I woke up in the middle of the night, still pressing my ear against Tom´s chest. His heart beated rhythmically and invited me to drink more of his sweet blood. I was honestly tempted to rip his clothing apart and draw as much blood as possible. But I also knew he would die and I didn’t want to lose him yet. Even when Aska held his word and he was getting reborn, I had absolutely no use for a baby.

As such, I gulped and pushed myself away from him, only to stand up and walk towards a backpack Tom must have brought with him. As expected, there were a few bottles of blood inside. I opened one of them swiftly and placed my mouth onto the lid while trying to ignore the already repulsive smell. Animal blood or even worse old animal blood was simply disgusting, but like always, I gulped the fluid that tasted horrible down.

“This feels like I was run over by a hundred horses. Do you have a drink for me as well?” Tom asked, just as I was emptying the second bottle and wanted to grab the third one. This one was filled with beer, so I rolled it over to him. Sadly, the backpack was nearly empty now, but my thirst was already quite sated. As usual, the desire to drink more always stayed with me, but I could suppress this pretty well.

“Did you place the letter there?” I asked Tom and fished a letter out of the backpack. He shook his head just as he took the first sip. Curiously, I opened it and began to read.

‘Heyho! It´s me! I´m glad that we were able to find a solution considering your emotional problems.’

I shook my head in disapproval. What we had wasn’t a solution. He was responsible for my emotions in the first place, and forcing me to act contrary to them was horrible for me.

‘As promised, here is your gift: A recipe for a magical artefact! No more looking at the sun and falling unconscious, wouldn’t that be great? As such, I developed an item called sunglasses. These particular sunglasses will filter out any harmful light and thus, you will be able to walk under the sun! Even better, they are magically enhanced to be self-repairing and always will come back to you, even when you lose them. But the best thing about them is probably their sleek look!’

That was indeed practical ... well, not how they looked, but whatever. He was really good with stick and carrot, I had to give him that.

‘To craft this item, you need to rely on alchemy. Therefore, you need a simple cauldron first.’

Understandable. Well, crafting sunglasses with alchemy was weird, but so were the gods.

‘After that, you will need 500 gram of quartz sand.’

Alright, that was understandable for the glasses, although the amount seemed a bit much for me.

‘Add 2 kilogram of iron powder and mix it properly.’

The frame was apparently built out of iron, although I hoped that most of it would be discarded somewhere along the line. Two kilograms seemed a bit heavy for a frame.

‘If you did that, you need to add blood from you after you abstained from drinking for ten days. That’s for magically linking up the sunglasses to you.’

It was getting weirder and weirder, although it still made some sense.

‘Add an unusual weapon bathed in the blood of a hundred victims.’

…

‘Mix everything with a holy window from a church.’

The fuck?

‘Add two litres of the purest alcohol available.’

Was this some kind of scam?

‘Throw something you love into the cauldron.’

I looked around to see if Aska stood somewhere beside me, laughing hysterically, but except a confused Tom, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary here … if one ignrored the wrecked furniture obviously.

‘Last but not least, throw an old shoe inside the cauldron while doing a handstand and wriggle your legs.’

The letter ended abruptly after these words. I hoped someone would tell me that this was a joke. This crafting recipe was … unique. The ingredients weren’t too hard to get, but each and every instruction was slightly … off? This couldn’t be real alchemy.

“Hey, Tom … forget it.” I doubted he knew much about alchemy and thus, I didn’t even ask. Unsatisfied, I put the letter back into the envelope and began to shove the mess away from the door. Tom soon helped me with that task and together, we managed to dislodge the door and walk out of the room. “Well, at least we have firewood now... let´s go!”

Tom was leaning onto the wall, panting heavily. He always had a bad constitution, but this was a little bit over the top. The blood loss must have hit him hard, not that it was my fault. Deep down, he wanted that … probably.

“Do you want a cookie?” I asked sweetly and held his shoulder, a bit concerned about his well-being.

“Maybe later. We should go now, Mary really wanted to see you for some reason other than your last endeavour.” It was interesting to know that she didn’t talk to me because she understood my involvement with the murders, but rather because she wanted my help. On the other side, Tom didn’t even try to get in contact with me for three days straight. Sighing, I grabbed his shirt and dragged him through the hallway until I stood in front of Mary´s door, a struggling Tom by my side.

I knocked once and as I didn’t hear her inside, I started to hammer against the door continuously. Frustrated, I let go of Tom after a minute and opened the door. There were still no locks at every door, and although I didn’t want to intrude into her room, I had to.

Her room looked really cute. There was a large bed in the middle of the room with one big teddy bear on it. Her mattress was soft, even softer than mine before I destroyed it. I was a bit tempted to steal hers now that she wasn’t here, but that also meant admitting I wanted to sleep in the mess I created.

“Maybe in the study?” Tom refused to get dragged along by the clothing this time, so I held his arm and simply pulled him behind me. After a few seconds, he stumbled and fell over. Only I held him up and continued to drag him towards Mary´s working room. After I successfully navigated around a corner, I opened the study´s door, only to slowly close it again.

I frowned, looked towards Tom who was just now standing up, rubbed my eyes and opened the door once again. The sight that presented me the first time didn’t change at all. There was a corpse inside the room, a rather fresh one at that. She was a maid, judging by her clothing, and was apparently brutally murdered by a paperweight. I wasn’t even remotely weirded out by the corpse, but rather by the person sitting on the chair, eyes opened wide and staring at her bloodied hands.

Just out of curiosity, I grabbed the handle and closed the door once more.

“What do you think? Has she gone insane?” I asked quietly.

“Maybe. She didn’t notice us yet, so we could escape now.” Tom said and pointed towards a nearby window. I nodded twice, but then grabbed the handle once more.

“Are you sure?” I opened the door a little bit and spied through the gap. She wasn’t looking towards us at all, but kept staring at her hands. I closed the door quietly again for the third time. “Okay, she didn’t see us so far. But, if we jump too loudly out of the window, we could theoretically anger her. And don’t forget, you are still not in the best condition, you could strain your ankle.”

“This is the ground floor …” Tom pointed out. In that case, our escape route was indeed secured.

“Okay, this is the plan when she won´t react to our words. In any case, we probably should speak to her first. Do you know how we should do that?”

“Didn’t you read a few books about psychology?”

“Oh, I did … I think a bit of empathy is needed here.” I opened the door once again, this time completely. It creaked as it came to a halt, but even that wasn’t enough to drag Mary out of her state. Reluctantly, I stepped into the room and carefully walked over to her. Halfway there, I began to speak.

“Hey mum … uhm, I know you are feeling really excited right now by your first murder. Seeing her realize how her own life was dwindling away must have been thrilling. Don’t worry, there are always more people you can kill, it doesn’t have to end with her.” Irritating noises came from behind me as Tom flailed his arms around wildly. I raised an eyebrow as I turned my head to look at him, but couldn’t quite understand what he meant. Was trying to be empathic bad after all?

I stepped over the badly mutilated head of the corpse and sat on top of the desk, only to proceed to lay down on it so that my face was directly in front of her. A constant stream of tears was flowing out of her eyes. My playful smile vanished in an instant as I realized that her feelings weren’t even remotely close to mine.

I have seen harpies happily killing beavers, elves gladly burning down their forest to kill humans and a worm murdering one human after another. So far, I assumed that everyone would react the same after visiting the dark side … I was horribly wrong.

For her, this wasn’t a great experience at all, she didn’t feel great as she murdered this maid and she also didn’t do it for fun. She was still staring at her bloodied hands, even as I took hers and pushed them downwards.

“Mum … mum, snap out of it!” I snipped my fingers in front of her eyes and thankfully, she seemed to focus on me rather than her hands afterwards. “It´s okay, it´s okay. You have done nothing wrong mum.”

“What makes you so sure?” She asked quietly and weakly.

“The light in your eyes. You are scared mum, scared of …” I breathed in sharply. “scared of becoming like me. But you aren’t like me, you never will be. And that’s completely alright.” With the arms of my dress, I began to clean her hands. She looked incredibly guilty as I did so and more than once, her gaze wandered over to the corpse that was promptly dragged out of the room by Tom. Only a blood trail remained in the room, along with a sweet scent of human blood.

“Am I going to hell for this?” I shook my head fiercely. The waiting queue for hell got too long after its initial opening and Aska was forced to shut it down after a few millennia of running it. Since then, the poor souls inside it were still rotting, it was just that the lights were turned off and no more souls entered. But she probably didn’t want to hear that reasoning at all.

“Sometimes, there is no other way. It was either you, or her, wasn’t it?” Mary nodded quietly. “You made a difficult choice, you would neither go to heaven nor to hell, no matter how you would have decided.” I said and sat upright once more. Mary didn’t cry anymore, but she was still far from feeling alright. “What happened, mum?”

She was struggling to start and kept looking at the puddle of blood on the floor, even as Tom threw a towel over it.

“I … I hired new maids. I checked all of their … their records and tried to keep anyone with connections to the north of my domain out ...” I nodded quietly as I started to understand. Arthur was born in the north and held deep connections to these nobles during his lifetime. Now that he was away, they probably feared losing their privileges and tried to kill Mary to install a puppet as a new duke.

“You wanted to ask me for help with them, didn’t you?” I asked concerned.

“There are … there are signs they are preparing to march to Eastminster.”

I breathed in loudly and massaged my cheeks. Problems just had to pile up massively, no matter where I went. It wasn’t entirely surprising, but still a massive hindrance to my plans.

“Alright, what do you want to do?” Mary blinked a few times as if she didn’t understand the question. Although she still had a pained expression, she started to think calmly again, much to my surprise.

“I want to solve this issue in the most peaceful way possible.” Was she asking me to present her a miraculous plan that didn’t exist? Even if it existed, I was absolutely incapable of even imagining solving a situation like this peacefully.

“So you surrender.” I proposed.

“No? I ... I cannot let the legacy of my ancestors end with me and give my citizens up to these people. I need your help, honey. They could theoretically recruit around ten thousand soldiers while I only have three thousand at hand.”

“What about the king?” I asked. If he was on Mary´s side, there was not a chance these nobles would succeed.

“He already halted the inquisition in Arthurs death. He doesn’t want to be concerned with this mess, especially because the northern nobles are even more loyal than I.” I did share her perspective, although I guessed these nobles had a backroom deal with the king as well, even though the uproar would be huge if a ducal family fell because of a rebellion.

“So no help from him … what about the other nobles?”

“They sent their troops to Arthur´s now extinct army … but they have a deep-rooted connection with my family.” So we could at least be considerably sure that only the north rebelled. A bit worried, I looked towards Mary who was trembling significantly.

“I see … and what will you do?” I asked, tilting my head in wonder.

“Can you … can you help me?” She asked, completely overwhelmed by the current situation.

“You are asking an evil person for help?” I said and smiled bitterly.

“Sometimes … you have to choose. It´s either giving up and waiting for the elves to trample upon everything, or strike back. Another decision I will go to hell for … and so I ask you to help me, as long as you keep civilian causalities to a minimum.”

“I will give my best …” I said and bit on my lower lip. It was getting quite difficult to follow the plan I set out for solving our little elven issue as it would take a long time to pull it off if we didn’t want to live with the rage of a king. Even preparing for what I planned would take a long time.

“Mum, we need as much money as you can get us in a single day. We will pay back every single bit eventually.” I wasn’t even asking for payment to help her, but Tom would need this money if I wasn’t around to steal everything I could get my hands on.

“That´s around ten thousand gold coins.” Tom whistled loudly while I had little idea how much I could actually buy with this amount.

“Should be good enough, what do you think, Tom?”

“It is enough for the start.”

With this everything was settled. Tom would start our operation in the royal capital, while I would help Mary with the nobles as much as I could. Happily, I stood up and walked towards the paperweight. 99 more to go…