“This is stupid!” Dia exclaimed so loudly it was almost a shout, drawing the furtive or aggressive attention of the people from the other tables around them in the dingy tavern in the lowest slums.

Arne had insisted they go to the truly miserable end of Arabesk immediately upon exiting the Queen’s house. He’d pulled his hood up and led them through the dingiest back alleys available, happy he hadn’t involved any of his people in this part of his personal misery, and hurried Toog and Dia off to this much less savoury area of town.

“Yes, Dia. It is stupid. It is all stupid,” he agreed. “However, I don’t know if you missed it, but that …woman-thing is quite a lot more powerful–“

“Undead,” Toog added loudly, completely unaffected by the ‘mug you for your money, slit your throat for free’-atmosphere of the bar.

“She was a mage. That thing she did…” Dia’s voice trailed off.

“She made you drink,” Arne mused. “What happened?”

“What did it look like happened!” Dia snapped back.

“Well, magic. Like how she knew things about us. Our past. That was magic, right?” Arne asked them both in general, not sure how to narrow the question in.

“What else would it be?” Dia asked, exasperated.

“Speaking of drink,” Toog said, conversationally. “I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, gods!” Arne sighed as Toog went to the bar, waving over their shoulder at him and Dia. Arne took Toog’s bag from the bench next to him and moved it so it wasn’t in the way when he would undoubtedly have to get to his feet quickly to end a fight before it began by stabbing several people in the kidneys before they knew he was there...

“What are we doing here, anyway? This isn’t that Zihr place, is it?” Dia asked. “What city is this?”

“Ehh,” Arne wrinkled his brow. “Arabesk. This is Arabesk. How did you miss that?”

“Getting jumped by those shit-sticks on my own damned turf and hauled here with magic, that’s how!” Dia exploded.

“Still undead!” Toog shouted from the bar, clearly not paying attention to the conversation but still pitching in. Arne feared that might be a trend. On the plus side, no fight had broken out yet. Small blessings were worth counting, as the saying went.

“Fine. Alright,” Arne held his hands up. “Trust me, we all had a really shitty day yesterday. I know your frustration.”

Dia scoffed. “What happened to you?”

“Monster…” he said. “Crawling on the ceiling. Broke enough bones to convince me running into it again is not in my best interest.”

“Fine, so why were we here?”

“We are here because nobody here knows me, and my network has nothing to do with whatever happens out of this bar. That makes it safe for us to discuss our approach here, rather than when we get to the temple, mansion, Family, whatever.”

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“Why is your ‘network’ not safe?” Dia asked, her tone indicating she thought he was a bit of a simpleton.

“If my involvement with that woman-thing–“

“Undead!”

“…becomes known, everyone will assume I did something foolish to attract attention from an international player and that I was coerced into doing something against my will. None of those pieces of information are going to serve me in any way. I have a reputation to uphold and a very delicate power balance to tiptoe.”

“Right, so we do the job quick and dirty and then she lets us go? Are you stupid?” Dia asked condescendingly.

“No,” Arne answererd, voice strained, “I am not. But you don’t know what she is or how to kill her yet. None of us do. We have nothing on her we can use to ensure our safety. So we do the job as ordered because it buys us time to extricate ourselves from this mess. We find some–“

“Undead. Most likely a vampire!” Toog shouted from the bar. “I already told you.”

Arne took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles to calm himself. “Right, what makes you sure? How certain are you?” he asked as Toog came back with a bottle of …something and three small, grimy cups.

“Pretty sure,” Toog shrugged. “So, what did the gnomes have on you two?” Toog asked, pouring.

“Absolutely nothing.” Dia folded her arms and leaned back.

“Alright, the desert riders who jumped you, then? I think you called him mage-pants?” Arne persisted, allowing things to stay off track for a moment to annoy Dia.

Dia sent him a scathing look. “Drink your alcohol and stay out of my business.”

“Oh, I’m not drinking that.” Arne nodded to the cup Toog handed him.

“Fine, if I die, you get to haul my corpse off to the Queen,” Toog said. “Sounds fun. Wonder how she is going to fix it? Turn us into undead slaves?” Toog emptied the mug, then offered one to Dia while blinking the tears from the alcoholic onslaught out of their brown eyes. “She will probably turn you into her personal slave regardless, seeing as how she was all over you,” Toog grinned at Arne, pouring a fresh drink.

“She was just trying to rattle me.”

“It looked like it worked,” Dia smirked.

“Let’s just move on, shall we,” Arne insisted. “She has something on all of us, and her precise wording when talking about the job was that the quicker we did it, the quicker we could expect to be off the hook. Just expect. Not actually be. So, we need to know each other’s strengths and skillsets so we can make the most out of this and relegate time to research.”

“I got nothing for you, man,” Toog stated.

“She called you information retrieval.”

“Well, I do study life. Intensely. And sometimes during my studies, I might as well ask people questions, you know… chat a bit. Maybe that’s what she meant,” Toog mused.

Arne and Dia looked at each other, then back at Toog.

“How do you study life, then?” Arne ventured.

“Mostly in layers. People have a lot of layers.”

“…Where?”

“Well, the skin alone has quite a few. Many more than you would think. I’ve been trying to work my way into where life sticks to a person. Where it is tethered.”

“Let me just get this straight,” Dia stated. “You peel people’s skin off while chatting with them? Is that it?”

“That’s a gross oversimplification, but it will do for the layperson.” Toog nodded kindly and smiled at both of them.

“Right. Torturer.” Arne nodded. “Can I assume you are good at it?”

“You know what, let’s just call it that, I don’t mind anymore,” Toog said, as though in response to some inner dialogue. “Yes, I suppose you can call me very dedicated to my studies.”

“Alright. Lovely. We can work with this. You?” Arne nodded at Dia. “Brute strength?”

“I just kill people. Spectacularly. Once I get going, I suggest you never got close to begin with.”

“How do you mean?” Arne asked, immediately regretting not being more specific. “And I don’t need a demonstration right now,” he added quickly.

Dia sighed and looked tired. “I take life from one place and smash it into another. That hurts. A lot. And buildings fall down. The end. Move on. What do you do?”

“I’m handy in a fight,” Arne responded. “I have access to people, things and information and I’m not a stranger to planning and executing hits of different types.”

“Thief, you say? Murderer for money?” Toog asked.

Arne looked at Toog for a moment. “You’re just sour because I called you a torturer, aren’t you?”

“Cheers.” Toog washed down another mug of alcohol.