Midnight Meeting [Rhia]

While the teenage necromancer had no illusions as to her abilities when it came to stealth, she always seemed to end up in situations where she had to sneak into someplace. As was the case this night, where she was running her first job for her new guild Confidence International. Even though she did not think of herself as a thief, the morality of what she was doing did not really bother her. The fact that it was to steal from a local rich dirtbag that got his money from scamming poor people was nice, but unneeded. It was more important to the young girl that she fit in with the guild than to worry about things like “right” and “wrong.”

None of this made her any better at sneaking. Thankfully she was not completely out of options, and as she stood in the back entrance of the massive mansion of her target, her skeletal assassin was in the middle of picking the door’s lock. Say what you wanted about the guy, he did not skimp on the security. It took the skeleton a full thirty seconds to open the door, which Saiko was fairly certain was a record. Really, while the job had sucked at the time she was thankful for the cult that had provided such a handy skeleton. High level assassin bodies were surprisingly hard to come by.

Once the door was open, she made her way in, finding herself near the building’s massive kitchen. Everything was quiet and dark around her, as she had expected. The owner of the mansion was supposed to be out of town today, and most of his staff should have gone with him. Less people meant less chance of being caught, not to mention fighting off any guard would be potentially dangerous. Saiko was confident in her abilities, but she knew she was not some unbeatable juggernaut.

Creeping forward, the girl and her skeleton began looking from room to room as she tried to get her bearings. The guild member who had scouted the location had given her a rough idea of where the mansion’s vault should be, but she was quickly discovering that trying to parse directions into an actual space was much harder than she thought. Her sister Suki might have been better at doing it, unfortunately the doll held in Saiko’s arms would not prove as helpful. For now it was just her and her mindless undead.

Even with her initial confusion, she did eventually find the stairs leading down to the basement. Supposedly this led to the vault where all the most valuable objects were kept. Her orders had been simple: get into the vault and take as much as she could carry. By using her undead summons, she could carry a lot. In fact, that was probably why they had picked her for this mission rather than have to act with one of the guild’s confidence men. Her lack of eloquence while speaking was hard to miss.

Near the middle of the steps she came to a stop, as she could just barely make out a guard standing at the bottom. Cursing silently, she made her way back to the top of the stairs. It was hardly surprising that there was a guard, even if the owner was gone. The question was what she did about him. Killing him was certainly an option, but one that risked her entry being discovered sooner than she wanted. “Now what…” she asked herself quietly.

585 words
585 total

Rhia hummed to herself, her boots snapping twigs and crushing leaves as she traipsed through underbrush of the lightly forested countryside. Today’s the day! Her first real job as a mage! It seemed easy too. She continued walking as she flipped open a satchel on her belt and pulled out the job flyer, ‘Enter the abandoned mansion -blablabla- collect the artifact known as Horn of…’ definitely can’t pronounce that word - in fact, let’s just skip it. The next page was a strip map showing what roads to walk down, general distances noted on each path ending with a simple drawing of the mansion at the end. Roads are boring though, they are so traveled that they hardly ever let you see the world for what it is. She glanced at the final page, it seemed to be a charcoal sketch of the interior of the house, the author of it left several annotations, but they were illegible in this light. After rolling the three documents back up she slid them back into her satchel.

“That’s the place!” she shouted while pointing, knowing full well this gesture was for nobody. Rhia picked up her pace into a light jog now deftly dodging roots and branches as she went, she quickly scaled the fence and tossed herself off the far side towards the front door. Odd, there are lights on the third floor, I should probably ready something. It occurred to her she hadn’t really paid much attention to which shells she had taken today, she popped the four shells from their loops on her belt. In her hand she now had four brass metal cylinders engraved in silver. In her hand she saw a paralyzer, a continual flame, another paralyzer and an ice bolt… can’t see a good reason to use that last one. She unholstered her Caster, a smooth metal tube with hinged breach on the rear and an angled handle, opened the breach and slid in one of the paralyzers. the breach snapped shut on its own, any faster and it would have caught her finger. The light’s probably just to discourage people from looting the place.

She holstered the now loaded Caster and tested the front door, the knob turned freely but the door didn’t budge, must be stuck from lack of use. “Stupid door!” she shouted right before turning the knob again and slamming her shoulder, full weight behind it, into the door. The door swung open and collided into the wall with a massive crash, the sound echoed through the large foyer and down the halls. Seems it was just stuck, as she thought. Let’s see, the vault is in the basement, and the stairs down are behind the stairs leading up to the second floor balcony… I think. Rhia pulled the charcoal sketch from her satchel and found the stairs down fairly quickly. As she approached the stairs she got a whiff of something rotten, it’s probably nothing, but just in case, she drew her Caster. Rhia entered the stairwell and stopped dead, She wasn’t alone, two silhouettes ahead. Aaw crap…

516 words
1101 total

Before Saiko could decide what to do with the guard below, the mansion rattled as a loud noise echoed from the opposite side of the house. From down the stairs, she heard a shout and the sound of movement. Thinking she had been found, she immediately took action. The skeletal assassin sank into a shadow, before appearing from the guard’s, slicing his throat open.  With the guard down, she did not have to worry about being caught between two enemies. Not her original plan, but she did not see much choice in the matter.

Once the guard was dispatched, she began moving toward the front of the house. She did not get far before spotting another figure, standing tall and threateningly. Reacting more from reflex than intent, she sent a sickness spell toward the unknown enemy. It was not a particularly powerful spell, just giving the recipient symptoms such as an intense dizziness and a terrible cough. It was really only useful for throwing off the enemy long enough to summon her undead.

Which she did now. Skeletons of various shapes and sizes began to crawl their way from the shadows, while a pair of ghostly knights popped into existence in front of her. The amount was overkill if it was just a normal human, perhaps. On the other hand, against a high level mage these low level undead would likely be of limited usefulness. Rather than wasting her mana immediately, she chose to ration it out in case she needed to draw upon her more powerful magic.

Only after she had summoned her small army of undead did she get close enough to the enemy to make them out. A freakily tall woman (in Saiko’s opinion at least) wearing weird clothes. The woman did not look particularly threatening, except for the strange looking object in her hand. It looked like a gun, just not very well made. Still, it was best to consider it as a potential threat. Only once she had made her initial evaluation did she notice the guild mark on her neck, one belonging to the Silver Wolf guild if she remembered correctly.

Not one to keep up on guild politics, Saiko was not an expert on this woman’s guild. As far as she was aware though, they did not hire themselves out as mercenaries for the rich. Instead they seemed to prefer collecting rare artifacts and other… valuables…

Ah.

Rather than a guard working for her target, it seemed Saiko had run across a rival for the riches in the vault. That did not mean this woman was harmless, just that killing her would potentially lead to more trouble than the teen wanted to deal with. If she dragged her new home into an interguild war, she somehow felt they would be less than appreciative. With a mental command, she sent one of her stronger skeletons to emerge from the woman’s shadow and attempt to restrain her.

“Shouldn’t be here,” Saiko said, the irritation clear in her voice as she spoke.

501 words
1602 total

All the hair on Rhia’s body stood on end, her skin crawled, the figure below twitched suddenly and before she could raise her caster or say anything she was hit with a wave of nausea.  Her legs went weak, her off hand instinctively shot out to brace herself to the wall, gagging and coughing as she struggled to maintain balance.  I thought the smell was bad before, I think I'm going to be sick…

She clenched her eyes shut, they continued to water, this place must have had a fully stocked larder when it was abandoned, its since gone rancid.  She dry heaved before collecting herself a bit, squinting below she let out a small gasp, it was all she could do to not twist her face into an incredulous stare. Somehow the figures below had multiplied, it had to be the nausea, there’s no way…. Wait, this place is abandoned, with maybe a caretaker checking on it. No monsters, no guards and definitely no multiplying shadows.  That’s a dirty thief! And I’ll bet they’re here to loot the place!

She tried to speak a couple times to the silhouettes below, now convinced it’s either an artifact of her blurred vision or some magic trick of some sort, but every time she tried she’d either dry heave or cough.  The figure below finally spoke, the voice sounded young.  Rhia blinked a couple of times, her eyes were finally adjusting and then they shot wide open, below her was a young woman, still hard to tell how young, but definitely more than a couple years younger than herself, but that wasn’t important right now, a man was creeping up behind her with a stick. She had to act now.

All in one motion, the tall(ish) woman leaned further to the left, twisting her body into a roll through her left arm.  She tumbled backwards, uncurling herself into a crouch, her cape fully billowed from the twirl.  At the end her Caster now pointed to the right past the girl, a sound like wet clothes hitting a rock was heard as a billow of glowing pink flower petals burst from the end of the metal tube, the man’s body loosened up, he dropped the stick as he stared blankly ahead.

“Ow ow ow ow ow!” She dropped the Caster, it had overheated from the shot, burning her hand. The stupid thing tumbled end over end down the stairs having a grand time, it held no regard for decorum… or her feelings. She slumped down sitting on the floor now.

“What do you mean I shouldn’t be here, I’m on an official job to get this fancy horn!  Got my flyer and everything. What are you doing here?” Her face contorted in pain, but she was trying to sound like she hadn’t just hurt herself doing a cool rolling shot… on stairs, what was she thinking?

481 words
2083 total

Before her skeleton was able to grab the unknown woman, she rolled out of the way. At the same time, her undead alerted her to something behind her. Her demon looking zombie stepped in front of her to guard her from the woman’s gun as Saiko turned to see what was behind her. It seemed another guard had appeared and was trying to sneak up behind her, but a flash from the gun split her attention momentarily. Seeing the shot was aimed at the guard and not her, Saiko decided to focus on the guard as the larger potential threat.

Or perhaps not. Rather than a gun wound, the guard seemed to be in some kind of daze. Was it a magic gun then? Not knowing how long this spell would last, she ordered her spectral knights to cut down the defenseless guard. Once he was safely taken care of, the young girl turned her attention to the woman still holding her hand in pain. Saiko did not know much about magic guns, but she strongly suspected they were not supposed to blow up in their user’s hands. Either it was defective, the woman did not know how to use it properly, or it was some combination of the two.

“Robbing it,” Saiko answered in her usual abrupt manner. Then a small elbow to her stomach reminded her she needed to explain things better. “Also a job. Blood money.”

Yeah, she was not exactly the best at explaining herself. Her desire to get into a fight with the Silver Wolf hang was nonexistent though, so hopefully the woman would understand she was not just a common criminal. That did not mean Saiko trusted this woman or anything, even if she had technically tried to defend the necromancer against a rear attack. Necromancy was often treated with scorn and hatred, so trust did not come easily to her.

For this reason, she kept her undead summoned. The various skeletal forms closed in on the pair, ready to strike if ordered. Skeletal wolves, bears, and humans in tattered clothes stared down at the tall woman as if waiting for her to make a move. That was an illusion of course, none of Saiko’s undead had a will of their own. That was one necromantic secret she had yet to figure out, not for lack of trying.

A silent command sent one of her skeletons lumbering over to pick up the discarded gun, after which Saiko decided what to do with the other mage. “Come,” she ordered, the undead making it clear following the order was not optional. First she walked over to the guard that had been trying to sneak up on her, and began to draw upon the shadows around her. The shadows moved and covered the body like a film before they began to eat away at it. Moments later a new skeleton minion emerged from the shadows, standing up and joining the rest surrounding her like an honor guard.

Her next stop was the descend the steps to the basement, stepping over the body of the first guard. The entrance to the basement was a standard door, which implied the vault was further inside somewhere. Taking a minute, her assassin skeleton picked the lock and carefully opened the door. Nothing immediately tried to attack the skeleton, which was a good sign. If there were more guards inside, perhaps they did not know of the intruders.

Looking back at the other woman, Saiko jerked her head to the door. No sense risking one of her own when she could risk a nuisance instead. “You first.”

605 words
605 total

Cloak, twirled itself all out of whack; hair, mussed; back, likely bruised; holster, missing Caster but otherwise A O K. Her cloak was great for so many reasons, none of which seemed to want to come to mind at the moment, and if it mattered Rhia didn’t care, it was cool, and functional, and it was now sideways.  She clambered to her feet straightening her clothes and came face to face with what was inarguably… The source of that smell. It’s magic, It must be, It’s gotta be an illusion or some kind, or some kind of summon magic made to look undead, it can’t be real, you can’t bring the dead back!  Definitely can’t do that!  Magic has rules right?  An illusion couldn’t pick up my Caster right?   Is the Caster an illusion now?  Is it?  No no no no, they have to be physically here and this girl must be insane to conjure up stuff like this... Ok ok, I got this, calm down, those things haven’t attacked me, maybe they can’t think for themselves. SO. GROSS. Her face twisted from nauseated, to confused, to panicked, to a bad facsimile of a poker face, and then back to nauseated. Her train of thought was stopped dead when the girl spoke up again.

I kne.. She stopped herself short, not actually intending to say it out loud. I so called it. She’s a thief, here to rob the place and I don’t think I can stop her, definitely over my head here. She shuddered involuntarily as the girl spoke again. I really don’t know enough about how guild jobs work, maybe If I go along with it.

A job… right.  Rhia struggled  to squeak out, not managing to keep full composure.  Being surrounded by a bunch of, quite possibly, real animated skeletons from a variety of sources was not making it any easier.  She made a show of straightening her cloak again and noticed the empty holster on her thigh.  Her hand throbbed, a reminder that she had dropped it.  In all the fuss it slipped her mind.  Her eyes swept the area looking for where the Caster could have gone, they stopped on the bony hands of one of those things.  Ok think, the girl has my Caster, I mean, technically that ‘thing’ has it, but that doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s inert right now, safe, not that I think anyone would want to use it after that amazing display of craftsmanship.  Still, I can’t.  Rhia heard the command and thought the best option here was the same as before she lost the Caster, go along, try to salvage the job, and don’t die. Rhia loosely followed the girl, not taking her eyes off the Caster.  Her focus was shattered as the silence was broken by the girl’s fresh order.

Her cloak billowed out as she raised her arm pointing it straight at the girl, the other on her hip. Her face and voice incredulous as she spoke. “What do you mean me first?!  I’m not even armed! Send one of those…” Rhia’s voice cut off as she remembered where she was. She shivered as her arm dropped to her side, her head turned to look at her Caster and back at the girl.  She continued calmer.  “I’m not doing anything dangerous without my Caster.  That’d be like you going in there blind folded, hands tied behind your back and without these…” Her voice trailed off again still not wanting to acknowledge the existence of undead.  Keeping her focus on the girl, Rhia held her hand out to the skeleton palm up, grasping at the air.

”Please?”

611 words
1216 total

While Saiko still had not decided how she felt about this annoyingly tall woman, she had to at least admit she was brave. It took a lot of courage for someone so defenseless to make demands on a necromancer while surrounded by her undead minions. On the other hand, she had at least been polite about it so she refrained from having one of the skeletons pelt her to show her where her place in the world was.  Saiko did not like rude people (and was completely unaware that her usually brusque way of speaking came off as extremely rude).

With a jerk of her head, the teen ordered the skeleton holding the gun… thing be handed back to the frustratingly tall woman. Naturally the rest of her creations were watching closely with the red pinpricks of light that made up their eyes in case she was foolish enough to try and shoot Saiko. Assuming she was not so foolish, and went into the basement as instructed, the young necromancer would be left alone. Well, as alone as one could be when surrounded by undead. Now to see how long until the other mage was killed by any guards, so she could counter appropriately.

“Don’t let… her die,” said a quiet voice from just below her face, its words sounding as if they took a lot of effort to get out. This elicited a grumble from Saiko, who was now hardly able to refuse. Continuing to grumble under her breath, she summoned four ghost soldiers to her side, two knights and two archers, and sent them to act as guards. They would attack if the other woman attacked, and defend if the opposite occurred. And unlike her skeletons, their translucent blue forms did not significantly block line of sight, and they made no sound as they passed. A bunch of corporeal undead acting as guards would have immediately alerted anyone inside.

So as not to remain blind, she used her Spirit Sight spell to borrow the eyes of a wandering ghost, asking it to float in behind the rest of the advance party. In this way she had a nice view of the basement, her perspective much higher than usual. Just ahead she could see the four ghost soldiers and their charge, who Saiko imagined was incredibly thankful for the back up. As she should be, given that Saiko had not originally wanted to spend the mana to help. It seemed unlikely that a strong mage was guarding this place, but it was still possible given the value of the items in the safe.

As they moved forward the vault came into Saiko’s line of sight, with two guards standing in front of it. It was possible there were more guards nearby or inside the heavy vault doors, if there were she could not see them from here. For now she hung back outside the basement, waiting to see if more guards appeared when the first two spotted the intruders. Once she knew who needed to be killed, then she would step in and help the canar-, er, fellow mage. Saiko was a backline fighter, after all. Good luck, random stupidly tall lady!

517 words
1733 total

The slightly tall woman clenched her jaw, trying not to move and keep a stoic expression.  This whole situation was ridiculous, simple D rank job, go into an empty mostly abandoned mansion, go into a trophy room in the basement, and grab the horn of whatever it’s called.  There weren't supposed to be armed guards, or this many rooms, or a strange little girl with an obsession with a death motif.  I didn’t come prepared for this. Rhia’s expression, despite her attempts otherwise and for lack of better words, wandered through that whole line of thought until a cold rod was dumped into her hand.  

Without looking at the thing, she nodded her head in… its? Direction, tossed the Caster a couple inches in the air letting it spin and flip catching it by the hand grip. Her thumb flipped a lever on the side releasing the spring loaded rear breach, catapulting the silver engraved bullet a couple feet into the air.  She quickly turned to her left letting her cloak flow outward obscuring her left hand, she grabbed a nearly identical shell slid it into the breach and stopped her spin, with her left arm raised straight in the air, in time to catch the falling spent shell, at the same moment the breach of her Caster snapped back shut. Her right hand spun the Caster by the trigger guard a couple and slid it into her thigh holster. At the same time sliding the spent shell into an empty belt loop.  She made a mental note, one spent paralyzer, a continual flame, an ice bolt and another paralyzer, yeah.

Thank you, I never leave home without it. Rhia said flatter than she had meant and gave a salute before pushing through the door.  She snapped open her pouch while she walked, pulling out the crude map of the basement she received with the job, she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, no idea which way was which, they must have entered from a different stairwell than the one this map was drawn from.  She decided this didn’t matter and she’d eventually see something that made sense. The heavily carpeted basement, who carpets a basement? Muffled her boots as she turned a few corners.  The hall dead ended into another hall, with a large metal door built in and two guards, she immediately dropped to the floor, everything on her made of leather and fabric, this didn’t make much of a sound.  The guards looked quite oblivious to everything that happened upstairs and neither were looking down at her at the moment.  Should I do this slowly,  and hope the girl does her part, or… never mind the only way to do this is the cool way.

She took off sprinting, unholstering her pistol with her right hand and grabbing a second shell with her left. Please let this one work. She dove, extending her whole body midair, lining up the shot with the guard on the right.  Her left hand bracing her right wrist, spare shell ready Rhia focused on the shell inside and released the stored mana.  Baby blue apple blossoms burst in a cloud from the end of the barrel with a solid -FWIP-.  She didn’t have time to make sure it took effect before tucking her head and arching her back.  Rhia hit the ground activated the breach release ejecting the shell to anyone’s guess where and slid a new shell in locking the breach just in time to stop in a crouching position, she lined up the shot as the second guard too notice and let another shell expel it’s magic; a ball of ice the size of her fist formed traveling at high speed accompanied by a crack of thunder slamming into the guard’s shoulder.  But Rhia didn’t see any of that, the recoil sent her flying a couple feet backwards, landing and skidding across the carpet on her back.

658 words
2391 total

After being given back her weird metal thingy, the vexingly tall woman began making a series of bizarre and frankly confusing actions that ultimately seemed to culminate in shoving a smaller thingy into the metal thingy. Once this performance was over, Saiko stared at the woman as if she were a worm Saiko had just discovered in her breakfast.

“Why?” was all she asked.

When the Silver Wolf mage attacked with her strange device (was it a wand? It acted like a wand) the undead that had been following her attacked as instructed. The first was paralyzed for a moment, which was long enough to take two ghostly arrows to the chest. Her second shot released what appeared like a ball of ice, knocking both her and the other guard flying in opposite directions. One of the knights flew over to finish off the unconscious guard while the final knight continued to guard its charge.

The two guards were now dead. This was all well and good, except the explosion at the end had apparently alerted more guards who had not been on duty. A door near the vault burst open and eight more guards in various states of dress charged into the hall. It took them only a moment to see two of their fellow guards dead, four ghosts hovering in the air, and an unknown woman lying on the ground. While they were clearly unsure how to handle the ghosts, an enemy laying on her back was an obvious target.

Watching the guards move toward the other mage, Saiko decided now would be a good time to step in. Her plan to lure out any other enemies had worked flawlessly. Now that they were all in the open, a battle of numbers would always favor the young necromancer. The skeletons she had kept near her sank into the shadows before bursting forth from the shadows of the guards. Stepping through the door to the basement, she summoned ghost after ghost to further tip the balance. A spectral general led her undead as a single cohesive force, bringing order to the chaotic brawl.

During this she ignored her fellow mage entirely, leaving her to fend for herself. It was not exactly out of malice, so much as an expectation that any mage sent out on a job like this should be able to handle themselves. She naturally had no idea that the mage in cowgirl cosplay had already used up most of her spells. After a short but bloody battle, the guards all lay dead on the ground. Not expecting any more resistance, Saiko began releasing her undead until only her skeletal assassin remained. Walking over to the other woman, the shorter girl shook her head.

“Terrible,” she said dismissively. “Never fought before?”

Having made her opinion of the woman’s fighting abilities completely clear, she walked over to the vault. It was made of thick steel as one would expect, but she could also detect magic wards covering it. Likely lock picking spells and normal attack spells would be ineffective, not that she had either of those available. Her assassin might be able to pick the lock, though she had a feeling it would take too long. As she stood there thinking, she quietly mumbled to herself. “Hrm. Need to open…”

543 words
2934 total

”Ow ow ow ow ow, that wasn’t right.” A couple things flew over her, and by the sounds finished off the guards. The prototype Caster misfired twice tonight, not ideal, She made a note to fix that. Her inner monologue went a little different: ‘Oh come on! This piece of junk, I knew it wasn’t ready! At least it didn’t burn me this time.’ She laid on the ground for a second to catch her breath. Which was probably a mistake as now several more guards came rushing into the hallway.  She curled to the side,her shoulders still in pain from the impact, to get a better look. Rhia was no slouch in a fist fight, but that was entirely too many in her basically disarmed state.  What was she thinking?  She couldn’t handle that many even if she was fully prepared and armed. No time to put much thought into this just pure will and effort, maximum effort.

She rolled over a couple times, dodging a downward spear stab then turned that momentum into summersault back to her feet. She spun her caster by the trigger guard and turned in place, throwing out her cape. Finally coming to a stop, left arm extended pointing at the nearest guard, she holstered the Caster at her right thigh.  While she waited for the guards to move in, she mimed a fighting pose she saw on stage, right arm forward and bent leaving her fist by her face, two fingers extended, her left similarly posed, but the extended fingers were over her right elbow. By this point the little psycho was having her… They ripped apart the guards. Two of the guards rushed her, the feint didn’t work, it always worked in the shows.  Rhia sidestepped the unarmed guard’s attempt to grapple and shoved him into the other guard.  She took the moment to draw her Caster, spin it once and eject the spent shell, her left arm snatched it out of the air with an exaggerated movement.  One of those ugh, the little girl paraded them around, cut down a guard before it could get to Rhia, she didn’t notice and continued her flashy reload poses, this time loading her final shell, continual flame. She probably should have brought a few more shells, and this last one can hardly be considered an offensive spell.  She put on a smug face and casually pointed it at both of the guards, they didn’t know the Caster was little better than a welding torch right now, dangerous sure, but not a gun. Most of the guards seemed much less interested in Rhia, having a multitude of other problems at the moment, the two still looking at her were effectively pacified.  ”Good, now lay down on your stomach, hands extended above your…”  Before she could even finish giving them instructions a pair of… the guards were stabbed through the chest, and the hall was now a mess of death. Rhia felt a strong need to vomit, but held it back.

”Does it have to be so messy!? And those two surrendered! GAH! It’s so gross in here, please tell me there is none on me.  How are you so clean? I don’t think I’ll find my missing shell in THIS, Oh come on! My boots are coated in this stuff…” She trailed off realizing this was all out loud. She followed the short girl to the vault door through the festival of red, trying not to pay much mind to any of it. ”Fight? That’s mostly silly stuff people do because they can’t think of something better right? Jokes aside, Not really, and I wasn’t expecting to either, This job flier was SO off the mark. Rhia looked at the sides of the vault door and decided it was best to just make a hole. She drew her Caster and placed it about mid chest height, then paused and looked over to the girl, shook her head, then dropped the Caster down about a foot.  She pulled a pair of dark goggles out of her pouch and slid them over her face.  ”I’ve got a tool for this, but it’s really REALLY bright, might want to turn around until after the sound stops.” The tall..er woman counted to five in her head and braced herself for another miscast. A blinding light and a deep bassy hum coincided with an inch wide nearly invisible flame jet erupted from the end of the barrel.  Louder still was the high pitched sound the metal door made as it was ripped through, she slowly dragged the Caster in a circle large enough to fit through. The spell turned bright red for a couple seconds before fizzling out. After a few seconds she gave the plug a hard kick and  it fell into the vault. She held the Caster straight in the air, other hand crossing her chest parallel to the ground, then dropped to her knee holstering the Caster. That was dumb, now she had blood on her knee.

”There, we have access! Only thing I want in there is the horn of something or other. She motioned for the little girl to enter first.

868 Words
3802 Total

“Dead can’t attack,” Saiko responded with a shrug when the surrendering guards were brought up. Not to mention as a necromancer, every dead enemy was another weapon she could potentially wield. Perhaps it was a warped way for a girl her age to be thinking, but she had been surrounded by death since she was born. Being able to see and talk to the dead had given her a very strange outlook on the value of life. Those that mattered to her she wanted alive, those opposed to her simply had no value. On the matter of why neither she nor her doll were covered in blood, she had a simple answer for that as well.

“Just, stay out of the way?” she asked, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. If someone was going to be cut, they obviously were going to bleed. If you stood far enough away, then you did not get covered in any blood splatter. After that it was just about watching your step. Given the frills and intricate design of her self-made clothing, she did try to avoid getting them dirty. As for fighting, the other woman’s lack of experience had been daily obvious. She was clearly over her head if she expected to take on a well guarded vault with a few ice ball and paralyze spells.

When told to turn around, she let out a distrusting “...’kay,” before complying. Not entirely trusting the silver wolf mage to not attack, Saiko resummoned a few skeletons to keep guard. Their magical sight would not care about blinding light, unlike her more fleshy based sight. Once she was turned around, both she and her doll covered their eyes and waited for the all clear to be called. When the painfully loud screeching began, she had one of her skeletons cover her ears as well to dampen the sound. Eventually both the noise and light faded away, so she turned back to see a neat hole cut through the door. Seeing that the other mage had actually been useful caused Saiko to raise her opinion of the woman slightly.

Then she did another weird pose, dropping her knee into a puddle of blood. This caused the young girl to scrunch up her nose in disgust at the unsanitary action. Who got other people’s blood on them on purpose? “Gross,” she said, looking at her like she was a mouse that Saiko had found in her breakfast. A substantial step up from a worm, mind, because at least mice were kind of cute and made for useful undead when they were killed.

Ignoring the weirdo, she made her way through the hole into the vault. Once inside, she saw the vault’s lock mechanisms, not guarded at all from this side. Hardly surprising, because if anyone were able to reach them then the vault had already been breached. Raising a hand, she cast Rot at it. Immediately the metal of the lock began to rust, until it eventually failed and fell to the ground leaving only a brownish-orange stain behind. Satisfied that the door was now open, Saiko pushed against the door to open it. Only for nothing to happen. Frowning, she braced herself and tried pushing again as hard as she could. Again, nothing.

Apparently all her ninety pounds of weight were simply not enough to push the heavy door, even unlocked. Frustrated by its refusal to move for her, she drew upon the shadows. They spread out from her into the other room, covering the bodies of the guards, dissolving them. Then they combined into a single large shadow, and from the shadow a large golem made of bone emerged. It grabbed the handle on the outside of the vault, and with its massive bulk was easily able to swing the door open.

Giving a satisfied nod, the necromancer turned to the riches inside the vault. Now she again brought out all her corporeal undead, as they had a job to do. One of the two zombies was wearing the tattered robes of a death cultist, and had a large bag on its back. This was Lawrence. He had not been present during the rest of the fight, because he kind of sucked. That was okay, as he made an excellent pack mule. Her other undead walked over to him and began to take more bags out of his bag. Once everyone was wearing a bag, they began to fill the bags with loot.

She had discovered early on that undead that went into her Morgue skill kept their belongings, using this to her advantage made moving so much treasure much less risky than it might otherwise be. It was only a matter of time before everything got loaded, so for now she looked at the mage who had been of some help during this adventure.

“Can have any horns,” she said before pointing to herself. “Saiko.”

824 words
4626 total

Rhia’s stomach turned as her temporary distraction was just pulled from under her like a rug soaked in gore.  Wait, that’s not a proper analogy, that’s literally what I’m kneeling in. She carefully stood back up, avoiding getting any more on her, and then dry heaved. Rhia decided she’d let the little girl grab what she needed, not like the tallish woman could stop her anyway. She took a couple steps to the side of the door and picked bits of mess off of her clothes and hair, straightening her cape as she went.  It wasn’t more than a few moments before one of those… I  just, never mind.  The massive door swung open behind her, tossing her cloak as it passed.

Rhia turned on the spot and entered the vault, doing her absolute best to avoid looking at the crowd. At least it was clean in here. The room was larger than she imagined, walls lined with shelves, side rooms sectioned off with metal bars, and a couple tables in the center.  Oddly enough, there were seemingly no magical defenses.  The short girl’s words drew her focus from the rest of the room.

”Thank you, I only want the one. I have… Yeah, that’s pretty evident by the mess out there, I’m Rhia by the way.  Her tone started off matter-of-factish and turned dry as she spoke.  She opened one of her pouches, pulled out her job flier and held it out to the little psycho, on it was an sketch of the horn and it’s name ‘Horn of Cthabruxr’ a name Rhia had no will pronounce, let alone attempt to remember it. As she did she saw a drawing of the mansion as well, and this one was definitely not the one depicted.  She pulled the drawing back, looked at it again and screwed up her face. Think Rhia what did the front door look like.  This place was three stories tall, white, and had large pillars out front holding up the second and third story balconies, the picture was two stories, and had a very large covered porch out front, no front balcony. It’s definitely the wrong place, she had wandered into a random house and assaulted random guards and helped the little psycho have a gore fest….

”And this place doesn’t even have the horn!” Noticing she had yelled that last part out in frustration instead of just keeping it to herself, she cleared her throat and tried again, if not a bit sheepishly.  ”Sorry, I think my horn isn’t here.  Either this picture is a very poor rendition, or I’m in the wrong place.”  Rhia leaned back, hands behind her head and sighed.  ”Such is life, I guess I’ll grab some food, and sleep and check out the real place tomorrow.”  This is going to end up looking like a roving band of thieves cleared out these mansions… I’m going to regret this but.

”So, Psycho, seeing as how I helped you here, do you think you could join me in going through the other mansion?  All I want is the horn there and it should be less guarded."

524 Words
5150 Total