Catlike, the shadowed figure sprang to the side, moving nearly faster than his eyes could track to evade Oliver's bullet. The second bullet he'd been preparing before the first had even reached its target took it clean in the chest as it was casting about for him in the shadows, for the stealth of night was a two-edged sword.

It was thrown backwards and landed on its side, hard. It was struggling to its feet when the third and fourth rounds struck it in the sternum and head. It lay still, one leg twitching slightly. Oliver waited. A moment later, its final twitches ceased. Oliver went over to it to examine it, another bullet held pinched between his forefingers protectively out before him. He didn't want to take any more chances.

It was still and the dark, concealing clothes of the figure didn't give anything away to his examination. If it was a soldier of the Empire then it was a breed the Moderates had not seen before; perhaps it was a mercenary.

"Target is down," said Oliver over the comms spell.

A moment later Gideon's voice came weak and distorted in his right ear, the one he'd cast the spell on. "What was it?"

"Not sure. A person with some kind of stealth and agility combo, focused on speed. They were wearing dark robes, no armor. Assassin, I'm guessing. They had mana suppression, so I was only able to see them with the new thermal sense spell. Seems like they're getting nervous about us."

"Should we abort?"

Oliver cast a critical eye over the mana signatures at camp. The captain by the fire didn't seem to be particularly alarmed, nor did the other mana signatures by the fire; none of them had moved.

"As far as I can tell they didn't trigger any kind of alarm back at camp. The captain hasn't moved. We need this, Gideon."

There was silence for a moment, presumably while Gideon thought.

"Get into position for phase two," he said after a brief pause. If he was indecisive, it didn't show.

"Roger," Oliver said back, and after a last glance at the corpse he left behind him he crept back into the darkness of the underbrush, moving as silently as he could through the forest. A few moments later, he reached a point in the woods where firelight could be seen reflecting off the undersides of the branches ahead. There was a space where the trees opened up to the cloudy night sky. His pulse began to accelerate as he approached, and he tamped down on his nerves. There wasn't time to be afraid, just time to act.

But this was it. This was the first time they'd be intentionally engaging with what their threat classification model referred to as a C-class threat, a captain within the Empire's guard.

Well, engaging was a strong word. If there was any actual engagement going on they were going to come out on the losing end. The way Gideon put it, and the way Oliver'd experienced it, physical reinforcement practitioners strong enough to be promoted out of the general ranks danced like ballerinas and hit like literal trucks.

So no, they wouldn't be fighting with him. They'd simply be eliminating him.

Oliver crept up forward, keeping as many tree trunks and patches of underbrush between him and the exaggerated mana signature as he could until the person finally came into physical view.

The one thing his mana sight hadn't told him was that the captain was, in fact, a woman. He swallowed a sigh. What was one more nightmare? He'd already had his fair share and then some. There was no getting around it, no playing it self. No margin for error. This soldier had to die.

"Target's in sight," he said, trusting in the spell to keep his voice quieted.

"Confirmed, target in sight," came back a moment later. Gideon's mana signature had come in from across the fire.

The woman didn't seem particularly alarmed. She was sitting by the fire, relaxing on an ornately embroidered lounge chair that only a spatial storage ring could make practical. Her helmet was by her side and she sported long, red hair tied back at the nape of her neck.

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"Target B confirmed, she has a ring," said Oliver. "You see the chair?"

"I see it. Get the spell ready. Again, on my mark."

Oliver nodded, tabbing down to the next spell on his list. It was labeled simply "CO".

"Are—are you sure we want to do this?" asked Gideon. "I won't hold it against you if—"

Oliver thought briefly for a moment. Was this cold kill moral, or just murder? He'd already thought it through before committing, but the sight of an actual person before him, unarmed (though, of course, her whole body was a weapon) and unaware, forced him to reconsider.

It boiled down to whether or not he believed their efforts as members of the Moderates to fight back against the Empire were practical, would be successful. They'd long discussed it.

In a terrestrial environment, it was unlikely that such a small rebellion would make much difference long-term. But that was Earth, where you didn't have magic and superpowers and it wasn't possible for a single person or artifact to overturn major world powers. In this place, the answer was simple: if they were individually strong enough, they would succeed. And they could get strong enough, with enough mana and the right spells.

It was a simple, elegant moral justification that both terrified and elated him, and terrified him that it elated him.

He breathed in, breathed out, watching as the wordless sigh evaporated in a puff of air his thermal vision helpfully highlighted as red before his nose.

They would be strong enough. They would do what they had to to make it home, to protect home.

"We don't have a choice. Let's do it."

"Three, two, one, mark," responded Gideon in rapid succession.

Oliver triggered the spell, watching as the green mana thread, perhaps the width of his pinky, snaked out from the trees and into the small clearing.

He willed it to stay close to the ground so that on the off chance she had some sort of mana sense it wouldn't be triggered by the approaching foreign mana. It snuck up behind her, in much the same way his other spell had snuck up behind the guard earlier, and when it had reached its position seconds later sprouted its deadly payload.

Oliver suppressed the nausea as a bubble of pure carbon monoxide enveloped the head of the captain as she sat. It wasn't the first time he'd seen an enemy combatant slain in cold blood, but she just looked so… peaceful, even as the spell took its deadly toll on her physiology.

Some thirty seconds later, her face went slack and her eyes drifted out of focus, and then she was collapsing to the ground with a thud that spoke to a greater-than-usual density and strength.

Strength only meant something if you were awake to use it.

The bubble stayed with her, starving her of the oxygen her brain needed. Oliver nearly cancelled the spell then; if he had, she would have a chance to survive, but knew he could take no chances. It wasn't clear what kind of physical reinforcement she had — it was usually impossible to tell from looking — but there was always a chance it was possible it would somehow allow her to do without oxygen for longer than the average human, biology notwithstanding.

Magic here was weird; many spells worked basically the way you'd expect them to if the body was a balance of the four humours and the four elements, gravity was due to the ground and the things above it being in a romantic relationship, and the world really was the center of the universe. How that was possible Oliver wasn't sure; he'd have to thank the System's neural net for that. But it was certain that enforcing these additional expectations of the casters was expensive; that was what their testing had shown so far, in any case.

Oliver waited a full two more minutes to be safe, not wanting to take any chances. After the captain had failed to show even the smallest sign of life or twitch after that time he released the spell. This casting, at such a distance and potency, had already taken up some five percent of his mana and, on top of his earlier spells and the ongoing mana and thermal sight, he was down more than he was comfortable with. And he wouldn't have a chance to restock until after the raid was concluded.

"She's down," he murmured after dropping the spell.

She hadn't reacted at all, hadn't noticed a thing from start to finish. From her perspective, she got a little sleepy with one breath; with the next, she would have slipped into a final slumber without her heart rate even accelerating.

It was terrifying what you could accomplish with mana, a little creativity and a deep understanding of biochemistry and physics.

Gideon emerged from the trees, scanning the periphery. He approached the fire as Oliver too left cover and did the same. A covered wagon with wood walls stood beside the fire on the other side, with a padlocked door and no windows; it was this wagon which held the other signatures he'd sensed, the ones blazing bright and entirely uncomplicated; bloated auras, nothing more.

Oliver knelt by the woman's side, felt her pulse. She wasn't breathing. The fire crackled beside them. He tugged off one of her gray-plate gauntlets, then the other, finding the ring on her second hand, her left.

As they had discussed, Gideon was going for the wagon. Oliver glanced up as he reached it, saw the dark-skinned man physically rip the door out of the wooden wagon with a loud pop, forgoing the crude, matte-gray metal lock entirely.

He looked back down to what he was doing, drew the ring off her hand to find that a strand of mana was still following it.

A surge of dread; that — that wasn't supposed to happen. Artifacts could be mana-bound, Gideon had shown him how they would connect to a person's mana and draw off it to power their spells, but it shouldn't be still drawing on her mana.

It wouldn't, unless she was still alive.

He was standing up and preparing to cast the CO spell a second time when she twitched beside him, then opened her eyes to focus on him. They were emerald green.