Lillia’s palm drove into Arwin’s unprotected stomach. He let out a grunt of pain and stumbled back, shifting his weight to keep from falling. She spun, lowering her center of mass and sweeping her leg out to take his feet out from under him.

Arwin leapt over the attack and lunged at Lillia. She shot upright, grabbing a piece of scrap metal from the ground on her way up, and flicked it. The scrap struck him in the shoulder and bounced off harmlessly.

They both froze. Arwin let his hands drop.

“Could have been poisoned,” Lillia said as she straightened.

Arwin nodded and scratched at his chin. “Yeah. I guessed that much. That probably would have been a covered area if I were wearing armor, though.”

Rodrick, who stood in the corner of the smithy to observe them, nodded in agreement but raised a finger. “What if it had hit an unprotected area?”

“Good point,” Arwin admitted as he sat down on the edge of his anvil with a thoughtful frown. “Damn. There are just so many different angles to consider. More than I can possibly put into a single set of armor if I want to keep it relatively limited in power and avoid broadcasting the full range of my abilities to everyone in the kingdom.”

He and Lillia had been trying to pin down every trait Melissa’s armor would need to let her survive an assassin attack. Rodrick had been present for the whole of it, giving them suggestions and sharing all the information he knew on the assassins. They’d been at it for the past hour, running through every ability they’d seen the assassins display as well as a few extras just in case.

Unfortunately, as good of a warrior as Lillia was, it just wasn’t enough. She wasn’t an assassin. And, as useful as Rodrick was, knowledge wasn’t the same as experience. Arwin had a huge list of traits he wanted the armor to include, but he wasn’t sure which ones were the most important.

All they were doing was replicating the moves they’d seen the Falling Blade do. It was good, but even a tiny mistake could mean Melissa’s death. Good wasn’t enough.

“There’s just so much,” Arwin said, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know where to focus. You’re doing great. It’s just… not the same as actually fighting the Falling Blade. What if I focus on the wrong thing? This is like playing a guessing game when we speak the wrong language.”

“Yeah,” Lillia said. “I know what you mean. It’s too bad we didn’t leave any of the assassins alive. We could have interrogated them.”

“Too dangerous. We made the right choice killing them,” Rodrick said with a firm shake of his head. “With the poison they were using, one could have easily had a hidden weapon of some sort. That’s quite common. None of them were particularly strong, but what if they’d had a class that let them do… well, anything? Invisibility, poison mist, the list goes on. You don’t leave an assassin alive if you value your own life.”

Arwin pushed away from the anvil. Rodrick and Lillia looked to him. They’d gathered a lot of information over the course of the last hour. It had definitely been productive. And, although he had a lot to filter through and figure out, there was more to do than just determining what traits the armor needed. A lot more.

And, just like that, a thought struck him. It was so ludicrous that he should have laughed it off on the spot. Nobody in their right mind would have ever even considered it. But, the more Arwin considered it, the more potential it seemed to have.

A slow smile crossed his face. There was no reward without risk.

“I think this was more than enough to let me get started,” Arwin said. “I appreciate both of you. I think we should move on to the next stage. I’m going to need quite a few different materials. This isn’t going to be something I can make in one go. I’ll need to do some extensive testing. Finishing it in a week will be tight… but if you guys can get me everything I need, it’s possible.”

“Just give the order,” Rodrick said. “We’ve got your back.”

“I know,” Arwin said with a smile. “Thank you. We’re going to start with resilience. I’ve already got bits of chitin to work with, but I also want a way to store energy. I need gemstones. As many as you can get your hands on. While you’re at it, also keep an eye out for anything light. The armor can’t be too heavy. Oh, unique metals as well. I might need to use something nicer than the existing stuff I’ve worked with. Something discrete. Ask Madiv and Esmerelda to get their hands on that. And after that…”

***

Two days later.

“This is… odd,” Leena said, adjusting the black mask covering her mouth. She was perched on the edge of a rooftop in the dead of night, staring at the strangest job she’d ever seen.

“Tell me about it,” Riker agreed from beside her. His voice was a whisper on the wind, audible only to her ears. She could barely even make his concealed form in the darkness. The cheap enchantments covering the black cloth made him little more than a shadow. “You think the target is even going to show up?”

“How would I know?” Leena replied with a shake of her head. “The job makes no sense. I’m pretty sure the Guildmaster just took money from a loon. I mean — five minutes in the dead of night, but for three nights in a row? Does he expect us to fail?”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It’s certainly strange, but we’ve got our orders.” Riker’s form shifted ever so slightly in what Leena suspected was a shrug. “We do everything in our power to kill the man that walks into the square at midnight. Immediately stop all attempts and retreat after five minutes. Then do it again the next day, for a total of three days. That’s it. Nothing else matters.”

Yeah, but if we don’t kill him the first time, why would this guy be stupid enough to show up a second time, much less a third? If he’s somehow strong enough to beat both of us, then we’re dead. There’s no way we can come back and try again.

“Do you think someone’s trying to scam us?” Leena asked, tilting her head to the side. “They only paid for a single kill. Maybe they’ll be luring three different people here.”

“That will be for the Guildmaster to deal with. Our role is not to question orders. It is to kill.”

Leena nodded. Riker was right. She had a bad habit of overthinking things. That was what had landed her on an odd mission like this. Leena’s grip tightened on the blackened dagger at her side.

With any luck, we’ll just sleep the idiot and be on with our lives in a few minutes. Or he won’t even show up. That’ll be even —

“There,” Riker whispered.

Leena’s eyes shot to the corner of the cobblestone square below them. A large man stepped out from an alleyway and walked straight into the center of the square, stopping beside a greened fountain that hadn’t had flow in years.

He wore a full suit of completely mismatched armor. A silvered helm with two small horns at its sides sat upon his head, obscuring the majority of his face. His chestplate looked to be the new scale plate that had been growing more popular in Milten in the last week or so. The green scales had been tarnished and blackened in artistic patterns that resembled rippling waves. A small white gem glistened on either one of the armor’s shoulders and a larger blue one was embedded in the center of its chest.

The man’s greaves and gauntlets were both made of black metal that overlapped itself like the plates of an insect’s carapace. A crystal-clear gemstone was embedded in the center of each of his knees and at the back of his hands.

And, for some reason, he was completely barefoot.

“What the fuck?” Leena muttered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Riker whispered back. He rose slightly, his blades sliding soundlessly from their sheaths. “Let’s go.”

Leena rose as well. Even though they stood in plain sight, the darkness completely obscured their forms. She almost felt bad for the strange man in the street below. Leena generally made it a point not to get to know her targets too well.

That made it harder to forget their faces once they were dead.

She leapt from the rooftop, drawing her own daggers in the process. Riker was a shadow beside her as they both shot down toward their unsuspecting target.

The wind gathered around Leena as she fell, aiding her movements as she drove her daggers for the exposed parts of the man’s flesh. She’d killed more than a dozen targets with the very same blow, and this one would be no different.

Her blades carved down. Beside her, Riker struck as well. A pair of perfectly synchronized blows, both so silent and sudden that nobody would ever even get a chance to —

A howl split the night as a wall of wind slammed into Leena’s face with such intensity that her lips flapped and her eyes flared with pinpricks of pain. She hit the ground in a practiced roll and sprung to her feet, disbelief marring her features.

Riker rose just a few feet away from her, his longer sword held before him defensively. A chill ran down Leena’s spine and she lowered into a fighting stance of her own. They’d been stopped.

Their target had been ready for them.

“Is this a setup?” Leena hissed. “How did he know—”

“Focus on the mission,” Riker said, his voice flat.

Leena’s eyes flicked back to the armored man. He hadn’t made any move toward them. Instead, to her complete befuddlement, he’d pulled out a quill and a sheaf of papers.

“Wind… worked,” the man muttered under his breath. He finished writing and looked up at them. His face was completely cast in shadow, but the movement almost felt… expectant. “What are you waiting for? Get on with it.”

Leena didn’t need to be told twice. Shadows twisted up from the ground and she sank into them. One of the core skills of an assassin — [Shadow Walk]. Any assassin worth their salt mastered it long before anything else.

The world flashed by and she rose up beside the man. His bare heels were right in front of her, but she was no fool.

Anyone that walked around with such extensive armor and completely bare feet was definitely trying to bait her into attacking them. He probably had some form of skill that let him use them defensively — and an assassin was never predictable.

She drove her daggers for the joints of the armor in the back of his legs and activated [Piercing Strike]. Magical energy poured out of her and into the blades, sharpening their tips and increasing the speed of the blow.

A loud clang echoed out. Leena’s training kicked in and she hurled herself to the side to avoid a counter attack, but her mind was reeling. Her strike hadn’t penetrated the armor.

Impossible. I’ve ripped through solid steel with [Piercing Strike] before. How could I fail to cut through thin metal?

Whatever. As long as I have his attention, Riker will finish him off.

She hit the ground in a roll and sprung to her feet as a second clang rang out. Leena turned just in time to see the man holding his arm up, having blocked Riker’s strike with the palm of his hand.

The gemstones on his legs and palms were glowing a dim white. Leena grabbed a poisoned throwing blade from her kit. But, even as she went to throw it, a brilliant flash tore through the street.

The shadows were momentarily banished, preventing her from using [Shadow Walk]. Leena swore and jumped back, raising her hands defensively before her face.

No attack ever came. When she dropped her hands, the man was still standing in the center of the square and writing on his notepad once more. Riker had retreated as well. He was equally uninjured.

Disbelief slammed into Leena like a hammer. The armor on the man’s chest was whole. A huge scar ran along the center of the chestplate, but it hadn’t been cut in two.

Riker’s [Shadow Slash] is nearly twice as strong as my own attack. How is that armor still in one piece? It’s enchanted. It has to be.

“Defense… not strong enough,” the armored man muttered to himself, still writing in his notebook. “Increase durability. Gems… need to hold more power. Got the fast activation, but effect didn’t last long enough. Also blinded me. Need better eye protection.”

“What is this?” Leena whispered, a flicker of worry passing through her. She’d fought a lot of people before, but she’d never met someone that didn’t even seem to care that they were getting attacked.

The man looked over to her and tapped his bare foot on the ground impatiently. “Come on. You’ve got a few minutes left of work, don’t you? No slacking.”

And, with those words, Leena’s blood turned to ice. A cardinal rule of the guild had somehow been broken. They had an information leak.

Gods above. He knew about the contract.