Hirrus didn’t have to carry the body very far. The man had come from a small group of villas just a hundred yards off the Hari Path along a side road. There were only four larger buildings, and no sign of farmland or pasture nearby. The man must have been a wealthy retiree to live here with no obvious source of income.

Behind the villa was another footpath into the forest, where a surprisingly expansive cemetery waited within a small wrought-iron fence surrounded by pines.

Hirrus set the body down next to an unmarked stone.

When he started to dig, Alric immediately knelt down to help. Between the two of them, they made a proper grave in only a few minutes.

They lowered the corpse into it gently, and Hirrus crossed the man’s hands over the hole that had been burnt into his overshirt by whatever acidic poison the masked adventurer had afflicted him with. Clambering out of the hole, the pair of them started to push the pile of dirt back into the grave.

Halfway through, Hirrus was aware that they weren’t alone. He felt eyes on him, just as he had in the ruins of the first town.

They were being watched.

“Hm,” he said, stopping for a moment.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel for whoever it was with his other senses, but the sound of his own heavy breathing - and the sound of Alric shoveling more dirt - meant that the only thing he had to go on was the vague and directionless sense of a presence.

“I’m going to check the buildings,” Hirrus said. “In case there’s another to bury.”

“Sure,” Alric grunted, shoving a lump of dirt into the grave. “Leave me to my own bright idea to find more manual labor for us. That seems fair.”

Hirrus ignored the comment, moving back down the footpath towards the villa. He focused his attention on the sense of being watched.

One of two things was bound to happen. Either the sense would go away as whoever was watching revealed themselves to attack Alric, or it wouldn’t as the watcher followed him and he could lure them into one of the buildings to confront there.

The sense of being watched followed him most of the way down the footpath. But, after a minute, it faded.

He stopped for a second, waiting to see if it returned.

When it didn’t, he knew.

Alric was in danger.

The Split Second Arcana let Hirrus rush most of the way back to the cemetery in a flash. Alric had finished pushing dirt into the grave, and was leaning against the stone. The stone now held the name and epitaph of the man who had died.

Alan Pierce

Survived many unhappy endings to find a happy one.

Instead of focusing on that, Hirrus’ attention scanned the graveyard. It didn’t take long for him to orient on a figure creeping its way towards Alric. Their back was to him, and they were keeping low to the ground. It wasn’t difficult to recognize that they were going to strike as soon as they were noticed. Hirrus wouldn’t have been that afraid if they were just another adventurer - he doubted that Alric would die in an instant against a single person Hirrus could swat by the bucket - but he feared that they were something else.

He feared that they were like him.

With Split Second still on cooldown, he didn’t have a lot of options. The abilities he had that would slow the would-be assassin down didn’t have very long reach. Icy Grief was touch range, and Chilling Howl would only affect the immediate area around him. Even Oil Sear would just barely reach - and even then, it would only slow them down for under a second before they could step out of the burning tar.

With all of those Arcana obviously unusable, he fell back on his only remaining option.

Activating Eyes On Me made a crackling noise that caused the figure to freeze. It was just enough warning that they flung themselves behind a gravestone in the brief cast time for Melisune’s Eye, letting them avoid the effects. The cover prevented them from taking damage or being petrified, but it did stop them from launching themselves at Alric.

“Holy shit what the fuck!” Alric cursed, flailing his arms and diving for cover himself. “Who are you? What the fuck?”

“Identify yourself,” Hirrus barked. He kept his eyes fixed on the grave marker the person had hidden behind. He had two more gaze attacks ready to blast them with if they tried to pop out and attack.

They didn’t say anything.

Hirrus felt a moment of relief. An adventurer would have immediately started flapping their gums in a way to establish dominance. But if they were afraid of him, it was possible that they weren’t an actual threat.

Without taking his eyes off of the stone the person was hiding behind, he waved his hand at Alric, gesturing for him to get behind him. The man scrambled to obey.

“I’ll only ask one more time,” Hirrus said, taking a step towards the person’s cover. “Who are you?”

They made no response.

Hirrus found himself trapped between two options. He could back away slowly and force them to come to him or let him escape, or he could move forward and force them into a confrontation. It seemed wisest to live and let live, but he felt like he was flying blind. He needed information. The dying man had given him a nugget of knowledge, and he was hungry for more. If this was one of Rumi’s creations, they might be able to tell him where to find the man and stop his operation.

There wasn’t an obvious way to extract that information, though. Melisune’s Eye was the only way he could reliably lock a foe down to take them prisoner for questioning, and it had a very long cooldown remaining right now. The only way Hirrus could get information from them would be to get them talking in a fight. Overpowering this person and driving them into a corner might cause them to launch into an ill-advised monologue while they stalled for time.

It was a flimsy plan, but it was the only way Hirrus could turn this situation to his advantage.

He approached the attacker’s gravestone cover carefully, trying to be ready for anything. His approach would likely make them desperate, and so he had to expect any sort of attack as he reached the cover and forced the confrontation.

Of course, what happened wasn’t something he had considered an option.

Behind the gravestone was nothing.

“Hm,” Hirrus grunted, suddenly confused, concerned and chagrined all at once.

“What?” Alric asked from a healthy distance. “Who is it?”

“There’s no one here,” Hirrus said, looking around at the other gravestones. “They’re gone.”

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Alric said, suddenly looking around in an obvious panic. “Shit on me. Shit on me. I’m gonna fucking die.”

“You’re not going to die,” Hirrus snapped. “They ran off, that’s all.”

“That’s how it starts,” Alric insisted, moving to the wrought-iron fence and putting his back to it. “First they vanish, and then we let our guard down, and then boom! They pop out of thin air and kill the red shirt.”

Hirrus looked over his shoulder to confirm his own memory. “Your shirt is green,” he observed.

“That’s not what that means,” Alric said. “I mean that I’m-”

There was a flicker of movement at Hirrus’ feet, and he almost just stood there, dumbfounded by it.

The figure he’d seen before was now crouched right there where he’d expected them to be before.

Up-close, he got a good look at them for the first time.

Their mismatched adventurer’s garb was all various leather pieces, but every piece was a different color and style. They wore a headpiece that was a red leather hood with a cloth mask covering their mouth and nose. Their chest was covered in black leather reinforced with metal studs, while their leg equipment looked more like an immense collection of belts and chains wrapped around cloth pants than proper armor. They wore soft brown leather gloves, in stark contrast with boots that were practically menacing with metal spikes on the toe and reinforcing plates on the heel.

Under the armor, Hirrus could tell the person was feminine.

And also like him.

The thick-bladed dagger in her hand lanced up at Hirrus’ face as she stood, moving in a brutally efficient attack to open up a cut on his hairline to dump blood into his eyes.

He barely slipped to the side before the attack landed.

Her move had been calculated. The slash at his face - as dangerous and efficient as it was - was a feint. As her true attack, the next movements of her body were the rhythmic flow of an Arcana. A shockwave blasted outwards from her.

The attack did five thousand and thirty-six damage to him, with an obvious knockback effect that almost took him from his feet.

It shocked him. The damage was a heavy hit for something without a long cast time, and she wasn’t even amplified by her Merciless form.

That told him something important. Something that was honestly a little frightening.

She was as strong as he was.

Maybe stronger.

Hirrus quickly fell into a defensive stance. If he was going to face someone who was an even match, the last thing he wanted was to start from a position of overconfidence.

The woman stood, leveling her dagger towards him.

Hirrus sensed that her attack had been accompanied by a speed boost, just from the way her limbs moved.

She was going to close the distance with speed, and he had to carefully consider if he had enough of an opening to activate his own buffing Arcana before she would be-

In an instant she turned and ran.

Even in his caution, Hirrus had underestimated how much speed the Arcana had given her. She bolted away like a startled rabbit, far too fast for him to hope to catch even if Split Second had been available.

“Hm.”