Interlude: "Watch Your Back" - 2

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All sorts of things are said about the bearers of high levels and similarly high positions, especially about the reasons that prompted them to race with infinity, which gave them these levels and positions. Some go for recognition of their merits, some for the strength and authority that this strength gives, some just chase the gold coins, and everything else for them is already bonuses, not the main goal.

Areya Fern, with a pure heart and before any altars or oaths, could say that she desired to spend her holidays exactly as she had originally intended them to be, which motivated her to become stronger. Going into the army services, the daughter of an imperial officer followed the path laid down by her father, where it was trivially easier for her to build a career. Though her class wasn't so much combat as it was quiet, she was welcomed into Army Intelligence with open arms. Good and relatively quiet service in the central regions of the state paid off even a relatively risky role - scouts were often buried.

She would have remained a tomboy who grew up with the kids in the yard, not even reaching her twenty level, if it hadn't been for the damned abuse. You see, gentlemen, but ordinary townspeople and peasants only have about a dozen holidays a year when they can be off work quite officially. Well, there's less work in the winter, but you still have to work from dawn to dusk and sometimes even at night.

The Army of the Empire of the Ages was advanced enough that officers, even if grassroots, were allowed to rest at public expense for another ten days a year, not counting holidays. Soldiers were entitled to far less and only for faultless service, but she still came from an officer's family. Let's skip all that the pretty girl had to endure while serving in the company of brutal men, thanks to her character and upbringing perfectly helped her to don't give the fuck, and her father-centurion allowed her not to be responsible for that.

Not without bad incidents with those who were much more influential than a simple centurion, but her service flowed quite calmly and smoothly. If it weren't for the aforementioned Decade of Idleness, which was rightfully available to her. Scouts in the Empire's army had always been scarce. Even when serving in the provinces, where military conflicts are not too numerous. Especially if serving there, since the much-needed scouts, trackers, and lurkers were dragged to the borders, where their talents were needed. Daddy covered for his daughter as much as he could, not wanting to let her go into the meat grinder, where her kind had a bad habit of dying.

But she didn't get her Decade of Idleness until her third year... only to be yanked back to the garrison right in the middle of a vacation because of some inspection. There's a lot to be furious about, especially since they'd literally dragged her out of bed, even if she was the only one there. But even if there had been two or three or ten of them, she still would have taken her out.

Enraged enough to have her first serious quarrel with her always-understanding and supportive father, she silently threw her petition for transfer to the frontier service on the desk of the garrison commandant. Judging by the words of those who had been there, these boys, stern and defiant, were always given their Decades of Idleness in time, for there had been precedents.

After ten years, several campaigns, hundreds of skirmishes, and thousands of opportunities to die, Areya was ranked second, promoted first, reached level thirty-second, and piqued the reasonable interest of the Eyes of the Eternal. A mere assassin, of which there are so many in armies that they could be mistaken for branches of the night guilds, did not worry the secret service. The owner of the epic Liquidator and Combat Precog - very much so.

With her entry into the Eyes, her promotion, and the title of an aristocrat - her father had one, but it was inheritable - Areya was entitled to choose not ten days but twenty-three. Twenty-three days of rest and excitement that would not be diluted by blood, dirt, dancing with death, and all the other nice things she had grown accustomed to during her service.

But, surprise, there was always an extra job for a very talented woman with the right skills but without influential relatives. Yes, often, such work was much more interesting and enlightening than the usual army service, but it was still a job. And the Time of Idleness still went to others but was very difficult for her to win. And if it was won, it was with great difficulty she managed to spend it in idleness from beginning to end.

Because it is always necessary to trace that one, to drown that one quietly, to draw that one out of the trap, to lure that one into it, and to guard that one for a couple of weeks, because her father is hunted by the Alishan murderers! And who better to send than the talented, executive, and not-too-noble Areya, who has almost no record of failures? That's right, no one!

With her fortieth level and her status as a full-fledged noblewoman - a status she had been dragged away by her accumulated enemies - she smiled and smashed the faces and limbs of anyone and everyone who tried to stop her from going on a legal binge or pulling her out for the next important job. She could have started doing that before, back in the thirties - she would have been forgiven a lot, but she was too unlucky to get into a department where every first was nobler than every second, and the sound names made her head hurt.

It is a frequent situation when Eyes is formed from the noble sons-daughters of slackers, diluting them with talented, but not at all influential personalities, who will have to do the work for which the aforementioned slackers will receive rewards. However, the very fact that she got her levels already showed that it was better not to make her angry. She would kill. As a matter of fact, she killed in duels, or in the back, if the duels were rejected or put on brethers.

And now she can distinguish by taste and smell dozens of types of poison, hundreds of varieties of love potions, and can recognize the initial signs of the influence of a high-class Slavemancer or Whoremancer. It feels as if the image of the deadly and dangerous Secret Service assassin is more potent on some mentally sorrowful nobles than an alchemical stimulant. Had it not been for the blatant patronage of the smarter Eyes, who understand Areya's talent and potential, she would still have been poisoned or sent to her certain death. Although both managed to happen a couple of times, but the poison didn't finish her off, and she managed to do the deadly tasks. And anyway, have you often tried to poison a precognitive?

Those years are long gone, and today's Areya Fern can send even a full-fledged Eye, let alone a lesser agent, on all sorts of bad routes, but the situation in the capital was such that she couldn't help but think back to the beginning of her career. She had been yanked right out of the bath and almost kicked to work. True, the woman was chased by her immediate supervisor, who had the same forty-first level and a black eye.

She had to go. What else could she do?

Being a pre-cognitive is not only the ability to be ready for any attack but also the need to work in conjunction with clairvoyants of all kinds, amplifying their abilities. The woman herself could not see clearly into the future for more than a few minutes, which, however, did not prevent her from being used as a prop in the circle. All the broken visions and nonsensical images go to her, as does the headache - she had often been sent on similar tasks before.

The fact that someone dared to put her up to a similar task now shows that something is very wrong in the Eternal. Well, if the explosion and the massacre in Imperial Park weren't enough of a hint. Strange, she'd been given at least a couple of hours to finish her bottle of wine instead of being yanked out of the house by a direct teleport.

Now, on her way back to the house after four days without sleep or rest, suffering from a headache caused by overstretching her precognitive system, Areya sincerely wished that all those involved in the whole mess would turn their intestines upside down and start chewing with their asses and defecating with their mouths. She was usually much more creative in her swearing, but she'd run out of swear words on the second day. At least she wasn't poisoned by potions, or a couple of the newcomers had been dragged off by the healers. Maybe they'd even be able to drain them after all they'd been through. She was not buying her own alchemy for nothing.

Areya's mansion was located in a presentable residential area, albeit far from aristocratic quarters. At one time, she did not want to move there, although the second mansion presented by the Imperial Office was much larger. She restricted herself to hiring servants to prevent the garden from overgrowing and the walls from becoming dilapidated. Otherwise, one might insult the giver... who was considered, albeit formally, the Emperor since the gift went through his entourage.

When she entered the house and gestured to the maid to prepare the bathroom, she went to sleep. As she passed the kitchen, where, to the grumbling of the cook, she grabbed a few smoked sausages, checking them for poisons, she nodded to the young lad who was leaving the kitchen. The nephew of her solicitor, who watched over the house in her absence, was a bright boy with whom she might otherwise have exchanged a few words. Only twenty winters old, and already a level fifteen and an uncommon class. She, too, had started in a similar way. True, this boy wasn't an Assassin, but a far more peaceful and versatile Adventurer, but still.

She went to sleep just like that, without even undressing from her uniform, leaving the prepared bath to cool down.

She woke up because she was hungry. A couple of sausages chewed on the go did not satisfy her hunger but only whetted her appetite. Her head no longer ached, and the quiet rustle of unfulfilled events indicated that the class had returned to relative normality. There was unpleasant weakness in her body, but she felt surprisingly well. The alchemist hadn't lied about the restorative tonic's quicker recovery - she shouldn't mix it with the usual booze, but the effect was excellent. Otherwise, she would have taken a week to recover, and now she was almost back to normal.

She got up and stretched softly, stretching her stiff muscles, and walked over to the small mirror in the corner of the room, assessing her condition. Long periods of lack of sleep and hard work didn't add to her beauty; there was no lying or embellishing here. Areya had taken several rejuvenating formulas in her time, so she looked as young as she had in her youth. Such a look helped rather than hindered her work - not many people expected a trick from such a person. Bonuses in the form of regular indecent suggestions and the need to check food and drink not only for poison but also for charm potions came with it.

Black hair with small flecks of dark red dye, the typical mark of the capital's youth, the kind used by the daughters of rich merchants who are not watched by their wealthy parents. Not this appearance was considered obscene, rather too provocative, but it allowed her to get into places where a grown-up aunt would arouse suspicion. In fact, she didn't like being serious and prim - her job was serious enough as it was, at least give her the appearance of a belated teenage rebellion!

Much more questions were raised by the tattoo on her arm, gradually extending to her shoulder and back. The intricate design, created by a true master of his craft, not only strengthened the ability to intuitively sense danger but also helped to detect unnecessary impurities in the food and air. Not an alchemical scanner, which is relatively easy to fool if you know how, but a full-fledged intuitive insight that simply lets you know what you shouldn't eat and what you shouldn't breathe.

For a pre-cog, which is so hard to kill in direct combat, all sorts of long-playing poisons are considered a major threat to life. She can't look far, but blocking her visions is much harder, as well as deceiving her. It is the slow-acting poison that is the easiest to conceal, and then, even after considering her death, there is nothing she can do but prolong the agony. That's why she bothered in her time with this tattoo, finding an independent and trusted master with the right level. The Eternal Empire was not the Empire of Arms, where combat tattoos were more common. Her master, however, was not narrow-eyed but black-skinned, hailing from some desert tribe. Not that she trusted these guys that much, but at least he was human. She certainly wouldn't trust her body to some elf or beastman.

Her lazy thoughts, combined with breathing exercises and warm-up, were interrupted by a catching irregularity. The house was too quiet, unaccustomedly quiet. The servants were asleep, of course - it was the middle of the night - but the silence was not nocturnal. It was different. The kind that comes with the activation of the sound barrier that covers the whole building.

She kept no special protection on her house, reasonably believing that those who could get close to her unnoticed would not be frightened of the protection she bought for money. Her reputation and influence allowed her to check out those craftsmen who didn't sell their services for gold, but then there would be no escape from listening. For the chance to keep an almost official eye on her, her superiors would even put up protection for free. She was relatively new to the imperial elite, so she hadn't had time to build up any serious capital. And her reluctance to seek patrons only made things worse. On the other hand, patrons sometimes found her themselves, soberly assessing the prospects of friendship with Areya.

The lack of good protection showed itself in all its glory. This was not the first time she had been attacked in her home. Twice before, she had had to change her house to find a new one. No, of course, the command knew where she lived, but a certain anonymity was assured by the change of lodgings. Everything else was taken care of by her class skills, preventing her from being caught unawares. How many times had they tried to catch her in bed, tempted by minimal protection and remoteness from well-guarded areas? Already she lost count. But for every murderer or corpse they took alive, they managed to get some dividends. From equipment for assassins to incentives for the service. True, a fair share of those who ordered her death was not foreign enemies or rebellious lords but all those to whom her temper was up to their necks. And not all of them could ever be held accountable for what they had done, oh not all of them.

A deep breath and the world breaks up into a circle of separate images.

Areya picks up her daggers and leaves the room, immediately going into stealth, hiding the sound of her footsteps and presence. The corridor is empty, and so is the rest of the house, not counting the sleeping servants. She is not lazy to check on a couple of gardeners, but they are just asleep, breathing deeply and measuredly. There is no sign that they have any health problems. She walks out of their room back into the hallway, and her legs buckle, her hands let out daggers, and her eyes go dark. A tattoo belatedly burns, warning of what appears to be a multi-component alchemical slurry in the air, and a shroud of unconsciousness falls from her eyes, preventing her from applying her intuition...

Areya rushes to the bed faster than lightning, opening the secret vault and quickly pouring into herself three powerful alchemical antidotes at once. The combination of drugs, perfectly chosen, especially for her, is not only almost harmless but also removes from the body any other compositions and potions. She is not able to use it often, and not only because of the crazy price, even for her, but now she feels a slight chill in her lungs when the first component of the complex compound disabling composition stops working.

She then pulls out a rag mask from the same hiding place, covering the lower half of her face. The cloth is covered with invisible runes that not only filter the air she breathes in but also create a subtle field that prevents poisonous - or any other - particles from touching her exposed skin. The woman put on gloves of young wyvern skin on her hands and hung a whole set of throwing and not so throwing iron on her belt. The jokes were over - those who could get that close to her deserved to be taken exceptionally seriously.

In her mind, she weighs her options, contemplating trying to sneak out the window and not mess with her attackers. On the other hand, the surprise attack has already failed, and in direct combat, the lurkers are not equal to the far more battle-oriented Liquidator. Unless the unknown detractors have not sent their liquidator not inferior to her, or even several at once. The decision must be made instantly, and she takes it almost without thinking...

A circle of images and there, she slips out of the window, crossing the garden in a few moments and observing the complex and cunning barrier that covers the entire house and the surrounding area. A short and very deep blink takes her beyond the barrier, and she is already hiding in the darkness, sounding the alarm through her amulet. Except the amulet is silent, unresponsive to attempts to activate it. On the other hand, she's already gone, and there seems to be no chase after her.

The circle continues, but now Areya does not go to the window but signals through the amulet, which, just as in the version that did not come true, does not work. Quietly, like a shadow, she walks across the perfectly studied floorboards of her house. The fabric of the mask heats barely perceptibly, reflecting the attempt to poison her. There is absolute silence in the house, broken only by the breathing of sleeping people. But then another movement of Areia's touches something incredibly delicate, like a cobweb brought by a draught. Immediately a sense of danger erupts, and the liquidator herself recognizes the touch of a signal thread of the highest quality, blocking with her daggers the attack from around the corner...

The circle still stretches on, but Areya bends at the last moment, almost biting her boots, avoiding three beacons at once, hovering motionless in the air. Such spiderwebs, combining magic and matter, are great for countering lovers of silence, but not when their presence is known. A figure standing around the corner, covered by an invisible cloak and his skills, dies before he cries out, stabbed in the heart and eye.

Silently laying the body relaxed in death, the woman sprawls out on the floor, crawling under several more strands of signaling. The fisherman's game, as her mentors called this technique, is to slowly penetrate the target's dwelling, gradually fill that dwelling with your billets and traps, and only then attack. Ideally, all preparation would not be necessary at all, and the fish would be hooked with the first strike, but if it failed, the neutralized and turned against the victim's defense of the home walls would be a decisive help.

They were perfectly equipped. But they were no match for her on her field. Far from being novices, at least twenty-five, but to her, they were like inexperienced children, honestly. The second intruder dies just as quickly and ignominiously, getting sharpened by activated skill steel in the temple, but still managed to crush some amulet in his fist at the last moment. Her gut told her that the alarming...

The second dies, struck by a barely glowing dagger to the temple, and her hand grips with a steely grip on the palm of her hand that had reached for alarming amulet. The quiet crack of a broken wrist is no longer needed - death has taken the one trying to warn his comrades much sooner than he realizes the pain. The blood pounded quietly in her head, and the headache that had never fully gone away began to show its effect again.

The Fan of Probabilites requires tremendous concentration for prolonged use, but it pays off. A few more accidental jerks and desperate attempts at signaling, which these guys seemed to put far above trying to save their lives, could only be avoided by canceling what was to happen a moment later. The Misdirection helped only once when the victim, imagining herself to be a hunter, almost managed to breathe out a colorless cloud of something in her face. Other than that mistake, she made no other.

All the power of her class is revealed exactly in such situations. The cost of a mistake in high-level assassin battles is always the highest. Areya's advantage was that she could afford to make a mistake without making a mistake. She lost the lion's share of her strength in encounters with powerful deceivers who could override even her precognition, but there were none here. There were few of them around the world if truth be told.

But the people who attacked her were clearly consulting with someone similar. Her hunch was silent, her intuition was barely able to make anything out, and if it weren't for the ability to turn to a Direct Simulation of unhappened, Areya would have had no chance of removing the interference quietly. And after all, they clearly expected her to be exhausted from her work and unable to use her second class for at least another week. It was not for nothing that she did not inform superiors that she had spent the rarest potion of her personal reserves. She wanted to because she would have recouped some of the cost through the department's accounting department, but she was just too tired to do so, and she postponed the fuss for later.

Less than a minute had passed since her awakening, and she was already on the verge of a nosebleed. But her house had an added decoration in the form of eight corpses, blood still to be cleaned. She hadn't even tried to take them alive - it was easier to strain necromancers than to take the risk. At the very least, she would take the very last one alive, but certainly not the first people she encountered - a disabled agent could wake up at the most inopportune moment.

Eight bodies, one for each section of her house space. But if she understands anything about elimination and abduction techniques, there must be a ninth one nearby now, closing the standard "three by three" formation. And if he didn't catch her eye or in the circle of images, that could mean a very unpleasant fact.

Her intuition, which did not help at all during the night's adventure, did not help even now. It was the years of experience of someone who had been in a similar situation more than once and on both sides of the conflict. And so, Areya fell silently to the floor, sprawling on the surface of it and going into a low dash, simultaneously swinging her daggers at the intended vectors of attack. And even hit someone, alas, who managed to meet the steel with her steel.

A U-turn and another deceptive feint allowed her to stand exactly in front of the obviously insecure opponent. His class is unknown but clearly, as a lurker as his comrades. His level is also unclear, but only she knows from experience that a fighter in turmoil and uncertainty is no match for her, even with her foresight turned off again. It's time to take the information bearer alive and then a long and persistent search for those who have worked so hard for her.

A test swing of the dagger was taken for another block, though this was sudden - they don't block such blows. She had already prepared to receive a completely sudden blow with lightning magic through the blade, but instead of lightning, something else happened, incomprehensible. A flash of golden light seemed to bind her and the intruder, causing Area to break the distance. She could have tried to strike, but fatigue and exhaustion had already played a part, forcing her to make a mistake.

She almost managed to reach her opponent's face in a leap backward, tearing off the hood and the same cloth mask as hers, but it didn't bleed. The typical aristocrat's pale face was wrinkled in a genuine panic until a strange amulet on a chain wrapped around his forearm glowed with the same golden light. The expression of dangerous and desperate hope clearly indicated that the jokes were over, and the woman was about to strike in earnest...

"Don't attack me!" With these words, the amulet in the form of an amber drop glowed even brighter, dispelling the warm golden light of the night darkness.

"Okay, I won't." A little irritated, Areya answered, leaning her back against the wall and trying to regain her breath, bringing her premonition back into working order. "Do you want to go to the cell yourself, or should I force you?"

On the outside, this brat looked like a typical imperial man from the picture - short black hair, thin and straight features, a noble profile, and all that. In a crowd, she would have taken him for a Duelist or a Brether, but certainly not someone of the lurker classes that aristocrats traditionally didn't want to go into. Someone's bastard? Quite likely, for it was a common practice to put strong-blooded men in jobs where you couldn't send your official kin.

"Let's not go anywhere. Let's talk here." The absence of the blade at his throat clearly seemed to have restored both his arrogance and confidence, but the liquidator's attentive gaze found no attempt to pull his paws to the handles of the knives on his belt.

"Let's talk if you will answer." She found no reason to object. "Who sent you? What for? Contacts? Tell us everything, and you won't have to die so painfully. Unless they decide to turn you over under oath as a collaborator."

"So, we went to the harlots." The man she was talking to said, somewhat uncertainly, glancing up and down at the dimly glowing amulet. "I swear."

"Excuse me, what?" Areya gasped, imagining the whole company sneaking into the nearest brothel, in full combat gear, and with all the precautions. "Don't tell me you've got the wrong address. How could anyone ever mistake my house for a brothel? You'd have to be blind and completely drunk."

No, but if you tell anyone, they won't believe you. She wouldn't have believed it herself if she hadn't witnessed what had happened. The full nine, in combat gear, mistook the house of the imperial liquidator with a brothel, entered in the first readiness and combat formation, and so died almost all. It is true what they say, that Eternity has seen everything imaginable!

"No, no!" She shouldn't have hidden the knives because that asshole's face was begging, if not for a second smile, then for a good kick in the teeth. "You're Areya Fern, aren't you?"

"Obviously, yes." Along with the answer, she immediately picked up, suspecting that the coincidence might not have been entirely coincidental.

He glanced again at the pulsing gold amulet, which was a distraction, and then seemed to calm down even more, smirking the kind of smile that would make her look for love potions in her drink and break the noses of her overly self-important coworkers.

"Well, that's where we were coming to." With feigned surprise, he explain to her. "Everyone knows that Areya Fern is quite a wench. Cheap, greedy, and horny beyond measure. She'll do anything for a handful of coppers. And if you show her gold, she'll do anything. She's as greedy for meat as a victim of succubus blood!"

She's such a mess. Working from home in her position was foolish - it was already a rumor. She usually prefers to go to the Harbor District or the Merchant Quarter of the Copper Circle on her own. There are so many girls in the ports and markets that it's easy for her to get lost there. A regular sucker, not a cheap slut, with good looks and a knack for presenting herself, she was in short supply. Not that she needed gold so much if you remember how many who offered bribes and patronage she sent to the devils. But that was on duty, and this was after hours - an extra penny and a treat. It's hard to live with a constantly wet cunt, while maintaining a reputation as one who doesn't give to anyone. If only she knew who had managed to connect that girl and Area Fern herself, the forty-first level Liquidator, and shut them up forever. And how she sometimes wanted to accept a couple of proposals and finally spread her legs, instead of tolerating and suppressing her desires, but all conspiracy...

"I won't apologize for your friends." She only lets her face crease a little as she assesses the number of cocks that have passed her by. "They're degenerates for coming into my house. I don't know what to do with you now, you pussywalker."

"What do you mean?" He asked with the same painfully feigned amazement, rolling the gold round in his fingers that had instantly caught her eye. "Let me put you on the four. Now that you're here?"

After catching the tossed coin deftly, Areya thought for a second about how not to cross her two jobs, but then she gave up and decided to work off the gold first and only then to cover her tracks. Perhaps with a generous client, because if she drove him to breathlessness, it wouldn't count as assault. Eh, how many times she was offered to take Seductress courses, but no, insulted and called a duel if insisted! And how much she could learn useful for a second job!

"But hurry up. I have to go to work in the morning." The woman declares in a normal tone, not daring to insult the client, pulling down her enchanted uniform and regretting that she did not have time to rinse. "If you want to fuck ass, then warn me, okay?"

With that last phrase, she tried to smile her most depraved and seductive smile, which somehow came out strained and unaccustomed. She leaned one hand against the same wall she'd just leaned against, and the other pulled back the crescent of her bulging asshole, revealing a perfect view of the already moped slit. The pragmatic part of Areya hoped the guy would cum quickly, but the lustful part demanded a long marathon with a full set and use of all her orifices. Too bad he was the only one who survived or her holes could have been used all at once - more enjoyable, and the coin would work out faster.

In one fell swoop, he entered her, causing a convulsive wave of pleasure. The nameless client grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back, revealing her neck. The old-time assassin wanted to be indignant, and she just didn't like the rudeness, but then he started to fuck her, and all the complaints went to waste. A familiar throbbing amulet flashed in front of her face, and the man breathing hotly in her ear began to speak.

Some people apparently just like to humiliate whores by telling them what whores they are. As if she would hear anything new in those words. The truth is not insulted, and certainly about her lustful whore nature Areya could tell about as much as she had heard. Though this fool's fantasy would be more suited to a slavemancing lover than to the average client.

Really? To cum from a butt slap and fall hopelessly in love with whoever slaps her, becoming willing to do any betrayal or risk for his sake? This is already a fairy tale from cheap novels for lovers of playing with other people's brains or an application to the level of about half a hundred in the specialized class. She hadn't read the former, and her client, who had just given her her third straight orgasm, was definitely not the latter. With a growling groan, he poured into her hole, groaning loudly and with pleasure, as if pouring into her all the accumulated tension after the beginning of such a stupid battle.

"You scared me, Lady Fern." He said it in the suddenly elegant language of high society, not the coarse, primitive language he'd spoken before. "Very much so."

She was about to tell him to shut the fuck up, demanding that he fuck her again, and if she got lucky, she could ask for an extra penny, even if it was copper, but then three things happened at once. She turned to face him, keeping her palms on the wall and her buttocks up. The client swung his arm, clearly about to slap her buttocks, as if following his fantasies. And the third detail was a crossbow arrow that pierced the poor man's skull, an arrow enchanted to burst, which turned the client's head into a red slurry. It's a good thing he was thrown to the side first, or else she would have had to clean her ass out of his brains, too.

She should have changed position herself, pulled out her daggers, and assessed the situation, but a whore is still a whore even in this situation, so she only made her used dignity more prominent, remaining in the "ready for service" position. For some reason, it seemed very important to her to hold her busy pose, pressing her hands against the wall and waiting for a slap on the buttocks, just like in the fantasy of the dead idiot. She didn't hear the click of the bowstring behind her own moans and heavy breathing, either, though.

"Hello, Mort." She smiled invitingly at her housekeeper's nephew. "How long have you been watching? If you were in such a hurry to get your dagger into my sheath, you needn't have killed the first one. I'm not going to be picked off, not if the people who pick me off are going to die so often.

"Lady Fern, come to your senses. Something's wrong!" Red as a freshly boiled crawfish, the boy clearly wanted to fall under the ground, trying to look in any other direction but always returning his magnetized gaze to her nakedness.

"Of course, it's not all right!" Areya was a little indignant. "No one fucks me, and there are nine corpses in the house of those who are supposed to be doing it. By the way, would you like to do it yourself? I'm already used, of course, but the back hole is still intact, and you, as an acquaintance, with a discount. Ten pieces of silver, is that a good price?"

Mort shook his head in a way that made her think for a moment that her neck was going to explode, and the red hues on his face grew brighter all at once, even though it looked like it couldn't go any further. Honestly, no amount of stat would be enough to stand in that position forever, but Areya couldn't get past the laziness and the sluggishness to make herself stand up.

"What? Expensive?" She squinted her eyes slyly and continued to press on the panting boy. "Well, how about a nickel, then? At least a copper one? Or don't you even have that kind of money?"

"Damn you, Lady Fern, wake up!" His shriek was a falsetto, and if it hadn't been for the barrier around the house, it might have roused the neighbors... and if it hadn't been for the sprayed potion, it would certainly have woken the whole house.

"By the way, how did you manage to wake up?" Areya asked in a suddenly serious tone without changing her position. "And your shot... it was about thirty, but he couldn't dodge it."

He groaned desperately and bit his palm. The still embarrassed boy adjusted his clothes, hiding the tension in his pants, then ran both hands over his face as if to shake off some kind of obsession. Areya heard fragments of several very sophisticated swear words, among which there was even a phrase she was unfamiliar with.

"I have an endurance achievement that increases resistance to poisons and the rate at which toxins are released." He said lost, trying to turn away but not to turn away from the one he was addressing. "Uncle Irnon... he let me sleep here tonight. Only tonight! In the morning, I would have fled before dawn! It's just that the guards are so fierce now. It's dangerous to wander the city after dusk. I wake up, come out of my room for a drink, and there's a corpse lying there. And then the noise came from the living room. I sneak out, and I see... He was doing something to you, Lady Fern!"

"Of course he did." Areya hummed, correlating what she knew. "What, strangling a dragon while peeking since there's no money for entertainment?"

If the alchemy was made just for her - although it seems that those who came to get her off for the night need not do so - then such a property of the body could also help him come out of sleep faster than the estimated time. And if he really sat there for a long time, behind the wall and out of the direct line of sight, and then attacked only at the moment of maximum distraction, then, in principle, his successful shot is not so surprising.

"Gods, I'm going to be executed for this." Now Mort started whining, which didn't suit him at all. "All right, all right... We need to get out of here, Lady Fern. We gotta get out of here, quick."

"Okay, slap my ass, and let's go." She only agreed because she feared for the health of the guy who wouldn't stop blushing.

"Or we could just go..." This was already so pathetically said that it even made me smile.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Nope." Areya protested in a mean voice. "If you're so broke that you can't even afford copper, you might as well rub your hands on something else's, or you'll die a virgin."

"Devils, what's in it for me? I have money!" Any tantrum sooner or later could turn into a battle rage, but she hoped the guy wouldn't lose his mind completely.

"So, you're squeamish after the others?" The woman clarified, noting this fact to herself. "Then I don't have to invite you to orgies. Well, come back later when I've cleaned up and have another night off from the service."

"Whew... Okay. Lady Fern, would you stand up and walk with me to the nearest guard patrol?" Cautiously, as if stepping through a trap-filled ancient dungeon, the adventurer asks.

"That's easy! What kind of strange questions are these, anyway?" Sincerely, she is indignant. "Slap my ass, and let's go wherever you say. If you pay me extra, we'll do more than that. All right, I'll give you a free blowjob, pretty boy."

"Oh, holy Eternity and all the gods that are and will be, may I not be killed for this later!" With this peculiar prayer, the boy's palm rose uncertainly into the air and sank on Areya's soft skin.

For a second, the world stopped, curled into a point that settled somewhere deep in her body, burst into a stream of dragon fire, melting her consciousness in the fire of the most amazing orgasm imaginable, and then gathered itself back into the world she was used to. Only now, something about it had changed. Areya Fern was absolutely certain of three things: she was a whore, she liked fucking best, and best for money, and the boy Mort was the one she lived and would live for, the one she would die or kill anyone for. It didn't raise any questions like the sunrise or the process of breathing doesn't raise any questions. Just one of those truths that must be accepted and lived with, impossible to go against, and not to be shaken in any way.

"Please, Lady Fern, come to your senses, huh?" Mort, unlike her, felt nothing but burning excitement, equally burning shame, and the realization that his life was in great danger.

And Areya had really come to her senses. No, she was still a whore, and she was sure she could easily get laid for a dozen coins... if Mort didn't mind. And sex was to her one of the main drugs of her life, as necessary as water or provisions. Neither was the absolute love and loyalty that had turned her into an instrument of someone else's will.

But that strange veil prevented her from understanding what was happening to her, making her believe everything that the already dead spy told her... It disappeared completely and allowed the liquidator, who had seen a lot of trouble, to realize the extent of her failure. For one thing, she was glad - not only had she belonged to Mort, but the bastards who'd come after she, get nothing. On the other, more professional, she wanted to run around and smash through the wall with her head.

If only she'd been that naive little fool from the Army Intelligence Service. She could have been trapped and hunted by mental magic, though only a few could do such a thing so quickly. But to turn someone with her level, perception, intuition, and training into a corrupt wench in a few phrases? This was no joke or self-discovery - an artifact in the hands of a "client" was worth more than the lives of the group and the whole city block that came after her. And more expensive than the lives of Areya, to be honest.

"We're in the shit, Mort." Her clothes were on in an instant, and a moment later, she was kneading her stiff body. "Let's get out of here now while we still can."

To send such an artifact to a mission without a backup would be impossible folly, which means that the artifact is bound to come after it, as well as both of them. And while Areya could, with luck, escape the battle, Mort, unfortunately, would only be able to die.

"But my uncle..."

"No buts!" She interrupts him, barely suppressing the urge to press with authority, as she is used to working with overly willful subordinates. "They are simply out of their minds from the sleeping potion. It is much more important now to get to the Eye, to report to them what happened..."

And then you don't even have to be precognitive to realize the fate of Mort, at whose mercy a person of her caliber found herself. No, you have to think hard about how to get around the subject in an interrogation and how not to get caught by those who can look deep enough. She has enough administrative resources to hide the guy away until things settle down. The main thing is to convince him to be quiet. If it gets out that her mind was under the influence, there's no way to avoid a full scan. She might be able to keep the staff mentalists out of her head, but who knows how much influence she'd been under?

In theory, it shouldn't give off any flashes, or else she would be identified almost instantly, but that's just a theory. Maybe they wanted to turn her into a one-time suicide bomber, for whom a long conspiracy is not necessary at all. She was already wildly lucky in that the last survivor turned out to be just a clinical idiot. So incompatible with life is this lust that there's nothing to say. If he hadn't decided, intoxicated with the power over another man's mind, to fuck his victim, Mort would never have been able to bring him down with a single crossbow shot in his life.

"It is dangerous for us and for them to stay here." She carefully wrapped a cloth around the faded amber and placed it in the container on her belt without interrupting her explanation. "I understand there are many questions, but this is neither the time nor the place."

"But... aren't murderers and slave catchers handled by the guards?" Her sudden love asks perplexedly. "Yes, and they won't let us into the Eyes... if we find them at all."

In all this fuss, she had simply forgotten that the boy knew nothing about her. The landlord suspected something, but he, too, preferred to remain silent, not to share his dangerous suspicions with his nephew. From this side looking, her desire to go exactly to the Eye really seems strange.

"They'll let me in." She interrupted him briefly, trying to figure out whether to squeeze the signal amulet again. "Come on, keep up."

The amulets still didn't work. That could only mean the other, the receiving one, was destroyed. Or not destroyed but temporarily blocked. She would have thought of some trick used by the night visitors or, rather, another artifact. Areya could name a dozen ways to inconspicuously disable all the amulets in a particular area. A couple of them were even discreet and quiet enough not to wake her up by the very fact of their use.

But it would be too naïve to think the attack on her had been made without the mole from Eyes, even if that thought was wrong. She had often been tried to be set up, but an action so brazen, with such means as the medallion still in her bag, simply screamed this was no longer the usual attempt at revenge or threat. Not even the thought of failure was allowed here, so backup had to go at all levels, including the use of double agents. It is possible that they were not even aware of their status - the same artifact hinted at that directly.

As she passed another inconspicuous building - fortunately, Mort was silent and generally behaving like a model adventurer following a more experienced mentor - she pulled another alarming amulet from under the slightly protruding stone of the paving stone. The hunch was still silent, and the effort to activate the Fan was too much of a pity - it would take at most another dozen seconds, and then it would really take a week to recover. She just had to turn her head and rely on her own experience, which had helped her more than once before.

Alas, not this time.

She was going to use the alarm, then wait for backup at an agreed-upon point. She had enough liquidators and assassins of all stripes at her disposal, even though she was only a senior officer. Debtors, apprentices, comrades, and allies - all of whom she had limited confidence in over the years of service and bloody work. They had helped her in situations where even she could not do it alone, so the situation did not seem hopeless.

It wasn't until they met in the middle of an abandoned pottery factory on the outskirts of one of the craft centers. Areya had deliberately taken the boy outside the Eternal for fear of fiddling with him in an environment so saturated with foreign surveillance and all sorts of spies. Far from being a girl, she knew powerful artifacts could also be tracked, especially when used. That's why she put it in her personal isolation container - to avoid accidents. Even now, she could easily be found by the trail of such trinkets, but that would not be done quickly.

That's exactly what she thought.

They stepped forward without hiding, though they were disguised, probably created by amulets. Three men of not too high a level, with all the hallmarks of a typical mercenary of average untidiness. They were well equipped, but their habits and mannerisms were very distinctive, easily discernible to the trained eye. The leader of the formation was a familiar face, even if it was now concealed by the same cloth mask as her own.

Kenai Ettle hardly ever crossed paths with her on the job, but his face was familiar enough that she could recognize a fellow operative by his gait and body proportions alone. An ordinary, classic even, spy from domestic intelligence, level about thirtieth. High credentials, a lot of experience, and truly gigantic ambition - all the things a spy and agent needs to succeed in the service. The ability to lie and betray with a smile on his face in the name of the Empire is not taken into account because this is such a base, without which even the attracted staff will not be taken.

In general, in another situation, such an encounter might even have been pleasant, if not for one small but. Kenai shouldn't be in this place, and she'd recently had very specific thoughts about the presence of moles in the department.

"Why didn't you go to the agreed-upon point." The question, the tone, and the very attitude of the spy just screamed that he wasn't expecting a fight, not at all. "And why isn't Minir with you? He must have..."

You know, there are those moments in everyone's life when two things come over you. One, you're a fool. Two, you're in the shit. Now Kenai clearly understood exactly these two truths, comparing the absence of someone who was supposed to be there for her and the "failure to come to the point." She would wonder later why the experienced agent hadn't sounded the alarm about such a failure to appear. But now she, like her interlocutor, realized only two things - she had, after all, been traced unnoticed, and now a traitor was standing before her.

What followed was not a battle but an execution. Kenai was not a fighter at all, and though he had a few clever tricks up his sleeve, they were too few. His escorts were clearly not of the caliber to help him in battle. Kenai was the very first to fall when she moved toward him with a quick blink, choosing the most successful of her five choices of attack. The one in which she thrust the dagger into his spine, safely paralyzing him. Anticipation, after such exertion, thanked her with a new migraine, but she didn't need it anymore. Not one of the mercenaries, including even the owner of the single-shot lead shotgun cunningly hidden in his sleeve, even managed to scream.

She turned toward her prisoner and ignoring the surprised exclamation of Mort, who hadn't even realized the battle had begun, saw the prisoner take his breath away. Died. Though he could not physically have died from such a wound. This trick Areya had practiced so many times that she could have done it blindfolded, even without the use of a Fan.

"Not good..." From her absent-mindedness, she even spoke out loud.

"W-what happened?" Something had to be done about poor Mort because his career as an adventurer was not prepared for such problems and adventures, and if he snapped, he would easily ruin himself and Areya, who did not want to leave him.

She turned to the boy, already preparing the standard soothing phrases. Contrary to rumor, she knew how to quickly bring a panicked rookie partner to his senses, a skill she'd had since before she'd joined Eyes from her home army. She turned around... and died as her heart and brain were pierced by two phantom daggers that emerged from the void...

Feeling her spine crack, Areya twisted, letting both blows pass her by, for in the variations where she did try to block, the enemy blades simply passed through the enchanted steel as if her blades didn't exist, slicing through hot flesh. She did not see the assassin, even as she died facing the blades. Only a barely perceptible shiver of air, even to her perception.

A break of distance and she dies right on the move, not even noticing the attack, but still in time to hear the quiet cry of Mort, who received a fatal wound a moment later...

Trying to strike back was useless - as if you were hitting a void. She poured the epic artifacts with power, both her own and borrowed, but they caught nothing. She would have thought the subtle mirage was a hoax, but simultaneously with her desperate throw, the mirage itself struck. And unlike the reaction to her attacks, these strikes were just as deadly, intangible, and unpredictable. Her intuition and sense of danger were not just late. They were silent, as if there was no danger at all, despite her throat being ripped open all the way to my spine...

A blow to the throat forced her into a blink, only to die on her way out, again before she could see the invisible assassin...

A double blink and roll allowed her to escape with only a couple of deep cuts on her back, though her uniform was enchanted for good measure. The immaterial blades, however, sliced through the armor as easily as they had slashed through her flesh in conscious simulations. A crossbow bowstring rattled, releasing an arrow in the direction of the blow, but Mort's attempt to help was as futile as her blows.

Blood was streaming down her face, the result of the nightmarish overexertion. Areya could have died of a brain hemorrhage at any moment. Her already overstretched abilities continued to work, taking years of her life. She did not have time to pay it back, dying again, being cut open like a fish - from her groin to her throat...

A step back and a deceptive volt saves her again, but the sense of doom squeezes her heart too tightly. She's just not good enough to fight this... with it, whatever it is. She can't strike, she can't block, and she can't even dodge, only dying a couple of times in simulations, exhausting herself more and more. For a moment, Areya realized that now that's it. She would no longer be able to fight or live. At least she wouldn't have to deal with command and hide the changes in her mind. And the loving hearts died in one day, like in a bad fairy tale.

A dozen years earlier, she might have tried to make a mental plea to the Deities, but now she had long since believed in anything, and the battle required all the effort she could muster, so she didn't even have time to despair. Life is not novels about knights, false publications of adventurers' diaries, or love lyrics. Here help never comes at the last moment and those who are weaker simply and uncomplicated die. This must be fun for Irnon when he wakes up - a house full of corpses and no nephew or hirer.

The last thought even made her smile as her legs buckled at the knees, and the terrible weakness made her drop her blades and slam down the Fan that was still working by some miracle. She couldn't see the attack of the still invisible blades, and she wasn't looking, but she still saw something entirely unexpected.

The daggers that appeared in midair, just as they did out of nowhere, flew through the empty space. But at the same time, the gray haze that covered these weapons of murder and bloodletting had some effect other than its absence. The air shuddered even more, and then the shudder flickered, moving away from another pair of daggers covered in the same gray magic.

And then, two figures appeared in the middle of the alley. The first, huge and massive, wrapped in a heavy traveling cloak, stood with its back to her and probably belonged to the one who had saved her life for some reason. Someone from Eyes? Perhaps she was once again the bait in some special operation, only on a different, higher level? In any case, she was still breathing, as was Mort, who had settled out of her sight.

The second figure did not belong to a human being... It did not belong to any kind of endowed, monster or creature she knew of! An incredibly graceful, eye-piercingly beautiful snow-white figure of something faceless and sexless. And the absolute intangibility of this figure, and its complete absence in all her senses except sight, clearly indicated exactly who was trying (very successfully) to cut off her life.

"Greetings." The creature's sexless and emotionless voice was perfectly audible, despite its lack of a mouth or lips to utter the words.

"Hi." The man answered in a muffled, soaked half-groan, in a manner more befitting a frontier bandit than a capital dweller. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Instead of answering, the creature disappeared again, and the stranger followed. With a quiet clang, the intangible blades met with the usual and clearly good-quality long and thin daggers. And then began a real fight, the likes of which Areya had only seen a couple of times in her life, and even that from a distance.

Despite her high level and good classes, the woman's arsenal was completely lacking in truly powerful attacks. In her opinion, a properly applied light slap will often be much more useful than a blow with a steel club. That, come to think of it, could be considered the fighting credo of every assassin, and, indeed, of every other dancer or dodger. The Cape Bearer must have been not informed because he confronted the invisible and impossibly fast killer with AoE blows, forcing him to take materiality and fight back rather than play hunting for a defenseless victim who can't even hit him back.

Dust.

Gray, fine and clogging up every crevice, the dust rose into the air and began to age everything around them. Areya was afraid for herself and Mort, but strange spells didn't affect them. It certainly wasn't geomancy, though the earthworms knew a thing or two about using dust barriers. It was something very, very dangerous, deeply conceptual, and constantly changing its vector of attack.

The creature would disappear but reappear where it had stood a moment before or move obviously not to where it wanted to go. It pierced the face of the cloaked stranger with its blades, but the stranger, clearly mortally wounded rather than deceived, reassembled from the dust, unharmed. She saw his death reflexively turn on the fan which almost cost her her life, but the simulation just malfunctioned and failed. She saw what had not yet happened. This man was rolling back what had happened.

Dust beat its blades and raised barriers, forcing the creature into close combat, where the human daggers made it feel uncomfortable. It responded with dozens of invisible blows, among which there were a couple that reached their targets. The blows were met by strange armor covered with the faces of frankly unfriendly elders who seemed to be making more and more angry faces. The man responded with whole spheres of dust, within which the dance of gray particles seemed to falter.

Watching the attack frozen within such a sphere, equally invisible but now outlined by a dusty outline, Areya came to the shocking assumption that a bearer of the power available to the Crowned Bloods had come to save her. Not that anyone besides them knew how to play with the Immutable Law, but if you encounter such a cad in the middle of the capital of the Empire of the Ages, it's reasonable to assume the most obvious option.

For a moment, she thought the man had lost, having stumbled and missed the double attack before she could roll back his wound, but it turned out she wasn't the only one. The creature that had emerged next to the man trying to clamp down on his punctured throat pierced the enchanted armor in several places at once, clearly using an amplified strike. But the body, instead of disappearing into a cloud of dust, scattered into a cloud of that dust, from which he emerged unharmed and real. But now it was a decoy that was used, just a very high-level one, so good that it was almost real.

The creature was frozen as a motionless statue in the middle of a very large sphere of dust. By the will of the man standing motionless beside it, all the excess dust began to flock to the sphere, clearly preparing to turn into something dangerous to the alien existence. Smoothly rising to her feet and hesitating for a moment, Areya stepped closer, stopping just short of their savior. Not behind her, no - she had the good sense not to try to get in the back of a likely fellow liquidator, only a very high-level one. Already behind her was Mort, but he could do even more than that now.

The creature struck suddenly and very hard.

It is a creature, not a faceless thing.

It didn't change externally, but what had previously been a complete void in energy perception began to radiate. For a fraction of a moment, Areya's mind and body tried to comprehend what she was about to experience, and then it got her. The pleasure of being one step away from agony, the lust that blurs the line between reason and madness, the pain that brings only the thirst to continue the torment over and over again, the ecstasy that is followed by nothingness, into which she longed to jump more than anything, the desire that is more important than life and death-all this came over her mind in an instant, sweeping away any self-control at once and without the slightest resistance.

With a half-strangled shriek, she falls on her buckled legs, releases her raised weapon, and shudders in the most powerful orgasm of her life. The most beautiful and probably the last. She felt the damned fleure of the high-ranking Devil literally drink away at her soul. The idea of resisting was somewhere far away, and Areya's whole will was focused on diving headlong into ecstasy. Forever.

The stranger struck, turning a sphere of dust into grave slabs that collapsed on the still-silent creature. And though it showed no excitement, its attack did something to it, forcing it to stop the song of its Vice, loosening its death grip on Areya's mind and the somehow miraculously still-breathing Mort. If it had had time, it might well have commanded it - under the Fleur, the very notion of will is simply absent. That's why this undoubtedly iconic technique of the inhabitants of Hell is disliked. It can turn an army on its comrades at once. And all the knowledge, skills, and honed tactics will go to the devil's side. This is not the usual slavemancing, which, more or less, can only produce obedient puppets and shadows of their former selves.

The creature ceased its influence only for a brief moment, but that was enough for the man to step inside the sphere and grasp the monster's face, devoid of eyes or any other feature, with his bare hand. And then, instead of losing that arm along with his soul, he struck. Dust streamed from his fingers, flowing into the creature's body and turning its flesh into ash.

For the first time since the conflict had begun, the thing was seriously pissed. No, it didn't shriek in pain or horror, but it twitched visibly, trying to break free of its grip, and all the dust around it became harder than rock at once, preventing it from moving freely. When the grayness took up half of the creature's head, it blinked again and simply disappeared.

The sphere had fallen, as had all the other dust.

A moment of blissful silence and peace.

"Why the fuck did I even get involved in this shit?" The man's question was somewhat abrupt, which made Areya, still reeling from the attack on her mind, flinch to her shame.

"B-because you've d-decided to nobly help us and save us from being devoured b-by Hell?" To her surprise, Mort hadn't even turned gray, and he hadn't lost his mind or his soul, though his underwear and hers needed to be changed.

"Hey, pretty lady, why the fuck were you covering for the kid?" He was a very insolent, though respectful, address, but Mort was ignored. "He's obviously not a nobleman, the level is low, and he's not worthy of being a witness. And I know you. Your Peeper always values your skin above the lives of those around you."

That was what the Eyes were called only in criminal circles, and it was circles that were too close to the Frontier, which made the plebeians living there lose their fear and gain foolish self-confidence. She didn't want to point out the insult to her interlocutor because Areya wanted very much to live.

"I..." She didn't know she was lying yet, when a slightly glowing lilac crystal waved in front of her face, signaling the activation of a disposable artifact. "I won't answer under the Cry."

She wonders where she got the nerve. In any case, she could have tried to deceive the Liar's Cry, prepared and full of energy, but not in this condition. And to say that Mort is now more important to her than her life, her service, or anything else is a direct way to take him as a hostage.

"Girl, I'm not going to fucking beg you." The man shook his head. "I'll just turn around and walk away, and when that asshole comes back with his friends, you can dance them off by yourself. You suck it?"

The impotence made her want to either weep or stab the bastard in the femoral vein, but she was already too old for the former, and the latter would only end in a very humiliating death.

"I have an artifact in my container." The words had to be squeezed out of her with a terrible mental squeak. The mento-corrector is no lower than a legend. I was affected by it, programmed, but before the imprinting could be secured, the guy shot the last of the capture team in the head with a crossbow. He really just happened to be in a bad situation."

All Mort could do was look from her to the asshole in bewilderment, and he seemed to be able to understand something of what she was saying. She deliberately spoke in as complicated a way as possible - well, as much as she could afford to under the gaze of the liquidator waiting for answers - hoping that the not-so-literate Mort would not understand what she was saying. Not that she was against his authority over her, but this, alas, was no place for fantasies. Especially after they'd both nearly had their souls sucked out.

"Really?" With utterly genuine surprise, the big guy checked the glow of Cry and then shifted his unreadable gaze to Mort. "Fuck, you're not bad!"

While the shocked Mort was coming to his senses from the realization of the responsibility he'd been given, the man who'd saved them began to gather his knives and wipe away the traces of the battle with dust clouds. Either he couldn't remove them completely, or he was too spent on fighting what was clearly not the last fiend in the Hells hierarchy, but even so, Areya suspected it would be difficult to read the picture of events here.

"Okay." Like he was struggling with himself, he said. "This is the first time I've ever seen such a fucked-up spectacle in my life, though I thought I'd seen a lot of shit. I'll take you fuckin' lovebirds out of here."

With these words, he lifted Areya and Mort by the collar of their clothes and dragged them somewhere in the alley, at the same time taking and hanging on his back the crossbow lying on the ground. She wanted to be indignant at this attitude since she could walk if she didn't hurry, but the stranger, who hadn't even told them his name, stepped somewhere in the wrong direction.

Before that day, Areya had never traveled straight through a plane, confining herself to either portals or momentary transfers, where you don't spend even a fraction of a second on another plane. Now, Areya realized for sure she would have loved to continue to be unfamiliar with the experience. Preferably until she died of old age. All that remained was to close her eyes and not to look anywhere, not to see the dust-covered, trampled by myriad boots of the Road, which had neither beginning nor end.

"Y-you-honorable, m-may I ask you a q-question?" Mort, who was squinting in the same way, tried to address the guide.

"Well, go ahead." He answered with a certain tension that indicated the difficulty of movement, but not so much as to cause panic in the passengers dragged through infinity.

"And if we, uh, break the artifact, l-lady Fern, will she come to her senses?" Quite a nice attitude, but it certainly didn't fit right now, even if we forget that she certainly didn't want to come to her senses.

"Hardly, little one." The man replied, thinking it over for a while. "You can try, though. If you can take it away and throw it here, the artifact won't last long."

"Lady Fern, will you please throw that disgusting thing away?" No, she will gladly listen to him, but only if his orders are not harmful to him.

"Ahem, ahem, a devil's artifact, ahem, ahem, a beacon, ahem, ahem, fuck." The guide muttered, immediately whistling merrily.

She would assume that he just wants them to get rid of the artifact voluntarily and then pick it up - so strong user of the Road, if she correctly interpreted her feelings from this place, it would not be difficult to find the trinket afterward.

"By the way, lad, aren't you afraid that when she comes to her senses, she'll snap your neck, too?" He asks Mort with a discernible sneer, eliciting a wave of mild approval from Areya. "Not even out of spite, but as a dangerous witness?"

"Y-you know, fuck you, s-sir." With surprising ease and amusement in his voice, the guy says. "My dad taught me that brainwashing is evil, and brainwashers are better seen dead. I don't give a fuck if I think I'm a shit myself. If they kill me, fuck me, there'll be no one to cry over it. I'm a fucking adventurer! Like I believe I'll die of old age."

"Gee, kid!" Despite the rather insulting treatment, the bouncer didn't even seem offended. "You can die of old age here and in a few minutes. But I hear you."

With a jerk, he tore the artifact container from her belt, tossing it into the wall of dust that surrounded the road. Areya, who dared to open her eyes, immediately closed them back, trying to keep her mind stable. The Road and the Trails - these two planes, which many scientists would consider one, just in two forms, are relatively friendly to visitors. Or rather, they kill the unprotected with the same painful guarantee, but having an affinity with them, you can stay here long enough and even take your comrades with you. It is hard to think of better specialists for sending raiders into enemy territory. But even under the cover of such a powerful Wanderer, just looking at this place is monstrously creepy and alien.

Meanwhile, the man stopped and dumped their bodies on the dusty ground, creating a sort of island of stability on the Road. Not the easiest trick, either, though it's pretty well-known. Areya was just now remembering all the facts she knew about such specialists and, at the same time, trying to match the bandit face of their savior with the Path and Time adepts she knew. So far, she couldn't find any.

"All right, lad." The big man lifted Mort by the shoulders, put him on his feet, and hovered over him with his full height, forcing the woman to reach for her scabbard, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. "What's your name, anyway?"

"M-mort, son of Volaan, I am a c-craftsman, a glassblower." Despite his stammering, he answered without looking away... at least, without wishing to turn his gaze to the world around him.

"Well, there it was, Mmort." Suddenly the vulgarity of their savior or captor's voice and manner of speech was gone, and he resembled a wild beast, ready to leap. "If you have the balls to give her back her will. Get ready. The distortions of the fiends are strong, and that thing we just fed to the Road was the foulest I'd seen to that day. But while that stuff is still fresh, I can partially roll it back, take its time and mix it with the dust. Since you have control of the binding, I'll take it out of you."

Areya struck quickly, silently, and precisely, as she had done so many times before, trying to hit the articulation of the enchanted armor in which this assassin moved so easily but only managed to scratch the cloak, then curled up on the dusty ground, if that was the ground at all. A blow to the solar plexus and another to the ear wasn't enough to knock her out, but she wouldn't even be able to stand for another ten minutes.

"Shouldn't we start with Lady Fern?" She could barely make out Mort's incredulous question amidst her thirst for breath, combined with dizziness and the aftereffects of overexertion that had overtaken her.

"Her level is over forty, boy." The negative shake of the head she picks up intuitively rather than seeing, as does the shocked look of the boy who realized her strength. "If I start ripping it out of her, I'll have to cripple her first."

"H-h-how do I know you w-won't take c-c-control for yourself?" The threat in the adventurer's voice was not at all comparable to that of his interlocutor, but it was a threat that was met by a hearty laugh that turned to laughter.

"For a mere craftsman, you seem to know a lot about these things." He laughed, and then he was just as serious and intimidating again.

"My sister and her friend were bewitched by a traveling brainiac, and he took her with him." He said calmly but with aged anger, causing her sincere respect, separate from the unshakable loyalty. "We were too l-llate to understand, and then there was no one to catch up with."

"Oh, boy. Well, then, look, Mmort." He started kneading his hands, which were gathering more and more gray dust, at the same time as he was explaining. "You wouldn't know about that. You have to believe... ...though you'd better hope so. It's a pity you're so normal. It's easier to take time away from those whose lives you don't intend to spare."

With those words, he simply jammed his hands into the chest of Mort, who was convulsing and whose face showed an easily discernible agony. Areya tried to force herself to get up, to fight, to save and protect, but her limbs felt as if they were filled with lead, and her head exploded with light-noise mixtures time after time. All that remained was to watch in helplessness as her love died in the hands of an assassin. She should have attacked him when he hadn't already taken them out of reality, thrown them into the alien's plan, but she'd hoped he was an Imperial retinue. When it was clear she'd been wrong, she hope for a miracle. And there was nothing she could do. She just couldn't.

And after that thought came the real pain.

It was like gold worms bursting out of her eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth, shining, beautiful, and ugly in equal measure. The Wanderer reeled these living threads around her gray-coated fist, using Mort as leverage. With each tug, she felt herself being turned inside out, but she couldn't even lose consciousness. Agony gave way to familiar pleasure, hatred to love and admiration, pain to ecstasy, but somehow, by some miracle, her soul held on to her body, unhurriedly crumbling to dust.

She awoke to a ray of sunlight shining on her face, and she suspected it was not of the same day as the day on which these adventures had begun. Anticipation felt like a dead stone and a continuous migraine but did not threaten to kill her with ruptured vessels, there was a treacherous weakness in the body, and the general feeling was closer to "bad" than to "good". But after the experience, such little things didn't seem to matter.

Trying to sit up on the bed, she could barely contain her moan, but it was enough of a creak to bring the boy, who was Mort, into her field of vision. She still felt some sympathy for him, much more noticeable than before, but she no longer considered it the norm to be his whore. And she didn't want to be a whore anymore, to be honest. That is the very idea of going to the port and dressing up as a slut and having fun was a very noticeable desire, but it was just lust. A new and extremely powerful fetish, but not a rewriting of the mind at the root level - if someone now offered to sell her asshole for a gold coin, he would choke on blood from her slit throat much sooner than he would finish making the offer. Her personal life, however, will have to be diversified.

An extra check, preferably by a private mentalist, will definitely be done by her to avoid accidentally, and "accidentally," forgetting behavioral algorithms in her mind. But at first glance, this brute kept his promise and really gave her back her will. Which raises a very important question for her, or rather a whole bunch of questions.

Who is he anyway?

What the heck is going on in the Eternal that the high ranks of the Eye are almost openly working with the Higher Fiends?

Why did they come to her in the first place?

And, finally, what did Areya Fern step onto once again without even noticing it?

It's like being young again, honestly!

"Put your happy face away, Mort." She grumbled, trying to sit up and ignoring the outstretched hand. "I'm grateful, honestly grateful. But I have too many questions in my head right now to express it properly."

"No need to thank me, Lady Fern." The boy just shook his head as if he didn't know what he'd done and in what situation.

Even her closest allies, if they were in a similar situation, would, at the very least, consider leaving it as is. Very seriously they would have considered it, and only a few of them would have dismissed it out of respect for her, not out of fear of punishment when it came out. And that's not counting the few who wouldn't think twice about it! And yet he did not hesitate for a second, which shows an amazing level of naivety and stupidity. She would certainly have taken the risk if she had been him.

"That's enough." She interrupted him, still managing to sit up. "I said I was grateful, and I said I'd return the thanks. You don't have to shake the air with empty words."

"And I said you didn't have to thank me for it!" He yelled in her face, triggering a reflexive attempt to hit him, which, due to his painful condition, turned into a barely-kept balance. "Anything but that."

Looking into his eyes, Areya nodded silently and finally stopped seeing him as a petty fool with the book knight syndrome in his head. She did not understand his motives and reasons for his actions, but at least she was ready to show respect to the one who showed it to her. Even if she thought his actions were frankly rash and right to the point of being wrong. A young middle-ranking adventurer who came from the merchant would never understand a veteran liquidator who had been through the flames of war, the blood of loss, and the venom of high society. But she too, as it turned out, could not understand this adventurer.

Let it be.

"Where did this... did he even introduce himself?" She changes the subject.

"No, he never did, not even a nickname." Mort was quick to pick up on the change of subject. "I've been here twenty-four hours, Lady Fern. We're somewhere in the slums, in the southern district, but I don't know where; I've never been here before."

"There is something wrong..." Areya summarized.

In that condition, she would not risk going to the command now. Even apart from the fact that she might be detained because of the effect on her mind, there were other problems. The most important of these was the fact there were servants of Fiends sitting in the department. In the Eyes of the Eternal! A ridiculous assumption, but she could no longer dismiss it after her life had been miraculously saved.

It is usually the lower and middle classes of human and non-human society that fall into the ranks of the Hell zealots. It is such who are seduced by the devils with their promises, such who have no will to refuse their gifts, such who the Fiends can see among their servants. Their influence, though very dangerous, is viscous and difficult to detect, but it is quite easy to spot those whom they have enfolded with their poison.

There have been entire aristocratic families that have sold their humanity for emptiness and deceit, there have been entire guilds and trading houses, and even entire towns have worshipped this abomination. The latter, of course, is in very neglected cases. But to infiltrate their agents into the Eyes? Right in the Capital? With all the paranoid inspections and regularly changing scanning mechanisms? With the constant vigilance of independent groups of seers?

This is nonsense!

A nonsense that almost made her cum out of her soul.

Is it possible that all this is a set-up by an unknown party, to whom belongs the rescuer, or "rescuer"? Yes, it is possible! But this is all too complicated if it was possible to enslave her from the beginning and not worry. It is far more likely to assume the existence of several forces at once, one of which she was caught in the clutches of, and now, if she understands anything at all, there will be a process of re-slavery. Why it was necessary to free her rather than enlist the far more susceptible and completely inexperienced Mort, she still didn't understand, and that bugged her.

She considered the most unlikely version to be the one where they were actually saved by a randomly passing high-class Wanderer. It was so delusional that she could hardly even believe she was seriously considering it, but he was a Wanderer nonetheless. Their class is very strange, disliked by all the secret services collectively, and uncontrollable by force. That's why she suggests this option without putting it aside. Exactly the Wanderer could have accidentally come by his Road exactly to the place where she was dying. Once they reach high levels, they always remain very willful bastards, hard to control and command.

This does not invalidate the fact that he could have been sent here, just counting on her and her colleagues from the Eye of Understanding to think this way. She is, after all, the Eye of Elimination, which will be easier to deceive than the hardened wolfhounds of the analytical departments, who suspect even their own shadow of treachery and duplicity.

However, so far, she has not been recruited and has not been incited to dangerous things for the Empire, as well as to seemingly non-threatening ones. There is time to probe the interlocutor and form an opinion. Since he hasn't killed them yet, nothing is finished. In any case, she would prefer to lie in bed and recuperate for the time being. Especially since the same seers will probably be looking for her. All traces, or as they call them, images, would have been erased by the Road, but anyone could be found if they wanted to. Here she remembered the murderers of the Crowned Blood and mentally corrected herself - almost anyone. She would certainly be looked for, which meant she had to be found.

The main thing is that those who found them weren't the same guys who found them last time.

Otherwise, the Wanderer, who decided to interfere, might not be there.

She turned her gaze to the side and noticed the Wanderer, who had clearly just entered. If he'd dropped his stealth, she might have seen something... Though remembering his demonstrated skills, she wouldn't have seen anything.

"What do you say? Who do you play for, and what do you demand?" There was no strength to follow the protocol, and he did not follow it too much if you remember the manner of communication. "And what should I call you? Mind you. If you don't give me at least the first call sign that comes to mind, I'll pick it up myself."

"I'm nobody's." He ignored the threat. "I am my own, you might say. I don't need anything from you, I warn you. I've left some road dust around the house. It'll hide from the seers... for a while."

"Priestly technique?" Areya raises her eyebrows in surprise. "There aren't many pure plane users who study them.

"More like a magical ritual based on a priestly prayer." He nodded in response to her hunch. "I'm not going to ask you to keep quiet about anything, and you won't think twice about lying."

"Aren't you afraid for your incognito?" Barely suppressing the urge to arm herself, the woman squeezes out, frankly afraid of provoking this man but unable not to probe the ground.

"I can get away from any pursuit." He waved off the supposed threat. "And I have a suspicion that all of you will not care about me very soon. There's the assassination of the Second Prince of Eternity, and the unrealistically suspicious actions of your Eye, to say nothing of the Devils. I'm worried that it might burn in the near future."

"Do you feel something?" She stared breathlessly at her interlocutor's face, searching for the slightest hint of emotion. "What's coming?"

"No." He answered surprisingly gloomily. "I don't sense anything. At all. I'm not the only one who doesn't sense anything. It's more frightening than that. I'm not a Seer, not an Intuit and that's understandable. But there are a huge number of clairvoyants of all kinds gathered here. And they're not sounding the alarm about the Hell breaking through, are they?"

She was silent instead of answering, and Mort, who was sitting against the wall, swore in a very obscene manner. She was trying hard to keep her mind off the subject, but it all sounded too much like the truth. She just wouldn't risk going to the Office in her condition. For one thing, she wouldn't get there. Second, she didn't believe they would let her go in.

Usually, she's not mistaken about these things.

* * *