As they started the fourth attempt, Thalia's anxiety about the process could not have been higher.
Aiden was already trying and failing to stabilize the ingredients properly.
Trial and error could work to make the potion in a week or two.
But their next round was tomorrow.
They did not have time for trial and error.
However, just as they were adjusting the burner to begin simmering, there was a loud crash.
The walls shook.
A commotion erupted outside.
Aiden's head shot up from where he had been watching the ingredients.
His gaze snapped toward his spear and armor as he began to step away.
"You stay," Thalia said quickly. "I can't figure out what went wrong, remember? I'll see what happened."
She headed for the door and made her way into the hall.
What greeted her was surprising.
Near the doorway were marks, like someone had dug their feet in while trying to shove something impossibly heavy.
Thalia turned in the direction they faced and saw that both the railing on the small platform over the lunch hall and a good chunk of the front of the building were missing.
She threw her strings forward and yanked herself toward the ledge.
Landing beside what remained of the wall, she held on and peered out.
Selene was on her knees.
No injuries seemed to be on her, but there was a strange look of defeat on her face.
Around her, two figures emerged from a ball of liquid silver, while a large crab-like figure with one claw bigger than the other loomed over her.
Thalia wanted to rush forward.
But something in the air made her hesitate.
Selene's mouth moved as if she was saying something.
Then a burst of steam-like mist rushed out of her.
Through the fog, Thalia could only see Selene's silhouette as the crabman reached a claw inward.
A moment later, he yanked it back and stared down at it as if making sure it was still there.
This was not something Thalia recognized as normal.
Much less natural.
Her thoughts drifted back to the day Selene and Aiden had returned from the woods acting strange.
Thalia had assumed they had found something.
She had not expected it to be to this degree.
Below, Selene spoke from inside the mist.
"Don't try to play innocent with me," Selene said. "I heard your plans to rob us. Or were you hoping you could bluff your way out of this?"
The girl opened her mouth as if to speak.
Then Thalia turned and saw the crabman take a deep breath.
"You idiotic fucking trog—"
He got no further.
The mist around Selene lunged toward him.
His silhouette inside the smoke changed.
Shrank.
The figure was only around Thalia's height now as he fell and landed awkwardly.
There was a gagging sound.
Selene seemed to be holding him, his arms and legs struggling, but strangely unable to move within the smoke.
Thalia extended her strings as she heard the struggling gasps of someone choking.
However, Selene was holding him down.
Not strangling him.
Thalia tapped Selene with a string.
Selene turned and saw her.
The smoke parted.
Thalia saw her holding down what no longer looked like a crab, but a dwarven man.
He struggled and gasped, confused and enraged, while Selene's face was dark with a worrisome emotion.
The other two stared as if unsure what to do.
A massive mammoth stood before them and began advancing toward the fog.
"Selene," Thalia asked, "what are you doing to him?"
Selene turned.
"He tried to take my abilities away," she said, "so I collapsed his lungs using my mist."
The way she spoke was strange.
For one thing, her normal stutter was gone.
And where Selene normally would have been, at most, holding this man down, she was instead choking him as his face turned blue and his hands flailed.
Selene seemed to be focusing heavily on holding the dwarven man down.
The mist itself was being used to bind him, though its effectiveness was strange.
Almost like, aside from whatever allowed Selene to control it, the mist was giddy.
Excited to help her.
"Selene," Thalia said, "whatever this is has you in a strange state of mind. Look at what you are doing."
Selene now fully turned.
The hold on the dwarven man's lungs seemed to loosen enough for him to draw in a shaky breath.
"His companions over there tried to rob us," Selene said, "and now they're screaming at me like I did something wrong by stopping them."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Not to mention whatever this one did."
An impact shook the area.
The mist behind Selene thinned heavily before starting to gather again.
Thalia could see the mammoth slamming a foot down on what seemed to be a strange barrier dome.
She wanted to say more.
Before she could, space was ripped open.
The girl from before stood there, arms to either side as if her fingers had torn through whatever Selene had set up.
Whatever it did seemed to snap Selene back.
She stood, and whatever control of the space she had faded as the mist retracted into her.
The dwarven man stood.
A sound far too loud for his size rumbled out of him as he returned to the towering twelve-foot crab from before.
Several gasping breaths escaped him as he stared down at Selene, who seemed faint.
Even her mutated arm now looked deflated and thin compared to normal.
"Jeriko, are you okay?" the girl called.
The mammoth rushed toward Thalia and Selene as if to run them over.
Thalia grabbed Selene and, using part of the broken wall, yanked them back with her strings as the mammoth planted itself between the crabman and them.
"What happened?" the scorpion man asked, sounding surprised. "She's barely level eighteen. How did she hold you down?"
Jeriko panted a few more times before he seemed to regain his breath.
Heat rose from him.
Then he let out a guttural growl.
"That little…"
His clawed hand rose into the air as energy began to swell.
People in the street began backing up.
"Fuck it," Jeriko snarled. "I'll just level the whole city!"
He glared at them.
Thalia felt a shift in her strings.
The crabman seemed to see something.
He snarled, released the energy he had been building, and grabbed his comrades before jumping away over the rooftops.
Thalia watched them flee, a shiver sliding down her spine.
Then a strange tapping noise echoed behind her.
Like someone with a metal-tipped walking cane striking cobblestone.
Around her, people froze.
The rubble began to rise from where it lay in the streets, moving in slow motion and reverse as it drifted back into place.
Cracked windows became whole.
The street mended.
The people who had been panicking and running moments before now wore blank expressions, wandering as if unsure why they had stopped.
Thalia's strings felt the figure beside her.
But she was not so foolish as to look a walking calamity in the face.
So she turned, head down, and dropped into a bow.
Her spine felt like ice cracking as she forced it to move despite the shivers running through her body.
She could only see the figure's feet and cane.
But those polished black shoes, those pants, and that aura were unmistakable.
Her mouth felt as dry as a desert.
The second of silence stretched into eternity.
Then Thalia stuttered, "S-Since you spared m-me from t-the mental effect, t-there must be s-something you w-wish of me?"
Each stutter felt like a rope being pulled on a guillotine.
Another endless instant of silence stretched.
Then the icy metal tip of a cane touched the bottom of her chin.
Thalia did not fight.
The difference in physicality she could feel told her she would not be allowed to resist even if she tried.
Her head was lifted until she looked up at the masked figure.
The curves of the porcelain face covering.
The red suit.
His identity was impossible to deny.
Red seemed to be watching Selene, who lay unconscious beside Thalia.
Whether from the strange effect of the smoke or something else, Thalia could not tell.
His mask did not change, but a strange grin seemed to emanate from it.
Like someone who had seen something he did not expect.
He stared silently for a moment.
Then he turned his head.
A golden pocket watch rose from his pocket as if suspended by strange magic and opened itself.
Seeming satisfied with the time, it shut and returned to his pocket.
Then he turned to face Thalia.
Immediately, she felt what could only be her soul dying as her body was atomized, each cell desperate to both run and begin revering the one before her as a being greater than any lousy divinity.
Red raised one gloved white finger to his lips in a silent shushing motion.
Thalia's face did not move.
But she understood.
He lowered his cane.
Thalia dropped her head, not daring to move.
The rhythmic tapping grew fainter and fainter.
Only once Aiden came down four hours later with the completed potion did Thalia finally move again.