Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 211-212 (Patreon)

Lillia’s palm drove into Arwin’s unprotected stomach. He let out a grunt of pain and stumbled back, shifting his weight to keep from falling. She spun, lowering her center of mass and sweeping her leg out to take his feet out from under him.

Arwin leapt over the attack and lunged at Lillia. She shot upright, grabbing a piece of scrap metal from the ground on her way up, and flicked it. The scrap struck him in the shoulder and bounced off harmlessly.

They both froze. Arwin let his hands drop.

“Could have been poisoned,” Lillia said as she straightened.

Arwin nodded and scratched at his chin. “Yeah. I guessed that much. That probably would have been a covered area if I were wearing armor, though.”

Rodrick, who stood in the corner of the smithy to observe them, nodded in agreement but raised a finger. “What if it had hit an unprotected area?”

“Good point,” Arwin admitted as he sat down on the edge of his anvil with a thoughtful frown. “Damn. There are just so many different angles to consider. More than I can possibly put into a single set of armor if I want to keep it relatively limited in power and avoid broadcasting the full range of my abilities to everyone in the kingdom.”

He and Lillia had been trying to pin down every trait Melissa’s armor would need to let her survive an assassin attack. Rodrick had been present for the whole of it, giving them suggestions and sharing all the information he knew on the assassins. They’d been at it for the past hour, running through every ability they’d seen the assassins display as well as a few extras just in case.

Unfortunately, as good of a warrior as Lillia was, it just wasn’t enough. She wasn’t an assassin. And, as useful as Rodrick was, knowledge wasn’t the same as experience. Arwin had a huge list of traits he wanted the armor to include, but he wasn’t sure which ones were the most important.

All they were doing was replicating the moves they’d seen the Falling Blade do. It was good, but even a tiny mistake could mean Melissa’s death. Good wasn’t enough.

“There’s just so much,” Arwin said, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know where to focus. You’re doing great. It’s just… not the same as actually fighting the Falling Blade. What if I focus on the wrong thing? This is like playing a guessing game when we speak the wrong language.”

“Yeah,” Lillia said. “I know what you mean. It’s too bad we didn’t leave any of the assassins alive. We could have interrogated them.”

“Too dangerous. We made the right choice killing them,” Rodrick said with a firm shake of his head. “With the poison they were using, one could have easily had a hidden weapon of some sort. That’s quite common. None of them were particularly strong, but what if they’d had a class that let them do… well, anything? Invisibility, poison mist, the list goes on. You don’t leave an assassin alive if you value your own life.”

Arwin pushed away from the anvil. Rodrick and Lillia looked to him. They’d gathered a lot of information over the course of the last hour. It had definitely been productive. And, although he had a lot to filter through and figure out, there was more to do than just determining what traits the armor needed. A lot more.

And, just like that, a thought struck him. It was so ludicrous that he should have laughed it off on the spot. Nobody in their right mind would have ever even considered it. But, the more Arwin considered it, the more potential it seemed to have.

A slow smile crossed his face. There was no reward without risk.

“I think this was more than enough to let me get started,” Arwin said. “I appreciate both of you. I think we should move on to the next stage. I’m going to need quite a few different materials. This isn’t going to be something I can make in one go. I’ll need to do some extensive testing. Finishing it in a week will be tight… but if you guys can get me everything I need, it’s possible.”

“Just give the order,” Rodrick said. “We’ve got your back.”

“I know,” Arwin said with a smile. “Thank you. We’re going to start with resilience. I’ve already got bits of chitin to work with, but I also want a way to store energy. I need gemstones. As many as you can get your hands on. While you’re at it, also keep an eye out for anything light. The armor can’t be too heavy. Oh, unique metals as well. I might need to use something nicer than the existing stuff I’ve worked with. Something discrete. Ask Madiv and Esmerelda to get their hands on that. And after that…”

***

Two days later.

 “This is… odd,” Leena said, adjusting the black mask covering her mouth. She was perched on the edge of a rooftop in the dead of night, staring at the strangest job she’d ever seen.

“Tell me about it,” Riker agreed from beside her. His voice was a whisper on the wind, audible only to her ears. She could barely even make his concealed form in the darkness. The cheap enchantments covering the black cloth made him little more than a shadow. “You think the target is even going to show up?”

“How would I know?” Leena replied with a shake of her head. “The job makes no sense. I’m pretty sure the Guildmaster just took money from a loon. I mean — five minutes in the dead of night, but for three nights in a row? Does he expect us to fail?”

“It’s certainly strange, but we’ve got our orders.” Riker’s form shifted ever so slightly in what Leena suspected was a shrug. “We do everything in our power to kill the man that walks into the square at midnight. Immediately stop all attempts and retreat after five minutes. Then do it again the next day, for a total of three days. That’s it. Nothing else matters.”

Yeah, but if we don’t kill him the first time, why would this guy be stupid enough to show up a second time, much less a third? If he’s somehow strong enough to beat both of us, then we’re dead. There’s no way we can come back and try again.

“Do you think someone’s trying to scam us?” Leena asked, tilting her head to the side. “They only paid for a single kill. Maybe they’ll be luring three different people here.”

“That will be for the Guildmaster to deal with. Our role is not to question orders. It is to kill.”

Leena nodded. Riker was right. She had a bad habit of overthinking things. That was what had landed her on an odd mission like this. Leena’s grip tightened on the blackened dagger at her side.

With any luck, we’ll just sleep the idiot and be on with our lives in a few minutes. Or he won’t even show up. That’ll be even —

“There,” Riker whispered.

Leena’s eyes shot to the corner of the cobblestone square below them. A large man stepped out from an alleyway and walked straight into the center of the square, stopping beside a greened fountain that hadn’t had flow in years.

He wore a full suit of completely mismatched armor. A silvered helm with two small horns at its sides sat upon his head, obscuring the majority of his face. His chestplate looked to be the new scale plate that had been growing more popular in Milten in the last week or so. The green scales had been tarnished and blackened in artistic patterns that resembled rippling waves. A small white gem glistened on either one of the armor’s shoulders and a larger blue one was embedded in the center of its chest.

The man’s greaves and gauntlets were both made of black metal that overlapped itself like the plates of an insect’s carapace. A crystal-clear gemstone was embedded in the center of each of his knees and at the back of his hands.

And, for some reason, he was completely barefoot.

“What the fuck?” Leena muttered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Riker whispered back. He rose slightly, his blades sliding soundlessly from their sheathes. “Let’s go.”

Leena rose as well. Even though they stood in plain sight, the darkness completely obscured their forms. She almost felt bad for the strange man in the street below. Leena generally made it a point not to get her targets too well.

That made it harder to forget their faces once they were dead.

She leapt from the rooftop, drawing her own daggers in the process. Riker was a shadow beside her as they both shot down toward their unsuspecting target.

The wind gathered around Leena as she fell, aiding her movements as she drove her daggers for the exposed parts of the man’s flesh. She’d killed more than a dozen targets with the very same blow, and this one would be no different.

Her blades carved down. Beside her, Riker struck as well. A pair of perfectly synchronized blows, both so silent and sudden that nobody would ever even get a chance to —

A howl split the night as a wall of wind slammed into Leena’s face with such intensity that her lips flapped and her eyes flared with pinpricks of pain. She hit the ground in a practiced roll and sprung to her feet, disbelief marring her features.

Riker rose just a few feet away from her, his longer sword held before him defensively. A chill ran down Leena’s spine and she lowered into a fighting stance of her own. They’d been stopped.

Their target had been ready for them.

“Is this a setup?” Leena hissed. “How did he know—”

“Focus on the mission,” Riker said, his voice flat.

Leena’s eyes flicked back to the armored man. He hadn’t made any move toward them. Instead, to her complete befuddlement, he’d pulled out a quill and a sheaf of papers.

“Wind… worked,” the man muttered under his breath. He finished writing and looked up at them. His face was completely cast in shadow, but the movement almost felt… expectant. “What are you waiting for? Get on with it.”

Leena didn’t need to be told twice. Shadows twisted up from the ground and she sank into them. One of the core skills of an assassin — [Shadow Walk]. Any assassin worth their salt mastered it long before anything else.

The world flashed by and she rose up beside the man. His bare heels were right in front of her, but she was no fool.

Anyone that walked around with such extensive armor and completely bare feet was definitely trying to bait her into attacking them. He probably had some form of skill that let him use them defensively — and an assassin was never predictable.

She drove her daggers for the joints of the armor in the back of his legs and activated [Piercing Strike]. Magical energy poured out of her and into the blades, sharpening their tips and increasing the speed of the blow.

A loud clang echoed out. Leena’s training kicked in and she hurled herself to the side to avoid a counter attack, but her mind was reeling. Her strike hadn’t penetrated the armor.

Impossible. I’ve ripped through solid steel with [Piercing Strike] before. How could I fail to cut through thin metal?

Whatever. As long as I have his attention, Riker will finish him off.

She hit the ground in a roll and sprung to her feet as a second clang rang out. Leena turned just in time to see the man holding his arm up, having blocked Riker’s strike with the palm of his hand.

The gemstones on his legs and palms were glowing a dim white. Leena grabbed a poisoned throwing blade from her kit. But, even as she went to throw it, a brilliant flash tore through the street.

The shadows were momentarily banished, preventing her from using [Shadow Walk]. Leena swore and jumped back, raising her hands defensively before her face.

No attack ever came. When she dropped her hands, the man was still standing in the center of the square and writing on his notepad once more. Riker had retreated as well. He was equally uninjured.

Disbelief slammed into Leena like a hammer. The armor on the man’s chest was whole. A huge scar ran along the center of the chestplate, but it hadn’t been cut in two.

Riker’s [Shadow Slash] is nearly twice as strong as my own attack. How is that armor still in one piece? It’s enchanted. It has to be.

“Defense… not strong enough,” the armored man muttered to himself, still writing in his notebook. “Increase durability. Gems… need to hold more power. Got the fast activation, but effect didn’t last long enough. Also blinded me. Need better eye protection.”

“What is this?” Leena whispered, a flicker of worry passing through her. She’d fought a lot of people before, but she’d never met someone that didn’t even seem to care that they were getting attacked.

The man looked over to her and tapped his bare foot on the ground impatiently. “Come on. You’ve got a few minutes left of work, don’t you? No slacking.”

And, with those words, Leena’s blood turned to ice. A cardinal rule of the guild had somehow been broken. They had an information leak.

Gods above. He knew about the contract.

Chapter 212

For the next few minutes, Leena and Riker did absolutely everything in their power to kill the armored man. They tried combining their attacks. They tried talking to distract him and going for cheap shots. None of it worked.

Leena stood across from him, panting to catch her breath. Thick scars covered the man’s armor. It had been dented and scratched apart, but it still held. The only time the man had bothered trying to dodge at all was when they’d tried to attack his unprotected feet.

At the end of the five minutes, despite her absolute best efforts, she hadn’t drawn so much as a pinprick of blood. She braced her hands against her knees as she caught her breath. All her training told her it was a terrible idea to show weakness before an enemy, but at this point, it didn’t even matter.

The man hadn’t tried attacking them once. All he’d done was jot down notes and make snide comments about his own armor. That was it. It was almost as if they didn’t even exist to him.

Feet scuffed against stone. Leena’s head shot up and she dropped into a fighting stance, only to find that the man had turned and set off without another word. She stared at his back in disbelief. Then, slowly, she looked over to Riker.

The other assassin just shook his head in disbelief. Neither of them could manage a word. Leena wouldn’t go so far to call herself an experienced assassin. If she was honest, she’d only gotten her class a year ago.

She’d been on a number of jobs. She’d had some solo hits. Most of her fights had been against monsters — but still, she wasn’t completely new. Riker had more practice under his belt. A single look into his eyes said everything their words could have.

Neither of them had ever seen anything like this. It was just beyond logic. It was almost beyond comprehension. Not only did The Order have an information leak in it. Not only did they get one of the strangest jobs Leena had ever heard of. Not only did their target know that they were being targeted — he’d actually shown up to let them try to kill him.

And, somehow, they hadn’t even injured him.

It was nearly a minute before the silence finally broke.

“What… do we do?” Leena asked.

Riker pulled his gaze away from the empty alleyway where the man had left. There was no point chasing after him. The contract had been for five minutes, and five minutes were up.

“What can we do?” Riker asked. He slid his sword back into its sheath. “We come back tomorrow.”

***

Leena sat on a rooftop beside Riker once more. It wasn’t the same rooftop they’d used the previous night — it wasn’t smart to attack from the same angle — but she wasn’t so sure it would matter.

Their report to The Order the previous day had gone nowhere. The job remained. For whatever reason, their superiors just didn’t seem to care. Perhaps they’d also been corrupted. Leena didn’t know, and Riker just kept repeating —

“It isn’t our job to think,” Riker said. “We just kill.”

“We didn’t kill much of anything last night,” Leena said, unable to restrain her irritation. She turned the dagger over in her hands. Its edge glistened in the moonlight, coated with a bright silver powder. “There’s no way he’s going to come back, is there? It’ll be someone else.”

Riker just looked at her. It was hard to tell what he was thinking with the mask covering much of his face, but Leena still had a pretty good idea. She glanced up at the moon. Its pale sheen glistened far above, nearly perfectly in the center of the sky above them. It wouldn’t be long to midnight. If the man was actually going to come back, it would have to be —

Footsteps echoed through the square. The back of Leena’s neck prickled slightly. She leaned forward, breaking a rule and risking revealing her position in her impatience. Riker did the same.

“What the fuck?” Leena whispered.

It was the same man, but it took her a moment to realize it because of his armor. After all the damage it had taken in the previous fight, it was only logical that he need to replace it. Leena just hadn’t expected the replacements to be so significant.

The helm, gauntlets, and greaves were now all made from the same material, a swirling mixture of a faint rose gold and dull silver. The armor was sleek and more than a little form fitting. Small red gems studded the sides of the greaves and the knuckles of the gauntlets. His helm had the same form as the previous version and the only change seemed to be its material.

The strange metal the pieces were made from had ripples running through it like waves that forced Leena to squint to remain focused on the man’s actual form. It wasn’t enough to completely throw her off, but it did cause a dull throbbing ache to build behind her eyes.

Their target had foregone his barefooted approach from the previous night and now wore plain silver boots. The only piece he hadn’t changed out was the chestplate, but it looked considerably different than the last time she’d seen it.

While the armor was still made of tarnished green scale and bore wave patterns reminiscent of the other armor pieces, the gemstones had been removed from its center and shoulders.

Instead, a number of much smaller, white gemstones had been embedded along the wave patterns to exentuate them. Leena couldn’t tell if the armor was beautiful or gaudy, but she was leaning toward the latter.

Is he planning to work at a burlesque club after he walks out of here?

Her lips pressed thin. That wasn’t going to happen. She’d failed once, but not again. No target of hers was going to flaunt like this and get away with it. Riker gave her a slight nod. He felt the same way.

This wasn’t just a job. This was their pride on the line — not to mention their money. The Order got paid to kill people, not inconvenience them. Leaving a contract unfinished would have dire consequences.

Leena’s stomach twisted. She quashed the feeling and focused her attention on the blade in her hand. Worrying about potential failure would only distract her. All that mattered was the job. All that mattered was killing the man below her.

Riker caught her eye and the two of them nodded. They readied their weapons in the guise of night while the man waited beside the fountain. The previous night, Leena had thought he’d been unaware of their presence.

Now she knew he was just indifferent to it.

Tonight, that would change. As one, she and Riker leapt off the building. Five minutes to regain their honor and finish the job. That was more than enough. An assassin didn’t need five minutes. They only needed seconds.

Tonight, the armored man would die. Leena swore that to herself.

Come tomorrow, there isn’t going to be anyone walking up to this square. I’m going to go treat myself to a night out in town. Maybe visit that burlesque club. It could be fun. Anything other than sitting on a damn rooftop waiting for this bastard to come mock us.

Tonight, he dies.   

***

Leena was sitting on a roof again.  Her lips were pressed so thin that she could have crushed a nut between them and she was pretty sure that steam was going to start coming out of her ears and inflating her tightly wrapped clothes.

 Somehow, the previous night had gone even worse than the first. Not only had she and Riker completely failed to land a single good blow on the armored man, but his armor had barely even been damaged.

She had absolutely no clue what his class was, but it felt like fighting a stone wall. Powerful swirls of wind batted away her thrown weapons. When she finally got close, it had felt like she was fighting a wraith.

Half the time, he wasn’t actually where she thrust her blade. It just passed harmlessly through the air, leaving her exposed. The man could have killed her a dozen times over in the fight, but he never did.

All he did was jot down notes on his damned notepad. To make matters even more infuriating, Leena or Riker actually managed to land a blow, the armor went off with a brilliant flash of light that blinded them and disabled [Shadow Walk] while rendering them unable to fight properly.

That night had ended in complete humiliation. Before the five minutes had even ended, the man turned and walked off without a word. Neither Leena nor Riker had the will to follow after him. She was pretty sure that literally all three of them were thinking the same thing.

There’s always next night.

And now it was next night.

Leena stared at the dagger in her hand. The poison coating it hardly felt even close to sufficient. She had several extras hidden in sheathes all across her body, as well as a pouch of poison dust.

I don’t even know why I bothered with the powder, actually. It’s completely useless with that wind magic of his. I’ll just blow it back into my face. Fuck. What’s the point of this? Is he just playing with us?

Riker wasn’t in much better shape. He hadn’t even bothered trying to prepare anything new. His main strategy the previous night had been caltrops with paralyzing acid stored within their core.

The man had just crushed them under his feet. Leena wasn’t even sure if their seemingly immortal foe had realized what the caltrops had been meant to be.

A heavy air rested on Leena and Riker’s shoulders and bore them toward the ground. There just didn’t seem to be a point… but they still had a job. The only solace was tonight would be the last night. After this, she’d be free — one way or another.

Footsteps echoed through the alley. Leena dragged her eyes over as the figure that had been haunting her dreams stepped out into the market square for the third time. One of her eyes twitched.

He hadn’t even gotten hurt last time, but he’d still changed out his armor. Despite her anger, Leena’s eyes widened. The man’s armor was now all made of the same rose-gold material, but it was incomparable to what it had been before.

It wasn’t just metal to defend himself with anymore. It was a piece of art. Small white gemstones made twinkling stars across the shoulders and chest, turning into streaks that ran down into the gauntlets, whose knuckles were still studded with matching gems.

Beautiful silver patterns traveled down from the lower half of the chestpiece and down the greaves, running all the way to the boots, where more white stones accentuated his knees and shins.

Strangely, the armor felt out of place on the man. Leena couldn’t quite place why. It was feminine, but that wasn’t the reason it felt odd. It almost seemed as if he were wearing armor that belonged to someone else.

Leena dropped down from the rooftop without even bothering to hide her presence. Riker did the same. It wasn’t like their target didn’t know they were coming.

Time was ticking. Riker lifted his blade. Leena readied her new daggers. The man raised his notepad.

The fight was on once more.

Leena and Riker flashed forward, drawing every scrap of power they had in them. They’d learned from their previous battles. There was only a single way left that they’d been able to determine had a chance of success.

An all-out attack. One where every scrap of their power was put into a single blow, with no thought of survival or what would happen after. And that was what they did.

Weapons whistled through the night. Leena activated [Piercing Strike] and poured all her magic into the blade with a scream of frustration. She thrust it for the man’s chest while Riker drove his sword for his back.

The man didn’t move. The weapons struck the armor. Leena squeezed her eyes shut in time to avoid the brilliant flash that tore through the night like a miniature sun — but that didn’t prepare her for the immense thrum that ripped down her dagger and into her hands, vibrating her body so violently that her teeth felt like they would dislodge themselves.

Leena opened her eyes, hoping to see at least something as a result of her and Riker’s efforts. She regretted her decision immediately. There wasn’t even so much as a scratch on her armor.  

She crumpled to her knees. All her energy was spent, both mental and magical. The fight was over. Riker hadn’t had any more luck than she had. He’d fallen to his backside on the other side of the seemingly immortal man and just sat there in silence.

“Finding a way to bounce back magically enhanced physical attacks… successful,” the man said as he wrote. He snapped the notebook shut. “Well then. I think we’re done here.”

Is he going to kill us now?

Leena tried to gather the energy to rise, but she’d thrown so much power into her attack that her body just didn’t respond. The only thing she could manage was to look up into the shadowed face of the man above her and squeeze out a single word.

“Why?”

“Needed a little help with testing,” the man replied gruffly. He reached into a pouch on his waist and dropped two bags of gold on the ground beside them. “Thanks for working with me. I appreciate it. There’s the pay for the completed job I placed.”

With that, he turned and walked into the night.

“Did — did he just say that he placed a hit job on himself?” Leena asked once he’d left, his words bouncing around her head like hyperactive toddler.

Riker pushed himself upright with a groan. He knelt, grabbing the bags of gold and tucking them under one arm, before helping Leena to her feet. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“Come on,” Riker said, breaking the silence. He jerked his chin toward an alley. “Sometimes, the best thing you can do is forget. I’m going to waste all this on burlesque dancers and alcohol until the last three nights get wiped from my mind. Want to come?”

Leena looked off in direction the armored man had set off in. Then she turned back to Riker. “Yeah, I think I do.”