“You can use the shield talisman as much as you want, but do not under any circumstances use the fireball one. The last thing we need is to trap ourselves in here by starting a fire.” Pius whispered as he slowly moved over towards Kelile who had a confused expression on his face.

“Start a fire? How? It shoots a magic fireball, not a normal fireball. That can’t spread to other things.” Kelile almost looked insulted as he clenched the thin stone shaft in his hand.

“Well clearly you also know very little about magic in addition to your knowledge of the criminal underworld. The only difference between magic and normal fire is the source, they can both spread across flammable surfaces and burn things. If they didn’t then it wouldn’t be all that useful now would it?” Pius was about ready to punch Kelile in the face as he gave a very simple explanation of how magic fire worked. Aside from the swamp weed he has been nothing but a liability so far.

“Well how was I supposed to know that! It's not like I went to a fancy school like you did as a child!”

“I had to learn this without school you moron, do they not have libraries on Pyrosa for the public to access!?”

“Who in their right mind would just allow commoners to freely read books!”

As Pius and Kelile argued while they hid behind the table Arthur was trying to find a way to remove the rather large and thick table as an obstacle and eliminate the remaining gang leaders along with their second in commands. He could always go with the standard continuous bombardment of earth projectiles, but that would eat up his mana reserves and leave him vulnerable.

He could also start using fire magic to try and burn the table and force them out from their hiding spot, but the fire could easily spread and cause a lot of damage to the tavern, and the last thing Arthur was trying to do was destroy the tavern. The bartender/owner seemed like a nice enough person, he just had a terrible clientele.

Neither hydromancy or aeromancy gave Arthur any more avenues of attack, that left him with just geomancy and pyromancy to try and force his enemies to move. Of course Arthur kept his mage staff out just in case, but he would like to resolve the situation without using it at all as it could possibly hold him back if he relies upon it too much.

With a sigh of defeat Arthur readied himself and casted the Tri Fire Bolts spell and conjured up three small bolts of fire that hovered around just waiting to be used. He took a small peek from around the corner and once he was certain that no one was watching him he flicked his wrist and propelled the three bolts towards the table. He specifically aimed towards the top edge of the table with one bolt for the center and both sides each. The idea was that the three bolts would slowly smolder until it would start to burn.

But the remaining five gang members quickly figured out what just hit the table and attempted to find a way to put them out. One of the less important members even tried to grab and remove it that way, but when his hand touched the burning bolt he immediately screamed out in pain as his hand burned. To make things worse Arthur capitalized on the opportunity and launched a slightly larger earth bolt that was around the size of an arrow. This earth arrow pierced through his hand and into the table thus preventing him from removing his hand.

As this situation was unfolding Eveline was racking her mind for who this mysterious mage might be and why they might be attacking them. For starters the most likely reason for the attack is an assassination, obviously they were not the only gang that survived the purge but clearly they must have been stepping on someone's toes to hire a mage to kill them. The next important detail she noticed was that most of the spells they had employed thus far were geomancy spells, which further narrowed down the list of possible mages within the underworld that she knew of.

‘If we knew the gender of our assassin I could further shorten that list and actually make an educated guess and if we are lucky negotiate our way out of this. But we need to get them to talk first, since Kelile is most likely the one who angered our rivals he should be the one to do. And besides he is on the end of the table, it will be a lot less work to move around behind here without moving over a dead body.’

Eveline slowly began to crawl behind the table towards Kelile and his end of the table to speak with him and tell him about her plan and why this was most likely his fault. “Are you insane!? If you are correct about this being an assassination attempt then why would they be willing to listen to me especially if one of those losers was a part of some larger gang?” Kelile was not exactly happy with Eveline’s plan and suspicion that he was the cause of this situation.

“Because even if they are hostile to you after you speak you have a talisman that can protect you unlike the rest of us. That might end up being the only thing that saves your life in this situation.” ‘And even if he does try to kill you there is a good chance he will say something beforehand, should you die we can just appropriate your funds and build something better.’

“Fine-” Kelile practically growled. “-but I expect you to find something about our assassin.” Kelile took a deep breath and readied himself to bring the attention of the mage assassin as Eveline returned to her original position.

“To whoever is currently attacking us, we are willing to negotiate!” Kelile shouted and he quickly stood up with his hands raised high, the shield talisman within the firm grip of his left hand.

For a moment Arthur stood behind cover deciding on what he should do. He could consider negotiating with them, he might even get something nice out of it. But what they said about killing an alchemist was very suspicious, Arthur would love to ask questions regarding that but that would be very suspicious and could give away his identity. Though speaking was not out of the question as to his knowledge none of them were familiar with his voice.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Is that so? What might you be willing to offer me to go our separate ways and forget about this whole… situation?” Arthur attempted to sound like a sort of assassin that does illegal things for fun over money but still likes to be paid at the end of the day.

“Well… We have a large amount of money that we are willing to give you.” Kelile said as he thought through all the possible things he could offer to this mage to make him leave.

“Interesting… Anything else you want to share with me before you hear my final answer.” Kelile gritted his teeth at the response he received. He was making it evident that he wanted more than the money they just carry around, he wanted a definitive number and a few other things to go along with it.

“I have 100 gold coins in a secure location that I am willing to hand over to you on the condition of leaving the remainder of us alive.” Kelile hoped that this assassin would take that, very few people would offer up more than one hundred gold coins for an assassination of such a small group.

Meanwhile Eveline was racking her brain trying to think of who the assassin might be. ‘There are two types of assassins that talk to their targets, the ones that can be bribed and the ones that like to watch their targets squirm before landing the killing blow.’ Of all the geomancer assassins that she knew of, this one did not fit any singular one. There was a large amount of overlap, but no definitive answer.

‘All I can do in this situation is hope he isn't one of the ones that I have so little data on that I couldn’t even recognize him. A few like The Butcher and Dagoth are only known for how they leave their victims after the fact, not so much information on how they interact with them while they are alive.’ Eveline did her best to keep calm with these thoughts within her mind as she told herself it wasn’t the case, but something told her deep down that she should be worrying.

Pius on the other hand was looking at the small dagger in his hand that he always carried with him. As a young boy he received a bit of training on how to use it in a defensive manner, although he hadn’t used it for a long time he still recalled the basics even after all this time. The only worry in his mind was if he would need to use it to get out of this situation. Kelile was standing up as he negotiated with the assassin and Eveline was sitting at the opposite end biting her nails as her best thieves tried to use the reflection on their daggers to peek around the table to get a look at their assailant.

‘Things can only get better from here… Right?’

“We- I have a talisman that you might find valuable. It casts the fireball spell when it is used and I have only used it once, so you can still find a lot of use from it.” Kelile reached for his fireball talisman and raised it above his head so Arthur could see it.

As this was happening one of Eveline’s thieves that she brought with her decided upon seeing no one at the doorway watching that she would try and move closer. She slowly slipped off to the far side of the room she and her boss were initially hiding and pressed her back against the wall. Because it was a secret meeting the room had its singular window closed and blocked preventing any sunlight from entering the room, this resulted in the use of candles to light the room cast were not exactly the most efficient. It left deep shadows along the walls that the thief used to hide herself.

“An interesting offer, but I would like to hear more about that alchemist that you blew up. It sounded quite interesting how you killed him, such a weapon even if experimental sounds very dangerous.” Arthur said as he noticed a small glint from metal reflecting light, someone was hiding along the shadows with a knife or sword drawn. In response Arthur readied himself to cast Tri Earth Bolts to disable this threat.

“Um, well this alchemist we contacted with the intent to do business with decided to reject our offer after hearing far too much about what we planned to do. He was a liability so I spoke with one of my old contacts and acquired an experimental alchemical creation called a demon powder orb. We triggered it with some magic thing from a distance once the alchemist was in his work station, the city guard eventually found out he had a former apprentice that was unhappy with him and started to investigate him leaving us in the clear.” Keline also noticed the young thief hiding within the shadows and knew he needed to stall for more time so she could get closer.

“If you want I can also introduce you to him. He might be willing to sell you some for your… job if you have the money to pay for them.” Kelile knew that would never happen, but he needed to keep the assassin from noticing his ally.

Suddenly three earth bolts shot out from the doorway, Kelile instinctively activated his shield talisman and ducked behind the table for cover. But that was unnecessary as he was not the target of that attack, it was the thief who thought she could sneak up and. She was hit in the right leg, the stomach, and her left eye, but surprisingly that didn’t kill her. Luckily or unluckily the earth bolt only managed to pierce around halfway through her eye, so instead of dying she was left in excruciating pain. She fell to the floor as she screamed out and quickly pulled the earth bolts out of pure instinct, which led to her wounds starting to bleed.

Arthur let out a sigh, nearly killing that woman felt good to him. It was like a massive weight had been lifted off of his shoulder that he didn’t even notice was there until now. ‘They must have been the one to kill Georgius. The stories of them both line up far too much to be just a coincidence, and now I have an opportunity to extract my revenge. No mercy.’

Arthur stepped out into the doorway with his mage staff at the ready, he quickly casted the force armor on himself in preparation for what he would do next. With a small flick of his wrist his mage staff fired a force bolt at the direct middle of the overturned table and with a loud crack it split in half and was pushed back.

The unlucky man who was hiding right where that force bolt hit flew back and hit his head on the floor with a loud thump. The other gang leaders and their second in commands were also impacted by this as well, some were forced into the open from the impact and were swiftly met with a force bolt to the face that either killed them from the blunt force or knocked them out.

Kelile was lucky because his shield talisman managed to hold after the first second and even third force bolts while he scrambled to his feet. Since force magic wasn’t working Arthur moved onto pyromancy and fired several bolts of fire at him to test and see what would happen. Just like the force bolts, the fire bolts did nothing to the shield.

By the time Arthur was done casting Kelile was up on his feet and wielding a short sword in his right hand as he held the talisman with his left. “You can’t kill me you bastard!”