12:20 AM, 3rd of December
<6 days, 19 hours, and 40 minutes until departure>
Edwina “Eddie” Hofstra, 63 years old (and two years Wolf’s junior), was a banker and financier who’d struck it big by investing her modest earnings into every enduring idea and venture that ended up defining the Industrial Revolution. Steel, oil, textiles, railways, even this newfangled ‘electricity’ thing Wolf was still coming to grips with. You name it, Eddie Hofstra bankrolled it, enriching (and overcomplicating) the lives of all across Franzmark and beyond, all while she herself became the richest woman in the nation, if not the world over.
Yet, Eddie wasn’t satisfied just being history’s most successful example of a Tactician-turned-businesswoman. No, she also had to flaunt how much Good (with a capital letter G) her money could bring to the world, chiefly in the form of orphanage schools that plucked every last mudlark, match girl, and chimney sweep off the street with military efficiency. These children were then fed, clothed, and showered with unlimited love and education, all thanks to Eddie’s bottomless coffers. If reports were to be believed, some of them had already grown up and rejoined society at the highest levels (His Majesty’s Navy, the House of Commons, and what have you), spreading the gospel of the Hofstra Foundation everywhere they went.
Public opinion on Eddie’s brand of philanthropy was… predictably divided. After all, some Franzishmen still recalled fondly the times when mudlarks and match girls filled their streets, and those who came from Old Money couldn’t help but view the Hofstras’ meteoric rise with alarm and suspicion. But Wolf, of course, knew better. For the last three decades, she'd watched from afar as Eddie grew her wealth and built her orphanages. She watched with a kind of gnawing melancholy… for Wolf knew, better than anyone else, the true root of Eddie’s endless love for motherless children.
And now, after three long decades, the two of them were reunited.
Presently, Eddie sat by the hearth, thus occupying the only chair inside Wolf’s hut. The Assassin, for her part, remained standing, choosing a corner that allowed her to keep the farthest distance from Eddie, such as it was. She did this, not only because she hadn’t the foresight to fashion herself a second chair, but also because she didn’t trust herself to grow too comfortable in the Tactician’s presence.
“Won’t you come into the light, Wolf? Let me take a better look at you.”
Eddie said this with the same heartbreaker smile with which she’d greeted Wolf earlier. Seeing (and hearing) this, Wolf almost relented. But she stood her ground, kept her arms crossed, and growled, “I’m good, thanks. Rather stay out of your [COMPEL] range, if I can help it.”
“I’m actually offended by that,” Eddie retorted lightly, looking none the worse for wear. “You know I’d never use my spells on any of my packmates without their consent.”
“That might’ve been true once… when we were a pack. But that was thirty years ago. As far as I’m concerned, trust has a shelf life, as with anything else.”
Eddie fell silent again, but her smile never faltered. Wolf watched her carefully—warily—as phantom visions of a shared past clouded her view of the present.
Eddie Hofstra had always been silver-haired, but that same hair, now drawn up in a ponytail with one loose lock hanging luxuriantly over the right side of her face, had somehow become even more strikingly beautiful in old age. Even at a sitting position, it was readily apparent that her slender and stately figure shouldn’t have belonged to a 63-year-old woman. Wolf too had kept herself fit, mostly by virtue of having to live off the land by her lonesome, but even she couldn’t hold a candle to Eddie and her—
Wolf involuntarily shook her head, at the same time dispelling the crude thoughts that threatened to weaken her resolve. She’d of course expected some of her old feelings to resurface, but she hadn’t expected them so soon—nor for them to be so potent. Had Eddie already cast a spell on her? But no… if that had been the case, she would’ve picked it up with her [WILD SENSE].
Quickly running out of excuses even to herself, Wolf tightened her grip on her own arms and shrank further into her corner of the room. A mere few minutes into her first interaction with another human in nearly thirty years, she was already ready for it to be over. Come on, Eddie. Say what you have to say, so I can tell you ‘no’ and be done with it.
As if she’d read Wolf's thoughts (perhaps she had), Eddie let out an audible chuckle.
“Oh, Wolfhilde, my dear… you haven’t changed at all. Must you always be so difficult? You know you could make things so much easier for yourself just by… lightening up a little?”
“I know you didn’t come all the way here to psycho-analyze me.”
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“You’re right, I didn’t. And because I know how your mind works, I also know there’s no point beating around the bush. And you know exactly why I’m here.”
Wolf held herself in a flimsy imitation of [STILLNESS], waiting for Eddie to say more so she could tell her ‘no’. When no such elaboration proved forthcoming, she let out an audible sigh.
“Have you already rounded up the others?”
“Not yet.”
“Hm. Not like you to leave things so last minute.”
At this, Eddie shifted in her seat, lifted her mug to her lips, then stopped short of taking a sip. Hesitation. Uncertainty. More traits that weren’t very much like the Tactician Wolf once knew. Had age and its ravages come for even the great Edwina Hofstra, after all?
“You already know why I haven’t asked the others yet,” Eddie spoke softly into her mug. “You know as well as I do that this doesn’t happen unless you’re the first to buy in. There is no job without you. Because you’re still the only one of us—maybe the only one in the world—that can get close enough to the Urlking to steal his Crown.”
Wolf breathed deep through her nose, then let it all out through clenched teeth. When next she spoke, she let a touch of irritation—more so than usual—roughen her voice, “You still haven’t told me why you left it so late to come find me.”
“Why, did you want to be found sooner?”
“Answer the question.”
Eddie smiled. A different smile, one tinged with the same melancholy with which a Wolf had watched her from afar. She set down her mug, sip untaken.
“I just didn’t know if it was the right thing to do.”
“What? Since when does Edwina Hofstra care about the right thing? Wasn’t it always the job first? The job, the whole job, and nothing but the—”
“I care about you, Wolf.”
Wolf stopped, lifted her gaze from a fossilized stain on the floor, then met Eddie’s melancholic smile, eye to eye. Just how did this woman do it? Take such unrelenting hold of Wolf’s emotions, with or without the use of Tactician spells—and even after thirty long years?
“I care about you,” Eddie went on, “and for the longest time, for as long as I could bear it, I tried to respect your wish to be left alone, no matter how much it hurt me—no matter how much it divided our Wolfpack. I thought I could do it. I thought I could let it go. Leave the past where it belongs. God knows I’ve had time enough to do that, but I just can’t. I can’t let it go!”
Before Wolf’s disbelieving eyes, Eddie’s ever unflappable visage distorted into a quivering grimace, before a single tear trickled down a cheek that—Wolf could see clearly now—sagged and cracked noticeably, compared to thirty years ago. But Eddie quickly brushed it away, then stood to bring herself eye-level with Wolf, instantly transforming into the self-assured Tactician-turned-businesswoman that she was.
“The Kronvall Express arrives in Saint-Jude Station at 5 PM on the 9th of December,” she spoke, voice even and silky, with none of her earlier passion. The job, the whole job, and nothing but the job. “It’ll idle for exactly three hours while the Urlking puts on the usual dog and pony show. It’ll depart, like it always does, at 8 PM sharp, with all ‘guests’ on board—both Goblin and human. And I won’t hide the fact that there’re personal stakes for me, just like there were thirty years ago. Because this year’s intake includes children under the care of the Hofstra Foundation.”
Now it was Wolf’s turn to fidget where she stood, as she tried and failed to lessen the blow of Eddie’s words. In her stubborn hostility, and in her desperate attempt to give the past more weight—more meaning—than the present, it’d never occurred to her to wonder if something other than an old grudge had brought Eddie Hofstra a-knocking on her door.
“And you’re right, Wolf,” the Tactician added. “I don’t like to leave things last minute. So, if you do want to do this with me, I’d prefer you leave me with at least a few days of buffer. I’ve rented a room at the Hunchback Inn, just like old times, but only for the next three nights. If I don’t see you before then… then I guess this is goodbye again. This time for good.”
Wolf knew Eddie well enough to surmise that this was the last of what she’d intended to say. Even though the job always came first, the Tactician wasn’t above a bit of theatrics from time to time. Yet, to Wolf’s surprise, Eddie stood in place, lingering even after she’d said her piece. For a moment, something melancholic and wistful crossed her otherwise impassive face—something that yearned for another’s touch. Wolf’s touch.
But the Assassin stood her ground, glued to her corner. If Eddie had wanted to, she could’ve closed the distance in a second, held Wolf in place with a spell that needed no magic. But the retired Tactician—the erstwhile fixer and leader of the Wolfpack of Shved Mountain—made no such attempt. She hesitated for only a moment longer, then straightened herself into her slender and stately figure, before heading to the door with confident and purposeful strides.
The door swung open. Wolf’s [WILD SENSE] filled with the sounds and smells of a wintry mountain forest in the dead of night. Yet, something else lingered, just on the periphery of her awareness—enough to make her give voice to a gnawing dread.
“Johann,” she called after her departing visitor, invoking the name of their shared nightmare, as if compelled by an ancient and unknowable magic. “Did you… did you ever hear from him again?”
A gust of unnatural wind. A rush of something dark and hateful at the periphery of Wolf’s [WILD SENSE]. But the moment of heightened dread passed just as abruptly as it’d manifested, leaving only a wrinkled and cracked hand that lingered upon a doorframe.
“No.”
The door slammed shut. And Wolf was alone again.