Chapter 79 Venom Lab

The ancestral construct filled the tunnel corridor from floor to ceiling, and Damien did the arithmetic on it in the time it took to reach the bottom stair.

Level nine hundred and ten against his seven, inside a stone box, a woman caged directly above the ceiling it wanted to breach.

’I cannot kill this, yeah, so stop thinking about killing it and start thinking about where its body will not fit.’

He went left instead of back, into the flooded side channel Mina’s plat had marked as a nine-year-old overflow, and the thing followed him into a passage two sizes too small.

Verdict took the keystone out of the arch behind its shoulders on the third strike, dropping forty tons of Marlowe drainage onto an animal that could not turn around.

The construct did not die, since ancestral lines never perish under masonry, though its screaming came up through the drains for two hours.

[Ancestral construct: contained, not defeated]

[No Death Flag registered.]

’Nothing posted at all, not even experience, and now I have a headache, okay, so the system also thinks running away was correct, which is the most insulting agreement I have ever received.’

Mina met him behind the eastern glasshouse at four in the morning with a toolroll, a residue reader and an expression that had opinions about his coat.

"Man, you smell like a chemical spill and something is actively growing on your left sleeve," she said.

"Then do not stand downwind of me while we walk into an alchemist’s private laboratory," Damien answered.

The cold-store stair sat under the glasshouse exactly where the irrigation drawings put it, behind a rack of seedling trays that nobody had moved in years.

Celene’s laboratory appeared on no plan, held no window, and kept one lamp burning at the far end above a workbench used within the last day.

The room ran twelve meters, walled in glass cases, and every case held something suspended in fluid that was still moving.

’Living samples in a private lab under a glasshouse, shit, nobody down here is doing alchemy, they are running a nursery.’

Mina went to the workbench and stopped touching things entirely, which was how Damien knew the situation had become serious.

"Every one of these cases is a growth vessel and the fluid is a feed medium, so somebody has been culturing living venom stock down here for months," she said.

"Find the acquisition record’s working copy and photograph everything around it before you move a single page," Damien replied.

She found it in nine minutes, inside a folder in a drawer nobody ever locked, since visitors were not expected down here.

The working copy carried Celene’s signature in her own hand, dated eleven weeks earlier, countersigned in the margin by the heir.

Mina photographed it twelve times from four angles with the drawer, the bench and the lamp in frame, then sealed the original in the paired custody case.

"Ah, that is a tribunal exhibit and a house-ending document in the same piece of paper," she said, her voice quiet with delight.

Damien had already turned toward the glass cases, having spent two hours that night waiting for exactly this part.

The room held eleven cases, one standing empty with its lid seated wrong, which was the detail he came down here remembering.

In the original novel, Chapter nine hundred and eleven, the artificer who reached this room died at an empty containment vat while the thing inside it came out behind her.

’Fourth line of that Chapter, yeah, the vat is always empty and it is never empty.’

He put Verdict through the empty case before Mina finished sealing the custody lid.

The thing inside came apart across the workbench, and it had been three feet from her back with its mouth already open.

[Correction-touched sample: destroyed]

[Ambush prevented.]

"Huh, you just put a saber through an empty box for absolutely no reason," Mina said, staring at the wreckage of something invisible eleven seconds earlier.

"It was never empty, only waiting, sitting in that case four months for somebody exactly like you," Damien answered.

The other ten cases opened at once, since whatever held those lids down had been holding them against one specific event that just failed.

’The trap had a second stage and I only knew about the first, damn, the novel never got far enough into this room to write the rest.’

Three of the things coming out were bigger than the rest, every one of them carrying black-gold seams under the hide.

[Eye of Reckoning: Correction-touched venom beasts]

[Level: 590 to 640]

[Residue signature: matches gala ward, showcase construct, vault guardian, arena runes]

’Four months of the same handwriting, damn, the Benefactor has been standing behind every single one of these rooms.’

Mina did not run for the stair, which had been the entire plan, going at the wall instead to pull extractor arms off their mounts.

’Of course she is not leaving, tch, why would the artificer leave a room full of machinery.’

The laboratory’s extractors were designed to draw fluid out of a body under pressure, at range, through a needle line, she reversed the pump on two of them in about forty seconds.

"Keep them off the bench for a count of thirty and then stand somewhere that is not in front of me," she called.

"Thirty, and do not aim that at anything you want to keep in a jar," Damien answered.

He held the middle of the room with Flicker and Silver Rain, the Blood Ledger filling from the second exchange, since those seamed ones came in fast.

’Thirty seconds of getting bitten for her count, yeah, and every bite is a deposit, so let them queue up.’

[Debt: 0 → 214]

[Interest: ×1.2 per exchange]

The Sinner’s Brand went onto two targets at once for the first time since the mastery page, and both marks burned red across black-gold hide.

[Sinner’s Brand: 2 targets]

[Debt: 214 → 588]

Mina’s reversed extractors fired at twenty-nine, and two of the three big ones came apart from the inside in a way Damien intended never to describe to anybody.

The third one stopped moving entirely, stood up on its hind segments, and opened a mouth that had no business producing human speech.

"Sterling, you are standing in my grandmother’s cold store with my aunt’s paperwork," it said, in Evander’s voice, without any accent at all.

’The residue is riding it like a phone line, shit, that means the heir has known where I am for at least a minute.’

"Your aunt’s laboratory has better records than your law office," Damien answered, walking toward it.

"My aunt keeps a laboratory only while I permit her one," the beast said, "and the rite proceeds at dawn on the fifth day, with the accused transferred to arena holding tonight."

"Then you have moved her somewhere with fewer walls and more witnesses, so thank you for that," Damien replied.

The beast lunged on the last word, exactly as expected, since men who monologue through animals never let the creature finish first.

Reckoning released at close range carrying five hundred and eighty-eight points, with Verdict’s conductance layered over the top.

[RECKONING - 588 Debt × 2.0 = 1,176]

[Verdict conductance +20% = 1,411]

The thing came apart against the far wall, the black-gold residue crawled out of the wreckage toward the drain rather than dying with it.

Blank came off Damien’s shoulder, landed on the residue, and ate it.

The creature made a small satisfied sound, edges settling into one shape for four entire seconds, while Mina produced a noise like a kettle.

"Your familiar just ate a piece of the thing that has been trying to kill you since the gala," she said.

"Then it is going to grow, I am going to find out what an Unwritten becomes when it eats Corrections," Damien answered, sealing the custody case himself.

The laboratory was burning by the time they reached the cold-store stair, since Mina had put the second extractor into the feed medium on her way past.

Behind them, the eastern glasshouse went up bright enough to be seen from three districts, and every alarm in Marlowe Keep started at once.

"Celene’s carriage left the north gate four minutes ago with an armored escort," Bram said through the relay charm, breathing hard. "She is running, she took the seal press with her."

Damien came up out of the smoke into a courtyard full of running hunters, put the custody case into Mina’s hands, and told her to take the tunnel while he took the road.