Oren scowled, leaping back from the wickedly sharp knife that had been disturbingly on course to impale his abdomen. 

It would be a simple job, they said. Don't worry, they said. You won't even have to use your magic, they promised. Nothing would go wrong, obviously, and even if it did, he'd have two powerhouse adventurers there to back him up. 

That's how Gideon had sold him on taking the job, anyway.

Now he was considering all the things he could do to Gideon to thank him in wonderfully graphic detail.

"Dammit!" Oren hissed, clutching a hand to his suddenly searing arm; the knife nicked his bicep, slashing a grim, crimson line right through the mark adorning his skin. Blood welled up between his fingers, trickling down the lines of his palm. It hurt like a bitch. "Goddammit, Hawthorne, where the hell are--"

The thief in front of him crumpled to the ground, struck unconscious by a hefty blow to the back of his head, and in his place stood a tall, blue-haired man who smiled the instant he saw Oren's slack-jawed expression.

"You called?" Hawthorne beamed, lowering his shield. More blood now coated its intricately-carved surface, blotting out the silver, swirling designs Hawthorne was always tracing while he polished it. 

That shield would be in dire need of a cleaning after today.

"...I was fine," Oren muttered, and without preamble, he shuffled forward to latch onto Hawthorne's arm. At the brief contact, Oren's features began to morph in lightning-quick succession until he stood as a carbon copy of Hawthorne, blinding smile and all. A shield — an exact replica of Hawthorne's — formed in a burst of red sparks, settling comfortably on Oren's arm. Perhaps he'd play defense for a while, allow Hawthorne and Sia to finish clearing away the scraps.

He blinked.

Right. Sia. He hadn't seen her in — too long.

"Where's Sia?" Oren asked, looking rather disinterested in the answer.

"Around. I think. Last I saw of her, she was being chased down a side street by... three guys?"

"And you... didn't think to go after her?"

"I tried," Hawthorne retorted, smacking a hand to his chest for emphasis. "But then I noticed you were in trouble, so I just--"

"I wasn't in any trouble!"

Hawthorne might have argued, but the moment of peace was shattered by a desperate lunge from one of the remaining thieves. Hawthorne's arm came up automatically and the man's face slammed into the broad side of his shield at a breakneck pace. The sickening crunch of his nose made Oren wince, though he quickly looked away before Hawthorne could take notice of it.

Sighing, Hawthorne ordered Oren to locate Sia. He'd go himself, he said, but... well, he was having fun on cleanup duty. Or, at least, that's what Oren gathered from the brightening of Hawthorne's eyes once he'd turned back to the ragged group of thieves.

As there was no arguing with Hawthorne when he'd entered "battle mode," Oren didn't waste his breath, and simply turned around in a slow circle, eyeing all the streets that branched away from theirs. Sia could have vanished down any one of them, and he couldn't spot any sort of trail to give him a feasible hint. Blood would have been the most obvious, so he supposed it was a good sign that no crimson drops marred the cobblestone path. Oren followed his instincts instead, slipping around the corner of a weather-beaten storefront, his boots slapping against the stone with rhythmic ease. He almost scowled again; why did Hawthorne have to be in such damn good shape?

Shadows crawled along the road, seeming to lengthen with every passing second, swallowing up more and more earth. Sunset was coming on fast, and soon they'd be hunting down these thieves in the dark. Oren didn't like their odds if it came to that; Hawthorne was deadly accurate with his shields, and Sia could handle a load of enemies at once, but all of them were human — it wasn't as though they had night vision. And if Sia extended the scope of her magic to include the entire town, she'd either collapse from the effort, earn herself a raging mob of cranky citizens, or manage to knock out both Hawthorne and Oren in the process. And while he could probably use the rest, getting forcefully knocked into unconsciousness wasn't his idea of fun.

"Sia!" Oren hissed, glancing hastily from side to side; the light was fading, and he could barely see ten feet into the adjacent alleyways on either side of him. "Sia, are you there or what? Don't make me yell, dammit, I'm not in the mood!"

Another minute of nothing-to-show-for-it searching later, and Oren had managed to convince himself of something.

He was going to have to yell, his mood be damned.

"Sia!"

He waited, counted his heartbeat, drew in an irritated breath.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Nothing.

He could already feel the beginnings of strain of his magical reserve, the slow-building ache in his center that grew in intensity the longer he held onto Hawthorne's form. It would be a while yet before he was forced to release it, but he didn't think he could afford the distraction when he hardly knew how to handle Hawthorne's shield to begin with.

"Sia, if you don't answer me in the next two seconds, I'm leaving your ass behind! And if you're dead, then I'm not gonna be the one to drag your body back to the guild!"

An empty threat at best. Sure, Hawthorne would likely volunteer to lug home a deceased teammate, but that was besides the point. If something had really happened to Sia, something lethal enough for her not to be able to even cry for help...

Oren swallowed thickly, shaking his head to cast away the morbid thought. Hawthorne would chide him on his negativity if he was privy to it; and he basically was, given that Oren had access to all of his thoughts now that he'd taken on his form for a little while. Sometimes Oren found himself wanting to smack Hawthorne for his constant cheeriness; now it was a welcome distraction.

The next alley was empty, as had all the previous ones he'd stopped to peer into. But with the waning light, he found he had to enter at least the mouth of the alley to make sure nothing lay in its depths. He squinted, trying to see past the thickening shadows; he could make out the vague shapes of refuse and what might've been the outline of scampering rodents, but nothing that even remotely resembled his teammate. He wasn't sure whether to take that as a good or bad sign. Good felt a little too optimistic (Hawthorne's thoughts seeping into his own head space, possibly); bad was just... bad.

Gods, he wasn't Ilias, even if he didn't give half a damn what happened to his fellow guildmates most of the time. His sanity was relatively intact; he shouldn't have been this morbid.

Oren stopped, head swiveling to track what he thought was the sound of muffled shuffling - footsteps, approaching from the expanse of shadows stretching out before him. He took an instinctive step back, drawing Hawthorne's shield up and in front of him; his fingers flexed, straining the worn leather of his gloves. The thieves had been numerous, and it wasn't impossible to think that a few had slipped past Hawthorne's guard; or, even more likely, whoever had been pursuing Sia could have doubled back once they'd finished with her.

Oren bit his lip; he tasted copper.

Now was not the time for his pointlessly pessimistic musings.

That ache was growing stronger, a reminder that while he currently wore the guise of Starry Rose's beloved Thorne, his skills did not extend to a mastery of Hawthorne's abilities. The shield hung like head weight from his arm, and it was only Hawthorne's inherent strength that prevented it from falling from Oren's grasp entirely. Hawthorne himself would have been a much better candidate to take on whatever emerged from the shadows.

Dammit.

In the next heartbeat, Oren threw down his shield, knowing how useless it would be, and raised his fists, internally cursing up a storm. Hawthorne would pay for this, goddammit, he would; and Gideon, too, the conniving bastard, for setting him up on this job in the first place. Seriously, why did he agree to this again? He wasn't strapped for cash (he thought, anyway) and cabin fever hadn't been setting in. Just how stupid was he--

The figure ambled forward into the rapidly fading light, and in an instant Oren's shoulders slumped and he smacked a palm to his forehead. His forehead, to be precise; the surprise had shaken him from his transformation.

"Sia," he snapped, and the girl lifted her head, fuchsia eyes wide. She looked exhausted, her usually pinkish hue bleached out, eyes dull and lifeless, but there wasn't a scratch on her. No telltale signs of a struggle that Oren could see. And that pissed him off. He'd been worried - wait, no, of course he hadn't. But if he had been worried, it would've been for nothing. "Where the hell have you been? Hawthorne had to take care of the rest of those freaks himself."

He blatantly ignored the fact that he could've been helping out if he wasn't so... non-combative.

"I thought it might be better to lead some of them away," Sia said quietly, and as she spoke, a film seemed to slide from her eyes, giving way to a thoughtful gleam that bled through the tiredness. "We would have been cornered and overrun if we all fought in that cramped area."

Oren blinked, mentally reviewing the state of the fight before he'd noticed that Sia had disappeared. There weren't that many thieves, were there? Whenever he'd looked away from his single opponent, Hawthorne had dropped another lowlife, but then, another one had quickly jumped in to replace them. The crime ring they'd tracked had a far-reaching influence, from the information Gideon had given them, so it made sense that they had more than just a few petty thieves among their ranks. But their sheer numbers hadn't struck him as problematic when they'd first infiltrated their hideout.

Wow. What an idiot he was.

"...Are you alright?" he asked gruffly, swiping a hand across his face to hide the scowl that tugged at his lips.

Sia looked herself over, coming to the same conclusion that he had: Physically, she was fine. It was her magical energy that was running low, causing her shoulders to hunch and her hands to faintly tremble where they gripped her upper arms.

She nodded.

"Just need some rest," she confirmed with a soft smile.

Hawthorne found them not long after the exchange, shambling together back down the twisting side streets of Nemia, the town that had practically begged Starry Rose to rid them of their thief problem. Hawthorne explained that he'd run across the mayor of the town, the one who'd originally sent out the request, as he was tracking them down, and once he'd told the man that the last of the thieves were taken care of, the mayor had given him their reward.

With a sheepish smile, Hawthorne dropped the meager bag of coins into Oren's hands.

Nemia was not, in fact, a very rich city, and the thievery hadn't exactly helped matters.

Another convenient detail Gideon seemed to have left out of the report he presented to them.

Oren crushed the bag in his grip, swearing up and down that Gideon was going to get it. Whatever it was. He hadn't decided yet.

Sia and Hawthorne exchanged a look, each cracking small smiles at Oren's display; the boy's bravado was far from unexpected.

Together, the group set off for home, with Oren ranting on and on about what he planned to do to Gideon (and Cross, for that matter, because he was somehow sure the irritating flirt had something to do with this, because he always managed to piss Oren off one way or the other), and his two companions indulging his tirades with subtle laughter that he convinced himself wasn't at his expense.