NOVEL NEXT Vol 2. Chapter 73: The Key
Lukas didn't hesitate for a second, popping the bottle open and pouring the contents straight onto the desk in one swift motion. If Thomas was lying about bunyip ashes and how often it was used, then no one would care that Lukas had wasted a bottle of bunyip ash.
Even if it was the most expensive ingredient in the world, Lukas could not have cared less.
Lukas wasn't after the ash. He was after what was hidden inside it.
Lukas ran his fingers through the dark, fine powder, searching through the dark powder. Then he felt something solid—cold, hard, and small. His fingers closed around it and pulled it from the pile of bunyip ash that he had spilled out onto the table.
It was a a key made of iron, and it had been buried carefully in the ashes.
Frowning, Lukas walked over to the washbasin and ran it under a stream of water; scrubbing it clean with his thumb. Behind him, Thomas had already set his glass down, the clink sharp in the quiet, and watched Lukas carefully; his eyes tracking his every movement. The mage had heard that clink when Lukas had shook the bottle of Bunyip Ashes and though he had not commented on it, he was just as curious as Lukas to see what he had uncovered.
Lukas turned the key over in his hand, studying it closely. There were strange inscriptions that ran along its surface, rough and jagged. At the base, a number stood out more clearly than the rest: 56.
Lukas didn't know what to make of it. That number did not mean anything to him.
But it seemed like Thomas Harrow had an inkling of what it might be because Lukas caught the look in his eyes—sudden recognition, sharp and immediate the moment he laid his eyes on it.
Lukas held the key out, letting Thomas get a better look at the key.
"Do you know what this is?" Lukas asked.
Thomas nodded slowly, his brows tightening as he tried to think through the haze of intoxication. "Yeah…at least I think I do," he told Lukas. "My father…he was a bookkeeper for the Church. Used to take me to where he worked. It was beneath the chapel if I remember correctly. The entrance was near…the altar room?"
"Under the Church?" Lukas echoed.
Thomas nodded again, trying his best to compose himself and explain as best as he could in his drunken state. "Yeah. That's where they keep all the Church records—it's these floors stacked one beneath another, filled with vaults. Most people don't even know it's there. It paid well though, my father worked there for most of life. Put a roof above our head, put food on our plates…but that's besides the point. He'd always carry a bunch of keys just like that around."
Thomas pointed to the number etched into the iron. "That key? It'll unlock one of those vaults. And they have like…hundreds of them. Way more than they really need. Vault Number 56 it looks like."
Thomas turned the key over in his hand, frowning as Lukas handed it over to him to examine further.
"But…it's also unfinished," the mage noted after a moment of consideration. "Usually, there'll be another smaller number below this one. To tell you which of the five levels the vault belongs to. This key…it doesn't have it."
Lukas tilted his head. "Is that unusual?"
"Very," Thomas replied, still studying the inscriptions. "The Church only really keeps records on the first three floors underground. That's all they really need. Everything else below that's been sealed off for centuries now. Ever since the Great War—when the dragons burned and destroyed most of the Church's ancient archives—I guess there hasn't been enough records to warrant opening the deeper levels."
Thomas looked up, deep in thought before coming to a conclusion. "This could likely be a key for the fourth or even the fifth floor. But neither of those levels have been used for a very long time."
By now, Anriette and Jesse had moved over to the table, drinks abandoned and curiosity piqued by the sudden shift in mood. Jesse leaned in, his eyes flicking from the key to the ash-streaked bottle and back again. Anriette crossed her arms, watching them silently.
Still deep in thought, Thomas finally handed the key back to Lukas. "But why in the world would this be in a bottle of Bunyip Ashes of all things?" Thomas wondered, mostly to himself.
Lukas, on the other hand, had come to a sudden realization.
Varian's letter. The postscript.
"P.S. All the ingredients can be found in the Magic Tower's laboratories. The fresher, the better! Don't be afraid to pop a new bottle of Bunyip Ashes for that extra kick."
"Don't be afraid to pop a new bottle of Bunyip Ashes for that extra kick."
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Lukas inhaled sharply and he felt his chest tighten as it hit him all at once. He had never pulled ingredients from the cabinet here. Not even once. Lukas had always gone to Ellion when he was in Easthaven for ingredients or sourced them directly from local breweries—insisting on freshness. Always fresh, just as Lukas had thought Varian intended.
But this time…
Lukas had grabbed his ingredients from the cabinet in the Tower's Potions Lab, specifically the bottle of Bunyip Ashes.
An ingredient that no one would ever use.
An ingredient that Varian had put great emphasis on in his final letter.
Lukas stared down at the desk, at the scattered ash, and then at the key gleaming faintly in his hand. His heart skipped a beat.
Could it be? Could it actually be?
Jesse's eyes suddenly widened. The young dragonborn looked from the bottle to Lukas, stunned. And when their eyes met, that single glance was enough. A current of understanding passed between them like a jolt of lightning.
They both knew what this could mean, what it could be.
Jesse had memorized Varian's letter just as well as Lukas for he had spent weeks studying it upon Lukas' request. Every word of that letter had been etched into their minds like scripture.
Jesse's voice was breathless when he confirmed what Lukas was thinking, "This…is it! This is it!"
"I know, Jesse. I know!"
The two humans turned towards Jesse, demanding to grasp what they could be possibly referring to.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Anriette asked, her voice sharper than intended as she looked at Jesse.
Thomas echoed her sentiment with a confused scowl. "Yeah—what does that even mean?"
Jesse only laughed. Not in mockery, but in that strange, half-breathless way people do when everything finally starts to make sense. The young dragonborn shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips, though his eyes were still locked on the space that Lukas had occupied.
"I'm afraid you'll just have to wait and see." He said with that knowing Cheshire grin.
Jesse's answer was unacceptable, it was far too vague.
It didn't even begin to explain what on Hiraeth they could be talking about.
Both of their expressions tightened with frustration, their questions hanging unanswered in the air.
But when Anriette and Thomas turned back to Lukas and demand more—
Lukas was already gone.
Anriette's jaw clenched. "Oh, for fuck's sake! That's the second time he's done this!"
Thomas blinked, stunned. "When—how did he—?"
But the Vice Admiral was already moving toward the window, shoving it open just in time to see the faintest glimpse of water trailing off into the sky, already fading out of sight.
Lukas was moving like a man who had just discovered his own pulse. Heading straight for the Church without any plan in mind was a tad reckless—he knew that. But what more information did he really need?
This wasn't him being impatient, Lukas had waited five years for this.
Five years of quiet suspicion and of sleepless nights and dead ends.
Five years of believing that there was something Varian never told him.
Five years of Lukas knowing that the potion—the recipe, the wording—had meant more than it appeared to be.
Now, in the wake of scattered ash and broken routine, that belief had finally taken form. And Lukas was not going to let it slip away. Water had sprung to life beneath his feet the moment he stepped out, rising to meet him like it had been waiting too. A swirl, a twist, and then he was gone—high above the tower, threading through the wind as if the entire world was pulling him toward the Church.
Towards the Church and the vaults that lay beneath it.
Towards the truth.
Yes, Varian had meant well when he left him that potion to help him sleep, to quiet the noise in his head such that he could rest peacefully in the dark of night. But from the moment Ellion had given him that letter, Lukas had known Varian had hidden a secret message within it.
Lukas just hadn't known how to find it. And now?
Lukas quite literally had the key. The key, not to just a vault, but to all the words that Varian had never gotten to say.
To everything Lukas had feared, suspected, questioned.
To the shadow that stretched behind the Church, the man who controlled it all.
To Daerion Ittriki, the King of Nozar. He was the man that Lukas had long painted in his mind as a villain—a manipulator, a coward, a butcher of truth. But was he? Or had Lukas been wrong all along?
Was Daerion simply a man who had made mistakes too great to undo? Could he truly just be a man with many flaws like so many others who walked the face of Hiraeth just like Celina had described him to be?
Lukas did not know. But for the first time in five years, he was going to find out.
Those questions—the ones he thought he had buried, forced to silence for his own sanity—rose back up with startling clarity. They pressed at his ribs and burned within his chest. Varian, the clever bastard, had hidden the answers in the one place no one would look, in something as mundane as a bottle of bunyip ash and within the very place that Daerion would never come looking: the Church that the King of Nozar himself controlled.
The very concept of it was so simple it bordered on absurd. But Lukas knew, with the kind of certainty that didn't come from logic but from instinct.
Now the truth was waiting. Waiting for him in Vault Fifty Six.
Once thought long forgotten. But not for much longer. Because Lukas Drakos was coming.
This time around, his questions would finally be answered.