The assassin known as Rin was able to endure a lot of things in the name of a mission. When Wilke disappeared and left her without a plan, although it was uncomfortable, she made a long and tedious showing of being a disgruntled inspector searching everywhere for something to be unhappy about. Chai had told Wilke to go back to where he was, so Rin made every effort to not go there in case it should blow his cover... but she still worried and wondered exactly what was going to happen to her. Her people were used to working in teams, and that meant she was used to far better communication than she was getting out of this team of people from the Order.

When Wilke's spell fell apart, Rin had no warning except a series of odd noises from the two house guards that were following her. She was, of course, exceptionally paranoid, and so she had a weapon in each hand when she turned to find them dazed and confused. She had little time to guess whether they would have shot her, but they certainly did raise their weapons immediately.

Ti-mana were trained to over-prepare for a fight. The weapons in her hands were unusual, but completely effective: a small bit of stiff paper with a glyph on it that most would not recognize. Like every card Rin had ever made, this one would always be within her Domain, and she could trigger it with a thought. So when she threw two bits of card at the guards, it was effective in both confusing them and killing them in the same stroke.

Both cards turned into compact spinning balls of fire in a moment, and both went straight into the neck of their target. She declined the chance to make them explode into a shower of gore, because there was a time and place for spectacle, and this wasn't it.

At times like this, she missed her partner. O'ani had died of natural causes many years ago, which took her off the list of active agents; she had been assigned to Seyona afterwards to investigate a complete failure of a team, but the client had not been forthcoming with the details, taking all too many secrets to his grave. She had some suspicions, but as she wasn't part of a combat squad or even pair, it wasn't her place to investigate further. She had been itching for this fight for a while, but it wasn't the same without O'ani. Especially now, when her instincts screamed at her to turn to the mental link and coordinate with him, and he wasn't there.

A noise down the hallway turned out to be another guard leveling a crossbow. Rin stepped behind one of the dead guards, grabbing it with both hands to use the chainmailed torso as a shield. As confident as she was, she felt some shock as a noise and flood of pain erupted from her thigh; the crossbowman was a great shot, and had managed to shoot through the leg of his compatriot and into hers. For her, it was only a shallow wound, but now was a bad time for any leg wound.

So she appeared three cards and pasted them to the dead guard's torso, activating them to catapult the corpse down the hallway with the force of a ballista shot. Even correcting it twice in midair, she didn't quite manage to hit the man, who dived out of the way and came back up with the crossbow half reloaded. The next card she threw down the hallway wouldn't have that problem; a moment later, it exploded with a blinding and deafening bang! Activating two cards on her legs--placed there long ago, among many others--helped Rin propel herself across the distance with practiced grace, leg wound be damned, and a card held in her palm landed firmly on the guard's forehead with a slap, sticking to him until she was certain her own hand was far enough, and then vanishing with a flash.

At that moment, the life left the guard's eyes, and Rin was momentarily alone.

The first thought that crossed her mind was that it was probably wrong to have killed the guards so soon. Nobody among the Order actually thought these people were innocent, but she could really use someone to question. A crash from above let her know that Wilke was probably in trouble, but--

No, actually, Rin knew better than that. She would never have recognized Wilke by name or reputation, but assassins studied the movements of warriors, and he was deadly. There was always a chance that he would be snuck up upon, shot in the back, or otherwise defeated by a trick, but she had every reason to think he was on his guard and would be fine for now. Especially with that voidling giving him direction; Master Marion herself, when giving Rin directions on this matter, had made it clear that she was to trust Chai and his advice with her life.

That did, fortunately, clarify where she should go next. Rather than take a chance at the stairs, she simply moved to the front of a house, blew a nice clean hole in the window, kicked the remaining glass out, and jumped. A spellcard on her chest arrested her momentum just before she landed, and she didn't so much as bend her knees, just took a quick step forward to maintain her balance.

"Back here," came Marin's voice, and Rin found her and Chai in a hastily constructed pit behind the carriage--a pit with a raised front lip high enough to act as a shield, suggesting Marin was expecting that whoever attacked the carriage would either go right through it, knock it backwards into them, or set it on fire. Bemused, Rin simply dropped into the pit and looked between her and Chai.

Chai was... the same as always. Perhaps a bit more focused. If anything, there was a bit more confusion on his face than normal, a look that suggested a more complicated situation than any of them knew.

That was, of course, bad.

"What do you need me to do?" Rin cut straight to the heart of it. She was a warrior, and this--

"Oh... no, we're pretty much done for now." Chai shook his head. "I know what you want, but this situation was always going to fall apart." He paused, then looked at Marin. "We'll be able to start the job when Melle gets back."

"Melle?" Rin felt her entire body tense. "I don't... what even is she here to do? She's not a combatant, she's not..."

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

"She's an expert on spatial nodes and the leyline network," responded Marin quietly. "And... she has a particular familiarity with the underworld."

Rin paused and let that sink in. Of all the countries on Contel, her island nation of Tiyoma was the only one that still had trouble with goblins creeping out of the underworld. Marin was a generalist mage trained by the Master herself--whether she was related or not was an open question that neither Marin nor Marion deigned to answer, but few thought her name was a coincidence. Wilke was one of many that the Order considered a combat specialist, but his boundless confidence spoke of skills that Rin had not yet seen, and she had seen him do several things.

"What exactly is our mission here?" Rin narrowed her eyes at Marin, knowing that if anyone had that answer, she would.

Surprisingly, it was Chai who answered, with a tilt of his head and a gentle smile. "The usual," he said simply. "Solve problems with violence, throw a wrench in the works of a well-laid plan, and leave everyone wondering what just happened."

Marin was a little more forthcoming. "This was all necessary," she said with a gesture towards the mansion, "and nobody will be sad to see them go. But the Order does not usually interfere inside Seyona for political reasons. The King has been looking for reasons to go to war for a long time, and..." she paused, as though carefully filtering her response, "...we will need him later, if the Goddess is to be believed."

"The goddess?" Rin raised her eyebrows. She wasn't a religious person, and it wasn't clear by context who Marin meant.

"I am... not at liberty to say more. Suffice it to say, the Church of the Terranic Light guides us on this matter." After a moment, she shook her head. "As for the rakshasa... there is a specific problem here that we may address. We will get to that in time."

Rin knew little about the Church, except that it was more of a pantheon that collected several deities, including more than one goddess. Still, she forced herself back to the more important discussion. "Fine. What about Wilke?"

"Oh, I'm fine," came the easy reply from behind her. Rin turned, ready to snap a reply, but didn't see anyone there--until, a moment later, Wilke and a jackal woman appeared out of thin air. "My lady, may I introduce to you Rin, Marin, and Chai. Ladies and Chai, this is Chandra."

The name made everything fall into place immediately for Rin. "Chandra... Chandra d'Amanci, partner Kentin d'Amanci, missing in action and presumed killed along with everyone else on that mission." Rin had to struggle to keep the rage from her face. "Years ago they sent me to discover your fate, but our contact died rather than answer even a single question. If I had known..."

Chandra gave Rin a surprised look, and she scanned Rin's face for a long moment. After a moment, she shook her head. "I know your face," she said, "but my memories are... my whole mind is not well. Things are too... I don't know."

"She was under some kind of mind control spell," offered Wilke evenly. "The card she had prepared--the one Chai told me to burn--was some kind of spellbreaker. I had to finish powering it, but things all worked out on that end." He paused, then looked to Chai. "I notice we aren't getting spitted by crossbow bolts."

"She is retreating," offered Chai. "The Lady will make it out. Her father," he glanced at Chandra knowingly, "won't survive. An enemy will follow them. The Lady's fate hangs on the choices that dear Chandra makes now."

Chandra blinked at Chai, too weary to recognize the man's rambling as being prophetic. "I don't understand," she said. "What choice...?"

"The Egrethore house has many sins," said Chai. "The Lady's hands are by no means clean. She saved you, and I can tell you clearly that she loved to do so, for she has done too little saving and feels the weight of that. If you and Rin choose to chase after her, the Lady's life may be spared, but you may both die. If you let her go, she may yet live, but she cannot kill the nightmare that chases her. I cannot see far enough to know," and suddenly Chai closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "...but I suspect you will meet that nightmare once more in the years to come."

Chandra stared at Chai, clearly not understanding his confused Void-sick babble. "You want me... to sacrifice my life for that woman?"

"It is a choice you could make," replied Chai, looking up at her. "Understand, lady, I am trying not to sway you with my words. Neither your death nor hers is certain, but only the three of you working together could kill that nightmare--at least today. The future is always uncertain, and my window on it is closing fast."

"What is this nightmare?" Chandra stared hard into Chai's eyes, looking for an answer.

"It is Him," was all Chai said in reply, although he put odd emphasis on the word.

Rin watched Chandra go pale, and without knowing who "He" was, she knew what he had done to the woman. He was the one who had kept an assassin alive, tortured her, and bound her to his service. She had little doubt, given Chandra's well-kept looks, what he had done to her in the meantime. She did not bear the scars of constant torture, and she did not have the physique of one forced into manual labor. Nor had she maintained the muscles or skills needed to be the man's own pet assassin, to put down his enemies.

If it were up to Rin, she would chase the man down--

"But he is dead," whispered Chandra.

"He was," replied Chai. "Now he is a nightmare."

Rin, now thoroughly baffled, looked between the two. "How is that possible?"

"I can't explain as I am now," said Chai with an apologetic glance. "I saw it. I see it. I may understand later." To Chandra, though, he added, "It was the metal. The one he died holding. It now holds the remnants of another."

Rin looked at Chandra, waiting to see if the woman was eager to charge off and get revenge. At a word from her, Rin was ready to hunt this... whatever this nightmare was, across the whole of Contel if necessary. But what she saw in Chandra's eyes was something that made her catch her breath.

Chandra's eyes, slowly but surely, began to hold nothing more than exhaustion. Bit by bit, every last ounce of strength fled from her. At first, it could only be seen in her eyes, but then it took over her whole face, and any semblance of youth melted away. It was as if Chandra were aging a decade in the course of a minute, but it was all in the way she held her facial muscles, and in her posture. Bit by bit, every pretense she had been keeping fell apart.

"I can't," she said, and the words sounded like a campfire reduced to its last few coals. "I can't face him again. He was supposed to be dead. This should have been over."

The others watched as Chandra sunk to her knees in the dirt, her voice becoming quieter and quieter, until she seemed to have passed out on her knees.

Chai watched her for a long moment, and then brightened. "I was wondering how that would turn out. Now I know." He glanced between the other two, his eyes once more very far away, focused on nothing. "We'll wait here for a little while longer and then go kill Amon." He leaned back until he was reclining against the stone lip of the pit that Marin had created, and closed his eyes.

After a moment of this rest, Chai's face also registered a sudden onset of exhaustion, and when he opened his eyes, for the first time in a very long time, they focused properly on the world in front of him.