Chapter 576: The Scent Beneath the Blood

Orion looked at the man and flipped him the bird without a word

The man laughed.

It was a warm sound, genuine, unbothered by the greeting entirely.

Ronan turned. "Lysander." He frowned slightly. "What are you doing here?"

Lysander exhaled and ran a hand down his face.

He looked exhausted.

There were faint shadows beneath his eyes, his usually composed appearance slightly undone, like he had either not slept or had been working without rest for far too long.

"I came to see Madam Tyler," he said. "Regarding what Sophia asked me to look into."

Sophia straightened.

Lysander turned to her. "I was going to come find you later," he said. "But since you’re here."

He moved closer to the table and set his hands loosely against the edge of it, gathering his thoughts for a moment.

"I still haven’t found anything that matches the tonic you described drinking when you were younger," he said. "Not exactly. But I found something with similarities."

Sophia nodded, listening.

"While I was working on Tobias," Lysander continued, his voice shifting into the measured tone he used when he was being clinical, "I identified the poison."

The table went still.

"Wolfsbane," he said. "That’s what was used."

Ronan’s jaw tightened.

"Wolfsbane reduces our healing ability dramatically," Lysander continued. "Which is why his body wasn’t fighting back the way it should have. That part wasn’t surprising once I found it." He paused. "But there was something else."

"That doesn’t make sense," Ronan muttered. "Wolfsbane alone is already dangerous enough. Why add another?"

Lysander shook his head slightly.

"That’s what we thought at first too," he said. "But after examining it further, it has a similar quality to what Sophia described before—the smell of rotting flesh."

Sophia’s breath caught faintly.

"It was faint," Lysander said. "Barely there. Genevieve caught it too, which confirmed I wasn’t imagining it." He shook his head. "We reached a conclusion. The wolfsbane was the primary agent—it was what stopped Tobias from healing. But the second substance was a booster. It was accelerating the wolfsbane, making it spread faster than it naturally would have."

He paused.

"And there was also the fever, which Tobias ignored," he added. "And that alone had already made his body weak. Then, combined with the wolfsbane and the other poison..."

He shook his head, turned, shifting his attention to Annabeth.

"From what I know," he said, "no other beasts attacked during your journey here. Is that right? Just the Virelops?"

Annabeth nodded. "Primarily the Virelops, yes. The other beasts—they were killing each other. It was strange to watch, but they weren’t focused on us."

Lysander nodded slowly, like this confirmed something he had already been turning over.

"With wolfsbane in his blood," he said, "and Tobias bleeding the way he was—a Trihydra should have appeared."

The table was quiet.

"Trihydras are drawn to our blood," he continued. "Especially blood mixed with wolfsbane. It’s like a signal to them. And there was more than enough to draw one in." He shook his head. "But none came."

"I suspect this is because of the second poison," Lysander said. "Whatever it is—it repelled them. Something in it works against what would normally attract a Trihydra." He exhaled. "Which also explains why the healer from the Silver Creek Pack couldn’t identify what Tobias had been given. It wasn’t one poison. It was a combination. And the second one is something none of us recognized."

He looked at Madam Tyler.

"Which is why I came to you," he said. "If perhaps you can help me out."

Madam Tyler’s brow furrowed deeply.

"Rotting flesh," she muttered quietly to herself, her brows furrowed in thought.

Lysander nodded.

She was quiet for a moment, her expression shifting through several things before it settled.

"We don’t use anything like that here," she said. "Nothing in this shrine produces that kind of smell."

Lysander sighed, unsurprised by that.

But then suddenly, Madam Tyler paused, her eyes widened.

"What is it?" Orion asked her.

"There is..." she started slowly, "...a plant."

"People who know of it call it the corpse plant, though it’s not its real name," she said. "They just call it that because of the smell it produces. The smell of rotting flesh."

Lysander’s frown deepened. "I’m not familiar with it."

"Most people aren’t," Madam Tyler said. "It’s not common, and people don’t use it. I only remember because at one point before we moved here, when the plague took over, we experimented with the different plants you guys brought in, and one almost took us out due to the smell."

Annabeth had gone very still across the table. Her eyes were wide.

"I know that plant," she said.

Everyone turned to her.

Annabeth straightened slightly, something shifting behind her composed expression—recognition, and beneath it, something that looked a lot like unease.

"As far as I know," she said carefully, "it only grows in the west."

Lysander’s frown deepened further. "Really?"

Annabeth nodded. "It’s rare. Most people outside the west have never seen it—at least that’s what I heard." She paused. "And it’s not used as a poison, it has strong healing properties."

Lysander rubbed at his jaw. "It’s no surprise that I couldn’t identify it then. I may have come in contact with it when I was younger, but I didn’t spend time with the healers during the plague for fear that I would get infected." He shook his head. "And if it only grows in the west and isn’t known outside of it, that would explain why neither I nor Genevieve could identify it. And the fact that it was mixed with wolfsbane could be why your healer could not identify it too."

Annabeth nodded slowly. "Like I said, it’s extremely rare. It can only be seen in the Blood Moon Pack, and it’s heavily guarded too."

"The Blood Moon Pack?" Sophia asked, dread curling in her gut.

"Um... it’s Victoria’s pack. She’s the only one who plants this corpse plant. She has a garden of it," Annabeth said to them.