The Huntress, Isobel, swirled an invisible power around her finger, stirring her coffee until it was pure gray and entirely too sweet. The plain showing of raw strength pulled a few eyes in the barren room, as she was neither a mage nor a trickster. A cantrip or trick was simple enough and quite common, but the Huntress was posturing herself.

Her rank was far above those who sat around her, and she wanted them to remember that. Especially when the High Inquisitor finally arrived. She didn’t think any would interfere with their conversation, but smart people have done dumb things before.

That thought drew more irritation than she planned, causing her power to fluctuate. The invisible force swimming around her finger suddenly hardened, cracking the ceramic cup like an egg. Coffee poured through the gaps as several onlookers gasped in angst.

She glared at them to silence themselves.

Isobel sighed internally, knowing her emotions were out and open as of late. But could anyone really blame her? She had been waiting in this accursed town, Pebblefarm or Pebblerock or whatever, for months. Originally the High Inquisitor was supposed to start his investigation within the day, but something had attracted his attention. Her orders were solid, however. She was to wait.

She’d do anything to start searching for her marks, to catch up with the smart one, the brutish one, and the quiet one. Well, she’d have to rethink Leland’s name. He didn’t seem so smart recently, especially as she thought about her time following him. She had her suspicions but they were only that, suspicions.

She couldn’t prove anything, but when did her gut ever steer her wrong?

She wiped up the spilt coffee with her ragged old cloak. It was a relic of her past, back when times were simpler. Back when her family was still alive.

Honestly she didn’t know why she kept it around. There was only one other thing that had remained from back then, that being herself. She had long let everything else go, after she got her revenge, that was. But the cloak remained.

She smiled at that. It wasn’t even a cloak. It once was a full on coat, but time had not seen it well, and it was left in shambles. How many times had she patched it up? Sewn it into something new? Cut and pieced together something wearable?

It felt strange to give such a lame piece of fabric such power over herself. But who was she kidding? It made her feel safe. It reminded her of why she fought.

A few minutes later, the doors to the drabby inn burst open by a lanky man wearing red and white. He stepped in, scanning the room before nodding out like a bunny escaping a wolf.

Isobel rolled her eyes. Like the High Inquisitor needed to be told a building was safe. If anything, the man’s sudden appearance told those in the inn that they were in danger. A tap of the finger could kill them all, except Isobel, of course.

A heartbeat later, an elderly gentleman strolled in. His presence carried with him, red silken robes almost obscured by the sheer bright power he controlled. His eyes didn’t look through the room, nor the bystanders waiting for his orders. No, they snapped directly onto the Huntress. He smiled.

The man, minus the boisterous aura, was unremarkable. Fit and firm, yes, a testament to a life spent with hard work and determination, but otherwise just a wrinkly old man. Only his eyes whispered hints of his true identity, blue like a calm sea just before a world ending waterfall.

It was strange to the Huntress. She had met a few Lords, not including her own, during her life. But none compared to the man before her. While Lords didn’t want to kill the mortals that stood before them, the High Inquisitor held nowhere near that amount of power.

But he held enough.

“Isobel,” the name flowed like the river the man was named after.

“Rushwin,” she replied, with a steady drawn out head nod.

The Huntress would be hard pressed to admit it, but the High Inquisitor was one of the few that had earned her respect. Although, anything more than a polite greeting was pushing the limit of just how much she was able to give without bursting from the inside.

“Leave us.”

The command came out as nothing more than a simple string of words, but the effects ruptured the inn’s once populated common room. Only the inn’s owner remained.

The High Inquisitor raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not leaving. Can’t have you stealing things.”

Now that even made Isobel shift her gaze. But quickly her eyes turned back when the High Inquisitor giggled. That deserved a slack jawed gape, but she wasn’t such a peon that she’d drop her blank face.

“Very well then, innkeeper. How about some ale? Whatever is regional.”

“Everything is regional here,” the man muttered, scrounging around for a bottle opener. A moment later, the inn’s sole occupants had unbroken drinks.

“A little early, don’t you think?” Isobel asked, already having taken a swig.

Rushwin smiled, his hand flashing from his silk robes. Instantly an invisible bubble appeared around the pair, silencing their conversation to the outside.

“Very true, but I always try to eat or drink some of the local stuff when I’m out of the capital. Everything there is boring now.” The High Inquisitor took a sip himself, frowning at the warm ale. A flick of his tongue nearly froze his and the Huntress’ bottles over. It was a simple cantrip, one cast a million times at this point.

“Isobel… why am I here? There are several more pressing issues to deal with right now.”

She swallowed at that. There was no point lying, she’d never get away with it like those bumbling buffoon Inquisitors she had first spoken to.

But then again… maybe there was a reason to try.

“Harbinger and Lordly image appeared. Former killed, latter fled.”

“The Toy Maker, correct?”

The Huntress nodded.

“And who killed the Harbinger, and subsequently fought off the image?”

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“Me,” Isobel stated, resolving herself the best she could. She sat straight and tall, never breaking her eye contact like even the thought of looking away would prove her lie.

“Try again,” Rushwin calmly said.

“I did. The Harbinger and—”

A force extended across her like a ship being dropped onto the open ocean. Invisible water sprayed against her, cooling her body while also threatening a true death. Drowning by the Tide Maker wouldn’t be the worst way to die.

“Try again.”

“I did!” she spat, feeling her lungs fill.

The High Inquisitor regarded her for a moment. “I see.” The pressure vanished. “Either you are corrupted, a traitor, or trying to protect someone or something.”

He looked away, sipping his ale. “Which is it, Huntress?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a command. There was only cold malice in his voice, a lifetime of fighting the forces of the vile Lords and their minions resonating within. He didn’t wish to hurt her, in fact he wouldn’t. He was her leader, her mentor. He knew her better than most everyone, which made him more than hesitant.

It was unlike the Huntress to lie. He needed to test the waters.

At her silence, Rushwin spoke again, “There is a camp a half-day’s travel from here. At your speed, I mean. It has been destroyed, dead bodies everywhere. Was that you?”

“Y-yes,” Isobel said, her shoulders weak and her legs shaking. “They were led by an unveiled Witch.”

“Unveiled you say?” Rushwin’s test went as planned. She wasn’t incapable of speaking the truth, which ruled out some possibilities for why she was lying. “They followed a Witch?”

“The Harbinger was in the Witch’s command as well. Uncle and nephew.”

That was news to the High Inquisitor. Or was it? He only scanned over the initial reports, knowing most of them were lies. Regardless, he was listening now.

“And the nephew followed the uncle’s orders to leave the camp’s protection?”

Isobel hesitated at the question, knowing where it’d lead. “Yes…” she still said.

“And what, to your best knowledge, was this order?”

She didn’t know how to answer this question. Hiding the doings of Witches and Harbingers was treason while taking credit for someone else was, strictly speaking, not. She could lie about Leland, he was protected by at least two laws she knew of. Refusing to disclose immediate plans of those wishing to defeat the Crown, however, was grounds for—

“Isobel. Answer the question.”

She lost the staring contest. “To kill some civilians.”

That answer, hopefully, didn’t give the kids away.

“’Some civilians,’ you say,” Rushwin leaned back. “Now, let’s see if my old age hasn’t left me totally lost.”

A blue power entered his eyes, turning his already blue irises solid. “Hmm,” he said as he looked across an infinite amount of possibilities. “Civilians implies not a guard, soldier, or something like a traditionally taught mage from the colleges. A normal civilian often goes their whole lives without even seeing a Witch. Which removes plenty of possibilities. So what does that leave? Adventurers?”

He tasted the word, moving it around in his mouth like a piece of candy. “Adventurers often hunt monsters, while poachers hunt trophies. Those could overlap, creating an irritant to the Witch. Enough to send an assassin? Maybe, if the trophy was large enough.”

He paused again, recalling something from the initial report. “Frostford and their Guardian Spirit Beast. Huh, that is a large trophy.” He glanced at the Huntress, sending a shiver down her spine. “And four adventurers thwarted the Witch’s plan?”

Isobel did her best to remain still.

“Really?” Rushwin continued. “Not four? I would have sworn… So three adventurers. Then they, what? Leave Frostford because the festival was canceled. They head up the mountain and once the assassin is able to isolate one of them, he attacks?”

A bead of sweat rolled down her face.

The High Inquisitor didn’t stop. “The assassin, the nephew I suppose, would go after the easiest target first. The one that could, in the long run, cause a headache. The mage of the team. They fight, the mage knowing he’s outmatched, runs.”

His eyes moved to a seemingly random point in space. He saw through the inn’s walls, staring at a freshly reconstructed window upstairs. “Rough fall. That’d kill any mage without a way to protect him or herself.” He continued to look through the walls, tracing the direction Leland ran. “They had a choice. Run toward the forest, try to lose the assassin in the trees, or run into the town’s center, where hopefully their friends would be waiting.

“Obviously they choose their friends. A team of three? They must be loyal to each other. Friends for years, maybe? Or perhaps since they were kids? Hmm… That might explain their inexperience to not notice someone tailing them.”

He looked back to the Huntress. “So three kids, it is. The mage runs, but something cuts off his path.” The Huntress didn’t react. He continued, “Something also blocks off his friends from helping. The mage now has to defend himself, battling against the Harbinger solo. Toy Maker, puppets. The corpses weren’t charred, nor waterlogged or diced up. How many schools of magic does that leave, eh Isobel?”

She didn’t answer.

“I can think of a few dozen, potentially more depending on his Legacy. But that’s beside the point. The mage battles, wins, and is promptly confronted by a vile Lord. The Toy Maker inhabits his own Harbinger’s body like a demented sock… But this is where the story falls apart, isn’t it? Why does the image flee?”

The Huntress was now sweating through her old cloak.

“The mage could be powerful enough to drive away the image. But that is unlikely, I’ve already discovered he is young. I guess you could have intervened, but that is incredibly unlikely as you spoke in a lie… Well, no matter. I’ll just have to adjust a bit.”

The High Inquisitor’s eyes shone deeper blue, his sight looking through the walls of the inn and into the town’s center. Then things changed, and he looked back in time. The few months difference made things difficult, but he had plenty of experience doing this very spell.

Although, in his near six century lifetime, he had never seen anything like what he was currently viewing.

A heatless violet flame clashed against the sea of raw power, sapping his mana like it was evaporating in a hot pan. He tried to fight against the consuming entity, but he was far too weak to even attempt to usurp the strangeness.

Then the screams began. Rushwin clamped his hands over his ears, hoping to dampen the cries. They didn’t stop, however. They burned themselves into his mind, seared his brain, and left their mark on his eyes. His solid blue eyes splintered, revealing speckles of a familiar purple.

He canceled his spell.

“Isobel,” the word came out quietly, like a soldier dying from a sundered body, “are you protecting this… thing because you are afraid of it? Or because you think it will become an ally.”

The Huntress didn’t need to think about the answer nor did she need to lie. “An ally. Maybe even one of the greats.”

And just like that, all of her reservations around Leland disappeared like a forgotten memory. She felt first hand what his power emanated. She had been warned by his guardian. She had watched him grow as he fought against evil. She trusted Leland, and… that was okay.

She clutched her old cloak. It was time to fully move on.

“I see,” Rushwin said. “Well then. For your disobedience and purposeful derailing of this investigation, you are now under new orders. Guard duty.”

Isobel almost rolled her eyes. “Who?”

“Princess Sybil Palemarrow.”

“The brat?”

The High Inquisitor didn’t answer that. “You will guard her for the duration of the Royal Dream, then report back to me for a new assignment.”

That… didn’t seem like that bad of punishment. There had to be a catch.

“You will work under her current guard.”

There it is, she thought. “Who?” she asked.

“The Inquisitors Silver.”

She froze but Rushwin continued, “I see their reputation precedes them. This will be good for you, in the long run.”

The High Inquisitor smirked, “You should have a far greater punishment. But I’ve always been a softy for my apprentices.”

The Huntress didn’t know about that… His training was always brutal, even back when she was a fledgling Inquisitor.