For the next couple of weeks, very little of what went on could be called productive. He was so concerned that invisible spies might be watching him or that the ambush they'd all been waiting for might begin that he didn’t actually cook once. Instead, he sat around bored out of his mind, pretending to have a good time with Adin or going on leisurely herb gathering trips where he plucked anything but the ingredients to Blue.

He also made sure that no one left the grounds without an armed escort. It didn’t matter if it was him, the Parins, or even a messenger boy. They weren't going to make this easy on Lord Torvin because, like it or not, Lucas was sure the cagey old man was planning his revenge. The man had a heart of flint and a devious mind. He also paid people in the village to watch the road and keep an eye out for strangers, and he arranged random guard patrols of the grounds and the orchard. None of that would have been enough to stop a determined attack, but all of it would make the planning that much more difficult.

It turned out that waiting for the axe to fall wasn’t the most difficult part of the whole thing, even though Lucas had thought that it would be. It was pretending to be someone like Adin the whole time in case he was being watched. Trying to throw the Torvins, along with anyone else who had a vested interest in killing him, off the trail, was exhausting work. He just wasn’t made to be a dilettante and eat finger sandwiches while he had long conversations about nothing at all.

The second most difficult part, though, was putting up with Adin all day long and his incessant whining about Annise. Apparently, she was very displeased that she’d gotten hooked on Blue in all of this, and though she couldn’t break the engagement for appearance’s sake, she’d barely spoken a word to him since and had refused to see him on numerous visits. Lucas found how upset he was by that to be more than a little amusing, considering how it was supposed to be a marriage of political convenience.

“Just tell her it was all my fault,” Lucas said. “Tell her I’m the monster that made you do it, and you’re in the same position she is. It’s pretty much what I told her father, so she’ll definitely believe it.”

“The only thing worse than being a villain is an impotent fool,” he snarled back. “If I told her that, she’d never respect me again.”

“You’d rather be hated?” Lucas asked, laughing.

“Love isn’t necessary for a strong relationship, but respect is,” Adin sighed. “Ours was never going to be a loving bed, but for a time, it was quite nice. Annise is very clever, I’ll have you know. You could learn a thing or two from her.”

Of that, at least, Lucas had no doubt. She was a snake, for sure.

Spending time with Danaria was nice, at least for the most part. She still seemed to run hot then cold, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that. One day, everything was fine with them, and the next day, she was chastising him for being a drug dealer. It wasn’t a fight he could win, so he rarely tried. Instead, they talked about other things, like the cosmetic research he’d tried.

She wasn’t much for makeup, but she hoped that he would try perfumes one day, which, honestly, wasn’t something he’d ever considered before. Could he make perfumes with his alchemy skills? Lucas had no idea, but he supposed it was worth a shot. They were mostly just just alcohol and sweet-smelling things, weren't they?

Wait, didn’t whaling have something to do with it, too? He thought to himself. He had a brief recollection from history class about something to do with whaling and whale oil, but it was gone. He’d never exactly paid much attention in school, so that was hardly a surprise.

Lucas wasted almost two full weeks. It was only when he risked a trip into town and hired a sage for the extortionary price of 8 golden dragons to explain to him how the ring of invisibility worked that he was finally able to get back to work. He needed to. They were spending a small fortune on precautions, and pretty soon, the Knights of Brass were going to be on his ass about re-upping.

Honestly, Lucas wanted to phase out that whole line of business in the not-so-distant future and sell exclusively to the nobles. Not only would it be less destructive in the long run, but it would be much more profitable, and he could feel good about both those things, so long as the sage could tell him how to slip away so that he could come and go as he pleased.

“You see here,” the wizened old man pointed out. “This symbol here is what controls the device.”

“What? Like a button, or is it more of a command word?” Lucas asked, unsure of how exactly he would pronounce a diamond shape with several cursive squiggles that ran through it.

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“Neither,” the sage said. “First, you wear the ring, and then you visualize the sign on it in your mind, which links your mana to it and…” As he spoke, nothing happened for several seconds, and then suddenly, the old man vanished in the blink of an eye like he’d never been there at all.

Lucas had just enough time for his jaw to fall open at the minor miracle, but before he even finished reaching out to touch the man, the sage reappeared and handed Lucas the ring. “Now you try,” he said calmly.

If it was that easy, Lucas felt like he’d been seriously ripped off on the fee to meet with this man, but it turned out not to be the case. He put on the ring, but try though he might he couldn’t feel more than a tickle.

“You must calm down,” the sage said after several attempts when Lucas’s irritation started to become relevant. “Channel essence can only happen with a clear mind.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do here,” Lucas sighed.

The old man walked him through a series of breathing exercises. Then, after that interminable waste of time, Lucas tried again. At first, he felt nothing, just like before, but on his second attempt he felt a slight tingle, and on the fourth try he flickered out of existence long enough to notice, before the sudden surge of excitement at that realization broke the spell and ended it immediately.

“Woah,” he gasped.

“Indeed,” the old man said softly. “It can take some getting used to, but it’s important to stay calm, first and foremost.”

“And once the magic is active, it just stays on? Until when?” Lucas asked. “How do I know when I’m running out of mana or whatever?”

“These things will become clear to you when you practice more,” the sage said. “Mana is like any other form of endurance, and it improves with practice. Initially, you might find you can only use this trinket for short periods of time, but with practice… well, I’m sure you’ll get the results you seek.”

The man offered to sell him a child’s toy that nobles often purchased for promising you mages to improve such skills, but at 55 golden dragons, Lucas balked at the price. He would happily practice with his ring instead, which was exactly what he did that night.

Because he was being watched, he was sleeping in the guest bedroom of the main house, instead of in the ciderhouse with the guys. And after he went to bed he spent more than an hour practicing his invisibility. This time he got it on the second attempt, but by the fourth he was able to just hold it in place with a little bit of concentration.

That first night, he couldn’t even sit up without breaking the spell, but after a few nights of trying, he was able to sit up, stand up, and even walk around. Opening doors and picking things up without reappearing took longer, but after a few more nights, he got there. All in all, though, he was able to stay invisible for several minutes without any real strain. Starting on the second night, he tried to hold it for as long as possible.

Though Lucas didn’t have a clock, he estimated that he could hold the invisibility effect for maybe three minutes without any effort and maybe five before he started to really feel the burn. “I wish there was some way to quantify this better,” he sighed to himself. “You know, like numbers and shit.”

Part of him hoped that some stupid pop-up window with all of his magic stats would appear when he said that like it did with his alchemy stuff. That didn’t happen, though. After almost a week of practice with the ring, including a few late-night walks around the mansion while everyone was asleep, he finally decided to test it the following day outside, where people might catch him.

Somehow, despite his nervousness, he managed not to fuck that up, and he quickly and quietly made his way down to his beloved lab. It was only when he was standing there in the near darkness that he realized how much he missed the place. Despite the noise of people working above him now that apple harvesting was in full swing, he felt more at peace down here than he had anywhere since that whole stupid trip in the woods had almost left him gutted.

Lucas spared a moment to enjoy that, but after that, he got to work, reviewing inventories and noting what ingredients were still good and what would have to be tossed out. Fortunately, he’d thought ahead and dried vast quantities of witch grass blossoms, wizened gnome caps, and dwarf berries for just this moment, and they’d boiled off the water from the goblin bile and blue esper vine sap to make a more purified and shelf-stable version. While he noted a few of the jars of bile now had the status of rotted or putrified, most of them were still fine.

So, Lucas quickly got to work. After all, he was going to need a lot more blue soon. They all were. Their regular noble customers needed over a hundred doses a month now, the Knights were going to need forty doses a week of the watered-down stuff, and Lord Torvin and his bunch, well… Given that they hadn’t been attacked yet, Lucas was pretty sure he could put them down for another forty or fifty a month just to be safe.

The result came out to be almost four batches a week, which definitely meant more mats than he had right now, at least in terms of goblin bile. His mind racing, Lucas realized he was going to have to get the boys out scavenging again, and he was looking to pick up any esper vine they could before the weather turned. Then there was talking to Kar’gandin so the dwarf could get more bounties out there for the bile and…

Lucas forced himself to stop, then feeling slightly ridiculous, he used one of the breathing exercises the sage had taught him to force himself to calm down a little. All that could wait. It could certainly wait until the end of the day and probably until the end of the week. All that mattered now was what he was doing. He’d waited weeks to get back to it, and he wasn’t about to blow a cook because he was distracted.

Refocused, Lucas smiled and then lit the fire on his stove. It was time to get to work.