Xana sat atop the rafters of an abandoned chapel, draped in shadow. The only light in the building was from the full moon shining through the giant stained glass window below her. She glanced down at the She had accepted a job from Kreg, and failure really wasn't an option with him. She wasn't exactly shy on money either, she ran plenty of her own hits, never got caught neither. It's just…she sort of owed the man a favor, and she didn't need that kind of flak on her name. A hit or two was no big deal for her anyway; on the contrary, she rather enjoyed it.

  She shrunk, sinking further into the shadows when she heard the click of the doorknob. This was where the fun began. Rags was the name of her target, a new small-time dealer making a name for himself on the streets. The little Tiefling — *ahem* imp *ahem* — walked through the doors of the chapel carrying a briefcase with an entourage of orcs bodyguards at his beck and call. Problem was, his name was getting a little bit too popular for Kreg’s tastes, and he just so happened to be dealing right in his territory. Now mind you, the guy probably didn’t even know, but Kreg wasn’t the type to sit down and have a chat with everyone he disagreed with. All in all: pretty unfortunate set of circumstances for Rags. Not that she even cared in the first place; to her he was just a bag of cash and a briefcase of drugs at the end of the day.

  Rags had placed the briefcase on a desk and opened it, revealing the bags of fine beige powder inside. Passion … she was an addict and she wasn't afraid to admit it. Kreg’s envoy just said to make sure no one leaves alive, so anything else she found in the process was free game, right? She slid her daggers out of their sheaths, crossed over her lower back, one in each hand. She smiled in anticipation; who to kill first? It would be wise to kill one of the bodyguards first, they're being paid for a reason, but Xana didn't care about that — she wanted to be entertained. She decided to kill the client first, just to see the looks on their faces when she dropped down from the fucking roof.

  She leapt from her place atop the rafters, cloak dragging in the wind behind her with an unholy smile on her face. She landed upon her target, and he crumpled to the ground. She dug her daggers into him, and one of them pierced his heart, quickly ending his life. Oops, she wanted him to scream a bit…for psychological purposes.

  The shock only lasted for a second before the bodyguards formed a wall between her and the imp. These guys meant business, aye? A devilish smirk warped her face as she sunk back into the shadows, manipulating the moonlight into leaving behind an illusory clone of herself as she changed her position. They seemed convinced for a little while, but the clone was imperfect, flickering in and out of existence for a hair's breadth every now and then.

  By the time they realized it was a fake, it was already too late. Xana had emerged from one of the bodyguards shadows and slit their neck — two left.

  “Check the shadows,” one of them yelled. “It’s fucking Xana!” Rags seemed to be panicking now; his eyes were darting around the church in search of a sign for his hunter. She emerged from the shadows, bolting straight for them. The bodyguards stabbed at her — the blades went straight through. The real Xana dropped down on one of them from above, wrapping her legs around his neck and twisting her weight around until she heard a crack. As the body fell, she dropped in its shadow and disappeared.

  Rags panicked and ran for the doors, leaving behind his passion and his hired goon, but Xana poked out from his shadow and sliced his heels. Rags fell to the ground while uttering cries of pain. The last bodyguard was sweating, head on a constant swivel. Xana walked out from the shadows, twirling a blade around her finger by the loop on the end of the hilt. After a moment of deliberation, the orc dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender. “I give,” he said with a shrug.

  Xana stopped. “Oh, well you’re no fun.” she said.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting a —” A knife pierced through the back of his throat, and the Xana he was speaking to dissolved into moonlight.

  The real Xana glanced back at Rags and smiled at the sight of him crawling on the ground like a worm. She skipped across the chapel and kicked him onto his back before kneeling over him. She looked him in the eyes and said, “Listen buddy, I don’t want you to think I have a grudge against you or anything, okay? It's just business.” Rags, in fear of his life, frantically nodded his head up and down with wide eyes and a forced smile only for a dagger to be swiftly stuck through his left eye. “Thanks for understanding, bud,” she said before she cut off his head and stored it in the burlap bag she had brought for this very reason.

  She then strolled over to the briefcase of passion on the table and peered inside. Passion was a relaxant; it slowed your perception of time and warped your vision into a beautifully saturated blur whilst also intensifying your positive sensations and numbing the negative ones. It was one of the most popular and expensive drugs cycled in Noxia, and for good reason.

  She shivered in anticipation; it was enough to last her through the winter…well, maybe not that long, but it would last at least a month…a week. She slammed the briefcase shut and carried it out the chapel with a skip in her step. Today was a good day.

  At the outer walls of Noxia, on a warm sunny day, two guards stood watch at the eastern gate. Nothing much ever happened at the eastern gate, since it was the only gate to a road that ran straight through the woods. Most people didn't feel safe going that route, and for good reason, so they'd simply take the longer way around and go a different safer road.

  Larry, a good fellow with a heart of gold and one of the habitual guards of this gate, had started whistling a tune to pass the time. Gary, his partner, did not like that. Not. One. Bit.

  “Larry,” Gary pronounced, to which Larry ignored to continue whistling. “Larry,” Gary said again, louder this time, since he obviously hadn't heard him the last. But Larry continued whistling. “Larry!”

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  “Hm?” Larry turned toward Gary with a jovial grin.

  “Stop fucking whistling, will ya?”

  “What? Why? You don't fancy the tune? I can switch it up for ya,” he offered.

  “No, no, Larry. Don't switch nothing up, don't do nothing. Just stop whistling.”

  “I don't understand. What's wrong with me whistling, I’m just trying to pass the time?”

  “And I'm trying to keep my damned sanity! So stop fucking whistling!” A whistling noise sung through the air just before Gary's neck was gashed open. Blood sprayed all over Larry's face as Gary collapsed to the ground and failed to breathe through his crushed windpipe.

  “G-Gary?” Larry stared down at his fallen comrade in absolute shock.

  “Will you two shut it down there?!” One of the more mature guards yelled over the catwalk, but paused at the sight of Gary bleeding out on the ground. “Shit, close the gates! Close the gates!”

  As the attack bells started ringing, Larry looked up at the treeline maybe a five hundred footsteps away. A pack of at least a dozen gnolls came rushing out of the foliage, and following them was a teenage sized anthropoid calmly walking toward the gate. It was male, obviously, and covered in dried mud from hair to toe. Its eyes turned to look at him, and he could've sworn they were red.

  “D-Demon! It's a demon! A demon!” Larry screamed in fear as he ran through the closing gates. He looked behind him and the demon narrowed its eyes ominously at the gate. It dropped down on all fours, coiled up like a beast, and his eyes widened as he watched its muscles bulge under its skin before it sprung into an impossibly fast sprint. One hundred steps…as it ran, the dried mud peeled off in the wind, revealing perfectly white skin beneath…two hundred steps. “It- It's coming! It's coming! It's coming!” He backed away from the gate in disbelief.

  “Relax, the gate will close before it even gets here,” one of comrades attempted to console and placed a hand on his shoulder. True enough, right at around one hundred steps if distance left, the door slammed shut. “See,” he said with a grin.

  A white blur busted through the door and rammed through his comrade. He heard the sound of armor crumpling to the ground behind him and feared to even look. He didn't turn when he heard the sounds of his comrades charging into battle behind him, and he didn't turn when he heard the sounds of two opposing forces clashing with one another. Instead, he fell to his knees in despair at the sight of the mega-pack of gnolls quickly closing in on the body sized hole in the gate. He didn't fight when a hand grabbed onto his hair and pulled his head back, forcing him to look up into red hate filled eyes with snake-like irises. He closed his eyes and accepted his fate; may the Deities spare his soul.

  Sharah, Captain of the East Guard, was leaning back on her comfy reclining office chair. She was painting her nails a deathly black, wanting to feel cute like any normal girl would, when her lieutenant busted into the room unpronounced making her get nail polish on her skin and drop the entire bottle! “Derrick!” She screamed at her most trusted colleague.

  “The eastern gate is under attack!”

  “What?!” She stood up from her seat and quickly grabbed her sword and helmet. “Send someone to the central guardhouse and brief me while you take me to their location!”

  “Yes, ma'am!” He spoke while they traversed down the eastern guardhouse. “There's a man-sized hole in the east gate created by the guards are calling The White Demon.”

  “The what?”

  “The White Demon; description is that of a teenage sized anthropoid with white skin, white hair, and glowing red eyes,” he said as they rushed down the stairs.

  “How did he make the hole in the gate?”

  “He rammed through it.”

  “Of course.” Sharah didn't miss a beat.

  “Lucas,” Derrick called as they walked past through the armory, where many guards were getting dressed for battle.

  “Yes, sir?” A Viraki rushed over, still only half-dressed, and stood at attention, one fist over his heart and the other behind his back.

  “Finish putting on your gear and send word to the central guardhouse as soon as possible!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Derrick and Sharah ran out the guardhouse and immediately began dashing from rooftop to rooftop. For a Conduit, enhancing their own muscles was a simple technique.

  As they neared the outer walls, the sounds of screams and chaos could be heard. Gnolls were destroying business, breaking into homes, raping women and slaughtering innocent men and children. Walking calmly through the streets, seemingly unbothered by the atrocious acts happening around him was one teenage looking boy with pale skin, red slit eyes, and white hair that listlessly flowed behind him in the wind as he walked. He curiously observed the chaos that flowed around him as if he were in the eye of a storm.

  “The White Demon, I'm guessing,” Sharah said as she unsheathed her sword. Just as she was about to leap forward, Derrick placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “He's dangerous, Sharah. Reports state that if someone attacks the boy, the Gnolls will return to defend him. It's best if we observe wait for reinforcements.”

  “The longer we wait, the more women will be turned into breeders! It only takes minutes for Gnoll newborns to birth and hours for them to become a full grown adult!”

  “I know, Sharah, but if we run in there alone, we will die pointlessly!”

  Sharah glanced at the demon boy walking through the streets. He was no longer walking. He was standing still, and staring straight at them. Did he hear them from over there? They were at least a thousand steps away.

  “Fine,” she grit through her teeth. “We'll wait. But I won't stand by and do nothing. We'll pick off the outliers until reinforcements arrive. But…not before I do something else first.”

  Asura lulled through the abandoned roads while his Gnolls wreaked havoc upon the massive village. This...senseless savagery brought some odd sense of comfort to him.

  “...ull grown adult!”

  He stopped in his tracks as his ears twitched, determining the direction of the sound. He honed in and found a pair of anthropoids crouched atop a roof. They looked like ants arguing in the distance. The female seemed like a lively one. Perhaps she would bring him some entertainement before he brought her to her end.

  She suddenly raised up from her crouched and held out her hand beneath her. The tiles from the roof flowed into her hand like soft clay before forming into the shape of a long javelin. Asura narrowed his eyes as she held it back and swung it through the air. When she let it go, it a sonic boom cracked. His eyes widened as the javelin shot toward him at an unbelievable speed. He swayed to the right, but the javelin cut into the left side of his face; his teeth were exposed through a bloody open gash, and his ear had been torn clean off, leaving only a small hole in its place.

  He glowered up at the thing that had dared to harm upon him with unbridled hatred, and she was smiling. He vowed her death would be slow and painful. The two slid disappeared behind the other side of the building before he could even attempt to give chase, leaving him bubbling full of rage with nowhere to put it.

  A female anthropoid sprinted out of a nearby alleyway, followed shortly by a raving Gnoll. Asura watched as the woman ran up to him, screaming for mercy. He grabbed her by the neck, lifted her off her feet and snapped her spinal cord. Still alive, he tossed her back to his Gnoll, ignoring her labored breathing as it tore her clothes off. He supposed that made him feel a little bit better.