A light rain began to fall over the forest surrounding Shinvers. With it, the smell of the earth and air changed, acting as a midnight storm’s polite announcement. It would be a spring rain, normally praised by the Shinveners, as it saved trips to the well with watering cans and lacked the threatening portents of Autumn floods. That night however, was not spent by the fire, sipping warm drinks and sleepily listening to the rain; it was spent with double-checked locks, children locked away in basements, with fathers and mothers holding daggers and swords all night. The superstitious and the religious made their prayers, and the secular even lacked faith in their own blades, sharpening them to razor edges. Three men were dead, one beheaded, and the culprit escaped.

  As the sun began to set, and the storm prepared to let itself in, Nil sat stone-still nestled inside the log. She despised having to rely on luck or fortune, hated hoping that the guards would not have trained dogs to track her down, and detested the feeling of despair when her mind would turn to how unlikely all this was. What if there happens to be a hunter hurrying back to the town for shelter from the storm, what if he is approached by the Six-Fingers and asked if they might use his skills to find a certain Gnome. What she hated most of all was that the whole situation was brought about by some idiot in an alley, and that this particular idiot was especially violent. In any case, Nil had to find a better place to take cover from the rain.

  She slowly exited the log, and attached the small hooks of her bag to the rings on her leather armor to ensure that, even if the strap broke, it would still cling to her as tight as she clung to it. Lightning struck in the imperceptible distance, creating a low, long rumble that crept along the tree branches. This did not startle Nil. Something closer did. In the middle of the thunder’s note, she heard the sounds of a stumble and fall. It was faint, and the person did not shout or swear as they fell, but the distinct clatter of metal falling to the ground meant that it had to be some pursuer. Since it lacked the telltale rattle of a guardsman’s armor, and the footsteps that followed it had the distinct difficulty that city-raised people have in navigating nature, she was sure it was some Six-Finger crook. How someone who could hardly place one foot in front of the other without tripping over a root or hole managed to track Nil was a complete mystery to her, but one that would have to be pondered later. It was time to move or die.

  Nil was beyond capable of navigating the forest swiftly and quietly. She did not worry about the many vials and instruments in her bag making a racket as she broke into a sprint over the forest floor, as they were all well packed with cotton and rags for this very reason. Despite this, her pursuer still doggedly followed. This pursuit was, however, not as elegant as Nil’s flight. Whereas her foot falls were like the gentle rain, her adversary’s were like buckets cast down stairs. This would not have been an issue normally, where the loudness would make it easier to avoid, but somehow this graceless sprint was catching up to Nil.

  Feeling that she had no other choice, as she thought the warm sensation on the back of her neck was her chaser’s breath, Nil launched herself into the air, grabbed onto a branch, and hoisted herself up a sturdy tree. She had intentionally run in a circle after spotting this natural tower, so that she could make a stand. She pulled a small hand crossbow from her bag, and loaded it with a steel dart laced with a strong sleeping agent. Bracing the crossbow against the tree, she pulled its two strings back to their locked position, making a sharp click, and prepared to fire. However, the other pair of footsteps had suddenly stopped outside of view, leaving her in terrible suspense.

  Nil tried to focus on the situation at hand, but she could not help herself from being amazed at the sudden ability for her bullheaded chaser to suddenly become quiet and patient. As her eyes scanned all around and her arrow-tipped ears trembled at every sound, she began to further press herself against the tree, hoping it would provide cover from an unseen arrow.

  Suddenly, a loud sigh was exhaled, and loud breathing could be heard. Nil was surprised that they would so clearly give away their position, and trained her crossbow towards a large tree about five meters from her arboreal bastion. Slowly, two gauntleted hands emerged from behind the cover, followed by the arms attaching them to the lagging body. Nil’s first thoughts were that this was an obvious trick, and instead of focusing her attention on the supposedly surrendering figure, was alert for another attacker or approaching force. She was prepared to fire her bolt into the chest of the person emerging from behind the tree.

  “Dear Sir, I entreat you to listen to me. I mean you no harm.” The voice was male, and very raspy from over exertion and lack of use. Nil hesitated firing at the figure when she recognized it as the vagrant that started this trouble for her. He stopped approaching when he had fully entered Nil’s line of sight, so that she might evaluate him as a threat or not. The rags had been mostly discarded or, more likely, torn off of his body. The wrappings about his elbows and knees still defiantly remained tied to the skinny body. He was very tall, easily reaching the height where doors for squat people become more of a hazard than an entryway. His skin was a rich brown, though his gauntness pushed his complexion into the ghostly. Exposed from its prison of wrappings was a terribly maintained doublet. Its color had faded and the padding had flattened. It was wet from sweat, but would have looked just as wet without the day’s excitement due to its obvious stains. His pants were in the same sad state, only the black fabric managed to hide more than its upstairs neighbor.

  Shockingly, his shoes had a slight scent of the upper class about them, though they were as battered as the body they were attached to. They were made with black leather, with a single buckle across the top, with sharp toes. Even from up in the tree Nil could tell that those shoes were tailored for ballrooms and fine parlors, not chases through the wilderness. Similarly, his hands were armored, encased by two large gauntlets that went half way up his forearm. While they desperately needed polishing, it was clear that they were a masterwork. Most gauntlets Nil had seen were bulky, only allowing enough articulation to grip the straight handle of a blade or mace. She saw how the man’s slender fingers bent backwards, a complete contrast to the bear paw articulation she was familiar with. In fact, it would not have surprised her if the armor was more flexible than her leather gloves, which were tightening around on the crossbow.

  The man’s face was difficult to fully discern in the darkening forest, for though the rain was only droplets, the clouds were accumulating into a fierce mass. His head was large and squared, but looked thin like the rest of him. On top of it sat an unruly mop of dark hair tumbling down here and there. His face was like his gauntlets, in that it was stunning. Not so much that it was beautiful, but that it seemed to have been created for him, as if a portrait artist was brought in when he was born to proportion his features. A kind, longing, and somewhat pitiful face was chiseled into his face. Though what stood out most were his eyes. He was looking up, directly at Nil, despite her never giving away her position. His pupils and iris were heavily clouded, and Nil could only assume he was completely blind.

  The man lowered himself onto one knee slowly. When he found his balance, he glacially removed a straight sword from his belt. The greatsword he had used earlier was absent. However, Nil did not remember him having such a blade on him in Shinvers, so he must have nicked it during his escape. After fully unsheathing the blade, he aimed the point of the sword at himself and let it rest in the middle of his collar bone on his jugular notch. He tilted his head back, which only further highlighted the direction of force required to end his life.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the crossbow bolt piercing a few centimeters under his left collarbone, close to the shoulder. He dropped his sword, fell to his side, and gripped the bolt protruding from his chest. It was not deep in his chest, but it definitely had pierced the skin. His eye brows dropped, his eyes narrowed, and his lips shrunk, as if someone had told him a riddle. He wobbled in place, then, in a matter of seconds, lost consciousness.

  Nil waited a few extra moments atop the tree, listening attentively for any reaction. To her surprise, it appeared that the stranger was truly alone. She climbed down from her branch, and casually approached the sleeping lump on the forest floor. After crouching down next to him, she took out a decrepit looking journal from her bag, and tucked back the many notes and pages slipping from their bindings, opened to a page somewhere in the middle, and took out a pencil. After estimating his body weight, she made a few notes concerning the sleep venom that had tipped the crossbow bolt. She was satisfied with the effect, but not with the efficiency. Some figures would have to be tweaked to get the truly desired result, using as little of the rare ingredients as possible. Here, the subject was clearly already half unconscious by the time they physically reacted to the impact. An amateur would think that is good, and Nil had to admit it was allowable in this circumstance. However, had there been accomplices, not just one lone madman, the suddenness of the whole event might lead them to think she used a lethal compound, prompting approximately equal violence upon the deliverer. Ideally, the dart would induce a state of extreme drowsiness, on the edge of unconsciousness, where the body would be heavy and the mind fuddled. Enough function to sit up slightly, instead of laying like a sack of rocks at the bottom of a river.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  This particular sack of rocks was rather bony, and Nil made sure to roll him over onto his side to prevent the unlikely event he would drown in his own spit. She put away the journal, and took out a few medical tools and bandages. Carefully, she extracted the bolt and ensured that the carefully designed tip was not too damaged from the penetration. She returned it to its spot in her bag, next to its siblings still filled with various alchemical solutions. It was made to just break the skin of soft tissue, and deliver its contents into the blood of the subject. If there was a need, she had a number of similar darts, only with stronger and longer points to penetrate through the slits of armored foes. Absent-mindedly, she went about cleaning, disinfecting, and dressing the wound she had made.

  This was not particularly done out of a care for him, more a matter of practicality. It was a shallow wound, but dogs would pick up the blood smell from far away and investigate. Though the thought did not form in her consciousness, she was extremely hesitant to be directly responsible for anyone's death. The whole situation was framed in a scientific, distant way, so that if the unfortunate happened - well, there was some groundwork to internally deny murder. Her confidence in her sleeping agent was resolute, it was not potent enough to kill someone of his weight, but an infection could.

  Satisfied with how she treated the wound, she moved on to the gauntlets, and tried to remove them. “For all he’s brought on my head, I figure I get something back,” she thought. Even if armorers thought they were stolen, there was only a choice number of fools who would turn down such masterpieces of smithing. Plus, in trying times like these, many stores kept special twilight hours for these kinds of pieces. After all, blood and guilt can be reforged in a hot enough fire.

  The tops of the hands were wonderfully smooth, despite being segmented in thousands of ways, allowing an array of movement that made having dry skin feel more unnatural. A complex design of spirals and miniscule hooks covered the palm and underside of the fingers. She ran her own fingers over them, and found it rough and smooth in a thousand different ways. Slightly different strokes could tear skin or caress it, like a creek's stream.

  These gauntlets were not simply put on like gloves. They were more like puzzles carpenters make for children, with interlocking parts designed to confuse. Trying to pull them off directly would sooner separate his arm from the shoulder than the metal from the hand. Around the wrist, it was so thin that it was hard to discern if there was even space between the flesh and the steel, with the thinnest of Nil’s blades sooner cutting skin than finding the space between.

  Frustrated, Nil gave up. She searched his person for any valuables, but only found his musky smell from clearly not having bathed in some time. After she gathered up her things, she left him lying on his side. She looked back, though, and stopped a moment to watch his small breaths. Nil did not understand the pose he had made with the sword at his throat. What confused her more was how a blind man was able to perfectly track her through the forest. Judging from the clumsy way he moved about before being sedated, there was no way he was an outdoorsman. Yet here he was.

  The sun was setting, and the darkness that would soon smother the forest was creeping in through long shadows. Despite all their threatening and gathering, the rain clouds rolled on. Nil left the vagrant there.

  Spring had started to return to the area, but most of the trees were still hesitating before spreading their green fingers. Ice still clung stubbornly to the tips of ferns and grass, fighting off the morning’s sun until forced to melt. If someone were to lay unconscious from a sleep dart through a night like that, it would be unpleasant - but not deadly. Nil, however, would not stomach such a thing for herself. Despite having both thorough knowledge and experience with sleeping outdoors safely, Nil would never find it comfortable. Nil, in truth, detested sleeping outside. If the very notion had a face to spit in, it would find itself covered in a far worse alchemical concoction.

  Shinveners, fortunately, were rather avid hunters in the summer season. During the warmest part of the year, a number of animals make their way into the woods, namely horned boar. These large beasts from end to end are as big as a full grown man, and on their legs stand at about chest height. Atop their head points two spiraled horns that conically point away from each other. The age of a horned boar can be discerned from the points of these spirals, as they begin to grow when the animal is about 3 months old, erupt to a rather large size at about 6 months, and then cease all growth. The older the boar, the more dull and cracked these horns become. It is not unusual to find the remains of a boar dead from old age with two nubs atop of their skull, like bulging ivory eyebrows. Before we cheer the bravery of the townsfolk for hunting such beasts, it is best to listen to the people themselves about the whole ordeal. Where in some places the boar hunt is an adventurous undertaking by young men with the real threat of being gored, Shiveners casually refer to the task as “going for a cutting.” And, really, that is about all there is to it. The horned boar is a large, but terribly dull animal. They hibernate from the beginning of autumn, and continue until late spring. The region's predators just wait until they simply do not wake up one year to chew on them, with some being simply too proud to go after such prey. For the Shinveners, they simply walk close to one, crouch down with a long, sickle like knife, and slit the horned boars’ throats. Properly done, it avoids all nerves in the surrounding tissue, essentially bleeding the animal out without it being aware of the danger.

  Some hundred years ago, when the town’s foundations were being laid out, there was a panic about over-hunting. A favorite summer activity quickly became heavily regulated, with an auction and raffle being held every year to determine who would have the privilege to hunt these animals every year. Someone with a sufficient interest in the history of wardenship could dive into the myriad scandals, corruption charges, and alterations on game law in Shinvers, but for us, the number of hunters allowed to kill these animals every summer went from about five thousand at the height of the sport and to about a hundred during around the time of a certain public beheading. These other hunters were resigned to hunting smaller, blander game like deer and birds.

  For Nil, this story mattered less in the interest of local history, more in the fact that hunting cottages, largely unused for most of the year, were scattered about the area. She followed her feet for a while, paying close attention to the slight changes from one piece of the forest to another, until she noticed the signs of a coming clearing, and when following them proved fruitful, she circled it widely.

  Facing away from the small patch, tucked between two large trees some ten meters away from the clearing, was a tiny cabin. It was old, with the chimney partially collapsed and the roof only waiting for one decent sized branch to shake loose and cave it in. It was windowless, and the chinking used to keep the wind out from between the logs had been badly worn, to the point that Nil was able to see straight through the structure at one point. A palace, thought Nil, compared to sleeping exposed to the dirt and stars.

  The door was locked, but it was clear that it was designed only to keep the wind from blowing open the door during the owner's absence. This was the normal fashion of the older hunting cabins in the area, with the light security acting as a kind of invitation for lost hunters or moonlight lovers to have a little sanctuary. Nil stuck a blade into the lock, and turned it over.

  Inside was as humble as could be. Straw was sparingly covering the packed dirt floor, which set her expectations. It was furnished with a narrow bed without legs, a pile of scrap wood that had the hauntings of a chair, and a small, dirty fireplace. Nil slid inside without opening the door all the way, and closed it softly. The only metal she could see was the bar laying on the ground by the door, as if it was carelessly lifted, and listlessly watched as it fell back down.

  Crudely formed, crudely made, and crudely heavy, Nil could not lift the pole off the ground entirely. The slot for the crossbar was in the middle of the door frame, so she let the one end stay on the ground, propped the other end into the first slot, and slid it into place, with a fair amount of difficulty. While frustrated with the difficulty she had in locking the door, it comforted her more than the simple door lock, which she also double checked to make sure it was latched.

  To avoid stumbling blindly in the dark, Nil reached into her bag, pulled out a green flask, and shook it vigorously. After a few moments, it started glowing slightly, and Nil sat it down next to the fireplace. Nil took some of the wooden pieces, then gathered some straw from the floor, and started a small fire.

  Doubly deceitful, the rain and thunder had returned stronger than before, now bringing a cold wind alongside it. Wind blew through the tiny accidental windows and across the bed, so Nil tugged it over to the opposite corner. After Nil’s interior design was set, she noticed a hole that the bed had been covering. A large piece of canvas was folded like a bun and tied with a string. Surprisingly, it was not rotted and there were no clear signs of insects or rodents chewings and leavings. The string broke when Nil undid it, and the unfurled material revealed a few quilts and a small cooking pot, which had rusted, creating a hole in the bottom.

  Despite their roughness, Nil pulled all the quilts over to the bed, put out the fire, and having warmed up her hands enough, and fearing that the embers would jump onto any of the old wood or straw, put it out.

  The leather armor wrapping her body stayed on as she unfastened her satchel from her side. The blankets formed a small hill on the bed, with Nil curling into a small, warm ball underneath, hugging her bag tightly to her chest. Exhaustion had crept in through places even the wind could not pass, and swiftly brought sleep to Nil. Just before, she listened to the rain change from drizzle to pour, and imagined the vagrant in the woods, wet, with hands shooting out a brilliant light that the metallic bolts in the sky reflected. After that, she noticed her cold feet.