Brewing Bad Ch. 128-129

Ch. 128 - Whirlwind

Lucas had expected that his return would be the top news around the manor for the next couple of days, but as it turned out, he didn’t even make the top three. That was impossible with Adin’s arrival and the scandal of his sudden engagement. That was hardly his fault, though. Though he had no idea he was going to be coming home the same day as the garbage that would one day be his brother-in-law, that wasn’t even the end of the surprises. 

Once he had a minute to breathe and chatted with Kar’gandin, the dwarf quickly got him up to speed on everything, including the latest gossip about Arissa. “No shit,” Lucas breathed as the two of them sat in the cider house, drinking a couple pints of hard cider. “She’s pregnant? Already?”

“It hasn’t been announced yet,” the dwarf nodded, “But all the maids are whispering about it. Yer news is just one more log for that very chatty bonfire.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lucas sighed. 

For once, Hura’gh was away on business with the Knights of Brass, so Lucas didn’t have to deal with his smart ass, but he was sure he would have no end of bad jokes when the half-orc returned in a few days. Still, Kar’gandin did more than his fair share of teasing while they drank, and Lucas took it if only to soften the blow when he turned the conversation to talk of the Prince’s terms. 

That was enough to distract the dwarf for hours. “A thousand dragons within the season? That’s highway robbery! What is the man thinking? It’s more than half of what we have left from what we’ve made so far!”

“Well, if you want to explain how unfair that is to him, be my guest,” Lucas said with a shrug, “But I doubt very much that he will listen to you when it comes to conversations about balancing the books.”

The dwarf swore a blue streak at that as he cracked open his ledger and started ranting about the legitimate costs of an illegitimate business. “Does he think we get these reagents for free, or that muscle grows on trees?!” the dwarf yelled, outraged as he went line by line. That finally gave Lucas an excuse to laugh. 

Honestly, Lucas had planned to keep his engagement on the down low until everything with Skylara was resolved, just as the Prince had told him to, but in light of today’s events, he was glad he hadn’t waited. If anything, he was kicking himself for not popping the question months ago. 

Dirty or not, Lucas really should have taken Adin’s blessing while it was on the table instead of breaking his nose a few months back. It wouldn’t have been as satisfying, but it would have been so much cleaner. It will be fine, he told himself. It’s not like we can do more than go shopping for an expensive ring until I convince Skylara to find a new boytoy. 

Lucas let Kar’gandin bellyache about the state of their finances for a good long while before he told the dwarf the good news about the state of his recipe. “I’m glad to hear that, at least, but who else do you plan on selling it to. We’re already bleeding half of the richest families dry.”

“Well, we could try to hook the other half,” Lucas laughed, “Or we could try to spread it further abroad. That was the Prince’s suggestion. That we franchise this shit.”

“Pardon?” the dwarf answered. “Franchise?”

“It’s… Well, it’s a foreign word,” Lucas answered, trying to smooth it over. “Basically, I mean, we sell it in bulk to some other enterprising men wholesale and let them sell it in their own cities at a profit.”

“Aye, that might be possible,” Kar’gandin agreed, “I have many connections abroad, but few of them deal with such products. Still, I could send off a few letters, and we could see if there’s anyone with some interest. It's gonna take months to get an answer, though, even to talk terms.”

“Yeah, well, offer them cost plus 30% of the expected profit and include a few samples,” Lucas told them, “Then tell them to double the price to their dealers, and everyone will make a healthy profit.”

“Ye sound like you’ve done this before,” Kar’gandin answered, stroking his beard. 

“Yeah, well, never from this height,” Lucas responded. “Usually, I’ve been at the other end with stepped-on shit trying to make a profit. It's better from this end, though, trust me.”

Kar’gandin laughed at that, but when he tried to probe further, Lucas turned the discussion to the new home he wanted to be constructed as soon as possible. There, the dwarf didn’t disappoint. Though it was little more than holes in the ground for footings and foundations, work had indeed begun weeks ago as soon as the ground had started to thaw, and bricks were already being baked just outside Meadowin at the closest clay bank on the stream there. 

“It won’t be fit for newlyweds this year, but perhaps early next year, ye will be able to move the missus in,” he answered. 

“Sooner is definitely better with everything that’s going on here these days,” Lucas sighed as he got up to get them both another round. 

Lucas didn’t even bother to clean up his lab or get to the state of his reagents that day. The most he did was put his concentrated moonlight down there for safekeeping. Then, that night, he brought the brightest bottle in his collection up to Danaria after she’d gotten ready for bed. She still pulled her blanket up over her nightgown even though it covered everything up to her neck as if his presence around her in long johns was a scandal, but he ignored it. 

She did, too, once he drew the sparkling vial from his pocket and gave it to her as a gift. “Oh Lucas, it’s beautiful,” she breathed as she gazed into its glimmer, shifting luminescence. 

“It really is,” he agreed, staring at her instead. 

Danaria missed that compliment entirely, but that only made him smile brighter when she asked him what he was smiling about afterward. “You’ll see,” he answered mysteriously before he kissed her goodnight. 

In the days that followed, he showered her with so many that she couldn’t dodge them all. The first thing they did was take a carriage together to the high street in Lordanin, where he looked for the most expensive jewelry store he could find and bought her a thirty-dragon golden ring that was encrusted with rubies, as well as ordering a pair of wedding bands to be completed in the future.

A ring of just gemstones wasn’t worth that much, but the thing had a number of small glamorous woven into it, that made the thing even more beautiful. Not only did the rubies glimmer even when there was no light. They also seemed to contained little flower gardens if you peered closely into the largest ones. 

It was more money than he’d ever spent on anything during his time here, and Kar’gandin was not pleased with the extravagant cost, but Lucas didn't care. She was worth all that and more. “The new home yer building will cost less than a pair of those rings!” the dwarf had insisted, but that was okay with Lucas.

“We’ll make more money,” he insisted. “Don’t worry about it. We got this shit on lock now.”

And really, it felt like he did. Though he was counting down the days to the ball he was supposed to meet Skylara at with increasing concern, he didn’t let it show in front of Danaria or his crew. By day, he spent his time with her, taking her places and showing her off, and by night, he was locked up in his little lab, churning out batches of blue and experimenting with empowered alchemy. 

For now, Lucas decided to make batches of both real Blue as well as Water of Life. This was done as much so he could experiment, as because he was worried about what would happen if suddenly freed all of their rich clients of their addictions. So, in the end, he made some dilute but empowered water of life for the knights to distribute to the common folk, and he ratcheted up the euphoria on the Blue they sold to their rich clientele. 

Without Hisenburgle here to second guess what he was doing, Lucas tried pretty much every option that both potions allowed him at least once. He used mana to ramp up the quality and the quantity of both drugs and when he noticed that sometimes empowering a potion in one day unlocked certain effects, he made sure to be extra thorough. 

In the end, he found out that burning all of his mana was exhausting, but that didn’t stop him from doing it almost every night. It felt just like the first few times he’d started using his ring, and he was sure he had even more potential to unlock in terms of his own performance, with or without his system. 

For a few days, that was his whole world. Finding secret moments to steal kisses from Danaria, and seeing if he could beat his euphoria high score on either potion before he watered them down enough to make them fit for human consumption. He even let Danaria watch once and showed her how Lwynthenll came apart in a dazzling light show when he got it just right, which left her mesmerized. 

Lucas thought about telling her they could take that one together someday but decided against it, even as a joke. Not only would that send the wrong message to her about the things her brother had told her. It would also necessitate him telling her what the elves used it for, and he wasn’t ready to have the talk about the birds and the bees with her just yet. 

He loved that rhythm of events so much that he only took a break from his lab three days before the upcoming ball. That wasn’t because he had literally hundreds of doses set aside and ready to be used, even though he did. It was because his preparations were finally completed. While he was keeping Danaria busy, he sent Mort into Meadowin with a long to-do list, and then one warm afternoon all of his hard work came together in the form of a feast. 

It was over the top in every way but had still only cost a handful of gold coins. It was nothing compared to the cost of their engagement ring. 

There was a roast pig for the head table, roasted chickens for all the other families that chose to attend, and a seemingly endless variety of pies, cakes, and other confections to be tasted and shared. More than that, though, there were flowers. The flowers were grown out of season with magic and more expensive than all the food combined, but Lucas knew how Danaria loved such things and wouldn't have dreamed of throwing her a party like this without them. 

For her part, she was taken completely by surprise. She didn’t even suspect that he had such intentions until the entire village exploded in celebrations one afternoon after they’d stopped there with the supposed intent of visiting the cobbler for a new pair of shoes. Her look of astonishment, when everyone started to congratulate her out of the blue, amused him to no end. 

The party went on all afternoon until it was too late and cold to continue. Eventually, even the manor shut down so that all the servants and members of Lucas’ ever-growing organization could pay their respects. The only people that didn’t come were Adin and his wife. Lucas had made it clear to the man in private that he wasn’t welcome, and though Danarai kept asking why he never bothered to show up, Lucas never told her that. 

Instead, he just shrugged and said, “He has his own family now. I told you. People start to grow apart once that happens.” That wasn’t so far from the truth to be a lie, but truthfully, Lucas would be a lot happier if that growing apart went a hell of a lot faster.

Ch. 129 - Turning into a Pumpkin

Though those days were some of the happiest that Lucas had ever known, they were not without discontent. Occasionally, he had to involve himself in gang business, which he was largely content to leave in the hands of Kar’gandin and Huragh. That part wasn’t so bad. Though it was a distraction from his lab, he was starting to feel like a bit of a legend the way that some of the men treated him when they talked about shipping product around the city. 

It wasn’t hard to do anymore, of course. Lucas thought they could probably stop paying any sort of protection money to the Knights of Brass, but that could wait until after he had a sit down with their leader to let them know the Prince’s new stance on everything, and before he could do that he had to brush up on his swordsmanship, because he knew that there was no way in hell he was getting out of the small courtyard without a dual or two. 

No, the only real thorns in his side were Adin and Skylara. For Skylara, at least he'd at least figured out a plan for the short term. He’d whipped up a foul potion of lesser toxicity, complete with nausea as a side effect that he planned to dose himself with at the party. He’d make some moves on her, then make himself sick and see what happened. That would certainly get out of whatever getaway she had planned for them this time, and with any luck, it would make her lose interest in him altogether. 

Adin, though, was a bigger problem, given that he had to see and interact with the man several times a day, and to date, he hadn’t given Lucas a reason to kill him yet. Well, he had. He’d given him plenty, but none that Danaria would accept. 

So, for now, he had to endure the man’s condescension at every dinner, and eventually, he decided that of the two, Arissa was the more personable one, which he would have never thought, considering she’d tried to kill him before. She wasn’t any happier than her husband, but she was more politic about it. Whether that was because she was smarter than Adin or because she didn’t want to get cut off from Blue, he couldn’t say, but eventually, with rumors that she might be pregnant, he had to confront her about it.

While Lucas definitely didn’t want to let her off the leash, he didn’t want her ending up with a crack baby even more than that, and when he took her aside and explained that to her, she cracked almost immediately. He expected her to blame him or to vow her revenge. Instead, she started sobbing on his shoulder, which was more than a little awkward. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed, “You’re right, this can’t be good for the baby, but… I can’t stop… I can’t go through what Adin did. It was pure hell, do you know that?”

Lucas nodded. He didn’t know what it was like to quit Blue, but compared to a couple of the other things he’d tried, he could easily imagine. 

“Quitting cold turkey wouldn’t be good for the baby either,” he told her, “but you still need to stop. Maybe we can get you on methadone or something.”

“Methi-what?” she asked. 

“Forget it,” he sighed. “The point is… we need to fix this.”

“How?” she said, on the verge of tears again. “I can’t just stop. Not after all this time.”

“I’ll make you a special batch,” Lucas promised her as he did the math in his head. “As soon as we get back from the ball. It will be purer, so there will be less bad this in there to harm the baby, and then we’ll control the potency to try to ween you off slowly; how's that sound?”

“Even if you do that, you know I’ll still hate you, right?” she said, her tone moderating to something more typical of her. “Not just for what you’ve done to me or Adin, but for what you’ve done to my father.”

“Yeah, well, we can have our feud in nine months if you want to fight about this again,” Lucas countered. “This isn’t about you or me. This is about your child.”

That shut her up, and even before Lucas left the room, he had a plan. He’d make one dose in every five water of life, and the rest he’d make with an empowered batch of Blue that removed every last trace of poison. Then he’d ramp the potency down over the next few months from the eight she was used to to a two or a three and see how it went. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was the best he could come up with on short notice. 

The rest of the day, as he got ready for the ball, he wondered if she’d tell Adin, but given that he didn’t look at Lucas with daggers in his eyes when they were getting into the carriage that evening, he assumed she’d decided not to. That made sense. If Adin found out she was cutting her habit the easy way, he’d probably hate her for that as much as he’d hate Lucas. 

That wasn’t something they talked about much, though. In fact, there was almost no conversation between the two of them at all on the half-hour ride to the palace. It was one of the most awkward moments of Lucas’ life as the two men sat there silently, loathing each other the whole way. 

The only time that seething hatred blossomed into anything like conversation was when Adin gave him a hard time about leaving Danaria at home. “Yeah, well, I don’t see you taking your wife with you either,” Lucas shot back. 

“My wife is pregnant and would rather stay home than squeeze into a corset,” Adin smiled. “That’s a perfectly acceptable excuse in any circle. Yours, though, I wonder what it could be? Maybe you’re just embarrassed to be seen with your cousin.”

“The only one I’m embarrassed to be seen with is you,” Lucas countered. “Not everything that’s going on has been made apparent to you and your scheming friends. I’m sure if you ask the Prince, he will explain that he’s asked me not to make a big deal out of our announcement until the time is right.”

Truthfully, Lucas felt bad he couldn’t take Danaria with him. He wanted nothing more than to show her off. For now, at least, that was impossible. When he’d explained to her that the Prince still had him wrapped up in things that he’d rather she not be a part of, she’d been very understanding. At least she had after he asked her to help him practice his dancing. The two of them had spent many hours just dancing in her drawing room over the last week while she hummed softly in his ear and reminded him of everything he’d forgotten. 

Well, she’d reminded him of more than that, too, but this world wasn’t much for pre-marital sex, at least among the aristocracy. So, for now, that would have to wait.

Still, if the night went well, then he hoped that in a couple of months, he could bring her to court. If they were married by then, well a little drinking and dancing could lead to almost anything else. 

He’d probably need to go by some other name than Parin unless he wanted to start weird rumors, but then Royalty was known for marrying their own relations, so that might just be a hang-up in his own head. 

By the time they arrived at the place, Lucas had already braced himself for another miserable night. At least this time, though, no one’s clothes are going to be coming off, he reassured himself as he patted the row of small vials he had in his vest pocket. He’d brought not just his vomit potion, as he liked to think of it, but an antidote for it once the need for theatrics was over with, and also a couple of odds and ends just in case something unexpected happened. 

Really, he wanted to bring more. However, aside from the case of ultra-strong Blue that he’d brought for his real patron in the carriage, that was all he could manage without making his suit bulge in an obvious way. 

No one could blame him for that. Guards didn’t do pat downs here, and he’d had more than one attempt on his life, so precautions only made sense. 

Still, as he and Adin were announced when they entered the grand ballroom, the largest threats were a swarm of swirling skirts and a barrage of conversation. Adin immediately went to seek out the Prince to resolve his own beef. Lucas considered joining him just for the laughs but decided he’d better join Lady Skylara instead. As much as he didn’t want to spend time with her, he had to, though, so he could act like he enjoyed her company until it was time to bow out as ungracefully as possible. 

It wasn’t hard to find her. She had a knot of hangers-on that was nearly as large as the Princes. In fact the way the two crowds were on opposite sides of the dance floor, the entire thing looked a bit like two planets made of suits and gowns orbiting the white wood of the large circular dance floor that dominated the room. 

Skylara’s face lit up as soon as she saw him, though she took her time working her way through the throng to greet him. To make matters worse, almost as soon as she deigned to grace him with her presence, it was to pull him onto the dance floor. 

“My dear, dear Mister Blue,” she whispered as she grabbed him by the elbow. “Even if the Prince hadn’t told me about your discovery, I swear I’d know just by looking at you. You seem like a new man, and…” she nuzzled briefly against his neck, “I can practically smell the divinity on you.”

Lucas’s first impulse was to fight it, but as soon as she started commenting about divinity, he decided that distracting her was almost certainly the best policy. He suppressed that, though, and forced himself to smile wider as he led her out himself. “My lady, I thought you’d never ask,” he whispered, trying to be charming enough to keep her mind from going down any strange paths as they found an empty space near the center of the floor and began to step and whirl in time with the other dancers. 

The night started out like that, and truthfully, for the next few hours, it didn’t deviate much. Every few songs, they would stop to drink and chat, but no matter how hard Lucas tried, he wasn’t able to turn the conversation much away from him. Had he tried the latest batch? Did he know how truly divine it was? Was it meant to make her aroused, or was that just a pleasant side effect from the earlier versions?

Lucas deflected as well as he could, but eventually, when they were alone on one of the balconies, for lack of any other option, he finally asked. “So, the elves keep a pretty tight lid on all of this stuff. How is it you ever got to try Lwynthenll in the first place?”

“Oh, now that is quite a story,” she said with a distant look that made her look like she was reminiscing. “It was a night of blood and fire when I burned down Quar’vallan… And when it was done, and I strolled into that burning temple, it was just… right there on the altar, and I knew I had to try it.”

Skylara went on then, offering lurid, bloodthirsty descriptions of those piles of burning bodies as the tree city collapsed and fell to ruin around her. That was when Lucas finally figured out why he was so profoundly unattracted to her despite her banging body. It wasn’t that she was a little past her prime or even that she was a dragon in disguise. It was that she was dead inside. All of her joys and piques floated there, skimming the surface of a bottomless void where her heart should have been. 

It repulsed him on a primal level, but he didn’t let any of that show. Instead, he just smiled and nodded as she explained to him how the stuff was meant to allow the priests to commune with their Goddess. Lucas knew that wasn’t quite right, of course, but it wasn’t a point he ever planned on criticizing. Instead, he just counted down the hours until he could pop his potion and become as sick as a dog.