Fiora Tenia stood among a garden of sunflowers, plotting a kidnapping.

Her target was a man named Nerium Destralia, the head of the Destralia militia-family of Llevelwyn. Yes that’s right, militia-family. Meaning everyone in the militia was related or married, and this guy was the head of the house. Llevelwyn sure was full of weirdos.

But anyway, a couple high paying customers had approached Fiora, and her associate Asla two verdants prior, asking for the man to be delivered to them alive. She was to bring him to an airship docked just outside Llevelwyn’s capital, Port Valenia, upon the eighth phase of the pale.

At the moment, she was just north of the city, hiding away in the sunflower gardens kept on the Destralia family estate. They glowed blue, and smelled of honey and vanilla and all sorts of other inviting scents. Asla would have adored them. Too bad he’d come to her last pale, the pale right before the operation, to quit on her.

It really threw a wrench in her plans to be honest, but Fiora was never a woman to back down. If she had to capture a high profile militia-family-leader-guy on her own then so be it.

Fiora haphazardly scanned the sky for the Pale Moon, wishing she had brought a wristwatch. She quickly spotted it below the Verdant Moon, right by the horizon. Seventh phase, it was almost time.

She sat down in the dirt, and laid out her tools in front of her. Her equipment needed to be double checked in case something was wrong.

First thing to check, a pistol. Ol’ reliable only ever failed most of the time, which made it not very reliable at all. As it turned out, when you’re a high profile assassin, you’re often facing people with a pretty good grasp on Expression. This of course made bullets mostly useless unless you caught your target off guard. Still, it was a simple enough plan to just shoot ‘em in the kneecaps, and when it worked, it worked.

Second thing to check, another gun! But this gun was a special gun, it held red-gold circuits in its magazine instead of ammunition. This stuff was expensive, but worked pretty well against people who’d gotten good enough at Expression to block or dodge bullets. Currently, she had three circuits loaded into the gun, which would produce all sorts of neat magical effects. One of them was a circuit that would hopefully put the target to sleep if he was hit by the bullet. Though admittedly, she’d bought that off of a rather shady arms dealer back in Haven, so who knew if it actually worked.

She clicked open the magazine and popped out the circuits. They all looked somewhat similar. They were small rectangular pieces of red-gold a bit shorter than her hand, and half the width of it. Each was embossed with a maze-like pattern on both sides. If there was even the smallest scratch on any of the patterns, then the magic wouldn’t work. She analyzed each one thoroughly under the blue light of the petals, making sure everything was ok.

The circuit responsible for conjuring the bullet was fine, this one was arguably most important. The next circuit, the one which infused the bullet with sleep magic was all good too. The last one, well that one was kaput. A large scratch right down the middle. A shame really, that was the fun one. It made the gun blow up in a huge ball of fire when the safety was turned on. Fiora ejected the circuit and threw it back in her bag. No use keeping it in the gun, the scratch might cause the magic to do something unpredictable and ruin the mission.

Last thing to check was Levi. He wasn’t physical at the moment, but she could still talk to him.

“Hey, Levi,” she whispered to herself. “You there?”

Always! I’m ready to serve, Master Tenia! Summon me when there is evil to be slain!

“Er— Right! Though no slaying tonight.”

You’re not slaying evil? Would that not make you evil?

“Hey now! I’m not evil! And I’m sure whoever wants to kidnap this guy is gonna end up killing him at some point anyhow, shouldn’t that be good enough?”

Your heart is impure. You’re not a true hero. I’m only to be wielded by true heroes.

Ugh. This thing. No matter, with any luck, Levi would stay as Plan C tonight, and she wouldn’t need to bother with him. Though it hurt her heart to leave him out of things. Back when she’d created Levi, the two of them had really gotten along. Unfortunately, people change, and magical powers made from Expression don’t. Fiora packed up her tools and checked the moon.

It was time to act.

She peered out the edge of the cluster of sunflowers, out into the pathway. The garden was situated in the back of the main building of the estate. It consisted of two large plots of sunflowers with a colorful brick path between them leading to a strawberry bush hedge maze. The hedges, like every other plant in the garden, glowed a bright blue.

This guy sure liked bluelight plants, maybe it was because they were the brightest ones you could find. They lit up the garden like it was daytime.

Most assassins would have been put off by that. After all, the best cover anyone could ask for was night, and these bright eyesores were scaring it away. But Fiora wasn’t most assassins, she was going to use these beautiful glowing plants to her advantage.

See, Llevelish architecture in Llevelwyn (as opposed to Llevelish architecture in Semirance or Delmarv) consisted of high roofed domes and lots of marble pillars painted all sorts of gaudy colors. The back of the main building had a large patio area overlooking the flowers, spanning the width of the garden. This was of course covered with an outcropping of roof supported by a bunch of disgustingly orange painted marble pillars.

Now since the brightest source of light around was from the garden, the pillars cast huge shadows onto the patio, the perfect place to hide. And hide there she would, until Nerium inevitably came out to bask in the light of his garden, like he always did around this time of the pale. It was the only time in his schedule where he wasn’t surrounded by at least five trained men.

Fiora settled into position behind a pillar a nice distance away from the lounging chair Nerium usually sat in. He’d be out any time now, with only two guards. Though hopefully, she wouldn’t need to worry about the guards at all. Why? Because she’d poisoned their dinner! That’s right, she poured a whole bunch of sleeping medicine right into the stew being served at the barracks. It was genius, really. She’d like to have poisoned Nerium’s food too when she snuck in earlier, but getting to his kitchen had proved a lot harder than getting into the guard barracks.

The back doors opened. Right on schedule, Nerium came out to sit, joined by two sleepy eyed bodyguards, who were probably his cousins or something.

She waited a little bit longer for his buddies to finally conk out. One slumped down on the wall of the main building, the other took a seated position by a pillar and closed his eyes. Nerium, who was too busy using the blue light to read, hadn’t even noticed. Time for kidnapping!

Fiora pulled out her gun, the normal one which didn’t cost an arm and a leg to shoot, and aimed at his knees. No need for silence, after all, she and Nerium were the only two people on the estate awake right now. The bullet sailed through the air after a loud thunder-like crack, and hit Nerium right in the knee.

Clink.

That was the sound of the bullet harmlessly bouncing off his leg and hitting the patio floor. Nerium closed his book calmly and got up, not a scratch, no blood whatsoever.

“So that’s where you were hiding,” he said.

He turned toward her, and she slinked out of the shadows into the blue light to face him.

Nerium Destralia wasn’t an ugly man by any stretch. His features were obviously Llevelish, a pronounced nose and eyebrows, with short cropped blond hair. His jaw was strong and covered in a medium-length squared off beard. Like most of the royalty and nobles in Llevelwyn, he was wearing this ridiculous colorful toga.

Fiora shook her head to herself. “When did you realize?”

“Around the time my elite guards fell asleep on the job like amateurs.” He sneered at her.

“Aw shucks, you should have said something,” Fiora said. She packed up Ol’ reliable and took out her other gun.

Or she would have, had he not immediately charged directly towards her. He leapt off his right foot, closing the gap between them, landing on his left foot and bringing the right up to a kick towards her ribcage. Fiora quickly guarded, using Manipulation to concentrate some of her body’s magic to her forearms, which she brought to her chest.

The kick still sent her skidding back a good distance, and knocked the pistol off to the side. His move had clearly been enforced with some magic of its own. She shuddered to think what kind of damage it would have done had she not guarded.

Fiora needed a bit more space, she held her palms out facing Nerium and concentrated magic there, jumping and shooting it out to thrust herself backwards. Nerium had to dodge the expelled magic or get burned; he hopped to the right.

Fiora used the time to grab her second weapon from its holster. She took aim and motioned her magic to flow into the circuits, activating them.

Nerium kept moving right, spiraling inward to close the distance. Fiora followed with her gun, leading slightly ahead of him. He stopped suddenly, and made a move to charge again.

Just like last time, he leapt off his right foot. Fiora shot.

He couldn’t dodge, not with all that momentum. The bullet went right where she aimed it, his left shoulder. As expected, it bounced right off his skin, unable to pierce the concentrated magic he’d made with his Manipulation. But the magic on the bullet had likely already wormed its way inside his body. All it had to do was touch him.

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Her gamble worked, but it cost her. She’d hardly had time to guard against the kick, and took the brunt of it to her chest. It sent her flying right into the side of a pillar, which cracked upon impact, sending flakes of orange paint everywhere. She’d luckily been able to guard the secondary impact, but was still left hurting from the kick.

She tried to get up, however something had grabbed onto her forearm, keeping her down. A vine had crawled up from the garden, and was curling itself around her.

She knew from her intel what this was. It was Nerium’s Art, the unique, specialized form of his Expression. Like Fiora could summon Levi, this man could control plants. Which was precisely why she’d tried to keep the fight on the patio, away from the garden. She’d underestimated his range.

The vines began to curl around her legs and torso. Fiora struggled against their grip as Nerium casually strode towards her. He had this infuriating smirk on his face, like he’d thought he’d won.

He shook his head and knelt down to her level, putting his foot on her left hand, where her gun was. “Looks like you’ve bit off a bit more than you could chew. Eh? I guess you never really stopped to think about why I have so few men to guard me when I’m in my garden?”

She spit on his face. He furrowed his brows and closed his eyes reflexively, before wiping it off his cheek.

“How vulgar. You know, I— Ugh” Nerium faltered mid sentence, the vines’ grip weakened slightly. It was working, the weird sleep magic was taking effect.

Fiora naturally took advantage of the situation. She moved magic to her right forearm and fist, breaking it free of the weakened vines and shoving it upwards towards Nerium’s sternum.

He couldn’t use Manipulation to guard, not when his Art had been activated, so the punch was effective, really effective.

Nerium went flying upward, hitting the patio roof and falling back down to the floor with a sickening thud. Blood pooled underneath him. Maybe her punch was a bit too effective.

Fiora shrugged off the now limp vines and carefully walked over to the body, keeping her gun trained on him. Hopefully she didn’t kill the guy. Her clients specifically mentioned she wouldn’t be getting the second half of her payment if she did. She was also pretty sure they said they’d murder her, but Fiora wasn’t too worried about fighting some pansies who couldn’t even do a kidnapping on their own.

She gingerly turned Nerium over using her foot.

He looked pretty messed up. His nose was bent badly, and gushing blood. His toga was torn up at the chest where her punch landed and the skin underneath was a sickly purple. Still, he was breathing, as evidenced by the blood bubbles his nose was making. She checked his pulse for good measure, bringing her hand down to his neck.

He grabbed her arm.

“Hey! Let go of me!” She struggled against his grip, which was pretty solid for a guy who just got thrown to the ceiling and back.

“You think I’ll go down that easily?” Nerium’s sentence was punctuated with several throaty coughs.

“I think you’re already on the ground, you stupid bastard!” Fiora kicked him in the side of his ribcage. “Give up already!”

He continued to hold on. This guy was as stubborn as the sun! She kicked him harder. He groaned in response, before beginning to laugh.

“You like getting kicked like this? Or did ya just hit your head too hard on your marble roof? Or maybe you just—” Fiora paused. A white light had begun to envelop Nerium. His nose, it was beginning to right itself, the blood was flowing back into it. He was healing himself?

Fiora tensed the magic in her legs and jumped back a distance, breaking from Nerium’s grasp. He continued to laugh as he stood up, and the white light dimmed. He looked good as new.

“How!?” Fiora called out in disbelief. That power wasn't basic or even advanced Expression. It was an Art. But he’d already used his Art to control the plants, it was impossible to have two separate Arts!

“Impressed?” Nerium walked over to the pillar Fiora had crashed into before. There wasn’t even the slightest limp in his step, he was completely fine. Even if he had just used a healing Art, it would have used up nearly all his magic to fix himself to such a degree. He should be lethargic right now, barely able to stand up. Fiora was beginning to realize why she was being paid so much to capture this guy alive.

Nerium put his hand up to the marble. The white light returned, spreading from his hand to the pillar, engulfing it. Slowly, the cracks began to seal up. The chips of paint that had been knocked off returned from where they’d been scattered and reapplied themselves seamlessly to the surface.

By the daughter of Aeris, that wasn’t a healing Art at all. It was time. He was reversing time! “That’s impossible,” she muttered.

“It should be, you’re right.” Nerium smiled. “Time is a divine aspect, magic shouldn’t be able to influence it in any way. But here I am, doing just that.”

Fiora snarled at him. She channeled magic into her gun’s circuits and shot again. It bounced off him like nothing.

“Surely you’ve figured out by now that you’re outclassed, assassin?” Nerium held both his hands out in a shrug. He didn’t even bother going for an attack. “Why don’t you surrender so we can get to know eachother better? I’d just love to find out who hired you to kill me.”

“Levi!” Fiora whispered. It was time for Plan C.

Here, Master Tenia. Are you ready to slay evil?

“Yes! Come to me, Levi!”

No. He’s not all that evil, really. This Nerium Destralia seems like a decent fellow actually.

“Are you kidding me!? Now is not the time for this, Levi!”

Give me one good reason to help you. Even if he was evil, you’re not even killing him. What’s the point?

Nerium began to walk towards her. Fiora ran for the hedge maze.

“One good reason!?” Fiora wasn’t even whispering anymore. “How about this: If you don’t help me right now, I’m going to die! And newsflash buddy, if I die, you die!”

“What are you blabbering about, assassin?” Nerium asked from behind. He was using Manipulation to reinforce his legs and speed himself up; she didn’t have to worry about stray vines just yet.

She jumped over a strawberry hedge and tried to lose him in the maze. If she couldn’t get Levi up, then she was just going to have to stall and hope for the sleep magic to work a second time.

I would rather die than wet my blade with a good man’s blood.

“He’s not a good man!” Fiora brought her voice back down to a whisper as she ran erratically through the maze. She took turns at random, hoping to shake off her pursuer. “He— He eats babies, or something!”

Do you have proof of that?

“No, but do you have proof he doesn’t?”

Well of course not! How could I?

“Then how can you be sure he isn’t eating babies?!”

I suppose I cannot be sure. This is something I’ll have to dwell on.

“Dwell quickly, please!” Fiora took a left, leading her to a large clearing in the maze. Unfortunately, at the other end of the clearing was Nerium.

“Let’s end this charade, woman,” He called out. His shoulders were slumped, and his breathing was heavy. The sleep magic was working, again, or maybe it never actually stopped.

“You’re looking a bit tired there, buddy,” Fiora yelled out.

“Nothing more than battle fatigue. I’ll just have to end this quickly.” He went for a charging stance again.

Fiora wasn’t going to bother fighting. Stalling was the name of the game now. She turned back the way she came and began running again. It was no contest, really. When they were both using Manipulation to run faster, she outpaced him with her smaller frame. She turned a corner and was out of sight.

He was too slow, she’d totally lost him. All she had to do was keep running and—

Vines. They tripped her and she went tumbling forward into a hedge, slamming her face into the dirt. Her legs were strapped down by tendrils emerging from the ground. Around the corner of the bush Nerium came, shaking his head.

“Come on now, trying to outrun me, in a maze I created?” He gave her some payback, kicking her in the ribs.

“That’s pretty evil. Kicking someone while they’re down,” Fiora grunted.

“I’m only copying you.” Nerium chuckled.

I agree, that is pretty evil.

Oh finally, it was about time! Fiora threw a punch at Nerium, he dodged back, unable to guard while using his vines. Fiora held out her hands and gripped at the air in front of her, as if holding onto an imaginary pole.

“What are you—”

“LEVI COME TO ME!” The air in front of Fiora glowed bright red, brighter than the bushes around them. The red light condensed, until it took the shape of a massive single headed greataxe. The vines loosened as Nerium’s concentration faltered, Fiora broke free and stood up.

The shine faded, until what was left was a greataxe taller than Fiora, it had a white steel axe head with a large purple crystal at the center, cut to look like an eye. The pole was a shiny black, and adorned with another purple crystal at the end opposite the axe head.

“Alright,” Fiora huffed. Summoning Levi took nearly everything she had, especially after all the running around. “Let’s do this.”

Nerium took a fighting stance, he charged toward her yet again.

She swiped Levi down at him, but his charge was a feint this time. He pivoted off his left foot to her right side and aimed a punch at her shoulder, hoping to use the opening created when she swung Levi. However, the axe was far lighter than it looked. Fiora twisted, changing Levi’s direction mid swing and slicing Nerium right through his arm, cutting through his Manipulation like butter.

He crashed into the bush, his arm flying off to the side.

“GAAAH!” He writhed in pain on his side. “You—” he wheezed. “You’ll pay for this!”

Fiora backed off. She knew this wasn’t quite over. Nerium began to glow white again. Just as expected, his arm began to crawl back to him, and the blood started to return to his body. It reattached itself and Nerium stood up once more.

But he looked disheveled. Tired still. Fiora’s experiment gave her the answer she wanted. The heretical time magic wasn’t undoing the sleep magic. It was healing his physical body, returning it to a state it had been in before, but doing nothing to the soul, where his magic resided.

Nerium took a fighting stance one final time, but Fiora didn’t bother to defend. He looked uncomfortable at her ease.

“What is it?” He rasped. “Why aren’t you...” Nerium began to speak, and then stumbled, his perfect stance crumbling as he fell to his knees in the dirt.

“What’s happening to me?” Nerium looked up to her, his eyebrows furled upwards, and eyes shone with fear. “What have you done?”

“Looks like it’s finally over,” Fiora dismissed Levi, who disappeared in a flash of red light. She brought a finger to Nerium’s forehead and pushed him over onto his back. His eyes closed, muscles relaxed. Asleep at last.

“Goodnight, Nerium.”