Philip knew something fishy was going on. He didn’t trust that other girl one bit. Something about her was off, and he couldn’t believe he might be the only one to see it. Well, maybe it wasn’t that strange as he simply was that good, but still.

She was probably there to spy on them. Why else would someone do the same thing as them in the library? Before they had started to do the research, no one had touched the archives in a long ass time. They had to blow the dust off initially. And suddenly she showed up wanting to do the same thing as them?

He wouldn’t fall for it. It was obvious something was up, which was why he had taken it upon himself to get some more information about who she was. If only he wasn’t wanted he might have been able to get some information another way. But no, he had to do the sneaking himself. Strangely, they had sent Matt with him. He didn’t understand why as the kid was basically useless, but he had volunteered. They had insisted in case something happened. All true, but he felt like the kid was more of a burden than a safety net.

Whatever, so far he hadn’t made a mistake. At least not yet. They were following Maya from a rather large distance, just checking out if she did anything weird. So far the girl was boring beyond belief. It had already been a few days since they had met her, and he knew she was hiding something. Just not what.

She didn’t seem to speak to anyone, never bought food, at least not outside and was simply so boring it was strange in itself. They had seen her buy some charged mana crystals, which could be for anything, and toured some shops, but hadn’t bought anything. Philip knew she would slip up at some point. No one was that boring.

They followed her back to her hotel, and even Matt seemed a bit disappointed. Yeah, it would be a lot harder to see what she was doing in her room. Or would it? Philip brought out a device he had bought earlier and Matt looked at him questioningly.

“It’s for scrying.” Philip explained, but Matt still looked clueless.

“It basically sets up a remote viewpoint and lets us see through that viewpoint? So it’s like we’ll be there looking, without being there.” He explained.

“Oh, and she won’t know it?” He asked.

“Hopefully not. It’s magic so if she is sensitive to mana she might notice something, but I think it’s worth the risk. Don’t you?” Philip could see Matt thinking about it, clearly on the fence.

“Look, worst case we just shut it down and run back. No way she’ll be able to know it was us.” He added.

“What if she is naked or something?” Matt asked him, almost panicked. He looked at the kid, and saw he seemed to think that would be a problem. Was he stupid? If she was naked, good for them! But even he could see that would apparently upset him.

“We can just turn it off whenever?” He simply said.

“Yeah, alright. So how does it work?” Matt scooted closer to him as they were sitting in a dead end close by the hotel. He brought out the device, it looked like a cube.

“Here’s the front, where we can tell who we want to scry. If you have the name and general location it should work. Then you just make sure to slot in enough mana crystals inside and let it work.” He explained.

“This is a rather expensive model, which is why it’s so big actually. It’s made to be almost impossible to detect. Or so they told me.” He continued, excited. He had always wanted to use one of these.

Pushing on some buttons, he input her name and the general area. They were close enough by a rather large margin. Then he pushed one last button and felt the magic operate. The front lit up like a screen and changed to show the interior of a room. Philip could hear Matt take in a sharp breath as they spotted her, sitting at a desk and writing something. That wasn’t why he had inhaled sharply though.

Maya had stopped writing and was looking straight at them. Matt turned to look at him, and Philip couldn’t help but frown. Had he been ripped off? Impossible to detect? She had clearly done so without any issues whatsoever. If he ever had the opportunity, he would like to speak his mind to the snake that had sold him the device.

Even worse, the image started unfocusing and became unclear. Suddenly it cut off and a message appeared on the cube.

‘Interfering spell, stability compromised. Scrying aborted.’

“What does that mean?” Matt said as he pointed to the words on the cube.

“That means someone else was already scrying her, and that this poor excuse of a device couldn’t handle the interfering magic.” He paused before adding.

“Or this is a piece of shit and I got ripped off.” He said as he sighed. Dammit he should have known. It had been too cheap to be true.

“Well, why don’t we try to scry Krovukk then, see if it’s the cube, or the person?” Matt asked. Maybe the kid wasn’t hopeless. Still, he had much to learn.

“Already on it.” He said as he just started it back up again, this time with Krovukk’s name.

The image soon appeared and they could see him talking with Xar. None of them reacted to the scrying in any way, and they waited a few minutes to see if anything would change, but nothing did. It was working perfectly. Shit. Did that mean the girl was high level or something? It just wasn’t normal to spot something like that so easily. Or maybe she was a mage?

“Uh, I think Maya might be in trouble, no?” Matt said, taking him out of his thought process.

“Why wou-” He started before stopping. Oh, it meant that someone else was spying on her. It was too much of a coincidence for sure. Had she spotted the other scrying device? Hard to tell as their had shut down, but it was true she might be in trouble. Nobody scried you for a good reason.

“Yeah, you might be right. But who would be after her?” Philip almost became happy. Something was up with that girl. He had been right all along. They just still didn’t know what.

“Maybe the same people that are after us?” He said and Philip scoffed. Right, like that was even remotely likely.

“Think about it. She is doing the same research as us, people seem to be after her too. Maybe we should just confront her about it, no?” Matt said. Philip knew the little twat was starstruck with the girl. It was obvious, so he knew the kid’s theories were heavily biased. Still, he couldn’t shake the idea completely.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“You know what, let's get the others. If we do confront her about it, I want some backup, no offense kid.” He said.

“Fine. Let’s go.” The kid said, clearly unhappy about his comment.

*********************

They were soon on their way to Maya’s hotel, all five of them. Not that it hadn’t taken some convincing first. Krovukk and Xar had been the most against it. And it made sense. It was probably nothing, they had said, and not really their problem. But Matt had somehow convinced them that it actually could help them figure things out if she really was looking into the same things as them.

After all, they had only learned that this whole thing seemed far bigger than they had originally thought, without any real information, and this might just be their first real breakthrough, possibly. And they might save someone in the process. They were the good guys right? Stupid stuff like that, and it had worked. Matt was lucky Philip hadn’t needed convincing.

Honestly, Philip didn’t mind. He hated unknowns, and that girl was hiding something. Confronting her might just be the fastest way to uncover her secrets. He was confident they could handle her should she try something. He was there after all, and nothing escaped his notice.

They were soon walking into the hotel and Krovukk walked up to the front desk, spoke a few words, slipped the guy something and soon came back towards them.

“Room 603. Let’s go.” Philip could respect that. Clean, efficient.

They took the elevator up and as they walked out, they heard a loud crash. Philip saw a dust cloud as someone had impacted the wall so hard they had gone through it. The dust settled slowly, and he saw Maya walk out of it. She spotted them, looked surprised and took up a fighting stance.

Something flew past her face as she dodged, fast. A blurry form came up to her and she parried blow after blow in a dizzying display of skill. What level was she? Another blur shot towards her from the side and she got knocked towards them, flying several meters in the air. She almost instantly got up and was ready to fight them. Krovukk stepped forwards, axe drawn as he swung towards her.

It almost touched Maya only to go past her and swing towards one of the blurry figures who avoided it at the last second. The rest of his companions moved forwards to help the girl as Philip saw one of the figures stand still long enough to get a clear view of the person.

A lizardman from the looks of things, clad in all black leathers. Even standing still, his image looked a bit blurry, like it was hard to focus on him. High level, that was for sure. He spoke into his wrist and the assassins attacked their group again, having regrouped. There were six of them, and they were clearly a level above the idiots they had killed in the streets.

Philip barely avoided a dagger aimed at his neck, only to see the real blow coming towards his face too late. No way he would be able to move out in time. A hand gripped the assassin's wrist and stopped the blow mid air, right in front of him. He saw Maya look at him for a second before she tried to punch the assassin in the gut, only for the figure to disappear backwards.

A fireball shot out of Matt’s hands towards another figure, but the ball of fire was laughably slow compared to these experts. One of them lunged at the kid, and Philip was sure he was done for. To his surprise, a bright directed light shone straight at the figure who aborted the strike as soon as it got blinded. The kid really was becoming decent. Obviously he would be done for without the support of the others, as Xar and Krovukk were defending the others from the sneakier assassins.

Surprisingly, Maya was also a force to be reckoned with. She used no weapons except her bare fists, but managed to block daggers and shortswords as well as projectiles with her arms. Did she have some kind of enchanted bracers underneath her long sleeves? She moved as fast as the assassins, and honestly was the only reason the other two adventurers had enough room to cover the rest of the team.

Suddenly, the assassins stopped the assault. The six of them stood in front of them, and Philip could see him speak, but couldn’t hear a peep from him. As suddenly as they had stood there, they all disappeared, and he was about to sigh in relief when the hair on his neck stood up straight, warning him of dangers unseen.

It felt like time slowed down as he tried to turn around, to see what was coming to claim his life. But his body was so slow. He felt someone push him hard to the side and saw that it had been Kali. Time resumed and he wondered why she had pushed him? It had been a false alarm, nothing had actually hit him. Or so he thought, until he saw blood dripping down.

The pain suddenly hit him. Something had hit him in the back, the pain was too much. He almost fainted but saw that the others were still holding their ground. He couldn’t faint now or he might never wake up. Fuck his useless classes, he should have picked up something better for combat. He hated being so weak.

A cry of pain went up, and it wasn’t from their group this time. It only took a few more seconds before the assassins were gone again, but this time it seemed to be for good. Kali knelt down next to him as he felt himself bleed.

“It’s not such a bad wound.” She said as she inspected his back. He wanted to scream at her, how could it not be? He was in so much pain! It hurt so much.

“It’s poisoned.” Xar said as he poured a potion on the wound. The pain subsided for a second, but came back shortly after with a vengeance.

“Our generic antidote isn’t working.” He said, that useless rat.

Philip was holding in his screams.

“Let me take a look.” Maya said. Philip vaguely saw that the others weren’t unharmed either, but only he seemed to have been poisoned.

She prodded the wound and he would have cursed at her, if he had the energy to. Instead he simply took it like a man. That was to say, he screamed his lungs out.

Soon enough, he felt the familiar energy of a healing spell, and all of his pain seemed to go away. He sighed in relief and the others looked at her.

“That was a rather potent healing spell.” Xar spoke.

“Yes.” Was all that she said. Philip couldn’t care less. He finally felt almost normal. His wound was closed, but he still felt some discomfort. Was the poison not gone?

“There might be some poison left in his body, but it shouldn’t be much.” She said as she inspected the wound. Philip was just happy he would make it.

“Who were they?” Matt asked as he looked at the girl.

“I don’t know.” She said, shaking her head.

“I think it’s time you tell us what you are researching in the library.” Matt said. Maya seemed to hesitate a moment, before nodding.

“I’m looking into my fathers death.” She finally revealed.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Matt said.

“And why are you doing research in the library then?” Xar asked.

“Because I think the reason he got killed was that he discovered something he shouldn’t have.” She said. Philip couldn’t help but scoff.

“Care to drop the mystery act and tell us what's going on plain and simple please?” He said sarcastically, as he contorted uncomfortably, his back still hurt a bit.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to know everything. They came after me because they suspect I know, what will they do if you know too?” She looked at them, determined. Krovukk laughed at that.

“Oh girl, we can’t be in more trouble than we already are. You might as well tell us.” He told her.

“Please.” Matt asked her.

“Alright. My father discovered that magical anomalies have been happening, and that they are not a natural phenomenon, but made by someone. Why, or how, I do not know, but I do know they are covering it up as best they can. My best guess is that it’s a weapon of some kind.” She explained.

They all looked at each other. No one spoke, but the silence was heavy. Maya looked at them as they all continued to exchange glances.

“Told you, I shouldn’t have said anything.” She finally said.

“No, you don’t understand.” Matt started.

“They have been trying to make us disappear because we not only lived through an anomaly, but escaped the clean up.” He told her, and for the first time since he had known her, Philip saw a surprised look on her face.

“And I can even tell you who ‘they’ are. The ships sent to clean up were from the Crystal Emporium.” Matt revealed. She was clearly taken back by the revelation.