The magical city of Aza sat amidst the land as both a beacon of light and an icon of darkness. Cruel, jagged spikes sat atop stone turrets. Gothic architecture lined every part of Aza’s streets. Pedestrians of all kinds walked them with purpose. People in magus robes, beggars in torn clothes, thugs in light metal armor, and mages wearing immaculate gear adorned with magic jewels all walked adamantly along the cobblestone. An aura of mystique and intrigue crept all throughout the city, like a thick fog that enveloped its residents and the place as a whole. Lights seeped through the stained glass that accompanied most of the structures, giving the cool gray avenues a slight tinge of scarlet.
A watchful eye from far away set its sights on a bulky man wearing a sleek hat. The man had a permanent scowl on his face as he looked to his left. Walking down the street, he eyed the various signs for establishments until he found the one he was searching for. With a slight hesitation, he opened the dark oak door and walked inside.
A small bell rang at the door to let the bartender know that a new customer had walked in. “Hey, Breven. What can I get you?“
“The usual,“ he replied, setting his sights on an armor-clad man sitting at the bar. Breven sat down next to the man. He seemed to be passed out with his head resting on the bar and an empty bottle still in his hand. His face featured a short, patchy beard and he wore a set of furred armor, one a soldier might wear in the northern lands.
“I know you’re awake, and I know you ain’t drunk. I’d thought you’d wanna settle this like a real man, a real warrior, but I guess I forgot that you’re neither of those things no more.“ Breven gave a menacing chuckle, eyeing the man like a hawk.
Suddenly, the man spoke up. “You really wanna do this? I thought you’d learned your lesson a week ago. Or maybe I’m thinking too highly of a second-rate Rumhound thug.“
Breven scoffed and got up from his seat. A small glimmer of fear struck his heart, but his arrogance quickly smothered it. “Fact is, Graves wants you taken in. He’d rather have you alive, but he made it very damn clear that dead would be just fine too.“
The warrior sighed and got up from the bar. He broke the bottle he was holding in his iron grip and tossed the makeshift weapon at Breven. “How about a drink?“ he said with a mischievous smirk.
“Thank you kindly. I’ll use it to bash yer face in.“ Breven swung the shattered end of the bottle at the warrior, but the man dashed away at the last second. “What the-“
Before Breven could finish his thought, the man was already crouched to his left with one hand pointed at Breven with an open palm. A wispy chime was intoned, and archaic symbols appeared in bands around the man’s arm in glowing azure script. He rotated his hand slightly, and quicker than the melting of a snowflake, a great flurry of frost jettisoned from his palm. It instantly covered Breven’s entire left side of his body in a chunk of ice. Rearing his right leg, Grovalt turned and roundhouse kicked the chunk, shattering it and the broken bottle into a million pieces. Breven fell to the ground and a pool of blood began forming on the oaken floor.
“What the hell…? You never used magic before! Where the hell’d you learn that, Grovalt!?“ Breven turned to look up at the strong, pale warrior with his face full of shards of glass and ice.
Grovalt just kept looking down at Breven with a cold stare. After a second, he gripped his blade and unsheathed it. The greatsword was true in name; it was twice as long as a common sword, and was made of a type of steel found only in the north. Its black metal barely reflected any light in the dim bar.
“Wait wait wait! I wasn’t really gonna kill ya, I swear man! Graves really did want you alive. Why would he want you dead? You were his right hand man! C’mon, please? Don’t kill me.“ Breven peered up at Grovalt, eyeing his monstrous sword with a face of pure terror.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find him myself and we’ll have a little chat. Man to man.“ Grovalt raised the sword above his head as Breven’s fear took hold of him. He was too scared to move. He was petrified. What he felt the next moment was not the pain of a blade, but the pain of blunt force trauma. Grovalt had hit the side of his head with the hilt of his greatsword, knocking him unconscious.
“Hey, Grovalt. Ya gonna pay for that bottle? That was one of my best whiskeys, asshole.“ Grovalt turned to see the bartender’s extremely annoyed face, his mustache curling up in a way that embodied disappointment.
“Sorry, pal.“ Grovalt left him a handful of coins, sheathed his blade, and left the bar in a hurry. He made his way through the lower districts until he found a large deserted building. It was once used by a sect of the Aza Academy, now home to a gang of street thugs known by many as the Rumhounds.
The Rumhounds stole booze and other valuables from establishments in the city, but specialized in street robbery. As much as they wanted the people of Aza to fear them, they weren’t nearly as intelligent and threatening as the Ravens.
As he approached the entrance, Grovalt had a strange feeling, as if someone was watching him from the shadows. He decided to shake it off for the meantime, for he had no time to dawdle. Graves had to be waiting for him.
The door to the building’s innards opened with an echoing creak. Cobwebs tore apart in the way of Grovalt’s intrusion. He could hear the faint sound of laughter from the floors above. The inside was a mixture of classrooms and libraries. Books lined nearly every wall. Their titles ranged from Anima: The History of Magecraft to The Power of Channeling. Grovalt’s eyes moved from the bookcases to the desks in the middle of the room. They were chaotically spread out, as if a rampaging bull had clobbered into them as it charged throughout the building. He then noticed a few stacks of bottled liquor and unsharpened weapons strewn about. The sight of them reassured him that this was the right place. They were still here, after all.
Grovalt made his way up the stairs, now crouching to avoid alerting his cantankerous foes. He had snuck up about three stories when he could finally hear what they were discussing.
“...and right as we were about to rob this lady, a mage sees us. I’m thinking, ‘this is it, we’re doomed.’ But he looked ‘round, then knocked her out with one punch. He told us to keep it quiet, and gave us half of her coin!“
A roar of laughter followed, one of them sounding eerily familiar to Grovalt. He then heard the voice of Graves. “Hehehe. Y’know, I knew the Imperium had dirty cops, but that takes the cake. Great job, guys. Just one thing.“ A scuffle was heard. “You goddamn idiots got lucky. What if that mage was some goody-two-shoes, eh? What if it was the goddamn Archmage himself!? Keep on the lookout next time, or I’ll slit yer throats with yer own teeth.“
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“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again. Promise.“
“Mmhm. I know it won’t.“ The men fell silent. The sounds of footsteps trailed off into another room. “Buncha dumbasses. Every last one of ‘em.“
Grovalt reached the top of the stairs at last and boldly leered around the corner. Sure enough, his old boss Graves was sitting in a large iron chair next to a sputtering fire. He was scratching his beard, lost in thought. Grovalt waited until he got up to get a drink, then quickly made his way to the other side of the room. The door he entered through was one of a pair that led to yet another classroom.
Three men dressed in black and red were sitting on top of desks, downing bottles of rum.
Grovalt was about to make his move when he spotted a shadow silently plummet through a broken skylight above into the back of the room without making a sound. He couldn’t make out what or who it was, but he saw the glint of what could’ve been a dagger. He couldn’t let this thing ruin his chance. He cast a frost spell but slowly so that it would emit a quiet hum rather than a loud chime. Ice formed from Grovalt’s hand onto the floor, spidering across the room towards where the thugs were resting. Soon after, a cold sunk into the very air in the building, and the men noticed this quite quickly.
“Damn it’s cold in here. Can’t the boss give us a light once in a while?“
“Man, he’s already mad. Don’t be asking him for something as dumb as some warmth. A little frostbite won’t kill ya.“ The man moved to adjust how he was sitting, but his legs were stopped. A resistance had wrapped around them. Now that he realized it, he couldn’t even feel his legs.
The spell Grovalt had been conjuring had become a flurry of ice and wind that began to spiral about the feet of Graves’s men. The lower halves of their bodies were already encased in a thick layer of rime.
“Hey, hey, what the hell!?“ One of them screamed, desperately twisting his body to escape the trap but to no avail. He fell off of the desk he once sat atop and on to the floor amidst the small ice storm. His skin turned a dark blue and his body stopped contorting. He had already succumbed to the intense cold. The others had managed to react in time, and only lost a few toes in the ensuing blizzard. The two ran from the origin point of Grovalt’s storm and readied their swords. Darting their heads across the dark classroom, they spotted him on the far side.
The shadow Grovalt had seen before now made its move. It leapt from where it hid, appearing behind one of his enemies. It mercilessly slit his throat with a knife that showed a brilliant jade color under the skylight, now half-painted in a deep crimson. As the shadow threw the now deceased foe to the ground, it revealed its true identity to Grovalt. An incredibly beautiful woman stood before him clad in black, lined with vervant stripes. Her hair was an immaculate shade of blue, the kind you’d see looking at the reflection of the moon on the surface of water. Her lower face was covered by a black mask, but her vibrant green eyes were uncovered to observe the world around her.
Grovalt, entranced, moved not one muscle. He released his spell due to his lack of focus.
The woman in black turned to see the last Rumhound running toward her with his sword overhead. As if vanishing into nothingness, she appeared right next to the man just as she did to the other, this time in front of him. The arm that once held his sword was cut clean off and fell to the floor. Blood spewed from the man’s arm and his resulting wound. The woman simply cleaned her dagger in front of the man, then used her left hand to grab him by the throat.
What Grovalt witnessed next was something he had only ever heard about in his time as a warrior.
The man tried to call out for help, but something emanated from the woman’s hand. Actually, something was pulling the man in. A shadowy essence dotted with red streaks erupted from the man’s torso and then from his limbs, pulling into the woman’s hand and arm. Life drained from his face as the last of the essence left him until finally, she dropped his weightless corpse to the floor. She turned to Grovalt.
Grovalt managed to come back to his senses. He knew what this woman was, but he had no idea if he could win against one. He had heard stories of an entire battalion falling to a single anisai. Granted, he was stronger than most men, but against the equivalent of a one-man army, what did that matter?
Before either of them could do anything, Graves burst into the room with a wild expression. Flaming fury burned in his pupils. His oppressive black beard seemed seared at the end. He took one frenzied look at Grovalt and the mystery woman, then a glance at his dead men strewn across the floor. A hearty chuckle began to emanate from the huge brute, his chest pounding up and down with each gasp in between his laughter.
Grovalt’s eyes widened as he witnessed this display, then slowly moved back to the merciless woman still standing in the dark shadows of the classroom. The rime-filled air began to sparkle under the little light from above. The ground did too, as bits of frost settled amidst the dusty rugs and floorboards.
As Graves’s laughter began to pitter out into nothingness, he looked now only at Grovalt with a meaningful gaze. “So, I let you go free when ya abandon your own and this is how you repay me, eh? Killing the men you once drank with? Teaming up with whatever lot this wench crawled out of?“
“To hell with that, Graves. You know full well what you’ve been doing. Did you really think an idiot like Breven could convince me to come back, let alone put me in shackles?“
“Nah. You showed all of us here you could take all of ‘em in a fight with nothing but your bare hands. I ain’t that stupid, son.“
“Then why send him?“
Graves took a few steps forward. His mighty weight flowed through his legs and struck down through his heavy metal boots, the floorboards dying under each long step. “To bring you here, of course. I’ll admit though, I did expect you to come knockin’ on the door instead of sneakin’ in here and killing ‘em. Do you normally turn to murder at the slightest annoyance, Grovalt? And here I thought we were seen as the uncivilized crowd. Seems like since you left the Rumhounds we actually became more like valued citizens. Hahahaha!“ Graves erupted into another bout of laughter, except it was much shorter than the last.
“Actually, I’d like to clear things up.“ The woman in black suddenly chimed in with a whispery voice, waving her jade dagger playfully. “I don’t know who this guy is, but now that you’re here I’ll have you kill you both.“
“Is that right, sonny? You don’t even know this lass?“
“No. I thought maybe you did.“
“Never seen her before in my life.“
“Great,“ the black-clad woman said, “now you never will.“ With that, she rushed forward instantly toward the two men like smoke being carried by a powerful wind. Her dagger flew at Grovalt but was blocked as he raised his sword to meet it. When that failed, she turned to Graves but he had already distanced himself a few meters.
“Ooooh. She’s a feisty one, Grovalt. Don’t lose yer head.“ He chuckled as a black smoke began to bellow from all around Graves’s body. After a short while, it cleared and revealed Graves once more except he was wielding a battle axe of sorts made entirely of flame. Not just that, but Graves himself seemed to be enveloped by a scorching flame akin to cinders. The floorboards began to catch on fire as ash swirled around the room, knocking over books and desks. The classroom that once acted as the Rumhound hideout was slowly falling apart due to Graves’s fiery transformation.
Grovalt was desperate. Even with all his confidence, he hadn’t dared ever to challenge Graves to a fight. His men would tell him day in and day out that they had only joined in fear of what he’d do to them if they ever told him no. “I don’t know who you are,“ he called out to the woman, “but if you help me take down this asshole, I’ll do whatever you say. Deal?“
The shadow-like woman stood for a second under the swirling flame and smoke raging from the other side of the room. She looked deep into Grovalt’s eyes and then to the madman cackling within the chaos. “Alrighty. Deal.“