By the time I was done getting the cores out of the woman, I was quite eager to have my right arm back. Cutting apart rats with knives using force magic was annoying, but there wasn’t any sort of time restriction and the process wasn’t nearly as messy. In contrast, trying to access the organs quickly so I could remove the heart and stomach cores of the corpse in the alley, without being covered in blood, seemed impossible. At least the skull was easy enough to split, I thought as I wiped my hand on the corpse’s clothing. I checked the seal on the tube of blood one more time to make sure I hadn’t broken it, glanced at the three lumps of flesh suspended inside, then pocketed it once more and began climbing the wall.

Did I leave a trail? I thought once I reached the roof. As I was about to look over the side, the sounds of metal-clad footfalls made me pull back and hide.

“I heard the yells from somewhere over here,” a female voice said, far to my left.

“You stay here, let us take a look,” a male voice replied. Time to leave, I thought, getting to my feet and breaking into a run. With force magic and core control jumping between rooftops was easy, the main consideration was making sure I wouldn’t be spotted while doing so. In this case, however, that consideration came secondary to getting away from the scene of a murder. As I sailed over the street in dark clothing, not a single person even looked upward to spot me, though a few drops of blood did fall from my chest onto the dirt below.

“Murder!” someone yelled a second after I landed on my target roof, and I ducked down low again just to be safe. Immediately, chaos erupted in the streets as panic swept through the civilians and the guards began moving to assist. At least I-

“There’s blood on the wall!” someone else shouted. “Check the roofs! Spread out!” Damn it, I swore, I need to get out of here now.

It took almost two hours of zigzagging between roofs before I finally got away cleanly. Nobody actually saw me at any point during the pursuit, but the Kahvahrniydah royal guards were exceedingly efficient at creating wide search patterns by simply shouting orders between each other, expanding their sphere of influence faster than I could flee it. Thankfully, they weren’t patrolling in sufficient numbers to observe all four sides of every building at all times, meaning that every couple of minutes I could exploit gaps in their movement patterns to change my location.

Covered in sweat and dried blood, I finally landed on a building just across from the Zae’ey’yaob mansion and breathed a sigh of relief. Once again I checked my vial, finding it still sealed, then I glanced down at the foot traffic below and waited. Thankfully they thought I would flee towards the poorer areas of town, so they seem to be expanding the pattern that way, I thought. Looking at my magic levels, I was once again nearly out of solid fuel and the nutrient required to make it, but I didn’t have far to go before I could get a warm bath and make a trip to the kitchen.

After about five minutes of waiting, I saw an opportunity to jump the gap into the Zae’ey’yaob property, and I took it. With a running start, I pushed myself off the ledge at forty-five degrees, creating an arc that let me sail upward across the fence so I would land on the lawn. This is a security flaw, now that I think of it, I thought as I impacted the ground. Normally I would have rolled, but I couldn’t risk damaging my cargo, so instead I let my ankles snap from the impact force. I should tell Aavspeyjh how I did this, the wall should be at least another three meters tall to prevent intrusion.

“What the seyt are you doing here?” a familiar, muffled voice growled behind me. A heavy mass of metal came down slowly on my shoulder, resting there as an implied threat. “You know, I don’t think the guard would care if I bashed your brains in, and I might even be able to squeeze some cash out of this house’s master if I did.” Looks like she managed to find another mace, I thought.

“You should reconsider,” I replied quietly, raising my arms. “I’m not a thief, in fact I’m a guest at the moment.” Because it was touching my shoulder, I felt the mace quiver for a moment as its wielder heard my voice and recognized it.

“I seytoydh knew it,” Vaozey sighed, sounding simultaneously angered and relieved. “Gods-damned ihv kept me sleeping like a baby, but I knew you weren’t enough of a niyzao to die like that. Looks like they got you pretty good though, judging by the arm. What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” The mace was removed from my shoulder and I turned around, putting my hands down and removing my face covering.

“I was about to ask the same thing,” I replied. Vaozey rolled her eyes and snorted, then put the mace back into a holder on her hip. Unlike the last time I saw her, she was wearing armor again, but nothing as heavy as her original suit. A single-piece chest plate, a shoulder and collar guard, forearm guards, and a pair of boots sat atop a simple two-piece leather outfit. On her head, she wore an open-faced helm with a scarf underneath to hide her burns.

“As it turns out, there isn’t much work in this city,” Vaozey scoffed. “At least, not for people like me. I’ve been doing some favors for people, one of which was dropping off some stuff over here at the request of the innkeeper at that place we were staying. Oddly, this one pays better than cracking skulls does.”

“I thought the temple was sponsoring you,” I replied. “Or… perhaps the government? Something like that.” Just from her brow, I could tell Vaozey started to scowl, and she looked away.

“Those jhoytvahz npoytz can’t do anything but argue back and forth endlessly,” she spat. “I got sick of it and gave them a piece of my mind, and in return, they politely suggested I should stop showing up to their talks. Can’t leave Kahvahrniydah until they're finished though, of course, because I might actually fix their problem before they get done discussing it.” From what I’ve heard of the politics of this region, that doesn’t sound out of the ordinary, I thought. “Why do you smell like you just took a bath in blood?” Vaozey asked.

“No reason,” I replied. “So, what, did you just see me jump over the wall and run over here?”

“Are you really a guest here?” Vaozey asked. “I figured the Zae’ey’yaobs had something to do with this, but I was half-convinced they were the ones who sent the assassin after you to shut you up or something. You wouldn’t believe the stories that are going around.”

“They were Rehvites, definitely,” I replied. “What sorts of stories?”

“Everything from a secret hit squad trying to kill a politician to a god appearing to smite those who slighted it,” Vaozey cackled, smiling under her face mask. “Most of them are just as ludicrous as the truth, I assume. Not that I doubt you, but I’m surprised the attackers were actually Rehvites given their tactics. They don’t generally sneak around and rely on tools or tricks, they prefer shows of force. Did they really use some kind of exploding canisters to destroy your room while you were asleep?”

“Grenades, yes,” I replied. “I need to get back inside before someone notices I’m gone or sees us talking. I’m not supposed to be out here right now.”

“So you’re staying at the rich boy's house until your arm heals, I’m guessing?” Vaozey asked.

“Another week or so at most, yes,” I replied. Vaozey’s eyes narrowed, and she looked at my empty sleeve.

“A week?” she grunted.

“Maybe less,” I replied, unable to suppress a slight grin. Vaozey didn't look like she believed me, but she didn't dispute me either.

The window I had left through was still unlocked when I found it, so I slipped back inside the mansion and made a beeline for the nearest bathroom, stopping on the way to drop off the vial of blood in my laboratory. Once again I startled a servant by walking around covered in blood, but as usual, nothing was said about it. By the time I was done in the bathroom, I had to choose between sleeping and eating as both had become pressing issues on my psyche. Opting for the latter, I stopped by the kitchen and ordered a stew, and by the time I was finished, I was so tired that I didn’t even remember walking back to my room.

The next day, back in the lab, I sealed the tube inside my low-oxygen environment and popped it open, saving the blood inside another tube for reuse. As I looked at the three core organs I had a moment of hesitation before I allowed myself to cut them open, briefly paralyzed by the thought that some errant oxygen might evaporate the bounty I had retrieved. Picking the one of the three with the thinnest flesh, I grabbed it and a knife with force magic and made an incision, then gave the organ a gentle squeeze. Out popped a mass of solid magic fuel at least as large as ten rat cores, which clattered against the glass beneath it.

That’s very odd, I thought as I looked at it, The rat cores had hexagonal prism-shaped crystals for the most part, but this looks more like it tends towards cubic shapes, but also has some others in small grains along the edges. Maybe the most common shape indicates what organisms it's compatible with? The chemical structure could be different, I suppose, but then what exactly is this material? I had been putting aside investigating some of the more anomalous properties of magic fuel in favor of creating a practical product, but the sheer amount of things about it that didn’t make sense was beginning to weigh on my mind. No, this isn’t the time, I said to myself, just focus on making a magic-dense mixture and testing it. Save the details for later.

I split the other two cores open then dumped their lumps of fuel into the blood vial, trying my best not to think too hard about the one that had primarily dodecahedron-shaped crystal structures. As expected, all three of them quickly vanished as I grabbed the wax seal and re-applied it, then slipped a snake tooth needle through the center. I guess I should test this out, I thought, or rather, I should try the equivalent strength mixture on a rat first and make sure I’m not about to kill myself, then test it if it's safe.

A few of the rats I had tied up appeared to have died of starvation, but the others that were alive had spent their time cannibalizing the corpses within reach so they were still in good enough condition. I picked the largest of them, a gray-brown animal nearly twenty centimeters long, and placed it on the table. The vials of heavily-saturated rat blood were still in the same order I had left them in, so I selected the third weakest and brought it over, then slipped the snake tooth into the rat’s leg. In one push, not waiting for the needle to clog, I shoved the day-old blood into the rat’s veins, then pulled the tooth out and observed.

My test subject squeaked much like the others who had died did, but unlike them, it remained alive. Thrashing against the string binding its limbs, its movements grew increasingly violent and its head snapped from side to side. If that rat were human, it would be cursing me right now, I thought, amused by the strange idea. My amusement stopped as a series of crunching noises came from the animal, which was breaking its bones because of the sheer force of its movements. The squealing intensified, then a forelimb came free and raked the table, ripping out curls of wood with its nails before they too snapped off, only to be replaced moments later.

It’s not going to kill me, so I guess this test is a success, I thought, reaching out and grabbing the rat’s head with my left hand. I could have just decapitated it with a knife, but the lab was already filthy enough so I opted for crushing instead to save magic. The skull broke easily under my grip, but the struggling of the rat’s body didn’t stop. Instead, its spasms intensified, limbs tearing loose from their bindings and ripping at my skin. It wasn’t until I destroyed the animal’s head to the point that bits of brain oozed between my fingers that it finally slowed down and stopped moving. Even then, when I removed my hand pieces of its skin looked like they were slowly healing for a few seconds.

I might have made something extremely dangerous here, I thought ten minutes later, sitting in a wooden chair and holding the sealed tube of human blood. From what I saw the rats had no real talent with force magic, nor any other kind of magic, but the influx of power had apparently allowed my test subject to use internal force magic through sheer instinct. What could happen if I lose control of this when I use it? I wondered. In my mind, there was usually a distinct barrier between magical and non-magical actions, but I knew well enough that even I had occasionally cast something purely through instinct. What are the limits of what I could do by accident? I asked in my mind, as though someone was listening. Of course, I got no answer.

In silence, I sat just a little while longer, staring at the vial and building my nerve. I never understood why some warbreed pseudofemales acted like this before battles until just now, I thought, I suppose they were just a bit more like creator humans than the full-blooded males. Three times I tried to bring the vial to my right arm stump, and three times my instincts forced me to pull it back as if telling me I was about to do something that would kill me. The fourth time, I didn’t let myself pull back, stabbing the snake tooth needle in before my body knew what was going on.

My heart hammered in my chest, and suddenly I realized I should probably be sitting down. Finding my chair and moving carefully to not slip the needle out I sat down and leaned back, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. Then, with a flex of magic, I pulled the wax cap off the inside of the needle, waiting until my blood started to wash back into the tube before I used any other magic. Once I heard droplets falling into the tube and breaking the liquid’s surface, I grabbed the makeshift syringe’s contents and shoved them upward, feeling a rush of liquid flow into my veins.

Unlike with the rat blood, the effect was near-instant and overwhelming, as if I had injected pure fire and lightning into myself that spread from my stump until it filled my entire body. I was so distracted by trying to suppress the instinct to scream that I didn’t even notice when my left hand crushed the glass tube, the pain of both the injury and the healing paling in comparison to what every sensory nerve of my body was already experiencing. The blue aggregate bar of my heads-up display, which for some reason decided to appear of its own accord, pulsed like a beating heart, looking oddly organic to spite its minimalistic and geometric design.

Need to keep my concentration and focus it on the arm, I thought with a growl, pushing with my mind to direct the fire in my veins back to where it was injected. My vision was narrowing like it had done the first time, but I could still see a small circle in the middle of the static, which found itself peering at my right stump. As the fire pooled where my elbow was to be, it intensified to an extreme degree, growing more painful than I thought possible. The last thing I saw before my eyes failed me completely was my flesh rippling and contorting like it was made of the same wax I had grown accustomed to, then sprouting two curled spears of bone that looked more like antlers than anything belonging to a human limb.