Archchancellor Velasco stared silently at the overgrown corpse resting atop the mortician’s slab. The great skeletal husk was vaguely humanoid in shape, but the proportions had been warped, elongated, and twisted into something that was like a malformed parody of a human. Those deformities had been rendered all the more striking by whatever queer magic had killed the creature, scorching and shrivelling his muscles.

  “This is the body,” Velasco said, his expression flat and unreadable. “Yes. Certainly unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” He folded his hands behind his back.

  “Yes, milord. We had people scouring the royal medical archives, as you said, but we found nothing reflective of this physiology. The magic that killed it withered it in such a way that autopsy was even difficult than we would have expected.” He raised a scalpel in one hand, tapping the Y-shaped incision that had been forcibly carved into the creature’s chest. “The organs, as you can see, are shrivelled and blackened like fruit that has been left in the sweltering sun. But they are reflective of human organs, lacking any of the peculiarities you would find inside a gnome or elf.”

  Velasco gave him a flat look. “I think we could safely rule out the possibility of this gargantuan behemoth having ever been a gnome, Scallid.”

  “Aha. Of course my lord.” The balding man had a few beads of sweat dappling his ebony brow. He tendedto sweat whenever Velasco made rare visits to him. He turned and made for a wheeled tray just off to the side of the slab.

  Velasco watched, silently, as Scallid lifted a great jar onto the slab. A strange ebony gem, large and jagged, was suspended in a luminous green fluid. “This, however, was unique. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It was lodged in the chest cavity, suspended in a cobweb of black veins that dissolved at the touch. Whatever eroded his flesh did not seem to warp the gem.”

  “I see.” Velasco leaned in for a better look. Magic, unseen, blossomed in his breast and pulsed to the meteorite stud in his left ear. He tried to sense any magic in the stone, and found it to be as dull and lifeless as any other rock. Either all the magic inside it had evaporated upon the death of the strange figure, it had never had any magic in it to start with, or it was some form of mystical energy unknown to his senses.

  Each possibility was concerning in a different way.

  “Have you sent for it to be examined by anyone else?” he asked.

  Scallid nodded firmly. “I checked with my contacts in the Artisan’s Guild, those with a special interest in studying minerals Two of them never saw anything like this before. A third had a hunch, but said he needed more time to research some old notes of his. So, not much in that regard. But Fiodor and a few of his cohorts also examined it. They, similarly, were stumped by it.”

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  “So there’s no way of knowing if that growth is what caused these strange alterations to his body?”

  “Afraid not. It’s a strong possibility, but I’m willing to believe there were other factors that led to this altered physique.” He reached for the trolley again and lifted up a plate weighed with blackened scales. Like the world’s least appetising snack. “These had to be removed before I could make the main incision. I wasn’t sure what to make of them at first, but I found something truly odd when I gave them a deeper look. They appear to be ogre scales.”

  That made Velasco perk a curious eyebrow. “This... is a human/ogre crossbreed?” He had heard of such things in the past, but assumed them to be tall tales. Really one had to only imagine the mechanics of such a coupling to know it seemed unfeasible.

  “I don’t believe so. These growths, the way they emerge from the human skin, seem unnatural. Something that was sprouted by an outside force.”

  “Hm.” Velasco’s mouth pulled into a long, thin frown. It was his natural state of being in the eyes of most who knew him. “A human with strange ogre-like protrusions spouting artificially from his flesh. Well now...”

  Scallid watched him warily, trying and failing to read anything from his body language. The man became like a statue. A horrible, vulture-like statue who would haunt the nightmares of children. “Ser?” he eventually prodded.

  Velasco did not answer, initially. He was a man who picked when he responded to people, to an often obstinate degree. “Tell me, Scallid, have you ever heard of Shibalba?”

  “I cannot say I have, Archchancellor.”

  “It’s a country, and one with a rather unpleasant reputation. Travel east, all the way to the edge of the continent, and then farther east still across the Sea of Drakes, and you will find the isle of Shibalba. Their Citadel of Shadows is, in some respects, one of the greatest institutes of arcane study known to man,” Velasco said. He lifted one broken scale, rubbing it between his fingers until it ground into a fine black powder.

  “I see,” Scallid said, nodding along.

  “And while I have never been, personally, I have read a few accounts of the dark practices of Shibalba. It is said they practice some truly profane arts, including something that is known only as black alchemy.” He turned his head with deliberate slowness, meeting Scallid’s eyes. “The ability to meld the flesh of a human, with the flesh of a beast. A terrifying power.”

  “Y-yes, milord, it does... sound worrisome. And you believe that these ogre scales are a result of this black alchemy?”

  “We can’t discount the possibility.” Velasco huffed, removed a cloth from his pocket, and cleaned his fingers. “To think the Brotherhood would have access to forbidden knowledge from across the sea. Even in the era of the crown, they didn’t have such resources.”

  His face was a grim mask, as if carved from granite, but there was a blaze of terrible anger humming behind his eyes.

  “What are we to do then, ser?” Scallid eventually asked. A chill had settled across the mortuary, with Scallid’s mind becoming abuzz with images of malformed half-human monsters, dispatched to slay anyone the Brotherhood saw as a threat.

  Why had they sent someone like that to kill Coin? That was the thought that loomed largest in Velasco’s mind. That boy was odd, no doubt, but would they really send a hit squad of such dangerous individuals after him, solely because he had given information to Velasco?

  The Brotherhood didn’t like loose ends, never had, but sending such a hit squad would be seen as overkill under most circumstances. The fact that Coin’s people had survived without a casualty was all the more surprising.

  So many questions needed answering. And Velasco sorely hated unanswered questions.

  “We do our research, my good man. Do everything we can to get a good handle on the situation, and understand exactly what we’re dealing with. Things will get worse before they get better.” He straightened his posture and paced across the tiled floor. “Now then, onto other matters. What kind of magic was used to kill this man?”