Tharion advanced several paces until he stood where he had fought Bram. Calla lay unconscious from his wounds, roasting in the sun. Their cloaks were woven with an impenetrably black fabric, which absorbed more light than it reflected. This made their movements blurrier than normal as well as maintain as much of their mana regeneration as possible. Tharion could still use his skills, but his vulnerability afterwards depended on the current strength of the sun. How much light there was at any given time influenced his every action. In fact, most of the time was spent calculating the position of the sun a few hours in advance.

  The fresh breeze from the south pushed past him, carrying the smell of death away from his feet and into the rolling hills beyond. He found that a bush on his left side didn’t quite rustle the way it ought to. It wasn’t that he knew how a bush was supposed to sound when it was violently jostled by the wind, but he knew when his ears heard something they didn’t like. And he trusted his pointy ears. They had served him faithfully for centuries, keeping him out of trouble, finding trouble, and escaping trouble – all in the same afternoon. His ears were his lifeline. They more than made up for his lack of perception. An elf’s ears, after all, were superior to their human counterpart. For all the sniggers, sneers and snickers an elf got in the poorer parts of the empire, his ears were the only thing he could keep pride in as an orphan.

  His eyes, however, were not as useful, especially with the way the sun was shining. The wind grew stronger, and he relished the coolness it brought to his aged face. While his skin still enjoyed the suppleness of youth, lines under his eyes told of the countless nights he had been forced to stay awake for and the toll it had taken on his body.

  He stared at the shrub, enjoying the feeling of dominance before he slaughtered his prey. True, he couldn’t kill them, but he could make them suffer. It was justified, for they took away Calla’s livelihood and caused him to use his special cloak. Invisibility was only as useful as it was surprising. So as long as he cut their tongues and chopped their hands off, he would still retain the advantage for his next job at least.

  Clutching his daggers tighter underneath his cloak, he started towards the bush carefully. As usual, his breathing quieted, his pulse keeping well within the parameters of a safe traversal through human-occupied territory. He could barely hear his own footsteps, the grass no doubt aiding in their imperceptibility.

  A minute later, Tharion was standing over a beautiful young woman in a red dress. She was obviously not a combatant, for she was as pale and as fair as one of the ladies in the portraits he had seen in Lord Gaius Aurelius Vitellius’ salon. His grip on his blades relaxed a little. He almost didn’t want to hurt her because to ruin a woman’s appearance was truly a wicked thing to do. What was it that Calla said, which had made him laugh until he puked all over Gaius’ dinner table? ‘The greatest crime a man could commit was the desecration of natural beauty.’ Calla's rigid adherence to these new, strange human beliefs had gotten him destroyed. Had he listened to Tharion and scouted the area for other enemies while he distracted the warrior, he would not be laying on the ground in his own entails right now. But no, the warrior had to be defeated for the experience points – because levelling up couldn’t wait one more night. The younger generation lacked patience.

  But Tharion wasn’t going to make the same mistake. Beautiful bystander or wicked enchanteress, she was going to get amputated. The invisible thief held his dagger at her throat whilst he searched for the healing rune in the dirt. Because his eyes weren’t so good in the sunlight, it took longer than it should have taken, for it was right in front of him.

  On the other hand, Anara continued to pretend that she couldn’t perceive him. Not only could she see the individual blades of grass bending under each foot, but she could their crunching, as well as the elf's laborious breathing; this was incredible, for the elves were known to have smaller lungs, and thus even their heavy breathing was imperceptible to the human ear. Her rune was working. She tried her best to avoid giving away too much information, however. The plan hinged on avoiding the thief’s moderate insight, which no doubt bested her low deception attribute. She only had to last a few more seconds...

  But the elf was looking at her – she could feel his gaze bore through her scalp. Had he realised the rune was a decoy? The real one was behind her. A rune for enhanced hearing. It was incredible that she got it to work; it was her first time ever drawing it since she was a child.

  Tharion carefully raised his foot over the healing rune, his blade ready to slice the woman’s throat the second the enchantment was broken. But he noticed something particular; the hairs on the woman’s neck were standing up. Holding his breath, he leaned in closer and saw that her skin was crawling with goosebumps. Calla would have said that he was being overly cautious, but it paid to be when one was a thief, and he withdrew his foot gently as his eyes followed the natural curvature of her back until they landed on the earth she was sitting on. Then, he saw it. The second rune. For a moment, his mind was blank, thrown into a chaos of confusion wherein he had no sense of up or down, left or right, or whether it meant anything at all.

  As his brain processed this information, it hit him that perhaps the woman knew that he was there, for he caught in his peripheral vision a flicker of recognition – just a flash – so momentarily that he thought it was a false impression; and when he jerked his eyes to the woman’s pallid face, whose brow was bubbled with sweat droplets the size of a man’s eyeball, he saw a different kind of woman than before. The woman was nervous. Or was she? His head spun. When did it get so hot? Where did the breeze go? Tharion was not himself, clearly, and he needed to get the job done as soon as possible before he ended up like Calla. Thieving was all he had going for him. He wouldn’t let a woman take that away from him, no matter how beautiful.

  If he scrubbed one of the runes, wouldn’t they initiate their plan? He glanced nervously over his shoulder. He saw only Calla’s body floating on golden-crusted blades as though his body was being paraded through the field. Tharion had only ever seen crippled thieves in light, not darkness, and this only intensified his worry. He had to pick the right rune to rub out first. But which one? The longer he waited, the riskier it got. Shaking his head with frustration, he lowered his foot on the rear, desecrated it, and immediately grabbed a clump of the woman’s brunette hair and pressed her down to the earth. Anara screamed – the game was on.

  Tharion kicked at the remaining rune, but Anara’s threw her leg in the way and intercepted it. Her shin absorbed the blow, and she clasped his shoulders and drew him into her neck. The feelings of repulsion were supplanted by the fear that their plan wouldn’t work. His rancid breath burned her nostrils. It felt like a boot was pressing down upon her chest; perhaps she would have preferred that over an elf on top of her. The thief bit into her neck, drawing blood, and she cried out in hysterical agony. Was a friendship with Larkin worth this much pain? It was too late to consider that now.

  Suddenly, as he was struggling to tire out the woman, his ears stood up, and he heard the grass crunching behind him. Whilst his strength attribute was low, he could afford to see what was approaching; but when he did so, the woman kneed him in the groin, which caused a sensation no man, whatever class he belonged to, could withstand; the pain was as sharp and as sudden as the steel which came hurtling down from the pitch-perfect spring sky, the kind which decorated the walls of Gaius’ salon.

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  Tharion tried to roll away, but the woman’s fingernails dug into the seams of the cloak. Although he was restrained, Tharion’s mind, like all young men faced with death, refused to give in so readily. He fought hard to free himself. Gritting his teeth, he activated backstab. In a flash, he was behind the warrior. Drawing a large, sharp breath, he quickly switched to a reverse-grip, lifting his daggers above the man’s neck; in this way, they appeared like the blood-stained fangs of a giant spider.

  Bram’s own blade came within an inch of splitting Anara’s face in half. Without so much as a second thought, he spun around and slashed at the waist of his adversary. This time, however, it didn’t work; Tharion was expecting it. The thief backflipped several paces away, easily avoiding the towering greatsword.

  “Damn it,” cursed Tharion under his breath as he landed on the other side of the mound.

  He was right where he started, but at least he wouldn’t have to share the reward. Sucking in breath through his clenched teeth, he hissed like a serpent. He tried to suppress the wobble in his knees. His limbs, as well, were trembling. For when he activated Backstab in the open daylight, his mana, and thus his life points, halved; but he shouldn’t be feeling this tired, he thought, since his cloak mitigated much of the danger. Suddenly, something white in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Glancing down, he saw his tunic flapping against his hard skin.

  After a minute of heart-thumping silence, the white-haired elf found the strength to raise his eyes. He saw the woman standing next to her tall, broad-shouldered companion. Dangling from her fingers was his invisibility cloak, The Shadowveil of Erebos. It flickered in and out of existence, the inside lining being the only part visible to the naked eye.

  He turned pale. His heart leaped, and he reached out for it.

  “You want it?” Anara teased; her voice was barely audible in the wind.

  Before Tharion could respond, she let it go, sucked up by the naked breeze. He tried to follow it with his eyes, but to no avail. It was lost forever.

  “Erebos!” gasped Tharion, staggering after it.

  After a few, tiring steps, he glared at the woman speechlessly.

  Bram held his greatsword in front of him, the tip of the blade pointed to the azure above, and closed his eyes, moving his lips mechanically.

  “What are you saying?” Tharion shrieked, his face burning in the swelling heat. The panic of losing his invisibility was getting to him. He trudged forward.

  Suddenly, as his sword charged with a white, crackling energy, a powerful wind swept at Bram’s feet, flattening the shrubs behind. Anara dug her heels into the dirt, bracing herself against the strong current.

  Tharion’s blood ran cold. The earth shifted beneath his feet, and he braced, intent not to fall to the ground. Although he lacked his greatest asset, he stood his ground. There was nowhere to flee as things were. Even if there was, he wouldn’t dare. He could still defeat them. If push came to shove, he could slash the woman and make a run for it anyway. The warrior would be forced to choose between his and her life. Despite the gruff, to Tharion, he looked like the noble-spirited type.

  Bram glared at the thief as he lowered his greatsword at him. The thick layer of perspiration on his face reflected the high mana cost of using Power Strike. Instead of half his life force being depleted after its use, like in the case of Iron Warden, three-quarters was drained. Only levelling to Adept would reduce the overall mana cost. Crouching into a spring, he launched at the elf with a loud, volcanic roar. The blood rushed into Tharion’s ears, but he had no mana of his own to backstab or sneak. Instead, he intended to rely on his agility to evade the strike, and his dexterity to slip his dagger into the brute’s throat.

  As the warrior approached with the speed and force of a lion, carrying in his grip a beam of light, Tharion's eyes opened wide. A realisation dawned upon him, which made him feel sick to his stomach. Why did he need to enhance the strength of his blade? If he had more time, perhaps Tharion could have figured it out. He shielded his eyes, waiting impatiently for the warrior to get within slashing distance. But just as his mind began to unravel the mystery, the tips of his ears imploded, and his neck snapped. His body fell to the ground with a soft thud, his eyes gazing at Calla’s torso.

  Larkin stood over him, his Hammer soaked in blood.

  “I gave you a chance to surrender,” he said solemnly.

  Bram brought down the sword, chopping the elf in half. The flesh seared off, and his face was quickly splattered with elf guts. Not that it was the first time he had seen the insides of a subhuman race, for when he was a conscript in the imperial army, he was walking in elf intestines for weeks during the Siege of Ironclash. Back then, the empire liked to use elves on the front lines against the mighty orc tribes of Gruthar. For Bram, this was nothing.

  As for the young blacksmith, he appeared preoccupied with the sight of the dismembered thief. He had known a few elven boys at the orphanage. Bram was right; if he was to achieve greatness he had to do unspeakable things; for no one would take him seriously if he relied on other people to do the dirty work. Bram placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Well done, lad. One less roaming the streets,” he chuckled.

  Larkin shook his head.

  “I won’t cripple unless it’s necessary."

  “You can’t trust an elf. Believe me, I’ve tried,” Bram said.

  Larkin couldn’t tear his eyes away from the decapitated head of the elf. Tharion’s eyes stared straight ahead.

  “Why isn’t he blinking?” asked Larkin.

  “Is he supposed to?” grunted Bram, wiping the blood off his sword with his sleeve.

  Larkin faced his friend; but in this expression there was a flash of genuine panic. Bram realised this instantly, but turned away, uncomfortable at the boy’s feeling, which felt like a tsunami on his shore.

  Before Bram could say anything more, Anara joined them. Spotting a shard belonging to Tharion’s broken dagger, she picked it up. It felt unusually cold in her fingers.

  “This isn’t standard guild work... Someone higher up is holding the purse strings,” Anara muttered.

  A flash of anger reigned on Larkin’s face. “They want to destroy everything I’ve built? Fine. Let them come. I’ll forge something that will put them to shame.”

  A smile came to Anara’s lips. “I was about to say the same thing,” she said.

  But Anara caught the bloodthirstiness on the boy’s face, and wondered to herself how it was possible for him to change emotions so quickly. With a large sigh, she pocketed the shard in her satchel. Her own eyes gravitated down to the elf. Sure, she did not feel an ounce of pity for the scoundrel, but she was an experienced enchanteress. Larkin, on the other hand, had no such life experience; and yet, he appeared as calm as the day she answered the bulletin.

  “Bram,” said Larkin, his eyes fiercely amber, “you haven’t told me why he isn’t blinking.”

  As she was staring at the elf, a droplet of blood crashed into the flattened ear. She lifted her eyes and saw that it came from Larkin’s Hammer. It looked nothing like how it had appeared earlier. Neither did Larkin.

  “Something’s not right...” murmured Bram.

  An urge to inspect the shard once again struck Anara all of a sudden, and she reached into her satchel and pulled it out.

  “What is it?” Bram said, his voice betraying a worry he was trying to suppress.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Anara.

  “Why does he not look alive? His eyes aren’t closing!” demanded Larkin, glaring at Bram with frustration. He stepped towards him, his Hammer shaking by his side.

  Anara flipped the shard around. There was an insignia written on the back of it. Larkin caught it just before his anger overwhelmed him. He instantly turned pale.

  “What is it?” Bram asked again.

  “The Cult of the Obsidian Smith...” Larkin said weakly.

  From a mile away, in another ancient watchtower, a red-cloaked figure lowered his enchanted Voidglass – a long, thin tube which allowed him to see far distances – and smirked.

  “Soon, Forgeheart. Very soon...”