The Steel Wings armorer was on the south bank of the river, with a huge sign made of carefully-crafted metal feathers. Just where Barin said it would be. It was large for an armorer, and the building seemed to be a newer construction. Perhaps the owner had a stroke of good luck, or his neighbors were just well paying.

Across the street from the armorer was a small house that looked a lot like Hirrus' own back in Yenon. Before the town had been burned down, of course. It was a narrow two-story house, relatively unadorned from the front, constructed mostly of wood. Surrounding it was a modest garden, with well manicured bush and tree, but none of them large enough to hide in or behind. Every window had a perfect sightline to the street.

The windows were dark, which was disheartening. But it was late into the night by now, so most of the neighborhood was the same. It didn’t mean that Orlina wasn’t home; he may have actually caught her asleep. If news hadn’t reached her that Clive was dead, she might be entirely unprepared to face him.

After what he’d heard about her, he was almost disappointed that she would be unable to put up a proper fight.

But Julissa hadn’t been prepared for what Last of the Strong had unleashed upon Yenon.

He didn’t deem it necessary to extend to them the courtesy that they’d denied her.

Hirrus wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. It was obvious that no great investment had been made into the building, since he was able to force it quickly and quietly with only a little work.

He was grateful he didn’t have to hack down the door. Not that he would have hesitated if necessary.

If the building was set up anything like his own, the bedroom would be right above the front door, and anything more than the light crack of the latch breaking would carry up through the floor. The noise he made by just forcing the lock could be mistaken for someone in the street, and might not earn further investigation.

Entering the house gave Hirrus a sense of vertigo. The actual construction of the building was very similar to that of his own home. Much of the furnishing was different - Orlina’s taste in decoration was heavy on framed maps and dead animal trophies rather than Julissa’s focus on landscape paintings and candlesticks - but the entry room was the same, with the hearth in the same place, the same nook under the stairs, and he could even look clear through the back into the kitchen that was a duplicate of his own.

Familiar instinct took over as he crept into the building. He found himself stepping around where he had kept a low bookshelf in his own home on his way to the stairs. He skipped the fourth stair on his way up, since in his own home, that board was loose and creaking. When he got to the bedroom door, he lifted the latch with a careful and practiced jiggle that minimized the simple mechanism’s rattling.

There was no one in the bed, and Hirrus grit his back teeth together. He considered the idea that Barin may have lied to him, but discarded the idea immediately. The rumormonger had told him that there was no guarantee that Orlina was there. It wasn’t his fault if she simply wasn’t home.

Hirrus abandoned the pretense of stealth and decided to poke around a little. It was possible that he might find some sign of where Orlina was, or perhaps even what to expect from a fight with her. There was a map of Inoha on the wall beside the door, and Hirrus picked over it carefully, wondering if it may hold some clue to the location of the guild manor. No such luck. The map was pristine for decoration, same as those he saw elsewhere in the house.

Looking over the rest of the room didn’t yield any leads. He developed an expectation of what she might be dressed like based on the contents of a dusty wardrobe and armor stand. It looked like a lot of black leather and purple cloth, along with a favoring towards burnished copper accents with ocean motifs.

He didn’t find any documents in any of the usual places, even when he found a writing desk in the upstairs back room above the kitchen.

As he poked around, the whole upstairs just didn’t feel lived in. A writing desk with no writing? The wardrobe and armor stand appearing to have been untouched for days? This was important. It meant something.

“Barin was wrong about the guild,” Hirrus muttered. “He expected them to be rats fleeing a sinking ship, but they’re not.”

He looked around the back room once more, and could see some signs of intent. The writing desk was clear of paper, but unlike the wardrobe in the bedroom, it wasn’t dusty. There was a nail in the wall with nothing hanging - a missing map, perhaps?

“They’re closing ranks,” Hirrus said, grimacing at the sudden realization. “Orlina was here recently, but not to stay. Just to make sure there was nothing left to give up their location. I won’t find anyone here.”

A creaking sound came from the stairs.

The same sound he’d avoided by skipping the fourth step up.

It was, perhaps, incorrect to believe he wouldn’t find anyone. The question was if Orlina would be the one coming up the stairs, or if he had, in fact, been set up. He didn’t hear a second creak of another foot ascending the stairs, so he thought there was a chance it was his would-be quarry, returning to clean up one last mess and finding much more than she expected.

Hirrus carefully stepped to the corner of the room, ducking down behind the writing desk and listening carefully. Booted feet went into the bedroom, and Hirrus strained his senses to try and detect where the wearer was.

His first priority at this point was to be undetected himself. If Orlina had come home, she would already know something was wrong - the busted latch on the front door would give that away - but she might think him long gone and go about her business. If she did that, he might be able to get the drop on her when she least expected him.

Waiting for her to prove to be alone or not was critical to his success. If she was accompanied by her entire raid team, she might still have them waiting at the door, ready to rush to her aid at the first sign of combat. Attacking before knowing for certain would be his death, not hers.

Hirrus held his breath as the booted feet left the bedroom and came towards the back room. In the leather armor of Orlina’s right hand man, he didn’t make a storm of clinking noises as he pressed himself against the wall. He did, however, hear the clinking of small pieces of metal moving against each other as the unseen figure stopped at the door.

Whoever it was grumbled quietly to themselves, giving up on the room. Their voice was in a feminine pitch, and as soon as the boots stomped away, Hirrus emerged from his hiding spot, creeping his way across the room as booted feet descended the stairs. He may have just been barely outside striking distance of Orlina. He couldn’t squander this chance.

“There’s no one here,” someone yelled from the backyard. “False alarm!”

Hirrus heard an angry shushing sound, and then nothing but quiet murmurs from the floor below.

So she wasn’t alone.

But he didn’t hear a storm of feet below him, or the scrape of moving furniture. Maybe three or four people in the house, then. Given that he was familiar with the size of the place, any more than that and there would be some fuss fitting them all downstairs in the main room at one time.

He could work with that.

Hirrus carefully closed the door to the back room and crept over to the head of the stairs. They hadn’t lit the hearth or any other lights downstairs, but that only meant they were still searching.

He dug into his inventory and retrieved a single silver coin. Weighing it carefully in his hand, he threw it straight up into the air. As soon as the coin was out of his hand, he ducked into the bedroom, leaving the door standing open as the unseen woman had left it.

The coin hit the floor with a soft click, and then started to clatter down the stairs.

In the nearly-silent house, it was clear as a bell to Hirrus' ears. He didn’t hear any immediate response, but he figured the sudden sound had driven the others to silence as well. He imagined them mid-argument, stone-still and straining to identify the sound.

True to his expectations, a moment later there was a creak on the fourth stair.

There was a scrape, and Hirrus - eyes closed and ears straining - pictured someone picking up the silver coin. He felt the sensation of someone in the upstairs hallway before he heard another sound. A gentle clink of armor confirmed that it was the same woman who had just headed down the stairs. Hirrus waited as she approached the back room. She had left the door standing open, and seeing it closed now would draw her past the bedroom door, letting him get behind her.

He crept into the hall as soon as he heard the rattle of the back room’s latch.

As soon as he saw her from behind, he expected that she wasn’t Orlina. The outfits in Orlina’s dresser had been black and purple, and this woman was wearing red and brown - what little cloth and leather was actually covering her body.

Orlina’s clothes had also been utilitarian and modest. This woman was wearing a brown leather cloak over one shoulder and red leather bracers and boots. Otherwise, she was dressed very provocatively. A short vest of metal scales left her midriff exposed, and her matching scale skirt was not even a foot long, ending just barely low enough to preserve the most generous sense of modesty.

Whether or not she was Orlina, if she was here, then she was a member of Last of the Strong. Likely one of the raid team Barin thought were powerful enough that he should fear.

Hirrus knew he had to deal with her quickly and quietly, before the people downstairs could join the fight. He was only a few strikes away from having one fewer foe to face.

His icy greataxe appeared in his hand, the low blue glow of the weapon illuminating just his hands.

The woman cracked the door open an inch, peering in with extraordinary caution, every muscle tensed to leap clear of a sudden threat. Unfortunately for her, the threat was coming not from inside the room, but from just behind her. Hirrus could only hope that she was similarly unprepared when it came to calling for help after his first strike came down.