The crowd outside of Ruina Academy was overwhelming; onlookers and gawkers flocked from the far corners of town in a rash sense of morbid curiosity. People of all shapes and backgrounds congregated together, craning necks and screaming questions to a very short-staffed dreary-eyed detective force and an equally frazzled headmistress. The lights of the city guard’s vehicles and the absurd number of news vans parked at the entrance only heighten the strobing chaos.

To an average person, the madness of the crowd would seem like the last place someone who had committed a very high-profile crime would choose to hide. For Davion Elmdew, however, it served as an ideal vantage point as he watched the old and rusted gears of detective-work turn.

Davion held his face low, a large baseball cap pulled down, helping to hide his more prominent features. When it came to stealth and espionage, he had drawn the short straw on genetics; his large ears, green eyes and pointed nose all choired together to distinguish him. So when he needed to hide from guards, reporters, and detectives, he wore the hat.

From his position in the crowd, Davion could watch the comings and goings of the school; he watched as they carried Seabright’s massive body on a stretcher, the miniature sheet they had placed over him only partially covering his blood-covered corpse. The detective, a short, stocky woman wearing a very unflattering golden chest plate, stepped out with the body, huffing and not looking the least bit happy.

Davion smiled, knowing her reaction meant they were also clueless about where the watch was. But then again, he also wasn’t the least bit closer to finding this stupid watch either.

He was frustrated; after all his efforts, the bodies he had to pile and the blood he had spilled, to be so close to his prize and purpose. And to have it all ripped away with no explanation was agonising; for the hundredth time that night, the memory of losing it looped in his mind, driving him crazy with rage.

He remembered Seabright falling to the ground and seeing the watch grasped tightly in his chubby green fingers. He remembered the blissful, beautiful happiness that flooded his heart like a boy seeing a puppy for the first time.

Then to watch it just vanish.

Poof.

Into smoke and air, like a boy seeing his puppy disappear in front of him.

It was nothing short of a cruel and relentless joke played on him by the universe. Why was this happening to him? Why couldn’t he have this one thing? This one favour from the universe would have granted him such a colossal amount of happiness. The universe obviously doesn’t reward good people anymore.

Well, objectively, Davion couldn’t say he was a good person; He had killed so many people; not to mention the torture, robbery, general mayhem, destruction, and, he supposed, the occasional bout of littering. So yeah, ok, maybe he wasn’t a good person by the universe’s standards; but who was the universe to judge?

Davion’s pity party was interrupted when the academy’s entrance flew open. He watched in sicking horror as a ravenous group of reporters flocked to the guardsmen as they left the building. Some of the guards looked injured; limbs were missing, and faces were bleeding; Davion was reasonably sure one guard would just straight up cark it right on the academy stairs. But out of everyone that walked out, the most shocking was a short, sharply dressed man in a blood-stained brown tweed suit.

His uncle looked injured, but not critically – one eye was swollen shut, and his lip looked like an overinflated balloon. He shuffled with a slight limp and was escorted by two more guards, each keeping a tight grasp on his shoulders.

Jesus, old man, what have you been up to?

He watched as the battered guards loaded his uncle into the white van, the runes on the outside glowing a fluorescent blue as they closed the doors. It lurched forward and began slowly driving off through the academy grounds, occasionally stopping to maneuver the raging crowd.

Davion hastily pushed through the crowd, keeping his head low and focusing on the van through his peripheral vision. It pulled out from the crowd and continued driving, picking up considerable speed once it hit the main street; he followed it, only stopping briefly to steal a particularly slick-looking motorcycle from the parking lot.

He sat on the bike, placing his hands on the bike’s engine. He let his magic flow through him, talking to the bike, powering its runes. He felt it greedily respond to his magic, so he fed it more. Finally, the engine purred to life beneath him; he flicked the kickstand up and flew down the main street.

The wind roared as he picked up speed; it dried his eyes and silenced his ears; his skin numbed as the wind whipped at him. He made a left at the end of the street, the van only barely in sight because he had imbued magic into his vision. He held a distance back where they wouldn’t be suspicious but still close enough that he wouldn’t lose it as it entered a more densely packed street.

The van made a right, then another left, and then another right. It wasn’t going to the station, that was for sure. Instead, Davion guessed they were going somewhere private – somewhere distinctly no one would look.

A devilish smile cut through his lips; this would be fun.

He followed like this for what felt like hours; until the city was a distant speck on the evening’s horizon, and the open road continued into the infinite black hole of the night. He left his lights off to avoid detection on the empty open road; his eyes were better equipped for the dark anyway.

Trees raced by at a dazzling rate; their browned leaves a mere blur as he passed. He felt the blisteringly cold wind bite his face, drying his eyes and freezing his nose; he did not push it away. His magic was made for better things than comfort.

After a few more minutes of mindless driving, the van slowed, pulled into a long unlit driveway, and carefully traversed its way to a farmhouse barely visible at the hill’s peak.

Davion jerked the bike to the side of the open road, cutting his connection to its engine and stashing it in some partially large bushes. He calmed his breathing and watched as the van holding his uncle pulled up to the farmhouse, its lights turning off as it ground to a halt.

Slowly, carefully, Davion climbed the hill. He kept low, sticking to the trees where he could and avoiding open space; he heightened his senses, searching for anyone patrolling the perimeter as he climbed – but he only felt the distinctly non-magical presence of mercenaries on the outside of the house.

This was going to be easy.

He circled the house from the tree line, occasionally creeping closer to get a better view of the defences. There were four mercenaries outside the home, probably a few more inside. He circled again, slowly spiralling closer to the backdoor; he couldn’t afford to be loud; he couldn’t give away too much yet.

A lone orcish man guarded the rear. He was coated head to toe in black Kevlar and carried around what could only be described as a big gun. Yet somehow, this was still the most straightforward way in.

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He crept to the house, coursing magic through his body to quieten his movements. His footsteps were as quiet as snow, his breathing dulled to a faint breeze on the wind, and his figure hypnotically blended into the forest behind him. He moved quickly; by the time the man realised someone was there, Davion had already plunged a knife into his neck.

Leaving the gurgling man at the base of the door, Davion turned the handle, quietly slipping into the darkened farmhouse. The inside was disappointingly barren; its interior was stripped of any furniture, so only a single chair sat in the middle of what could only have been a living room. The windows, some of which were broken, had newspapers obscuring their view.

He quietly moved inside; his blood-soaked knife held ready in front of him as he slipped through open doors; still taking care to mask his presence. He briefly stepped on a creaky floorboard and held his breath, waiting for someone to investigate. Then, when the guards raised no alarm and no one rounded the corners, he pressed on through the house.

None of the rooms looked like they had ever seen life, let alone contained recently contained his uncle. The long hallway was thick with recently disturbed dust as if someone had been dragged. Davion followed the disturbance to the final door at the very end of the hallway.

Morons.

He opened it, creating a barrier around the hinges as he did so to mask the creaking. Dust-filled stairs with similar levels of disturbance led to what could only be the most cliché basement he had ever seen. Streams of light from the distant end of the basement snaked their way to the base of the stairs, dimly illuminating his path. He quietly placed one foot in front of the other, carefully listening for any expectant residents; his knife still held ready.

Before he reached the basement floor, he had briefly considered why he could hear no one within the house. His heightened senses and perception should have allowed him to hear the whispers of a conversation at the very least, but he only found distinct silence. His query was answered when he saw the shimmering wall dividing him from his uncle and the lone city guardsman, who had conveniently turned his back on the approaching intruder.

Davion watched as his uncle grimaced in pain as the guard pressed a knife into his leg, the invisible wall hindering his moans of anguish from travelling beyond it. Davion walked to the wall, ignoring his uncle’s muted cries of pain. He had seen something like this used before; it essentially was just a wall of condensed air, firm but not powerful.

So he pushed his hand through the wall, careful to be as quiet as possible; he needed the element of surprise because as strong as he was, the guards could bite back. The wall was painful to move through, like an electric shock that did not end; it was worse the faster he went, but he couldn’t afford to take his time, so he continued to push through.

His uncle had either not noticed Davion or was an outstanding actor because as Davion drove himself through the barrier, his uncle continued staring at the guard, groaning in dull pain.

As his head passed through the barrier, Davion could finally determine what the guard was asking.

“I don’t want to do this, Mr Elmdew”, Davion watched as the guard twisted the knife deeper into his uncle’s leg, “So just tell me where your nephew and the watch are, and I’ll make it all stop.”

“Syril?” Davion thought as he finally pushed his whole body through the wall.

“Where is he? Where is the watch Mr Elmdew?” another twist of the knife, “Come on, just tell me.”

His uncle looked up at his torturer, tears welling in his eyes as pain erupted through his body. He deliberately held the guard’s eyes, watching as Davion inched behind him through his peripheral vision.

“When will you just shut up?” his uncle groaned, before spitting into the guard’s face, “also, you are in desperate need of a breath mint.”

Davion seized the opportunity, plunging the knife deep into the back of the guard’s neck as he tackled him to the floor. The guard didn’t have a chance to respond before the pool of blood began to form under his body. He let out a slight gurgle and went limp underneath Davion’s grip.

Davion got up, dusting off his trousers and then using said trousers to wipe the blood from his hands. He walked toward the chair, pulling the knife from his uncle’s leg and using it to cut the ropes binding him.

“Hey there, pops.” Davion grinned at his uncle, who was holding his now knifeless leg in a look of wary pain, “fancy seeing you here.”

“Yeah, fancy that,” his uncle mumbled, closing his eyes and blocking the pain, “you’re getting sloppy; I felt you following us from back at the school.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Rescuing you really was nothing,” Davion muttered sarcastically, rolling his eyes, “it’s not like I killed two people to save you or anything.”

The guard groaned on the floor.

“I don’t think he’s dead”, his uncle muttered, fixing his cufflinks and hobbling out of the chair.

“You don’t say,” Davion responded, walking over to the body lying in the still growing pool of blood, “He should be dead. So why is he not dead?”

His uncle grabbed his jacket from the floor, scoffing at the blood stains scattered onto it, “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t know how to put a knife in someone?”

“Uncle, I am perfectly capable of putting a knife into someone’s neck,” he kneeled over the guard, studying the runes littered across his body, “by the way, salt and cold water will get the blood out nicely.”

The guard’s eyes opened, his hand flying out faster than Davion could react as he grasped Davion’s leg. Suddenly the world was turned upside down as the guard pulled his legs from under him. Blinking through the confusion, Davion looked around the spinning room, which was awash in a strobing blue light as the guard’s runes pulsated. He rolled off his back, using the momentum to propel himself away from the guard.

“So you guys are hard to kill,” Davion stood up, staring carefully at the guard, who withdrew the knife from his neck with a slight pop.

“We try to be.”

The guard ran at Davion, the knife from his neck firmly grasped in his hand. Davion pivoted around him, narrowly missing the blade as it sliced through the spot he had just been.

“That’s my knife,” Davion said, aghast.

“You stabbed me with it,” the guard smiled, slicing through the air with little effort. On occasion, the blade met Davion and left a deep cut. Each incision was like surgery; it hurt like hell without anaesthetic.

Davion clocked the knife he had dropped on the floor. He dived and rolled to it, grabbing the knife on the roll and springing to his feet before immediately pivoting away from the guard’s blade.

Honestly, Davion impressed himself.

“Hey, that’s my knife.” The guard said as he spun and sliced through the spot Davion had just been.

“You stabbed my uncle with it.”

Davion now met each of the guard’s attacks with one of his own; occasionally, their steel would clash, and sparks would fly. He felt joy with each cut through the air. Despite either of their impending deaths, he was having a great time.

“So, what’s your name?” Davion asked as he stabbed at the air, twirling around to sweep his feet, “you know, since we’re being intimate and all.”

“It’s Loch.” He replied, jumping the sweep and responding with a high kick to the face that connected, “what yours?”

“Davion.” He skipped back, rubbing his face and spitting out some blood, “Do you come here often, Loch?”

“Only when I have to, you know how work is.” Loch ran at him again, throwing an elbow with his left arm and immediately following by stabbing with his right.

“Yeah, I get that” Davion grabbed Loch’s knife hand and tried to twist the knife away; when Loch held firm to the blade, Davion instead elbowed him in the head before pushing away from him, “what’s say we get a drink after this?”

“Are you hitting on me?” Loch stopped dead in his tracks, the blood dripping from his face pooling on the floor below him. He was staring at Davion, wide-eyed and mouth agape. Davion, in turn, blew a kiss and pounced on Loch, using his embarrassment against him.

“Do you want me to be?” Davion asked through cuts and blows, the embarrassed guard now responding in kind.

Loch responded by hurling the knife at Davion, who narrowly ducked its path as it pierced through the air above him. A little offended, Davion sprung up, a quip already forming on his tongue – but he could only watch as Loch extended his now bright red hand, and a truck-like force collided with him.

Davion flew back, the air separating from his lungs, crashing into the basement wall with a sickening crunch. If he hadn’t imbued magic into his body before this, he doubted he would have lived through it. As it stood, though, Davion was pretty hurt.

“Ow.” He stood up, his legs slightly weak from the impact, and he spat out a tooth, some blood and some rouge concrete. He looked mystified at Loch, who graciously allowed him to at least stand-up.

“Sorry, I really try not to mix work and pleasure.” Loch slowly started walking towards him, twirling the bloody knife in his hand like a horrific circus act.

“Bummer…” Davion was having difficulty catching his breath; it had been a long time since he’d fought this, “thought we had a connection.”

“It’s nothing personal, I promise,” Loch said sadly, walking closer to Davion.

“Yeah, but this is.”

And he could only grin as the magic he had been pooling into his hand formed a sphere of white-hot energy; Loch’s eyes widened in realisation and horror as Davion hurled the sphere into him. It burst into a deafening wall of force and launched him across the room; he collided with the basement wall with such power that it rumbled the foundations of the building. The air where Loch had just been was now popping and simmering.

Davion looked on in astonishment at his power.

“Do you think he’s dead?”