This wasn’t great. Right now, I wanted to focus on Maslin. Killing three people, self-defence or not, was a lot to have asked a nine-year-old. Even a super-powered one.

Super-powered was probably an overstatement. While Maslin was stronger than any of my ex-boyfriends, I could probably beat him at arm wrestling. Probably. It depended on what his level was, and how he’d spent his stats.

All of which was a distraction from the real matter at hand.

“So the situation is,” I said to the group, “That Duke Finlay is missing some of his assassins, that he wants — or wanted to kidnap me, and we are sitting on an illegal dungeon. Oh, and we murdered three people.”

That might have been double-counting the same item, but I did feel that the repercussions of eliminating Duke Finley’s assassins needed to be counted separately from the result of killing three of the King’s servants.

“If it helps, evidence of their existence here no longer exists,” Rhis said, a little too proudly in my opinion.

I took a deep breath. “That does actually help,” I admitted. “But for future reference, in the absence of a life or death threat, it’s more helpful to not commit the crime, than it is to conceal the evidence of it.”

“Understood,” Rhis said, nodding seriously as if I had dispensed some profound wisdom.

“I’m sorry,” Felicia said, looking up from where she was fussing over Maslin. “This is all my fault. I’m the alchemist, I should have been quicker with an antidote.”

“No, Felicia, this caught us all off-guard,” I said. “And right after we were warned about just that. Diagnosing and finding an antidote is expecting too much from someone who’s just been drugged.”

“If I can make a suggestion.” Rhis raised his hand, a habit he must have picked up along with English. “I should be able to make an item that would detect poisons or drugs, given enough time to accumulate mana.”

“How long?” I asked.

“It’s difficult to say right now,” he replied, with a thoughtful look. “The mana density here fluctuates strongly. I haven’t had enough time to establish a pattern… but perhaps two or three days. More if I am forced to exert myself to protect you, of course.”

“Do the corpses help with that?” Kyle asked with studious neutrality.

“The corpses provide XP, which is appreciated, and raw materials. However, a magical item requires a mana-enhanced metal of some sort, which they sadly lacked.”

That was tempting. Dangerously tempting, in fact.

“Just how easy is it… to tell if there’s a dungeon around?” I wondered. From the blank looks and shaken heads, no one actually knew. I turned on my mana sense and looked at the wall that separated us from my dungeon. It was… hard to tell. I thought I could sense a general movement of free mana, but I was too close to really get an idea.

“I need to go outside and take a look,” I said.

“It’s the middle of the night,” Janie pointed out.

I shrugged. “I’m sure the guards have had crazier requests than a midnight wall. I’ll just tell them I couldn’t sleep. They’ll probably want to escort me, but I just need a quick look.” I looked down at myself to see if I was in a fit state to go out, and I saw that I wasn’t.

“Ugh, who spilled this drugged wine on me?” I asked rhetorically. At least this I could fix. I cast [Disguise], and put myself in a different, clean dress. “Wish me luck,” I said, heading for the door.

It wasn’t long before I hurried back in. “Bad news guys. It’s visible.” I wasn’t sure if the reason I could see mana at night was because the grounds were well lit, or because mana wasn’t seen, exactly. Whatever the reason, it was pretty clear we were screwed once people woke up.

“There’s a big mana-funnel right over our rooms,” I told the others. “It’s not moving very fast, but it’s very clearly visible. Sorry, Rhis, we’re going to have to disable the dungeon.”

“Must you?” Rhis asked petulantly. “I don’t relish returning to that imbecilic state.”

“Well… can you cast [Conceal Mana]?” I asked. “Since you can do illusions.”

Rhis brightened at the thought and got an absent look on his face. “I can… but only as a trap field,” he said with a disappointed look. “It can only affect the mana inside my domain,” he explained to our confused looks.

Can I do it? With [Theurgy], it should be possible. I had an example spell to work with, my own [Conceal Mana]. That was actually a very sophisticated spell for its level, with multiple options at cast time. If I was doing it myself, I wouldn’t need all those additional complications, but I would have to change the target and range limitations…

“Let me think about this for a second,” I told the others and summoned the spell construct to mind. This was something I could do now, just… consider a complex structure as if I was looking at it. Enhanced [Intelligence] for the win.

If I got rid of this… extended this… and turned that around…

It seemed doable… until I looked at the power requirements. This was looking like a level fifteen spell at least. Probably a level twenty. Which would mean getting a casting total of more than 200. Unfortunately, [Theurgy] was based on [Inteligence]. At my current score and level, I’d need… a seven in the skill.

So that was out. I was just going to have to accept that I wouldn’t be as good as other magics as I was at illusions. Something nagged at me though. This was an illusion spell. Surely what I needed to do was create a new [Illusion Magic] spell, rather than doing it through [Theurgy].

Exactly how to do that was beyond me at the moment though. “Sorry Rhis, I can’t cast it myself, we’re going to have to shut you down.”

“Yes, master,” Rhis said sadly. “I’ll undo the spatial expansion then.”

“Do we have to worry about the stuff you’ve stored away?” I asked, carefully not mentioning that the only thing he should have were the corpses of our assassins.

“I can purge that into… actually, I’m not sure where it goes,” Rhis mused. “Unless you wanted any of it?”

“No… send it away if you can. Is there a better way of deactivating you than what we did before?”

“Probably not,” Rhis told me. “There is a shutdown procedure, but I suspect… it returns the core to a default state. I’d prefer it if you repeated your rash and unconsidered action from before.”

“Happy to,” I said wryly.

“I’m ready now,” he said simply. I nodded and entered the common room. This time it was normally sized. The only difference from the room I remembered was the crystal core, perched on a short pedestal about a foot high in the middle of the room.

“Please proceed,” said the illusion of Rhis, which had followed me in. I sighed, and without further ceremony, grabbed the orb and pulled it out of its socket.

Dungeon core has been removed from external mana construct. Five minutes before external construct unravels.

“I—” Rhis said, and then was cut off, disappearing.

“Rhis!” I said, but there wasn’t anything I could do right now. The orb in my hands was shrinking, the mana it was composed of twisting and re-configuring as I watched. Trying to link the illusion to it was probably a wasted effort. In any case, Rhis wasn’t the illusion, he was what I was holding in my hand.

Not wanting to be inside when the contract collapsed, I stepped out of the room.

“I hope there isn’t any damage,” I said to the expectantly waiting others. “It would be hard to explain.”

“I think the damage in Oakway was mostly caused by the spatial expansion collapsing,” Felicia said uncertainly. “Since he didn’t make any actual changes, it should be fine?”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” I agreed. We all waited anxiously for the five minutes to expire. When it did, there wasn’t a crunch, or an explosion or anything. We opened the connecting door and peered gingerly through it.

“Seems OK,” I said.

“Let me go first,” Kyle said, and cautiously stepped inside. He took three steps in, looking carefully around. “Seems just the same as before,” he said.

One at a time, we all entered back into the room, checking that all the doors still worked, and led to the same rooms that they had before. Eventually, we all took our seats in the restored common room, and I re-attached Rhis’s enchantment.

“Hello! That was weird,” he said, looking around. “I said some pretty mean things about myself, didn’t I?”

“You remember all that?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he replied. “A lot of it is quite fuzzy, but what I said, what you said, is pretty clear.

“I like this you better,” Maslin interjected. He was sitting between Janie and Felicia on the couch but was seemingly feeling better. “The other you was mean.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because I’ll be back to that as soon as possible, right?” Rhis said, looking at me.

“When we can do it safely,” I agreed. “You’re not worried about your own self getting subsumed into the larger construct?” While super-intelligent Rhis was more useful, I had to admit that I liked… mini-Rhis better than his bigger self as well.

Rhis looked at me, puzzled. “No? I’m different, but I’m not different people,” he said. “Does that make sense?”

“Not a lot, but I think I understand.” I turned back to the others. “Now that that is settled, we need to deal with the rest of it.”

“That?” Felicia asked.

“You know, the bit where we got attacked while under the King’s protection.”

“Oh, right.” Felicia flushed. “I did get distracted by…” she glanced at Maslin and elected not to continue.

“Right. So, any ideas on how this happened? If it was the wine, it was sealed when we came into the room.”

“And you picked the bottle,” Kyle pointed out. “So if it was poisoned beforehand, they would have had to poison all of them.”

“Is it relevant that the wine steward was one of the assassins?” Rhis asked. We all looked at him. “Sorry, I forgot to mention that?”

“Forgot?” I asked. Forgetting didn’t sound like Construct Rhis.

Rhis smiled sheepishly. “More like… didn’t think it was relevant?” He frowned in thought. “It’s fuzzy, but I think I wanted the conversation to go a different way?”

He wanted us to focus on the magical detector, I realised. Have us keep him around for a bit longer. Interesting. It seemed that he was capable of some manipulation after all. Not terribly harmful — when it came down to it, I’d rather have the device than focus on the poisoner. But it was good to know that he could act in his own interests.

“That is relevant,” I said. “If anyone could poison wine while it’s being poured, it’s the guy doing the poison. Sleight of hand, do you think?”

“Maybe some sort of ability from his [Profession]?” Janie suggested.

“That’s disturbing. Is there some sort of—” it was easier to query the System than it was to finish the question. There was a [Poisoner] profession.

Profession: Poisoner

Development Cost: 10

Description: The Poisoner slips through society, striking at his enemies with equal amounts of subtlety and viscousness.

Pre-requisites: Level 4 - Intelligence 6 - Herbalism

Skill Unlocks: [Intrigue], [Legerdemain], [Acting]

Skill Bonuses: [Cooking], [Intrigue], [Herbalism] +2 , [Weapon Mastery - Dagger]

Extra: Infuse Dose

There wasn’t further help on Infuse Dose, but it did sound like something that could have been used here.

“Nasty,” Janie commented when I passed that on to the others. “So where does that leave us?”

“If the wine steward was the [Poisoner],” I mused, “then we probably don’t have to worry about further attacks of that nature. Duke Finley can’t have that many [Poisoners] in the King's employ.”

“Not the only guy that wants to kill you though,” Janie pointed out.

“Can we get one of those rings without setting up our own Dungeon?” I asked.

“I’ve never heard of a Dungeon that offered that,” Kyle said. “Doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

“We could ask Enchanter Mandel to get his dungeon to do it,” Felicia pointed out. “He’s not so concerned with people finding out about him now.”

“Can you enchant one yourself?” Janie asked.

“I don’t know of a Detect Poison rune,” I said. I looked at Rhis. “Is there one?”

“I don’t think so?” Rhis answered. “You can detect a single thing though, so if you hook up a bunch of them together, along with some… other stuff that looks for poisons you don’t know about, you can get pretty good results.”

I sighed, “When you say a bunch, are you talking hundreds, or thousands of runes?”

“Um, too many for me to count, so the last one I guess.”

“Right so that’s out. Instead, for now, let’s just try to make sure that someone who isn’t a kid is left out for any meals that we have together.”

“Not just Felicia,” I added as everyone looked at her. “We’ll take turns, and Felicia can put together an antidote pack for that person to hold.”

Everyone murmured agreement, so I moved on to the next item. “The next thing is what we tell the King’s people in the morning. I’m thinking we don’t tell them anything.”

“And let Duke Finley get away with it?” Felicia protested.

“I know. But the only reason we know it’s him is the Intrigue notification, and they can’t be shared.” I looked around at the others. “So it comes down to our — well, my word against his, and he’s a Noble. Plus we’d have to come up with a good explanation of how we survived.”

“I get it. It’s just like the orphanage,” Cutter put in, surprising everyone. “You don’t go snitching to the grown-ups. Someone does you, you do them back.”

Maslin nodded slowly, if not agreeing, then at least understanding the argument.

“I guess it is the same,” I agreed. “In both cases, you don’t have someone you can trust to judge fairly, so you have to take matters into your own hands.”

“Is he going to do the same? Just write off his losses?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll come after us looking to recover them,” I said slowly. “That’s how the game is played after all. This is just the opening round.”