“How did you know?” Lucas thought he could stall for time, and honestly he was surprised by this. How did Tyr know that he was involved, where he was, and then how did he get past the guards? Lucas would suspect a traitor, but it would not make sense for any of them to do so…

“Do you think I don’t have my own sources?” Tyr sneered, “did you really think I was as foolish as my father?”

“Honestly? Yes, so this is quite a surprise…” Lucas had to admit that he seemed to had misjudged Tyr, a pity since if he had reached out to him things might have been able to be settled differently.

“I cannot blame you, in fact, let me tell you a little secret.” Tyr stopped moving forward and his face went from anger to cunning cruelty, Lucas had cold sweat down his back as he realized he had deeply underestimated the man. “With your death I will be honored above all others when I return this land to its rightful owners!”

“Cousin,” Lady Versi exclaimed in shock. “You joined the Cult?”

“You would not understand ‘cousin,’” Tyr spat. “But worry not, because you do not need to.”

Tyr advanced on Lucas, suddenly rushing forward and swinging his sword, which Lucas just barely dodged. Lucas had immense regret that he had not learned martial arts, he could imagine that Gorn or Valencia could have done something in this situation… But he himself…

“Are you just going to keep running?” Tyr roared as he yanked his sword from the table. Unlike the slaves who had attacked Lucas earlier, Tyr had the benefits of a noble lifestyle, training, and equipment, he was not someone Lucas could deal with and the two soldiers that had entered with Tyr were simply laughing at the spectacle.

Lucas stumbled over a thick carpet and fell back, Tyr raised the sword with a smile on his face, Lady Versi and Almistraus screamed and the soldiers laughed. For Lucas time seemed to move at a crawl… Which it shouldn’t have. Researchers had shown strong evidence that humans perception of time does not change when they are in danger, rather due to how memories are made when they look back on that memory they believe it took longer than it did. So the fact Lucas was able to have that entire thought in this moment was impossible, but here it was.

If he had time to think, he needed to use it… The only thing Lucas could use was the few lessons he had with Julian and he pulled at his magic, feeling the uncomfortable static feeling crawling over his skin. As he did, Lucas felt something else, something around Tyr… He instinctively knew that magic could not penetrate… Whatever it was, which left him panicking except… Lucas did not need to touch Tyr directly, rather he reached into the air itself.

Air is not a sterile thing, thousands of microbes live in every breath of air, not to mention fungal spores and pollen. But Lucas did not have the skill with magic or the time to truly do much with them, but he did not need to do much. He used magic to forcibly attach foreign particles to the microbes and spores as Tyr was inhaling, which caused…

Tyr stumbled back, his free hand going to his chest as he gasped for air, his eyes widening with sudden fear.

“Right now,” Lucas stood up and brushed himself off as Tyr dropped his sword and grasped at his throat and chest while falling to his knees, absolute terror. “You should be experiencing a feeling like being submerged in water, unable to catch your breath. Others had described it like having something heavy on your chest or perhaps like a pillow is being held over your face, my world would call this an asthma attack.”

Lucas wasted no time in putting his own hand around Tyr’s neck, preferring not to leave it to chance. Without medical treatment it was still possible to survive an asthma attack, but doing so while being strangled? Tyr would die here without a doubt. The two soldiers with Tyr started to advance, but Lucas merely gave them the same treatment. Although he had to admit he was still unsure how he was doing this.

Strangling someone takes a while, so Lucas had time to think about it. That might seem like something a sociopath would do, but really, Lucas did not want to focus on the fact he was killing another person with his own hands. Killing like this… It felt wrong, but if it was that or die he’d do it a million times over…

The only thing he could imagine was when Valencia claimed she would give him something, perhaps it wasn’t just the kiss? The electric shock he had felt was similar to how using magic feels after all… The only question was what had she done to him…

When Tyr finally stopped struggling Lucas held on for another minute and then checked his pulse, he was dead. The other two soldiers were still struggling on the floor, but Lucas just gave them a kick in their throats to make certain they would die. He took their weapons for himself, and that allowed him to feel a little better, at least he had a way to defend himself that he understood.

“They had some kind of… Shield?” Lucas was not quite sure what to call it since he had obviously never experienced it before and had not been told of any such thing. “Around them, it seemed to prevent magic from touching them…”

“Some demons have shields like that apparently,” Terrasin commented. “But as I am not mage I do not know much about it.”

“Perhaps they obtained it from their demon allies then,” Lucas frowned. “No wonder they were able to get through our guards so easily.”

“How did you kill them?” Lady Versi said nervously, “I have never seen anything quite like that…”

“Whatever that shield was, it protected them from magic.” Lucas explained as he removed the sword belt and scabbard from Tyr. “So instead of targeting Tyr, I targeted the air he was breathing. You probably were not aware, but the air is full of living creatures. By altering them slightly, I was able to make his body have a severe allergic reaction to the microbes it now recognized as dangerous foreign matter. His body believed he was under attack and in its rush to defend him closed his airways and killed him.”

“That is…” Terrasin shivered at the description.

“Terrible?” Lucas supplied, “because what I just did would be considered illegal in my world. It is proof that I need to be careful of what I teach in this world, because it is far too easy to use magic to produce biological weapons.”

Admittedly, as those weapons go this was quite simple. But honestly, that just made it worse. An easy to produce bioweapon that induces asthma is far more dangerous than a hard to produce weaponized version of ebola. simply because of its ease of production.

“Regardless,” Lucas continued. “It is clear we are not safe here, we should abandon our original plan and meet up with Julian and the others.”