The light of a sun falling into its tilted axis struggled to warm Dimitry’s face as he hustled through Malten’s impoverished streets with two green-glassed distillation devices nestled in his arms. What were once beautiful roads now housed refugees and the watchmen yelling to keep them from rioting.

Everyone sought to survive a rapidly chilling winter, including the man that scowled at Dimitry near the glassblower’s shop. He attributed their anger to desperation. Which starvation victim wouldn’t get furious after seeing gold coins get tossed around for seemingly useless trinkets?

Eager to avoid getting mobbed by the poor, who watched him with hungry eyes, Dimitry’s pace hastened.

Just ahead, a girl whose curly red-brown hair fell from the hood of her crimson robe leaned beside the hospital entrance. She held a small wooden tub topped with towels. “Look who’s finally back. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”

“Judging by your tone,” Dimitry said, “quite a while. Did you stay away from people with purple skin like I asked?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Angelika nudged her chin toward the two glass devices balanced in Dimitry’s hands. “What’re those?”

“Distillation apparatuses. Curious?”

“Not really.” She lowered the tub she held to the floor. It emitted a wooden thud when Angelika tapped it with her boot.

“What’s that?” Dimitry asked.

“A sign that you’re not very popular around the castle.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t get what you asked for no matter who I spoke to.” Angelika shrugged. “When I said ‘Dimitry the surgeon needed maids’, I got this collection of trash from Klaire.” She reached into the tub to pick up a black soap ingot that smelled like rotting animal fat.

Dimitry frowned. Were the people in the castle so busy that they couldn’t spare any manpower at all, or was his reputation that poor? Probably a combination of the two. As a stranger, Dimitry never expected to get much assistance, but did the queen expect him to cure the plague armed with this? “It’s not what I hoped for, but it’ll have to do. Come on, let’s haul it upstairs.”

“Upstairs? Like to the roof?” Angelika raised an eyebrow. “Why not just use the cellar?”

“There’s a cellar?”

“Of course, a refugee like you wouldn’t know that.” She stepped into a cramped alleyway beside the church and beckoned him forward.

Although Angelika’s words weren’t polite, they weren’t wrong either. Dimitry was a refugee. The only reason he didn’t lay freezing and destitute on the streets was because of his connections with Saphiria.

“This way.” The girl jumped over a mound of insect-covered bones. “Watch your step; there are usually loads of rats here.” When she reached the end of the alleyway, she tugged on the handle of a hatch embedded in a stone floor. It didn’t budge. However, being as stubborn as they came, Angelika didn’t give up. “This fucking—” Her face red, she pulled harder. “Won’t… open!”

Sensing the girl’s frustration, Precious snickered.

Pity flooded Dimitry as he watched her engage in a battle of wills with a locked door. “Maybe brute force isn’t the solution. Perhaps keys are?”

Angelika wiped her against her crimson robe. “And where would we find those?”

Dimitry pointed at the church’s stone walls. “Think the surgeon has them?”

“Wait. I thought you were the surgeon.”

“There’s two: me and a guy named Josef. Heard of him?”

Angelika’s curly hair bounced side to side as she shook her head. “Probably just another refugee.”

Dimitry placed the two distillation apparatuses on the floor and stepped out of the dark alleyway. “Keep an eye on the goods. I’ll go talk to him.”

After passing through the hospital’s domed entrance, Dimitry approached a bald and lanky man who operated on a nearby patient. “Josef, I have a question.”

His face soured upon seeing Dimitry. “Looks like the body collector finally decided to show up. It’s been all morning, and you still haven’t moved any of these corpses. I can’t do your job, too.”

Apparently, killing patients by gorging their raw wounds with spices was a job that required concentration. “That’s because I’m not the body collector. I’m a surgeon hired by the queen to cure the plague.”

“A youngster like you? A surgeon? And you will cure the plague?” Glancing up and down Dimitry, Josef chuckled. “Too bad you don’t have any tools.” The bald man slapped his palm on a stack of papers, causing the saws and knives resting beside them to jump. “Keep your hands off my patients. There’s a lot I have to teach you before you go digging in.”

Dimitry suppressed the urge to ram his knee into the man’s gut. “Maybe later. For now, I need the—”

“I remember when I was a kid like you. Didn’t know the difference between black bile, blue bile, or yellow bile. With my tutelage, you won’t have to be the same.”

“The keys to the cellar; do you have them or not?”

“What do you need the cellar for? All the patients are right here.”

“I need a place to store equipment.”

“Your equipment?” Josef turned away. “Don’t have ‘em.”

“The guy’s lying,” Precious whispered. “He sees you as a threat.”

It seemed greedy and self-obssessed surgeons, desperately holding onto status, existed in every world.

“I was informed that you had the keys.” Dimitry held out his hand. “Waste any more of my time, and I’ll report you to the queen.”

Josef frowned and stomped to the corner of the room to dig through a pile of his belongings. “If you’re not going to help, you could lock yourself in the cellar for all I care.” Josef threw a key across the room, which bounced off of a patient’s stomach and clanged onto the floor. “Take them and get out of my sight.”

Dimitry had many unpleasant words he wished to shout at the prick but shared none of them. Angering a coworker more than necessary was unwise—especially in a hospital. How would the nurses and patients feel to see their superiors bicker?

“Thanks.” Dimitry left the hospital and reconvened with Angelika, who waited for him beside two green-glassed apparatuses.

She pushed off of the wall. “You know, if someone talked to me that way, I would have crushed their head.”

“Good thing I’m not you.” Dimitry placed the keys in her hand. “I don’t want to get locked up for attacking that moron.”

“You’d be doing everyone a favor.” Angelika walked ahead of him. “That guy was an asshole to you even though you were trying to be polite.”

“Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way.” Dimitry curled his arms around each of the distillation devices, careful not to crush the fragile glass. He followed her to the cellar. “What if a watchman walked in while you were stomping his brains out?”

“I’d clobber the watchman after the surgeon.”

“Strange to see a girl like you try to sound threatening.”

“Sound threatening?” Angelika looked back, a scowl on her face. “You only say that because you’ve never seen me murder a crawling devil.” She turned away to unlock the cellar and pulled open the oak hatch, revealing a set of stairs. “After you, Mr. Surgeon.”

The echoes of footsteps tapping against stone accompanied Dimitry as he descended a narrow and darkening stairway. The smell of iron grew stronger with every stride.

Scant light leaking from the surface illuminated dust and the ominous features of the room. A fireplace with a big mouth built into the wall had a stone chute protruding upwards from its base. An alarmed squeak rang as something dashed across the floor. Holy statuettes, chains, and rusted iron cuffs covered in droplets of blood lay strewn across the floor, giving the cellar the appearance of a long-abandoned torture chamber.

So this was a church cellar. After seeing the cathedral dungeon in Coldust, its appearance didn’t surprise Dimitry.

“Smells terrible.” Angelika trailed behind him. “Wasn’t like this when I was a kid.”

“Leave the soap against the wall.”

Angelika kicked away iron chains and dropped the tub full of hygienic paraphernalia where they used to lay. “If I’m your guard, why do I find myself carrying stuff all day?”

“Because you’re good at it.” Dimitry handed her a distillation device.

“Whatever.”

“Don’t shake it.” Dimitry reached for a towel laying on top of the tub Klaire provided. “If it shatters, I’ll be down two gold marks.”

“Not my money. Why should I care?”

“Break it and find out. There are so many errands I could ask you to do for me to make up for it.”

Angelika clicked her teeth. “What the hell is it for, anyway?”

“I’ll be using it to distill alcohol from ale.”

“What’s that? Like a potion or something?”

Dimitry furrowed his brow. While the idea of potions gave him pause, if magic existed in this world, why wouldn’t they? “No, nothing like that. Alcohol is different. It’s a powerful disinfecting agent good for sterilizing tools and—”

“Never mind I asked.” Angelika’s gaze drifted from the glass device in her hand to the towel Dimitry held. “Will you use that for disinfectioning too?”

“This is for a related project I had in mind. You’ll see when we arrive at Vogel’s Enchantments.”

Her eyes shot open, revealing orange irises. “Wait! Can’t I just wait for you here?”

With Angelika’s reluctant assistance, Dimitry found the place he was looking for: Vogel’s Enchantments. Compared to the other structures in Malten’s castle district, the shop was narrow and stood only two stories tall. Aside from a glass window on the second floor, its sole luxury, the building gave an impression too homely to be a store.

Angelika cradled a distillation apparatus the size of a basketball in her arms. “I know you need my help carrying these things, but why do we have to go here of all places? We could’ve just gone to the Sorceresses Guild.”

“A friend recommended it to me,” Dimitry said. “I thought you were tough. Surely you can handle whatever horrors await inside.”

She leaned against the store’s cobblestone wall. “Can’t I just wait out here?”

“Why don’t you want to go in?”

“Please. I’ll hand you the distillator when you need it.”

“Sweetie, is that you?” a voice called from inside the shop.

Angelika clicked her teeth. She gave Dimitry an inconvenienced glare and passed through the store’s entrance with slumped shoulders. “Hi, mom.”

Mom? Ignacius mentioned that his family ran Vogel’s Enchantments. Was he related to Angelika? Thinking back, the old man mentioned a similar name once or twice.

Dimitry followed the red-robed girl to a sales floor smaller than a fast-food restroom. Shelves upholding canisters and other magical devices lined the stone walls, tapering an already clustered room further. The claustrophobic space led to a counter behind which two women stood.

“Angelika, are you here to visit?” a bubbly, round-faced woman asked. The life-weathered look in her eye gave her the impression of someone in their thirties despite a delighted smile and smooth skin. Skin a faint shade of purple. “Aren’t you supposed to be working in the castle?”

The girl beside the woman, perhaps slightly older than Angelika, brushed her wavy scarlet hair back to reveal the pointed chin of a beautiful face. “Slacking off, or are you here to borrow more of my clothes just to never return them?”

“Shut up, Leona.” Angelika lowered the distillation apparatus onto the counter.

Leona slowly rotated the object made of green glass, examining it from every side. “What’s this?”

Angelika pointed back at Dimitry with her thumb. “Ask the guy behind—” Her words cut short when she leaped to grab the older woman’s purple hand. “Mom, your skin.” Her head shot up. “When did this happen?”

“It’s nothing, sweetheart.” Still smiling, her mother turned her gaze to Dimitry. “Who’s your friend?”

“Dimitry!” Angelika glanced back. Terror filled the girl’s eyes. “You’re a surgeon, right? You can help my mom? Right?”

He wanted to say ‘yes’ to comfort her. No one deserved to see a parent snatched away from them at such a young age by the plague. Unfortunately, all he could do was shake his head. “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

Leona’s orange eyes remained steady. “Can you calm down a bit? Panicking won’t help.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” the mother said. “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your relationship with my daughter?”

“My name is Dimitry.” He nodded in greeting. “I am a surgeon working for Her Royal Majesty to find a cure for the plague. Angelika was assigned to be my guard. She has been a great help to me so far, and I will rely on her continued help in the future.”

“I’m glad to hear it!” The woman displayed a radiant smile that held a hint of pride. “My name is Raina, and this is my eldest daughter Leona. I hope we can be of assistance, too.”

The scarlet-haired girl beside her performed a deep bow. “If Angelika offended you in any way, please accept my apologies. Although my sister’s mouth is rotten, she’s an excellent combat sorceress.”

“Now do you know why I didn’t want to come here?”

Dimitry smiled at a blushing Angelika as he walked forward. “If it’s not too much of a bother, I have a towel here that needs to be enchanted with preservia.” He laid the cloth over the counter, then used his newly vacated hand to point at the tube-like condenser portion of the distillation apparatus he held clutched in his other arm. “And I need to enchant these with something that keeps them cold.”

“You handle the preservia, sweetie.”

Leona laid the towel out on the table, then her confident, orange eyes met Dimitry’s gaze. “How strong would you like the enchantment to be?”

That was new. When Dimitry bought a dispelia enchantment in Ravenfall, the rotund man never offered him the option. “What’s the difference?”

“The effects last longer, are stronger, and reach further. It’s also more expensive.”

Although the queen’s reward was fifty gold marks, a small fortune, Dimitry decided to save as much money as he could. “Just make it normal.”

“As you wish.” Leona gathered a pile of vol pellets before hovering her arm over the towel. A scroll suspended with a gold chain hung from her wrist. “Preservia.” She began to cover the cloth in a vibrant, pink glow.

Raina reached to take the second distillation device from Dimitry. Deep scars, perhaps a remnant from past overload, lay buried in her left hand’s palm. “And for both of these… things, only the long slender bits should be infused with freezia, correct?”

Was freezia the cold equivalent of incendia? “If it would cool the device, then yes. Do I have the option of strength on it as well?”

The mother beamed him a bubbly smile. “You do!”

Dimitry stroked his chin, recalling the chemistry experiments from over a decade ago. He used room temperature tap water to cool condensing columns back then. Was that to prevent heated glass from cracking? If so, the freezia enchantment shouldn’t be too powerful. “Make them weak.”

“Righto. It’ll be just a few moments.”

Angelika leaned over the counter to put the back of her hand against her mother’s forehead. “Mom. You forgot to ask him to pay.”

The woman’s face shot up, revealing wide-open orange eyes. “Ah! That should be…” The tip of her finger traveled between vol pellets, perhaps counting how many Leona used and the ones she prepared to consume herself. “Seven golds and three silvers.”

“Isn’t that a bit expensive?” Dimitry reached into his fur-trimmed cloak for a leather pouch.

“It’s not our fault,” Angelika said. “The queen increased vol prices. Apparently, she’s trading away what little the forges produce these days to buy food from Ontaria and Feyt to keep refugees like that deadbeat alive. Is he even home?”

Not intending to get involved in their personal affairs, Dimitry placed ten gold marks onto the counter. “Get me as much mixed vol as the change could buy, please.”

Finished with her enchanting task, Leona slid the coins into her hand. “I heard he went to poke around dead heathens. Old habits die hard, it seems.” She began to stack crude and pure vol pellets.

Raina sighed. “Stop it, both of you. It’s rude to talk about your grandfather like that. Especially in front of customers.”

Dimitry furrowed his brow. Were they talking about Ignacius?

“He’s not my grandfather anymore,” Angelika said, her voice grim. “He abandoned us to be the Church’s lapdog, and now he comes home as if nothing happened? I hope a crawler stabs him in the ass.”

Leona’s hand covered her mouth to hide a giggle.

“Look.” Raina shot a stern but non-threatening glance at both of her daughters. “Ignacius’ wife is an important woman in the Church, so he had many difficult decisions to make. In the end, he realized he was wrong and came back to us. Isn’t that all that matters?”

Both girls shared a glance. “No,” they said in unison.