Will

His ass ached from sitting on hard tiles. His bad eye itched the way it always did. His good eye was sore from squinting so long in the dark. His breath was sticky from the humid air. He had bug bites in a hundred different places. That was how Will kept his vigil.

At least it wasn’t cold. Stakeouts in winter were always the worst. Little mercies, he told himself. Silver linings.

A stubborn drizzle started up. He pretended it didn't exist.

From the roof of the four-story tenement building, he could easily see over the ivy-covered walls that surrounded the rented townhouse of Philly Upnorth, the Stormfront merchant that Will had been contracted to kill.

He seemed a decent enough fellow, all things considered. Staking out a target was a strangely intimate thing, and Will had spent the last two days making himself familiar with every part of Philly’s routine. Both of those days, he had visited the markets bright and early to buy flowers for his wife, whom he had brought with him from Stormfront.

As he appeared to have a fondness for visiting upscale Topside taverns, Will was certain that he could have found an opportunity to slip something into Upnorth’s drink or applied a bit of contact poison to a surface the man was sure to touch.

But the lord had insisted on making it messy, so he would give Brimstone exactly that.

The three-story townhouse was mostly turned down at this time of night, windows dark and still. The building currently had eleven inhabitants: six guards—two Laborers to show off, and four somewhat more inexpensive Builders—three servants that doubled on both cooking and cleaning duties, Upnorth himself, and his wife Irina.

Philly himself was a Level 11 Trader, but after a thorough Identify scan while the man was asleep, he had concluded that he was unlikely to be a problem, given that his build was not at all geared toward combat. His guard sergeant was one of the Builders, a Level 10. He was the only one Will had to really keep a close eye on. The rest were non-issues.

A Detect [Life] showed him that most of the household were quietly tucked in their beds, vertical smears of light showing through the walls on various floors. The guards shared two rooms on the first floor, the servants occupied a third, and the merchant and his woman had a master bedroom on the third, though he gathered that Mr. Upnorth had landed himself in the doghouse over something, because they were sleeping in separate rooms tonight.

Two of the Builders were on duty. One sat in a lantern-lit guard booth just outside the wrought-iron gates, there to turn away anyone who might wish to disturb his master at this ungodly hour. The other patrolled the grounds, scanning for those with more unsavory intentions.

If only they knew.

One of the servants was still awake—making herself a late-night snack in the kitchen, it seemed to him based on the miming of her ghostly silhouette. He could wait for her to fall asleep, but he figured it was best to take his chances now, as the other servants would soon be up and about anyway to begin preparing food for the household. He did not envy cooks—by profession, not Profession—the ungodly hours they had to keep. Then again, they were not sitting on a roof in the middle of the night with a numb ass and a swarm of mosquitoes for company, but that was another matter.

Groaning, Will slowly began to work some feeling back into his stiff body, slate tiles shifting beneath him. He slid down the east side of the roof, out of sight of the townhouse, and caught himself at the edge by slotting his heels into the metal rain gutter. He lit a cigarette off a match and sat there for a bit, letting the smoke in his lungs settle his nerves a bit.

Silver linings.

It was a nice couple of minutes, but like all good things, it ended too quickly. Flicking the damp butt into the exposed drainpipe a few feet over, Will clambered back to the top of the roof where his rifle case lay propped against the chimney. He opened it, removed the long-barreled firearm—pointedly ignoring the sword that also called to him from within the padded box—and attached scope, then silencer, then magazine. He draped himself on his belly with arms and rifle propped on the peak of the slanted roof.

He put his good eye to the scope and took his time lining up the aim, sliding across oceans of black before finding the irregular pool of lantern light that marked the guard booth.

With a sustained cast of Detect [Life] active, lining up a clean shot through the guard booth’s thin wall was not difficult. Humming softly to himself, he cycled a bullet into the chamber, then squeezed the trigger. The shot that rang out—muffled by both silencer and his Light Touch passive—was still loud, but sounded more like someone clapping their hands together hard and less like the tell-tale whipcrack of a high-caliber firearm.

The Builder inside the booth slumped forward as indicated by his shadow double, struck clean on the dome. Will didn’t usually try for headshots, as they were less consistent than aiming for center mass, but he did not like the idea of a wounded man screaming for help and waking up the whole house. He was certain that he could go through all those guards even if they were awake, alert, and armed, especially with his brand new semblance to tip the scales, but it was an unnecessary risk regardless.

Though the shot itself was muffled, the sound of wood splintering and a body falling over attracted the attention of the other guard, whose bright afterimage began making its way toward the front, soon rounding the corner of the building.

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Will cycled the bolt with a smooth, practiced motion, lined up another shot, fired. Guard number two fell like a string-cut puppet, silent in the dark.

Sighing, Will pulled himself up, gathered spent bullet casings, and packed them away with everything else as he unloaded the rifle and disassembled its attachable components. He hesitated only a moment before taking out the cursed saber, strapping it on as he stood. It seemed to tug unnaturally at his side, seeking his attention like an insistent, psychopathic child pulling on his shirt hem.

“Just a minute,” Will grumbled, flipping the rifle case shut with his foot. “You’ll get to eat soon.”

Leaving the case on the roof to pick up later, he leapt down to the street, wind rushing and setting his clothes fluttering. Before he could break his legs off the cobbles, he used Repel to kill his momentum, landing in a smooth crouch instead.

Brimstone was about to get the mess he had ordered.

* * *

Sam

Sam pursued the Trader across the ring, quickly closing on him. Serene had said that Jax would want to stall her out, so she would make sure not to give him that opportunity.

It had started to rain, just enough to dampen the sand and give her feet a little extra traction.

Despite being blind, the man seemed to have no trouble keeping track of her as he backed away—not that it would help him very much, as he was not nearly quick enough to evade her.

Closing the last bit of distance, her opponent more or less pinned back against the pit’s rounded log wall, Sam led with a flying knee.

“Peace!” Jax called, and Sam suddenly found her legs seizing up, unwilling to do what she asked. Instead, she landed awkwardly and staggered headfirst into the wall as the Trader spun away. She regained her balance quickly and spun around only to feel a hot streak across her cheek, and realized a moment later that he had slapped her.

It barely hurt. Clearly, the attack had been meant to annoy, not harm. But boy, was it annoying.

She was already familiar with the Peace skill—the slavers had used it on her to keep her from fighting back while they captured her, what felt like years ago even though it had only been days. From there, inferring its effect was not difficult. As soon as she felt the pacifying effect wear off after a few seconds, she went after Jax again, this time leading with a safer jab.

“Peace!” he said again—and again, Sam locked up, her fist stopping short of its target.

While she was still unable to fight back, Jax pressed a hand flat to her face and said: “Illuminate.”

White light filled Sam’s vision before she had time to blink, followed by hot, searing pain, as though boiling water had been poured over her eyes. Snarling as she backed away, she did not see the slaps coming, a quick one-two.

Sam blinked and wiped furiously at teary eyes, but the white in her vision was slow to fade, eventually darkening into an angry red. Her sight returned in blurry, erratic patches that served to disorient her more than anything.

“Power Word [Confusion].”

Sam’s stomach lurched, her vision spun and pulsed with color. As soon as she tried to take a step, the ground seemed to shift impossibly beneath her, like she was on an unsteady sea, and she fell to her knees.

Serene had warned her about this one—Power Word. It could inflict whatever mental effect the user wanted onto a person, but it only worked as long as the recipient was already attuned to the effect being inflicted on them.

Shaky and still unable to see more than general movements, Sam slowly fought her way back to her feet, tears streaking her cheeks and a trail of queasy drool extending from her bottom lip. She tried to follow Serene's advice on repelling mental attacks, imagined herself inside a house with the door locked and the windows shuttered.

“You little shit,” she spat, turning blindly around and around to try and catch some vague glimpse of her opponent. She couldn’t even hear him over the din of the crowd. “C’mere man, I just wanna talk to you—my fist has something it really wants to say to your face.”

Another slap streaked across her cheek, then she heard: “Power Word [Rage].”

Whatever focus or composure she had been able to scrabble together was instantly shattered, drowned in a sea of burning, thumping red. Her heart raced until she felt it beating like a jackhammer on the inside of her ribcage, and she tasted blood as she bit through her own gums with grinding molars.

Whatever she had been thinking about a second ago was no longer important, and the only thing that mattered was finding the miserable rat fuck named Jax and smashing him to a bloody pulp.

Flinging herself blindly in the direction of the last slap, she went tumbling when she struck nothing, was back on her feet in less than a second. She swung, got slapped again, aimed a kick in that direction, hit nothing. Then, as soon as her vision began to return, another “Illuminate!” plunged her back into bright oblivion. She punched and kicked and tackled the air, drool foaming at the corners of her mouth, cheeks aching with how tightly her facial muscles were pulled.

Every missed attack only stoked her anger, and the occasional slap that came her way wasn’t doing a bad job of it either.

Then, suddenly, she felt a lucky spinning back fist connect with something that was simultaneously hard and flabby. A face. Bones crunched satisfyingly. With a howl of sadistic glee, Sam leapt in the direction she had sent her opponent, found clothing under her fingers, and dragged herself into a mount. She did not need to see to pummel the person beneath her with elbows and hammer fists until resistance ceased, and the weakly flailing arms that opposed her fell away.

Then, fist raised over her head, poised to continue until she powdered the man’s skull, Sam halted. The fog slowly began to clear. Her vision was returning, too, and she began to make out the bloodied, swollen face of the Trader, his blindfold torn off and discarded off to one side.

He breathed raggedly, blowing tiny droplets of bloody spittle with each exhale, and his eyes wheeled about beneath stitched-shut lids as he straddled the line between waking and unconsciousness. She had knocked at least a few of his teeth in, and his nose was folded nearly flush with his cheekbone.

“Ooh,” Sam panted, working her fist, fighting the urge to let it find its mark one more time, “that was a close one.”

“Illu—”

Sam yanked the man up by his shoulders and knocked skulls with him. “Don’t do that,” she said lightly, and let the now unconscious man fall back to the sand. “Give it a rest for a minute, will you?”

The horn soon sounded to mark her victory. Once attendants came to tend to Jax and confirmed that he would live, Sam stood to greet the deluge of presents flying in from the audience members ringing the edge of the pit. This time, they had prepared better material, trying to hit her with actual rotten fruit and sackcloth bundles filled with what appeared to be cow manure, if the smell was anything to go by.

She laughed, arms outstretched, face up to the rain. "Doesn't look like such a big tough murderer anymore, does he?" she shouted. "Almost looks cute when he's sleeping like that!"

She would have liked to keep her taunting going a while longer, but she knew it was probably time to bow out when a fist-sized rock whizzed past her ear. Through a bit of nimble dodging she managed to stay unsullied, and hit a quick victory pose before capering through the open doors of the tunnel she had entered from.