Stella started awake, confused. It felt much too early to be awake. Something was wrong.

It was four weeks since she’d started her apprenticeship. The days since then had passed much like the first two, except that Elrick had seemed to grow gradually less grumpy. He’d taught her several more potions, including a sleeping draft and a hunger potion. Oddly, he’d bottled the hunger potion rather than letting her harvest its energy. He told her the potion allowed the drinker to eat as much as they wanted without hurting their stomach. What he wanted with it was beyond her imagination. She was just upset that she hadn’t gotten to feel its energy. He’d also shown her how to craft a few magical objects, including a teleportation roll: a roll of rabbit skin pickled in a special brine to allow for teleportation within a league of its ignition. Elrick had let her keep one of those, and it lay on the ground by her straw mattress.

Stella heard skeletons rattling below. The ones guarding her sleeping nook were gone. She considered only a moment before heading down to see what was happening. The potion room was silent, so she continued down. On the ground floor, the only moving thing was Maw, snoring as he lay by the room’s central fire. More rattling echoed from down in the cellar, and Stella followed it.

She hadn’t been in the cellar since passing through it the first time, so this was the first she’d seen of the large table at its center. It was circular and seven feet wide, and its surface had several large dark stains.

Stella spotted a few skeletons disappearing down the tunnel. That’s it, she thought. It must be a conference day. They’re headed to the meeting room. Stella followed the skeletons down the tunnel, feeling the wall along the way to keep from bumping into corners. Tarant had been unable to tell her what went on in those meetings, but now she could find out.

She could soon see the sorcerer sitting on his throne of yellowed bones, looking annoyed and bored. Six blackened skeletons stood behind him. Stella stopped two yards short of the tunnel’s exit. She couldn’t see anything beyond the dais, but she didn’t want to risk being seen, either. If this effort yielded any information that would help her kill Elrick, it was best to keep her knowledge of it a secret. Besides, she could hear all of the proceedings perfectly.

Hinges squeaked as a door swung open, followed by footsteps and grunts. It sounded as if people were approaching her, but the closest ones stopped a few yards away. Elrick looked right and left, his expression unchanged. Whatever was happening, he was unimpressed.

“Oh great and ineffable Elrick,” Vatran’s sycophantic voice said, “Please accept this choice selection of offerings to add to your greatness. And if you find it a worthy offering, give ear to your humble servants, that you might hear our petition and grant it according to your timing and pleasure.”

Feeling a stab of concern, Stella peeked into the room. Seven people stood lined up before Elrick. They wore gags and dirty clothes, and skeletons held them in place. The closest was Laurel, Stella’s mother.

“No!” Stella screamed, bolting into the room. She tried to pry the skeleton’s fingers from off her mother, but they were like stone. A pair of skeletons came down from the dais and seized Stella. They dragged her away from her mother, and up onto the dais, stopping next to Elrick’s throne.

The sorcerer scowled at her. Vatran fell to his knees. “I’m so sorry my lord,” he said. “She’s a curious girl. Please forgive her.”

“Silence,” Elrick said, and Vatran snapped his mouth shut. “Get up.” Vatran hastened away and took his place at the center of the small arc of fanatics. Elrick turned his scowl back to Stella. “You have an objection?”

Stella swallowed. “That’s my mother, sir.”

Elrick squinted at Laurel. “Are you married, woman?”

The skeleton holding her slid its finger across her gag, and it fell off as if it had been cut. “My husband is dead. You killed him.”

“Interesting.”

“Interesting? You—” The skeleton covered her mouth with its black fingerbones.

Elrick scowled. “You will be silent unless spoken to.” He pointed to the man on her right and said, “You. Who are you, and why should I let you live?”

Apart from the dirt and the bags under his eyes, this man looked like he was at the peak of health. He drew himself up. “I am Reginald IV, Crown Prince of Cephaneia. My father the king is ailing, and the kingdom will fall into chaos if I don’t get back to it. Release me now, and I will see that you receive a king’s ransom in return.”

Elrick snorted, his scowl disappearing. “That’s enough from you. Next.” He went down the line, asking each prisoner the same question he asked the prince. One man was married with nine children. Another owned the largest cloth-shipping business in his region. The fourth man said only that he was “a hunter seeking progression,” but he had a familiar burn mark on his cheek and a bracelet brand on his wrist. The other two were ruffians with little to say for themselves.

Elrick nodded, finished with his questioning. The skeletons holding the prince and the father pushed their captives forward. The others were dragged back. Five fanatics came forward, each bearing a simple branding iron, already hot. They branded the prisoners’ cheeks, resistance quelled by the skeletons’ strength. The branded prisoners were each left with a burn on their cheek the size and shape of a man’s little finger. The hunter, who’d already had a burn, was given a matching one on the same cheek, making him look like the fanatic Abjectus. The skeletons shuffled the branded prisoners through the door below the dais.

Knowing the pain of the branding iron herself, Stella wanted dearly to comfort her mother. But she couldn’t. The skeletons holding her were too strong. So she held her tongue, her stomach churning with outrage and anticipation.

Elrick stood to regard the remaining prisoners. The prince and the father were left unbranded, but they now stood directly in line with the scorch marks that scarred the stone floor. Upon realizing this, they broke into protests: the father pleading, the prince promising riches. Giving no heed to either, Elrick conjured a fireball in his hand and sent it at them. The flames engulfed the two men, but there was no screaming. The only sound was the cackle of the fire. The blaze lasted only a few seconds. When the flames died, the skeletons were left holding blackened versions of their captives. The flesh hadn’t been damaged, just discolored. But they were limp, dead. Part of Stella wondered at the speed of it. The other part rationalized that at least the men hadn’t suffered for long.

The skeletons picked up the corpses and took them down the tunnel toward Elrick’s cellar. Elrick turned to Stella. “We’re going to talk about this later. For now, go wait in the cellar. I have to ‘give ear’ to my ‘humble servants.’” He turned back to the fanatics, and the skeletons dragged Stella away.

They deposited her in a high-seated chair in the cellar but didn’t release her. The other skeletons had placed the dead men on the big table. More skeletons joined them, and they went about the shelves, collecting jars and bringing them to the table. Stella watched with confusion until one of the skeletons dragged its finger down the prince’s chest. The skin split open, revealing the muscles, bones, and organs beneath. Stella squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn’t block out the sounds. She recognized the sounds from her first time in the cellar, but now her imagination had more to work with. Despite all her attempts to distract herself, she couldn’t banish the images her mind was matching to the sounds: the slipping sound of a long organ being pulled out of its place, the sloshing sound of juices being emptied into a pot, the shloop of an organ sliding into a jar, the clack of lids on filled containers.

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The sounds continued for several minutes, every second of which Stella wished to be anywhere else on the Dracon continent. Or even the islands, she thought once. Swarms of mosquitoes would be preferable to this.

Silence fell, and Stella held her breath, hoping the skeletons had finished and would let her go.

“I hate being interrupted,” Elrick said. Stella looked slowly up at him, avoiding looking at the table.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said quietly.

“You made the ordeal take longer. And Vatran’s grovelling. I hate that.”

“I understand.”

“People who interrupt me usually die in flames.”

Stella dropped her gaze, shaking. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

“Even if you see your mother in the lineup again?”

Stella froze. Would she be able to hold herself back? Elrick had left her alive, but would he do so again? “I— I’ll try, sir.”

Elrick sighed. “I won’t kill your mother. She doesn’t have enough potential left to be worth my trouble. Too old, for one thing.”

Stella looked back at him, confused. “What?”

He ignored the question. “That’s not to say the fanatics won’t. You saw them give her a rejection mark. Prisoners who get a third mark don’t show up again.”

Stella paled. “How long does she have?”

“At least four weeks. Eight at most.”

Stella shrank in her seat. She’d already wasted four weeks. She was no closer to assassinating Elrick than on day one. How could she manage to form and execute a plan in that time? Elrick kept her time with him limited to their lessons. He’d recently let some of her lessons run longer than her allotted hour, but never by long. Stella needed to know what kept him alive when he was badly wounded, how he healed himself, and how to get around both of those obstacles. The only thing she’d learned in the past four weeks was just how much he loved collecting energy.

“But enough stalling,” Elrick said. “I might as well get your lesson out of the way now. I seem to remember you showing an interest in potential energy.”

Stella perked up. “Yes, sir!”

“Good.” He walked over to the table. “Join me.”

The skeletons released Stella, and she hurried to Elrick’s side. Then she saw the bodies, and her heart froze. The skeletons had pulled most of the organs out of the body cavities. The resulting holes pooled with blood. Two organs floated in each pool. One was about the size and shape of a fist. The other stretched the width of the body cavity; it was cone-shaped and had a dark red-brown color.

A skeleton brought Elrick a bottle that glowed red. Stella recognized it instantly as a hunger potion. Her stomach shrank to the size of a pea as she watched Elrick take a swig. He picked up one of the larger organs and wolfed it down. He didn’t even stop to chew: just bite after bite until the whole thing was gone. He wiped his mouth, then turned to Stella, pulling a gem out of his cloak. He stopped, raising an eyebrow at her shocked expression. “Do you have a problem?”

She couldn’t respond. He shrugged, then held out his right hand. He clenched and unclenched his fingers as if squeezing something. A ball of shining energy appeared there, bigger than any Stella had managed to get from a potion. She stared in awe, momentarily forgetting its creation process. Elrick held it for a few seconds, letting her take it in, then deposited the energy into the gem. “Your turn,” he said.

Stella paled. “You don’t— you don’t want me to—”

Elrick picked up the large organ from the other body and held it out to her. Blood dripped from it, splattering the floor. “I want you to harvest the potential energy from this liver. It’s easy.” The skeleton offered her the potion. “Take a drink of the potion. Then eat the liver. I’ll instruct you after that.”

Stella shook her head. “I’m not eating that.”

He frowned. “I can’t teach you about potential energy if you don’t.”

“Maybe I don’t want to learn it.”

His frown deepened. “I want you to learn it, and that’s final.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “I want the process to move faster. If we both do it, it’ll take a lot less time. You’re also much younger than I am.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“It has a lot to do with it. Younger people can harvest more energy, especially potential energy. You’ll be able to get a lot more energy from this liver than I will.”

“I’m not eating it.”

Elrick scowled. “This is not negotiable. If you don’t, I’ll fetch your mother from her cell right now, and her end will be much slower and more painful than these were.” He gestured to the bodies on the table.

Stella’s stomach twisted like a snake caught in an eagle’s claws. He had her and wouldn’t let go until she did what he wanted. She bowed her head. “Yes, sir.”

The skeleton pushed the potion into her hand, and she took a swig. Her stomach rumbled. Elrick handed her the liver. She wrinkled her nose at it. It was squishy and slimy, and it stained her hands red with blood.

“Stop stalling and eat it,” Elrick said. Stella steeled herself, then took a bite. The tissue was bitter and metallic to the taste, but it went right down her throat before she could try to chew. “That’s the potion,” Elrick said at her confused expression. “It helps the stuff down. It speeds up its digestion, too. Keep going.”

With an unsettled gulp, Stella continued. She found he was right. All she had to do was cut the tissue with her teeth, and the bite would disappear into her stomach. Before too long, the whole liver was gone.

Elrick pulled another gem from his cloak. “Now you’re going to pull out the energy. You’ll find it in your stomach, but it will feel different from the chemical energy you’re used to. Close your eyes and find it.”

Stella obeyed, stretching her mind downward to find the energy. She knew the difference between thermal and chemical energy, so finding a third type shouldn’t be hard. She blinked her eyes open, gaping. It hadn’t been hard at all. It was the easiest thing she’d ever done. The well of energy in her stomach was so massive that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t felt it appear. It was dark and slimy compared to the other energies she’d felt, but its sheer mass made up for that.

Elrick smiled. “Now squeeze it out, like this.” He showed her the squeezing hand motion again. When she copied it, a ball of brilliant energy emerged. It was nearly as big as her head, and it warmed her whole body. The power she’d felt from the potions was nothing compared to this. If she knew how to harness it, she could topple forests, move mountains, evaporate rivers. She could kill Elrick, subdue the fanatics, and save her mother… if she knew how to harness it. For now, it was enough just to hold it and dream.

Elrick’s smile widened. “Fantastic,” he said. “Now guide it to the gem.” Reluctantly, Stella deposited the energy into the gem, causing it to glow brighter than any she’d seen before.

Elrick tucked the gem back into his cloak. “Very good. Off to town with you, now. Your time’s up. Don’t come back before sundown.”

Stella gaped. “That wasn’t even close to an hour!”

“Your time started when you interrupted this morning. I’m not arguing this. Go.”

Stella opened her mouth to object further, but two skeletons grabbed her and dragged her upstairs. Another gave her a list and shoved her outside. Stella gaped some more. “Not even a bag this time?”

A skeleton poked its blackened head out the door, then pointed at a pile of brown cloth bags on the ground outside. Stella frowned and picked one up. Why did they move the pile? Was it just to make it easier to send me outside? She frowned some more. The remaining pile was tiny, having only two left. Weird.

She started down the mountain. As she walked, she remembered a few times over the last few weeks when the pile had moved the same way, but she didn’t remember why. Not that it matters. Indeed, she had much more important things to think about. She had a deadline. She had to accelerate her mission. She had to find a way to kill Elrick before the four weeks were up. Otherwise, the fanatics would kill her mother.

Stella clenched her fist around the cloth bag. Vatran had promised to keep her mother alive. Instead, he’d offered her up to Elrick, literally asking the sorcerer to slaughter and cannibalize her.

“Stella!” Tarant ran toward her, happier than ever, his black robe billowing out behind him as he ran. Stella scowled. Tarant wouldn’t know anything about Laurel’s predicament, but it still provoked Stella to have his cheerful face interrupt her impossible problem.

“What are you so happy about?”

Her dour attitude did nothing to dampen his. “You came out!”

“I do that every day.”

He shrugged. “Vatran was worried about you. He said you interrupted their meeting. I thought maybe… But you’re here! This is going to be such a good day!”

Stella rolled her eyes.