The first thing I heard was Trent’s heavy, disconnected breathing next to me. He let go of my arm and rushed to her.

A tiny light from an oil lamp showed us a horrific scene. Matilda was fully clothed but handcuffed by a long metal chain to a metal pole. She had several bruises along her face. But she wasn’t the only one. Five other women of various ages were also tied to poles around the room, each one certainly more beautiful than your average village girl. I figured they were spoils of past successful raids on villages. Plates of uneaten food lay next to them, as well as some fresh blankets, a small bin for piss or shit, and a few belongings like jewelry and chains. There was a sign plastered on the wall written in red letters that said Gentleman’s Lounge. There was a smaller room like a small closet to the right of that sign where I assumed the magic happened.

Clearly this room was meant to be used like some kind of sex dungeon. After all, the familiar salty smell violated the hairs in my nostrils. But the victims had their clothes on. Did the bandits re-dress afterwards or something? To keep them from losing their will? A put ‘em back when you’re done kind of thing?

Their strategy didn’t seem to work. The six women carried the same look of despair. The windowless attic kept them in the dark all hours of the day. This torture chamber might have been even worse than the underground one at the Adventurer’s Guild.

Matilda screamed when a hand touched her. “Who’s there?”

“Alster, undo the invisibility.”

A light returned to her soft face with a relieved curl of her lower lips, like she made when Trent or I got home safely. “Master Trent? Alster?”

That’s the face I remember. Glad the bandits didn’t break her.

“Yes, it’s us,” Trent whispered.

The card’s effect wore off and our bodies returned to normal. Trent hugged Matilda and told her everything would be okay, stroking her hair softly as she cried in his arms.

I had no idea how we were going to get her out. The chain links of the handcuff were extremely thick, at least two inches wide. They made cops’ handcuffs look like a joke.

Three women were sleeping, while the other two called out to us.

“Are you here to rescue us?” one said with a hopeful face.

I gulped. “No, sorry. Only her.”

Matilda’s face turned aghast. “Please, Master Alster. Don’t abandon them.”

“Matilda, it’ll be hard enough getting you out. I don’t think—”

Trent put his hand in my face, interrupting me. “—We’ll consider it. Alster,” he continued, eyes ablaze with rage. “Can your card create something sharp to cut the links?”

“No.”

“One of the bandits,” a woman said in one breath. “…has a set of keys. He has a round face with scars. He’s very overweight and has a few strands of hair in the front and—”

“—And all his hair in the back?”

“Yes!”

Trent and I looked at each other.

“Ladies, we’ll be right back,” he said.

That fatass had everything on him. The keys, the invisibility card. Good thing I ran into him.

I reactivated our invisibility. There was a timer in the bottom-right corner of my vision that showed the amount of time we had left. Five hours fifty minutes and 42 seconds. I pulled Trent aside and whispered. “We can’t rescue all these women. Don’t give them false hope.”

“I’m aware. But say, Alster. Don’t you want this whole place to burn?”

“What do you mean?”

“Originally, we were going to blow up the warehouse as a distraction. But now I’m thinking… why stop there? There wasn’t just natural gas in that warehouse. There was kerosene.”

I had seen oil, but it was on a shelf with some kitchen utensils, knives, flour and nonperishable ingredients.

That wasn’t cooking oil back there?

“Where?”

“At the very back. When we were looking for the invisible bandit, I made note of it.”

“So what? We make the women invisible and pour kerosene everywhere?”

“As your father, arson isn’t something I ever wanted to teach you. But I think we’re on the path of righteousness, don’t you?”

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“I don’t care. These people took what was mine and I said I’d make them pay. That’s all there is to it. I’m in.”

* * *

About ten minutes later, several hundred Holy Knights emerged from the center barracks. From the burps and casual banter, it seemed they had no idea there were intruders.

I can’t believe they left the inner stronghold undefended. They probably never get trouble so they weren’t expecting much.

“I drank too much,” one of them said, stumbling. “I’m going to puke.”

Another put the knight’s hand over his shoulder and bent slightly forward to support him, while a third slapped him on the back. “It was the vice-captain’s birthday. I didn’t take you for a lightweight, Ronnie. Not every day the entire station gets together to celebrate like this.”

“But the captain left.”

“Ah, yeah. Some emergency in Fuoril’s city. Can’t be helped if a noble is involved.”

A dinner celebration tonight? Lucky us.

With my card’s power, Trent and I were not only invisible, but our movements didn’t make a sound. We’d hurried over and taken the keys from the fat bandit. I piled up all the dead bodies in a corner of the warehouse. Then Trent grabbed the kerosene and I made those containers invisible as well. But without using up additional target slots. Apparently, the card allowed wearables or objects you could hold to be a part of a single target. I guess that’s how a large group of bandits was able to move around with a lot of stuff after raiding a village. Living objects were always considered a target though.

We’d taken all the flammables we could find. The bandits had almost a hundred gallons of the oily stuff and ten containers of natural gas. The oil would allow the fire to connect, while the gas containers, placed at even intervals by Trent, would blow the walls and spread the fire inside. It was straightforward dousing all the barracks in kerosene when you couldn’t be spotted.

We got to work right away, and initially things were going smoothly.

But soon, our antics went noticed.

“What’s that smell? Oil?” a knight said.

After the dinner celebration, many were starting to head out for late-night patrols. A few caught a whiff of a nasty smell in the air. Some ignored it and grabbed the yolks of their horses and climbed on, joining the trail of departing knights out of the station. But several began to investigate, splitting up into teams and searching the perimeter of the barracks.

Trent and I froze. One of the knights had gotten very close to us around the right barracks. He’d found a trail of oil on the ground.

“Brent, look,” he pointed.

Brent bent over and put a bit on his fingers. “Tobias, isn’t that—”

“Kerosene!” one gasped, clenching his fists. “Elroy. The others. Did they turn on us?”

Tobias brought the rest of them close into a group huddle. “I’ll tell the vice-captain. One of you let the watchman know to keep the gates shut!”

“We don’t know how much oil is on the ground. We shouldn’t shut the gates,” Brent insisted.

“The vice-captain has the Divine Barrier card. They’ll be burned alive while the rest of us are unscathed.”

“I’ll get Alderman,” another chimed in. “He has the Dark Nullify card. They might have turned invisible by now.”

Brent nodded. “I’ll circle the perimeter and see how far the oil goes.”

“No,” Tobias said with a sleight of hand. “I want the rest of you to search for the bandits. We need to corner them before this gets out of hand. Give a whistle signal if you find them. Two if you don’t.”

Satisfied, Brent nodded and the group dispersed.

Trent and I had heard everything, as we’d gotten close. He grabbed my arm. I allowed us to make noise. “Alster, we do this now.”

“The plan was to get away first and throw the match from the outside, wasn’t it?” I whispered back.

“Matilda and the others should have already left when the knights first opened the gate. Besides, we don’t know what this Dark Nullify card is. You said your card’s attribute was Dark, right?”

“Yeah.”

“If it undoes our invisibility, we’re dead. We’ll climb the watchtower and jump.”

I trusted Trent’s judgement. Though jumping from the tower scared the shit out of me, it probably beat getting surrounded and killed. We ran toward the center barracks and lit the first match. The first gas container was placed around the back wall, so we’d have about a minute head start.

Trent took out a match from one of his pockets but the flame was invisible. I could only tell it was there from the small trail of smoke in the air. He dropped it in the oil.

A loud whistle cut through the air.

“Silence my movements and run!” he whispered.

My card glowed as Trent’s footsteps became muffled and quieted. We made it to the watchtower and started climbing the ladder. There were almost fifty steps to climb. Trent went first. We made it to the twenty-fifth before something interrupted my vision.

New Skill Acquired: Climbing

Oh great.

Under the direction of the squad that had uncovered the oil trail, several knights had apprehended ten bandits laying low in one of the smaller buildings around the warehouse and interrogated them with their Lie Detector cards. The ten claimed to know nothing of a betrayal. Elroy, the bandit who had been trusted to hold the invisibility card, was nowhere to be found.

“How can that be?” Brent hissed. “Elye, what do you make of this?”

Another knight, Elye, had joined him in questioning.

“Tell the others,” Elye replied, then turned to the bandits. “You all, stay here. If you move, you know what will happen.”

The bandits looked at each other, unsure of what was going on. But they obeyed.

Elye gave a signal to Brent. He was to stay there and keep a watch while Elye relayed the news to the highest commanding officer on station. But heavy clouds of smoke entered the doorway, blocking his path. Brent and Elye ran outside.

“Fire!”

Brent shook his head. “Is Elroy acting on his own? We need to get Alderman and undo his card’s effects!”

The fire spread too quickly. As the vice-captain became aware of what was happening outside, the back wall was blown up by the first gas container. The flames leapt upward as they began to latch on to the barrack walls.

The vice-captain gathered all the knights that hadn’t left just outside the center barracks. A blinding yellow ring with seven transparent shields about two feet long encircled the one hundred men. The ring extended about twenty-five feet outwards from the epicenter, the card wielder, and shot yellow light upwards resembling a pillar.

“Alderman, do it now!” Tobias shouted.

“Dark Nullify!” a deep voice bellowed into the smoky air.

A Holy card he held in front of him created a dome of rainbow-colored light like plasma that extended to the entire station. It had no effect on anyone, and while some were wondering if it even did anything, two figures came into view.

I could see my hands grabbing the steps, and my legs arched to stay in position.

Damn it! We’re visible again!

Nearly at the top of the watch tower, we had been just five steps away from getting out of here. Now, over one hundred pairs of eyes shot in our direction. I pissed myself.