Chapter 15: The Assassin’s Way (Patreon)

Nathan sat on the ground, looking at the bloody corpse lying on the other side of the room. He’d need to retrieve the man’s weapon sooner or later - or destroy it. It was too dangerous an artifact to leave out. He’d also need to dispose of the corpse before it started smelling even worse.

But that wasn’t what was overwhelming him at the moment. They’d been attacked by an [Assassin], and he'd been after Nathan. The man was neither a mage or a slave, and his gear was all wrong for Giantsrest. No, this person was from somewhere else. It was possible that the remaining mages had thrown around wealth to get some external help. But more likely was that this was just the first indirect attack of many that came from the Questors.

He said he’d start the Endings early, not that he wouldn’t send killers after you. This isn’t going to be the last time. And the next one might take the opportunity to kill my teammates, even if it would have tipped me off.

There was a faint knock on the door, and Nathan got up to answer it. He found a nervous-looking woman outside with the armband that identified her as one of Myrla’s messengers. She blinked up at Nathan, then seemed to remember how to speak. “Is there a problem here?” Her eyes widened as she spotted the scattered furniture and the pool of blood

Right, the noise. I demolished a chair over the man.

“Yeah.” Nathan replied tiredly. “An assassin. I’d like to ask for some guards and some help getting rid of the body.” He glanced back into the room. “And a new chair.”

The messenger clapped a fist to her breast in a Giantsrest-style salute before sprinting away.

Nathan heaved a deep breath and went to carefully secure the knife. He also managed to extricate the man’s dimensional bag, disabling a lethal security enchantment first. Then he patted the would-be-assassin down for other possessions, finding a few enchanted odds and ends as well as a single sheet of enchanted paper that declared itself to be a writ of free passage through Litcliff for one person. It was signed by three of the city’s five oligarchs.

A team arrived to haul the body away, leaving a scrubbed floor and a new chair where the old one had been. Nathan sat in it, looking down at the writ and wishing he could talk with the Heirs. This complicated things - in a lot of ways. They'd need to make some decisions soon.

In some ways it’s better I get a chance to think this over while they sleep off the poison. Just by being around me they’re in danger.

Nathan rolled his eyes at the thought. While true, it was also dumb. He’d already agreed that they were a team, and he wouldn’t split that up over a single close call. He’d always hated it in stories when people tried to protect each other by taking extra risk on themselves. His best defense against future assassins was his friends, and they complimented his weaknesses well.

I can win against any mage, but I wouldn’t stand a chance against somebody like Brox. But all of the Heirs together… we might be able to take him. I need them, and they need me.

He’d talk about it in the morning. If this changed their decision to come with him then he’d reevaluate, but he didn’t expect it. This attack was a wake-up call that they needed to get moving. Just like the last time they’d pissed off a powerful foe with a long reach, the solution was to get the hell out of town before they got buried underneath hired killers.

–

“It was on the cookware.” Aarl said the next day, tossing down the pot he’d used to cook dinner the night before. “I keep the ingredients in my dimensional bags, but he poisoned every pot in the kitchen and then waited in the pantry.”

“A blasphemous foe.” Stella said, then shivered. “Not something my magic can defeat.”

Sarah shot her an annoyed look. “You could learn scanning spells.”

“Wouldn’t have worked.” Nathan said, pointing towards a bracelet the assassin had been wearing around his wrist. “That deflects scanning magic.”

Khachi looked thoughtful, stroking the hair growing on his chin pensively. “My bones say he will not be the last to come for us. For Nathan.” He turned his gaze to Nathan. “But are they hired from Giantsrest, or from beyond?”

Aarl picked up the sheet of paper. “This might be a decoy. Meant to distract us from the source.”

“I don’t think so.” Nathan said. “He intended to survive this. When he saw that I was awake he tried to use Sarah as a shield. Only a fanatic would plan for their own death and go to the trouble of getting a fake writ just in case. I think he was from beyond the continent, was already in Litcliff and got hired to come kill us. The timing would match up if he had a travel skill of some kind.”

He hesitated, thinking over the next part. “As for who hired him - I think it was Badud. The assassin didn't seem to care about killing anybody but me. If an archmage hired him he would have tried to kill us all."

“We need to be more careful,” Stella said. “Ask for guards on the door.”

Nathan shook his head. “It wouldn’t take much in the way of stealth skills to sneak through the city, especially now. The main defenses against that sort of thing are enchantments or people with perception skills of their own. And if it is Badud hiring assassins to kill me, they’re going to be the best. This guy almost got us all.” He looked around at his friends. “There’s only one good defense against that.”

Aarl snorted. “Run away. The same way we evaded Taeol. For a while.” He met Nathan’s eyes. “That just slows the problem, it doesn’t kill it.”

Nathan shrugged in response. “If this guy was merely the first of several then we’ll avoid the rest by leaving today. There might be a few others without travel skills still on the road. Let’s go south to take care of Azamar, swing by Ardglass and zip back through Gemore and get to Litcliff while all of the assassins are chasing our trail. If we’re quick we can be on a ship before the people who took the contract can even get back to Litcliff.”

“We could trap them?” Stella suggested, but it didn’t sound sincere. “Ambush them when they attack us here.”

Sarah shook her head. “The next assassin won’t attack the same way. What if they fire a giant arrow from far away? Or pretend to be a slave and stab Khachi with one of those.” She indicated the sheathed dagger that had almost killed Nathan. “Aarl, do you want it?”

Her brother reached out a tentative hand, plucking the sheathed dagger off the table. It vanished to their eyes, making it look like Aarl was empty-handed. He breathed out a surprised breath. “The description says that it slays anything the blade cuts.”

“Description?” Nathan asked with some confusion.

“One of my new class skills, for [Relicwielder].” Aarl replied. “[Item Descriptions], it tells me the details of any magical item I touch. This is a weapon for surprise kills, not open battle. It will hide itself from any search or scan.” He nodded and opened his pouch, presumably depositing the knife inside.

“Litcliff will be a dungeon for us.” Khachi said. “We should ask Sudraiel and our parents to see if there is another way to leave the continent.” He inclined his head towards Nathan. “But the faster we move now the less likely we are to wake up without heads.”

Nathan spoke decisively “Then are we good to get out of here?” He received nods from every one of the Heirs. “Alright. I’ll leave a message for Myrla. We’ve helped a lot here, but it’s time to go. The antimages and the elites will need to be enough. At least we'll take care of Ardglass and Azamar on our way out."

He stuck his head outside to confer with the messenger who’d been waiting outside. Myrla had anticipated this decision, and had left a short list of places for the Heirs to hit on their way out of the city.

That woman is scary.

—

It was good to be on the road again. Granted, they were mostly above the road. Stella, Sarah and Aarl zipped through the air under the influence of Stella’s [Fly] spells, while Nathan ran a few feet above its surface. Khachi was the sole person in contact with the stone surface, footsteps clanking in a rapid-fire staccato as golden light propelled his armored boots.

Nathan had started off running alongside him, but they were moving fast enough that literal friction with the road had started to wear down his shoes. Khachi could fly, but it was apparently significantly less resource-efficient. He couldn’t get a free recharge from Stella the way Nathan could. They’d left as quickly as possible after taking care of Myrla’s final requests and scarfing down a quick lunch from their stores. Nathan had expected to feel bad about leaving Giantsrest behind, but he just felt relief. He’d enjoyed very little of his time in the city. It had been the site of his greatest achievement, but only because there'd been a lot of stuff that needed breaking.

He spoke loudly enough that everybody could hear him. “I hope to come back some day, and see a wonderful free city full of life.”

“I’ll pray for that light.” Khachi responded from below.

The other Heirs nodded, but didn’t say anything. The mood was still somber after their close call, and Stella in particular was smarting over being rendered helpless so simply. It was a good reminder after the last few days of going from triumph to triumph. They weren’t invincible.

“There it is.” Sarah called out, pointing ahead. “Azamar.”

“Let’s figure out the plan.” Nathan said, slowing down and descending to the road below. He waited for everybody to gather before proposing his plan. “They’re going to be on edge, scared of anything coming from Giantsrest. But we want to clear this as quickly as possible.”

“I can move towards them, shining brightly and declaring their dooms.” Khachi said. “If Stella is with me, we can appear as an army, while being protected from any attack.”

Sarah nodded. “And then when all of the most powerful mages gather to defend the city, we strike them down.”

“How?” Aarl asked. “You won’t be able to kill them quickly, and they’ll spot Nathan and I before we get close.”

“Not necessarily.” Nathan said. “We should wait for night, so that Khachi and Stella are even more obvious. Sarah will be invisible against the sky, and we can get closer to the city. I can probably get us right up against the walls, and then we can get to the mages and take them down.”

“What of the city afterwards?” Stella said, frowning. “To repeat prophecy, treat it as Halsmet?”

Khachi frowned. “We cannot stay here so long, and we are not suited to solve all of the cities’ problems. I will tell all we free of the safety that lies in Giantsrest, and we can send a message to Myrla to expect them. The mages can take up hydra farming for all I care, so long as the slaves can escape first.”

“And then on to Ardglass.” Nathan said. “The same trick probably won’t work twice, but at least there shouldn’t be any archmages in Ardglass. Sarah got the archmage of Ardglass when we ambushed the Giantsrest army.”

“Then let's wait for night.” Aarl said, nodding off the road. He led them into the lee of one of the small hills scattered across the grasslands around Giantsrest. In Gemore, this land would be farmed or at least grazed. But here they had more productive land much closer to the city.

“You were speaking of combustion.” Stella prompted Nathan as they set up a quick campsite. “Specifically, how it relates to oxidation.”

“Yes, and how our bodies truly burn food as fuel.” Aarl said, shaking his head in indignation as he started preparing lunch.

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Alright, let’s dive into the nuts and bolts. We’ve talked about how there’s both positive and negative charges, and lightning is negatively charged. Well, a lot of materials like to have either a positive or negative charge on them. The charge they have is called their oxidation state, and if you mix one material that would like to be more negative and another that would like to be more positive, then they react to shift the charges around.”

Stella tilted her head, not connecting the dots.

“They also release a lot of energy.” He pointed to Sarah, or more specifically one of the cartridges on her bandolier. “Gunpowder is a good example. There’s charcoal in there, which is carbon that’s neutrally charged. It would like to be more positive. There’s also nitrate, which has a lot of oxygen that would like to be more negative. Most of the energy comes from the carbon reacting with the oxygen to make carbon dioxide, where the oxygen is more negative and the carbon is more positive. Carbon dioxide is a lower-energy material than both charcoal and nitrate.”

Sarah was frowning at his explanation. "Then why doesn’t it react on its own? Why doesn't the gunpowder all burn up immediately?”

Nathan shrugged. “For the same reason wood doesn't burn until you light it. It needs a kick to get started. We call it activation energy. It’s like a ball on top of a hill, you need to give it a push to get it rolling. To start the reaction first you need to break the oxygen away from the nitrate to grab onto the carbon, which takes a bit of energy. But once it happens a little bit, the energy released will cause it to happen again and you get the chain reaction that causes an explosion.”

“And the same happens with normal fire, but the oxygen is in the air.” Stella said thoughtfully. Then she looked back at Nathan. “The key is in what likes to be positive and what likes to be negative. What determines that? Is there anything that can burn in other ways?”

“Hmm.” Nathan thought about his reply carefully. “It’s a trait called electronegativity. It basically means how much any given element likes being negative. Most things are already in a stable configuration because they’re paired in ways that make them happy.” He kicked the ground underfoot. “Sand doesn’t burn because it’s made of silicon bound to oxygen. The oxygen is more negative, and the silica is more positive. It’s basically already burnt, so it can’t burn again, like carbon dioxide. But lots of things would burn that you don’t expect. Most metals like being positive, but they’re just too dense to burn easily. They rust instead. But if you make some powdered metal it will burn well, especially when mixed with something like the nitrates in gunpowder. That’s how you make thermite, more or less.”

“You can burn metal? Stella asked incredulously at the same time as Sarah fixed Nathan with an intense gaze. “How do you make thermite?”

Sarah and Stella pestered Nathan with questions about how to make different kinds of things burn, and he answered jovially, casting around in his memory for a little while. Then he paused, staring off into space as he stumbled onto something interesting.

Ah, there it is. I should have read more random science blogs, they’re a fun corner of the internet.

Mental Vault 5 achieved!

He changed tacts from describing the oxidation potentials of various metals. “Some fuels will burn with certain oxidizers but not others. Oxygen likes being negative, but even oxygen gas is just neutrally charged. But if you could start off with positive oxygen, then it will burn with almost anything. And there’s a material that contains positive oxygen, called dioxygen difluorine, or more affectionately, FOOF.”

“Foof?” Stella said, mistrustful of the name. Or maybe it was the wide grin Nathan wore as he said it.

“Foof!” Nathan responded. “About the only thing it won’t burn is glass. It will make ice explode.” Then he remembered some of the math behind the article he'd read, and did a quick calculation. “I don’t know if you can summon any, but… maybe try really, really small amounts. A drop of it will probably explode about as hard as a normal fireball. With air as the fuel. If you give it charcoal that drop will be more like one of your plasma fireballs.”

Fire danced behind Stella’s eyes, and Nathan wondered if he’d made a mistake in describing ways to make bigger fires.

Probably not. She can already make some pretty big fires. How bad could it get?

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Arcane Nullfield 6
Permanent Talent 2: Immortal Body 5
Permanent Talent 3: Airwalking 7

Class: Void of Magic level 643
Deepened Stamina: 18202/19590

Void of Feeling

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Magic Anathema

Airborne Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Voluminous Aura

Denial of Wizardry

Mana Severance

Class: Spellslayer level 479
Regenerative Focus: 4890/4890

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Sneaky Blow

Antimagic Stealth

Magical Manipulation

Lethal Index

Wizard Resistance

Magic Jammer

Controlled Failure

Utility skills:

Wizard’s Meditation 8
Inspiration 7
Acceleration 10
Wizard’s Detection 6
Alertness 10
Wizard’s Understanding 7
Effortless Dodge 9
Mental Vault 5
Tutoring 5
Parkour 7
Visibility Control 2
High-tier Disguise 3
Mid-tier Battle Cry 10
High-tier Aura Manipulation 10