Is it strange I carry a bit of the substance that could end my life on my person? Calvin wondered as he squished the bit of beeswax onto the end of the metal pokey stick, wearing watertight leather gloves.

It wasn’t directly on his person, it was in his ingredient wagon, but still. He carried that around on his person.

In front of him were four shallow dishes with fluids of varying colors. There was a red one, a blue one, a clear one, and one filled with a shimmering substances that Calvin recognized as distilled mutation.

They’d managed to separate out the blood, the plasma, whatever substance made his blood purple, and his standard mutations, now they were going to test each of them with a bit of beeswax on a stick.

Poking things with sticks is the foundation of all science. Elliot said.

Calvin carefully poked the wax into the red blood, and nothing happened.

“Hemoglobin isolate is nonresponsive,” He muttered, taking the blood-covered wax off the tip of his stick before Learner handed him a fresh one.

“Plasma is nonresponsive,” Calvin muttered when the plasma just sat there doing nothing.

Calvin moved on to the scintillating, irridescent liquid and dipped a fresh wad of beeswax in.

There was a faint sizzle as Calvin removed the stick. He could see faint white light emanating from the beeswax as it eroded away, burning the iridescent liquid and giving off faint smoke.

“There’s a weak reaction from the mutations. Definitely not as energetic as when it was consuming my finger.”

“I’d guess it’s more likely that our separating techniques aren’t up to the task, but there’s always the possibility that the mutation requires more than one part to be reactive with beeswax.”

“I’m making a note,” Learner said, jotting it down in the journal right next to the dishes before handing him another ball of wax.

“Last one,” Calvin said, moving onto the blue dish. The blue substance that we suspect changes the coloration of my blood.”

The blue stuff they had separated out by using obsidian.

After subjecting the blood to hundreds of different materials in rapid succession, they had noticed that obsidian caused an unnatural congealing effect that faded when the obsidian was removed.

Intrigued, Calvin had pressed obsidian to the tip of his finger, accomplishing nothing. When he stabbed some into his palm, however, he felt a biting pain and his entire hand locked up, paralyzing him to his elbow.

Obsidian, another weakness of the maculat he hadn’t known about. In this case though, it served as an excellent separator, congealing the blue maculat blood into what were essentially curds before squeezing out the impurities, then painstakingly removing the obsidian flakes with assistance from tiny Knick-knacks.

I just imagined maculat curds. No wait, Calvin curds. You should make a cheese.

Calvin rolled his eyes, wiping off his gloves and putting another wax ball on the end of his stick before carefully extending the tiny rod into the blue liquid.

There was a flash of light, prompting Calvin to kick himself backward, accompanied by a harsh tug on his collar as Learner yanked his clothes.

In a fraction of a second, Calvin was ten feet away from the table, watching the glowing, hissing dish of liquid spatter its contents around the workbench like an out of control grease fire. the spatters glowed white and gave of the faintest smoke as they scattered across the table.

“The notes!” Learner shouted as one of the white hot drops of liquid landed on the pages, sending up a bit of smoke.

“Wait, it’s not-“ Before Calvin could tell her not to, Learner had already lunged forward and smacked the book out of the range of the violent reaction before pushing herself away.

“Nng,” Learner gave the distinctive sound of strangled pain, clutching her palm.

“Let me see,” Calvin said, grabbing a scalpel from a nearby bench and kneeling down beside her. Depending on the strength of the reaction, he might have to cut it away before she lost anything big.

“Stupid adrenaline, makes you stupid.” Learner muttered, unclenching her palm.

Calvin studied the skin of her palm, where she’d touched one of the droplets of white fire.

There was a divot in Learner’s dark skin. It was cauterized out, about the size of a pinky finger, smoldering slightly but no longer growing.

He could see where her body was already sloughing away the charred flesh and beginning to regrow.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Calvin said, tossing the scalpel aside. “Let me know if you feel any poison or infection, but I think the chance is slim.”

“Still hurts,” Learner muttered, watching the hole in her palm slowly close. A second later, her eyes widened. “The notes!”

Learner jumped to her feet and cautiously walked around the table where the last spatters of the blue liquid were burning themselves out. Once she was past the white flames, she snatched the book up with her good hand and wiped off the cover with the back of her hand.

“Thank goodness, it’s not damaged,” Learner said with a sigh.

Calvin and learner glanced at each other, uspoken words passing between them in an instant as they both frowned.

Why in the Abyss wouldn’t there be damage?

“No damage at all?” Calvin asked, approaching the bench as the last of the Maculat blood sputtered out.

“None that I can see.” Learner said, turning the slim, leather bound folder this way and that, frowning and running her fingertips over the cover.

“That’s odd. I could swear I saw some of the drops land on the cover,” Calvin muttered, running his gloved hands over the workbench. He wiped away the grimy residue of the reaction off the wood to reveal…

Nothing. The burning blood hadn’t done a thing to the wood.

Curious, and possibly a little insane, Calvin tugged off the heavy leather glove covering his right hand and slowly swept his hand over the smooth grain of the wood.

No heat whatsoever. Even if it hadn’t caught the table on fire, it should have at least left some hotspots, especially right next to the scorched dish, where most of the splatters of white flame had erupted. Even there, Calvin felt no heat on his fingers.

He ran his fingers over the ‘scorch’ marks on the glass dish and came away with a bit of grime, but no heat, and no damage or melting. The scorch marks looked like the black tar from burning, which made Calvin think there had been some kind of combustion, and the impurities had been deposited on the glass…

But there was no heat.

It wasn’t an endothermic reaction either. The glass wasn’t cold.

So where the Abyss was the energy coming from, and where did it go?

“Calvin.” Learner called his attention to her, then motioned to the ground, stooping to inspect the ground where the spatters of fire had fallen.

The thick grass of the clearing around the city walls showed few signs that dollops of white fire had been scattered around. None of them were burned.

Calvin’s gaze fell on one of the thicker blades of grass, covered with a distinctive smudge of tar-like substance. Calvin wiped it off with his thumb, revealing a happy, healthy blade of grass underneath.

“At first I thought maybe it only burns living matter, but the grass is fine, implying that whatever this reaction is, it’s more complicated than a typical chemical reaction” Learner said, her smile widening. “This requires more study.”

“I’m down,” Calvin said, using a rag to wipe out the smudged dish and refilling it from the jar of replicated blue fluid.

“Any idea what the impurities making the smudge are?” Calvin asked.

“I’m not sure,” Learner responded. “This isn’t a normal combustion reaction so my only thought is that it likely isn’t typical carbon residue.”

“Well, let’s poke around with it, maybe we’ll get a clue how it chooses what to burn.”

***Several hours later***

“The atomized beeswax suspended in Vreek oil interacts with the Maculat blood at a controlled pace, identical to the other oil emulsifiers, but without the inordinate amount of waste residue.”

Calvin watched the white flame flicker on top of the V column of dishes. Unlike the myriad columns to the left and the right, there were no gouts of black smoke billowing out above the test dishes.

“V-one through V-four had too much beeswax to Vreek oil, creating violent reactions as expected, while eight through fifteen exhibited weaker reactions than we want. What were the ratios on five, six, and seven?” Calvin asked.

Learner flipped open the notepad in front of the V-series, then handed it to him.

“Hmmm, let’s have the Knick-knacks run some tests to find the exact mixture that results in the ideal controllable reaction. Let’s have them run every mixture between V-5 and v-7 in increments of one tenth of a percent.”

“Sounds good.” Learner said, closing the notepad. “I’ve been thinking about re-introducing Mutation catalysts from the collection in the wagon now that we’re closing in on a viable mix.”

“Sounds fine. Anything in particular?”

Learner shrugged. “I’m going to apply a wide array of isolated mutations to see if there’s something unforeseen, but given the mixture’s unique properties, I’m interested to see if it would be possible to give the material synergy with a Wraith’s non-living intangibility.”

“You’re so much better at this than Goob.” Goob, lord of plastic production, was still hiding from girls with the Ooze Weavers.

I should help him with that sometime, Calvin thought, rubbing his chin with his gloved fingers.

“Not that difficult,” Learner said before climbing into the supply wagon.

“Go ahead, I’ll note the consumption rate while you’re out,” Calvin said, grabbing the notepad and watching as his Knick-knacks began feeding captured roaches into the white flames. The roaches twitched for an instant in the fire before they caught fire, burned white and crumbled into ash unnaturally fast.

How the abyss does that work? Calvin shook his head, noting how many roaches each admixture took to expend its payload.

From what they understood so far, only living creatures with nervous systems were actively affected by the substance.

Shoving living grass into the flames did nothing, nor did iron, or wood, or even the flesh of a corpse, but if it had a living brain, it died. Strange.

It might seem cruel to burn living creatures left and right, but they were roaches, and this was fun.

Predictably, V-5 was able to consume the most roaches before running out of juice, flowed by six and seven. The amount of drop off was pretty drastic, implying there was a very specific mixture that would perform the best.

Note, instruct the knick-knacks to try mixtures stronger than V-5 in one tenth of a percent increments as well. Also, if we add another catalyst to change the behavior profile, we may have to increase the concentration of the active ingredients in order to compensate for the dilution. V-4 may see the light of day.

Calvin was humming to himself when he felt tapping on his shoulder.

“Mm?” Calvin glanced up and spotted Tzen, covered in nicks and scratches, along with a black eye where it looked like someone had smashed him in the face with the pommel of a sword. His fancy clothes were bloody and tattered, someone had taken a chunk out of his long dark hair. He was sporting a shit-eating grin.

To his right was a bound and gagged Bolesian man with extra-long mustache that Calvin assumed was part of the Hapain clan. He was giving everyone a rather intense glare above the wadded cloth in his mouth.

“Hi. Welcome back.” Ella said, from a bit to the left, where she stood with her arms crossed, covered in blood from head to toe. Her skin was metallic red, slowly absorbing the crimson material and adding it to her defenses.

Calvin blinked a couple times, his mind catching up with the situation. “What’s up?”

“Are you literally burning your own blood…to pass the time?” Tzen asked.

“I copied the original vial with undifferentiated matter, so it’s mostly not my blood, and it’s not really to pass the time. I had this idea rattling around in my head since the Uleis meeting. I had to work on it sometime, and there was nothing more pressing going on.”

Calvin glanced past Tzen, and spotted the flags of the royal family had replaced the symbol of the Hapain clan, fluttering atop the remaining walls of the city.

“Oh, are you guys done already?” Calvin asked. “How’d it go? Well, obviously you won.”

“Pay up,” Ella said, holding out a hand.

Tzen groaned and tossed Ella what appeared to be a scarf ring made of mother-of pearl.

Ella clutched the pretty with an evil grin before storing it in the waistband of her tattered clothes.

“Nice doing business with you,” Ella said, waving as she left.

“She bet you forgot about the battle.” Tzen grumbled, watching the tall girl saunter away.

Calvin pursed his lips and decided to let that pass. He had ignored the battle more than he’d forgotten about it.

“So how did it go?”

“We got feathers, without the fat,” Tzen said, scowling. “We might have been stronger, but two hundred men can’t secure an entire city obviously. We captured the Hapain clan leader, but the rest went to ground, escaping through tunnels hidden throughout the castle like Brek’nan rats.”

“You still look pretty pleased,” Calvin said, looking Tzen up and down. Aside from the obvious happiness in his stance, Calvin could see the prince’s mental state was clear, the cracks in his glass doll small and infrequent.

“We might not have gotten them all, but we made the Hapain clan pay dearly. We put them on the back foot, and advanced my cause tremendously.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“Thousands of civilians, hunters and soldiers have signed up to join my faction.”

“Did you tell them your faction is just you?” Calvin asked, quirking a brow.

Tzen blew out a breath. “Pfft, What do you mean just me? I’ve got a fortress city, a castle, and an army.”

“Oh.” Calvin said, glancing past Tzen at the slightly pre-owned city and it’s castle.

I hope he got Carfax.

“You’re not afraid they’ll use a secret passage to sneak back in and stab you in your sleep?”

“That’s what magic is for.” Tzen said. “And as a precaution I’ll probably remodel the interior and switch the servant’s quarters with the master bedroom.”

“In any case, we’re not going to be spending a long time here.”

“Oh?”

“I have to rally my brothers and crush the fleeing remains of the Hapain clan before we can align against the creatures to the East.”

“How long will that take?” Calvin asked.

“Months, at best.”

“That’s not really fast enough.” Calvin muttered, scratching his chin with his thick gloves. The rate at which that black forest was expanding was ridiculous. Calvin was pretty sure some of the small trees were visibly taller by the time he left.

“The royal heirloom. The one that makes you the legitimate successor. What is it?”

“A weapon of unimaginable power carved from the bones of a divine beast. At least according to the history books. It’s described as a bow that rains destruction in the wake of its arrows.”

“Really?” Calvin asked, thinking Baroke would love to get his hands on-

“It’s also described as a slender sword that can sever anything, be it material or immaterial, a galaxy that fits in the palm of the hand, a fiery chariot that flies, a beam of light that vibrates the strings of the universe, a woman with a face of smooth stone, a tree whose roots extend-

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Calvin said, raising his hands.

“It hasn’t been used in centuries. The old man is the only one who even knows what it looks like. As far as the brothers and I are concerned, it’s most likely lost.”

“That presents us with two options,” Calvin said, holding up his fingers. “First option. A madcap adventure where we search far and wide, looking for the secret of the royal heirloom, only to discover the key to the secret was the friendship inside us all along.”

“Pass,” Tzen said, waving his hand.

“The second option,” Calvin said, grinning mischievously. “Is we lie our asses off.”

“A fake?” Tzen asked, frowning. “That… that actually might work. It would require an artifact approaching divine power in order to be believable.”

“I could probably whip up something that scares the shit out of people,” Calvin said, nodding. “I seem to do that often enough without even trying.”

“What, by playing around with blood all afternoon?” Tzen asked, raising a brow.

“Check this out.”

Calvin made a quick batch of V-3 and flicked it at the prisoner before it had a chance to explode.

The Hapain man burst into flames, forcing everyone to step back from the heat as white gouts of flame shot up into the sky. The man’s body was consumed in a matter of seconds like a bit of pipeweed attached to a bellows, glowing white followed by crumbling ash.

The remains collapsed to the ground, where the man’s clothes and jewelry settled on top of the ash, along with the rope and the gag. It didn’t quite reach the man’s feet, and they were still inside his boots, cauterized stumps smoking out the top of the leather.

Stunned silence spread outward, radiating through the mix of hunters and civilians gathered around them. None of them dared to speak a word or approach the ashy remains, despite the heavy gold jewelry and ornate silk clothes lying there for the taking.

“How cool is that?” Calvin asked. “I still haven’t figured out a name for it, though.”

You know, you could just ask Kala to find out where the artifact is with her Seer powers. Elliot said, his voice filled with exasperation.

Oh. Shit. I guess the fake artifact is Plan B now.