It had been four months since the Mitchells had turned up at Honshuraskil. All that time Teddy had gone rogue, he had not taken the death of Ragnar well. He was hidden in the shadow in the top corner of the nobleman’s room. He thought to himself that he was getting quite good at breaking in unseen by now. His power Shadow Self let him blend into the shadows completely and it would take a talented higher rank essence user than him to detect him there. He had a shadow lantern in two of the corners of the room opposite him which made the whole room clear as day.

If he could be seen then it would be an unnerving sight. He wore his black combat robes he had worn in the battle of the valley under the mountain, shredded beyond recognition they were little more than tassels and impossible to repair but he wore them over replacement armour underneath. His face was covered by a dark grey shroud, the covering was mottled with only one discernible pattern on it; a diagonal line that crossed the eye with what looked like an eye patch painted on.

He had been waiting in the room for hours, the better part of the afternoon into the evening. He had the discipline to cling to the beam with his toes, knees and fingertips, guaranteed a shadow in place no matter were they moved the light in the room. Guards came and went, thoroughly searching the room, they had good reason to be cautious, many many people had been going simply missing recently. The target came into the room, did his own search then settled for bed. It was the same routine Teddy had seen for the past three days. When everything was quiet in the house Teddy dropped to the ground, his Slippers of the Shade power making it soundless. He activated the privacy screen in his hand, he had tested it the day before and there was no countermeasure in place for it.

He brought his lantern familiars down, they swirled around his torso rapidly giving him a fluttery appearance. He stepped lightly onto the post of the bed, silent and almost weightless using his Winged Feet ability. He looked down at the target, he knew he chose to sleep alone not to protect his family but himself, he’d grown paranoid in the last few weeks, harder to find. He moved from safe house to safe house never staying more than a few days trying to avoid whatever was hunting his people down.

He was surprised the man could sleep at all, even with the dozen guards outside, in a building shielded from magical entry and after the huge sleeping potion he had taken right before he closed his eyes. Teddy waited a moment to see if the man would stir with him standing so close and got nothing, changing his plan slightly he started to tie the man to his bed as he was so out of it from the potion. The target was bronze rank so he was thorough. When he was done he pulled the last rope firmly which tightened every rope taut. The target still slept on. Teddy jumped on his chest, straddling him and punched him in the face hard. He murmured groggily, so Teddy punch him again, and again, and again.

He finally roused, looking up at Teddy and his eyes went wide with panic and pain, he sleeping potion completely gone now. The first thing he did was try and shout for his guards, Teddy punched him in the jaw, getting punched in the jaw when it’s open hurts a whole lot more.

“Calling for protection from your bronze rank guards. Isn’t that ironic.” Teddy rasped, he wasn’t using any voice change magic, he rarely spoke so much these days his best batman voice needed little effort.

“You, you, you.” The target stammered.

“Me, me, me. No. It’s not about me, its about you of course! You were a hard man to find. Unfortunately for you that means there’s no chance you’re not the man I’m looking for.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about! I’m just a careful man, I have enemies, business rivals, I just want my family to be safe!”

“Of course you have enemies, you’ve made the whole world your enemy but you hide it. I was in the room when you told your wife that she was a liability and you would be better on your own. She thinks you’re a horrible man but she’s got no idea of the truth.”

The man continued to panic, looking around with no options. He looked to the door, surprised no guards had come to the rescue yet. “Where are you going to take me? Where have you taken the others?”

“Take you? I’m taking you nowhere. I’m here to kill you.”

The man gulped. “Kill me?” He seemed to find some resolve. “Then why haven’t you done it yet?”

“The thing with you secret confederate types is you think you’re so damn clever, think you’re so committed to the cause. I’m going to kill you but I want to see if you’ll break, if you’ll use your powers you swore to never use again.”

He punched the target so quick, a dozen hits in under a second it activated his By a Thousand Cuts power and the phantom fists thudded into the man when Teddy stopped.

“You’d be surprised how many of you do break.”

When he was done Teddy used his execute power, dark hands reached from under the bed to pull the man into it with a brief flash of light leaving nothing behind. The guards outside noticed and called out, when they got no answer they started scrambling to unlock the door. Teddy turned off his privacy screen and forcibly dragged open a rift in the air before stepping through. When the guards entered the room they found the bed mussed but empty, another mysterious disappearance in the city.

………

Two months later in the upper council room the Steward of Honshuraskil threw a goblet down the table at his assembled ‘experts’.

“By Justice’s left tit! What are you all doing?! This is meant to be a safe city, we have never had anything like this before. We’ve had two micro storms in the last six months with complete city lockdown and you still haven’t found what’s going on! We have the new adventure society director coming today to join us, she needs briefing on what’s going on, Rogers, I want you to give her a complete summary.”

The doors were opened when the adventure society contingent arrived. Three elves that looked identical were admitted, the only reason they assumed one of them was the Director was that she walked at the front of the small wedge. They were sat in the centre of the table for the brief.

“Madam Director,” Rogers started. “Welcome to the mountain city. I’ve been asked to brief you on the current disappearances problem. It started roughly six months ago after the last super storm. When the passes opened it must have changed something. So far we have had over fifty people disappear without a trace. We have yet to find a connection between them either the abductor is random or we’re missing a piece.” The Steward coughed, almost a growl as he scowled at Rogers. “We’ve tried finding a connection between the victims but ostensibly they’re all strangers, their paths should never have crossed. They live in different parts of the city and from all stations of society. Naturally it was only brought to our attention at the loss of several wealthy individuals but we’ve found over a dozen iron rank victims from our less wealthy population. So far the victims have either been iron or bronze rank, contracts have gone out to the society up to three stars but so far it has not been allowed to elevate above bronze as the previous director saw it as a lower rank problem. That’s as much as we know ma’am.” He looked uncomfortable, knowing he had basically nothing useful to say on the topic.

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The elves looked at each other and the others recognised they must have been using telepathic communication. When they were finished the director spoke.

“Thankyou for the brief, if I could kindly ask for everyone except the Steward to please adjourn we need to speak to him in privately about the matter, the meeting shall continue afterwards.”

While the director held no direct power over the city council she was a very respected figure who held a lot of influence. Either out of respect or expectation she was going to reprimand the Steward for such a shoddy job they left.

When the privacy magic activated as the door clicked shut the table occupants all got up to go and embrace each other.

“Rupert its so good to see you!” The Director said.

“Maggie, Margo, Melissa. It’s such a pleasure to have you in the city, it’s been so long. We’ll have you round for dinner as soon as we can, its been manic recently, people are up in arms about these disappearances at the moment, no one feels safe. I’m beginning to worry about civil disobedience next time we close the gates.”

The stewardship of Honshuraskil was a difficult position to maintain. The city frequently went through lockdowns depending on the severity of the storms. The high magic of the storms pounded the city defences with waves of gold rank threats, elemental monsters, dragons, behemoths and the raw power of the storm itself. The city had an impressive array of shielding and weaponry to keep it safe along with a cadre of astronomically expensive gold rankers specialised in the city’s defence. The only reason it was worth all of this was the magical ore that was mined from the mountain below. Only a small portion of the city was above ground with a huge operation below to extract the material. The founder of the city was a diamond ranker who had given the position of running it to the council who elected a Steward, they had gotten used to the power over the years and had only been interrupted in their rule during periods of civil unrest when, somehow, the founding diamond ranker had heard about it during their travel of the wider cosmos and come back to warn the council they would take back the rule if they could not manage it.

“Oh Rupert, you have no idea how lucky you are, you read the report from Lord Alihan when he visited?”

“Yes, he got in quietly, something about him being severely injured? There was some kind of fight in the valley on the mountain approach. We thanked him and sent him on his way.”

“So you skimmed it.”

Rupert waved his hand back and forth. “It was below the mountain, for a city that doesn’t produce paper I’m drowning in it, I have to trust my team to read the things I don’t have time for.”

“That paper went from your desk via special courier straight back to the Director’s office where it came from.”

Rupert frowned in confusion. “Why would it not be filed here?”

“Because that fight was more than it appeared, the society worked hard to play it down but that was an invasion.” She let it sink in. “You understand that this city is nigh unassailable, there was a staged attack, waves of troops from below and a threat from within.”

“A threat from within?”

“They must have been infiltrating the city for years, decades even. To get their insidious roots all the way through the city.”

“So this is you? Why wouldn’t you tell me? You’re hunting down these saboteurs, who are they?” Rupert looked almost angry, he was the Steward after all, he held the most power in the city and should know everything that was going on.

“Now Rupert, you know there are society protocols I’m not allowed to share. This situation however isn’t us, we only realised what was going on after whoever was doing started leaving us some breadcrumbs. We have no idea how they’re finding them and whilst on a personal level I applaud them on a professional level they need to be stopped.”

“So you know more than you’re telling me, but you’re telling me my city is in danger.”

“Was, your city was in danger if not for a very small group of exceptional people. We’ve been friends for a long time Rupert, trust me. You do not want to know the full truth.”

“So how do we stop this vigilante then?”

“We’re working on it, we should have them soon.”

………

Three months later Teddy was deep underground. His most recent target had eschewed the trend of surrounding themselves with guards and layers of security, realising the futility in it and had kept on the move constantly. It had taken weeks of work but Teddy had found them.

He was taking a risk, his life had become a hunt and he had grown tired of the usual prey. He had worked hard and hunted down one of the rare elusive silver rank members of the confederacy, as far as he could tell in all his work there were only one or two of them.

This one was a coward, it kind of spoiled his method of operation that she took herself out of her work routine, suddenly cutting all ties and running. He’d had it before of course with lower ranks but people paid less attention to them.

He padded silently down huge rectangular corridors worked smooth. There were coloured crystals through much of the upper levels and the active tunnels that led down to the working areas, these abandoned tunnels held stark little torches. The magical material never ran out of flame but it left them flickering in the air that was pumped through the tunnels from a system high above. Teddy wore his ragged armour and mask already, although he walked the centre of the corridor he could speed to a shadow in the top corners in less than a second to be unseen as innocent passers by came and went. He hadn’t seen anyone in hours though as he wound deeper and deeper. Eventually his search was fruitful and he came to a door. He knew from exploring down here that it was the only door in and out of these types of rooms and it would be a plain cube inside, placed there for storage one upon a time but very few ever got used. He let himself in.

Closing the door behind him he didn’t look away from the human woman in front of him. She was trying to hide her fear and he wondered to himself about the character of the people that were attracted to the confederacy. Were they all cowards? Scared of life and grasping at anything they could do to take control no matter how horrific. Having a silver ranker scared was strange.

As scared as she was she knew she had to fight. She drew a curved silver sword. All members Teddy had come across of the confederacy when they vowed to never use their essence powers again as essence users committed to becoming living weapons as close to non-magic as they could. There was no banter, no explanations. They both knew exactly what was happening here. For Teddy it was just another target, another reason Ragnar was gone, someone who did not deserve to live. For the silver rank confederate it meant stopping the threat, she didn’t want to, she had run away after all but it meant she could go back to her life of lies, explain away her brief disappearance and slip back into obscurity.

Teddy ‘drew’ his dimension blade. He’d hadn’t gone for a red blade, he wasn’t in the headspace for realising he was fairly villainous at the moment. The blade was empty, with the faintest corona of light around it. It made it hard to see the blade and gave him a slight advantage in these fights against expert swordsmen.

This would be the nearest to a fair fight he had been in. Still only bronze rank Teddy’s swift essence and all the powers in his repertoire would barely be enough to combat the silver rankers natural speed.

They met in a clash that lasted barely longer than a second for the dozens of strikes that took place, they broke apart with Teddy standing still and the silver ranker jumping back off his blade, her back hitting the wall. Teddy’s dimension blade had gone thin, like it had been whittled thin by sticking it in the silver ranker. She looked down at the hole in her torso under her ribs then up at the man with the unyielding black eyes beneath the mask. He made no move but she felt the surge of aura and the blade swelled to its original size again and he walked slowly towards her.

Sometime later she was getting desperate. She taught at various martial schools around the world in her time but she wasn’t in a fair fight. He flowed between forms, using the unsettling blade as a sword, then two swords, then a double ended sword and back. He jumped from shadow to shadow, she would strike at where he disappeared and he either wouldn’t be there or the strike would land but either be caught by some kind of armour or ability without doing him harm. He had lantern familiars that were punching up a rank but she still had her vision go more than once in a fight that every moment was critical. She recognised his focus and drive, she had seen the anger in his eyes when he first saw her but now there was a cool detachment, he was deep in a combat trance. He used every power in concert, if he used one of his unsettling gravity wells to one side then he would use speed bursts while she was fighting it, she was sure he was manipulating the area around him to cause her strikes to miss or hit less critical areas. She had managed to hit him a few times but had not done critical damage, she couldn’t even be sure what damage she had done as his flapping tassels distracted as they danced and he was quick.

Teddy was in an unthinking state. He was lost in a stream of consciously unconscious movement. Not thinking about where he needed to be but letting his body go there before he knew he needed to be there. He had done a lot of damage to the silver rank woman, whittled her down from the ridiculous reserves of health until she was now much more… mortal. There wasn’t far to go until she would have nothing left, she knew it, she was making more mistakes and it was costing her. They had passed the point of no return for her and she was delaying the inevitable. He was closing on the kill when her aura rose out like a leviathan from the deep, two leviathans, three and four.

He had found it extremely hard to find any information about his targets essence powers in his preparation and trusted that if they were going to snap and use them then he would get away if he needed to. With the raw power of a fourfold silver ranker there was no chance. His aura was completely crushed and she started pounding him with aura-based essence attacks. She was a human with the preponderance of special attacks that they normally gained. Hers were all based on her aura powers first suppressing whatever she was fighting and she had finally snapped out of an instinct to survive.

“Get off my husband.” She heard.

The door opened and a beautiful blonde woman in striking white and black armour with huge diamonds walked through. Suddenly none of her aura based powers would work on the dark man. She reached out now she was using her powers and found an unassailable wall where the two were. She couldn’t believe it, the man had beaten her into breaking her oath and when she had she was beaten again. Her sword clattered to the floor in defeat and the man finished it.

Outside the room Kyra and Teddy stood opposite each other in front of the closed door.

“It’s time to come home Teddy. Come home to your family, we miss you.”

He paused for a moment before slowly taking off the mask and dropping it to the floor and falling into his wife’s arms that he hadn’t been in in over half a year.