This girl may know her way around the place, and with her apparent enhanced sight, I don’t have to put in as much effort. The most striking features of the girl had to be her large yellow glowing eyes followed by a web of black veins underneath the skin. After a minute of sitting in silence, the girl began to speak aloud to an invisible companion.

“Wha-what was that?” she said in a raspy voice.

This was followed by a silence which I assume is the response as the girl lightly nodded her head to an invisible answer. Interesting, a soul connection perhaps? I was itching to take a look, but that is a very big over reach. Just a quick look never hurt anyone, that’s not true it has killed SEVERAL people, from the surface emissions and residual signal I could only detect that her soul had a few anomalies but nothing too out there.

The girl began to move and walked cautiously, seems like I really gave her quite a scare, towards the exit. She came upon large double doors of stone and knocked in a set pattern while injecting magic in a different pattern. The door jerked and slid open revealing several magic signatures along with a few scents. More people than what I was expecting but doesn’t look like anything too powerful. The girl looked around the hall skittishly but didn’t shy away when two large red-cloaked guards wielding halberds turned and stared at her intently. Unexpectedly when they met her eyes their bodies became rigid and the girl withdrew a dagger and slit their throats with practiced movements. Looks like I’m not the only one on an infiltration mission, I wonder how she knew the code though?

I could tell by reading the mechanism, but that comes from years of experience and expertise in trap making/dismantling. Despite their rapidly bleeding throats the men didn’t move or flinch and just stood there stiller than a stone. Since eye contact was the trigger then it was probably mind or soul magic, a much more advance and volatile branch of magic which mind magic is based on, and since there was no outward emission of magic it was probably soul magic. The thing is, if she had soul magic there was no real reason to kill them and leave bodies to be discovered, you could just cripple their soul which would leave them brain dead but still standing. Oh well, she must be a novice or just inexperienced in these situations, there could also be a multitude of other reasons.

The girl moved the guards by hand to stand in certain positions before the door automatically closed revealing a shabby protection ward that covered the guards along with everything surrounding the door. And that is why you have to be careful about who you kill, I bet one of my shiny coins that the ward would send a silent alarm if one of the guards were missing. The girl took one last glance to make sure everything was okay before speeding off down the hall. I followed close behind and matched her steps, I did skip a few paces each time, almost perfectly. In this mode of extreme concealment, it becomes difficult to detect magic and small traps, not that it really matters since even the shadows I was controlling were having a hard time finding me.

Light pitter-patter echoed out as the girl’s small legs caused her to look comical at the speed she was moving. The hall the room opened to was much less gaudy but still larger than it should be, it could probably fit four people shoulder to shoulder and I only needed to duck down a little bit to not touch the ceiling. Intermediate indents in the wall held dim flames that effectively only useful for atmosphere. We had traveled a distance before I detected something interesting and stopped while the girl continued on none the wiser. Several of the magic signatures took a hard left and disappeared into the wall. I took a closer look and found several smudged fingerprints upon the paint along with magic residue.

Looks like a secret door, I didn’t insert my own mana in case there was a mechanism that only accepts certain signatures. It was unlikely since the little girl easily passed through one but I’m still having doubts about the apparent incompetence of this organization. I grabbed one of the more intact strands and began to replicate it before mimicking one of the fingerprints as well. My claw retracted into my finger and a pattern that originally was absent appeared at the tip. Now for the sequence, this requires dating of magic insertion and prints which is normally incredibly difficult for anyone else, but I’ve made a living doing this kind of thing.

It turned out to be a very simple pattern and by adding slight inconsistencies into the replicated magic, which would cause an advanced to lock but not set off an alarm, I found the mechanism was simple and my precautions were unneeded. It opened all the same. I’m starting to feel stupid for treating this so seriously. A section of the wall beside me slowly opened revealing a staircase leading downward. To go or not to go. Hmm, it's risky but so far, they have proved incompetent so might as well. I slowly stalked the stairwell and watched every fluctuation carefully but once again it was for not. I’m starting to get pissed now.

Unlike the hall the stairs were cramped, I had to hunch over quite a bit to avoid the ceiling. Not that it really bothers me. I soon came to the exit and found a large room filled with tables and scurrying waiters, looks like I’m early to the party. Telling from the lack of utensils or tablecloths they are expecting guests probably from two to three hours from now. It wouldn’t be wise to just waltz in right now, so I went back up top. In another show of unpreparedness and naivety, the opening mechanism on this side was just a pull chain. I stopped thinking about how stupid these people were and tracked down the girl by her decidedly unique signature. She couldn’t have gone far.