"Pale, what's going on?!" Kayla shouted out as her and Valerie came sprinting over. A few seconds later, Cal and Cynthia joined them as well, all of them staring at her expectantly.

  Pale, for her part, shook her head. "There was a man in the trees," she reported. "He'd camouflaged himself among the foliage and was watching us."

  "Camouflage…?" Cal echoed. "You're sure?"

  "Positive. I saw him get up and sprint away just before I started shooting at him."

  "But you didn't hit him?" Valere inquired.

  Pale shook her head. "I took a few shots, but nothing made contact. Even I have my limits when it comes to fast-paced snapshots like that – I didn't really have a chance to dial in on him and start accurately putting rounds on target until he was already among the trees and impossible to see." She looked around, taking in each of her friends' expressions in turn; they all seemed equally pensive and confused. "Does anyone know who he might have been?"

  "He wasn't a goblin?" Cynthia asked, surprised.

  Again, Pale shook her head. "No, he was much too tall to be a goblin."

  "A hobgoblin, maybe?" Cal questioned. At Pale's confused glance, he elaborated, "Taller and more well-built than most other goblins; smarter, too. They're essentially the commanders for the goblins. Think of them as being closer to a trained human fighter than the regular goblins are."

  Pale brought a hand up to her chin in thought as she recalled the image of the man sprinting away. Finally, she shook her head. "No, I'm certain this was an actual person. It was hard to tell, given he was covered in camouflage body paint and loose bits of foliage, but he was definitely a human of some kind."

  "Great…" Nasir breathed. "Yet another unknown to deal with…"

  "It's war, Nasir," Pale reminded him. "There are going to be more unknowns than not, I regret to inform you."

  "I know. Doesn't mean I have to like it."

  "I'm aware." Pale pulled the magazine out of her rifle, counting the rounds left in it. She'd fired six off at their mysterious watcher, which only made the fact that she hadn't managed to get even a single hit on him even more of an embarrassment, at least in her opinion. Still, she swapped her magazine with a fresh one from her plate carrier, stowing the old one back in its place as she did so. Once that was done, she turned to the rest of her group and gave them a nod.

  "We should report back to the Mage Knights," she said. "Even with a suppressor on my rifle, they still might have heard those shots, and if they did, I'd rather cut this particular line of questioning off before it has a chance to spiral out of control."

  The others nodded, and Pale motioned for them to follow her as she began to head back to camp.

  XXX

  "Run that by me again, because I'm not sure I heard you correctly the first time."

  A vein pulsed in Pale's forehead, but she did her best not to let her frustration show as she stared Allie down. Currently, her former squad leader was seated across a table from her, flanked on either side by another Mage Knight; apparently, the others had determined her to be their leader now that Commander Mitchell had shuffled off his mortal coil. Pale wasn't sure as to the levels of seniority among the remaining Mage Knights, but the fact they'd chosen to delegate this particular responsibility to Allie of all people had to mean something important, she supposed.

  Pale shook those thoughts away, then let out a tired sigh. "...We were being watched by someone in the trees," she reported for the second time. "He was camouflaged among the foliage."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Camouflaged how?"

  "Does it really matter? He had body paint on, as well as additional concealment in the form of smeared-on mud, bits of grass and other pieces of scenery."

  "What did he look like?"

  "How should I know? Like I said, he was camouflaged, and I only got a brief glimpse of him before he ran away, during which time I was more focused on attempting to engage him than anything." She shook her head. "I know he was a human, that much is certain.'

  "A human?" Allie echoed. "He wasn't a hobgoblin?"

  "I've never seen a hobgoblin before in my life, but I know a human when I see one, even when they're covered in paint and mud, and that was definitely a human male." Pale crossed her arms. "If you want anything more than that, I won't be able to help you. Like I said, I didn't get that good of a look at him before he ran off."

  Allie brought a hand up to her chin in thought, then shook her head. "What do you know of the Assassins?" she suddenly asked.

  Pale blinked, surprised. "...Is that a descriptive term, or s title? And is it supposed to actually mean anything to me?"

  "That's a no, then." Allie let out a tired sigh, running a hand through her hair as she did so. "To put it simply… the Assassins are more myth than humans. We know they're real, of course, but everything surrounding them is a bit of a mystery."

  "In what way?"

  "In that nobody can tell where the legends end and the truth begins." Allie exhaled. "Legend goes that the Assassins are responsible for the death of the God who was in charge of raising and lowering the sun, thousands of years ago. As a result of this, they were punished by having the innate connection to their magic severed."

  Pale blinked, surprised. "I was specifically told that everyone in this world had a connection to magic through their sjel."

  "And whoever told you that wasn't entirely wrong. The Assassins are a special case – their sjel still exists, and it is what determines their respective Affinities… but the actual source of their magic is deep within the Otrudian Empire – a gift from Otrudias himself, many centuries ago, so old that the records scarcely make mention of it; a way to repay the Assassins for their loyalty and service to him, by partially giving them back that which was taken from them."

  Pale gave Allie a blank stare. Allie, for her part, sighed, then waved her off.

  "It's probably all bullshit," she stated. "I mean, really, they killed a God? Come on. Truth is, whatever's wrong with the Assassins, it's got to be something else more grounded than that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that they're called the Assassins for a reason – they start training to fight for the Otrudian Empire from a young age, which is to say, they start training to kill from the moment they're able to cast magic. Most of them have a body count by the time they hit their teenage years. I don't care who you are, that kind of thing has to blacken your sjel. I wouldn't be surprised if the Gods as a whole decided to curse them and their descendants for it by taking their magic away as a result."

  "And this is all speculation on your part?"

  "What, you think I'm making that shit up?" Allie asked, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, I am, but come on, it's about as convincing as the actual legend is, if not more so." She shook her head. "Look, the point is… the Assassins are obviously very dangerous, and the only thing preventing me from being too worried about them at the moment is that there simply aren't very many of them in the world."

  "How many do they have?" Pale questioned.

  Allie shrugged. "Nobody knows for sure, but last I checked, it was an estimate of a few thousand at most."

  "Truly?"

  "Oh, yes – their entire culture is pretty insular, for a variety of reasons, chief among them being that nobody, not even their allies in the Otrudian Empire, wants to marry one and risk producing a kid with a broken sjel. For another, their preferred line of work, as you can imagine, has a very high chance of death. To put it into perspective – most children in this world who die prematurely do so because of illness or malnutrition. Not the children of the Assassins, though – their number one cause of death is the blade, so to speak."

  Pale blinked in surprise. "How do you know all of this?"

  Allie waved her off. "I may not look like it, but I've been around the block a few times, in my years. I've spent time on the Otrudian border in the past, skirmishing with a few of them, interrogating captured Otrudian soldiers who got a bit too ballsy and decided to stick around after their probing attack failed… the conversations I had with them were enlightening, to say the least."

  "I'm sure," Pale said dryly. She crossed her arms. "You wanted my report, and I gave it. Am I free to go now?'

  Again, Allie waved her off. "Get out of here."

  Pale didn't need to be told twice. She turned and walked away from Allie's table, heading deeper into camp, looking for her friends. She found them all gathered in the center of camp, eating freshly-made stew; from the looks on their faces, it was especially unappetizing today. Idly, Pale did her best not to let her thoughts wander back to her breakfast, and instead sat down next to Kayla, who passed her a bowl of stew.

  "Here," Kayla offered. "Fair warning – it tastes the way Cal's armpit smells."

  Cal glared at her. "Come on, it's not that bad."

  "The stew or your armpit?" Valerie asked.

  "You tell me."

  Pale said nothing as her friends bantered with each other, and instead continued to pick at her bowl of food wordlessly, which didn't go unnoticed by the others. After a moment, Valerie cleared her throat.

  "Pale?" she asked, getting her attention. "Something wrong?"

  "Possibly," Pale confessed. "That man who was watching us… Allie seems to think he was an Assassin."

  Instantly, everyone froze, with Cal and Cynthia's eyes widening in particular. Pale turned towards them, as did the others, but before she could question them, Cal shook his head.

  "Honestly, the two of us probably should have recognized that sooner," he admitted.

  "You know about these so-called Assassins?" Nasir questioned.

  "We know of them," Cynthia replied. "Mainly through stories some of the knights and other nobles in our circle told of them."

  "Allie made it sound like they're to be feared," Pale explained. "Is that correct?"

  "It's not wrong," Cal said to her, apprehension leaking into his voice. "Of course, that begs the question… why would they send Assassins here? There aren't very many of them in the first place, and I'd think they'd have been better placed anywhere aside from here, considering it's the middle of nowhere…"

  Pale shook her head. "Hopefully, we won't find out," she said. "If they're anywhere near as dangerous as you're all making them seem, then it sounds like we should be hoping the one who got away was just a scout more than anything."

  A heavy silence fell over the group. Pale couldn't blame any of them for it.

  Somehow, even she didn't believe any of the words she'd just said.