Brewing Bad Ch. 132-133

Ch. 132 - Aftermath

By the time soldiers arrived from the castle, nearly an hour had passed, and the flames which had consumed the manor had all but died. Despite Lucas’ best efforts, many of the servants and henchmen he’d tried so hard to save had suffered the same fate. That was where they found him, kneeling on the ground in front of one of the maids, who had passed away just as they’d ridden up. He was covered in ashes as well as the rags of what had once been a finely tailored suit. 

The very first thing they offered was to treat injuries he didn’t have, but he brushed them off. He wasn’t hurt, not physically, at least, and there was nothing that they could do about anything else. “Don’t worry about me!” Lucas scolded the medic, who offered him a bandage he didn’t need. “Help them!” he yelled with a wave of his hand. 

That sent the man scurrying to do some good, but Lucas reminded himself it wasn’t that guy’s fault. He doesn’t decide anything. He certainly isn’t the one that burned this place down. These guys weren’t here to help the living or bury the dead. They were here to investigate the damage and make sure the Prince’s pet alchemist was still breathing, and that, more than anything, was the reason he was so angry.

He was the only one that should have died tonight. Well, he and Adin, of course. That prick deserved dragon fire a lot more than a fall from the fourth floor. 

No matter how quickly they’d been dispatched from the city to learn the truth of what had happened, though, they were already too late. Lucas had already sent away everyone that mattered, and it took very little acting on his part to pretend that they were dead as he greeted the soldiers despondently. One did not have to feign pain when surrounded by the corpses of people they cared about or anguish when the woman they loved had come within one chance errand of joining them. 

When the captain of the group dismounted and walked toward Lucas to say, “Sir, we’re so pleased that you’re alive, but we will need you to—” Lucas punched him right in his stupid mouth before he could finish talking. He tried to take a second swing, too, even as some of the other guards rushed to restrain him. 

“I don’t have to do shit!” Lucas roared, making sure to put on a good show even as he struggled against the guards. “She’s dead! Don’t you get it! She’s dead! They all are! So I don’t give a fuck what you want!”

In truth, the body he pointed to was one of Danaria’s handmaidens, but they didn’t need to know that. They also didn’t need to know that even now, Cassara had spirited away his fiancé to a cottage she kept at the edge of the Greenwood for drying herbs, and Kar’gandin had loaded a surviving mule with chests of gold to take to his cousins for safekeeping. There was nothing here for them to find or take now, so Lucas raged as much as he liked. 

Even if they could have killed him, they wouldn’t have done it. These were little bitches, and they’d been sent to babysit him. They didn’t even give him the beatdown he deserved for his insolence like a member of the city guard would have done. Instead, the palace guards bound him for his own good and quickly escorted them back to the city.

As they forcibly removed him from the grounds slung over the side of a horse, Lucas looked to his remaining men with hard eyes. He didn’t say anything. They’d already discussed how this was going to go down, and it was playing out pretty much exactly as he'd told them. Stay focused, save who you can, and then bury the dead and wait for Kar’gandin to give you new orders. 

It was a simple enough plan, but then, it had to be. Their organization was in ruins thanks to the dragon’s attack. 

Lucas contemplated that as he was taken back to the castle against his will. He could have avoided that too, he was sure, but that would have only made things worse, and the last thing that he wanted was to give mages an excuse to track him or Danaria down again. It was better if he was safely in hand and everything else was wiped out. 

That was awfully cruel, of course, considering he’d only just returned from Black Gate. They hadn’t even started their honeymoon period before everything was trashed, and as tough as he sometimes tried to be, that hurt him. 

Those thoughts kept his mind busy the whole way back to Lordanin, and it was only when they entered the palace gates that Lucas noted this was the third time he’d been dragged here against his will. That was almost enough to make him laugh, but he suppressed it. The last thing he was was happy, but he didn’t want these pricks getting the wrong idea, not with the negotiations that were about to come next. 

Remember, Kar’gandin had told him before he’d left with their cash after Kucas had given him the barest run down of the facts. The bitch might have been the one to do this, but he works for her, which means it's on him to make it right. That means he’s going to payin’ us for the foreseeable future, not the other way around!

The dwarf had taken just a little too much joy in that moment, even for someone who loved cash more than people, and Lucas was a little taken aback by it. Even if he was right, it wasn’t exactly the moment to take a victory lap over saving a chest full of gold. 

Still, as he was untied and marched down the halls to the Prince’s private audience chamber, Lucas felt the dwarf’s words resonate. This motherfucker is going to pay for what happened. Someone has to. Damages, compensation for every death, and all our other losses. He told himself as the armed men that were escorting him opened the door. 

That the Prince was still awake despite the late hour did not surprise him. Neither did the fact that he was alone or the fact that he looked to Lucas with annoyance from the moment he entered the room. 

“Have a seat,” the Prince said, waving a hand to him. “You’ve had a long night.” The tone was cold, as always, giving both statements an air of command rather than condolence.

Lucas didn’t argue. If the man wanted him to ruin his fine embroidered couch with soot stains, then he was happy to oblige. 

“Wine?” the Prince asked, proffering him a glass. 

Wine, drugged (excellent): Poison 2 (acid), euphoria 2 (blurry), mild intoxicant. This drink is likely to calm or stupefy their imbiber, depending on their toughness.

Lucas didn’t answer. He just shook his head and stared at his feet for a long moment, feigning shell shock, before he asked, “Why am I here?”

“In this room? Right now?” the Prince asked. “Because I wished to ascertain your safety in tonight's… unorthodox events. Why are you here in general? Well, that’s because you disobeyed my direct orders.”

“I didn’t do shit,” Lucas said. “You aren’t blaming me for Skylara’s rampage. She murdered a hundred people tonight, and I had nothing to do with that.”

“Nothing?” the Prince raised an eyebrow. “You did precisely what I asked you not to do, so recently, with very predictable results. I thought I made it very clear to you that the woman was both jealous and dangerous.”

“I didn’t tell her,” Lucas said, “That was all Adin, and I only proposed because he was going to try to marry her off to some old bastard just to spite me. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him.”

The Prince gazed at him with his bottomless eyes as if attempting to read Lucas’s mind. “Yes, well, as you already know, that will not be possible,” the Prince sighed. “There are a great many people that have had to be disappeared tonight because of things they’ve seen and heard. Did Lord Torvin’s daughter survive, at least?”

Lucas shook his head. “She was… there’s nothing anyone could do. Almost everyone in that house died, and the survivors… well, they’re scattered across the lawn getting what aid they can. I don't expect many of them to make it.”

Lucas’ paranoia had always told him that this guy could detect lies. He’d thought it was the intelligence elixirs that the gnome made for him, but it could just as easily be some sort of royalty-specific rulership talent. 

“Well, then, I’m very sorry for your loss,” the Prince said finally. “But unfortunately, that change’s nothing. The kingdom still needs you to—”

“The Kingdom can go to hell!” Lucas spat, noting the shock on the other man’s face that he’d been interrupted. “I’ve done everything you asked for months, and now I’m done. My life is burned down, and I’m over it.”

“While I sympathize, that is unfortunately not an option,” the Prince sighed, rubbing his temples as if he was attempting to ward off an oncoming migraine. “Tomorrow, people will still wake up and go about their lives. Bread will still need to be baked, shirts will still need to be mended, and you will still need to make your Blue.”

“Heisenburgle has the recipe. He can make it,” Lucas answered flatly as he stood in an apparent effort to leave. 

“If that were an option, I would do it,” the Prince admitted. “We both know it isn’t, though. The product that Heisenburgle can make is nowhere near as pure as what you can provide, and the Dragoness is less likely than ever to accept substitutes now that she’s been so publicly snubbed.”

“Well, if you think I’m doing shit for her, then—” Lucas retorted, raising his voice as real anger started to flow through him. 

“Sit down, Lucas,” the Prince answered with a shake of his head. “This is well beyond either of us. Truthfully, making drugs for her is the easy part. She will almost certainly show continued interest in you after this lover's quarrel.”

“Lover’s quarrel?” he exploded. “If you think that—”

“It doesn’t matter what I think or what you think,” the Prince answered, showing a hint of anger for the very first time. “That woman is a force of nature, and you are doing a good job of making her obsessed with you. It’s her nature. She hordes the things she covets, and now that you have given her a romantic rival to conquer, she is almost certain to want to claim you. That you may survive the experience is only because I have assured her that you are the only one in existence without pointed ears who is capable of making her the Lwynthenll she craves.”

“That’s not a favor,” Lucas said, deflating as he sat back down.

“It’s not,” the Prince agreed. “But it is all I can do. That and remind you that the more you antagonize her, the more people will suffer. Next time, she might not just burn down a manor house in a fit of pique. She might burn down half the city. Remember that. Their deaths will be on your head, not mine.”

Ch. 133 - Chains of a Different Sort

Lucas eventually got tired of talking about all the things he had to do for the good of everyone else and spent an hour or two making the conversation all about him. Though he rejected the Prince’s drugged wine, he eventually demanded a decanter of whiskey and spent the rest of the evening getting drunker and drunker as he made more extravagant demands of the Prince.

Though the man didn’t give in to all of Lucas’s demands, he did agree to fairly extravagant payments for the dead, as well as compensation for the manor and the laboratory that burned down. However, other than a small raft of funds to help him rebuild, the thousands of dragons that they agreed on were to be paid for by absolving Lucas of his current and future debts to the crown once he started business back up by pleading poverty. 

“Do you know how many people had to be bought off tonight when they saw her climb to the top of the west tower and transform,” he complained. “That's dozens of servants and guards that will need to have accidents and more than a few nobles who will need to be convinced by me personally that they didn’t see a thing. You are not the only injured party here!”

That was hardly what he and Kar’gandin wanted, but the man wouldn’t budge. However, by the end of the conversation, he was in no real position to advocate for anything. By that point, Lucas had gone from merely theatrically intoxicated to sloppy drunk, so he let himself be dragged away before letting something important slip. 

“Rest assured, you will be well taken care of,” the Prince told him. “I’ll even grant you the use of one of my villas until you’re back on your feet!” 

Lucas just waved that off and let him be dragged off to a waiting carriage sometime after dawn. He would have preferred to sleep in the cider house, no matter how singed it was, if that wouldn’t have raised questions that he didn’t feel like answering.  

Still, he slept on the way, despite the rough roads, and woke when they stopped somewhere in the nobles district. He thought that he was going to be taken to a country house, so that confused him, but it wasn’t like crashing for a night or two in the garden district would kill him, so he staggered out of the carriage and toward the doorman who seemed utterly enthusiastic about letting a ragged character like Lucas anywhere near well-appointed three-story townhouse until the driver gave him a note that had been sealed with the Prince’s ring. 

“A guest with full privileges who can stay as long as he likes? Him? At this hour?” the older man grumbled as he turned and opened the heavy oak door. “Who died and made you Royalty.”

“Yeah, sssame to you, buddy,” Lucas said, moving past him as he weaved slightly and followed the cute maid who promised to take him to his room. 

Along the way, she tried to chat with Lucas, but he mostly dismissed her, and when he reached the guest room, she offered to draw him a bath, but he declined. “I’m too tired for that ssshit,” he slurred. “Maybe jussst a pitcher of water and a basin ssso I can clean up a bit.”

He didn’t care about getting the Prince’s nice clean sheets dirty, but he didn’t want to wake up in the morning smelling like an ashtray. She nodded and smiled and came back a few minutes later with both items. He thanked her for that, but as she pestered him with offers of refreshments or washing his back for him, he balked. 

“I’m good,” he said with a shake of his head at her persistence. “You just take care of your other chores, and I’ll sleep it off, alright?”

He practically had to force her from the room, and when he did, she seemed somehow disappointed. Lucas didn’t have much time to think about that because as soon as she was gone, he stripped, scrubbed, and then passed out. 

That night, his dreams were troubled, but he slept soundly enough. Whether it was because of the traumatic images of the bodies he’d spent so much time trying to treat or the fact that he still reeked of smoke, he dreamed of fires all night long. While Skylara herself never quite made an appearance, he still woke up pissed at her sometime after noon that the sun lancing through one of the wide bay windows succeeded in waking him. Lucas groaned and rolled over in his sleep, trying to keep the light from making the incipient headache that was growing in his skull that much worse. 

When he found another maid sitting in his room quietly waiting for him to arise, though, it scared the shit out of him, and he only barely resisted making a very unmanly screech. “What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked, wondering if she was a warden or a bodyguard. 

“When you opted to sleep alone, we decided it was prudent to make sure that you had whatever you needed when you woke up,” the woman answered matter-of-factly. “You looked as if you had a rather rough day, and no one knew whether you were injured or not.”

Sleep alone? What the fuck? Lucas wondered, trying to figure out what this woman meant by that. She was almost as pretty as the blonde maid had been last night, but her dark hair and glasses made her much more severe looking. “I-I’m fine,” Lucas said as he rubbed his eyes and tried to ignore just how much of her thighs her oddly enticing uniform showed off. “I just need some water for the headache and—”

As he spoke, she got up and walked to the nightstand. Inside were a whole rack of top-shelf potions. There were potions of greater and moderate healing, potions of lesser and moderate curing, and a dozen other intoxicants in both the red and blue spectrum of designer drugs. Though there was no Blue, there were potions of Demons Blood, Dragon Fire, and even Midnight, which had to be some kind of collector's item, considering that the Blind hadn’t even existed to make any more of that stuff in at least a year. 

Maybe they did, though, Lucas considered, wondering if he and his comrades had missed someone in their raid of the blind and the subsequent slaughter. 

What caught his eye more than even the drugs, though, were the potions of Lesser and Greater Libido, along with the ointment of lubrication. This wasn’t a drawer for medications. It was a toy chest for foreplay, which was very much not what he was here for. 

“Would any of these be to your liking?” she asked in a tone that was sultry enough to make him tear his eyes away from them, only to find himself staring right down her ample cleavage. Though it had been invisible when she’d been sitting, now that she was bent at the waist, he found herself looking right down her dress and at her ample tits. 

Lucas quickly turned away and grabbed a lesser curative. Then he downed it, willing himself not to blush as he said, “This will do me, I think.”

“Well, if that’s all you want to do, then…” she said, letting the unambiguous offer linger as she closed the drawer and straightened. “Would you like me to have the chef prepare you breakfast or lunch?”

“Uhmmm, Lunch is fine,” he said. “Whatever’s convenient. But maybe a bath first and a… hey, where did my clothes go?”

As he did so, he was a little shaken by how brazen all this was as he tried to figure out what flavor of fuckery was going on. He’d been here for so long that he thought Danaria’s need to cover her blanket-like nightgown was endearing rather than ridiculous. After that level of modesty being the norm, the idea that one and perhaps two servants were propositioning him was a bit beyond the pale. The entire time he'd lived at Parin Manor, none of the staff had done so much as flirt with him.   

“Your clothes?” she answered. “Those were rags and needed to be thrown out. I'm sure they will be after a tailor uses them to get your measurements. I’ve been assured you will have a few new outfits before the end of the day.”

“What?” Lucas demanded. It sounded almost like a joke, but the way she said it so seriously made that unlikely. 

“Is that a problem?” she asked, confused. “The shirt was in shreds, and the pants were so encrusted with—”

“It’s fine,” Lucas said, willing the whole subject to be dropped. The very last thing he wanted to think about after his fitful sleep was that fire. “I appreciate the forethought; I was just a little surprised. I think maybe I’ll just go for that bath and try to relax for a bit if that’s okay.”

“Excellent,” she said, clasping her hands together and smiling before gesturing to the door on the other side of the room. “I’ll let the chef know, and I’ll have someone draw you a bath. It shouldn’t be more than five or ten minutes. Someone will knock to let you know when you can enter.”

Lucas thanked the woman and let her leave. A few minutes later, he heard the sound of buckets being dumped into the basin, which was pretty par for the course. It was too much to believe that even the royal love nest would have indoor plumbing. It didn’t seem to have been invented yet. 

“Why the fuck did he dump me here, though,” Lucas asked himself as he sat in bed, mostly naked. 

In the best case, he wants to cheer me up, he told himself, And in the worst case, he wants to bribe me. That seemed pretty clear, but there was about a zero percent chance that it was going to be effective. The very last thing that Lucas wanted right now was to bang some random woman. If he’d wanted that, then he would have fucked Skylara until she got bored of him, and none of this would have happened. 

“You know, for a smart guy, he’s pretty fucking stupid,” Lucas told himself as he sat there trying to decide what it was he should do next. Eventually, that was interrupted by a soft knock on the second door. So, Lucas grabbed a towel and walked to his bathroom in his boxers. 

There, he found the most luxurious bathroom he’d seen since he’d come to this world. It was two or three times fancier than the one in Parin Manor, with ivory-colored ceramic tiles, an actual porcelain tub that was closer to a hot tub than shitty ones that had always come with his apartments, and brass fixtures. It was also filled with steam, which gave it a mysterious ambiance as he stripped and slipped into the tub. 

As he sunk into the tub, he saw the filth come off of him in a thin residue on the soapy water’s surface. Even after scrubbing himself down last night, he really was in rough shape. 

Right now, though, he couldn’t be bothered to scrub himself. He just lay there appreciating the hot water as he reflected on all the awful shit that had gone down and everything he was going to have to do as a result. That was when he heard a knock at the door.