilded metal were floating overhead without attachment to any surface, providing their unnatural light in the room. Above these lights, the bare ceiling was inscribed meticulously with runes and glyphs, and as she looked more closely at her surroundings, Claudia found nearly every surface had these same markings. At the far end of the room, a robed figure hunched over a desk, speaking to himself, and had thus far wholly ignored her presence in the room.

“Arcanist?” Claudia asked, less for curiosity and more for his attention.

The figure stopped its work, but did not turn to face her. “Hmm…Claudia Reynard,” the scratched and gravelly voice mused. “Mistress of the people’s liberation…You’re late.”

“We encountered some problems in the wasteland.” Claudia approached closer and paused, realizing that his proportions were wrong. The last time she met the Arcanist, he was a smaller frame, nearly the same size as her, but this figure was far taller and broader than what could be thought of as human. “There were always the stories, but we never expected anything to go wrong.”

“Hubris, the folly of humanity,” the voice purred. “Only after we are punished do we ever learn, assuming we survive long enough.” He stood up straight, and the room accommodated his physicality. Suddenly the laboratory seemed much larger to Claudia, and while the change did not strike her with any discomfort or concern, curiosity clawed at her. Roth’s hooded head turned to one side as he motioned an arm. “The most recent details on your quarry’s whereabouts are there,” he said, gesturing to a sealed envelope. “He isn’t far, a day’s ride at most.”

Claudia, eager as she was for the information, largely ignored it. She cocked her head to one side, her red and blue eyes still fixed on the Arcanist. “Magic…is cursed. Here in the Reach. That’s what the stories say.”

“Thrice damned. First by humans, using it to bend the world to their will. Second by the gods, as punishment for humanity’s…” Roth punctuated the word again, “hubris. And finally by the primordial forces of nature itself, as punishment for the interventions of the other two.” He turned to his other side and walked with a distinct limp to a bookshelf in the corner. In the light, Claudia saw his black and green scarred hand pull a tome from the shelf. “I am not here to educate you on the price of mortal magic. Take your information and go, Mistress Reynard.”

“When you sent word to me, you had a perfectly etched drawing of my quarry. How did you get that?”

He growled and turned, showing the faint glow of yellow eyes hidden in the shadow of his hood, but as his gaze landed on her, his frustration became a curiosity of its own. “I will tell you,” he said, shuffling closer to Claudia, hunching over to meet her closer to eye level, “if you tell me about your…new friend.” His eyes twitched back and forth as they inspected the change of color in Claudia’s eyes; gone was the muted green from when they last met, replaced by a vibrant red in the left and a sharp blue in the right. He pulled his hood from his head, revealing the true extent of his disfigurement. His hairless skin was pockmarked all over, the eye sockets sunken in giving distinct pronouncement of his bony brow. His skin color was not the tanned bronze from before, but the blackened green she saw earlier on his hand, and it shone with a sickly wet substance. Most otherworldly and wrong was his lower face: the nose appeared sheared off, but healed over, revealing the two wheezing nostrils exposed to full view, and the entire oral center was not a human jaw, but a tangle of multiple bony, articulated mandibles that twitched and adjusted as he stood there, pondering this curious change of eye color in someone else.

Something in Claudia wanted to scream at the revelation, but something else–her passenger–held her fast. The recent incorporation of this new being into herself had provided many gifts, which, as she continued to discover, seemingly never ended. She took a deep breath and said, “I don’t know much about it, really. It offered me power, and I accepted.”

Roth withdrew from his hunched over inspection in reaction. “Hubris,” he said, and though she could not see it, it sounded like the voice smiled with the word. The Arcanist limped back to his desk and leaned against it. “As you can see, I have paid my price to attempt my work here in this land.” He raised a hand and flexed it, the bones audibly popping with the minimal effort he applied. “And the things you cannot see are far worse. So, over time I studied. I learned. I devised to a way to perform my works without paying the price myself.”

“How so?” Claudia asked, morbidly curious.

“Provide someone else to pay the cost,” he purred. “Take the etching for example. Normally I would be able to extract the memory from the child and transmute it into a visual representation. A simple enough enchantment I have done on numerous occasions to build my own library. But here, out here, if I attempted that, it would erase my own memory in the process. That is the recoil of this cursed place. So, to extract the image, the cost was paid by the boy, the one who saw him.”

Claudia’s eye twitched a brief moment before her gaze noticeably narrowed. “The boy who saw him? He was harmed?”

“The boy perished,” Roth said casually, with his scratchy, gravelly tone. “He was too young to withstand the changes. From his memories, I gathered he had some recent trauma as well, and that may have complicated the issue. But he was going to be harmed regardless; the recoil simply took more than I expected, his mind, his body, and his spirit.”

“You killed the boy?” she asked distantly, her hand tightening into a fist.

His gaze met hers in its intensity. “You were the one who told me to find him no matter the cost. ‘This is war. There are…’ how did you say it? ‘Casualties.'”

“You…killed the boy,” she repeated, her voice breaking. She swallowed hard.

“That is the price of mortal magic in this thrice damned land.”

“You. Killed. The boy,” she emphasized, her eyes now burning with radiance and ferocity. Her fist opened up as she raised her hand, and a black blade apparated like a phantom sword, void of color and definition beyond the rough shape of a hilt, guard, and blade. The Arcanist raised his hands to cast a defense, but she rushed upon him in fury, plunging the blade into his chest. Roth’s footing slipped as he stumbled, but Claudia held him, burying the blade deeper, piercing through his back.

Rage met fear face to face, and as the Arcanist’s life left him, his eyes widened as he stared into hers. “You…”

Though present for all of this, the being within Claudia did not speak, but she felt within her own spirit a grim satisfaction that this murder was just.

His eyes now vacant of any light or life, she withdrew the blade and let his body slump to the floor, the weapon vanishing from her grasp. The runes and glyphs drawn throughout the room did not flicker, fade, or respond in anyway. The lights remained illuminated and afloat, and the devices on the workshop bench continued their unknown actions for unknown purposes. Claudia stepped over to the envelope of information on her quarry and unceremoniously left the laboratory. Navigating the dark was easier this time, and when she got to the entrance, she found the door already unlocked and slightly ajar.

Stepping back out into the night, Claudia left the door open, and took in a deep breath of the cold night air. Rosa approached casually, but the concern on her face had not faded. “Did you get what you need?”

Claudia dropped her head avoiding eye contact for a moment to collect herself. Finally she looked the spymaster in the eye, “Yeah, I have it.” She padded the enveloped in her hands. “We’ll ride out at dawn, and when we go,” she turned to look up at the top of the tower, “we’re burning this place to the ground.”