Her hands already swirling with fire, Pyre swung the door open. It rattled with a hard clack against the wall.

The room beyond was completely entrenched in darkness. Pyre’s fire illuminated just a small halo of objects in front of them: half-broken chairs, more bins and buckets.

Shit, Akemi thought. How are we supposed to communicate in the dark if we can’t see?

Hearing no obvious reaction to their entrance, the two women stilled. Akemi heard Pyre ruffle through her backpack for something.

And then Pyre—aka, the woman who thinks of everything—raised a blank scroll of parchment paper to her face, and illuminated it faintly with the flame in her hand.

Words effortlessly etched themself onto the page.

I don’t think anyone’s down here. Good.

The chimeras don’t need light to see, but there should still be torches down here that the old, pre-bat government installed. I can light them and give us a better view.

Akemi nodded, and the two of them began to feel their way slowly across the room. The flickering flame bore long shadows across the stone floors, illuminating shattered glass, dead vermin, and—every so often—a collection of bones. Very human looking bones.

Whoosh. Fire burst from the head of an old torch, causing Akemi to snap her head toward the source of the sound. She found Pyre standing on what looked like stilts, and holding her burning palm to a series of small torches near the ceiling, flaring them to life.

Huh. Those must be the Inserts of Lengthening.

A criss-cross pattern of wood emerged from her shoes, cradling the bottom of her feet. They looked miserable to balance on, but as Pyre shuffled from torch to torch, she didn’t wobble in the least. The magic must help stabilize you.

Either that, or Pyre was a retired circus performer.

She lit the torches one by one until the space was no longer a midnight abyss. The room glowed softly now, bathed in light like a living room with a roaring fireplace. Akemi’s eyes searched immediately for exits, and found two. Both in the form of staircases, just a few feet meters away. One went up, the other went down. Both ended in large, ornamental doors. True palace doors.

Behind there is where the real fun begins. She smirked.

But first, a little snooping was in order. She swung open—as quietly as she could manage, which, telling by Pyre’s face, left much to be desired—every single cupboard, plucked the top off every box, and inspected every little nook and cranny the room had to offer.

She couldn’t help it. She was a slave to completionism.

Tragically, she found a grand assortment of nothing. So many pretty jars with nothing inside them. Not even a few gold coins or a useless crafting material.

The developers must have had budget cuts.

Stop making so much noise, was what Pyre’s passive aggressive parchment exclaimed as Akemi was inspecting her final corner of the room. The fire-headed woman’s disapproving frown only further rammed home the point. Especially near the doorways. They’ll hear.

Akemi was about to reluctantly comply when her hand grazed something strange. She had been running her fingers across the wall, searching for any loose ends, and sure enough—here was one. The texture of the section didn't match the rest of the wall at all. It was almost… soft.

She pried at it some more, and discovered a small, fabric knob. Pulling it revealed a secret compartment, as wide as a shelf. Several other shelves were stacked upon it, opening in sequence. The contents made her eyes widen, and vindication welled in her stomach.

Jackpot.

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On top of several interesting potions—probably poison, knowing who ran the place—were several pairs of cloaks and hoods, the same kind that the chimeras wore. Perfect disguises.

She grabbed the potions first, adding them to her inventory.

You have acquired [antivenom]

You have acquired [antivenom]

Just as she was about to try and communicate her findings to Pyre, a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Damn spikerats must have gotten in through the sewers again.”

The voice was gritty and low, echoing from behind the door on the higher floor.

Her adrenaline spiking, Akemi whipped around to find Pyre already holding a page of parchment up for her to see. Her eyes were wide, urgent. Her body rigid.

Hide. Then shoot.

Obliging without question, Akemi darted behind one of the ransacked cupboards. The cupboard was about half her height, so she could duck down behind it easily. She saw Pyre do the same; the other woman lay flat behind a wooden chest, her palms open and already sizzling.

The door flew open not a moment later.

The first thing she saw was its blue, hairless knees. The shallow storage chamber was much too short for it to enter at full height, so it bent down, its hooded head knocking against the ceiling as it did so. It made a high-pitched chirping noise of disgruntlement.

Mieki | Level 20 Blood Knight

“Agh, why is it so bright?” he grunted, rubbing the top of his head. “Can’t see a thing.”

Akemi gritted her teeth. Level 20. That’s four higher than Pyre’s. The number pulsated in the front of her vision like a warning. Chicken skin ran up her arms. Twenty was a formidable level on any enemy, but combined with a class name like Blood Knight…

Despite her brain’s best efforts to keep her frozen in place, she knew she couldn’t afford to dwell for even a second longer—Mieki’s finely-tuned ears would pick up their stuttering heartbeats and shallow breaths soon enough. Waiting too long to act was a death sentence in itself.

She lifted her head and arms above the cupboard, and thrust out her palms.

“[Orb of Pestilent Bloodlust]!”

Six orbs of hornets spawned in the air around Mieke in a circle, popping up in sequence. He whipped around, confused, as they latched onto him with a ferocity. Stinging and biting and buzzing like a demonic swarm of bees.

The chimera screeched, and it was an utterly ear-bleeding sound. His wings fluttered helplessly against the ceiling as the hornets picked his cloak, then his fur, then his skin, apart. His feet were slow and useless in his bent over position, his knees unable to squat without throwing off his balance. The dimensions of the room had turned out to be their greatest advantage.

Still, he lasted much longer than Akemi had hoped for; even with the six packs of hornets swirling around him, he managed to get a grip on the longsword on his hip, and thrusted it forward. A red, crackling half-moon of raw energy emerged from its tip, shooting headfirst through the hornet spheres—blowing the insects to dust—and throttling directly towards Akemi.

She leaped out of the way at the last second, watching in her periphery as the red curve of power tore through everything in its path, halving cupboards, obliterating boxes, until it finally left a wide, angry crack in the wall behind it, blowing out half of the torches.

Doing a push up onto her knees, Pyre called out a spell that Akemi didn’t recognize—“[Weakness Budgeting]!”—and then watched as Mieki faltered, falling to his knees. The tip of his sword buried itself into the ground, and he leaned his forehead onto it, gurgling. His skin was splotchy, his cloak in tatters. Fur lay in patches on the floor.

Despite his worsened state, he was still breathing. A fact Akemi did not take kindly to.

“What are you doing? Fireball him, finish him off!” she called out, lungs straining. She had no Mana left. The task of taking him down was left to Pyre.

“Fireball him? Have you forgotten the point of this entirely?” Pyre said in a harsh whisper before lunging at Mieki. “I need,”—she jumped upwards, her hand poised to strike—“to finish this quietly.”

Her fingers, splayed sideways, landed on his temple with an unassuming amount of force. To Akemi’s surprise—and utter joy—the move slammed his skull straight onto the hilt of his sword, cracking satisfyingly.

*You have defeated a level 20 Blood Knight - 1100 xp gained*

The experience screen flashing in front of her face, Akemi staggered upwards, wobbling as she regained her balance. She could still feel the sound of her heart thumping in her ears—the magic from his sword had nearly cut her in two, after all. It had been a matter of millimeters.

“Have I forgotten the point of this, what did you mean by that? Sure, a fireball would have been louder, but it was never going to be a quiet kill,” she said, slightly incensed, but more so mystified as she stood over the chimera’s dead, kneeling body. “He’s dead. Experience gained. First floor guard taken care of. Now, we just need to—”

Pyre gestured aggressively at his tattered clothing strewn across the floor.

“Put on his clothes?” she whispered, frowning deeply. “I was hoping you’d be smart enough to fire an attack that didn’t tear our potential disguise to shreds.”

A grin crept up Akemi’s cheeks.

Ah.

“What are you smiling like that for?” Pyre grumbled.

Without another word, Akemi returned to the secret wall-compartment, yanked it open, and carried back two pairs of robes in pristine condition.

And, man, she had felt the hot rush of battle, the indescribable high of a well-executed kill, but none of it came close to the joy she felt seeing Pyre’s face.

“Don’t worry your little head about it,” she said, handing a fully-assembled robe to Pyre, who stared at her, stunned. “Luckily, I think of everything.”