The eerie light of the magical lanterns formed five sticklike shadows as Hollie walked into the armory, and Vance watched these shadows, waiting for their malnourished mistress to approach him. He was in a difficult situation, because he knew that Himilco was waiting for him at the un-barred window. The roles had reversed, and the lone assassin was being shepherded into an ambush. But even in these circumstances, he remained calm and composed. It was too early to panic. Even if the door and window were blocked by his enemies, there was a third exit that only he knew about and that only he could use. His fate rested not on luck or brute force but on timing and execution.

The five emaciated shadows fell into place. Hollie stood in the perfect spot. And Vance rushed out of hiding. He moved as fast as a snake bites, and with two soundless steps, he was right behind her. Spectral Execution. As the helmet fell off his neck to reveal his Flame of Revival, he grabbed her shoulder with his left hand and guided the spectral dagger with his right. The weapon almost stabbed her in the back, but her body suddenly turned semi-transparent. Her shoulder slipped through Vance’s grasp as if she had been an impalpable ghost, and his Spectral Execution missed its target completely.

She can use Become Spectre. Vance took a quick step back to avoid a potential counterattack. This complicates everything.

Become Spectre was a double-edged defensive Skill, which was meant to save a Spectral Assassin in a dire crisis. For 1200 MP, it granted an invincibility that lasted for a full 5 seconds and nullified both physical and magical damage. But there was also a cooldown of equal length, and during this cooldown, the once invincible user received double damage from all attacks. Furthermore, if the ghost of the user overlapped with a physical object at the end of the 5 seconds, the duration of the Skill was extended at a cost of 10% HP per extra second, and the subsequent cooldown was also extended by the same length.

But it’s very difficult to abuse this 10%-HP rule because only the user gets the countdown notifications. Vance finished reabsorbing the tricky details of the Skill description, which he had memorized back when his class was Spectral Assassin. 1200 MP … I shouldn’t make any unfounded assumptions about her level or base Mana, and I can’t rule out her spamming the damn Skill. He watched as the ghostly Hollie turned around to face him. The cooldown window is my only chance to strike. I need to land a Spectral Execution before Himilco decides to join the fight. Otherwise, I’m done for.

“You son of a bitch!” Hollie shouted. “Why did you do it?”

The duration of Become Spectre ended, and she simultaneously swung her spectral scythe at him. It was another spectral Skill called Reaper’s Wrath. The silhouette of the Grim Reaper appeared behind Hollie, and it mirrored her movements with its bony limbs, doubling the damage of her attack and giving her the infinitesimal but spine-chilling 1% chance to execute Vance. The weapon drew a shadowy arc as it cut through the light. It had a long reach. It couldn’t be blocked by the thickest armors or shields. And its potential damage couldn’t be belittled in any scenario.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Vance said.

With a backward step, he moved out of the way of the Reaper’s Wrath. Then he lunged into a quick offensive. The scythe took time to swing, and it couldn’t hit a target that was too close, so he banked on his fast approach. He didn’t have enough Mana for a Spectral Execution, but he slashed at Hollie with his dagger and left a long dark-green trail across her light armor.

It’s working. I did damage.

It was his first successful attack, and it gave him confidence. He reversed his grip on the dagger and went for a vertical stab, but she caught his wrist in the air. He pushed, and she pushed back. Then he raised his other hand to punch her, but she banished her scythe and caught his fist. They reached a complete standstill, both unable to wield their weapons of choice, both pushing against a force of equal strength.

She’s not turning into a ghost … Did she use up her MP, or is she being careful?

“You didn’t mean to kill her?” Hollie said, as if to utter the words that had been repeating inside her. “What kind of excuse is that? Next you’ll be calling it an accident or some other bullshit!”

“It’s the truth,” Vance said calmly, pushing harder, trying to overpower her.

“Fuck you and your truth! That girl was innocent! You lured her to that fusty room! You used her and killed her when you were done!”

Vance didn’t say anything in response, and both of his arms began to shake. It was not because of guilt or regret but because of a much more complicated feeling—a sense of identity loss, a grave lack of self-trust, a severed connection between the conscious and subconscious. Himilco Magus wanted to punish him for breaking the law, but Hollie wanted him to pay for what he had done to Shannon. And her raw anger forced him to think about what it was that he had done. Did he commit murder without purpose? Kill without meaning? Just as Timathor hoarded stale food, even when fresh prey was abundant? Did Vermeil Activator encourage violence, or did it simply reveal a suppressed instinct?

Why did I do it? His arms weakened.

It was the chance that Hollie had been anticipating. Without wasting her Mana on Become Spectre, she let go of his hands and slipped away. In a flash, she was on his right, and when he regained focus and turned to face her, she had already curled her fist and aimed it at his liver. A direct punch would’ve been devastating, but he knew better than to gift her such a critical hit. With lightning reflexes, he managed to move his body sideways, and the liver shot landed a few centimeters off target. He minimized the damage but still felt acute pain as her fist twisted his insides.

“Shannon felt worse pain when you killed her!” Hollie shouted.

Vance moved his arms in front of his torso to guard against a second punch, but Hollie took a step back and kicked him on his forearms. It seemed that she had predicted his reaction, and although he was guarding properly, her quick kick made him lose his balance. He fell on the grainy ground and found his back against a stack of weapon cases. Wasting no time, she equipped her scythe and slashed at him, but he quickly rolled to the side and dodged the attack.

Where his nimble roll ended, he found a case with an iron dagger inside. He broke the glass cover, turned around in a hurry, and threw the dagger at Hollie. She couldn’t block it or deflect it with her scythe, but she still refused to use Become Spectre and relied on her light armor for protection. As Vance stood up again, she pulled the iron dagger out of her shoulder to reveal nothing but the shallowest wound—a thin line of red between folds of damaged leather.

She’s not letting anger get in her way. Vance began to retreat because he was afraid of a scythe-borne retaliation. She’s judging the damage before she acts. And she’s not giving me a chance to use Spectral Execution.

“You didn’t mean to kill her, right? Just as you didn’t mean to kill me now!”

She threw the iron dagger back at Vance, who had already retreated to a safe distance and now dodged it without a problem. Then she banished her scythe, grabbed three throwing knives from her belt, and sent them flying in rapid succession. The knives drew diverging lines as they traveled toward Vance, and while the first two limited his movement, the third managed to graze his left shoulder. It left a mere cut near the end of his collarbone, but this light injury served as a clear message: an eye for an eye.

“You’ll feel all the pain Shannon felt,” Hollie said, equipping her spectral scythe again. “And I’ll dig a grave for you next to hers.”

“Why do you care so much about her?” Vance said, trying to buy some time to come up with his next move. “You talk as if you knew her, but you only met today, didn’t you?” He paused for a second. How do I know this? An image of the tranquil riverside flashed in his mind. Shannon … Yes, Shannon herself told me. He continued more confidently, “You haven’t spent that much time together. So why … why the hell are you so obsessed with avenging her death?”

“I didn’t need a minute to tell that she was everything I wasn’t,” Hollie said, with an impassioned tone. “She was full of fears and doubts. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She was struggling to take a step forward … to accept herself and find her place in the world. And I could’ve helped her … I could’ve fucking helped her! But she told me she wanted to partner with someone her own level. She chose you over me, and you killed her!”

“I did nothing wrong.” Vance took a subtle step right.

“Nothing wrong?” Hollie stepped closer to him.

“You know very little about what happened, and—”

“And what? I’m supposed to let you go?” She stepped closer.

“And it’s none of your business.” He took another step right.

“Fuck you! I decide what my business is! You killed her, and I’ll kill you!”

By now, Hollie was boiling with rage. Her arms had mountains and valleys of protruding veins and sunken skin. Her hand clenched her scythe as if she was strangling it. Her heels climbed up, and before Vance could say another word, she took the last forward step that she needed and swung her scythe at him with all the brutish strength from her anger. High the weapon went until its curved blade disappeared through the ceiling, and down it came, like a gavel, to put an end to the chase and see justice through.

You’re not gonna kill anyone today. Vance took one last step right and pushed a tower of weapon cases. His one touch set the whole heap into unstoppable motion, and it collapsed at almost the same speed of the scythe, interrupting the attack and turning the well-aimed slash into an embarrassing miss.

Hollie fell on the ground and raised her arms as if to guard her nonexistent head. It seemed to be the result of human instinct, which still functioned even while she was a Headbound. The tower didn’t collapse on her, but she was too close to the danger. All around her, glass shattered, and weapons scattered. The clangs of cheap metal mixed with the blunt thumps of wood to create orchestral noise. And even after the cases settled, clouds of gray dust lingered in the air to give the impression of a long-lasting disaster.

Amid the chaos, Vance retreated behind the partition wall into the northeast section of the armory. He knew that it was a dead end, but he didn’t care.

“Come back here, you son of a bitch!” Hollie shouted.

Scrunches came as she stepped on wooden fragments and glass shards. Her footsteps foretold her arrival, and at the next moment, she appeared in Vance’s Mental Eye. She was turning around the partition wall. He saw her running. Then he saw her stopping in surprise. She thought that he had been fleeing, but he was actually waiting for her there—right behind the thin wall.

As soon as she made her ill-advised turn, he swung his spectral dagger at her. He aimed for her abdomen and moved his arm as fast as he could. Speed was everything. He didn’t want to give her time to tell whether he had activated a Skill. He wanted her to think and act as if the worst had been happening.

And Hollie fell for it. She only saw the hostile Flame of Revival in her haste. Mistaking the normal attack for a Spectral Execution, she made a split-second decision and activated her double-edged defensive Skill. Become Spectre turned her into an intangible ghost, and she emerged unscathed, feeling no pain even with the dagger inside her stomach.

“You’re mine now!” she shouted.

She took two steps back in a hurry and swung her spectral scythe at him with Reaper’s Wrath. It moved from right to left in a wide horizontal sweep, and such an attack couldn’t be easily avoided. A single back step would hardly be enough. A jump would be useless. A roll to the right or left would be deadly. But Vance didn’t shriek or flinch. Without a speck of fear, he lunged toward Hollie’s ghost. He rolled forward and passed through her, avoiding the spectral scythe by dodging into its wielder. The five seconds of invincibility ended. As her body regained its physical form, he turned around. He was now behind her, and it was his chance.

Spectral Execution.

There was nothing she could do. Mist erupted from his dagger, covering his arm and part of his torso with a layer of darkness. He had waited patiently for this moment, and he now savored every part of it. His arm moved fast and buried the dagger into the inviting back of his victim. Dark-green cracks spread all over it, and Hollie arched forward as if she had been impaled on a steel pike. It was a clean hit, and although her HP bar remained unknown, it was fair to assume that between 60 and 80 percent of it had evaporated, especially because Vance had double his base Intelligence in Middlerift.

“The level difference saved you, bitch,” he said, putting her in more pain by moving the dagger like a screw. “Next time it won’t. So stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, and stop trying to play the hero.”

He pulled the dagger out of her back and simultaneously kicked her away.

As she fell helplessly on her knees, the moment the ghastly weapon was fully out of her back, Vance suddenly disappeared from the solar-elven armory. He vanished without a trace, as if he had never been trapped inside. The door and window were still blocked by his enemies, but there was a third exit that only he knew about and that he now used: the failed Spectral Execution itself.

Skill Description Name Spectral Execution Evolution Phase 3 Cost 500 MP Description

You spend mana to hone your spectral weapon. Your next normal attack deals 1.5 times the normal magical damage. Your next sneak attack deals 2.0 times the normal magical damage.

If a successful sneak attack lands, weaker enemies in the area are inflicted with Fear of the Unknown (Bane). If a normal or sneak attack lands but fails to kill the target, you are teleported by Modus Cimmerian.

***

Teleportation was one of the most complex and rule-riddled types of magic, because it involved both body reconstruction and the manipulation of space and time. And even when these processes were automatic, as in a failed Spectral Execution, there was still a set of hidden rules that helped determine the final destination of the teleporter. Vance had tried to study these rules, and although he couldn’t fully understand them, although he never reached the proficiency of mages or philosophers, he was still able to gather enough knowledge to make educated guesses—reasonable predictions that helped him plan ahead.

The unstated mechanics favored open spaces over nooks and crannies, closer destinations over long travel, and solid ground over water or ice. No collisions or merges happened. And the teleporter was supposed to receive no damage during the space-time leap. Moreover, in the special case of Spectral Execution and similar sneak-oriented Skills, there was another important consideration: detection by adversaries. Every time, without exception, an assassin would be teleported out of immediate reach and sight—to a safe location that enemies couldn’t discover by a lucky glance or a simple look over the shoulder.

These were the most lucid rules, and reasoning using them—realizing that the armory was crammed with obstructive objects and predicting the positions of his enemies—Vance had made the educated guess that a Spectral Execution would send him outdoors. And it did. After he was done humiliating Hollie, he found himself on the roof of the armory. It wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be at the moment, but it was the closest place that satisfied the conditions for automatic teleportation. And it revealed that he was in a dire situation—much worse than he had imagined.

With a bird’s-eye view, he could see the beginnings of furor. Pedestrians were gathering. Riders were galloping down the dirt roads. And a commotion was already growing in the nearby alleyways. I need to leave before I get surrounded. He turned to face the direction of the distant market. He could almost see the faint silhouettes of the giant mantises, the breathing vehicles of his escape, parked beyond the unsightly clay slums. And without a second of delay, he was running toward them. From the roof of the armory, he jumped to the chimney of the neighboring building. He stepped on it and then landed in a roof garden.

A watering can rested next to a closed hatch. Packets of seeds and fertilizer lined up against a clay parapet. And there were eight parallel rows of pots, each planted with herbs that resembled basil, coriander, or dill. Vance passed by the hatch but judged that it was too early to leave the roofs. He noticed the packets but ignored them when he realized that they were gardening supplies. And he finally hurried along the rows of leafy herbs, guided by the belief that he should stay on the move. He caught sight of the next roof, which had archery training equipment, and prepared for a jump.

But the next jump never came. He imagined the upward step on the parapet, the bending and stretching of his knee, the flight across the dingy alley, and the landing amid targets and quivers. The images were vivid, but they never found a place in reality. And as he came to a gradual stop, it only felt as if he had been dreaming of that jump and all the jumps that would follow it. Even the distant silhouettes of the mantises disappeared from his conscious awareness. He stood stock-still and watched as a graceful hand reached toward a luxuriant plant.

Standing four steps away, Himilco Magus nipped off the leaves of an herb and raised them to his elephantine trunk as if he could smell through the bronze. A moment passed before he scattered the leaves in the air. The wind carried them away, and he said, with a rather sad but serene voice, “Lunar elves are still the most gifted botanists even here in Middlerift. It’s their spirituality that guides them. It allows them to accomplish daunting tasks and conceive revolutionary ideas. The Pact of Lost Flames is often said to be one of their proposals. ‘Ethics without god; revival without decay,’ they famously said.”

Vance only tightened his grip on his spectral dagger.

“Did you really think you could escape from me? And by teleporting? Out of all the methods in existence, you chose Modus Cimmerian.”

“You were watching the fight.”

“Yes, and it was quite entertaining,” Himilco smiled. “I thought Hollie would scare you out of the armory, but it was you who gave her quite the scare.”

“What happened to your rules? ‘Abandon not a Headbound in need.’ ”

“She asked me not to interfere.”

“You wanted us to fight to death.”

“On the contrary, I was hoping you’d both live. After all, you still have to give back all the time you received from donors. Or did you forget? Seven days need to return to their rightful owners before you die.”

“You don’t want to waste my Flame of Revival.”

“Exactly,” Himilco smiled. “Why else would I let a hypocrite live this long?”

“You’re the hypocrite. You gave me the patches.”

“No one has ever committed murder because of Vermeil Activator.”

“I’m not buying that.”

“The patches give you happiness and bliss.”

“It was more like a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?”

“What I remember of it, anyway.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s what happened,” Vance said. “I think … I think I might’ve been going through Shannon’s memories. I saw parts of her past.”

“Were you having a threesome with a Honeydew Fly or what?”

“You can mock me as much as you want, but this is the truth.”

“Oh, yes, ‘the truth.’ ”

“I saw how much she suffered, who she killed to become a slayer, how she was arrested by the Church of Amirani,” Vance said. “It was all too connected to be a meaningless hallucination. Then she appeared in front of me and asked me to kill her. Vermeil Activator made me go through all of this confusing shit … And when I woke up, she was dead.”

“You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?” Himilco said. “First, it was ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ Then it turned into ‘I did nothing wrong.’ And now you’re trying to point the finger of blame at me.”

“I wouldn’t have killed her if I had been in my right mind.”

“How many patches did you use?” Himilco asked.

The question was simple, but Vance found himself tongue-tied. I … I didn’t use any patches. He suddenly remembered that he had only kept them in his pocket. He didn’t even put them in his bag, because he was too afraid that they could rub off on his potion bottles and affect him later. I didn’t use them. I didn’t stick them to my skin. He checked his pockets in a hurry. He turned them inside out and even left them hanging like tents. But there was nothing. When, where, and how did I lose them? This doesn’t make any sense.

“Did you use all five patches?” Himilco said.

“No, I … I didn’t use any of the patches you gave me.”

“Oh, my.” Himilco giggled, not with ridicule but with honest amusement. “First, you blame them for everything, and now you’re saying that you’ve never used them? I’m starting to think you’re really out of your mind, Vance.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Forget the House of Turncoats. I should take you to a madhouse.”

Am I … Am I really insane? Vance felt his heart racing. No, I’m not … Everything has a logical explanation, even if it’s not apparent. The wind blew cold air at him. I could’ve lost the patches. They could’ve fallen out of my pocket. His heartbeats grew louder and louder. But that doesn’t explain how I ended up with a Redspine High. And even if I claim that the patches were stolen from me, I still end up with no explanation … unless ... unless someone stole them and then stuck them to my body. He considered this possibility. No … It sounds outrageous. Why would anyone do that? The risk is too big. Plus there’s no motive or benefits to counterbalance it.

“You’re brittle. And I don’t want to break you by mistake,” Himilco said, after the silence had lasted too long. Then he threw a stalk of Targrass near Vance’s feet. The stalk danced madly in the wind, but the heavy rubber seeds at its top kept it from flying away. “Accept your fate. Dip the Targrass into your Flame of Revival, and offer me all of your remaining time.”

My flame …

“This way, you also get to die with some dignity.”

Punishment …

“Your death will restore peace to Argilstead.”

Peace … The guardians …

“And I will make sure you receive a burial, even if you don’t deserve it.”

That’s it! That’s the motive! The fragmented thoughts suddenly combined—a veritable eureka moment. And Vance said, “If I murder someone in Argilstead, do the Dullahans get my remaining hours? Do they get my Flame of Revival?”

Himilco was taken aback by these few words. He fell silent and spent more time than usual preparing his answer. Then he said, grudgingly, “Yes, the Pact of Lost Flames gives them this special right, but the donors have precedence in these circumstances. They gave you their precious time, and they deserve to get it back now that you’ve shown us your true colors.”

“I don’t care about the fucking donors now! If the Dullahans get my flame, will they split the remaining hours among themselves?”

“What does it matter?”

“Give me an answer. I have the right to know.”

“No, they won’t split the flame.”

“It will go to a single Dullahan,” Vance said.

Himilco remained silent.

“The one in charge of the crime scene, perhaps?”

“The donors have precedence.”

“Who has the right to claim my Flame of Revival, Himilco?”

“The donors have the full right.”

“It’s Eleanor, isn’t it?”