The three of us followed the blood trail thanks to Finn’s magic, which he apparently learned during his short time with the red mantles. But after about an hour of walking through the city, my legs started to stipend up. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

He shook the blood in the vial, which was still glowing strong. “Yeah, it is, we’re getting close… The other blood is reacting too, and if we’re in range for such a small amount of blood it means we’re really close.”

“Ok, then do you mind if I try something?” Feisty said, making us all stop as she suddenly began to stand still.

“Sure, go ahead.” Finn shrugged.

She squatted down and placed her hand on the ground, after a moment she stood up, pulling a mass of earth up from the ground with her and creating a massive scale model of what seemed to be the section of the city we were in. “This is the city from where we are, see this blurry spot here that is all jumbled up? That’s because something scrambled my manna, likely where their base is.”

“So it’s underground?” I groaned.

“What, you don’t like caves?”

“It’s not that so much as I don’t like being cramped… If we are underground it’s way too easy to get surrounded.”

“Hm… That makes sense, but if that happens we could use my earth magic to carve a new tunnel. Try not to worry too much.”

‘Arn’t I supposed to be the fighter though? You’re just a blacksmith and you’re telling me not to worry…’ I sighed. “Sure thing…”

Finn was carefully scanning the map the entire time we were talking, and after a few moments, he walked a few steps ahead of us. “Here, Feisty can you open a hole straight down where I’m standing? And then Chika, can you light up the tunnels?”

I cracked my knuckles, “Yeah, I can do that.”

Feisty narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you’re with the Circle of Smoke?”

“Best thieves guild in Rothet.” He smiled confidently/

She walked over to him scratching her head. “Right… Nothing says thief quite like dropping down into the middle of the bad guy's lair with an earthquake and a light show… I’m ready when you are.”

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‘Wait… What?’

“Go.”

“Hold on a minute!” I shouted as the ground opened up underneath us. Since it was already too late I burst out several little light bubbles and as soon as my legs felt the shock of landing I sent them out in every direction, lighting up the whole cavern.

‘So much for being less reckless…’ I looked around at the shocked faces of about a dozen rogues wearing leather armor. “Hey guys…” I muttered timidly.

After the initial shock wore off it was to no one's surprise that a fight broke out… Right off the bat, I had to quickly dodge several throwing knives, retaliating with my own while manipulating sewer water to pull their feet out from under them from behind. From what I could tell Fiesty mostly just focused on not dying, and Finn used his abilities to almost appear in more places than once, taking out all the ones that I didn’t. It was over as fast as it started… But that didn’t mean my heart felt like it was going to explode any less.

“CAN YOU TELL ME THE PLAN NEXT TIME!” My voice cracked and whined as I screamed, catching my breath. Meanwhile, they were already gathering the bodies, tying them up, and bringing them all together.

“I thought you would have figured it out. Sorry about that.”

“Wasn’t it kind of obvious?”

I let out another soft whine checking my body for any scrapes. I took a throwing knife to the thigh, but my armor almost completely stopped it, aside from that I was untouched. ‘It’s fine… It’s fine… It all worked out…” I took a deep breath. ‘And it’s over now…’ I let all the air out at once, my heart finally starting to slow.

“Hey hey hey, Chika, check this out.” Finn grinned, holding up a stack of papers. “Here we have orders implicating they were working with several guards in the great forest, as well as a beekeeper. It doesn’t mention Alden by name, but it might as well. One of these even talks about how he’s been getting too greedy and they were thinking about cutting ties before he got caught, especially after he flubbed the minotaur job.”

“Well… That sounds incriminating enough… You should get that to the guards right away and send some back here. Feisty and I can watch over these guys until you get back with help to take them all in.”

He folded them up and pocketed them, heading back underneath the giant hole and turning into a blur as he practically leaped straight out of it. ‘I’ll have to get him to tell me how his abilities work sometime…’

With a long groan, Fiesty created a seat out of earth and sat down. “If I knew it would be this easy I would have gone to the guards a long time ago… You guys don’t mess around.”

“Yeah well… Neither of us our technically even a guard… So I can’t say this would have worked out so well… And you would have probably gotten fined for illegal dealings or whatever right?”

She sighed. “Yeah…”

“I have to ask.” I pulled the earthstone from my storage and tossed it to her. “This is yours right?”

She caught it, staring at it with sad eyes. “Right… I wrote this. The last time they broke in they took it because they thought it was valuable.”

“And I take it you're the girl in the story?”

She slowly lifted her eyes turning slightly red again. “You read it?”

I chuckled nervously. “Well yeah… We used the directions to find your forge in hopes of getting a lead… Sorry about that…”

She sighed. “It’s a bit silly to write about your life like it’s a fairy tale I know… But I guess I’m still just hoping that if I keep writing eventually there will be a happy ending…”

‘She’s so strong… And now I’m tearing up…’ I wiped my eyes quickly. “Why do you keep your forge in that part of town? Couldn’t you move? Or maybe join a guild? The gear you make isn’t bad.”

She gave a hesitant smile. “Well, I’m self-taught… And my dad said a lot of nasty things about me before he died so that made a lot of things pretty hard... As for moving to a better place to set up shop… Well… I guess it’s just hard to let go of things. That and I’m broke. I should have given up on forging a long time ago and just made money killing monsters… But I guess I’m just too stubborn…”

‘Or in other words… Your just like me…’