The air in the chamber was thick with the sterile, sharp scent of chemicals and the low, frantic murmuring of the man at the table. Vane's back was turned, his shadow dancing erratically against the stone walls as he clinked glass tubes together, his fingers stained a deep, bruised purple from the liquids he handled.
Asarmose leaned his head as far toward Alistair as the high-backed chair would allow. "Do you know him?" he whispered, his voice a mere thread of sound beneath the bubbling of the vials.
Alistair's eyes didn't leave the scholar. He watched the way the man's shoulders hunched with a calm, obsessive energy. "I heard of a young scholar who was picked up by one of the council members," Alistair breathed back, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. "A man named Vane. He was supposed to be a prodigy in the medical arts, focusing on the preservation of life. It seems he's moved on to more... industrious pursuits."
