“Eibon.” Cece started. “Could you remind me why you’re in my home, again?”

“Well I bought this nice bottle of red, and I don’t know anyone else is Astraev, so…”

“You don’t have any friends in this country?”

“I have you.” He said pointing at her, while rummaging through her cabinets for wine glasses.

“We’re not friends, Eibon.”

“Better.” He replied swiftly. “We’re accomplices.”

“I wasn’t planning on taking that offer if I could avoid it.” She stated with annoyance.

“Cecelia, I’m sure you have done an exceedingly good job so far, but Solastria is a powerful family. You’re going to need every friend you can get.”

“Well, excuse me for being suspicious of someone who should, by all accounts , want me dead.”

“Why would I want you dead?” He asked, crossing his arms. It was said less as a question and more like he was trying to teach her something.

“I usurped you. Don’t you want Knowledge’s privilege back?”

“Think. Why would I not be concerned about losing access to the library?”

Cece closed her eyes and considered for a moment, her enhanced mind beginning to think through every possibility, only to be cut off by the obvious conclusion.

“If you position yourself as my ally, you can ask me to access the library for you.” She said icily.

“Ding, ding, ding!” Eibon cheered.

“So you admit it, you’re using me to retain access?”

“No, Cecelia. I genuinely want to help you, but I’m giving you a logical reason why I shouldn’t kill you since you’re clearly not the type of person to believe in other’s good will. Otherwise you wouldn’t be holding that pistol so tight.” He said not even looking, pouring the wine into two glasses.

Cece would’ve flinched at the comment if her every muscle wasn’t under her mental control. She hadn’t thought she had been obvious, but clearly keeping the firearm in between the cushions of her sofa hadn’t been subtle enough. He turned around and handed her a glass, she let go of the revolver and snatched the glass out of his hands.

“Cece.”

“Pardon?”

“If we’re going to be “accomplices”, call me Cece.” She said, before taking a sip.

“Aren’t you scared I poisoned it?”

“I’m immune to most poisons.” She replied nonchalantly.

“Ah yes, I forgot how mage families train their children.” He stated.

“You’re a solo mage? I suppose that makes sense. I feel I would’ve heard about a family of necromancers.”

“Yes, the last family to practice black sulfur magic died of thousands of years ago. The only way I learned it was through Knowledge.”

“I figured, I did some digging in it’s library and it had some information, but it looks like most of it was restricted.” Cece said, swirling the wine in her glass.

“Yes, our master likes to keep particularly interesting pieces of information to itself so it can sell it individually, it’s what most of my souls were used for.”

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“That sounds like that treacherous snake.” Cece muttered.

“Snake?”

“Yes, a snake. Is that not what you see the devil as?”

“No, how a devil looks changes based on who’s viewing it.”

“Why?” She asked, slightly confused.

“I don’t completely understand it, but in many ways devils are conceptual beings.”

“I see. What does it look like to you?” Cece asked, letting a bit of curiosity drip from her voice.

“A bit like a grim reaper, albeit with horns. At first it was a little frightening, but I’ve long gotten used to skeletons at this point. What does it look like to you?” Cece seethed internally as he spoke. She would kill to be able to speak to a skeleton instead of what awaits her every time she visits Knowledge’s realm.

“A serpent the size of this building- no perhaps larger, coiled around an obelisk.”

“Oh my, that’s interesting. It does make sense “tempter of eve” and all that.”

“I suppose so. You said earlier, that you wanted to help me. Why?” She said, her expression suddenly turning serious.

“Let me ask you a question of my own.” He began, “Why were you looking into necromancy in Knowledge’s Library?”

“I wanted to see-” She started.

“If you could bring them back, right?” He finished for her. She simply nodded. “You remind me of myself a bit, that’s all. I’m sure you found the answer too, right?”

“Yes. The only way to bring someone back is if their mind has been preserved, otherwise their corpse is but a shell.” Necromancy could bring someone back, but only if they had died within the last few hours, otherwise it was useless.

“Yes, still I needed to try. I owed it to my family to try.” He said, with a sorrowful expression.

“I understand.” Cece said simply. She hadn’t been won over. The entire conversation could have been a lie, but still, she understood that sensation.

“To our fallen.” He said, raising his glass.

“To our fallen.” She repeated, clinking her glass against his.

In an estate a fair distance further into the city, Dimitri Solastria sat and considered a large board in his study. He had taken a fine toothed comb to Solastria’s many enemies, and had been trying his best to connect the dots. The poison had been analyzed, a low-dose argent moonflower tincture that had been aerosolized. The receptacle it was in had been transmuted, but it used a generic shape that many alchemical aerosols used, so that had been a dead end as well.

That was the problem with the entire case, there was a wealth of information, but none of it led anywhere. It was too well done to not be sabotage by another family, but it couldn’t have been a family since it didn’t fit any family’s modus operandi. It had to have been performed by a silver or phosphorus mage, but it couldn’t have been since Solastria no longer had any enemies that used those magics. It was contradiction on contradiction and Dimitri couldn’t help but feel that he was missing something.

He had piles and piles of papers on his desk, which he was pinning to the board, papers with names and pictures. His first pick was a sulfur mage name Grigor Svetz. Solastria had angered him with some unfair business dealings, as well as the fact that he blamed Solastria for his son’s death. He had been a promising sulfur mage who was going to marry into the family. Still he found it unlikely that the man could or would do such a thing. Although no element was necessarily “better” than another, there were certainly some that were considered more prestigious, and sulfur wasn’t one of them. It was one of the three primes: Mercury which sharpens the mind, sulfur that fuels the soul, and salt that protects the body. Mages of these elements were extremely common, since the three primes easier to learn than other magics, and they suffered slightly from this reputation. Mercury of course, had a slightly better reputation since it was also one of the seven heavenly metals, but there were almost no pure mercury mages anyway. It wasn’t an element that was generally pursued on its own, besides a few oddballs. This is all to say, that as a wise man who had led a sulfur family for fifty years Grigor would know better than to try and start a feud with a gold family, he wouldn’t win.

Still, Dimitri left him up there, since he had little competition when it came to who could potentially be their culprit. His second pick was the iron mage Seraphina Faroe. Freya Solastria had killed her father in a dispute a decade prior. He truly hoped it wasn’t her, she was a terrifying blood mage, a specialty that very few people found themselves in, and among those who did, few were relatively sane people. She especially was a terrifying woman, who had a reputation for killing.

He put her picture and a few others on the board, along with a few out there options. He almost laughed as he pinned a picture of a woman with platinum blonde hair to the board. She was dressed in a red gown, with an eyepatch over one eye. He was familiar with the girl, enough at least to find it funny to even consider she did this, and enough to wonder about this recent picture of her as well.

“I wonder what happened to her eye…” He mused.

Unbeknownst to him, it floated in the air, invisible staring, unblinking, at the board.