A couple of hours later, Emily takes careful notes as she watches a test subject convulse, wordlessly reaching up to tear chunks from his hair. She frowns and waves her hand for Aaron to inject an antidote to their latest formulation, glancing over at one of the now-awake prisoners. He's not struggling against his binds, sitting completely relaxed as if he were calm, except for his unfocused eyes that keep darting around the room, and his mindless mutterings, which pour out uninterrupted.

"…must not look to him for he is too great. The grand one's visage should not be seen by the mortal gaze for we are unworthy. The song of the end shall… Ellie? What are you doing here? You should be dead… bleed for the non-believers…"

"Wait a moment," she says, her eyes widening with realisation. "It's salvianross! I knew I should have recognised these symptoms."

"Salvian what?" Aaron questions with a confused expression.

"Salvianross: God's fruit," Emily explains, seeing a complete lack of recognition on the faces of everyone in the room as she digs through her belt. "I'm a little surprised you don't know of it, Aaron, since I assumed from your family name that you have roots where the plant originates from: the Lerus Isles. It's seen as sacred in Lebard and used in their religious rituals to meet their gods."

"A fruit lets them meet God?" Virgil asks from where he's leaning back against the wall with Silica, watching.

"It lets them try, and it's actually a flower," Emily replies, pulling out a jar holding a single bell-shaped violet bloom. "This is my only sample. They're rare on this continent, but I was lucky to find this one unidentified and being offered for sale in New Denntimo's mercenary circle."

She sets the jar down, opening it carefully and using a mixture of wind and water to lift the delicate flower out before squeezing it with her spell, drawing out a few drops of shimmering purple liquid.

"I read an account from a mage who visited Lebard and took part in one of their rituals," she explains as she adds the extract to a fresh cauldron along with a sprinkling of crushed fire crystal powder and a dash of ground wyrmroot. "They spoke of salvianross, a purple flower, giving them visions of higher beings. A single drop of its juice was enough to shatter their mind for days, leaving it to be pieced back together by the shaman guiding them. Unfortunately, the rest of the journal lost a lot of its legibility after that, but the state of madness it described sounds close to our current issue. Mind you, it didn't describe any violent tendencies, but there may be something else mixed in, and high doses of mentally degrading toxins are very hard to predict anyway."

She forms ice around her cauldron as she mixes, stabilising the brew within and releasing arcs of lightning to shred the impurities that try to form. After a few minutes, she's left with an opaque purple sludge that she pours directly into the mouth of a new test subject.

Nothing happens for the first few minutes as the ungagged man pointlessly begs for forgiveness for his crimes and mercy, but eventually his panicked wittering begins to slur. A dazed light washes over his eyes, and his pupils dilate before they begin jumping around, chasing shadows no one else can see. The subject begins struggling against his restraints, rolling his head back as if trying to get away from something, and he drops in and out of coherent speech and meaningless groans.

Emily grasps his head as he struggles, flooding his system with machina and immediately confirming a pattern of misfiring in his brain that's near-identical to that of their original subjects.

"Seventy per cent similarity," she hums aloud with satisfaction. "There's something else in the blend being distributed, to enhance the aggression, but it's definitely a salvianross-based drug."

"So, we should be looking for ships coming from the Lerus Isles?" Virgil asks while Aaron and Dom begin making notes on the deadly flower and its effects.

"I doubt that," Emily says with a shake of her head. "The plant is sacred in Lebard, so there's no way they're exporting it en masse. If you've got a large supply hitting the market, it's probably being grown and processed somewhere else already."

"Haaa, Morzea it is," the man sighs, drawing a hand down his face before pushing off the wall to make his way towards the door. "Why must they keep using such underhanded tactics? Just wait for the peace treaty to end and fight us like mages!"

"Well, I did help the Protectors update The Mist to cut off Morzea's little assassin squad, so you should've been expecting retaliation."

"Expectations aside, is it really so wrong to wish they'd stop causing us problems for a bit?" Virgil shakes his head, pushing open the door before glancing back over his shoulder. "I'll go send out some orders and be back in time to leave. Is your ship on the way?"

"She'll be here in nine hours," Emily says while waving him off, turning back to her concentrated salvianross extract to continue narrowing down the exact ingredients of the potion being peddled.

***

After finally managing to recreate the effects of the Morzean potion, Emily names the new brew Anger's Touch and gives Aaron the crushed remains of the salvianross to help in their efforts to create an antidote and spells to track the drug's distribution.

"Thank you for your help," Aaron says as she's cleaning up the tools and materials she contributed to the lab. "I'll make sure replacements for the materials you spent today are sent to your factory."

"That's alright," Emily replies, waving off his concern. "The salvianross is the only thing I used that I don't have an excess of, and I was looking to get more on my coming trip anyway. I'll chat with Virgil about any repayment for my time, since he's the one who asked me to help."

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"Please make sure he knows I'm happy to bear part of the cost for that," Aaron insists, walking her to the door. "We did ask him to make the request."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. All I'll be asking for is a little sparring, so I'm sure he won't mind."

She heads out of the city with her kids, spotting Elisime quickly approaching on the horizon and flying out to meet her. They reach the ship just as a burst of flames leaves Chroni to chase them, and Emily opens a portal to the bridge, leaving it open for Virgil to use behind her.

"You dealt with what they wanted you to?" Pod asks as she settles down in her command seat.

"Yeah, I shouldn't be needed anymore."

Virgil touches down behind her, and the flames around him disperse, revealing Dante standing at his side.

"Are you all finished?" Emily asks, looking over her shoulder and shutting the open portal.

"Yeah, I've sent word to tighten our watch for ships crossing the border and given Aaron permission to command my family's forces while I'm away." Virgil nods, stepping forward and dropping into a seat as Emily rearranges the floor's panelling. "If all goes well, the distribution of Anger's Touch should have ended by the time we return."

"Anger's Touch?" Pod questions, mirroring Dante's curious expression.

"It's what they needed my help with," Emily begins explaining. "Reverse engineering an unrecognised potion, which turned out to use a base of salvianross and dehydrated ornwood bark…"

***

A couple of hours later, when Elisime reaches the rolling ocean and flies out into the blue, past the border of Modo's territory, Emily has the ship reduce its speed.

"A weapons test?" Virgil hums with interest. "Is it a new type of gun?"

"Not quite," Emily replies, sending out a flurry of commands and opening one of the ship's cargo holds to let out one of her bird-like drones. "I was recently made aware of a new type of high-energy reaction and a few materials I can use to produce it. The knowledge I gained only contained information on the reaction in the context of power generation, though, and I know it's volatile enough to be weaponised. So, I've produced a very small bomb to test."

The bird flies past the bridge's window, clutching a small, arm-sized cylinder in its talons.

"And why are you doing it out here?" Dante asks.

"Well, I need to confirm," Emily replies as the bird stops a few hundred metres away, opening its claws and letting the bomb enter a rapid freefall towards the water below. "But if my calculations are correct, you really don't want this one going off anywhere near civilisation."

The bomb hits the water's surface and vanishes beneath the waves, and, after a moment in which the world seems to hold its breath, a thunderous roar washes over Elisime. Water, smoke, fire, and steam erupt in a column as ripples of pressure echo out for kilometres, and the entire ship shudders violently in the air despite Emily's flight stabilisation systems.

The light at the centre of the explosion sears Pod, Silica, and Dante's eyes, forcing them to shield their faces as Virgil squints and Emily observes without a flinch. The burning pillar of destruction breaks at its peak, spreading out to fill the air with a muggy, off-white cloud that Emily directs the ship to avoid.

"Wow," Virgil whispers with awe in his tone, turning his glistening gaze towards his host. "You have to sell me one of those."

"Haha, I think I'll hold off on sharing these for now," Emily chuckles, rising from her seat and gesturing for him to do the same. "We need to go down and test the explosion site, but, well… I doubt the area is conducive to low-circle life anymore."

Virgil and Mensacus follow her through a portal out into the open air, while the others remain behind for their own safety. Emily carries them away from Elisime, closer to the still-boiling sea, on a layer of solid wind, protected by a shifting barrier of sparks.

"What exactly is this protecting against?" Virgil asks, reaching out and tapping the wall of electricity burning around him, finding it surprisingly solid-to-the-touch. "What was in that bomb?"

"It's complicated," Emily replies, testing the air with her machina and pulling out one of her radiation counters to confirm her readings. "The bomb contained a blend of my more conventional explosive mix and enriched heavy metals. The detonation of the conventional explosives forces the heavy metals to compress and combine, setting off a reaction that splits the metals, releasing the energy contained within. Think of it like shattering a magic crystal, but instead of releasing magic, it releases waves of invisible radiation that will slowly rip you apart from the inside out. That's what the lightning is to shield against."

Virgil shivers and retracts his hand, turning his attention to the residual heat of the explosion that's getting worse and worse the closer they get to the epicentre. Emily's counter begins beeping erratically, and the barrier around them visibly wavers despite not obviously blocking anything.

"How effective is it?" Mensacus asks, peering over his mother's shoulder at the screeching device in her hands.

"Nothing third circle or below would survive within two kilometres of the initial detonation, and radiation levels are now similarly lethal for up to five," she replies with a pleased tone. "A fourth circle barrier would maybe hold up to a single low-yield device without the support of a mana vein, but double the payload and it should be a near guaranteed barrier-breaker if we can focus the force a little better."

The chimaera nods in appreciation while Virgil whistles.

"Damn, a five-kilometre lethal zone?" he asks incredulously. "How long will it stay like that?"

"I can't be sure without some more prolonged readings, but I'd estimate a few weeks for the worst of the waste to decay. It may be a little faster depending on what the ambient mana density here returns to once it stabilises again."

After pulling out a few more detection instruments and noting down all of her readings, Emily pauses the spell carrying them beside the slow-moving plume of smoke still connected to the now-calming ocean.

"I'd like to experience radiation exposure," she says as she begins putting her instruments away. "Would you like me to leave my barrier around you, or would you like to feel it too?"

"I'll follow you," Mensacus says without hesitation.

"You said it's only lethal to third circle and below, right?" Virgil questions, seriously contemplating it.

"Correct. Anything third circle or below that tries to get this deep into the fallout zone will be dead before it can leave. And, while it won't kill you immediately, if you tried to hang around in this level of radiation for an extended period of time, it would still have some painful adverse effects."

"It's worth a try then," he grins back at her. "You'll heal me up if it hurts, right?"

"Of course."

"Drop the barrier then."

Emily nods and follows his request, dispelling the bubble of crackling charge and finally letting the radiation filling the surrounding air touch them. The moment the invisible killer hits them, although she feels nothing with her conventional senses, Emily experiences a cloying sense of wrongness, and her bones seem to hum in response as her cells writhe with activity.

"Do you feel anything?" she asks the two beside her.

"A little slow," Mensacus mutters, watching his hands moving before his face. "My instructions are being delayed."

"Not much, really?" Virgil answers with a questioning tone, tilting his head and rubbing at his stomach. "Maybe a little queasy?"

Emily nods and notes down their reactions, feeling her body actively fighting against the ionising rays running through her as she reestablishes her barrier.

"Looks like I have plenty to work on to make these more lethal to high-level magical beings," she ponders, turning them back towards Elisime and connecting with the ship's Logic Core to begin working on a new set of weapon blueprints.

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