Julian is interrupted in his thoughts by what sounded like an earthquake. The staircase he was in was violently shaking, and he could hear Angelica’s voice thundering from above.

  - “NOT BAD! HOW ABOUT THIS?!”

  Another earthquake shakes the ground, followed by a deafening crashing sound as if a part of the mansion had just collapsed. Julian stops for a second, looking up, but slaps both his cheeks to focus.

  - “I don’t have the luxury to sit there doing nothing while she’s buying me time.”

  He reaches the end of the staircase, and finds himself in a familiar network of tunnels. The floor, walls and ceiling were paved with bricks, with literal hundreds of cells and metal doors leading to different tunnels lining the walls. He navigates through the labyrinth without hesitation, opening specific sequences of doors, revealing hidden staircases and concealed passages as he goes. The deeper he delved, the stronger the stench of mold and rot would get. After a few minutes, he stops in front of an iron door no different from the ones he had seen until now, and takes a deep breath.

  - “I used to get lost all the time at the start...” He whispers as he pushes the door. "Part of me wishes I never got used to this."

  On the other side, he sees a familiar scene. A massive, circular, five floor laboratory made of stone and metal expanding upwards like a tower, with tools and notes lying on various desks and tables. Giant columns of glass were slightly glowing on the far side of the first and second floors, due to the indigo colored liquid filling them and the small white sparks of light permeating it. In said liquid, naked humano?d bodies were silently floating. Julian’s heart wavers for a second, and he grips his chest.

  - “(I remember when we celebrated my hundredth catch… I wonder how many of those people are left in these tubes today…)” The thought crosses his mind as he walks into the room.

  A wind current blows past him, carrying pages of a book about human anatomy. His gaze follows them until they land in the hand of a short old man with gray-white hair and a thick mustache. He was donning a heavy white coat, abundantly stained with what Julian assumed to be blood, among other colored liquids. He was wearing a white eyepatch, and the black iris of his singular eye was fixated on Julian.

  - “Well if it isn’t Julian.” He says. “How have you been my boy?”

  - “Better than ever.” Julian replies with a twisted grin. “Can’t say the same for you though, Sergius. Seems like age is doing a real number on you huh ?”

  - “Hoho, that’d be right. Not everyone is blessed with a long lifespan like you elves or beastfolk.”

  - “Do you still never leave that lab? How are the experiments going?”

  - “Pretty well. I’m still using the people you gathered a little bit over a decade ago, and they’re proving to be great test subjects.”

  - “...” Julian scowls. “Alright, that's enough catching up.”

  He extends his hand towards Sergius and closes his fist. Sergius simply waves his hand to the side in response. Julian could tell that he displaced the mass of air that he was about to solidify away from himself before the spell could be completed.

  - “Couldn’t be that easy huh?” Julian comments.

  - “Come on, did you forget who taught you that trick boy?” Sergius chuckles.

  - “I was looking forward to watching you suffocate on the ground as you regretted your life choices. But I guess bleeding out will also do the trick.” Julian spins his dagger in his hand.

  - “I guess you never did grow up, did you? You threaten me exactly with what a teenager would say while trying to sound scary.”

  Julian bolts towards him, his dagger pointed at Sergius’ throat. The latter summons an air current by wagging his finger, transporting himself out of the way of the attack. Julian instantly follows up with a kick to the stomach, taking Sergius by surprise and causing him to stumble back. Julian then throws his dagger at his valid eye, and Sergius manages to knock it off course at the last second with a powerful burst of wind. The dagger was buried into his shoulder, and he was profusely sweating while trying to catch his breath. His blood was gradually soaking his white coat.

  - “I’m way too old to be doing this…” Sergius says as he reaches inside his coat. One of the giant tubes containing the humano?d bodies suddenly shatters, and all the indigo fluid filling it spills on the floor.

  - “What did you do?...” Julian asks, worriedly staring at the motionless body. It was a woman with blonde hair.

  - “A premature test.”

  Julian was about to reply, but the words stayed stuck in his throat. The woman was now standing, with a wide smile etched onto her face. Her irises were completely blacked out, and filled with a swarm of white shooting stars swirling in a hypnotizing spiral.

  - “A Night Touched?! Why now of all times?!” Julian exclaims, taking a few steps back for safety.

  - “Oh, I never told you what my research was about, did I?” Sergius replies with a proud grin. In his hand, he was holding a sphere of glass containing an indigo liquid similar to the one that was in the tube, but emitting more light. “Let’s see…” He turns to the Night Touched. “Show me what you can do.”

  The orb he’s holding glows even brighter in response, and the Night Touched raises her hand towards Julian. A giant sphere of dust forms above her, probably ten meters in diameter, its surface swirling rapidly due to the influence of powerful winds blowing below it. A large red spot was visible at its center, like an unblinking red eye staring at Julian. The bricks near the sphere begin detaching from the ground and gravitating around it, quickly being ground to dust by an invisible force and being added to the phenomenon.

  - “Is that the planet Jupiter?...” Julian asks before turning to Sergius. “Hold on… how is a Night Touched listening to your commands?!”

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  - “Well you see-” Sergius starts.

  Julian doesn’t let him finish his sentence and suddenly lunges at him. On his way, he grabs one of the loose stones that were floating towards the planet and strikes him in the temple. He then quickly tries to recover his dagger from Sergius’ shoulder as the latter stumbles, disoriented by the hit. An uncontrolled burst of wind erupts around Sergius, and Julian is sent flying back a few meters before he can reach the weapon.

  - “Attack him.” Sergius orders, trying his best to stay standing.

  The Night Touched points her finger towards Julian, and a storm of dust erupts from the planet above her. It quickly engulfs the entire first and second floors of the laboratory, and Julian is rapidly blinded by the storm. He was also starting to feel the dust entering his respiratory system, slowly suffocating him. Before it can progress any further, he creates a dome of solid air around himself, and the dust inside it settles down. He could feel the storm raging against his spell, eroding it at a worrying pace.

  - “Dammit! *Cough* Where is he?!” Julian exclaims. He hears a rustling of feathers before he feels something land on his shoulder, and when he turns his head he sees a raven standing next to his face. “Is that one of Agnes’ birds?... Did you follow me?”

  - “Affirmative.” The bird replies, a raspy and monotone voice coming out of its mouth as it opens its beak. “Synchronizing with summoning complex. Transmitting coordinates to other summons. Transmitting recordings to summoner ID: Agnes. Requesting assistance.”

  - “I’m guessing you’re trying to help me?”

  - “Affirmative. Orders specified monitoring and live capture. Suspect’s life is endangered, live capture becomes priority.”

  - “...Alright. Let’s buy time.” Julian looks around, seeing nothing but dust. “Sergius! Show yourself, you coward!”

  - “You’re calling ME a coward, boy?” Sergius replies from somewhere within the storm. “You sucker punched me with a stone!”

  - “And who taught that to me?!”

  - “Don’t try to act smart, it’s never been your strong suit.”

  - “That’s true, I have to admit it always was yours at the end of the day. You’re controlling a Night Touched after all, your research is revolutionary.” Julian sticks out his tongue in disgust as he says that.

  - “Oh I’m not just controlling them. I’m making them.”

  - “Huh? You can actually create Night Touched?” Julian replies, his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise.

  - “Do you want to know how?” Sergius replies. While he wasn’t visible, his smile was definitely audible.

  - “That’d be interesting, yeah.”

  - “Very well ! I haven’t had the opportunity to share my research with anyone else but the Director.”

  - “(Too easy.)” Julian thinks as he pumps his fist. The dome of solid air around him wavers for a second, and he has to focus to maintain its shape.

  - “The Touch of the Night is a phenomenon that only targets specific individuals. Namely, those who have lost the will to live altogether. My theory is that it’s some kind of cosmic virus that is very selective when it comes to who it contaminates. The contamination occurs as soon as the person is broken, even for a second. I think this is the state that the Director refers to as being open. Then, it has an incubation period of one second to ten years.”

  - “That’s… a pretty wide gap.”

  - “Absolutely. It doesn’t help that anyone infected shows no symptoms until they turn. But I managed to get some reliable results thanks to you.”

  - “You-” Julian whispers, but grits his teeth midway and takes a deep breath, managing to keep his cool. “How so ?” He continues.

  - “People that have been in a coma for a year or more are extremely susceptible to being infected. I think it’s because the virus confuses the lack of brain activity with a lack of will to live, but I could never really test that theory.”

  - “That doesn’t explain how you’re controlling them.”

  - “I genetically modified a genus of parasitic slime native to the ancient Elven lands. They work as a hivemind, and can control the movements of their hosts. It was really difficult to make them compatible with the Night Touched, given that their extreme magic resistance would kill the slime in minutes. But as luck would have it, a Night Touched happened to awaken while the slime was inside his body! This gave rise to a new species, which glows in the dark and is very compatible with the Night Touched. Granted, the Director had to save me from the Night Touched, and she had to kill him so that I could extract the slime and replicate it. This is the one I hold in this crystal ball, I tamed it so that it listens to my orders and conveys them to the rest of the hivemind. I wasn’t sure of how accurate it was until now, so I never tested it since it could just lead to me dying to an unruly Night Touched.”

  - “...Seriously, how do you sleep at night?” Julian snaps.

  - "Additionally, -Excuse me?

  - “Do you realize what you’re doing? You’re basically mass producing bioweapons and sacrificing countless lives in the process. I know you got more than a few screws loose, but there are limits to how evil someone can get. Why are you even doing this?”

  - “For science! Well, that and the fact I can’t stop. What am I supposed to do, walk up to the Director and tell her I’m resigning? She’ll just tear me apart to silence me and that’ll be the end of it.”

  - “That’d be better for everyone if that happened.”

  - “You really have a foul mouth now. I didn’t raise you like that.”

  - “Yeah that’s right you didn’t.”

  Julian’s dome starts slowly crumbling, and streams of dust pour in from the cracks. He takes a look at his fingers: purple spots were slowly forming at their tips as magic-induced necrosis progressed.

  - “These damn Night Touched and their absurd reserves of magical energy…” He grumbles. “I can’t hold out for much longer, I used too much energy when I jumped off that tower…” He coughs. “(I can’t defend anymore, I need to attack… but who, and with what? A rock? My magic can’t do much damage, and I don’t even know where to aim… And I won’t get anywhere with that planet suffocating me. It’d be nice to at least have my blade…)”

  He looks down at his feet, and notices a sheet of paper torn from a book that flew into his dome. Then, the gears of his mind start turning.

  - “(My blade… a blade… Why can paper cut through things? Because it’s thin enough and has small edges right? If those dust particles could do the trick…)” He thinks as he reaches towards a cloud of dust floating inside his dome, and solidifies the air around it. The dust particles completely stop their movement. “(That can work, I just need to solidify more air containing dust… compress it… increase the pressure as much as I can to make it more explosive when I release it… Picture an open line in front of me when that happens, like a very wide corridor with an extremely short ceiling…)”

  The particles immobilized in the air in front of him start violently vibrating as he infuses even more magical energy into the spell. The dome cracks, and then shatters due to him not having enough energy to maintain it.

  - “It’s all or nothing!” He yells as he swipes his extended hand sideways, palm up.

  A wide arc of dust and solidified air is released, cutting through the storm like a sword. The replica of Jupiter is cleaved in half, exposing its rocky core. The planet falls apart, and the remains of the core fall on the Night Touched as the dust storm immediately settles down. Julian spots Sergius, standing within the safety of the center of a miniature tornado with dust still swirling around it.

  - “What?! How?!” Sergius exclaims with a look of utter disbelief as his eyes darted around the room to find Julian.

  - “RHAAA!” Julian screams, leaping towards him.

  He punches Sergius, and rolls on the floor a few meters away. Sergius falls to the ground.

  - “...My head…” Sergius comments as he slowly tries to get back up. “What do you think this achieved, boy? I can just-” Sergius stops, noticing his hand felt empty.

  - “You’re looking for that?” Julian grins, triumphantly raising the glass orb containing the slime above his head with his now completely purple fingers.

  - “You little- That doesn’t matter.” He glances at the orb. “I’m done with this, kill him.”

  He looks over to the Night Touched, but nothing happens.

  - “Oh no, what's going on?” Julian innocently asks.

  - “What?... There’s no way this killed her, Night Touched are at the very least as durable as a confirmed mage…”

  - “Oh you’re right, it probably didn’t.” Julian raises his other hand and attempts to knock on the surface of the orb. Instead, his hand hits an invisible barrier. “But you probably can’t order her around without this thing hearing you. And guess who thought that the fact that sound can’t go through my magic was useful for assassinations and kidnappings?”

  Sergius stays silent, a burning hatred twisting his traits. He starts looking around the lab for any options.

  - “(Thank god he hasn’t noticed my fingers. I think I’m going to collapse the second I try to take a step forward, but he hasn't figured that out yet.)”

  The door of the laboratory creaks, and they both turn their heads to the right to see who pushed it.

  - “Finally, Agnes.” Julian sighs. “You sure took…” He pauses, his eyes widening in horror as the door fully opens and an absurdly tall figure leans down to get through its frame. “...your…sweet…time…”

  - “Director!” Sergius exclaims, relieved.