Both the mayor and the wizard were awake and waiting for Saren when he got back.

The guards ushered him into the bungalow without ceremony, and he found himself being led to the large sitting room of the house. The mayor usually preferred to meet guests in the opulent dining hall and ply them with booze and fine food, but that particular room had been quite thoroughly destroyed by the stranger - Saren and the guard leading him passed by it on the way, and the carnage was still exactly as it had been hours ago. Likely Sarketh was putting off the cleanup until Arvane had seen it for himself.

The sitting room was a smaller but cozier place, with several coffee tables and several luxurious leather chairs around them. A fire crackled merrily in the hearth, emanating welcoming warmth. Sarketh occupied one of the armchairs, and Thaelven was standing leaning against a wall, arms crossed across his chest with his magic staff close by, standing upright on the floor as usual. The guard bowed and left, and the mayor gestured his guest to take a seat.

"Your new friend really did a number on the dining room, huh?" Saren grinned as he plopped himself down on the soft cushioned leather.

The ornately carved dining table and its chairs had been a point of pride for the city's lord - the wood was from a Healing Polycress, a species that was protected almost everywhere in the world. Felling a single tree of its kind guaranteed a death sentence in many countries. As its name implied, the tree had healing properties, and not in the sense that its parts could be used in potions and such - it was an actual healing tree. It could not cure disease or regrow limbs or even make wounds close up, at least not by itself. But the healing process for many curable maladies could be accelerated by it, greatly speeding up the patient's recovery. The best hospitals all had at least one. Limonium, the capital city of Kylea, had a world-renowned House of Healing with seven of the largest and oldest-known Healing Polycresses in the world.

Once the tree was chopped and dead though, it had no more power, save for the fact that its wood was quite resistant to rot, and thanks to its dark brown hue and color, very pretty to look at. Naturally, this meant that all the rich assholes in the world wanted furniture made from Healing Polycress timber. The resultant overharvesting had left it very close to extinction, and given the fact that the species took several decades to mature and gain its magical properties, there were very few left. Saren himself had seen only one in his entire life. The mayor had skirted the law of the land by claiming that the wood for the table was harvested from inside a Living Lair, but whether or not this was actually true was anyone's guess.

Sarketh wasn’t amused. "Can I ask why you didn't step in?"

"I was knocked over by the shockwave, just like all the guards. When I recovered he was going out the window, and I figured you'd want me to follow him and report back." Saren sat back, put his right leg over his left knee, took out a dagger from one of the many sheathes on his person, and began cleaning his nails with it. Most rogues preferred to wear normal outfits and pass for something other than what they were, but not him. A dark elf dressed in black with flexible leather armor, he looked every bit like the assassin he was. "I think he heard me once when I tripped on a rock, but I was invisible and he saw nothing."

"He left town, then?"

Saren nodded. "Through the southeast gate. Took the path to the Wilds."

"Good. We may get out of all this yet."

"I still think you should've sent me instead. Those are my teammates out there."

"I know. But you have work to do here. It's time to deal with our problem once and for all."

"You're letting me kill him?"

"Not yet."

"Simply killing him won't accomplish anything." Thaelven said, the same argument that he had repeated many times over the years. Both the mayor and the wizard had suspected for a long while now that someone, or perhaps even many someones, were pulling Arvane's strings, which in turn meant getting rid of him would only result in another taking his place. This was the reason why they had been plotting for so long without actually doing anything.

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Saren was one of the seniormost members of the Ragged Blades - he'd been part of the team since before they even had a name as a proper warband. Three years ago, mage Thaelven had approached them for a contract out here in the Wilderness. By then they had a reputation for being reliable, and Sarketh was collecting a small group of trustworthy allies. They'd worked under exclusive contract for about a year before being entrusted with the truth. Saren, who was the Blades' rogue, had been pushing for the simple-and-straightforward solution ever since. It couldn't be helped: he was an assassin, so when he encountered a problem he assassinated it. Nature of the beast.

He'd been denied though - until now. What the mayor had left out of his negotiations with Rama was just how badly he needed the man's help. Jiru's arrival and arrest had set off a chain of events they could no longer control. The moment Thaelven had figured out that the newcomer was from another universe, handing him over to Arvane was no longer an option. Whatever the merchant (and the people behind him) wanted from the outworlder, the wizard insisted, they could not have it. Something had spooked the sorcerer bad, and he considered it too big a risk.

Since the mayor relied on his wizard as his chief confidant, advisor and administrator - and the fact that pissing of a mage of Thaelven's caliber was just a very bad idea in and of itself - that left Sarketh with the unenviable option of finally forcing a confrontation that he had avoided for years, an option that was made all the more worse because the Blades had been sent away to raid the Hidden Lair. When Sarketh had reached out via magical communication asking them to come back, there had been no response, much to his panic. That left Saren as the only member of the warband in town, thanks to the fact that he had been recuperating from an injury when the rest of his team had set out for the raid.

All of Rahken Sarketh's choices were crushing down on him now. His mistake in accepting the help of a man that he was now beholden to and wanted to get away from, his ambition and corruption, his hesitance to simply force a fight, his pure greed in wanting to get his hands on the loot of a Hidden lair, his neglect of the city's administration which had allowed corrupt or incompetent people to be put in charge, and as a result, his lack of control over his own town - they had all collapsed on him like so much debris shaken loose by an earthquake, trapping the mayor more and more.

Saren could see his happy-go-lucky demeanor beginning to break. Had Saren been a betting man - and he wasn't; as many vices as he had, he had no taste for gambling away his money - he would have put his coin on the mayor losing the upcoming bout. He would have even abandoned the 'cause' in question, had he not had his own friends to worry about.

"If I'm not killing him, then what do you need me for?"

"First we need to discredit him, push him into a corner where he has no choice but to confront us in a straight up fight."

"And that means inflicting losses on him without implicating us." Thaelven explained.

"Which is where you come in." Sarketh smiled.

"Sabotage." Something you can easily pin on someone else, like say an escaped prisoner who had been captured based on information provided by Arvane? It would be the easiest thing to simply claim Rama was out there, exacting vengeance.

"Sabotage, arson, explosives, whatever gets it done. Not your specialty I know, but I have no doubt you will rise to the occasion."

"Oh, I will. You can count on that."

"I do. Start with his businesses. At least two of them should not survive the night. At some point we should hit his manor outside town as well. I'm giving you free reign. By the time he comes back, there should be nothing left of his assets."

Music to my ears.

That was how, while Jiru was riding across the Wild, Saren Yored got to work. He hit Arvane's brewery first, because it was the easiest target, and just past midnight the building and its premises went up in flames. The fire wagons rang their bells and rushed to help, but there was no point in pouring water on (or throwing water spells at) flames that were burning alcohol - like a grease fire, water only helped it spread. They'd need vast quantities of sand to smother the burn, which they did not have. A pyromancer was brought in to help, but by then there was a veritable inferno, too big to control, and the best she could do was rescue a couple of the workers who had been trapped within.

So the fire burned for several hours, well into the day. Saren did not wait around to see that. He had vanished right after doing the deed, moving on to his next target. He intended to make sure that by the time those flames burned themselves out, things would have changed very drastically for poor Arvane.

After all, he was just getting started.