Point glided across paper, sealing the final document necessary to claim the old apothecary as his own. Rehtul smiled in relief. Red tape, even out in the middle of nowhere, was inescapable. He shook the mayor's hand and stood up from the table.

"I trust the entire sum is accounted for?" he asked as the mayor loaded the coin on the table into a leather pouch. The man nodded and handed it off to the secretary sitting beside him, to be stored in the city's treasury most likely. The mayor's office was quiet, despite the hour. Nothing much seemed to go on in this town. The entire time the two men had been haggling over the minor details of payment, only a single person had bothered them, and only to ask the mayor what he had planned to do about lunch.

The strong oak desk of the office, aged and scratched, but still sturdy, stood as one of the few testaments to the man's position in this town. Outside of that and the mayoral estate, if it could even be called that, being slightly larger and better kept than a majority of the buildings nearby, a person would never be able to tell at a glance who was in charge. Well, they wouldn't without reading the sign posted in front of the building, anyway.

"What were you planning to do with that old place, anyway?"

"To be honest? I need a place to do my magical research, and the apothecary is just far enough out of the way to lend itself readily to that task. It's also considerably cheaper. Have you seen building prices in Corone? My family has money, true, but purchasing a building the size I need in a bustling neighborhood would set me back far more than I was willing to spend."

"Makes sense, I suppose. You're headed there presently, then, or would you care to join us for afternoon tea?" the mayor asked.

While ordinarily not one to miss out on tea, Rehtul merely shook his head and said, "I have men waiting at the building for my instructions to begin unloading, and there are several items I'd rather be there to personally attend, if you catch my meaning."

"Ah, indeed I do, young master. In that case I'll bid you a good day and pray your... research goes as you intend it to."

"Don't worry. It's nothing particularly dangerous. Certainly not anything that'd drag the rest of the town down with me," the younger man said with a slight laugh.

"This does little to assuage fears around town that you might be trying to reignite certain... past affiliation," the mayor said. Rehtul's eyes beheld the gentlemen coldly as he fixed the front of his coat.

"This might come as a shock to you, but few of the Ixian Knights remaining want anything to do with the organization after what my Uncle did. I have very few people I knew during my days as a Knight that I would consider on friendly enough terms to call for a visit, and it's even more unlikely I'd ask them to come out to my laboratory when there are far more... comfortable places in Radasanthia that we could enjoy our time in."

With a slight chuckle at his usual longwindedness, he summed it up for the older, clearly confused man, "I don't plan to revive or begin any group or organization from this town, much less try to revive the Knights. They are gone, dead. That Brotherhood is doing a fine job on their own, anyway. It wouldn't do to step on their toes."

With that, the older man seemed to calm down somewhat.

"At any rate, I'll be seeing you!" Rehtul said as he turned and walked out with a wave of his hand.

-----

The next day, Rehtul had mostly settled in. He had searched the building high and low to find old notes or lab equipment that could have been held by the former master of the shop to no avail. It had been stripped clean, perhaps as part of an estate sale to recover lost taxes or some such thing. When he had stipulated that all belongings within the building were now his in the bill of sale, he had expected to find at least something worth more than a few copper pieces. Sadly, his search had yet to come up with anything of particular note.

He scoured the back room once more, only finding odds and ends, the occasional long dry rotted plant. His feet kicked up some dust from a long rug on the floor, causing him to sneeze.

"Damnable dust," he muttered under his breath as he bent down to roll the rug up to be taken out with the day's cleaning. As he rolled the ancient feeling cloth of, he noticed a small indentation in the floor, obviously cut out with a tool.

"Now isn't this interesting," he said as he called forth a small shard of ice from the air next to him. With a thought, he had it digging around inside the indentation, slowly shaping itself to completely fill the hole. The mage, once convinced he had filled the entire indentation, forced the makeshift key to turn clockwise.

A surprisingly loud click sounded through the empty chamber as Rehtul stood. The floor in front of him depressed by about half a foot before sliding back to reveal a long, narrow staircase, formed entirely out of carved stone.

"Well, this certainly isn't in the architect's notes... must be an add-on," he said, laughing at his onw horrible joke. Without much further ado, he took one of the lanterns he had on a nearby desk and walked down the stairs. His footsteps echoed through the long, empty descent, until he made it all the way to the bottom. He was about to lift his lantern to see how far the halls went when on either side of him, candles ensconced in the wall flared to life, lighting a path all the way down to the end.

"This place is far larger than I'd anticipated," the mage said as he shuttered his lantern and began slowly making his way down the cobweb infested hallway. Off to every side was a different room full of what appeared to be half finished experiments and mountains of papers and notes, each written neatly in slightly shaky handwriting.

"So much for the friendly neighborhood apothecary, it would seem," Rehtul muttered to himself. "Half of these experiments border on the inhumane. I can definitely understand the need for secrecy."

A soft glow filtered into the hallway a few dozen feet ahead. The ice mage skipped the remaining doors to check it out. Inside he found what he could only describe as a girl suspended in a giant tube of bluish green liquid.

"Okay... scratch the 'borders on inhumane' thing... definitely, one hundred percent inhumane."

Rehtul checked the cylinder for a release mechanism. There was a lever attached to a few cables that looked promising, and he yanked it down. The metal pole screamed in protest from being moved for the first time in what must have been years. As it finally clicked into place, the mage heard something like bubbles rising from the bottom of the tank.

"Well, here's hoping whoever's in there is friendly," he said as the fluid was rapidly replaced with air.