I breathed in deep the sharp, cold air of the Sanctum. My lungs turned to ice as I subconsciously rubbed my hands up and down my arms. The Hands must've been going through some tough times, if they couldn't heat the place like they could when I first served here, before the war.

Not to take all the credit or anything, but I did have a pretty lucrative thing going here. When you have one of the best poison makers in the world working for you, clients tend to open up their coin purses just a little bit more.

I was kind of hoping that Red wouldn't have brought up that accursed book, though. Advencia, Lye's succubus adviser or whatever she was, caught up with me when I was on my travels one day and unceremoniously dropped it in my lap, saying that the Left Hand requested that I put eyes on it and try and uncover its secrets. I'm a sucker for the forbidden and unknown, so I agreed to look into it.

Fucking thing was written in a script that I had never seen before--and based on what I was able to turn up in my little anonymous circle of scholar friends, it was one that hadn't been written in ages. You have to love living in a world with all sorts of mythical beings and ancient civilizations that couldn't bother to learn Tradespeak.

“Yeah, that's how it's seems, alright,” I said as the two of us wound our way through the labyrinthine hallways of the Sanctum towards my lab. “You know I'm not one for subtlety, so forgive me for being so blunt, but...”

I glanced over my shoulder at the Ar'Tuel. “You're essentially a ticking time bomb.”

It's not a conclusion I would have jumped to so lightly. For the stone-cold professional that Advencia is around me (considering I put her master under a mountain for a year and all), I was able to get her to open up just a little bit about how things were going back in Salvar. What she told me wasn't encouraging.

I'll spare you the details, as they're probably chronicled in-depth elsewhere by people who are less likely to abandon Red at any given moment. But had Advencia not said anything about Red's dramatic shift in attitude, I wouldn't have been able to piece together some of the ramblings that were written down in that book.

“There's a lot I haven't been able to translate so far, with the language having been mostly lost to time and all, but what I've been able to surmise isn't good.” I waited for a reaction, any reaction at all, but Red only nodded imperceptibly.

Advencia did mention that the woman had grown emotionally distant since I left, but wouldn't elaborate more on what caused this... transformation, I guess you could call it.

I plowed on. “I don't know what triggered these changes in you, and frankly it's none of my concern. But what I do know is that something has to be done to reverse them, otherwise some very bad things are going to happen.” I jabbed a gnarled finger at the Ar'Tuel. “Not just to you, but to everyone and everything.”