“Sometimes, you have to throw caution to the wind and take some risks if you want to win big.” - Famous last words of Captain Serilda “Gambler” Quen of the Serilda’s Scourge mercenary company, said prior to a risky maneuver that won the battle but cost the captain’s life amongst others.

Members of the Nightstalkers platoon, or the Niśācāra as they called themselves, were a tight-knit group that mostly kept to themselves, as they passed down their skills to either orphans they adopted while in Alcidea or to their own descendants. The former order of warrior-assassins naturally had several tricks of their own, the most famous one – if unknown in Alcidea – being their art of shadow-bending.

When a child was born with the Light affinity in the order, they would be trained to harness it in ways different to how the vast majority of people with that affinity did things. Rather than to focus on creating light and making use of it, they would train to diminish light and instead harness the shadows and darkness left as a result.

It was difficult training, and few of the children managed to acquire the knack to do things in that manner, with the failures washed out and sent to regular training instead. Out of every twenty children, only one or two would acquire such a knack, so the skill was rare in the current Nightstalkers, even with their slowly growing numbers.

Out of the older ones who came from Ur-Teros, only the Shahzade and the Artesh possessed the skill, with the latter being more skilled due to his greater experience. Several of the youngsters of the new generations showed promise too, however, in particular the three children born from the couple’s union, all of whom showed a knack to manipulate the darkness like their parents could.

The mission that the Nightstalkers chose to undertake voluntarily, however, had no room for such youngsters. Instead, it would be executed by a small group of five, led by the Artesh Hassan Al-Khaleed himself, along with four other senior and highly experienced members of their platoon. They only numbered five because that was the limit of how many people the Artesh could comfortably hide in the shadows he manipulated.

After all, they were about to walk into the enemy camp and attempt to claim the head of several generals, luck permitting.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Needless to say, for five assassins to walk into an enemy camp of over a hundred thousand in an attempt to kill some generals was an endeavor that was beyond “risky”. In fact, the five who volunteered for the mission – including the Artesh – considered it very likely that it would be a one-way trip for them, and none of them even balked at the prospect.

Such missions were far from uncommon for the Niśācāra after all, and the greater the risk, the greater the rewards tend to be. If they succeeded, they might well overturn the state of the ongoing battle in one fell stroke, which the five volunteers considered a very worthwhile trade for their lives, should they fail to return.

In fact, it was Reinhardt and Lars that needed some convincing before they eventually agreed to the suggestion, as neither of them were comfortable with what amounted to sending people to a suicide mission when the situation had not called for such a measure as of yet. Only after the two confirmed several times that the volunteers were truly willing to take the risk on their own volition did they allow the attempt.

So it was that the five Niśācāra assassins walked into the enemy camp, clad in the darkness Hassan manipulated to keep them hidden from view. They chose a dark night when one of the moons were not visible and the other was barely a pale sliver in the sky, half-covered by the clouds, which gave him plenty of shadows to work with, as the enemy’s camp was not all that well-lit at night.

The five of them still had to take care of several things, like to not stray too far from Hassan lest his magic failed to hide them sufficiently, or to avoid coming into contact with the enemy soldiers at all costs. His magic only hid them from sight, and anyone would still be able to detect them using their other senses, should they give away their presence.

It was why the five of them moved with deliberate slowness to avoid making noise and had rubbed their dark clothes with some soil and mud to blend their scent with their surroundings. The five of them moved like phantoms in the dark night, taking care to avoid leaving traces and to avoid the many enemy soldiers sleeping with only a thin mat of woven straws as their bedding on the ground.

They made a slow, careful progress towards the center of the enemy encampment, where tents were far more common. The central area was patrolled far more securely, but the cluster of tents that were present also made for good cover for the assassins, and they bided their time, often waiting for patrols to pass by before they moved from one set of cover to the next.

While under Hassan’s shadowy veil they could have probably walked out right in front of the patrol’s face and not be noticed, the five were experienced at their work and knew that such hubris was likely the cause of why many young, talented assassins failed their missions. They acted as if they had no shadowy veil hiding them from sight and moved accordingly, instead.

After passing through several layers of such patrols, Hassan and his fellow assassins finally reached the deepest cluster of tents, one where the tents were larger and better decorated. Their trained ears told them that there were only one occupant in each large, extravagant tent, which directly hinted at the occupant’s likely high position in the enemy army.

Out of sight behind one of the tents in question, Hassan allowed his shadowy veil to retract from his associates, and they exchanged nods as the five parted ways, each one headed towards one of the largest, most decorated tents in the cluster with the intent of ensuring that their occupants would not see the following sunrise.