The Master radiated power.


    I’d thought I’d felt power when I stood in front of the Bokor Council and received my first mission, but this was… intense. Maybe it was because of proximity, but this Touched was strong.


    I swallowed, “What do you want to talk about?”


    She looked at Eveth, “Your people recently learned something very dangerous.” Her voice was almost hypnotizing. “They cannot be allowed to keep it.”


    “You’re talking about the purifying crystals?” I drew her attention away from Eveth. Maybe if it had been Berthre or Helru or even Felge that had been doing the talking, they would have said something, but Eveth’s face was almost translucent, there was so little blood in it.


    “Yes.” The Master turned back to me.


    With my vision overlaying everything in purple, I couldn’t tell colors, but I did know that this woman had her hair pulled back and looked every bit as fit as Berthre had been. The thing that was really unsettling me was that now that I was closer, I could tell that her eyes weren’t glowing purple, but instead were red. Or maybe it was the combination of colors from the blue glowstone on the middle of her desk that made her eyes look that way. I wasn’t sure.


    The thing that it didn’t help was for me to be able to see any details about the person in the corner. I knew they weren’t a Zombie, because they didn’t feel like one. I could sense some magic coming off of them, but it felt cold and completely unlike the Touched or Bokor. I realized that the Master was watching me eye the person in the corner and turned my attention solely on her.


    “Is that why your agent has been murdering people in town?” I decided to try to pull whatever answers I could and hope one of us could make it back to report.


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    “They must destroy everything…” Her eyes went back to Eveth, “Some may even have been tainted by it already…”


    “Hey!” The guy pushed off of the doorframe and stopped dead in his tracks with one glare from the Master.


    “Even you.” The Master clicked her tongue. “The Corrupted will not stand for another, especially not one that is so… Toxic.”


    “The Corrupted… You mean the Bokor?”


    “NO!” She slammed both fists on the table. “THEY ARE NOT THE BOKOR! THEY ARE CORRUPTED WARPED SOULS DRIVEN BY THEIR ADDICTION!”


    We all flinched at her outburst.


    “I don’t understand.” I thought she might tear into me, but I was very confused. “Can you explain it to me?”


    The Master steadied her breathing. “Yes…” She eyed the two Wranglers, then reached into her desk and pulled out a heartstone the size of an orange.


    I choked on nothing. I’d never seen a heartstone half… no… a quarter that size. It was also deformed, with places jutting out in all directions. It honestly looked like it had been mined from a place like this, not grown in a Zombie.


    Do you know what this is?” She pushed it towards me. I pulled it from Eveth. The last thing I needed was for her to become a Zombie.


    “It’s a heartstone.” I looked the crystal over, “But there is no way that it was taken out of a Zombie.”


    “It was not.” The Master’s hiss was even more intimidating than the look she gave me as she crossed her arms.


    “It was mined..?” I looked around. “Here?”


    The Master laughed and it was that kind of laugh that sent chills down my spine.”No.” She tilted her head towards the two Wranglers. “Here they have the Spiritstone.”


    “That’s the one that Winey made his cure out of.” I tried a guess.


    The laugh came a second time and it was just as terrifying as the first.


    “There is no cure!” Her laugh continued. It was pure torture on my nerves to endure. “What the brewer found was the start of a way to prevent infection, which is something the Corrupted cannot allow to exist.”