It was high noon outside, the scorching sun baking anyone who was foolish enough to walk around in the streets outside. The dark-skinned assassin had only been out on the streets for one hour before he had immediately stopped whatever he was supposed to do and charged for the nearest bar. Whichever target he needed to look for and take down could wait, doubting that his target would be walking around outside in the godforsaken weather. A bell above the door chimed as the newly-admitted Hidden Blades assassin walked into the establishment, drawing lazy glances from the surprisingly packed bar before the patrons returned to whatever they had been doing.
It was comfortable in the bar, heavily tinted windows keeping the bright sun and its heat out, keeping the inside cool and dim. Amadeus walked up to the bar, ordering a bourbon and leaned on the bar counter while waiting for the bartender to bring him his drink while he scanned the room for any empty tables. A majority of the patrons were young, a far cry from the typical bars that were mostly old-timers. The decor of the place was the reason, favoring a more modern design.
“That would be fifty Jewels,” the bartender said in a rough but low voice, the only indication of his speech being the mild movement of his thick moustache. Amadeus looked the young man up and down, noting the heavily shaved sides of the man’s head, leaving only the hair on the top of his head with the tips curled and draped over the side.
“Screw it if I ever step in here again. Bloody fifty Jewels for bourbon,” Amadeus complained in an equally low voice but loud enough for the bartender to hear him, as he withdrew the requested amount of Jewels from his Requip dimension, putting it down on the counter and pushing it to the bartender as the latter pushed his bourbon to him in return.
“Cheap,” the bartender spoke beneath his breath as he walked away, rolling his eyes at Amadeus. The assassin’s eyes widened, putting on his most dangerous expression, but it softened a few seconds later, deciding that this was beneath him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. Grabbing the glass of bourbon in his right hand and the coaster in his left, Amadeus walked towards the table he had found earlier. It was a low coffee table, round and arranged with two arm chairs on either side of it.
Amadeus sank down into the armchair, setting the coaster down while his right hand brought his glass up to his lips. He cringed when he took a sip, the irregularity in the taste getting the oblivious bartender another glare from him but it would have to do. In any way, this was much better than walking around in the sweltering heat. Amadeus ran through the info in his mind as he sipped on his drink. His target was called the Mistress of the Storm, so obviously a female target. He also knew that the Mistress was once the mistress of a small, legal guild called Stormy Sight that had already been disbanded by the Mistress herself.
It was one of the members of the disbanded guild that had approached Amadeus for his services. As a small but close-knitted group, the informant had realized why the Mistress of the Storm had disbanded the guild. She had stumbled upon a lost magic that would allow her to create magical soldiers that would do her bidding but the discovery of the magic had also broken her mind. After wrestling with his conscience, he had decided that it would be better if he had hired an assassin to kill off his former guild leader instead of watch his guild leader be branded as a dark mage and harm the reputation of his former guild members.
Raising the glass to his mouth for another sip, an explosion from somewhere near shook the bar for a bit, causing Amadeus’s hand to go off course and ended up jerking his arm towards the back, pouring the remaining half of his drink in the same direction as well. The very audible sound of liquid splashing on someone’s back instead of an empty table or chair got Amadeus jumping out of his chair almost instantly, his restaurant owner senses kicking into action, as he turned around with the intention to apologize to the one sitting behind him.
However, whenever he turned around, looking at the man whose back was wet from his bourbon and then generally at the other patrons, Amadeus was shocked. While the explosion earlier had been quite loud and created a shockwave, it shouldn’t have affected them so terribly to the point where everybody were clutching their heads in absolute pain, groaning and moaning. There were some that in their urge to reduce the pain ended up banging their head repeatedly on the table or walls.
The truly surprising part was when shadowy tendrils began to appear from their bodies, accumulating around them, hugging their silhouettes and without any pomp, just separated from the bodies and solidified. A timely peal of thunder booms across the entire town, the sheer volume of it rattling the windows, threatening to shatter them. As if in response to the thunder, all of the clones manifested from the shadowy substance turned to look at Amadeus in unison, the hosts from which the black shadows had detached themselves from, fully unconscious.
Facing down all the blank stares that were directed at him, Amadeus knew very well what was going to happen next. Thankfully, his targets were shadow clones instead of mind-controlled civilians. He was an assassin but collateral damage was something he would want to keep as low as possible. The first of the shadow clones, belonging to the man who had been splashed by Amadeus, bared its teeth at the latter and tried to climb over the back of his armchair, arms flailing wildly to reach at the assassin.
The wild movements of the shadow clone indicated its low intelligence, but all they needed was mob tactics. They had numbers on their side and within the small area, they could overwhelm Amadeus if they played it right. Which was a pity for them actually, since the new Hidden Blades recruit wasn’t a pushover. A bulky black gun with neon green accents appeared in Amadeus’ right hand. He would normally dual wield but the situation proved to be a little sticky for him to just shoot with both hands. Instead, a combat knife appeared in his left hand which he quickly switched to a reverse grip.
Amadeus jammed the blade horizontally into the open mouth of the shadow clone nearest to him as it lunged at him, using the blade to hold the clone back as it continued pushing into the blade that was cutting its mouth open wider and wider. The assassin rolled his eyes and without hesitation put a bullet through the shadow clone’s forehead, dropping the shadow clone and glad to discover that they shared the same weaknesses as normal humans.
The gunshot spurred the other shadow clones into a frenzy, all of them attacking in the same way a mindless zombie would. They were all going for him, the only one who was seemingly immune to whatever magic had caused the shadow zombies and also the only showing any signs of vitality compared to their prone hosts. Amadeus took a step back from them, slashing his combat knife twice in front of him and catching two of the frontmost zombies in the face with it, drawing grooves into their face only to see black goo flow out of the wounds across their faces.
Amadeus cringed slightly at the sight but his right hand was idle either. Two precise shots dropped the zombies to the ground. The bar was no place to fight, especially when he barely had any space to maneuver. Leaping onto the table behind him, Amadeus kicked his empty glass at the nearest zombie, shattering upon impact and pushing the zombie back before a bullet through its head took it down. Giving the unconscious patrons that were either face down on the tables, leaning against the walls or just outright sprawled on the ground, Amadeus nodded before turning around and leapt at the row of tinted windows beside his table.
With his gun pointed in front of him, Amadeus repeatedly pressed on the trigger of his gun, bullets spread widely to completely shatter the window before his entire body followed through. His thick jacket protected him from the glass shards on the ground as he rolled on his back and then came back up in a one-legged kneeling position, the combat knife in his left hand replaced by a similar handgun to the one in his right.
Using his Rapid Fire spell, Amadeus’s guns spewed black flames as flaming bullets after flaming bullets left the barrels. Every shot had seemed erratic, but the dark-skinned assassin made sure that every bullet counted. After five minutes of repeated shooting, the last of the zombies spilling out from the broken windows finally ceased, a mountain of shadow clones in front of Amadeus with a few that had made it past his assault lying by the side, struck down by slash wounds from the energy blades that extended past his gun barrel like the bayonets of a rifle.
When he finally had the time to take a look at his surroundings, Amadeus could see that his surroundings were equally chaotic. A dark storm was brewing above the town, dark clouds gathering and casting gloomy darkness over the whole town. Flashes of lightning could be seen, with no sound of any thunder. Shadow clones were roaming the streets while some were engaged in fights, flashes of magic energy here and there informing Amadeus that he wasn’t the only one fighting back the hordes of the shadow clones. A scream broke through the grunts, roars and spells being cast, grabbing his attention. Catching on to where it had came from, the assassin immediately sprinted towards the source, actively shooting any shadow clones that were in his way.
Amadeus rounded a corner just in time to see a group of four shadow clones circling two mages, a male and female. The male mage was pressed back against the wall, right hand pressed to his stomach trying to staunch a bleeding wound while his left hand was still clutching a sword of ice, wildly swung at the shadow clones. The girl to his side was also using ice magic, but her fear was getting the better of her, affecting her ability to cast magic as the frozen icicles merely shattered upon touching the shadow clones without any significant effect.
The Hidden Blades operative swiftly moved into place, charging into the mob with a combination of martial arts moves and gunfire. Amadeus had first started with running side kick, the base of his foot colliding with the side of a shadow clone and pushing it and two more by its side stumbling away. The trajectory of the lunging kick had put him right in front of the two mages in fear, with one shadow clone that hadn’t been affected by the kick now standing beside Amadeus.
The shadow clone wheeled around to glance at Amadeus and bared its teeth at the newcomer but Amadeus could hardly bother with it. His raised gun was cocked against the shadow clone’s chest and three rapid shots echoed through the alley, two shots to the chest and one more to the head. As the shadow clone succumbed to the shots, Amadeus had replaced the gun in his right hand with a small canister. The three shadow clones that he had kicked down earlier was still struggling to get up when the assassin pulled the pin to the grenade in his right hand and threw it on the ground where the three shadow clones stood, exploding as it hit the ground and instantly engulfing the three shadow clones in a fireball.
“What is happening to this town? What foul magic is this?” Amadeus turned to ask the two. A glass of alcohol now occupied his right hand, as he walked towards the two fear-stricken mages. Amadeus extended the drink to the wounded man, with the latter eyeing it warily.
But before the man could even extend his hand to reach for the glass, a bullet flew through the air knocking and shattering it out of Amadeus’ extended arm. As he spun around to face this new threat, his P13A1 reappeared in his right hand, both guns pointed at the new threat, a shadow clone that looked exactly like him, mirroring Amadeus with two guns pointed at him. Lightning flashed around Amadeus’s legs as he leapt up into the air, his sport shoes replaced by a pair of knee-high armored greaves, just as two bullets flew through the air towards where he was.
“I would get out of here if I were you,” Amadeus said to the two mages, waking them up from their fear-induced stupor. He didn’t know why the three shadow clones he had burnt had suddenly taken on his form and abilities, but he wasn’t going to let a mere copy get the best of him. Amadeus dropped down from his leap right in front of his shadow clone, energy blades extending from the barrel of weapon slashing downwards parallelly. But the shadow clone wasn’t the cannon fodder created from the average civilian. The shadow clone backed away with a quick step, evading the slashing blades before lunging back in, leading with a side kick before swinging his right arm to attempt to smash the butt of his gun into Amadeus’s head.
The latter dropped down low, letting the shadow clone’s arm sail above his head. It was a no-brainer actually, as Amadeus kicked away to move backwards while he raised his arms, muzzles pointed at the shadow clone, rapidly firing away with his Double Time spell. As the shadow clone was thrown back from the spell, it took one last shot at Amadeus as well, surprising the latter when he took the bullet to his left arm, the red beam of light powerful enough to wheel him around. Blood splattered across the ground as Amadeus dropped to his bottom, eyes shooting back and forth between the unmoving shadow clone and the wound in his arm.
Having recognized the spell as one of his own, Amadeus had been shocked to discover that the shadow clone was capable of using magic, proving the similarity between them ran further than just their appearances. Ignoring his injury for the time being, the assassin moved cautiously to the prone shadow clone, the gun in his right hand ready to press on the trigger if the shadow clone even twitched. As the shadow clone dissolved when Amadeus neared him, it left behind a simple note. Eyeing it suspiciously, Amadeus toed the note instead of picking him up. The moment he made contact, a voice reverberated within his mind to say, “The storm rages on, the mistress grows her army.”
[2530 / 2500]
It was comfortable in the bar, heavily tinted windows keeping the bright sun and its heat out, keeping the inside cool and dim. Amadeus walked up to the bar, ordering a bourbon and leaned on the bar counter while waiting for the bartender to bring him his drink while he scanned the room for any empty tables. A majority of the patrons were young, a far cry from the typical bars that were mostly old-timers. The decor of the place was the reason, favoring a more modern design.
“That would be fifty Jewels,” the bartender said in a rough but low voice, the only indication of his speech being the mild movement of his thick moustache. Amadeus looked the young man up and down, noting the heavily shaved sides of the man’s head, leaving only the hair on the top of his head with the tips curled and draped over the side.
“Screw it if I ever step in here again. Bloody fifty Jewels for bourbon,” Amadeus complained in an equally low voice but loud enough for the bartender to hear him, as he withdrew the requested amount of Jewels from his Requip dimension, putting it down on the counter and pushing it to the bartender as the latter pushed his bourbon to him in return.
“Cheap,” the bartender spoke beneath his breath as he walked away, rolling his eyes at Amadeus. The assassin’s eyes widened, putting on his most dangerous expression, but it softened a few seconds later, deciding that this was beneath him. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. Grabbing the glass of bourbon in his right hand and the coaster in his left, Amadeus walked towards the table he had found earlier. It was a low coffee table, round and arranged with two arm chairs on either side of it.
Amadeus sank down into the armchair, setting the coaster down while his right hand brought his glass up to his lips. He cringed when he took a sip, the irregularity in the taste getting the oblivious bartender another glare from him but it would have to do. In any way, this was much better than walking around in the sweltering heat. Amadeus ran through the info in his mind as he sipped on his drink. His target was called the Mistress of the Storm, so obviously a female target. He also knew that the Mistress was once the mistress of a small, legal guild called Stormy Sight that had already been disbanded by the Mistress herself.
It was one of the members of the disbanded guild that had approached Amadeus for his services. As a small but close-knitted group, the informant had realized why the Mistress of the Storm had disbanded the guild. She had stumbled upon a lost magic that would allow her to create magical soldiers that would do her bidding but the discovery of the magic had also broken her mind. After wrestling with his conscience, he had decided that it would be better if he had hired an assassin to kill off his former guild leader instead of watch his guild leader be branded as a dark mage and harm the reputation of his former guild members.
Raising the glass to his mouth for another sip, an explosion from somewhere near shook the bar for a bit, causing Amadeus’s hand to go off course and ended up jerking his arm towards the back, pouring the remaining half of his drink in the same direction as well. The very audible sound of liquid splashing on someone’s back instead of an empty table or chair got Amadeus jumping out of his chair almost instantly, his restaurant owner senses kicking into action, as he turned around with the intention to apologize to the one sitting behind him.
However, whenever he turned around, looking at the man whose back was wet from his bourbon and then generally at the other patrons, Amadeus was shocked. While the explosion earlier had been quite loud and created a shockwave, it shouldn’t have affected them so terribly to the point where everybody were clutching their heads in absolute pain, groaning and moaning. There were some that in their urge to reduce the pain ended up banging their head repeatedly on the table or walls.
The truly surprising part was when shadowy tendrils began to appear from their bodies, accumulating around them, hugging their silhouettes and without any pomp, just separated from the bodies and solidified. A timely peal of thunder booms across the entire town, the sheer volume of it rattling the windows, threatening to shatter them. As if in response to the thunder, all of the clones manifested from the shadowy substance turned to look at Amadeus in unison, the hosts from which the black shadows had detached themselves from, fully unconscious.
Facing down all the blank stares that were directed at him, Amadeus knew very well what was going to happen next. Thankfully, his targets were shadow clones instead of mind-controlled civilians. He was an assassin but collateral damage was something he would want to keep as low as possible. The first of the shadow clones, belonging to the man who had been splashed by Amadeus, bared its teeth at the latter and tried to climb over the back of his armchair, arms flailing wildly to reach at the assassin.
The wild movements of the shadow clone indicated its low intelligence, but all they needed was mob tactics. They had numbers on their side and within the small area, they could overwhelm Amadeus if they played it right. Which was a pity for them actually, since the new Hidden Blades recruit wasn’t a pushover. A bulky black gun with neon green accents appeared in Amadeus’ right hand. He would normally dual wield but the situation proved to be a little sticky for him to just shoot with both hands. Instead, a combat knife appeared in his left hand which he quickly switched to a reverse grip.
Amadeus jammed the blade horizontally into the open mouth of the shadow clone nearest to him as it lunged at him, using the blade to hold the clone back as it continued pushing into the blade that was cutting its mouth open wider and wider. The assassin rolled his eyes and without hesitation put a bullet through the shadow clone’s forehead, dropping the shadow clone and glad to discover that they shared the same weaknesses as normal humans.
The gunshot spurred the other shadow clones into a frenzy, all of them attacking in the same way a mindless zombie would. They were all going for him, the only one who was seemingly immune to whatever magic had caused the shadow zombies and also the only showing any signs of vitality compared to their prone hosts. Amadeus took a step back from them, slashing his combat knife twice in front of him and catching two of the frontmost zombies in the face with it, drawing grooves into their face only to see black goo flow out of the wounds across their faces.
Amadeus cringed slightly at the sight but his right hand was idle either. Two precise shots dropped the zombies to the ground. The bar was no place to fight, especially when he barely had any space to maneuver. Leaping onto the table behind him, Amadeus kicked his empty glass at the nearest zombie, shattering upon impact and pushing the zombie back before a bullet through its head took it down. Giving the unconscious patrons that were either face down on the tables, leaning against the walls or just outright sprawled on the ground, Amadeus nodded before turning around and leapt at the row of tinted windows beside his table.
With his gun pointed in front of him, Amadeus repeatedly pressed on the trigger of his gun, bullets spread widely to completely shatter the window before his entire body followed through. His thick jacket protected him from the glass shards on the ground as he rolled on his back and then came back up in a one-legged kneeling position, the combat knife in his left hand replaced by a similar handgun to the one in his right.
Using his Rapid Fire spell, Amadeus’s guns spewed black flames as flaming bullets after flaming bullets left the barrels. Every shot had seemed erratic, but the dark-skinned assassin made sure that every bullet counted. After five minutes of repeated shooting, the last of the zombies spilling out from the broken windows finally ceased, a mountain of shadow clones in front of Amadeus with a few that had made it past his assault lying by the side, struck down by slash wounds from the energy blades that extended past his gun barrel like the bayonets of a rifle.
When he finally had the time to take a look at his surroundings, Amadeus could see that his surroundings were equally chaotic. A dark storm was brewing above the town, dark clouds gathering and casting gloomy darkness over the whole town. Flashes of lightning could be seen, with no sound of any thunder. Shadow clones were roaming the streets while some were engaged in fights, flashes of magic energy here and there informing Amadeus that he wasn’t the only one fighting back the hordes of the shadow clones. A scream broke through the grunts, roars and spells being cast, grabbing his attention. Catching on to where it had came from, the assassin immediately sprinted towards the source, actively shooting any shadow clones that were in his way.
Amadeus rounded a corner just in time to see a group of four shadow clones circling two mages, a male and female. The male mage was pressed back against the wall, right hand pressed to his stomach trying to staunch a bleeding wound while his left hand was still clutching a sword of ice, wildly swung at the shadow clones. The girl to his side was also using ice magic, but her fear was getting the better of her, affecting her ability to cast magic as the frozen icicles merely shattered upon touching the shadow clones without any significant effect.
The Hidden Blades operative swiftly moved into place, charging into the mob with a combination of martial arts moves and gunfire. Amadeus had first started with running side kick, the base of his foot colliding with the side of a shadow clone and pushing it and two more by its side stumbling away. The trajectory of the lunging kick had put him right in front of the two mages in fear, with one shadow clone that hadn’t been affected by the kick now standing beside Amadeus.
The shadow clone wheeled around to glance at Amadeus and bared its teeth at the newcomer but Amadeus could hardly bother with it. His raised gun was cocked against the shadow clone’s chest and three rapid shots echoed through the alley, two shots to the chest and one more to the head. As the shadow clone succumbed to the shots, Amadeus had replaced the gun in his right hand with a small canister. The three shadow clones that he had kicked down earlier was still struggling to get up when the assassin pulled the pin to the grenade in his right hand and threw it on the ground where the three shadow clones stood, exploding as it hit the ground and instantly engulfing the three shadow clones in a fireball.
“What is happening to this town? What foul magic is this?” Amadeus turned to ask the two. A glass of alcohol now occupied his right hand, as he walked towards the two fear-stricken mages. Amadeus extended the drink to the wounded man, with the latter eyeing it warily.
But before the man could even extend his hand to reach for the glass, a bullet flew through the air knocking and shattering it out of Amadeus’ extended arm. As he spun around to face this new threat, his P13A1 reappeared in his right hand, both guns pointed at the new threat, a shadow clone that looked exactly like him, mirroring Amadeus with two guns pointed at him. Lightning flashed around Amadeus’s legs as he leapt up into the air, his sport shoes replaced by a pair of knee-high armored greaves, just as two bullets flew through the air towards where he was.
“I would get out of here if I were you,” Amadeus said to the two mages, waking them up from their fear-induced stupor. He didn’t know why the three shadow clones he had burnt had suddenly taken on his form and abilities, but he wasn’t going to let a mere copy get the best of him. Amadeus dropped down from his leap right in front of his shadow clone, energy blades extending from the barrel of weapon slashing downwards parallelly. But the shadow clone wasn’t the cannon fodder created from the average civilian. The shadow clone backed away with a quick step, evading the slashing blades before lunging back in, leading with a side kick before swinging his right arm to attempt to smash the butt of his gun into Amadeus’s head.
The latter dropped down low, letting the shadow clone’s arm sail above his head. It was a no-brainer actually, as Amadeus kicked away to move backwards while he raised his arms, muzzles pointed at the shadow clone, rapidly firing away with his Double Time spell. As the shadow clone was thrown back from the spell, it took one last shot at Amadeus as well, surprising the latter when he took the bullet to his left arm, the red beam of light powerful enough to wheel him around. Blood splattered across the ground as Amadeus dropped to his bottom, eyes shooting back and forth between the unmoving shadow clone and the wound in his arm.
Having recognized the spell as one of his own, Amadeus had been shocked to discover that the shadow clone was capable of using magic, proving the similarity between them ran further than just their appearances. Ignoring his injury for the time being, the assassin moved cautiously to the prone shadow clone, the gun in his right hand ready to press on the trigger if the shadow clone even twitched. As the shadow clone dissolved when Amadeus neared him, it left behind a simple note. Eyeing it suspiciously, Amadeus toed the note instead of picking him up. The moment he made contact, a voice reverberated within his mind to say, “The storm rages on, the mistress grows her army.”
[2530 / 2500]
