The old man led Lucas down the stairs to the study, the parlor, or whatever the hell it was. It was a nice room with a lot of books that said more about the wealth of the Parin family than any amount of gold jewelry in a world where the printing press wasn’t exactly a thing.

He was sure they were very interesting, but he ignored all that and waited impatiently while the manservant fumbled through his keyring for the right silver key. “Come on, man,” Lucas prodded him. “This is life and death, you know?”

“You are not making this any quicker,” Gerwin snapped, but Lucas ignored him.

Maybe he locked up his hustle in here with the potions, he thought, choosing not to say it aloud and pick a fight. Now wasn’t the time for that.

As soon as the chest was open, Lucas was rifling through it. Well, he tried to. As soon as he could see them, a whole cloud of popups momentarily blinded him as he tried to look past the stupid windows to the objects he really needed.

Lesser Healing Potion (3 doses): Mild healing, endurance +1.

Lesser Healing Potion (3 doses): Mild healing, endurance +1.

Moderate Healing Potion (2 doses): Average healing, endurance +2.

Lesser Antidote (4 doses): Counteracts up to three levels of poison.

Mild Soporific (2 doses): Lesser sleep, euphoria 1, poison 1.

Potion of Cure Mild Disease (1 dose): endurance +5 (for the purposes of recovery only), poison 1.

Those were just the potions, too. The damn thing listed half a dozen herbs, too. Some of them were dried, and others were already mixed in poultices. That’s not what Lucas needed right now, though, and he quickly brushed them aside as he looked for the things he did.

As far as he was concerned, disease was a great problem to have. Disease meant that you had days or weeks until you died, and a lot could happen in a few days. Blood loss, though? It was much less forgiving.

Despite the dirty look that the butler was giving him, Lucas began to load up. He pocketed the lesser healing potion and the moderate one, too. Then, he started looking around for practical supplies. There was a needle and thread in here, so he pocketed those. There was no scalpel or bandages, though, which seemed stupid.

“Why does everyone have to rely on magic in this world,” he grumbled softly.

Medicine was for poor people, and doctors still had leeches. He knew that for a fact, though, which was why he'd never gone back after the last time. He’d rather die in a ditch than be told how medicinal purging his humors was.

Instead, he left the study as quickly as he entered it and barged into the dining room, where he quickly started clearing off the table.

“What are you doing?” Gerwin asked.

“What’s it look like,” Lucas shrugged, not bothering to look at the man. “I’m getting bandages. You tend to need those when someone is bleeding. You know?”

“B-b-but these are fine linens,” the old man sputtered, “You can’t—”

“I can, and I will,” Lucas said as he yanked the cloth free and started wadding it up. “If you got a problem with that, you can go right back upstairs.”

He didn’t even wait for a response that time. He could feel every second ticking by now. This was taking too damn long, and he needed to get out of here. That became even more true when he went into the kitchen to get a knife and he saw lights approaching in the distance.

They weren’t exactly the red and blue lights he was used to, but the group of flickering orange torches pretty much said the same thing in neon letters. ‘We are cops, and we’re coming for your ass.'

“I was never here,” Lucas growled at Gerwin before he bolted for the front door. “You understand that? Warn your mistress. Tell her none of this happened, and you never saw us, alright?”

The man nodded numbly, and it was only when Lucas was walking out the front door to his horse that he realized the butler might have thought he was being threatened by the way that Lucas was holding his newly acquired paring knife. There was no time for apologies, though. There was only time to get the hell out of here.

Lucas didn’t even bother to remount the horse. He just grabbed it by its bridle and started leading it around the house to the far side where they wouldn’t be seen. From there, he faced a dilemma. He’d been planning to do all this right there on the porch, or maybe in the barn he could just barely see from the front yard, but if those were guards, and they were really after them, Lucas couldn’t stay here.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

He’d have to be at least far enough away that they wouldn’t hear the sound of screaming when he yanked that crossbow bolt out. So, he headed out past the garden and the barn toward the black wall that he was pretty sure were woods. Being out in the forest of a fantasy world at night wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time, but it was the only choice he had right now.

Lucas sighed. “Man, I just can’t catch a break. I just want to lay down and take a nap, but that sure as hell ain’t happening.”

He complained the whole way to the forest, passing several smaller outbuildings and a farm over the next few minutes to chase the shadows away. This close to civilization, it was probably pretty safe, but really, what could he do? It wasn’t like they had another choice here.

Once he picked a likely spot to build their campsite, he carefully unloaded his patient, and after checking his pulse, he checked on the guards. There were torches around the Parin manse, and some lights were on inside, but they didn’t seem to be heading his way, and for now, that was all he could hope for.

“We’re going to be okay, man,” Lucas told his unconscious partner in crime as he got him up into a sitting position and fumbled with one of the potions of lesser healing.

He was talking to himself as much as the Viscount, but mostly he was stalling. He faced a critical dilemma at this moment. If he pulled the crossbow bolt free before he gave the man the potion, he would make the wound that much worse. Lord Parin might just decide to bleed out before the very expensive red liquid could work its magic.

The man had a much bigger chance of pulling through if Lucas started the healing first, but that just meant it was going to be that much more painful to get the thing out of there when the time came. Ultimately, Lucas didn’t want the man to die, even if he seemed like a putz, so he forced half of the lesser healing potion down the unconscious man’s throat and then held his mouth closed while he choked and sputtered.

Choking was a good sign, just like when Lucas had been yanked out of the water. It was a sign that you were about to die and not that you were already dead.

A few seconds later, the lord’s eyes fluttered open, and after trying and failing to speak a couple times, he finally asked. “Did I die?”

“Not yet, man,” Lucas smiled, “but keep it up, and maybe next time you will.”

“If I’m not dead, then why does it hurt so bad?” the Viscount asked.

“Well, that’s… that’s the thing, isn’t it,” Lucas said as he picked up the tablecloth and started ripping it into strips. “No one is ever grateful to wake up after they survived a drive-by, are they?”

“What’s a drive-by?” the noble asked.

“It’s a… never mind,” Lucas said as he started winding the cloth around a branch that was just about the right size. “The good news is that you lived, but the bad news is that in a second, I’m going to yank out the arrow that almost killed you, and it’s probably going to hurt like hell.”

“Wha… why didn’t you do that while I was unconscious?” Lord Parin gasped. “I… In light of the current circumstances, I think maybe we should see a proper physiker, or—”

He began to squirm in Lucas’s grip to the point where he was afraid the noble was going to aggravate his injury and drive the quarrel deeper inside him, so Lucas slapped him good and hard to bring him to his senses. “Listen,” Lucas hissed, offering him the stick. “There are guards right over there. This is what we gotta do. Alright? You’ll be fine. I brought two potions. One is to make sure you don’t die, and the other one is to fix whatever happens next. Now stop being a little bitch and bite down on this, alright?”

The Viscount looked from Lucas to the stick and back again before he finally said, “Don’t you have something… stronger?”

Lucas rolled his eyes and was about to tell the doughy, spoiled man to grow a pair when he realized that he, in fact, did have something stronger. “Yeah, man, actually I do, but the thing his… blue has risks of its own, you know? The pain might be better?”

“Why would the pain be better?” Lord Parin asked. “Do you just want me to suffer? Do you think it’s funny to see a member of the aristocracy in pain?”

“Nah, man,” Lucas shook his head. “I’m just saying that addiction is no laughing matter, and this stuff, well - it’s strong, you know?”

Truthfully, his blue was strong enough to scare him. Lucas had tried a couple of the early versions when he was still perfecting his recipe, and he’d built a pretty good model in his head of exactly how different drugs stacked up.

Brew of Mana Intoxication (ultra pure) (5 doses): Euphoria 12, poison 3, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 200% for 1 hour.

Heroin on Earth was probably something like a 9 or a 10, depending on who you got it from and how stepped on it was. Cocaine was somewhere below that at like an 8, which made the crystal he used to deal more like a 6.

Blue, though… Once he’d gotten the euphoria over 10, he promised himself he’d never try it again. He’d been in rehab enough to know what it was he could and couldn’t handle. The stuff he’d delivered to the Chimera’s Chalice was only an 8.

It was hard to make anything purer than that in bulk, but this had been meant to try to lure a new patron before everything had gone sideways. Someone like the Viscount but wealthy and powerful instead of bleeding out.

“If that’s what you want, man, but honestly, the stick might be easier…” Lucas said, removing the bottle from his jacket and showing it to the wounded man by starlight.

“Addiction is just a question of willpower, and that is something that a Perrin has never lacked,” the noble insisted.

Lucas hesitated for a moment before saying, “Alright, your funeral. Open up.”

With a shaking hand, Lucas opened the cork stopper of the vial, and careful not to drip any on his hands, he dripped a few drops into the mouth of Lord Parin.

“Is that it?” the man asked. “I think I’ll need more than that for… woah… what’s this then?”

“That is the next twenty minutes of your life being devoured by blissful oblivion,” Lucas said as he laid the man back down on his side to expose the injury. “Enjoy. ”

Then, picking up the knife, he looked at the scabbed, partially healed arrow wound and shuddered.