Second Impressions

Aeron wasn’t entirely sure how she wound up mixed into all this mess, as per usual. For once, Thana hadn’t been involved. All that really meant was that she couldn’t blame the infuriating woman. She had been approached by a representative of a dark guild about taking on a special job. Honestly, it sounded like more trouble than it was worth but Aeron was in desperate need of some jewel so she could eat. Stealing all the time got tiresome, and brought a lot more attention on her than she really wanted. It was simpler to just pay for a meal like everyone else. So despite her better judgment she’d accepted the work.

The mission was to kidnap a noble out of their home in the middle of the night. Apparently there was some Baron in town that this dark guild had been extorting money out of for months, and the man had finally dropped a pair of balls and cut the guild off from his finances. The dark wizards weren’t exactly pleased about losing their funding and decided they wanted to teach the guy a lesson by having his youngest daughter kidnapped. Normally they would have no problems doing the deed themselves, of course, but they wanted to make sure no ties were left to them.

Thus, Aeron had been contracted alongside some other mage. She didn’t know anything about the guy, not even a name. They just told her that they would have him meet her at this bar a few blocks away from the baron’s neighborhood. The woman had spent a precious few bits of her last jewel to buy herself a beer and sat down in a corner with her back to the wall where she could watch everyone with hard, cerulean colored eyes. Her hair was brown and cut extremely short. She wore a fraying, sleeveless shirt and a ripped up pair of dark pants. A black tribal tattoo in the form of a great bird with outstretched wings lay down the length of her left arm to the elbow.

She drank her beer in silence, eyeing the room with suspicion and wariness. Aeron didn’t like unknowns, and she didn’t like not having any kind of hint as to who she was supposed to be meeting. It made her feel vulnerable and exposed, but she needed the money. Hopefully the guy would show up soon. The longer she sat here like a chump, the more uncomfortable and paranoid she would become.

As her eyes panned the room, she found a man staring at her. At first she narrowed them in annoyance, mostly out of instinct, but it soon became apparent that he was the one she was supposed to meet here. At least, Aeron hoped he was. Otherwise she was about to have to deal with some guy walking over to bother her for something else, and she really wasn’t in the mood for that. This really would have been so much easier if they’d just given her something to go off of so she’d know who she was looking for.

He seemed a bit more confident than she was, at least, when he simply walked over and said it was time to go do the job. Aeron just stared at him in absolute shock as he turned without any further ado and headed out of the building like he expected her to follow. “Excuse me?” she asked, not at all pleased by his tone as she shoved herself out of her chair and stormed after him. She didn’t move with any intention of starting a fight, and her body language didn’t read as though she meant to do anything but catch up to walk with him, but she certainly wasn’t going to just let him talk to her like that.

“Yeah sure, I’ve got a few details for you. First of all, I got here early, same as you, so don’t you bitch at me like I did something wrong. Second of all, I suggest you drop that attitude with me before I give you a reason to have one.” Despite the harshness of her words, Aeron was actually keeping her voice pretty low so no one would overhear them as they made their way to the house in question. She glared at him hard with her bright blue eyes before finally looking away with annoyance and shoving her fists in her pockets with an irritated huff. It was just her luck to get stuck with some prick.

Getting up to the house wasn’t very difficult. There were plenty of lights on the main entrances, but almost nothing on the sides of the house. A couple of windows were opened a crack just to let a breeze through, but a bar on the inside prevented them from being opened further. The space wasn’t big enough for a hand to fit through either, so Aeron improved. “Give me a sec,” she whispered. Calling to the power that simmered in her core, Aeron’s body began to shrink until she was the size of a pixie, with a pair of colorful, butterfly like wings sprouted from her back.

She flew up to the sill and carefully squeezed her way inside. It was a tight fit, but she managed to get through. Once inside, she took a moment to look and listen, making sure no one was in the immediate area before returning to her normal form. Human in size once more, she easily pulled the bar out of place and quietly slid the window open so he could get in. “Any idea where the brat’s room is?” Aeron asked him, her voice barely loud enough to reach his ears let alone anyone else that might be in the house. This would go a lot more quickly if they knew exactly where they needed to go, but nothing in her life had ever been smooth so she suspected this would have to be done the hard way.

She scoffed when he looked down at her with what was probably the last expression she was expecting to see after going off on the man. “What the hell are you smiling at?” Aeron muttered irritably, somehow angrier by the notion that he wasn’t going to try to give her further lip. It felt more like he was brushing off her ire. So as he grinned down at her, her glare only deepened as he explained that she’d be much more upset if he was actually trying to set her off.

“Whatever.”

Aeron didn’t bother asking for his name, nor was she inclined to offer her own. Besides the fact that this was the type of mission she did not want to be caught doing or have traced back to her, she already didn’t like or trust this person she’d been partnered with. Granted that was par for the course with her; Aeron didn’t like or trust anyone, even Thana. Especially Thana. Instead she just walked in simmering silence alongside him until they got to their destination and managed to work their way inside.

She eyed him warily when he vaulted easily into the open window and landed without making nary a sound, but made no remarks on it. Magic was a weird thing, and she had more important things to worry about than wondering what made him so light on his feet. His demeanor shifted visibly, altering from almost a bit lackadaisical to a predator on high alert. Somehow Aeron managed to suppress her surprise when he suddenly loosed an ice spell that encased a butler that had been walking through the home. Aeron made a mental note of the ice magic before he spoke up and indicated which room the girl was in, seeming to be of the mind to let her nab the daughter while he kept on the lookout for more people that could get in their way.

A part of her wanted to argue for the sake of arguing, but even she wasn’t that stupid. Her own preservation of self tended to overrule most everything else, and he was right; if they wanted to get out of here cleanly, they needed to work fast. Following his direction, she moved as quickly as she dared without making any noise to the aforementioned room. The daughter was still pretty young, only about seven years or so. Still young enough that she slept easily through the minute sounds of someone opening her door to come inside. The question now was how to get the kid out without raising an alarm. Kids had lungs like elephants and could scream bloody murder loud enough to wake the dead.

She looked around for a moment until she saw a jar with a lid on the girl’s desk. It was filled with little origami stars. That’ll work, Aeron thought to herself. Focusing her magic on the girl, she shrank the child’s body like she had her own only a minute or so ago. The process was gentle, and did not wake the girl. The woman snatched the jar and twisted the lid off, dumping out the paper shapes. Pulling out a knife, she stabbed a hole into the lid. Then, she picked the girl up by her nightgown.

This time, the child woke up. Her eyes darted open in a panic as she realized everything around her was huge, and that she was being held by a giant. She screamed, but her body was so tiny now that the sound hardly carried further than where Aeron stood. “Shut up, brat. No one cares,” she whispered, dumping the kid unceremoniously into the jar and then screwing the lid on tightly. Once that was done, Aeron carefully made her way back to her partner, lifting up the jar for him to see and giving it a little shake to show him the little girl crying and screaming with fear inside.