Heisenburgle didn't want to talk about anything on the ride to Blackgate. Not even attempts at discussions of pure alchemy were enough to crack his icy shell. It was very clear that he was conflicted about this, but that knowledge didn't make their ride together feel any shorter.

When they arrived, he didn't even wait for Lucas to unpack. He gruffly said, "Come with me," and then started escorting Lucas away from the main building with its branching laboratories. Instead, he took Lucas to the smithy, and then, after bypassing a series of locked doors with keys and combinations, he took him to the same room that he'd shown off in the last days before Lucas had left here so recently.

Lucas had expected the old gnome to either send him away to brood or drag him to the alchemist's main office. The fact that he'd chosen here meant that his paranoia was probably close to raging out of control, which said as much to him as the gnome's earlier silence had.

It was only there, in that dark storeroom, surrounded by half-finished mechanical masterworks and half drowned in the sounds of hammer and bellows, that the gnome said, almost in a whisper. "I should not have done this. I should have left you there to rot!"

"I mean, I wasn't rotting. I'm actually—" Lucas joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Silence!" the gnome hissed. "I do not wish to know what you were doing or even, for now, what you plan to do. I have managed to manipulate the Price into releasing you to me while seeming to be opposed to the whole thing for one simple reason. I want to know what you meant when we spoke before about my talent."

"I mean, where do you want me to start?" Lucas said, scratching his head.

"You will start at the beginning, and you will answer every one of my questions to my satisfaction, or you will never leave these walls again. Is that understood?"

And you will suck my dick, Lucas thought, without actually speaking. Heisenburgle was always difficult to get along with him. His agitation, combined with his sense of smug superiority, made even the best of times difficult, but for once, Lucas didn't push his luck. The gnome had done him a favor, a fairly big one, in fact, and the fact that he'd done it for purely selfish reasons didn't change anything.

More importantly, though, Lucas was going to need him if he wanted any hope of succeeding in what was surely a suicide mission. So, instead of talking back, he just nodded and said. "I'd much rather be here than where I was, but I still plan on telling you everything, as crazy as it's going to sound."

"You already sounded quite insane to me when we spoke previously," the gnome nodded, satisfied that he'd cowed Lucas. He moved as he sat down on an old discarded anvil and waited.

"Aren't you going to, you know… With the magic dust first?" Lucas asked.

"No one is in here," Heisenburgle answered as Lucas found a stool and sat down across from the gnome. "No one has the keys, and since the advent of your blue, no one cares about the prospect that we might have to one day slay the true ruler of Lordanin."

I care, Lucas almost said, but he withheld it. He had to bait the hook before he could give the gnome any more reasons to stick his neck out.

"Let's get the craziest part out of the way right up front," Lucas sighed. "I've met your god and the elvish one too. Both of them. Thrzaelwick and Lwyn, both."

He expected the gnome to say a lot of things then. Mostly, he expected the man to shout 'Preposterous!' at the top of his lungs. Instead, he sat there silently, waiting for Lucas to continue, so he continued.

Lucas didn't quite give the blow-by-blow. He skipped the part with the angels entirely because that would have only confused things further. He did tell him about the true nature of the potion they'd made, though, and that the narcotics were just a side effect of the real black potion. He took all of that in stride until Lucas mentioned that it had killed him.

Then he asked. "You died, and then came back… and you knew you were going to die, but you weren't sure you were going to come back? Why? Why take the risk?"

"I had something important to do," Lucas said, not entirely lying. "I… wait, back up. Why are you asking me why I would take the risk and not asking me about meeting with Gods in the first place?"

"The purpose of Lwynthenll is for the elves to commune with the divine," he answered with a shrug. "The fact that the way to do that is hidden in the waste product is not entirely a surprise, I suppose. I just don't see the point. She is the Goddess of elves and trickery. To meet with her is probably a death sentence."

"Well, bad news," Lucas said with a smile. "Is that if you want to do anything with your sys… uhm, talent, she's the one you'll have to talk to."

Heisenburgle ignored that complication for the moment with a wave of his hand and continued to focus on Lucas. "We aren't talking about me yet. We're talking about you. Tell me what she did to you."

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Lucas confessed that the elven goddess hadn't done anything besides show interest in him, and while he didn't describe her relationship with Thrzaelwick as wrapped around her finger, he did admit that the gnomish God favored her and was eager to please her by helping Lucas with this.

For the moment, he didn't give up too many of his own details. He just focused on that exchange. That didn't satisfy the gnome, of course, and when pressed for more details, he told Heisenburgle that the gnomish god "realigned his talent to better match my soul as a favor to the Lwyn."

"Why would Lwyn owe you any favors?" the gnome asked.

"She didn't," Lucas confessed. I think I just amused her, mostly. "I definitely owe her one now, though, and I'm still working out how I'm going to repay it."

Finally, after several minutes of discussion, Heisenburgle demanded to know exactly what those changes were, and Lucas came clean, at least in part. He explained the levels and the points and how he could upgrade things.

"So you can see the nature of reagents just by looking at them like I can the temperature and strength of metals?" Heisenburgle asked more in awe than in jealousy. "Fascinating."

"I couldn't at first, though. Not like I can now," Lucas answered. "All of this is new, since that first night I complained the fumes made me sick and—"

"The night you died," Heisenburgle interrupted.

"The night I died," Lucas agreed. "Everything was different after that."

"Bizarre," the gnome muttered. "To think that Thrzaelwick would allow you to make potions of your own design that appear nowhere in any of our books or sacred recipes."

Let is a strong word, Lucas thought loudly, though he said nothing on that particular subject. Instead, he let Heisenburgle pepper him with questions until story time was over. After that, the gnome tested him by producing a number of potions from his pouches and pockets. Some were in glass vials that allowed Lucas to at least see the colors involved. Others were metal flasks that did nothing to betray their contents. In each case, though, Lucas got their little guessing game right. It was impossible not to.

"Refined Healing Potion, Potion of Wakefulness, Elixer of Accute Thought…" Lucas said before pausing. "Hey, why don't you use the same intelligence potion you make for the Prince?"

"Elixir of Superior Insight?" the gnome snorted. "I never touch the stuff. The side effects can be debilitating, and don't get me started on the cost of the reagents involved."

"If it's that bad, then why are you making it for him?" Lucas asked.

"Not relevant to this conversation," Heisenburgle snorted before holding up another potion.

Lucas had always thought that he was paranoid in the way that he kept a few important potions on his person at all times. Heisenburgle, though, was practically a walking alchemical lab, and it took Lucas far too long to realize that there was no way the diminutive man could fit three dozen potions in his pockets without some sort of magic trick.

He didn't bring that up, though, because Heisenburgle's annoyance was already starting to show. "All this time, you had this ability, and you hid it from me?" he wailed.

"Not all the time," Lucas lied. "I do happen to know a lot about reagents. These powers have all been granted to me after my little brush with death." That statement was only half a lie, but Heisenburgle could never prove it.

The gnome glowered at him, though, weighing those words and daring him to recant before he said, "So, If you make me this potion, and I take it, I die, then maybe the Goddess is feeling generous enough to help me out?"

"Well, I can guarantee that she'll help," Lucas answered hesitantly. "It's Thrzaelwick you'll have to negotiate with. I don't think he'll like the idea that you're going against his plan."

"To the pits with his plan!" Heisenburgle answered, suddenly on his feet as he began to pace. "I didn't ask to be born a metal worker! I don't want to play with pistons and steam! I want to explore the very foundations of the world and make the most refined potions imaginable!"

What happened to everything being alchemy, asshole? Lucas thought, again suppressing the urge. Rather than do that, he offered, "Well, you're going to have to find a way to say that to your God to convince him. Fortunately, Lwyn is going to be on your side. She's going to want to help you, and she strikes me as a woman who gets what she wants."

"How can you be so sure of that?" the gnome eyed him skeptically.

"Well, because I happen to know what she wants most right now," Lucas said, deciding not to bring up the topic of Skylara just yet. "Based on our last conversation, she has a little problem, and if you promise to handle that for her, I imagine she'll do everything in her power to make that happen."

"I don't suppose you plan on dying again to join me for these negotiations," the gnome grumbled.

"I mean, I would if I could," Lucas laughed. "But It's impossible. The potion works only once per customer. Try to use it again, and you just stay dead. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a potion thing, but that's what it says on the label."

Lucas considered telling him about the Potion of Lesser Communion but decided against it. There was no point. Heisenburgle was more likely to screw the whole thing up with a practice run than he would be if he just went for it.

Heisenburgle was quiet for a moment. Then, he sat back down and started to list things off one finger at a time as he summarized their conversation. Lucas nodded along until the gnome got to the end and mentioned the part where Lucas would make him the toxic Potion of Communion. That was where he had to stop Heisenburgle.

"Well, that last one is kind of a problem," Lucas said, scratching his head, "I uhm… I kinda promised her I wouldn't make Lwynthenll for anyone to use to contact her. So, I can't actually whip up a batch for you. I never said I wouldn't help someone else do it, though!"

"I… you want to go back on something you promised the Goddess of treachery?" Heisenburgle was at a loss for words then and face-palmed at that.

Lucas tried to answer, but he couldn't. He was too busy laughing uproariously. He tried to restrain himself. He knew he shouldn't laugh at a prickly son of a bitch like Heisenburgle, but somehow the whole situation was just too absurd.

He was trying to get the gnome to drink a potion that would kill him, gatecrash a god, promise to kill Skylara, and he couldn't even make the potion for him. It was a ridiculous situation, but compared to yesterday and the day before, it was worlds better, he decided. He wasn't in limbo anymore, and he was moving in the right direction again.

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