The Eternal Assassin

Loratta frowned, going over the list of elites for the third time that her people had spotted heading in and out of Draken's territory over the past few days. From what information she'd managed to gather, that blasted nobleman playing at gang leader had managed to pull together a few dozen powerful fighters. And based on some of the names listed here, he either knew, or at least suspected, her greatest trump card.

"Gravestone and The Mole," she muttered, picturing the two elites in her mind. Gravestone was a heavy-set woman never far from her granite armor and gauntlets, and The Mole specialized in infiltration and information gathering. Both were dangerous combatants, and more importantly, both were well-known for their Earth elements.

Loratta grit her teeth, trying to understand just how Draken had figured out about her. While she was famous within the darker parts of the city for her unusual and functionally indestructible Slime element, Loratta had gone to great lengths to keep her other two elements a secret. Even spending a massive amount of influence and wealth on obtaining a powerful enchanted item to hide her from information gathering skills.

Though apparently, it hadn't been good enough.

Snarling, she swiped the papers off her desk, ignoring the sound of her inkpot shattering on the floor as she got up and began pacing in her office. While her throne room was her favorite place to lounge around and enjoy everything she'd managed to build for herself these past few years, her office was where she unfortunately spent most of her time.

Think, Loratta, think. There must be some way out of this you're not seeing. Some unexpected angle you can aim for.

Trying to come up with a strategy to save her hide, she stopped pacing, practically hissing in frustration when she found herself forced to scrap plan after plan as she kept forgetting that a third of her elites lay dead in the streets instead of at her side.

Damn that brat!

Focusing on her breathing, Loratta forced herself to calm down. Ever since that blasted man had shown up out of nowhere, everything had gone to hell. For seemingly no reason at all, that strange librarian-turned-assassin had all but executed four of her elites before she even had a chance to respond. It had been more luck than anything that made Rosh drop into her lap, and she'd been shocked when Asher had actually gone with Rulfar to save his apparent friend rather than cut his losses.

She'd planned to kill both the bastard and Rosh immediately, but her men sent to secretly watch Asher's battle with Moxy informed her he had some strange teleportation skill and almost certainly another skill that heightened his reactions, so she'd been forced to get creative.

Might as well let Draken do something useful for a change.

Despite her current situation, Loratta couldn't help but grin as she imagined the confident bastard sneaking his way into Draken's base of operations, only to drop dead the moment he got within thirty feet of the man. She was well aware of Draken's ability to sense killing intent, which meant the brat was doomed to fail from the start.

That's one problem taken care of at least.

She briefly contemplated going and killing Rosh herself, but she had more important things to worry about at the moment. A slow death by dehydration would be fitting for the useless instructor anyway.

If she'd known what he would eventually bring to her doorstep, she would have just killed the man rather than kick him out after he'd failed her all those months ago.

A knock on her door tore her from her musings, and Loratta frowned. Unless there was an active emergency, only one person was bold enough to disturb her while she was in her office.

Sure enough, without even waiting for an answer Moxy walked into her office. Closing the door behind her, she threw a brief glance at the scattered papers and shards of broken inkpot decorating the floor.

"That bad, huh?"

"Pretty much," Loratta sighed, literally melting into her chair as she let her body turn to slime for a moment. It was a bad habit she made sure she never did in front of the rest of her subordinates, but Moxy was special. "Unless we can take out Tombstone and The Mole before they attack, we don't stand a chance."

"Guess you should have sent the runt after those two instead of Draken," Moxy joked, watching her out of the corner of her eye. Loratta tried to ignore the slight waver of concern in the woman's voice as she tried to act natural. It wasn't often Moxy encountered other fighters with the same insane lust for battle that she had, and her second in command had taken a quick liking to the bastard that had thrown her into this mess. As such, she'd made her stance quite clear on the idea of sending him after Draken.

Of course, she probably would have made even more of an argument if she knew the real intent behind the mission.

"Guess I should have," Loratta nodded, wishing for the umpteenth time that she still had her own resident assassin at her disposal. Of all the elites to take out, the bastard just had to go after The Spider, didn't he? "It's risky, but we're not going to make it out of this without a little risk. Send Pots after Tombstone and Knick after The Mole. Tell them to come back with their heads or not at all."

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"You want to split our remaining forces even more than we already have?" Moxy asked, clearly surprised by her order. "With those two gone, that leaves us with only a handful to defend the compound from the other gangs. If they have as many elites as we think-"

"I didn't ask for your permission, Moxy, give them the order," Loratta snapped, startling the warrior. Moxy was pretty much the only person in the world Loratta had that was close to an actual friend, but the woman sometimes forgot that Loratta was her boss.

"Will do, boss," Moxy said with a curt nod, a slow grin spreading across her face. "No sense freaking out just yet, anyway. That runt might surprise us and take Draken down after all."

"I wouldn't expect much from him," Loratta scoffed, rolling her eyes.

Moxy frowned and opened her mouth, no doubt to argue in favor of her new favorite pet when her door slammed open, startling the two of them.

Into her room stumbled a man in a dark, crimson cloak, his face so pale it was easy to imagine how he spent all his time cooped up with his 'test subjects' deep within the compound. In this particular instance, the man's face was also scrunched up in intense concentration, and Loratta immediately realized why as he'd practically collapsed into the room.

The man's throat was slit wide open, and there was a clean dagger wound straight through his heart.

"Knick!" Loratta gasped, her eyes widening as she took in the startling injuries of one of her oldest elites. Knick was a Blood element user that did quite a lot of her dirty work away from the light of day, and he'd been one of the very first to join her. She knew he had a healing skill, but it required the consumption of copious amounts of blood. Based on the severity of his current injuries and even paler face than usual, it looked like he was actively using his skills to keep his own blood within his body and circulating despite his horrific wounds.

"Boah!" Knick gurgled, unable to form the words through his ruined throat as he took another step toward them. He reached out a hand desperately, his eyes wide with panic as he pleaded with them to help him.

But before Loratta could even order Moxy to begin healing the dying man, she blinked, and realized there was another man in the room.

Standing directly behind her trusted elite was a man wearing a dark cloak, with a familiar bandolier of daggers strapped across his chest. He definitely hadn't been there a moment ago, somehow appearing like an afterthought as he raised his daggers.

Loratta didn't even have a chance to flinch before the agent of death brought his two daggers together, the blades slicing clean through Knick's neck and separating the man's head from his body. As Knick's head joined his body toppling to the ground, the bastard raised his own head, and the hood of his cloak rose just enough to reveal burning blue eyes that met hers for a single moment.

"I'll be back for you."

The moment the last syllable left his mouth, he grabbed Knick's shards and vanished. Gone like a whisper on the wind, the corpse lying at their feet was the only evidence he'd ever been there at all. Loratta could do little more than stare at her fifth dead elite as Moxy let out a booming laugh, clapping her hands together as her own eyes ignited with her lust for battle.

"Damn, that is one hell of a librarian!"

Curse that guy and his Blood element, Asher swore as he sprinted through Loratta's compound, using Distortion to cover the long hallways in seconds as he tried to put distance between himself and Loratta.

After getting the rough location of the owner of the Blood element's 'workshop' from Draken, Asher had planned to silently take him out and rescue Rosh before Draken's coalition started their attack. He'd managed to track the man down and stab him through the heart in a surprise attack, but had nearly lost his own life when rather than die, the man formed a blade out of his own spilled blood and tried to gut him.

Once the shock of realizing it would take more than a knife through the heart to kill the guy had worn off, Asher quickly realized he wasn't much of an actual fighter. Unfortunately, what he was, was extremely hard to kill. Asher's target had bolted from his workshop, and despite nearly taking the man's head as he ran, Asher hadn't managed to finish the job before he'd made his way to Loratta's office.

Which brought Asher to his current predicament. Finding and killing that Blood bastard had taken him longer than he'd expected. He had only a few minutes before Draken started the assault, and in that time he had to find Rosh and somehow get the man to safety. Unfortunately, the man hadn't been inside the blood guy's workshop, which meant all Asher could do was grab someone at random and try and force them to tell him where Rosh was hiding in this underground maze.

But before he got the chance, a familiar wrench was thrown into his carefully constructed plan.

A sudden gust of wind hitting the back of his neck was all the warning he had, and Asher reflexively slipped into the astral.

Just in time to dodge Moxy as she blasted down the hallway like a living cannonball, somehow using her skills to turn the underground corridor into something of a wind tunnel. Landing sideways on the far wall in a crouch that shattered the stone, the woman nimbly righted herself and dropped to her feet, her smile wider than ever.

"That was some entrance you had back there, runt! Glad to see Draken didn't kill you after all! You're lucky I never really liked Knick very much, or we'd be having an entirely different conversation right now."

"Moxy, as much as I'd love to stay and chat, I really don't have time," Asher said, sweating as he saw the oh so familiar fire burning within the woman's eyes. Even if he hadn't seen it on her face so frequently the past few days, he would have recognized the look just from how often he gave it to other people.

"I think you're going to have to make time for this," Moxy grinned, hopping up and down in place as she brought her hands up into a guard position. "See, Loratta just gave me a new mission, and it's to officially take you down this time. No more holding back, got it?"

Frowning at the woman he'd almost come to see as his mentor over the past few days, Asher briefly contemplated just slipping into the astral and fleeing through some of the adjoining rooms. Unfortunately, he had no doubt in his mind that the warrior wouldn't allow him to carry Rosh out of here alive unless she was dealt with, which meant he only had one possible choice.

Sighing, Asher pulled two daggers from his bandolier, shifting his body into the very stance his opponent had drilled into him during their hours of training with one another. Meeting her gaze, he couldn't help but mimic her wide grin, and he somehow knew without needing a mirror that his eyes reflected that same burning excitement radiating from the warrior's own.

"Try not to die, alright?" he called out, earning an even wider grin from the warrior as he parroted the advice she'd given him before their very first battle. As if some invisible flag had been waved, the two of them shot down the hallway at one another, all thoughts of rescuing friends or following orders silenced for a brief moment.

All that remained was the glorious fire of battle.