The girl wasn’t supposed to be here. That much he knew for sure. This train was completely booked and filled with magic users, mages, mostly of important families, and Adrian had no clue who she was. His memory wasn’t perfect, but he would have remembered her. She stood at around 5’6, with long platinum blonde hair and pale skin, wearing a crimson dress, and most notably with a red silk rose chained over one of her eyes serving as an eyepatch. He looked at her puzzled for a moment, before his survival instincts kicked in and he assessed her with his mage sight. He relaxed as he realized she had almost no magic within her at all, not only was she a mundane, she was as mundane as they came. A rare affliction, most people had at least a small amount of magic within them, but some were unlucky enough to have almost none. He wasn’t the most powerful mage in the world, but still he was a proud sulfur mage with quite a bit combat experience, and he was good enough to marry into the Solastria family. One of the most prestigious gold families in Europa and certainly the most prestigious in Astraev. So it went without saying that he felt no fear from this ordinary girl. Still she didn’t seem ordinary, and that put him on edge.
“Who are you?” He asked authoritatively.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She replied, with a soft smile.
The confidence with which she walked removed any hesitation he had. Even if she was a mundane she was either a threat or far too bold for her own good, and he didn’t feel like asking question after last year’s incident. He roared as his magic unleashed itself on to his body. Sulfur magic was one of the primal three elements of magic, it had a variety of spells, like any other element, but at its core it simply enhanced the body. Veins bulged on his arms and legs, his muscles tensed, and his skin went red as he prepared to rush the girl. She pulled a scroll out of her bag and activated it.
“So that’s how it is huh? A spoiled rich girl with enough money to buy scrolls thinks she can go toe to toe with actual mages” Adrian thought to himself. He nearly laughed aloud, but couldn’t risk disrupting his magic with his own lack of focus. Everyone knew that scrolls, convenient as they may be, were always second-rate compared to an actual mage. No matter how good the Alchemetrix may be, they couldn’t make up for the lack of training and will on the user’s part. Still something nagged at him.
As the scroll activated a bolt of flame launched itself at him, he dodge it easily and bounded towards the girl, fear filled her face, and he grinned as he lifted her by her throat. He went to squeeze, either to break her neck or choke her, whichever came first, but it felt…wrong.
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“An illusion?!” He realized.
“You mages really let your guard down too easily.” The girl said. She wasn’t anywhere near him. Adrian’s head snapped to find the source of the sound. There the girl stood on the other side of the cart, a gold and mother-of-pearl snub-nosed revolver in hand, a shot rang out through the train cart as it pierced his heart.
The man looked at her shock, while clutching his chest. “W-Why?” He said weakly, collapsing to the ground.
The girl walked over to him, clutching his chin. “It’s simple, your family killed mine.”
“Who-“ He began to ask, the blood filling up his throat interrupting him.
“My name’s Cece.” His last view was the strange girl’s smile.
The man was dead before she finished her sentence. She harvested what she could from his body as quickly as possible, a mage’s body was full of alchemically useful reagents, but it wouldn’t do for a young lady like her to be discovered here. Not that it mattered all that much. Mage society was brutal, she wouldn’t be jailed for killing him, just as his family wasn’t jailed for killing hers. Mages were above laws, and although she might be a mundane, this was a mage’s crime. Even if she could be tried in a court, she doubted the Solastria family would publicly admit to having a member killed by a mundane, it would be far too humiliating. She was avoiding detection for a much more simple reason, to preserve the element of surprise for her future exploits.
She exited the cart, where the segments interconnected, breathing in the fresh cold February air that throttled past her, she climbed a maintenance ladder to her left. She heard activity underneath as people, mages, began to investigate the commotion, but it was too late. Atop the roof of the car she activated a scroll of levitation. As the heels of her boots untethered themselves from the metal roofing below, the train rapidly shot past her now stationary form. She pushed her pinky downward to direct herself toward the ground. Most scrolls designed by Alchemetrixes were designed as cheap imitations of mages spells, structurally the same, but relying on a mundane’s untrained will to direct them. Due to her condition however, a scroll would never respond to her will, so she keyed her scrolls to respond to bodily cues. She softly landed on the snowy ground and made her way towards a trail nearby. Her calculations had been slightly off, much to her chagrin, so she landed a few kilometers off of her intended drop-off point. She trekked through the small wooded area, to a stretch of road where she had stowed one of her prized possessions behind some trees. She ripped the tarp off the bulky object to reveal a gleaming automobile, one of the latest models, embellished with gold and silver, with a red interior. She climbed into her trusty vehicle and with a soft smile, Cecilia Silva, last surviving heir to the Silva family, and Alchemetrix extraordinaire, drove through the winding roads of Astraeve that much closer to success.