Whenever Agnes is absent from her cottage, the place would become very quiet and only the sounds of her potions sizzling or her cauldron bubbling would be heard. Whenever these rare peaceful moments occur, Kellen would find himself having to busy himself with something.

Usually, he'd be in the basement cutting up fresh ingredients or experimenting with rituals, but now there are new additions to this place.

A dumb errand boy and a very peculiar rich boy.

Really, Kellen couldn't help but hover curiously over Aubrey to see what he was doing, and it seems like he was more focused on studying stones now rather than try his hand again with mixing potions. Maybe his last failure discouraged him, but according to Agnes, he actually exceeded her expectations. Alchemy wasn't easy to begin with, and Agnes saw potential in him. So maybe not all rich snobs were dumb.

And this one was honestly starting to become interesting.

There was a collection of stones in front of the blond apprentice, and some had runes or inscriptions inside of them. Kellen could vaguely remember Agnes creating some of these stones, and it seems like they were the samples given to Aubrey as a study material.

Sadly, she didn't give him any of the cursed stones. It would have been fun.

"You are being a creep." Aubrey said this as he flipped the stone he was examining, but Kellen continued standing over him just looming there for no reason whatsoever. The words did not bother him at all, instead they just made him want to stand there even longer.

"It's okay, just ignore me."

"Just a question," There was a hint of annoyance and nervousness caused by being observed like this when Aubrey set the stone down on the table, and Kellen tilted his head in curiosity to what the question might be as he let out an urging hum telling Aubrey to continue. "Are most of Agnes' potions-"

"Poisons." He corrected.

Aubrey continued, not very fazed by that. "Are her poisons deadly?"

A grin appeared on Kellen's face already knowing what Aubrey was insinuating. "Yes, very much so. Why do you ask?"

With an innocent shrug, Aubrey grabbed another stone to study. "Hm, no reason."

"Right." Kellen played along enjoying this, but then a creak caught his attention and his eyes went to the front door. The door remained closed, but faint careful steps could be heard making Kellen finally leave Aubrey's side to investigate.

Relieved by his annoying company leaving, Aubrey let out a sigh as he happily relaxed in his place and continued his examination. There were many patterns he was noticing the more he studied them, and his engrossment made him completely unaware of his surroundings.

He had his back to the entrance of the other room, and did not even care that Kellen was cautiously approaching the other room's entrance with an unhappy expression.

Alchemists like Agnes – no matter their skill and brilliance – often faced a very unfortunate and common problem due to the rarity of their craft. People are always after their creations, especially potions since they had effects no spells could produce, and that made their creations incredibly valuable in both usage and price.

It made thieves attracted to them the way flies are attracted to honey, and it seems like a fly decided to try its luck because Kellen found a few potions floating from their shelves and into the hands of the intruder. It was a woman who was much quieter than those before her, but she should have paid more attention to who was in the cottage before she decided to steal.

Kellen didn't even bother to say anything as he cleared his throat looking bored out of his mind – it happened a lot – and the woman quickly whipped her head, surprised that she was found out.

They always think they're being stealthy, but no amount of stealth would aid them. If they weren't caught immediately, they'd be quickly tracked down by him. It always ended the same.

"This isn't very nice." He told her quickly reacting to the falling potions that resulted from her broken spell. He already expected it, and he casually returned them to their place without a care while the witch glared at him clenching her fists.

"Stupid assistant." Clearly she knew that Kellen wasn't the alchemist since she wasted no time hurling a very aggressive spell his way, but before she could see the outcome of it, she took this as her chance to run out of the door to escape.

However, there were a few things she got wrong.

Assistants were known to be meek errand boys to their alchemists, and were usually more bookish and avoidant to confrontations. Agnes doesn't have an assistant, she never wanted one since she thought nobody could do the job as well as her, so the thief got that part about Kellen wrong. The thief thought that her spell landed on him, but if she had looked, she'd see that it was easily deflected.

She also wrongly thought that she would leave this place alive.

Rarely anybody does.

And that's how she found herself mere inches away from the door she came in from, flailing her legs. Just like the potions moments ago, she was suspended in the air trying her best to break away from the hold of the spell that was preventing her from getting away. She tried to overpower him, but she couldn't as she felt herself be immobilized.

She tried to scream, she tried to yell out something, but nothing except a strained gasped came out of her as she felt herself be slowly wrenched away from her own body.

It was horrible magic, plainly and terribly evil. Somehow, she knew that she wouldn't survive it as a loud crack echoed inside of the room due to her snapped neck and the scariest thing was that she heard it.

To her horror, she was now on the ground able to breathe but her body was hanging limply over her head. It was a shocking situation she found herself in, and she looked down at herself and moved her hands before touching her face.

"What did you do?" She asked a little bit relieved that she was solid, but when she tried to heave herself up by using a nearby table, she found herself having to quickly catch herself from falling because her hand just passed through it.

That's when the horrifyingly surreal situation became clear to her.

She's dead.

Her killer was humming a happy tune all throughout the whole thing as he let her body land gently on the ground. The moment it did, he grabbed her corpse by the hair and started to drag it away with complete nonchalance as she stood there feeling dread slowly seep in.

"No, no! I am not dead." She said trying to grab something without success and it only led to her crying some more. Her denial was intense, and she refused to believe that this was really her end. This wasn't supposed to happen to her. Not like this.

This couldn't be it. She's too young, it's too soon...

"Better just accept it." A voice beside her spoke making her turn her head towards it. She saw a friendly-looking young man who had been there the whole time. "I'm Sammy. You're the seventh death I witnessed ever since I started coming here."

She stared at him feeling slightly better that there's someone like her, but then she looked down in despair as she realized that she really was dead. That's when she fell down on her knees and started to weep.

Sammy just looked at her with a blank expression on his face before he sighed and crouched down beside her.

"There, there..." Sammy rubbed her back consolingly. It didn't do much to make her feel better, but at least she could feel his touch.

Meanwhile, her dead body was being dragged to the basement and the sound of something as large as a human corpse being dragged on the floor did not make Aubrey turn around to see what was happening mere steps away from him. Not even when Kellen opened the basement's door to kick the corpse down and made it tumble its way to the ground did Aubrey bother to look.

He was too busy with his stones, unaware of the weeping woman in the next room, and Kellen stretched as he cracked his knuckles finally having something to do for the night other than being an annoyance to cute rich snobs.

It was time to cut up the new ingredients for Agnes.