The stuff tasted like liquid tar, and even as Lucas’ stomach gurgled in protest, he tried not to contempte how much poison was in all the different reagents he’d boiled to make this stuff. It’s probably enough to kill Hura’gh dead, he decided, not that that bit of knowledge would do much good.

  Slowly, that discomfort transformed into muscle spasms and then a general numbness. When he started to have trouble sitting up, he let himself y down, trying to keep his shit together as the cold fire in his stomach slowly made its way up his spine, turning off various organs as it went.

  He’d expected this to be a gentle or even pleasant death, given the nature of Blue, but that was not at all the case. It hurt more than Lucas thought it would. He’d died before, but that had involved fire and a taser, so of course, it had hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but this wasn’t what he thought it would be.

  Stay calm, he told himself as he started having trouble breathing, or even keeping his eyes open. This is all part of the pn.

  Lucas hoped that was true. Still, he was reassured when, just like he took the Potion of Lesser Communion, something seemed to resolve out of the darkness. This time it was no garden tea party. He was somewhere far stranger. It seemed to be an arboreal city of sorts.

  It had that same imprecise, impressionistic feel that it had the st time, but otherwise, everything was different. There were trees as far as he could see, above and around him in every direction. There were elves, too. In fact, there were more elves milling about around him than he’d probably seen altogether in his whole life, slowly fading into view as the darkness retreated and his vision cleared.

  These weren’t the elves he’d seen in Lordanin or in his first master’s apothecary shop, though. Those had been dregs and junkies that weren’t welcome into elven society. These, though, were important people. It was easy to tell both by their robes and the way they carried themselves. They were also dead people, as it turned out, and he continued to see right through them.

  Still, despite their growing anger at his presence, he spun slowly in pce, taking it all in. This pce, whether it was elvish heaven or not, was the most beautiful pce he’d ever been, hands down. The structures seemed to be grown into the trees, and the organic flow of things like stairs and arches matched seamlessly. Even the stones on the pza he was standing on fit together so tightly they looked as if they’d been grown together.

  Still, none of that compared to the giant structure that could only be a pace. It had been just behind him when he showed up, but now that he’d seen it, and the wide stairs made of pure, pink-veined marble, he couldn’t help but climb them. Some of the elves seemed very irate at this decision, but they were screaming things at him in a tongue that he did not understand.

  “Sorry, no hablo Elf-o,” he said back, the first couple of times, but as the protests grew louder, the amount of fucks he had to give started to wane.

  “Yeah, same to you, buddy,” he called back. Still, he did manage to resist giving them the finger, but only because he was trying to be polite.

  The stairs seemed to be interminably long, but he didn’t get tired. Instead, the farther up he went, the faster he walked. When he approached the pace door, which was a gilded monstrosity at least twenty feet tall, the guards brandished their wide tower shields and fancy spears with strange bdes on the end but did not attempt to stop him.

  “Seems like no one is happy to see me,” he said to himself. He recalled the Heisenburgle saying something about that at one point, but now it was lost to him. In fact, now that he noticed, his whole memory was about as fuzzy as the painterly details of this pce, but he didn’t stress out about it because there wasn’t shit he could do to change it.

  Lucas walked through the pace like he was a fish on a line. He had no real choice in the direction he was going. Instead, at every turn, he knew with certainty which way he needed to go, and no matter what he might see in other directions, there was no way he could divert and go explore it more.

  When he finally found the throne room of the elven Goddess he’d met before. She was still impossibly beautiful, but the st time he’d seen her, she must have been in her business casual outfit because now, she was every inch a Goddess. Her clothes were made of silver thread, and the crown on her head barely contained any metal at all. Instead, it was a consteltion of jewels that orbited just above her head without quite touching it. It was a shocking sight, and it made it almost impossible for him to look around and take in the rest of the throne room in any detail.

  All he could do was stare and approach the throne. There, there were a handful of guards in even shiner armor than the ones outside, and as soon as he got close enough, they thumped the butts of their hafts against the stone floor, sending out a single dull note. The message was clear in any nguage. Close enough, buddy, stop right there.

  So, Lucas did just that, standing twenty feet from the throne. He gave the Goddess a low bow and said, “Your Majesty, you asked me to come, and here I am.”

  “So you are,” she said with a smile. “You may rise, Sir Sharpe, I am most impressed. I cannot remember the st time someone who was not of at least half-elvish descent stood in these hallowed halls. I hope it was worth it. You have made history, as well as many enemies. I hope that it was worth it.”

  “Enemies?” Lucas asked. “Certainly, you don’t mean yourself?”

  “No, of course not,” the Goddess smiled. “I find you and your ‘real shit’ to be quite charming. I am even prepared to grant you the boon you seek, but my children are a prideful people, and when the high priests learn that a human has trod in their hallowed halls, some may go to great efforts to seek you out.”

  “I thank you for that,” Lucas said with a pause, “But I haven’t even asked for anything yet.”

  “Ah, but you will. I heard it in your soul as you entered my pace, and so, since it is not my boon to bestow, I have sent for Thrzaelwick to hear your plea,” she expined.

  “But if you already know what I’m going to say or do, then what’s the point of all this… Your Highness?” he tacked that st bit on at the end more because of the way the guards were looking at him than she was.

  The Goddess herself seemed rgely amused by how all of this was pying out. She… it suddenly occurred to Lucas that he didn’t know her name. Had he known it before? Had she told him? He couldn’t say, but he wasn’t about to point that out and decided to just keep winging it for now.

  “What is the point, indeed,” she smiled, offering no answers. “What is the point of drinking a potion that you know will kill you just to go to a pce you don’t belong?”

  “Because a Goddess dared me to,” Lucas said with a smile.

  “I suppose I did, in a way, didn’t I?” she smiled. “But before we can talk of sending you home, there are a few things we must discuss. The—”

  Before she could finish what she was saying, a storm of sparks and smoke began to form not far from where Lucas stood. The guards pointed their weapons at it. He took two steps back, but the goddess on her throne seemed utterly unperturbed by the mysterious development. Lucas quickly figured out why.

  A well-dressed gnome stepped out of the rapidly dissipating smoke, and coughing once, he turned to briefly regard Lucas before he turned to the elven Goddess. “My dy Lwyn, it’s been too long!” he said effusively. “You need no wait for such oddities to invite me to visit. I’ve missed your company.”

  “And I yours,” the Goddess said with notably less warmth. “But we are both so busy, and it wasn’t until a human managed to replicate your fine potion that I had cause to seek you out.”

  “Any alchemist might make any potion if they are skilled enough,” the gnome answered, reminding Lucas of Heisenburgle in both the tone of his voice and the way he spoke. He supposed that Heisenburgle would find that to be quite a high compliment, so Lucas resolved never to tell him. “Do you know how this man came by Lwynthenll? Was it stolen, perhaps? I find it unlikely one of your high priests would give up such a thing for any reason whatsoever!”

  “It was not,” Lwyn answered with a shake of her head. “If you could believe it, he created the recipe through repeated experimentation and an exploitation of first principles. He was trying to make stronger drugs for an old enemy of mine.”

  “Impossible,” the gnome hissed, whirling on Lucas as he lowered one of the extra lenses on his spectacles into pce. “That’s a five-reagent potion, and some of them aren’t even official reagents! How could you guess what I purposely hid on behalf of my dear, dear Lwyn”

  “I, uhm, looked at their properties and just kept mixing it until I got what I wanted, I guess,” Lucas said, reminding himself that this was not Heisenburgle, and he needed to be respectful. “Are you going to tell me that there are only eight ways to make a healing potion next?”

  “There are only eight recipes for a healing potion,” the God of Alchemy agreed. “I am considering a ninth, but it’s not quite ready yet. In another few decades perhaps…”

  The gnome kept rambling, but once Lucas saw the goddess roll her eyes behind the gnome’s back, it was hard to focus. At least that was the case until Thrzaelwick said, “Now let’s see what’s going on here.”

  Lucas turned to face the gnome, but almost as soon as he did so, he ceased to exist. As his consciousness began to dim, he felt himself being split not into shards but into yers. Instead of being a book, he became a number of slim pages that were each about one very specific topic, instantly becoming less than the sum of his parts.

  He had a chance to briefly read over the shoulder of the gnomish God, observing all the events he’d recently endured, which were listed out very neatly like a journal. Harvested Moonblossom. Created Potion of Lesser Communion. Resisted the Dragon Skyra’s Ardent Seduction. Considered proposing to Danaria Parin. Distilled Starlight. Created Potion of Greater Communion. Perished. It was a horrifying way to be id bare, but even as his consciousness faded to nothing, he heard the Goddess cry out, “Gently Thrzaelwick! Mister Sharpe is a supplicant in my domain, and I pn on sending him back to the world of the living when this is done. You may not sunder him!”