Nelosa considered herself to be faithful. The Shadowfolk had always lived an existence that was rooted in the bounds of community and the sanctity of the rules they followed which allowed them to survive.

At the same time though, she’d raised a family, fled from the Butcher King’s persecution, and cared for an ailing husband. There were years enough under her belt that she knew some rules you followed because they were sensible and others you ignored and everyone else ignored them right along with you.

Finding a dwarf in her kitchen was, in theory, covered by the edicts that the Shadowfolk Elders had decreed.

Anyone not of the Shadowfolk who discovered the Shadowfolk, was to be put to immediate death and their bodies tossed into the deepest shadows, if such was an option.

Like most absolute rules, it was phrased as a matter of life and death. That was a wonderful ploy to get children to listen. It didn’t work of course, not on children or on adults, but it left the Elders with the impression that they were justified in extreme punishments for any who violated that rule.

In Nelosa’s case, she’s long ago had enough of killing and blooshed, but she was still extra wary of the unexpected visitor.  The dwarf was stunned and reeling and there was a portal flickering in the air behind her, but over the years Nelosa had seen stranger and more disturbing things.

“Who in the Odious Sunken Pits are you?” she asked, politely grabbing a carving knife from the counter.

“Wow, they didn’t warn about the kick that comes with that,” Venita said. “Am I still in one piece?”

“For another five second, yes,” Nelosa said. “Then I’m going to get annoyed and take you apart, starting with whatever your least favorite body part is.”

“Excuse me? Least favorite?” Venita asked.

“Gives the victim a chance to appreciate what they’re losing,” Pelosa said. “Now what’s your name and why are you here?”

“Venita, and to save your people.”

“We don’t need any help from dwarves,” Pelosa said. “So why don’t you just turn around and head right back into that portal that you came out of.”

“One, it’s not my portal, and two, I’m not the only one who’s trying to help you,” Venita said.

“Who else is with you?” Nelosa asked.

“We are,” Wynni said, stepping through the portal, followed by Gendaw.

“Traveling with a dwarf? You outcasts then?” Nelosa asked.

Nelosa had four children. Once it had been five, but the middle one, it was always the middle one for some reason, got their own ideas about what was best for the Shadowfolk. They got themselves outcast for speaking against the Elders and in a stroke, Nelosa was down to four children and one she could never speak of or acknowledge again.

People had gone on after the sentencing as though nothing had occurred. As those Hamell, her middle child, had never existed. Nelosa herself had refrained from any show of grief or acknowledgement of loss. Maybe her neighbors and friends had believed that she was as capable as they were of casting Hamell out of her thoughts, but there were bonds there which no judgment could ever severe.

Though she’d never sought Hamell out, Nelosa had felt the loss every day since, and her thoughts often turned to the hardships and trials her wayward offspring would face in a life apart from all who could know or trust them.

“No, we’re not outcasts. Not yet anyways,” Wynni said.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Gendaw said.

“What’s complicated about it?” Nelosa asked as two more people entered the room, two  human children. “And who invited you?”

“This is less of an invitation and more of an invasion,” Iana said. “I think we’re just foolish enough to hope that it can be a peaceful one.”

“Peace is it?” Nelosa said. “And what kind of peace do we get from your kind?”

“Little to none in the past from what I’ve been told,” Iana said. “That’s why I’m not going to ask for your trust.”

“Good.”

“She is,” Iana said, indicate Wynni.

“You’re a Tactical Squad Commander?” Wynni asked, looking at a plaque that had hung on Nelosa’s wall for years.

“I was,” she said. “That why I’m going to turn you in.”

“That’s what you have to do,” Wynnni said.

“But?” Nelosa asked.

“But, it’s not directly stipulated what you’re required or allowed to do before then,” Wynni said.

“You want me to give you a head start?” Nelosa asked.

More people poured into the kitchen. Humans mostly. Unfortunate for them. A dwarf might be exempted from the fatal mandate on non-Shadowfolk but no one was going to speak in favor of extending the same mercy to humans.

“We’re not running,” Wynni said. “The princess called this an invasion for a reason.”

“The princess? What princess?” Nelosa asked. Princesses and invasions were so far above her pay grade, that Nelosa felt like a void storm had ripped her house apart around her and she was standing in the narrow eye at its center. One move in any direction and she would be shredded, but standing still didn’t offer any sort of permanent safety either.

“The First Princess of Gallagrin,” Gendaw said, and indicated Iana. “Her.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be dead?” Nelosa asked.

“That was the plan,” Iana said. “There was just one slight complication.”

“You didn’t want to be dead?” Nelosa asked.

“Presumably that’s true too, though with how she behaves I’d wouldn’t swear to it,” Wynni said. “No, she’s talking about the part where killing her will lead to the eradication of our species.”

“And why would the loss of one little human cause that kind of problem?” Nelosa asked. “The Elders said by unbalancing the human royalty we’d ensure they never grew strong enough to threaten us again.”

“The Elders are wrong,” Gendaw said. It was a blasphemous sentiment and for a moment Nelosa wanted to scream out in rage. If her Hamell had been banished for speaking against the Elders why should these traitors be allowed to speak? She fought back the impulse.

“Their worse than that,” Wynni said. “They’re ignorant, willfully so. They’re working on plans that benefit themselves, that help them hold onto power, at the cost of placing us against a divine force.”

“Divine force?” Nelosa scoffed. “The Sleeping Gods are still asleep last I checked. What divine force is there for us to worry about.”

“Silian says the Queen and her wife fit that bill,” Wynni said.

“Are you touched in the head?” Nelosa asked. “Silian’s been dead for a million years now.”

“He says its been considerably less than a million years and that he’s considerably less dead than we’ve all supposed,” Wynni said.

“You think he’s talking to you?” Nelosa asked. “Right now?

“He says Hamell shouldn’t have been exiled, and that there’s a outcast colony on one of the deep shadow worlds where he’s wound up,” Wynni said. “And are you going to tell her where that is? What do you mean why? You think it’s important to her to know that this Hamell is alive and yet not be able to find him? Yes, I know he’s an outcast. No, I don’t think she could have sought him out before. Where would she have started looking? Ugh, no we don’t have maps of the outcast camps. They’re outcasts, why would we keep a map of where they went? So you’re saying the Elders have those maps? Do any of us look like Elders? Yes, I know she could be one, but if she was don’t you think she would have called for the guards by now? I’m glad we agree, now what about where she can find this Hamell?”

Everyone watched Wynni have a conversation with thin air and no one was interested in interrupting her, least of all Nelosa.

“I’m sorry, he says he’ll be right back,” Wynni said. “Sleeping Gods alone know what he’s planning but I’ve got to admit it’s kind of nice that he’s not nattering on in my eye for a bit.”

“You’re mad, completely mad!” Nelosa said.

“Trust me, I am keenly aware of how much it looks like I am, but give Silian about five minutes, if he’s not back by then scream for the guards and I promise no one here will do anything to stop you.

“How did you know I had a child named Hamell?” Nelosa asked.

“I didn’t. We’ve never met as far as I remember,” Wynni said. “Silian though seems to know whatever is least convenient for him to be aware of.”

“But he can’t be alive,” Nelosa said. “That was so long ago. No one could live that long.”

“No one could escape the notice of the Gods either,” Wynni said. “Trust me, I have issues with this too. I mean the stories about Silian don’t even make sense. I didn’t ask him to use me as his personal messanger services, but then I didn’t ask for a lot of thing that have messed up my life.”

“Do you believe her?” Nelosa asked.

“I do,” Gendaw said. “Even if she’s having a mental breakdown, it’s one that’s giving her impossible powers of insight and knowledge, so I think just running with the idea that there’s a Silian just makes the most sense.”

“That’s a wonderful vote of confidence,” Wynni said.

“Just being practical,” Gendaw said.

A piece of paper appeared in Nelosa’s open hand.

The parchment was rich and the design on it more impressive than any document Nelosa could remember handling. Without unfolding it, she knew what was on the paper. It was one of the grand maps – the well guarded route markers that showed the relationship of the Shadowfolks’  realms with the worlds they traveled through. The contents of the map were a state secret, not because the Elders wanted people to go missing, but because knowledge of how the worlds interconnected would allow other races to track them down into the Shadowfolks’ most secure hiding holes. It was treason to even hold the map without the proper rank and clearance, and glancing at it was yet another capital crime.

Nelosa’s hesitation lasted a full three seconds and then she devoured the contents of the map with her eyes.

It had been a long time since she’d read a multi-world chart, and none of the one’s she’d dealt with had the complexity of one in her hands. Old skills at deciphering the maps schema came back to her though and bit by bit she pieced together where she was and which worlds surrounded her.

“Silian says that Hamell lives with the Jass outcasts. Their world is far off, towards the bottom of the map, but they’re well defended and well supplied, so despite the instability of the shard they’re on, they’re doing better than most outcasts.”

“Is this true?” Nelosa asked, the energy orbs that made up her eyes radiating to a deep shade of violet, the Shadowfolk equivalent of tears forming in a human.

“It’s what Silian is saying,” Wynni said. “Honestly he doesn’t have the best reputation, but in this case I don’t see why he’d lie either.”

“To get her to help us,” Iana said.

“That not helping your case,” Gendaw said.

“I’m not interested in helping my case,” Iana said. “If there’s any chance to start healing the rift between the Shadowfolk and the sunlight dwellers of Gallagrin, we have to be honest. I have to be honest. As much as I can be.”

“But there’s a chance he’s telling the truth,” Nelosa said.

“A reasonably good chance, yes,” Iana said. “And I suspect that display from Silian was more to prove that he exists than to fully convince you.”

“Convince her to commit treason?” Tonel asked, appearing in the doorway of the house with a company of armed guards behind him.

The moonlight blade had a purpose, and it had a name. Those two things weren’t enough to grant it a will, but they did serve to guide the magic that was channeled into it. Within the folds of light that the blade was crafted from little bits of awareness were caught and sewn together.

It wasn’t an accident or a mistake in the design. For the moonlight blade to serve its purpose it had to possess a measure of awareness. It had to be able to connect with its wielder and act as a channel for their will. That was the only method of allowing it to fulfill its purpose.

Without a will, the blade would cut the shadows but have no particular destination and leave nothing more that a portal to the void when swung to pierce the dimensions.

“That can take us back to the real world?” Iana asked.

“Your world is no more real than the shadow worlds,” Lagressa said. “But yes, it should be able to provide passage between that world and this.”

“And if it fails?” Wynni asked. “What happens to us in that case?”

“It depends on how it fails,” Lagressa said. “The potential outcomes include being lost in the empty space between the worlds, ripped to pieces by an imploding portal or the portal exploding with deadly force over a wide radius.”

“How wide?” Iana asked.

“Anywhere from within a few feet of it to the entirety of this planet.”

“I see why you didn’t try it out earlier,” Iana said.

“It wasn’t ready earlier,” Lagressa said.

“Our timing seems awfully convenient then,” Iana said.

“It’s less a matter of convenience and more a matter of fate,” Lagressa said. “When the Silence Breaker is used, it cuts across not only the space but time as well. In doing so, it creates a weakness in both space and time so that things, or people, who are going to transfer between the worlds are more likely to wind up transferring along the same pathway where it is, was, or will be opened.”

“It does what now?” Venita, the dwarven air courier, asked.

“The worlds are separate,” Lagressa said. “Carving permanent holes between them could have disastrous consequences, so the Silence Breaker cuts a path through space and time.”

“That seems a thousand times worse,” Londela, the human land courier, said.

“It’s much safer. The tear only exists through a set amount of time, means that it automatically closes and was effectively never open afterwards.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Daggrel said. “How can something do that?”

“It’s magic,” Gertrude said as though that was the full and complete explanation for everything that she’d experience in the last several hours.

“Can’t say as I like magic,” Daggrel’s complaint was silently shared by most of the rest of the group, except, notably, for Iana.

“If it can get us back home, then I’m more than willing to try it out,” she said. “Commander Wynni, you said you would be able to evaluate the portal before we risked it?”

“I said we might be able to evaluate it. Our magic is internal. It’s a part of who and what we are,” Wynni said. “Either what the blade is going to do will resonate with us or we’ll have no more idea than you of what will happen to anyone that tries to pass through it.”

“Then I should be the first to go,” Iana said.

“No,” Yuehne stepped forward.

“You don’t want me to risk life and limb?” Iana asked. “I thought you wanted me dead?”

“Not here, and not like this,” Yuehne said. “Think; if you die or get lost, what happens to the Shadowfolk? What happens to the nobles of Gallagrin? What happens to my family?”

“The same thing that happens if I don’t get out of here at all,” Iana said, taken aback by the vehemence of Yuehne’s questions.

“The portal will be able to take more than one person right? So someone else can test it first?” Yuehne asked, turning to face Lagressa.

“If it’s stable, yes. We’ll cut through enough time with it that everyone can pass to the far end before it closes,” Lagressa said.

The Silence Breaker felt conflicting wills reach out for it. Those were easy to ignore though. Only one hand was on its hilt, and its maker had a special claim on its attention.

“Let me go through first then,” Yuehne said. “If I get scrambled, no one is going to miss me. They all expected me to die on this mission anyways.”

“No, I can’t let you do that,” Iana said.

“You have to take all the glory, is that it?” Yuehne said.

“No, there’s no glory here,” Iana said. “It’s simply a matter that no one else has the protections cast on them that I do. I’m also reasonably sure that if I’m lost, Dae will be able to find me. She doesn’t have the same connections with the rest of you to draw on. Most importantly though, you’re more critical to this moment than I am.”

“They’re going to start a war that could end a species because of you!” Yuehne said. “How am I more important than that?”

“Because you can give testimony about what you saw,” Iana said. “By living, I can forestall another  war, but you can help us root out the real culprits who are responsible for bringing us to this place.”

“I’m a failed assassin!” Yuehne said. “No one is going to believe anything I say!”

“You’re not a failed assassin. You’re a witness. One whose been brave enough to survive this far. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Brave? I didn’t have any choice for any of this!” Yuehne said.

“You’ve had at least a dozen chances to get away clean and easy since I met you,” Venita said. “And about half as many chances to finish your mission. I think our princess is right. You’re not as much a prisoner here as I first took you for. That’s why I’m the one who’s going to go through first.”

“Venita! No! I can’t ask that of you!” Iana said.

“That’s right. You can’t,” Venita said. “Which is why I’m not offering, I’m telling you, this is how it’s going to be.”

“I thought it was the royalty who gave the orders?” Gendaw said.

“You need to study Gallagrin more,” Venita said. “Royalty gives us suggestions. We then do with those suggestions whatever is most fitting.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it really works,” Wynni said.

“Well it’s how it’s going to work this time,” Venita said. “We can’t risk the princess being torn to shreds or tossed to a place worse than this, and I’m not letting a child run a risk that I’m afraid to face myself. So there. No. More. Arguments.”

The Silence Breaker knew that there wouldn’t be further discussion. Of all of the wills focused on it, Venita’s was the strongest. Even its owner was less committed to the course of action than the dwarf was.

“What about the wounded?” Londela asked. “Should we move them someplace safe before we try anything?”

“Yes,” Lagressa said. “Place them in the apartment I secured for her.”

She nodded at Miaza, who was staring open mouthed at the proceedings.

“The apartment you did what to?” she asked, snapping out of her surprise.

“The building you found where you’ve recuperated for the last few days? It had been the nest of a colony of swarm bears.”

“Sleeping Gods!” Wynni said. Neither she nor Miaza offered any other commentary, though both clearly knew of the creatures Lagressa was referring to.

“What’s a swarm bear?” Yuehne asked.

“You’re familiar with bees and bears?” Gendaw said. “Before the Sleeping Gods made those two creatures in their current form, they spawned a great number of early versions where the two were one entity.”

“So tiny little flying bears?” Yuehne asked.

“No, bear sized bees, complete with bear bites and bear claws. Sometimes the gods made wise choices in the animals they did not include in the final version of the Blessed Realms.”

“And you…?” Yuehne asked, turning to Lagressa.

“Drowned them. They were a nuisance and I’d meant to get around to it eventually. Her arrival just made it a more urgent matter.”

“So the meat and honey I’ve been eating?” Miaza asked.

“Was very fresh,” Lagressa said with a nod.

“Why? Why would you do that for me?” Miaza asked. Her expression was more than faintly horrified though whether that was due to Lagressa’s action or dining on Swarm Bears was difficult to say.

“The colony was hostile and unreasonable,” Lagressa said. “I hoped you wouldn’t be.”

“It’s not easy being more than you were designed to be. Especially not alone,” Iana said.

Lagressa answered with a small, tight nod.

“How long will it take to get ready to bring us back?” Venita asked.

“We could try immediately,” Lagressa said, “But I would be grateful to have the Shadowfolk inspect the edge of the blade. I have not made many of Silence Breakers and the construction of one is not a trivial task.”

“Let’s take an hour’s break then,” Iana said. “We had a long night and if we head back too quickly, we may run into the wrong people.”

“That should be enough time for our review,” Wynni said.

“Presuming you find no flaws in the blade,” Lagressa said.

“If we do we can re-evaluate our time table. If we don’t find anything in an hour though I don’t think we’ll find it in a day either.”

The Silence Breaker felt the relaxation of intent that followed. It wouldn’t be used yet.

Instead it was poked and prodded, turned over and used to cut a number of mundane objects. Nothing for which a true focus of vision was required.

Then Venita picked it up.

“An hour sure passes fast,” she said, and the Silence Breaker felt both her focus and her reservation.

“My hands will need to be on the blade as well,” Lagressa said.

“Does that mean I’m going to drown?” Venita asked.

“No,” Iana said. “Lagressa and I practiced while we were waiting.”

“Practiced what?” Venita asked.

“My curse is something I can control,” Lagressa said. “It was intended as a weapon after all.”

“The problem was, she never had anyone to practice the magic with, everyone would die at the first touch, so the effect was always on,” Iana said.

“And now you can turn it off?” Venita asked.

“I believe so,” Lagressa said.

“Well, that’s extremely comforting,” Venita said.

“You don’t have to do this,” Iana said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then take my hand,” Lagressa said.

The Silence Breaker felt Venita’s will coalesce. Dwarves weren’t made of iron, but their wills were.

Moonlight blazed down the edge of the Silence Breaker, driving back the shadows and making the mountaintop visible for hundred of miles in every direction.

“Focus on your world, hold an image of it in your mind,” Lagressa said. “The sharper the picture, the more details you can see, the cleaner the cut will be.”

“I’ve got it,” Venita said, her voice reverberating with the Silence Breaker’s power.

“Then lift the blade high,” Lagressa said, “And slash through the barrier that stands before you.”

The Silence Breaker descended like a bolt of judgement. Along its edge, the veil of shadows that stand between the worlds, cutting each off from the other, was rent in two. Moonlight burned through the fabric of reality, pushing aside the old boundaries, and two realms that had never touched, met at a single point in space and a brief moment in time.

Without waiting for anyone’s approval, Venita stepped through the rift in space.

She left the Silence Breaker with Lagressa. For all the blade’s power, it was nothing more than moonlight unless it’s owner chose to relinquish it.

If the portal lead back to the Blessed Realms, then it would be obvious enough for the others to see and follow in Venita’s wake. If it didn’t then Lagressa would need to forge the Silence Breaker anew and they would need to try again.

In either case Venita’s fate was sealed the moment she committed herself and from the smile on the dwarfs face as she entered the portal she was perfectly ok with that.

Miaza focused her aim on Gendaw but imagined a path through him to her true target. She hadn’t been cleared for execution, but if the princess of Gallagrin was lost in the deep shadow worlds and had the help of both a shadow dweller and two of Shadowfolk then the original scheme had failed to such a degree that wanton killing seemed like the only reasonable path forward.

“Does she have any sense of self-preservation left?” Iana asked, gazing in Miaza’s direction.

The Gallagrin princess couldn’t see her, Miaza was sure of that.

Or mostly sure of it.

Hopeful of it?

The girl wasn’t supposed to be anything special or challenging to deal with. She didn’t have a pact spirit bonded to her. She was human, and despite being raised in the Green Council that should have meant that her capabilities were well understood. The Shadowfolk practiced against humans as a baseline opponent since that was who the majority of their targets were.

It had been miserable luck and the presence of an unnaturally perceptive Faeneril that had ruined Miaza’s surveillance of the princess. She felt bad about her mistake, though being lost in the deep shadow worlds and injured almost to death seemed like sufficient penance for a minor error. What she didn’t feel was out classed by the princess.

Following the girl had been simple. Evading the other Faen had been simple. Delivering a fatal blow would have been simple too, but the mission wasn’t a simple one.

As far as Miaza knew, her partner Shippu hadn’t survived the jump into the shadows. His throat looked bad in the brief instant she’d seen him before they vanished. That they hadn’t wound up together at the same spot wasn’t unheard of but given how much good fortune she’d needed to survive, it didn’t seem probable that he’d landed in a similar situation and lived too.

So Miaza had his death to avenge as well.

“I don’t think she does,” Wynni said. “My guess is that in addition to being an utter screw up, she’s also working on a justification for why she should act directly against the parameters of the mission she was given.”

“Shippu’s not dead,” Gendaw said, concern in his voice driven by crossbow she was pointing at him. “He wasn’t strong enough to jump as far as you did so he landed closer, and we got to him in time. He might not speak again but he’s going to live.”

Miaza wondered if there was any point to maintaining the fiction that she was hidden from them. The other humans in the group were looking around and didn’t seem to be able to spy her position in the dark, but it was clear that they were also looking for other sources of danger too and not as concerned about her.

“Do you think you can talk to her?” Iana asked.

“I suppose I have to try,” Wynni said. “If I get shot though, will someone step over into the shadows and punch Silian for me. This is all his fault as far as I’m concerned.”

Miaza had to wonder if Wynni had gone insane. The woman wasn’t emotionally deranged but Silian had been dead for millenia. He was an important and revered figure, but talking to him was less likely than talking to one of the Sleeping Gods.

The scaled woman, Lagressa, began to hum a soft tune. It should have been irritating, Miaza hated music, especially any form of singing, but the humming felt too close to a natural sound to trigger Miaza’s disapproval.

Wynni relaxed visibly and walked forward, placing herself between Gendaw and Miaza.

“I know you can still shoot past me,” Wynni said. “Or through me. I’d prefer it if you did neither though.”

“Why shouldn’t I? You’re a traitor,” Miaza asked.

“No, I’m the best hope our people have,” Wynni said. “Or at least that’s what a certain annoying jerk keeps saying in my ear. Over and over and over.”

“Gendaw’s silent,” Miaza said.

“Gendaw’s not a jerk either,” Wynni said.

“I’m going to remind you that you said that,” Gendaw said.

“Sometimes you’re a clod, but do you really think I’d have spent this many years with a jerk?” Wynni asked.

“You’re both traitors,” Miaza said.

“You messed up,” Wynni said. “In fact you messed up worse than you can imagine, but honestly, none of this is your fault.”

“I will own my mistakes,” Miaza said. “They do not absolve you of keeping the company that you are in.”

She wanted to pull the trigger. Things were very broken and very wrong, and pulling the trigger on her crossbow would set off a series of events that would make everything right again.

Except she couldn’t.

She tried to tighten her finger on the trigger and something fought back.

It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t her sense of morality.

It was her will to live.

The humming from the scaled woman reminded her of a song from her childhood. She pictured the girl she used to be. She pictured the pride her mother showed in her accomplishments. That girl couldn’t die. Not lost in the dark. Not at the hands of her own people.

She’d been picturing a scene where the hated betrayers of her race fell one after the other, their blood flowing like wine to make her drunk. That dream fizzled away though, replaced by the tableau her mind knew would the real result of her actions.

She would shoot Wynni. The bolt might or might not kill the woman, with the odds tending towards not because Miaza was an indifferent shot by Shadowfolk standards and Wynni was adept at dodging.

The bolt would connect, draw blood and before she could reload a return attack from Wynni, Gendaw or possibly the princess would strike her back. Miaza might survive the return strike but it would impair her and they would show no mercy. If their second blow wasn’t an instantly fatal one, their third would be, and all of them would land faster than she could jump to another shadow.

In the light reveries of Lagressa’s humming song, Miaza saw that she was not enacting vengeance but committing suicide, and she couldn’t move forward on that. She wanted to live.

She lowered the crossbow to her side, not giving up its protection but signaling that she wasn’t as much a threat.

“You’re mistake might have saved us all,” Wynni said.

“How?” Miaza asked, certain that Wynni was feeding her a line.

“You doomed us, and more importantly the plan we were following,” Wynni said.

“What? How would that save us?” Miaza asked.

“Because the plan was doomed overall,” Gendaw said. “You and Shippu being revealed accelerated that and made the plans shortcomings clear before they were irreversible.”

“We’ve spent years working on this plan though,” Miaza said. “The Elders have reviewed it dozens of times.”

“That’s the problem,” Iana said. “You’re Elders aren’t looking out for the welfare of your people. They have more personal concerns they’re trying to address.”

“What do you know of our Elders?” Miaza asked.

“I’ve seen it before,” Iana said.

“You’re a child. Don’t lecture me on what you’ve seen,” Miaza said.

Iana pushed past Wynni, fire burning in her eyes.

“I am a princess of Gallagrin and I was the commander of the Green Council’s Warbringers. I have invaded foreign realms and spoken with a god,” Iana said. “You can’t imagine the things I’ve seen.”

Rage flared in her breast and Miaza raised and fired her crossbow in one smooth, thought-free motion, just as she’d been trained.

The bolt splintered into dust where it hit the princess.

“And I am blessed by the first sorceress of the realm,” Iana said, brushing the dust from her shirt.

Miaza heard the crossbow clatter on the ground and wondered when her fingers had dropped it. Everything felt numb.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“That’s what our Elder were pitting us against,” Wynni said. “They told you the assignment was a position of honor. Tonel promised you in secret that he’d clear your marriage bond with Belcon and convince your family to accept Shippu’s offer, but Tonel’s not a favorite of the match makers. He knew he wouldn’t have to follow through because he knew you weren’t going to succeed.”

“What? How? You can’t know that!” Miaza said.

“You are completely right. I wasn’t there when you got your assignment, and I’m not on Tonel’s good side, so he’d never share that information with me,” Wynni said. “You know who does know that kind of thing though?”

“Who?” Miaza asked.

“Silian,” Wynni said.

“But he’s dead?” Miaza said.

“Yeah, that’s why I thought too,” Wynni said. “Turns out he’s not, he’s just intent on making me wish he was.”

“I don’t understand?”

“Apparently I am convenient for him to talk with. Or amusing. Surprising revelation; he’s kind of a jerk! Anyways, the short bit of this story is, he’s informed on pretty much everything and since Tonel and his flunkies managed to mess up things up to the point where the survival of our entire species was in jeopardy, he decided to step in and give us a hand.”

“That’s…how can it be so bad? No one speaks to the Faen who saw us and the people there only caught the slightest glimpse of what we were before we shadow jumped.”

“Like I said, it’s not your mistake that was ultimately at fault. This whole plan was designed to destroy us.”

“But the Elders wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re Elders didn’t know what they were doing,” Iana said. “They thought they were keeping control of you all by focusing you on an external threat. The problem was they never bothered trying to understand that what they were pointing you at wasn’t a threat to them at all unless they made it one.”

“But how could our whole species be at risk?” Miaza asked.

“Silian says that provoking the ire of the most powerful queen in the world and the world’s first sorceress is something that even a Sleeping God realized was a mistake. Do you think we can fight a team that can beat a god?”

“But we were going to turn them against their nobles,” Miaza said, the plan sounding less certain with every word she uttered.

“Neither Queen Alari nor Dae are that easy to fool,” Iana said.

“And they would destroy us all for killing you?” Miaza asked.

“Queen Alari wouldn’t. I think. I’ve seen that her first instinct is kindness,” Iana said.

“But if she loses someone she cares about?” Wynni asked. “That’s Silian’s concern.”

“She had her Consort King beheaded, so she’s not all sweetness and light,” Iana said. “The real concern though would be if you convinced Dae that you were a threat to Queen Alari, and killing me might accomplish that.”

“What would happen then?” Miaza asked.

“Dae might not let you die, but I’m am very sure you would want to,” Iana said.

“Is she the devil?” Miaza asked.

“No, but do you remember how the angels of the Sleeping Gods would usually greet mortals with the words ‘be not afraid’? I think Dae is an angel like that.”

“A messanger?” Miaza asked.

“No. A horror that is being very careful to remain as human and non-threatening as possible because the one she loves wishes her to be so,” Iana said. “If there was a reason the Sleeping Gods left us, I think it was because they didn’t want to risk meeting someone like Dae, and your Elders very brilliantly tried to remove her restraints.”

“What does Silian want us to do then?” Miaza asked.

“He wants us to save our people,” Wynni said.

“But Tonel will be continuing the plan won’t he?” Miaza asked.

“Yes, he tried to carry it forward after you were lost,” Wynni said. “He sent Koblani and Pergrez to try to assassinate Princess Iana at a remote location.”

“What happened?” Miaza asked.

“The princess got the better of them,” Wynni said.

“That’s not possible,” Miaza said. “How did you see them coming?”

“I had some help,” Iana said.

“Any chance you can call on that help here?” Wynni asked.

“I believe she already has,” Lagressa said, holding a blade of gleaming moonlight in her hands.

Lagressa felt many eyes settle on her.  There were at least a dozen people who were painfully aware of her presence. A dozen people who’d thought they were safer than they were. A dozen people who had been warned that everything in the Shadow Worlds was dangerous.

Lagressa hadn’t stopped to consider how well armed the party that she was approaching was. She made a mental note of that as a forest of blades appeared in the hands of those she was addressing.

Not all of the weapons were aimed at her, of course. Several were held in position to deflect attacks from the side and rear of the group. For what looked like a rag tag group of travelers, they had surprisingly sensible reactions to the sudden appearance of danger.

“You don’t want to stab me,” Lagressa said. She’d been taught since she could understand language that the first reaction of any sunlight dweller would have to seeing her was likely to involve violence. From the stern edges of the expressions that faced her, she was beginning to believe those lessons had been correct.

“What will your friends do if that happens?” Wynni asked.

“That’s not why you don’t want to stab me.”

Lagressa didn’t have any friend waiting to strike back against any harm done to her. She didn’t really have any friends at all in fact. She was horribly outnumbered but that didn’t mean that she was in danger. Not with what she’d been designed to do.

“I don’t bleed,” Lagressa said. “If you stab me, I will touch you, and if I touch you, you will drown.”

“We’re not going to stab her,” Iana said, moving to stand in front of Wynni and putting a hand on the taller woman’s arm. “Why did you stop us?”, she asked, giving Lagressa her full attention.

For a human who looked so young, the girl Iana seemed to take command more easily than seemed proper. What was stranger was how the rest of the people with her listened to her commands.

“You spoke of needing to return to the sunlight lands,” Lagressa said. “I can be of assistance in that.”

“How and why?” Iana asked. The plainness in her tone made it less a challenge and more an invitation. That it was an invitation to avoid being stabbed was something not lost on Lagressa.

“The how is simple enough, I have been crafting a tool to breach the barriers between the worlds. The why is simple as well; I need someone to test it for me.”

The other young human girl laughed.

“That’s an awfully convenient story,” Yuehne said. “We traveled randomly into the shadow worlds and just happen to wind up on the doorstep of someone who has a tool to help us get back?”

“You are not the only ones who have arrived here,” Lagressa said. “Nor is this a random destination.”

“What do you mean?” Wynni asked.

The others in the party were shifting around, watching the darkness that surrounded them for more foes. A few weeks ago, that would have been a necessity for their survival on the mountaintop. Lagressa had worked to make the environs safer, but their watchfulness was still a wise choice.

Without a sun to light the sky, most of the Shadow Worlds had only moon and starlight to provide illumination to them. The nameless fragment Lagressa had fled to supported bursts of of glowing flowers as well, but their light was all pale violets and pinks. It would have been a perfect spot for an ambush.

Lagressa had made her sanctuary on the outskirts of the flower lit grove for just that reason. She’d expect her own people to chase after her and she wanted the best chance at surprising them that she could get.

“Another of your kind arrived here, days ago,” Lagressa said, watching both Iana and Wynni carefully to gauge their reactions.

“What did you do to her?” Gendaw asked, surprise showing on his fact where it was masked on Iana’s and Wynni’s.

Lagressa had expected the party would know of her earlier visitor. It wasn’t as if anyone arrived on the mountaintop by accident, and two groups fleeing from the sunlight world in desperation were more likely than not to share other things in common than the direness of their straits.

Those connection, Lagressa hoped, might be fortunate ones. If these new people were affiliated with the one who’d arrived earlier it might make it easier for them to trust her.

“I left her alone,” Lagressa said.

“She was injured. Badly.” Wynni’s grip on her blade tightened.

“Yes,” Lagressa said. “That’s why I made sure she was alone.”

“You let bleed out!” Wynni advanced forward a step.

“Wait,” Iana said, grabbing her arm. “You didn’t leave the other Shadowfolk woman to die. You protected her from the things that would have preyed on her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and left food where she could discover it,” Lagressa said.

“I don’t understand?” Wynni said.

“Do you know what this woman is?” Iana asked.

“No,” Wynni said. “I’ve never seen her kind before.”

“Neither have I, but I believe her about drowning if we touch her. She’s not a nereid, but she could be a predecessor to their race. That limits the kind of things she could have done for your compatriot.”

“I am not one of these nereids that you speak of,,” Lagressa said. “There’s nothing of the sunlight races within me. I was constructed to be as I am. I was built to be a weapon, and my touch is death.”

“Well, that’s a comforting thought,” Venita, the dwarven woman, said.

“If we can’t stab her, and she can kill us with a touch, should we be standing this close to her?” Daggrel asked.

“First fire and now water,” Gertrude complained and adjusted her grip on the kitchen knife she was carrying while stepping back two paces.

“A better question,” Venita said. “Should we be helping someone who can kill with a touch to move out of this place and on to our world?”

“Yes,” Iana said.

“How can we trust her though?” Venita asked.

“The same as you can trust me,” Iana said and strode forward.

Lagressa had no idea why the girl was walking towards her until Iana raised an empty hand and reached for Lagressa’s shoulder.

Lagressa tried to flinch away, to roll back before Iana could touch her. No one had ever been foolish enough to risk the curse that Lagressa was under. Killing the apparent leader of the group that surrounded her, even if Lagressa had no interest in doing so, was not going to endear her to them at all.

She felt warmth spread through her shoulder. It was an alien sensation but not an unwelcome one. For a moment the strangeness of it fuzzed the edges of her awareness as she asked herself what was happening.

Someone had touched her.

Directly.

And then the sensation was gone.

Iana stepped back. In her hands she held a dagger that pulsed with a soft light.

Had that been the cause of the warm sensation?

No. Lagressa’s thoughts came back into focus. Iana had reached up with her empty hand. She’d touched Lagressa on the shoulder. It was a simple gesture. Lagressa had seen other people do it on many occasions. It just wasn’t something she’d ever expected to experience for herself.

“Her touch can’t kill me,” Iana said after spitting out a mouthful of water. “Not with the protections that Dae’s given me.”

“What about the rest of us?” Daggerel asked.

“Any one of us could kill any of the others,” Iana said. “Some of us may even still want to.”

She looked at Yuehne, who frowned and looked away.

“But none of us are going to do that,” Iana continued. “Because we need each other, and because I will personally slay anyone who harms anyone in our unit here.”

“We’re a unit now?” Wynni asked.

“A poorly organized and temporary one, but yes,” Iana said.

The talked about something. Maybe who would lead them. Or what their next steps would be. Lagressa wasn’t sure. Her mind was wandering in and out of its fuzzy state, recalling the warmth that came from being touched.

She struggled with the memory, and managed to tuck it away only when she was asked another question.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked, having missed the words up until attention returned to her.

“You said you needed to experiment with the tool you created,” Iana said. “What can you tell us about it?”

“It is called a Silence Breaker, and it is tied to my nature, to the magics that empower and define me,” Lagressa said.

“What does it do, exactly,” Iana asked.

“Light can dispel shadows,” Lagressa said. “And water can find the weak points in any structure. By capturing moonlight in a blade of water droplets, I can slice a hole between any two worlds.”

“How large is the hole, and how long does it last?” Iana asked.

“It varies, from what I’ve been told,” Lagressa said. “Bigger holes close faster but the rate of closure isn’t constant.”

“Will there be enough time for all of us to get through one hole?” Iana asked.

“There should be,” Lagressa said. “If I’ve forged the blade properly.”

“And if you haven’t?” Iana asked.

“Then the rift may appear to go where its intended to, but anyone crossing through it could fall into a rift-within-the-rift.”

“And that would drop them off almost anywhere I’m guessing?” Iana asked.

“So long as a survivable destination is focused on when the rift is made, all of the world that are adjacent to it should also be survivable,” Lagressa said.

“So worst case we step through, wind up someplace we don’t want to be and we can cut open another rift to get out?” Iana asked.

“That’s far from the worst case,” Lagressa said. “Cutting a rift open puts strain on the Silence Breaker and if we wind up in a realm where there’s no moonlight at all then there’d be nothing to reforge the blade with.”

“We could help with that perhaps?” Wynni said. “We can travel the shadows on our own. If we inspect the rift before going through it we may be able to tell if the passage is stable or not.”

“I can’t say I’m a fan of this idea, but it sounds better than our other strategy of ‘waiting around here until we die of old age’,” Venita said.

“I thought the eyeless people were going to be able to get us back home?” Gertrude said.

“Shadowfolk come back from the deep realms fairly often,” Gendaw said. “And usually when they don’t its because they arrived alone and injured.”

“Speaking of that, what happened with the injured woman who arrived here before us?” Iana asked.

“She’s still here. Recovering,” Lagressa said.

“Did you provide her with any weapons?” Wynni asked.

“No. I chased off the predator beasts from the area so she wouldn’t need any,” Lagressa said.

“Then she’ll be using the ones she was sent on her mission with,” Wynni said.

“Is that a good thing?” Iana asked.

“Yes. For a surveillance mission, Miaza wouldn’t have been carrying poison coated bolts,” Wynni said.

“That should make approaching her easier,” Iana said.

“Approaching her won’t be a problem,” Wynni said. “According to Silian she’s already here.”

“Does he know where she is?” Iana asked.

“She was moving,” Wynni said. ‘Trying to get into position for a decent shot on you.”

“And she heard us talking her,” Iana said.

“And still hears us,” Wynni said.

“Who would she have to shoot through at the moment to get to me?” Iana asked.

“Gendaw,” Wynni said.

“She’s hesitating because she doesn’t want to kill one of your own?” Iana asked.

“No, I think she’s hesitating because she can’t believe we’re standing together and talking calmly,” Wynni said. “Unless I miss my guess she’s trying to decide which of us needs to die first.”

The Blessed Realms were constructed from stardust and gravity, like most other worlds are. For the Blessed Realms though, the stardust was synthesized not in early supernovae but through an act of divine fiat. The gods of the Blessed Realms came as architects and dreamers. They crafted the realms as one milieu in a long series of realities wherein they tried out variations on millions of separate and interlocking themes.

As with many works of art though, they had to go through a few initial designs before they reached one which they felt was right.

Those early works reached varying stages of fullness in the creation. Some were bare sketches of a world; smooth, lifeless spheres where the fundamental physical laws were applied in a haphazard fashion.

Other worlds more closely resembled the Blessed Realms, containing early copies of the mountains and lakes and wonders that the Mindful Races of the realms would live near, work on, and fight over.

Because the sun of the Blessed Realms didn’t shine on any of these half finished creations, they were known as shadow worlds and if there was one thing which united them it was that shadow worlds were never safe for those of the sunlight world to travel through.

Lagressa of the Drowning Kiss knew this. She also knew that as a child of the shadow worlds, they weren’t necessarily safe for her either.

“Those were frighteningly accurate copies of us,” a young girl said. “Are you sure that the queen’s wife is going to be able to tell that they’re not really our bodies?”

“I have no idea,” a Shadowfolk woman said.

Lagressa watched them walk under her tree house hideaway. The instincts that had been drilled into her said to wait for them to pass by and then stalk them from the rear.

Lagressa cast that thought aside. She’d fled to the ruined city on the mountain precisely because she didn’t want to be the person her people wanted her to be. The person she was designed and created to be.

“Do you know where we are?” another young girl asked. This one seemed more assured. She walked with an awareness of the space around her, flowing through the air with small turns that expanded her field of vision while making an attack on her vital organs more difficult.

“We’ve gone to one of the hells,” an older, human woman said. “One of the dark and bad ones.”

“There are bright and happy hells?” a dwarven woman asked.

“Sure, they’re lit by the fools they set on fire there and that makes the demons in them real happy,” the human woman said.

Lagressa couldn’t contain her fascination. Humans and Dwarves were sunlight folk. They never came to the shadow worlds. Not unless something was very wrong.

The Shadowfolk woman was an even greater anomaly though. Shadowfolk and the sunlight people never mixed. Even at the best of times there was too much suspicion between them, and the last decade had not been the best of times for either side.

“We’re not in hell,” a Shadowfolk man said. “The hells are lot easier to get out of than the deep shadows.”

The party that was walking beneath Lagressa’s hideout represented more people than she’d seen over the last six months, and each one of them was a puzzle she couldn’t resist trying to piece together.

“The Council doesn’t believe in Hells,” Iana said. “What’s a wolf’s heaven but a rabbit’s hell? I was taught.”

“I thought the hells were where the worst of the god’s cast offs were thrown?” Yuehne said. “The things that were broken and wrong.”

“Yeah, like the Shadowfolk,” Gertrude, the older human woman, said.

“You might want to consider that it’s those same Shadowfolk who are our only chance of making it back to the sunlit lands,” Venita, the dwarven woman, said. “And more importantly, you might consider that they can hear you and have feelings too.”

“As if we hear anything else from you sunlighters?” Gendaw, the Shadowfolk man, said.

“Whatever you’ve heard in the past, Venita’s right,” Iana said. “Gertrude, these people are representatives from their own sovereign nation. Respect them.”

“Like we got any respect?” Gertrude said. “They burned down my inn!”

“No,” Iana said. “I burned down your inn. If you have a problem with that…”

“I do! I do have a problem with that. I didn’t ask for you to come! I didn’t want you in my inn and I don’t want you in my country.”

“I owe you for the inn,” Iana said. “I have to make that up to you, and make it right. You can judge when I’ve done enough to achieve that. The loss of your inn though does not give you the right to malign others.”

“You’re going to give her a new one, right Princess? A new inn?” Daggrel, a human man, asked.

“Absolutely,” Iana said. “The Queen will consider it a savings if she only has to pay for one new inn instead of assigning a permanent member of her guard to watch over me.”

“Speaking of those two, what are they doing?” Yuehne asked. “Why haven’t they come after us?”

“The safety of an entire clan of people has to outweigh my own,” Iana said. “Plus, I expect Dae has been spying on us.”

“What? Why would she leave you unprotected? Why did she let you burn down the inn and fake our deaths?” Yuehne asked.

“A show of trust maybe?” Iana said. “Or she’s working on the problem through her own channels.”

“That seems to be what Silian is most afraid of,” Wynni said. “It’s why we need to draw my people back away from the sunlight worlds.”

“So that they won’t move onto assaulting the queen?” Yuehne asked.

“No, so they won’t be as easy for Lady Dae to track,” Gendaw said.

“Can she find them in these Shadow Worlds?” Londela, the courier, asked.

There was silence for a moment and then Wynni said, “Silian hopes it will slow her down.”

“It’s not entirely clear what Dae can and can’t do,” Iana said. “The world hasn’t seen a Sorcerer like her yet.”

“I’m surprised more people aren’t trying to assassinate her,” Venita said. “Not that I bear her any ill will but people tend to be scared of what they don’t understand. Our present company as a specific example of that.”

“I think beating a god into submission was enough to give other people pause,” Iana said. “The world is peaceful at the moment, and for now, no one has a pressing need to upset that. Not after the Green Council was used as an object lesson for what a bad idea doing so could be.”

“You sound like you know a lot about that?” Daggrel asked.

“I was there,” Iana said.

“Where? In the Council?” Venita asked.

“At the final battle,” Iana said. “I was at Queen Alari’s side when she fought against one of my gods.”

“But you’re so young?” Londela said.

“I commanded the division of Warbringers that first invaded Senkin,” Iana said. “I’ve been trained since birth for warfare.”

“That’s not fair,” Yuehne said.

“No,” Iana said. “It’s not.”

Silence reigned over the group for a long moment and Lagressa felt her skin buzzing with excitement.

Living on the edges of the world had been a lonely existence. She had no idea how great a cavity that had left in her until she heard the voices that surrounded her. She longed to reach out and alert them all to her presence, but she knew the peril in that.

The Shadowfolk were a threat she’d encountered before. They exterminated people like Lagressa on the general principal of destroying anything that could threaten their precarious existence. Sunlighters though? They would never trust her. They couldn’t trust the Shadowfolk after all and the Shadowfolk had at least been made to live in the same world as the Sunlighters.

“What are we going to do with these two?” Daggrel asked, pointing to two unconscious Shadowfolk they were carrying on makeshift litters. “You broke them pretty good and they’re getting heavy to carry.”

“We’ll need to find shelter here until we get our bearings,” Iana said.

“Normally we’d toss them into the abyss if they were going to endanger the mission,” Wynni said and held up a hand to shush the objections that leapt to several people’s lips.  “But since that’s the sort of thinking we’re trying to change, that’s not an option here.”

“Are these buildings safe?” Yuehne asked. “Maybe there’s room for them in there?”

The buildings were not safe.

Lagressa knew that from painful experience.

The problem was that they looked safe. In the shadow worlds though, how things appeared and what they were actually like often differed. Harmless spaces in particular were rare. With the base laws of reality being flexible, the areas which could support life were fewer than appearances indicated and those places which did have stable physical laws supporting them were often already claimed by the creatures which lurked in the shadow worlds.

“Nowhere here is safe,” Wynni said. “We can check them out but we need to be very careful.”

“Isn’t this where your people live though?” Londela asked.

“It’s not like that matters. Plenty of dangerous things where my people live,” Venita, the dwarf, said. “Doesn’t mean we can’t live there, and doesn’t mean some of us don’t still die because of one dangerous thing or another.”

“We’re deep in the Shadow Worlds now too,” Wynni said. “This is a place my people rarely choose to tread.”

“So there’s spots there are close to our world and ones that are farther away?” Londela asked. “Why did we go to one of the far ones? Was it to throw off your peoples’ trackers?”

“Yes, after we switched places with our mirror bodies, we had to make a blind jump into the Shadows,” Wynni said. “We don’t control where those go, and so we also can’t track them.”

“That was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Daggrel said. “You dragged a whole other me right out of the mirror.”

“It wasn’t you,” Gendaw said. “It was a reflection body. It looked like you because of the mirror but they’re just empty shells so it could have been anyone.”

“Yeah, but how do you do that?” Daggrel asked.

“It’s bit of Shadow magic. One that’s hard to detect,” Gendaw said.

“Also not widely known,” Wynni said.

“Will your trackers know to check for it?” Iana asked.

“Silian apparently fooled the gods with it when they were looking for him, so it should escape our tracker’s notice too,” Wynni said. “The bodies were inert but the fire burned hot enough that no one will be able to tell that.”

“If the trackers can’t follow us here why go to all the trouble to leave bodies behind?” Londela asked.

“Without the bodies they would have kept looking for me,” Iana said.

“Once they find her though. They’ll try to put together a scene to implicate someone else in the princess’s killing,” Wynni said.

“And Dae will see right through it,” Iana said.

“How does that help us though if we’re lost out in the middle of nowhere?” Venita asked.

“It’ll buy us time to recruit support from within the ranks of my people,” Wynni said.

“Is that possible?” Londela asked.

“Normally it wouldn’t be,” Gendaw said. “Normally we’re trained to be loyal unto death.”

Iana laughed.

“It’s always unto our own death isn’t it?” she said. “The one’s we’re supposed to be loyal to are never the ones who are at risk.”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be,” Wynni said. “It’s not what Silian wanted for us.”

“If all the Shadowfolk are brainwashed, won’t they refuse to help?” Daggrel asked.

“They’re not brainwashed,” Wynni said. “And I can get through to them. Or at least enough of them to turn things around.”

“How do you know?” Yuehne asked.

“Because I’ve got the voice of our progenitor nagging in my ear,” Wynni said.”They won’t listen to me, but he knows how to convince them. He managed to convince me after all.”

“Now the trick is getting out of this place and back to the umbral worlds so you can talk to them,” Gendaw said.

“I believe I can help with that.” Lagressa didn’t mean to give herself away. The words slipped out before she was aware she was saying them, but in the silence that followed she decided she wasn’t going to take them back.

Come what may, she was a part of the story she saw unfolding before her.

Tonel had been to the sight of many botched missions. He hated going to them. Things were always messy and it kindled a special kind of rage in his heart to see how incompetent his underlings were. For the case before him though he’d trekked out to a remote mountain inn to act as the Chief Inspector he’d once been.

Since Tonel’s promotion to the ranks of  Elder of the Shadowfolk, he was no longer required to personally inspect the aftermath of the assignments he gave but with everything that had gone wrong with the simple scheme against Gallagrin’s senior princess, he wasn’t willing to trust anyone else to evaluate the outcome of the job correctly.

“The fire was recent sir,” Kongrave, Tonel’s principal assistant said.

Tonel gritted his teeth.

“Yes, that’s obvious.” He kicked a pile of still glowing wood that had fallen outside the inn, probably as part of the collapse that consumed the roof.

The walls of the Sunblossom Inn weren’t exactly standing anymore. There was enough left of them to do an impression of a set of building walls but few of them rose above shoulder height any longer. From what Tonel could see from the outside, the structure had been completely gutted and from the remaining heat it was clear that the flames had abated only recently, likely due to the rain storm that had swept over the mountain in the pre-dawn hours.

The stench of smoke had been spread far and wide by the mountain winds, but the still glowing embers made it clear that the devastation had been centered on the building and those within it.

“Have you found bodies yet?” Tonel spat the words out, trying to resist the urge to strangle Kongrave and the rest of the incompetents that he’d brought.

“Yes, or the remains of them,” Kongrave said. “With the fire there was a lot of damage done.”

“So you haven’t been able to identify who they were?” Tonel asked.

“Not yet sir, we’re being careful about disturbing them, or the site in general,” Kongrave said.

Tonel’s fists clutched hard enough to fade his knuckles to a pale powder blue. He couldn’t fault his minions for being careful. He had ordered them to take extreme care. Doing so at the expense of time was a luxury they didn’t have.

“Have you secured the site?” Tonel asked.

“We have Elder,” Kongrave said. “No on who was inside survived the fire.”

“And the outside perimeter?” Tonel asked.

“Swept clean. There are no living creatures within a bowshot of the inn,” Kongrave said.

That seemed wrong to Tonel but he dismissed it as irrelevant. The lack of witnesses made for the perfect scene, and it was time for at least one thing to go in their favor.

“Then I will inspect the bodies,” Tonel said and strode forward towards the remains of the Sunblossom Inn.

“The building’s structural stability has not been fully evaluated yet though Elder,” Kongrave said.

“Then evaluate it!” Tonel said, halting his steps. It wouldn’t do for him to be injured in any further collapse of the inn. That was what subordinates were for. “We have to make sure the scene is arranged properly with the right evidence displayed to make the reports our existence seem too far fetched to be believable.”

“There is a complication there Elder,” Kongrave said.

Tonel emitted a wheezing growl. Of course there was a complication. The Blessed Realms hated him, personally, and existed for no other reason than to act as his own private hell.

“What. Has. Gone. Wrong. Now.” Tonel wanted to incinerate Kongrave with his gaze but the assistant refused to play along and catch on fire.

“Koblani and Pergrez were caught in the building when it burned,” Kongrave said. “We believe we’ve found their corpses.”

“Those two fools,” Tonel said. “They couldn’t carry out a simple mission to kill one young girl? We’re well rid of them.”

“Our problems are deeper than the loss of two of our assassins,” Kongrave said. “They burned with the building, and their corpses are a part of the wreckage.”

“They didn’t retreat to the shadows? They died in the sunlight world?” Tonel asked.

It was an unthinkable breech of tactical doctrine. Even in situations where the trip to the dark worlds was definitely suicidal, every one of the Shadowfolk were expected to take their final leap there rather than dying where they could be discovered by one of the sunlight races.

“It seems so, Elder,” Kongrave said.

“How whole are they? Are their ashes mixed in with the others?” Tonel asked. It had never occurred to him that the mission could go this disastrously bad. Even Miaza and Shippo hadn’t bumbled things that to that extent. They’d had the sense to flee to the deep realms the moment they were discovered. One might never speak again and the other might be lost in the shadows but, like all good Shadowfolk, neither had left permanent evidence behind of their existence.

“They’re mostly intact, it’s how we were able to identify them so easily,” Kongrave said.

Kongrave and his team had been at work on the Inn for a half hour. Easy tasks should have taken thirty seconds or less, not thirty minutes.

“Move,” Tonel said as he broke into a run, casting aside the shadows that were concealing him.

They’d wasted thirty minutes on reviewing the scene. They had no more than another thirty before one of the sunlight people became aware of what occurred over the course of the night at the Inn. In that time, Tonel had to make certain that Princess Iana was one of the bodies present, arrange things to indicate that the assassins had been human and, somehow, remove any traces of two dead Shadowfolk who were currently returning to room temperature after being cooked in a giant burning oven for hours.

It wasn’t possible.

Tonel knew that. He’d “tidied” up botched murder scenes before. There was no chance that they could rid the Sunblossom Inn of all traces of the Shadowfolk’s presence in that little time.

For a lot of assassinations, perfect removal wouldn’t have been needed. People were remarkably eager to contaminate places where they discovered dead people. Also, even for noble murder victims, the survivors wouldn’t necessarily go to that much effort to determine who was responsible as long as they had a likely candidate to pin the blame on.

The greatest gift to those who wanted to get away with murder was the willingness of people to accept convenient fictions as facts.

The problem Tonel faced was that he wasn’t dealing with a normal murder scene. Or fooling a normal investigation.

The queen wasn’t going to casually overlook any details that would point to the true culprits. Not when she already had the name “Shadowfolks” on her lips.

Tonel remembered Sathe, the Butcher King. The monarch who’d waged a personal vendetta against the Shadowfolk, to the point where he drove them closer to extinction than the Sleeping Gods had. His daughter sat on the throne, which meant his blood still ruled Gallagrin. The Shadowfolk would never forget that, and that was the perfect resource for retaining, in Tonel’s eyes. For all of the terrible things Sathe had done, Tonel had learned a lot from the Butcher King. Hate was the most seductive tool in a ruler’s arsenal, followed closely by ruthlessness.

“Fetch me the two slowest of your assistants,” Tonel said.

Wasting resources was disagreeable, but sometimes necessary. The scheme to sow chaos and strife in Gallagrin had been Tonel’s but it’s failure was in no sense attributable to him. At least in Tonel’s eyes. With the loss of Koblani and Pergrez, the Shadowfolk were down four, or possibly six of their trained operatives, if Wynni and Gendaw ere lost too. Wasting two more lives wasn’t going to bring the others back, but it might ensure that future losses were prevented. Most especially the future loss of Tonel’s place as one of the Elders.

“Hulnin and I are the two slowest inspectors, sir,” Kongrave said, calling one of the other inspectors over.

“Good. That will make this simple,” Tonel said.

And then he stabbed them both.

There was a glimmer of shocked betrayal that passed over Kongrave’s features as the life faded from his eyes, followed by a weary resignation, as though he had always known this would be his fate.

The fool should have done something about it, if he knew he was destined for this, Tonel thought, remorse entirely absent from his emotional landscape. The other inspector, Hulnin, had the grace to simply die instantly, a feat which insured that Tonel didn’t think about him at all.

“Elder?” Pilial, one of the other inspectors asked, apparently unable to form a more coherent question.

“This is price for poor performance. It’s what poor performance does. Not just to them, but to our entire race,” Tonel said, his words ringing with contempt for the fallen. “They weren’t performing. They just weren’t performing. So they had to go. But now we can move on.”

“What are we supposed to do, Elder?” Pilial asked.

“Burn them,” Tonel said. “Burn them to ash.”

“Why?” Pilial asked and Tonel wondered about the value of burning five Shadowfolk rather than just four.

“Because we can’t clear all trace of the first two who fell here, so we’re going to use these two to help obfuscate what occurred.”

“I don’t understand Elder,” Pilial said. “We were just cleaning up Wynni and Pergrez’s corpses. Should we stop doing that?”

“Yes,” Tonel’s rage hissed out of him. The plan was so simple. Why could these people see what he was asking and just make it happen. “Burn all of the bodies together in quickfire and the collect the ashes.”

“Understood, Elder,” Pilial said and scampered off to perform his task.

The Queen was going to come to the inn, or she would send her best staff. They would see what happened and want answers. Tonel had to make sure that they found the answers he needed them too and overlooked the clues towards what really happened as inexplicable oddities.

Burning the four Shadowfolk bodies would provide enough ash to spread a thin dusting of their remains all around the inn’s remaining structure, outer yard and the surrounding forest. Since that was not at all the pattern a dead body left, any traces of the Shadowfolk that were found in the building would be taken as more of the odd residue that covered the site.

Tonel wished he could do more to disguise their presence, but under the time constraints predicted by his tacticians, some sacrifices had to be made.

Simply throwing the trail away from the Shadowfolk wasn’t going to be enough though. The only thing that would get the queen to stop looking for them was if she had someone better to question. Someone she already had reason to suspect and someone who had the means and motive to attack the throne in such a roundabout fashion.

Gallagrin’s nobles were nothing if not accommodating in that regards.

Over a year after the last failed coup attempt, and the invasion of Gallagrin by forces from the Green Council, the nobles of Gallagin were still a contentious lot. Few spoke of rebelling anymore, and on the surface there appeared to be a growing peace between the disparate houses, but old tensions and hatreds ran deep.

Just because the world seemed to be improving didn’t mean it lacked the old animosities that Tonel could profit from exploiting.

It came down to little more than a handful of silver coins. That was all Tonel needed to cast the blame onto the right noble house to receive it. No grand notes spelling out their name, no deathbed confessions from the murders. Those made for great theater but were ultimately too dramatic for someone like the queen to be taken in by the lie.

A handful of silver though? Tonel needed no more than to wet a blade in still warm blood from the princess’s corpse and burn both the blade and the bag which contained the silver enough so they appeared to have been in the fire when it occurred. The queen would have to ask herself why a payment from one of her nobles was found near the remains of her adopted daughter, and from there all of the pieces for another civil war would fall into place on their own.

There would be more work to do, but once the war fever was stoked in the queen’s heart, the Shadowfolk would be forgotten and Gallagrin could get on with the business of destroying itself like it was supposed to.

Oline help Daggrel carry the incapacitated Shadowfolk into the main room of the Sunblossom. Neither was conscious, which was a blessing from the look of the injuries they’d received. It also made it easier to handle them without losing her composure.

Like Daggrel, Oline hadn’t fully believed in the idea of invisible assassins targeting their little inn. They were too distant, too small, and too unimportant for something exciting like that to happen. Unlike Daggrel though, Oline fully believed the girl Iana was in some form of peril. Even accounting for Iana’s foreign nature, Oline was too familiar with what serious worry about physical danger looked like.

Like Iana, Oline had fled to the safeness of a remote mountain inn, though it hadn’t been assassins that pursued her. Her own family had driven her out after she rejected the brute of a husband they selected for her. She’d spent a years after arriving at the Sunblossom watching the shadows around the inn just like Iana had.

Unlike Iana though, Oline’s demons hadn’t caught up with her and in time she’d let herself believe that they probably wouldn’t.

Carrying the smaller of the two Shadowfolk into the inn brought some of those old fears boiling back to the surface, but it was the appearance of the Shadowfolk that threw Oline off the most.

Their blue skin was similar enough to some of the giants that infrequently passed through that Oline wasn’t surprised by it, but the intricate network of scars across the woman’s face, hands and neck were unsettling. In Oline’s mind it spoke to years of constant torture and abuse, but there was a deliberate artistry to the scars that suggested the scars were intentionally born instead of casually inflicted.

Worse than the scars though was the lack of eyes. The empty sockets didn’t show signs of damage from the fight, so Oline didn’t think she was looking at recent wounds. The more she gazed at them more she wondered if they were even wounds at all. It looked like it was the natural state for Shadowfolk to not have sensory organs where most humanoids kept their eyes, but their absence was still disturbing.

“I can’t believe these things are real,” Daggrel said.

“We’re just lucky that girl is for real too,” Oline said. “I thought she was just being hopeful that she could handle these things.”

“I was,” Iana said, carrying in the larger of the two Shadowfolk with Venita’s help.

Oline saw that they’d splinted the man’s leg and wrapped the wound to his shoulder in bandages. Given the Shadowfolk’s intentions and capabilities, Oline was surprised at the care Iana was taking with them. The ropes that bound the assassins were strong ones and the knots well tied, but even that didn’t leave Oline with the feeling that they were harmless.

“You seemed pretty capable from what I could see,” Daggrel said, and Oline could hear both the admiration and the wounded pride in her friends words.

“That wasn’t all me,” Iana said. “They were both caught in the traps we’d laid out, and the spirits around here helped too.”

“They’ll want some extra offerings for that,” Londela said. “Interacting with the physical world is tiring even for the strongest of them.”

“I’ll be happy to throw them a grand feast,” Iana said. “Or at least as grand as Gertrude can manage with the supplies she has on hand.”

“Does that mean it’s safe now?” Gertrude asked, entering the main room from the kitchen.

Oline looked at the bound Shadowfolk. Even if they were feigning unconsciousness there wasn’t much they could do and if they tried, she’d be happy to stab them before they could get loose.

“Safety is never quite what it seems.”

Oline whirled to find a third and fourth Shadowfolk in the room. The woman had a knife blade held lightly against Iana’s throat while the other was pointing a strange wrist mounted crossbow type device at the rest of the room.

“You bypassed the wards, I’m impressed,” Iana said, holding very still.

“Yes, and before you do anything extreme about that, you’re going to listen to me,” Wynni said.

“And you’re going to listen to me,” Yuehne appeared holding a serving knife against Wynni’s throat just as Wynni held one against Iana’s.

Where the other human girl came from, Oline had no idea. To be fair, Oline’s attention was riveted on the man pointing the unusual weapon at her, so the rest of the world had narrowed away a bit but Yuehne had still moved with significant care.

Or she’d been hiding there from the beginning, waiting to strike. Who she was waiting to strike was unclear but she had a definitely acquired a target before speaking.

“Well this is a nice feeling,” Iana said, visibly relaxing despite the two assassins with knives at her back.

“Was what she said true?” Yuehne asked. “Were you the supporters who cleared the path for me to get to her?”

“That would be complicated to speak about,” Wynni said.

“I know you’re pressed for time,” Iana said, “But Yuehne’s had a pretty bad few days and has been in a stabbing mood since I met her, so maybe just give her a straight answer there for all our sakes?”

Yuehne pressed her knife in closer to Wynni’s neck.

“Yes, yes, I know she has a good point, if you’re going to pipe up save it for useful advice!” Wynni seemed to be speaking to a Shadowfolk who hadn’t yet appeared. Oline imagined them surrounded by dozens of the terrifying creatures but held off her panic with the observation that if more Shadowfolk were in the room then Yuehne would have someone holding a knife at her throat too.

“Who are you talking to?” Yuehne asked.

“An annoying progenitor,” Wynni said. “And in answer to your question, yes, we did support your attempt on the princess’s life, no, it was not me personally, yes, I know who did, and no, you won’t be able to reach them.”

“You used us! You’re a worse threat to Gallagrin than she is! Why shouldn’t I end you here and now and improve  all our lives?” Yuehne asked.

“Because unless I’m mistaken, they’re here to save us,” Iana said.

Oline blinked. It was an odd claim to make while being held at the edge of a knife. And had the Shadowfolk said something about a princess?

“You are not mistaken,” Wynnni said and moved her knife gently away from Iana’s throat. “And since you’re aware of that, I’m trusting you won’t find the need to do to us what you did to them?”

“The day’s just beginning,” Iana said. “So let’s not rule out our options too soon.”

“You believe her?” Yuehne asked. “Of course you do! You’ve dragged me along on this, we’re, what, your private assassin army?”

“Oh you don’t want me to have one of those,” Iana said. “Even I would trust me with that.”

“What in the Sleeping God’s Sulfurous Farts is going on here?” Gertrude demanded. She’d found a torch from somewhere and was holding it at her side like she was ready to start swinging until things started making sense.

“Our apologies innkeeper,” Wynni said. “There is a very dangerous contingent of my people who are, at the moment, overly focused on ending the princess’s life.”

“And who’s the princess?” Gertrude asked.

“I am,” Iana said. “Queen Alari adopted me last year.”

“Princess?” Oline asked, stunned at the thought that she’d been serving royalty for days and treating her like a normal girl.

“Yes?” Iana said, and Oline felt a thousand scattered observations click into place. Iana was young but she had a degree of self-possession and self-awareness that Oline hadn’t managed to master despite having decades more experience.

“What’s going to happen to us?” Oline asked.

“No, I’m not going to tell them that!” Wynni said.

“Tell us what?” Venita asked.

“My progenitor wanted me to tell you that we’re all going to die. He thought it would be funny for being true,” Wynni said. “What he would be leaving out is the part where we appear to die and then get away to plan our strategy somewhere else.”

“I’d trust this progenitor more if I could see him too. Tell him to come out of the shadows, would you?” Daggrel asked.

“He can’t do that,” Gendaw, the other Shadowfolk assassin said. “He’s only speaking to Wynni at the moment.”

“So she’s hearing voices?” Daggrel asked.

“I know how that sounds, but this one’s real enough,” Gendaw said. “He can tell her things she can’t know on her own.”

“I have to confess, I don’t really care why you decided not to kill me, I’m more interested in what you think comes next,” Iana said. “I’m also mildly curious how you got in here.”

“That’s thanks to Silian,” Wynni said. “Turns out he’s occasionally good for something.”

“Who’s Silian?” Yuehne asked, her knife still at Wynni’s neck.

“He’s the annoying progenitor I’ve been talking to,” Wynni said. “He saved my species when the gods tried to purge us from the world.”

“How did he do that?” Daggrel asked.

“He hid from them,” Gendaw said. “It’s what we do.”

“But if he was alone…” Oline started to ask.

“Yes! Thank you! That was my point exactly!” Wynni said.

“I think the important thing is that if he could hide from the gods, and hide well enough to get you in here undetected, he should be able to help us hide too shouldn’t he?” Iana asked.

“That’s the plan,” Wynni said.

“Why?” Iana asked. “I understand why the Shadowfolk have been trying to interfere in Gallagrin’s politics. Killing me is even a sensible path to victory, or it was until the two Shadowfolk in the Faen’s lair got caught. Why would your progenitor want to help me though?”

“To save my species,” Wynni said.

“How does saving her save your species?” Yuehne asked. “Is she some prophesied Chosen One?”

“I better not be,” Iana said.

“No, it’s much simpler than that,” Wynni said. “The Queen is sure to know we still exist now. You traveled with one of her Guardians right?”

“Two of them,” Iana said.

“Our leaders are invested in their revenge,” Wynni said. “It’s one of our central tenets.”

She paused for a moment, listening.

“Ok, it’s one of our central mistakes,” Wynni said, correcting her earlier statement, “Apparently vengeance was neither part of our initial design nor a trait Silian encouraged and he’s very disappointed to see how that particular weed has flourished in the heart of his noble and just people. There are you happy now?”

“So you’re afraid of what Queen Alari will do if your plan succeeds?” Iana asked.

“Me? I’m afraid of what your Queen will do now that two fools reminded her that we still exist,” Wynni said. “Silian is more concerned with what the Queen’s wife will do.”

“Dae?” Iana asked and Oline watched her expression change slowly. “Oh yeah, uh, the Shadowfolk could be a threat to the Queen. You’re probably right to be concerned about Dae. And I’ve probably been taking too many risks. I’m sorry.”

Iana offered her apology to Yuehne, which Oline had a hard time understating until the other girl spoke.

“They know who my family is too,” Yuehne said, her voice growing small and worried. “Is something going to happen to them?”

“From the Shadowfolk? No, they are still considered useful pawns,” Wynni said.

“I wasn’t worried about them,” Yuehne said. “What will the Queen do?”

“Talk with them,” Iana said. “Queen Alari is…she’s a better person than you can imagine.”

“What about her wife Dae?” Yuehne asked.

“Queen Alari will talk with them,” Iana repeated.

“It sounds like we need to get you back to them right away,” Venita said. “Otherwise this whole mess is going to get a lot worse isn’t it?”

“We can’t let you go back,” Wynni said. “Not yet, and not while the Shadowfolk think your still alive.”

“If we fake her death, won’t the Queen find out and slaughter all of your people?” Yuehne asked.

“Silian says no, but her wife might,” Wynni said. “That’s why we’re going to leave something behind that only a sorcerer would be able to detect.”

“Like what?” Iana asked.

“The ashes of your body,” Wynni said.

Daggrel felt like he was waiting on royalty as he brought a serving tray of food to the “Command Bower”. The girl who was suddenly in charge of their lives didn’t look royal of course. She was a foreigner from parts unknown and unimportant. Somehow though she’d managed to talk Gertrude into turning the whole inn upside down.

“Thank you Daggrel,” Iana said when he entered the big family room. She didn’t look up at him. Her eyes were glued to the weird script / drawing thing she was tracing over and over on the desk before her.

The other girl, Yuehne, was sitting on a bed that had been pushed to the center of the room and lay within a circle of salt that Daggrel knew he was going to have to clean up when everything was said and done. Providing of course that the Sunblossom didn’t burn to the ground before then.

Daggrel didn’t really think the inn would burn, but after hearing Gertrude lamenting the possibility for days he found himself imagining it every time some new bit of odd behavior caught his attention.

“Where do you want me to leave the tray?” Daggrel asked, looking for a clear horizontal surface in the room and finding them to be in short supply.

“I’ll take it,” Venita said, being careful to step around the circle of salt without disturbing it.

“So are you making any headway?” Daggrel asked as he handed the heavy tray to the dwarven woman.

“Everything’s prepared,” Iana said. “Now it’s their move.”

“She’s really serious about this whole assassin thing is she?” Daggrel found it hard to believe that a little nowhere place like the Sunblossom could wind up at the center of anything like an assassination plot by mystical “Shadowfolk”. To his mind, the simpler explanation was that the Iana girl was the offspring of some foreign noble who’d been sent to Gallagrin for an “exotic adventure” and Venita was tasked with supplying a few days of mystery and intrigue while keeping the girl away from anywhere that she could cause her family an embarrassment.

“Just slightly more serious than they are about me,” Iana said, still focused on her drawing.

To her credit, the image she was tracing and retracing had a polished quality to it that was well beyond anything Daggrel could manage himself. He couldn’t decide it Iana was writing in flowery foreign text or drawing an abstract image but in either case the artistry wasn’t bad.

“Fighting assassins is hungry work I guess,” Daggrel said, venturing as close to a complaint as he dared with customers who were paying in premium gold for the luxury of more or less owning the Sunblossom for a few days.

“The food’s mostly for bribes,” Iana said.

“Who have you got to bribe here?” Daggrel asked.

“The local spirits,” Londela, the courier, said.

How the dwarf and the two girls convinced someone as sensible as the Sunblossom’s most regular bringer of news to buy into their fantasy play was beyond Daggrel. The promise of gold probably worked as well on Londela as it did on anyone else but she had a timetable to meet so they must have been offering her a pretty remarkable sum.

“You’re lucky that they like you already,” Londela said. “I guess you must be treating them right.”

“I don’t know much about any spirits here,” Daggrel said. “The place has never seemed haunted to me.”

“Not ghosts, spirits,” Londela said. “For the love of stone, did no one ever teach you anything about the world?”

“The world comes to us here,” Daggrel said. “We don’t need to know much about it beyond that.”

“You should listen to her,” Iana said. “There’s parts of the world coming that you’ll only survive if you understand.”

“These assassins of yours you mean?” Daggrel asked. “I thought you said they’d be here by now.”

“I did, and they are,” Iana said, continuing to trace the image, and moving faster with each stroke.”

“They’re here but we can’t see them because they’re invisible right?” Daggrel waved his hands around as though trying to find an invisible person standing beside him.

“Not in the room,” Iana said, strain appearing in her voice. “Not yet.”

“Where are they?” Yuehne asked. Daggrel saw her palm a serving knife from the tray he’d brought.

“One’s moving towards the front of the inn,” Iana said. “Venita, could you go warn Gertrude?”

“I can do that,” Daggrel said.

“No, you should get to the safe room like we discussed,” Iana said.

“Is that really necessary?” Daggrel asked. “I’ve got the stables to do and the first floor to mop too.”

“Yes, go now,” Iana said. “There’s a second one moving in. They’re circling around to trap us here.”

“What about me?” Yuehne asked.

“The tracking charm is still blocked,” Iana said. “I’ll lead them away from here and they won’t have any reason to think of you at all.”

“I thought you were going to break the charm?” Yuehne said.

“I tried, but I’m not a crafter,” Iana said. “I just know some basic things, and it looks like that’s not enough to break a charm as strong as the one they put on you. They’re better at magic than I am. So you have to stay here but you’ll be safe as long as you do. They’ll think you’re dead already. However this turns out, Venita can go to the Queen and bring back a proper magic worker to free you.”

“Not if she’s dead,” Yuehne said.

“If we all die, and they come for you, do you really think you have the right to complain?” Iana asked.

Iana wasn’t looking at Yuehne, so she didn’t see Yuehne’s grip on the serving knife go white with tension. There wasn’t a lot of space between the two girls Daggrel noticed. Certainly a short enough gap that someone who was distracted by tracing an image wouldn’t be able to block a fatal blow. He wavered on taking a step forward for moment before the tension went out of Yuehne’s limbs.

“You’ve got still a lot to learn about Gallagrin girl,” Venita said. “We complain about everything. It’s what makes us happy.”

“You’re all going to be a lot less happy if you don’t move now,” Iana said. “The first Shadowfolk is through the outer wards and isn’t being subtle anymore.”

“It doesn’t feel right leaving you to face this alone,” Venita said.

“If you stay, I’ll probably die trying to protect you,” Iana said. “Go. That will keep me safe.”

“You’re sure she can’t come with us?” Venita asked, nodding towards Yuehne.

“I’m sure.”

And with that they were departing the big family room to go and hide in the pantry that led off from the kitchen.

It felt silly to Daggrel. Like they were playing a game of hide-and-seek and he was too old for games. If it wasn’t silly though, it was even worse. Running to hide in a closet when a young girl was in danger went against everything Daggrel told himself he was. He still found he was willing to do it though.

It’s one thing to imagine yourself facing down a deadly assassin, to imagine that you would lay your life down for a stranger because it was the right and noble thing to do. In all the stories he’d grown up on, Daggrel had been treated to heroes who could make that choice as easily as they chose their socks in the morning. Taking the safer path felt like cowardice but that didn’t change that it was also the easier path, and the easy path has a seductive power that is often denied but rarely avoided.

The non-combatants made it the kitchen before a whinny from outside knocked Daggrel out of his compliant march towards safety.

“Something’s spooked the Wind Steeds,” he said, pausing just before entering the pantry.

“Probably the assassin,” Getrude said. “Now get in here.”

“The assassin’s aren’t real,” he said. “And if they are we can’t leave the horses out there to get slaughtered.”

Daggrel had never cared for beasts as exotic as Wind Steeds before, but he’d formed a bond with them just over the few days they’d been at the inn. People were always a mix of good and bad, but creatures were better than that. Even the dangerous ones were still worthy of respect, and if you knew how to treat them, manageable enough.

Daggrel thought of the time he’s hiked into the path of a wolf pack. Common wisdom would suggest that they should have torn him to shreds. Maybe if the winter had been severe that would have happened, but when he found them, the wolves were lounging around resting off a fresh meal. Instead of an attack, he’d had a pleasant little encounter, giving the wolves some of the sweet snacks he’d brought for the trip and getting to watch the wolf pups tussle over them for a while.

Daggrel didn’t think it was wolves that had spooked the Wind Steeds, it wasn’t the season for them to venture close to civilized areas looking for food, but if some other animal had come by and was hassling the ever-skittish horses, Daggrel’s intervention might mean the difference between them remaining calm or flying into a self destructive frenzy.

So he left the pantry, and the kitchen, and safety behind. Not for anything that felt like an especially noble reason but just to make sure some creatures he cared about were ok.  He certainly wasn’t planning to fight any assassins.

Which of course meant that he ran into one immediately.

He didn’t see the assassin. Invisibility, it turned out, was really a trick they’d mastered. He wouldn’t have known they were nearby except that as he went running out the open front door of the inn he collided with the assassin who was trying to enter the building.

They went down together in a tangle of grasping limbs, with Daggrel getting lucky enough to pin one of the assassin’s arms underneath them both. As it was the arm the assassin was holding their primary blade in, that stroke of luck saved Daggrel’s life.

For about two seconds.

For all of his size and strength, Daggrel had little to no training in combat. Size and strength count for a lot in a fight, but so does knowing how to react, keeping your head about you, and being well practiced in the proper techniques. In each of those areas Daggrel was completely outclassed by his opponent.

The assassin was free from the pin before Daggrel even noticed he’d had control over his foe’s weapon arm.

With a kick to Daggrel’s solar plexus the assassin pushed free and spun, drawing their blade in a long arc that would have the power and weight to separate Daggrel’s head from his shoulders.

Daggrel had a fraction of an instant to see the blow coming and understand what it meant. He tried to raise his arms to defend himself but it was a worthless gesture. They were trapped under him, or too far out of position.

Death didn’t claim him though.

Metal screamed against metal and shattered in a cloud of metal dust. A blazing dagger had blocked the blow meant to end Daggrel’s life.

Iana didn’t waste time with words. A kick sent the assassin flying out into the yard beyond the doorway and the Green Council girl followed with a growl that no human thing should ever make by Daggrel’s reckoning.

Watching the fight that followed was horrifying.

The assassin alternated between attempting to flee and striking with new weapons produced from various sheaths and holsters.

Iana didn’t allow her quarry to escape though. Each attack was met with a disarming strike and each attempt to flee was countered with a takedown or a crippling blow.

Though the assassin was the inhuman looking one of the two, Daggrel couldn’t help but see Iana as some species of vicious cat that was intent on torturing the mouse before it into submission.

Just as the battle seemed finished, with the assassin laying on the ground as little more than a groaning wreck, Iana dodged away.

An instant latter Daggrel heard the sound of snapping bone as a second assassin joined the first at Iana’s feet. From the second assassin’s stillness and the dagger that impaled them into the ground, Daggrel couldn’t be sure if they were alive or dead.

“I told you to stay inside,” Iana said, turning towards Daggrel.

“What are those things?” Daggrel asked.

“These are the assassins I’ve been speaking of all week,” Iana said. “Find some rope. I want to secure them before we try to move either one.”

“They’re not dead?” Daggrel asked.

“No, I need them alive for what comes next.” Iana said. There was a flat coldness in her that Daggrel couldn’t imagine ever seeing in the eyes of a child.

Koblani didn’t like plan they were following. It would be fair to say she hated it. And her Overseer. And life in general. Not that the latter problem was likely to persist for long, since thanks to her superiors, she and all of her teammate were both going to be very dead, very soon.

“I keep losing the shadows,” Pergrez said. Pergrez was Koblani’s partner. Together they made a near perfect team. They knew how to watch each other’s approaches, how to cover and distract their target together, and, above all else, how to shape the shadows so that neither one ever had to worry about being seen.

“Step back and reweave them,” Koblani said, gripping the bridge of her nose in frustration. It wasn’t right to be angry with Pergrez. She knew that. It wasn’t his fault that the shadows were so slippery here. They were up against some kind of foreign spellcraft and none of their Shadowfolk elders had the sense to call off the strike on the princess until it was safe to move against her.

Koblani knew what proper procedure should have been. She and Pergrez should have taken up an observational position and waited for an arcanist, a specialized researcher of magics, to be dispatched. The arcanist would have looked at the spells around the target’s location and said either “here’s the openings you need to slip through” or, more likely, “this is too dangerous, hold the attack for a more opportune time”.

The Shadowfolk survived because they exercised caution. Because they knew not to tangle with things they didn’t understand when they didn’t have to do so. Trying to kill a princess in her lair, and it was growing impossible not to think of the mountain inn as anything except a lair, was not something they had to do.

The problem was the elders were panicked. They’d spent years working on their plans and due to a series of mistakes, the Shadowfolk had become much too exposed. Ordinarily that would be the signal to retreat, but a retreat would mean failure and failure would mean a loss of prestige and power.

When the people in power have to always be right and can’t admit to ever being wrong, when they bend the narrative to always blame others and never look at their own failings, that’s when everyone without power loses. Koblani hated knowing that, hated being sure that she was being used, but at the same time, she didn’t see there were any other choices left to her.

She was just one person. If the rest of the Shadowfolk were too blind to see what was happening then they would never forgive her is she turned renegade. That left her the choice of performing her duty and dying a beloved hero, or fleeing and dying a hated traitor.

“I think I’ve got the cloak woven again,” Pergrez said. “I don’t understand how this is happening though.”

“I don’t think we’re going to get to understand,” Koblani said.

“We shouldn’t be doing this should we?” Pergrez asked. “I mean, we should be coming at this from a different angle.”

“We’ve tried five different approaches already,” Koblani said. “We’ve got till dawn to make the kill. Think we can work out another path in?”

Each time they ventured close to the Sunblosson Inn, things started to go wrong for them. Each attempt started with their invisibility spells being picked away at. The close they got to the Inn, the harder the shadows were to hold on to. Koblani hadn’t pushed them forward far enough to risk being completely exposed, but time was not their friend.

Not after they’d made the mistake of reporting that the Inn’s defenses were growing stronger every day. That was what had ignited the order to move ahead immediately. If the defensive ring pushed them back too far they couldn’t maintain their observation of the princess’s hideaway.

“I wish I knew how the princess threw off the locating charm on the human assassin,” Pergrez said.

“Probably killed her,” Koblani said.

“I thought it was written to alert us to that? You said it would transfer to the princess herself in that case.” Pergrez said.

“They’re blinding us to what’s inside the Inn, we have to assume they could have silenced the charm too,” Koblani said.

“You think it’s more than the princess at work here?” Pergrez asked.

“It has to be,” Koblani said. “She’s just a child still.”

“Our operatives reported that the princess and the assassin left from the sky giant’s aerie without the Queen’s Guards?” Pergrez asked.

“They left without guards we could see,” Koblani said. “The operatives weren’t able to gain entrance to the aerie until after the two de[arted though, so we have to assume they had help.”

“Had? Or still have?” Pergrez asked. “We haven’t seen any sign of a Pact Warrior around but if one gets the drop on us we’re dead.”

“All the more reason to keep the shadows tight,” Koblani said. Her concentration was as solid as mush though and she felt her outer layer of invisibility slide away.

“Come on Ko, this is just another mission right?” Pergrez said. “We’ve run tougher courses than this.”

They hadn’t. They’d performed difficult missions, but this one had every hair on Koblani’s neck standing up and screaming that it was a trap. The layering of the defenses and the direction they were pointed suggested that any approach towards the inn would both weaken them and reduce their ability to flee from the dangers that awaited them.

“We have,” Koblani lied. “Like that time in the Mirror Halls. We had to scramble there but we got it done.”

A plan formed in her mind as she spoke. They were walking into their doom, but it didn’t have to be a doom for both of them. Between the two, she was too angry not to fight, but Pergrez was possibly just gullible enough that she could save his foolish, kindly life if she played things right. The thought of accomplishing something with her death didn’t raise her spirits much but it seemed a lot better than the alternative.

“Yeah, but the elders failed us for the Hall run,” Pergrez said.

“They failed us because we took too many risks, and broke from their script, but we got the job done,” Koblani said.

The failure had come with a stern warning and a three month period of retraining. Koblani had been apocalyptic with rage at the time but in retrospect ached with longing for those days of sanity and caution.

“We did, but Sleeping Gods was that a mess!” Pergrez said, remembering the incident as clearly as Koblani did apparently.

“I think we’re in the same situation here,” she said. “We’ve got to get this done but they know we’re coming.”

“You’re thinking something though,” Pergrez said. “You’ve got a plan. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You can’t see me at all,” Koblani said, tugging close the shadows that concealed her.

“We’ve worked together since we were five,” Pergrez said. “I can see you even when I can’t see you. Like right now, the edges of your lips are dipping about a half inch down while your nose tightens up and your neck gets all stiff with the argument you want to make.”

“None of that’s true,” Koblani said, pulling the corners of her mouth up as she forced her nose and neck to relax.

“Anyway, you have an idea, what is it?” Pergrez asked.

“We need to do a two pronged attacked,” Koblani said.

“Sounds great,” Pergrez said. “Where do we get the other team?”

“Right here,” Koblani said. “I’m team one and you’re team two.”

“And our backup will be?” Pergrez said.

“That’s the plan. We execute without backup,” Koblani said.

Shadowfolk kill teams never operated alone. The myth of the solo assassin was something they encouraged only because it was supremely poor planning. A solo assassin seemed glorious and daring. In reality though it was a desperate move and one which was much less likely to succeed than sending in a team where more angles and contingencies could be covered.

The primary role of the supporting member of the team wasn’t aggression at all, but rather concealment and situational awareness. As the lead assassin focused on setting up the kill, the support watched for anyone who was in a position to interfere or who could react in a timely fashion. They were also responsible for weaving a secondary cloak of invisibility over the lead assassin to make sure that once the deed was done, the team could escape safely and without pursuit.

Even for simple observation missions, the presence of a lead and a support was required, again to ensure that while the primary objective was being surveilled the team was not being observed themselves.

Tactical doctrine said any time any member of the team was compromised, the entire team dealt with the issue and aborted the mission if stealth was no longer an option. Dividing up and trying to execute an objective solo was not only forbidden, it was punishable by a temporary forfeiture of rank and mission priority privileges.

“Why? Why risk that?” Pergrez asked.

“Stealth was compromised before we started this mission,” Koblani said. “The elders knew that. They were aware that our target was baiting us out and they chose send in a team anyways.”

“We don’t know that,” Pergrez said, but his voice was unsteady.

“We do,” Koblani said. “We got read the initial reports and they know how we operate. They know we’ll cheat to get things accomplished. That has to be why they sent us. This is a mission that requires success and we’re the only ones who’ll do what it takes to achieve that.”

“We cheat to keep each other alive,” Pergrez said. “Not to put ourselves at this kind of risk. I mean solo work? How is that even us working together?”

“We’ll be working together because I’ll know you’ll be there to sink the blade into the opening that I make,” Koblani said. “Or rescue me if I get captured.”

“Wait, you think you’re going in first?”

“Yes. I’m better at cloaking, so I’m taking the direct route in,” Koblani said.

“I’m better at blade magic,” Pergrez said. “Whoever goes in first is going to have to fight. It should be me.”

“No. If you go in first, you’ll be discovered sooner and have to fight through more of the defenses they have in place,” Koblani said. “If I go in, I can sneak inside the Inn. I might have to fight some people in there, but you’ll be much close to being in position. You’ll be able to act in time, where I wouldn’t be able to get to you.”

“I’m not that fast,” Pergrez said. “If you don’t make it to the Inn, I won’t be able to help at all, and if you do, it’ll still take me time to get there.”

This was the truth that Koblani was relying on, she wanted Pergrez to be too late so that he would be able to bail out instead and not suffer her fate. That was why she felt no compunction about obscuring it with a lie.

“You’re faster than I am, and I won’t be moving quickly as I penetrate their defenses. You’ll have plenty of time to reach me.”

“And if I don’t?” Pergrez said. “If they have some defense we don’t know of yet and you wind up gutted while I’m on the far side of the Inn?”

It was a valid concern. Koblani was nigh unto certain that the princess had several defenses they weren’t aware of yet, and that she would definitely be detected before she reached the insides of the Inn. The key was to be detected before Pergrez was close enough to commit to her rescue.

“If we’re going to assume the worst, then we have to assume that they’ll take us both out as we move in, and that having someone working as support along isn’t going to matter,” Koblani said. “That’s a losing bet though so we have to go for the winning play. It’s our only option. If worst comes to worst and they do have defenses we can’t break past, we’ll abort.”

“And if they catch you?” Pergrez asked.

“Then you’ll abort,” Koblani said.

“I am not leaving this mission without you,” Pergrez said.

“If I’m alive I’ll appreciate that, if I’m dead I promise I will haunt you and drag you to the worst dark world I can find.”

“Can’t haunt me if I’m dead too,” Pergrez said.

“If you’re dead too then there won’t be anywhere you can escape me,” Koblani said. “Seriously, though, we have to succeed, but revealing the princess’s defenses could be enough of a success. If one of us falls, then that takes priority of everything else. No one will blame us if we return alone but bring back information on a protective measure that we’ve never seen before.”

“I hate this plan,” Pergrez said.

“Do you have a better one?” Koblani asked.

“Yeah, let me go in first,” Pergrez said.

“Do think that’s really going to increase our chance of success?” Koblani asked.

There was a long silence before Pergrez spoke again.

“No. It won’t.”

“Then we’re committed,” Koblani said.

“Till death do us part,” Pergrez said.

Londela knew something was wrong the moment she laid eyes on the Sunblossom Inn. It was a bright and shining day. The mountain air was crisp and thin, full of memories of the winter that still lingered on the world’s summits. The Inn was clean and quiet, a fairly typical state of affairs given the sparse traffic over the mountain in the early spring. Even the various birds and insects that called the high plains home could be heard singing their workaday songs.

But something was still wrong.

Londela shifted the pack on her shoulders and checked the haft of the spear she used as a walking stick. Rich folks loved to play with swords but Londela found that a nice long stick with a pointy bit on the end was ideal for fending off all sorts of aggressive beasts, be they animal, vegetable or mineral.

That left out spirits unfortunately, unless you had the coin to pay for an enchanted spear. If you had that sort of money though, then you probably weren’t working a job where you needed to worry about carrying one.

In Londela’s case she had an alternate strategy for dealing with spirits; she listened to them.

Gallagrin’s magic was focused on transformation, but the fundamentals of the pact bonds that Gallagrin’s elites drew on were built from simply listening to what the spirits had to say.

Not everyone had the knack for hearing spirits. Most people could learn to do so with a little practice but it was like listening to the screeching of a marsh full of insects at high summer – you knew what was out there, you could figure out what they wanted, and if they would just shut up you might be able to get a wink of sleep in.

Londela spent enough of her time on the road alone that the company of the spirits was generally a welcome thing. It meant paying more attention to where she went so that she wouldn’t tread on the spaces they claimed, or making the right offerings when she had no choice but to intrude. In return though, there were always people with her. Strange people, people who cared about things she couldn’t imagine being important, but people nonetheless.

Many of them had questioned her about forming a pact bond. Even little spirits could manage that if you worked out their proper names. Londela wasn’t interested in gaining magical power though. Pact bonded people lived the sort of lives that were shorter and more “interesting” than normal people from what Londela had seen and she didn’t need that variety of headache at all.

Her aversion to trouble nudged her back and away from the Sunblossom Inn. Nothing was wrong with it, but after a moment she was able to identify what wasn’t right either.

The spirits were focused.

Normally a bird spirit has the attention span of your average bird. The ones around the Sunblossom though weren’t flitting about. They were calling out, but in regular intervals, like sentries guarding a perimeter.

This wasn’t natural and it wasn’t Gallagrin magic either.

Londela wavered, hesitating between one footstep and the next.

She should go. She should run. There would be a waxing half moon in the sky once darkness fell. Plenty of light to see by. With enough speed, she could be over to the other side of the mountain before daybreak. She could rest at the next Inn along the trail.

But then she wouldn’t know what was happening at the Sunblossom.

Which could be an excellent thing to miss out on.

Unless someone was in trouble.

A vision of passing by on her return trip and finding the Inn a burned piled of rubble rose in her mind. All she would have would be questions, and a lingering sense of guilt.

She turned her steps toward the Sunblossom. As foolish as it was, she knew she’d feel terrible if she didn’t at least check out what was going on.

If it was bad, she could run then.

Hopefully.

Sometimes bad things were big enough that no matter how fast you ran, they’d still catch you.

And sometimes by the time you noticed them, you were already in their clutches.

Londela couldn’t help but feel like that was the case already as she walked forward through the perimeter of guardian spirits.

“Looks like you’re right about us getting visitors today,” Gertrude said. The Innkeeper was waiting at the door and speaking to someone inside the building.

It wasn’t odd to find Gertrude outside the Inn. She ran the place with just a small handful of staff and had to keep on eye on a lot of different things from what Londela had observed on previous visits. Seeing Gertrude looking tense though was another matter.

Londela was on good terms with the Innkeeper. A smile between the two wasn’t out of the question even on rainy, miserable days. Gertrude only had a scowl to share though when she saw who Londela was.

“Everything all right?” Londela asked. Straight to the point worked best Gertrude.

“Nope. We’re all going to die,” Gertrude said.

Londela didn’t think she was being metaphorical but there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger either.

“Somebody come down with a plague?” Londela asked.

“Just about,” Gertrude said. “A plague of assassins, assuming I believe them.”

“A plague of what?” Londela asked.

“She should come inside for now,” a girl said.

Londela looked at the doorway Gertrude stood near and raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question. Gertrude shrugged in response and nodded her in.

No immediate threat within then, but probably something that Londela wouldn’t be happy with. The talons of a fate far larger than herself felt like they were closing in, so Londela stepped inside. If she’d found a mess of trouble, she wanted to know what it was so she could deal with it before it dealt with her.

“Did you say that you knew I was coming?” Londela asked as she stepped into the Inn and found a dwarven woman and two human girls waiting for her.

“We did,” Iana said. “We have an early warning system setup, not for you, but for the assassins who should be arriving here within a day or so.”

“I know I saw the spirits,” Londela said. “Why are assassins after you?”

“They want to start a war within Gallagrin,” Iana said. “Did you say you could see the spirits though?”

“A war in Gallagrin? Who are you?” Londela asked. She’d seen the effects of the last civil war, and traveled to the north during the rebuilding from the invasion of the year prior.

“That’s less important than how you can see the guardian spirits,” Iana said.

“Everyone can see them,” Londela said. “Everyone in Gallagrin at least. Most people just forget how.”

“I’ve never seen them,” Gertrude said.

“Ok, everyone can learn to see them. A lot of folks never bother to though,” Londela said.

“Is it difficult to learn?” Iana asked.

“Depends on the person,” Londela said. “If you want to bother the spirits, or make them work for you, they’ll sense that and try to avoid you. For that kind of person it’s really hard to hear what the spirits are saying because they’re only interested in hearing about what they want to hear about.”

“What’s the alternative to that?” Iana asked.

“Listening to what the spirits want to talk about,” Londela said. “Most people find it sort of boring to listen to the spirit of a Morninglight bird chitter about how amazing it was that the sun came up in the East this morning.”

“It doesn’t seem like you’d be able to learn much from them if that’s all they talk about,” Iana said.

“You were in the military, weren’t you?” Londela asked.

“Since I was born,” Iana said. “I resigned my commission last year though.”

“Commission?” Londela asked. “But you’re just a child? Aren’t you?”

“The Green Council has…or had, a different manner of handling their young,” Iana said.

“What did they do to you?” Londela asked, sickened at the notion that the Green Council made little kids fight their battles for them.

“Taught me a lot of things I probably shouldn’t know,” Iana said.

“Which makes you better than us?” Yuehne asked.

“No, I am definitely not better than you,” Iana said. “You only tried to kill one person.”

“What did you…?” Londela started to ask but Venita cut her off.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “What’s important here is whether the Shadowfolk will be able to see or hear the spirit’s that are supposed to keep us safe from them?”

“Shadowfolk?” Londela asked.

“Those are the assassins that we’re preparing for,” Iana said. “They can turn invisible and travel through shadows.”

“That’s…how do you fight that?” Londela asked.

“You take away their advantages,” Iana said. “The spirits are one part of that.”

“And if they can see the spirits?” Londela asked.

“Then we’ll have one fewer defense when they come to attack us,” Iana said.

“Except we won’t know that we can’t depend on that defense until it’s too late,” Yuehne said.

“You could always ask them,” Londela said.

“I thought they talked about pointless stuff?” Venita said.

Londela scowled.

“It’s not pointless,” she said. “Where the sun rises is the primary point in a Morninglight’s world.”

“I’m not seeing how that’s helpful to us,” Venita said.

“That’s because you just want to use the spirits, like they’re some kind of tool, or weapon that you can point at your enemy,” Londela said.

“Is that how they feel about the duty I’ve asked them to perform?” Iana said.

Her eyes had taken on a hardness to rival the toughest of Gallagrin’s many stones.

“I don’t know,” Londela said. “They were acting pretty strange, but they weren’t complaining about it.”

“Can you ask them?” Iana asked, her body rigid with a tension that Londela couldn’t understand.

“Sure,” she said. “Why though? I mean don’t you need them?”

“No. Not like that. Never like that.”

The young girl may have been a commissioned soldier and specially trained in all sorts of exotic skills by the Green Council but Londela couldn’t help but see the fracture lines that ran through her. Everyone was broken in some way or another, but sometimes damage was limited and other times it ran straight through to their heart. Unless Londela missed her guess, Iana had been shattered by an expert.

“I’ll ask then. What will you do if they do feel like they’ve been weaponized?” Londela asked.

“Free them,” Iana said. “No one fights who doesn’t chose to. Not for me. Not ever.”

“I don’t remember getting much a choice in the matter,” Gertrude said.

“I don’t recall saying you were going to be allowed anywhere near the battle,” Iana said. “We have safe rooms setup. Their whole point is to keep you and the other’s here from harm.”

“No one fights in my Inn without me saying something about it,” Gertrude said.

“If we have to give up the spirits, this won’t be the sort of fight that I can cover all of you for,” Iana said.

“I don’t need your cover,” Gertrude said. “What I need is an Inn that isn’t burnt to the ground, but I know I’m not going to get that, so I’ll take the next best thing.”

“Money?” Londela asked.

“I was thinking revenge, but you’re right, money’s better,” Gertrude said. “Think you could trade those Wind Steeds in for a new Inn?”

The last was directed to Venita who tried to speak but Iana cut her off.

“Survive this, and I promise on my name that you will have a new Inn, no matter the cost,” Iana said.

“A girl like you can say that?” Londela asked. “How much did they pay you in the Green Council.”

“She can say it,” Yuehne said. “She’s…”

“Well supported,” Iana said.

“Which explains why you’re here, being hunted by invisible assassins?” Londela asked.

“It explains why I’m here, hunting invisible assassins,” Iana said. “They don’t know that yet, and by the time they learn, it’ll be far too late for them to escape.”