Victor woke up with a gasp. To his surprise, the act of inhaling didn’t burn his lungs — if anything, his chest just felt sore. Very sore. Almost alarmingly so — he wasn’t accustomed to feeling like he had just given a serious workout to his diaphragm.

Holding his breath, he closed his eyes again, as he felt he needed to calm himself. Hold it, hold it, now exhale — slowly…

After just a few cycles of slow, steady, rhythmic breathing, Victor opened his eyes. A low, dingy stone ceiling crisscrossed with filthy pipes and drooping wires greeted him. The lighting was quite dim — it seemed as if it was just ambient, reflected illumination from a light source around a bend or through a slightly open doorway.

Confused, Victor tried to sit up — and found that he was strapped down to the surface he was lying on. Both his arms and legs were bound. Try not to panic, he thought to himself as he began to panic.

At the very least, he could still move his head and neck. Turning his head side to side, Victor scanned as much of the room as he could.

Saws, knives, needles, and convoluted metal instruments Victor didn’t want to even try to identify. Black rubber hoses, tanks of crusty fluids with bits of foam and precipitated solids floating to the top. Worn and faded, but not dusty, books, folders, and charts. On the other side, Victor eyed a contraption that could best be described as a vapor distiller — constructed from what appeared to be a wash basin, a tarp, scavenged pipes, and some kind of electrochemical cell. The latter probably powered it with resistive heating.

Victor blinked. Fucking hell. By all evidence, he was pinned down like a collector’s butterfly in the heart of the lair of a junkyard engineer and druggie.

Victor tried to remember the events leading up to this unfortunate turn of events. Somehow, the trio had made it out of the dungeon after the fight with the troll. And then Chloe had led them to the residence of that woman — someone said that she also worked for Lord Harvey — and then she had injected him with a needle.

Victor’s panic evaporated. Not because he felt safe or reassured — quite the contrary. The whole situation was just so simultaneously ridiculous and bleak, and there was nothing he could do about it. The restraints felt pretty firm.

No, he was just resigned to waiting for whatever miserable fate awaited him.

Several minutes passed. With nothing else to do to pass the time, Victor began scanning the room again, this time paying closer attention to each individual object. One of the tanks of questionable fluid also contained a dark, lumpy, indistinct shape.

Victor squinted. Something about it strongly suggested it was vaguely biological in nature. Not exactly reassuring.

Half an hour passed, and Victor had run out of interesting things to look at. The space was quite dimly lit, after all, and there was only so much he could identify or speculate on from his one constrained angle.

And then the lights flicked on.

The sudden illumination was nearly blinding. Squinting in pain, Victor couldn’t help but tense as heavy boots approached him. Turning his head, he tried to catch site of the newcomer.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

He recognized the voice, though it was still unfamiliar. It belonged to the woman Chloe brought them to the previous night. This was probably her basement.

Victor cleared his throat. It was simultaneously dry and choked with mucus. “I suppose you prefer your victims to be conscious. Otherwise it can get pretty lonely in the lab, right?”

Fortunately, while his throat was still hoarse, it no longer hurt to speak at a reasonable volume. At the same time, Victor chastised himself for the banter. It had just slipped out, but now he regretted it.

But the silver haired woman laughed as she stepped into view. She was wearing a lab coat over work clothes now — surprisingly clean, Victor noted. “Now now. Is that really how you should speak to the one treating you?”

Returning his gaze back to the ceiling, Victor frowned. It was true that his lungs no longer burned, and his breath came easily despite the soreness… even if he was in the presence of a dangerous hack, so far, she seemed to have been an effective one — assuming the implication that she had ‘treated’ him was actually true.

Licking his lips, he tried to decide what to ask first. “Who are you?” He finally asked.

Although he couldn’t see her, Victor could for some reason imagine her frowning and tilting her head. Craning his own neck, he saw that he was mistaken — she was noting something down in one of the battered old books.

“Nika,” she said as she closed the book and looked up. “I’m one of Lord Harvey’s former associates.” Victor could hear the subtle emphasis on the word ‘former.’ Was she merely referencing the fact that their boss was now dead, or was there something else there?

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“I’ve also been teaching your sister fleshcraft,” Nika continued, “though I hear that this is news to you?”

Leaning back again, Victor sighed under his breath. How much should he let on? “Yes,” he finally said. Pausing for a moment, he gathered his thoughts. He sensed she was about to press the matter, so he quickly continued. “So you’re a fleshcrafter.”

“Alchemist, fleshcrafter, and physicist, mainly.” She paused. “My actual Class is alchemist, but I consider myself proficient in fleshcrafting and a leader in physics. And yes, I have a license in the first two.”

Victor snorted. “Damn. How much did that cost you? I’ve never had much luck with imperial clerks, but I’m also not Lord Harvey.”

“Fifteen cents to process the application, you little shit.” She sounded angry at first, but Victor was able to pick up that there was a deeper undercurrent of mirth. “Has it ever occurred to you that some people are just good enough to not have to cheat?”

Despite his best judgment, Victor felt himself really getting into it now. “Of course not. But you either cheat, start out with a winning hand, or lose.” Victor resisted his smirk. “And pardon me, madam, but you don’t strike me as someone who’s been particularly favored by the dealer.”

Stepping close, Nika stood over him. She now wielded a small, used scalpel, which she examined with idle curiosity and consideration. “You talk a lot of shit for someone who’s strapped down to an operating table in a sketchy fleshcrafter’s laboratory.”

Tearing his gaze away from the scalpel, Victor tried to give the equivalent of a shrug with just his facial movements. He didn’t think it worked. “With all due respect, people who play it safe don’t end up strapped down to operating tables in the laboratories of sketchy fleshcrafters.”

Well, not usually. Victor almost sighed. He thought he had taken mostly reasonable, acceptable risks at each link in the chain of events — given the surrounding context at least — and yet here he was.

Nika studied him impassively, with a blank, almost uncritical expression. “Right,” she finally admitted, “I suppose you’re right. Now.” She switched her attention to Victor’s side, adjusting her grip on the scalpel as she did so.

Victor tensed.

“Let’s get you up on your own two feet,” she said.

Relaxing, Victor stared at the ceiling as his host and supposed caretaker cut each of his bonds. He didn’t move until the last strap was cut free — at which point he sat up with a barely restrained groan.

Twisting his back side to side, Victor stretched. Parts of his spine actually cracked and popped rather loudly.

At the same time, Victor realized that his entire body was coated in some kind of clear, slick, oily paste. He hadn’t noticed it before due to his lack of mobility and restricted range of vision, but now, he couldn’t ignore it.

“…Why am I covered in lard?”

“Oh that? That’s my special butter for slow cooked roasts. Adds a nice nutty flavor once I cook you.” Victor stared. Nika rolled her eyes and scoffed. “It’s a healing salve you dimwit. And you took up pretty much my entire supply. Care to tell me how you managed to give yourself chemical burns on the entire surface of your body, including your lungs?”

Victor frowned. “I thought Chloe explained that.”

Nika shook her head. “Nope, all I got out of her was ‘chaos exposure and ichor drippers.’ Care to enlighten me a little?”

“Oh.” Dangling his feet off of the edge of the cot, Victor raked a hand through his filthy, greasy black hair. “Well, I don’t actually know quite how I did it…” He paused. “But I put way more arcane energy into an enchantment than it could actually hold, and then I threw it into a big mass of ichor drippers that was chasing me. I passed out then, but Chloe said I vaporized most of them.”

Nika blinked. After remaining silent for a few moments, during which Victor became increasingly conscious and ashamed of his own nudity, she shrugged. “Well that’s certainly a new one.”

Chuckling, she reached into a nearby bin and chucked a ragged, worn towel at him. “It’s quite fortunate that you survived that. If you had told me beforehand, I wouldn’t have bet much on your ultimate survival.”

Hastily wrapping himself in the towel as best he could — it felt kind of gross and wrong, given the sticky salve — Victor considered what Nika had just said. “So I’m going to be all better?”

She tilted her head. “I guess? I can take care of your lungs and skin, at the very least. For the chaos exposure…” she shrugged. “You’ll probably have to get someone else to handle that. The best I can do is treat whatever physical symptoms crop up as they come.”

Victor hesitated at that. “Will you?” He finally asked.

“Unfortunately.”

Victor snorted, and Nika continued. “Your sister managed to convince me to take care of you. And lucky for you, that debt is hers, not yours.” She rolled her eyes. “So I guess we should all thank her for blessing the world with the continued existence of another reckless idiot.”

The fleshcrafter shook her head in exaggerated disgust. “Honestly, the worst part about fools like you is how unexpectedly creative they can get with their foolishness.”

Victor let a little bit of his prior playful mirth slip back into his words. “Well, no one else can anticipate my movements if even I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

“Yes, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could carry yourself with just a modicum of carefulness while you remain on my premises.”

It was Victor’s turn to roll his eyes. Nika’s speech was ironically far too formal and diplomatic for him to take it seriously. As he fumbled with keeping the towel tied around his bare waist, Victor tried to figure out what to ask next.

“I believe your sister is awaiting you.”

Victor looked up, meeting the fleshcrafter’s gaze again. “…Can I clean up first? At least wash myself off and get some proper clothes on?”

Crossing her arms, Nika shook her head. “No. My salve hasn’t finished doing its work. On a professional level, I would go so far as to rather you remain towel-less — but on a personal level, that’s the one concession I’m willing to make.”

Licking his salve smeared lips, Victor frowned. “Please? I can just put it on at night or something…”

But Nika stood her ground, glaring at him with a cool, steely gaze and refusing to budge. “There isn’t enough left for another coat. I’m already going to have to make more soon.”

Raising his hands in a pleading gesture, Victor attempted to press the issue further. “I mean, if you’re going to have to make more anyway…”

Nika shook her head and pointed to the cracked doorway, behind which Victor could just make out some steep, slick stone stairs. “Nope. Just a towel. Now get out, your sister is quite anxious to see you.”

Sighing, Victor slid off the cot and made his way to the rusty, paint-flaked metal door while doing his best to keep his raggedy towel from slipping.

He needed to have some important, long due conversations…

And he was not looking forward to doing so while almost naked.