The damp air of the illicit market thickened with the smell of burning copper. Lord Grigori sat on a velvet cushion inside his private pavilion. He stared at a floating sheet of golden parchment.
"The telemetry is dead," Grigori rasped.
Malakor stood near the entrance of the tent. The younger smuggler wore a grey hood to conceal his face from the market patrols. "Did the Valorian king fail to deploy the relic?"
"He dropped it into the main reservoir," Grigori said. He tapped a withered finger against the golden contract. "The tracking runes confirmed the deployment. The plague activated. Then a superior biological ward eradicated the necrosis in five seconds."
Malakor stepped away from the tent flap. "A novice god cannot afford an apex ward. The system prices them in the millions."
"T
