Episode 6

> But remember, poison is like a sword without the hilt, all you have is the blade. Double-edged and ever sharp you must handle it with care.
>
> Spiderkiller as she reveals the dead rats, **Session 6**

SHORT SUMMARY

## Synopsis

At the dawn of Spiderkiller’s first class the party finds themselves waking up at yet another eventful day in the red church. After going out and fucking Mouser last night, Xanthus wakes up in Mouser’s chambers. As Mouser gets dressed, he offers to walk Xanthus to breakfast after feeding his cat. We don’t meet Giselle the cat on screen yet, but Xanthus notices an exit in Mouser’s room that leads outside of the school, there is a little kitty door. After Mouser fixes Xanthus’ hair they walk to breakfast. It is established that now every meal is held in the star-filled dining room. After arriving and seeing the empty staff table, Mouser realised he was late for a meeting that had been conveniently scheduled during breakfast time. Mouser asks Xanthus to sit next to Nadya in class and leaves the dining hall again, proudly displaying his hickies. Xanthus decides to sit next to Nadya during breakfast too. While feeding Vitruv, Nadya notices that she is rather reluctantly eating her food. Nadya notices that the food smells more bitter than normal, she is too paranoid to continue eating and tells the party. Agrippa starts slapping food out of peoples’ hands. Hush hears this and also stops eating his food. As the party is led towards the classroom, Caeso remembers the room from his investigation on the first day, where he got poisoned by touching the door handle.

They enter the hall of truths and are greeted by a display of jars, potions, herbs, specimens, and all kinds of other macabre stuff covering the walls and other parts of the room. The party sees a golden cage in front of the room, it is filled with seven rats running around. Xanthus links arms with Nadya to stay beside her as instructed and promises to tell her later about his night with Mouser. Spiderkiller enters the room and gives a speech about poison and killing. While entering, she removes three knives from her belt to hang them on three spots on her wall. Written in old Ashkan next to the spots, it says: Healing, Death, and Madness. As she does that she tips rat treats into a jar and feeds it to them. They die shortly and Spiderkiller starts her class. As everyone tries to figure out what happened to the rats and Nadya narrows it down to 5 plants, people start to feel overheated. As they narrow it down to two flowers, people’s conditions start to get worse. Petra and Xanthus start to feel short of breath, their vision gets blurry. Lynne approaches the others from the table and asks about the symptoms. Prompted by Xanthus, Lynne guesses the wrong flower. After looking her new bestie over, Nadya gets the idea that Red Dahlia is the flower. This earns Nadya a tiny smile from Spiderkiller. Spiderkiller prompts them to make the antidote. Lynne and Nadya figure out it takes three ingredients to make the antidote. As Xanthus passes out, Tacitus catches him like a romance hero. Aurelius anoints Nadya, while Lynne passes out, tossing the second ingredient into the antidote. Nadya manages to finish the antidote and green smoke starts filling the room. Everyone survives and Spiderkiller continues her class. She recommends everyone to read Arkemical Truths, the most basic book about poisons. It’s almost a compliment that Spiderkiller used Red Dahlia to poison us, since it’s a very expensive ingredient. It’s used quite a bit in the upper classes.

Bianca invites the party to a party they are throwing the next day. Nadya asks the party to meet her in her room before curfew. Before Petra leaves, Ashlinn catches her to ask about teaming up to steal Spiderkiller’s knives. As Mouser leaves the room he taps Xanthus on the back and gives him a thumbs up. Tacitus looks upset seeing this. The party gathers in Nadya’s room, as is to become a tradition. After Petra asks Caeso if he killed Leo, he reassures her that he hasn’t. Caeso voices his concern about being purposely set up for murder. While the others wait in Nadya’s room, Petra and Xanthus seek out to look through Leo’s room, they find letters and a wooden box with dried up eyeballs, supposedly Leo’s token. Xanthus notices a red thread caught between the latch of the door, about the same colour as an Itreyan army tunic. Xanthus reads the one letter written in Itreyan, it’s advice about how to find the Red Church. In a conversation with Aurelius about the upcoming interrogations, Caeso reveals to him that he had a nightmare the other night, when Aurelius and Nadya heard screams coming from Caeso’s room. Xanthus and Petra arrive again and disclose their findings of Leo’s room. Xanthus wants to keep the thread and find Tacitus to compare. As Nadya and Caeso read Leo’s letters, most of them contain information about how to find the Red Church, it seems Leo was involved with a group of Liisian radicals, who want to reclaim their land from the Itreyan. Those specifically were advising Leo how to find the Red Church. Caeso reads the final letter Leo had left, it is from his surviving sister and it’s about how his family was killed by the army and his sister is having ptsd. Leo seems to be from Galante, Nadya’s family has done a lot of business there.

Their room meeting is interrupted by Hush knocking on the door, he fetches Julius, to steal alcohol with Bianca for the party. After most of the group get drunk on Petra’s rum, Xanthus and Nadya walk ahead of the embarrassing drunk bunch as they all go to the dinner. Nadya asks Xanthus about his night with Mouser. Which prompts this conversation: X: »How much do you want to know.« N: »How much are you willing to share.« X: »All of it.« N: »Good, let’s talk.« Aurelius yet again percives too much about Xanthus’ sex life.

Seadancer tells them again about the party, stating that it was her idea that Bianca stole. Xanthus goes to mess with Tacitus and tells him thank you for catching him when he passed out earlier and asks him to come to his room later to ask him something in private. Meanwhile Nadya and Aurelius have a conversation about the magical healing bathwater. Petra sits by the fire with Whispcatcher. Bianca tries to flirt with Caeso. Tacitus ends up sitting beside Aurelius and they talk for a while… besties.

That night Aurelius continues his read of the Numicius book. During this, Nadya knocks on Caeso’s door and asks if he wants her to stay over, because he seemed stressed about the investigation. Xanthus goes to Tacitus to talk, threaten him and give him a quick kiss on the cheek.

## Further Reading

* About what happened when Nadya stayed over at Caesos: NadyaCaeso bedsharing fic