Prologue

Toby sat silently atop his comfortable crate in alleyway, his head leaning back and resting on the wall of the ware house behind his shop. As complete darkness had settled in roughly an hour ago, the shadows of night made him rather hard to see, especially since he had an penchant for wearing dark colored clothing.

He knew Rebecca would be passing by soon: he had heard her talking with one of her friends earlier about how she was planning on stopping by old lady Shelby's house after work to visit and help around the house for a while. Old lady Shelby had been sick for almost a month now, and everyone in the neighborhood thought she wasn't long for this world. Unfortunately, since she couldn't do much for herself these days, her family had take care of both her business. Her family consisting of only an 11 year old grandson, and an 8 year old granddaughter. Rebecca was a kind young woman, and she would often stop by for a few hours in the evening to help in whatever way she could.

Toby sighed inwardly to himself. Helping an unfortunate old lady was all good and fine, but she really should have known better than to take the same route home every single time. Furthermore she really should have known better than to return through the hammer district. Sure, rumor had it that there was no crime on this particular street, but you could never be to careful in this city. No matter the reputation of the area, this quarter of the city was filled to bursting with criminal scum; plenty of whom had not yet learned the rules.

Case in point, Toby could see a few rough looking fellows round the corner into his alleyway on the opposite side of the building from him, and start making their way towards him stealthily. At least, they probably thought they were being stealthy. They clearly had not seen him, which was the point. His comfortable crate was stacked on top of another crate, pushed up against the building, which meant he was sitting about a foot above the lead mans head. There were five of them, rough looking men; dock workers vests, rough spun shirts and pants, all articles of clothing dirty and stained with food and drink, every man of them showing signs of a rough life: scars, noses broken and healed crooked. As they drew closer a slight breeze brought a whiff of them to Toby. Ugh, add the stench of Alcohol and crystal use to that, and Toby was pretty sure he could place them. Takers from the dock district. Which meant that father Josephus was indeed identifying and choosing marks in quarter of town. It had looked like ol' father Jo had been paying too much attention to Rebecca's conversation earlier in town. Damn. He had kind of liked Josephus. It just went to show that no matter how normal they looked, anyone could be monster behind closed doors. He supposed he would have to pay him a visit once he took out the trash here.

As the men passed his sitting box and peeked around the corner, Toby debated on what to do. Usually if some down on his luck thief or desperate street urchin decided to set up shop, he would just give them a quick scare and a warning that business of that sort would not be tolerated on this street. Most of the regular criminal element in this city had realized that someone had claimed this small neighborhood as their territory, and seeing as there was really nothing here for most organized crime worth fighting over, they left this place alone. Toby wasn't 100% sure what these particular pond scums were up to in his little chunk of the city, so he decided he would just scare them off, maybe rough them up.

Just as he was coming to this decision, one of the men, the one who was peeking around the corner, spoke quietly to the rest of the men crowded up behind him. “Get ready, she'll be close 'nuff in about a minute. Damn, boss was right, she's a pretty one. We should be able to get a gold or two for her!” one of the other men, a rather large fellow with a surprisingly high voice chimed in “Don't hit her too hard, this is the last one for the week, and I want to have some fun with her before we sell her to the ships. We had to sell the last two right away, so I didn't get a turn.”

Toby changed his mind. Career kidnappers and rapists didn't get a warning, they got disappeared. As he slipped silently off his box, he called to the portion of his soul wrapped in something that he preferred not to actively think about, and manifested a long knife that gleamed slightly purple despite there being no light for it to reflect. Not that it mattered, the disgusting degenerate dogs in front of him were focused on Rebecca, and starting to get their adrenaline pumping at the thought.

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Toby took one deep breath, slowly, and silently formed the sigils for the only real spell he knew with his left hand. He whispered the keyword and his spell snapped in place, centered on himself. The spell wasn't all that powerful as far as most people were concerned. He couldn't throw fire, or call lightning, or anything anywhere near as impressive as that. No, all he could do was make a very small area devoid of sound for a few seconds. Not a powerful battle magic, no, but quite handy in it's own way. As with many things, he found it mattered far more how he applied his meager power than how strong the power itself was.

The instant he started whispering the word, he moved. Big man in back first. One quick cut to the artery at the side of the neck, a stab between the shoulder blades, slightly to the left of the spine, then tug backwards to make sure he didn't fall on the man in front of him. He had to be quick, and he had to make sure the targets didn't alert their comrades while they were dying. So long as he was quick enough, this would be easy. Cut, stab and pull hard backwards. Cut, stab and pull hard. Cut and pull hard. Rinse and repeat.

Luckily this time things worked out nicely, and he was done before any but the last man noticed that something was wrong. That unfortunate fellow turned to see what was going on just in time to actually see the knife that was coming for his neck, and try to flinch out of the way. He almost made it, but Toby had been ready for a reaction of that sort and had compensated for such a reaction the instant he saw the mans head begin to move. The end result was that instead of the man getting a knife in the back, he was able to put up a very brief struggle before getting the knife was plunged into his heart from the front.

18 seconds. That was how long the whole assault had lasted. He glanced around the corner to see how long he had before Rebecca would potentially be able to see the mess he had made. Roughly 30 seconds. Damn, he would have to hide this quickly. It was incredibly dark here in the alleyway, and the likelihood of her noticing anything here would be pretty slim, especially seeing as she would be peering from a lighted road into darkness, but it would be possible. And she would be looking. Even she wasn't dense enough to not be alert and check her surroundings while walking home at night.

Looking around at what he had to work with, Toby quickly made up his mind. He grabbed the corpses and tossed them in a rough stack a few feet back, then grabbed the crate he had been sitting on and the one underneath it, and used them to block off the alleyway completely. That done, he re-positioned his pile of bodies against the wall and behind another crate. Excellent! Neither blood, nor bodies would be visible from the main street unless someone decided to actively walk into the dark alleyway to see what could be here. Not likely! Hopefully.

Next, he released his spell. It wouldn't have lasted much longer anyways, but he needed what little magic he had for something else. This wasn't actually a structured spell, so much as it was an exercise in controlling and manipulating ambient magic. If he focused on it he could make the smell of a small area different. It was kind of hard to describe what it smelled like, just... off. While it would probably be noticed if someone walked through that area, it would be noticed in the way of “hey, what's that weird smell?” which in this case was much better than “hey, why does it smell like blood and death here?” It should be enough to hide the scene from Rebecca. That finished, all that was left was to stand very still, and think shadowy thoughts, while she passed by.

And so she did. Without having even the slightest inkling of what very nearly happened to her, she passed by the alley of her near kidnapping. She would never know, and she would never suffer that fate, ever. Not ever. He owed her father that much.

Once she was far enough away, Toby quickly pried the top off of the two crates. They were empty and waiting to be hauled off in the morning, so he crammed the bodies of the would be slavers inside, put the lids back on, and stacked the crates back into their normal places. He would have to do something about these later tonight, but this would do for now. As for the blood: he dropped the dagger in the pool of blood and left to follow Rebecca. He would make sure she made it home safe, all the while staying in the shadows and out of sight, and then he go take care of that fake priest, father Josephus.

Rebecca's father had kept this neighborhood free of crime for years without having to resort to the sorts of things Toby did. His reputation had just been that great, both the might of his blade, and perhaps even more importantly, the strength of his character. Everyone important in the city had truly respected him, including the more morally averse characters. So much so, that it was known that if you made trouble for him, the bosses of the shady side would remove you from play. Permanently. They would have taken care of this mess before, and they would have made sure nothing of the sort even could happen in the first place. But that was before, and this was now.

Rebecca's father was gone now, and Toby had to do a truly unfortunate amount of dirty work to keep the neighborhood safe. He kept the neighborhood safe because this was more or less the whole of Rebecca's life. Her father had kept this place safe because he wanted his precious daughter to be safe and happy, and so, Toby would do the same. Even if it required an awful lot of work. Because Toby owed him that much.

He hadn't been able to do anything for Rebecca's father, so he would do whatever he could for his daughter. Even if she hated him.