“Alright, alright, here comes the best part!” chuckled Asher as he sat upon a wooden beam far above the sprawling room below him.

Several white-robed men and women stood over an obsidian circle inlaid into the marble floor, reciting a deep and slow chant, calling forth the power within. Several nordic runes painted around the pitch-black ring began to glow, coming free of the ground and rising into the air.

“By the grace of Allivaine, tell us, o great runes, where might we find those we seek?” bellowed one of the robed men with his arms raised to the heavens. “Show us the way!”

The ring of runes began to rotate and move away from the circle to a large map of the continent, slowly shrinking in diameter as they spun faster and faster.

“And…” whispered Asher, looking on with a mischievous smile.

The glow coalesced into a single node of bright, halogen-blue light that settled on a single point on the map, towards the very north in a space populated by nothing but bone-like white.

“By the goddess, the Frostgrave Wastes?!” shouted one of the robed women. “Those children are as good as dead.”

“Silence!” angrily hissed another robed figure. “Our liege did not bring us here to deliver bad news! We have a location, and we must present it to Him!”

“You want me to be silent? You’re the one speaking nonsense!” shouted the same woman with a wicked glare. “Sending our troops to Frostgrave is a death sentence! Even for our elites! Who cares if those little snots are still alive, we won’t be able to bring them back!”

“Ha, what dumbfucks!” chuckled Asher as the wizards and nobles below him struggled to make sense of the ritual’s output.

“Good job, Ash,” came a feminine voice from the flip phone the agent held to his ear. The woman on the other end held a Zimbabwean accent with a heavy British tinge. “But you could very well have made the ritual point to somewhere more credible. We want to waste their time, not make them think something is wrong.”

“Come on, Khethiwe,” pouted Asher as he tried not to let the criticism throw off his good mood. “We’re blackops, and that means we have to keep our enemies confused. And that means sabotaging their tracking rituals to point to somewhere that can’t easily be checked.”

“What if they give up hope and switch to something other than the ritual altogether? Something we can’t as easily sabotage?” Khethiwe retorted. “We want them to stay distracted until Abhi and the others can rescue the children.”

“Relax, they’ve got full faith in the ritual! Which is befitting, since these idiots think that the runes came from their goddess, and they see her as infallible.”

“Say everyone,” said one of the robed figures from below, looking on at the map with a suspicious leer. “How do we know that the ritual even worked?”

Asher could feel Khethiwe’s smug expression from across the line.

“Blasphemy!” shouted the ritual’s leader, making everyone, including Asher, jump. “You dare sully the name of our Goddess?!”

And so could Khethiwe feel Asher’s.

“Wait, wait!” replied the same man as he put his hands in the air in supplication. “I mean we might have made a mistake with how we conducted the ritual! No fault towards the goddess!”

That seemed to satisfy the leader, who dismissed the misunderstanding with a sneer. “Very well then, perhaps we can conduct the ritual again, but the waste of resources is coming out of your pay Hefferdel. Understand?”

“Yes sir,” replied the man with a dejected look.

“Eh, I’ll call it a tie between us in that case,” said Asher as he regarded the robed figures preparing a second casting of the ritual. “But I changed their instructions and ingredients, so it should all go the same and still point to the middle of that icy wasteland. So I win the argument.”

“Hold on, you just said it was a tie,” replied a very confused Khethiwe. “How do you still win?”

“It’s a tie in that we were both correct about these people, but I’m more right, so I win! What’s so hard to get?”

“Whatever,” the woman grunted. “Just stay put to make sure this ritual goes the same way, and after that, we need Ashley to pay a visit to another group like this one. Asher’s already been spotted by the locals, so you’re going to have to make the switch.”

“Damn it!” shouted Asher. “I thought this was the last one!”

“It would be, but after Squad Charlie interrupted what was the only one, their king started organizing more of these locator rituals all over his kingdom. Probably to keep us from crashing at least one of his little soirees so that he has a chance to get one done unscathed. Too bad for him, we already know where they all are from intercepting his own messenger network.”

“And too bad for me, because I’m the one who has to do something about it,” whined the agent.

“Not anymore,” replied his boss with a mischievous giggle. “We’ve got someone coming to help you out this time!”

“Really now,” said Asher with curious mirth. “What prompted this? I thought I was doing a pretty decent job on my own. And who’s the lucky kid?”

“Apparently this is their biggest attempt yet, and they’ve even sent some VIP from the church to assist with it. So that means if we can covertly sabotage this ritual, we can have them believing whatever we want them to. And we have Lionel to help you out.”

“Oh come on!” Asher shouted in frustration, making some of the robed figures from below pause. He quickly quieted himself until their attention went back to the ritual. “Edgy McEdgerson? You’re really sending him to help me out?”

“He’s competent and actually knows the meaning of misdirection,” replied Khethiwe matter-of-factly. “We need them to truly believe whatever the ritual will tell them, and that means more steps to sabotage the thing. Besides, there are some weird rumors about this priest being a really big deal. I’ve got a bad feeling about him.”

“Fine,” said the agent with an accepting sigh. “But if you’re scared of this Very Important Priest, I can just stab him, you know.”

“We’re trying to make them believe us, Ash,” his boss deadpanned.

“Kidding, I’m kidding! Really, you need to lighten up. I’ll call you back once the second ritual here is done.”

“I’ll hold you to it. And be careful, Asher. Let’s save some lives.”

The man hung up the phone and stashed it in his pocket. “Alright, let’s see that instant replay of these idiots screwing up again! I fucking love watching the 5 stooges.”

“Raindrops fall toward Earth. The ritual continues. Fools, they’ll always be.” A man draped in a cloak as black as night, hosting a head of equally jet-dark hair and onyx-colored eyeliner leaned against a sturdy tree, regarding the large field before him.

“Hm, iambic pentameter,” nodded Ashley as she moved her long, red hair out of her eyes. “I never took you for a Shakespeare fan, Lionel.”

“It’s a haiku,” breathed the man opposite her in a whisper as he continued to stare ahead at the small group of people gathering in the flat, grassy space in the distance.

“Gesundheit,” she replied, using all of her effort to keep up her calm demeanor.

“You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?” asked Lionel with a single cocked eyebrow, still facing forward.

“Me? I’d never!” replied the woman with a shit-eating grin, no longer able to hold it in.

“I will forgive you for this, as we are still honor-bound to complete our mission, despite your outbursts. We shall make these fools suffer for taking human life for granted.”

“Make them suffer? I thought Khethiwe wanted us to be subtle or something?”

“They shall suffer in the long run,” replied the man with a snarl. “For now, yes, we shall be subtle.”

“Alright, Lionel,” said Ashley with a sigh, as she turned to face the clearing. “You’re the boss, somehow, so how do we go about this?”

“You have a list of changes to make, no?” asked the shadow-clad man. “You take on the first half, and I shall do the same with the rest.”

“Works for me,” shrugged the woman as she began to tie her loose hair into a ponytail. “Drinks on whoever finishes first!”

Lionel cocked his eyebrow once more, finally turning to face his partner. “Aren’t you going to be using the leftover operational funds to make that purchase? So how would it matter who buys it first?”

“It’s about the spirit of it, man,” scoffed Ashley as she began to make her way towards the group in the distance. “And how I’m going to kick your ass.”

“...Your ass has already been kicked,” replied the brooding man as he pushed himself off of the tree and followed right behind the woman.

“Alright, a quick muffle spell here, a light-bending one there, a little distraction in that little corner somewhere… and it’s showtime,” whispered Ashley as she concluded her rapid-fire spellcasting by setting fire to a particularly overgrown piece of shrubbery.

As the white-robed men and women rushed over to deal with the sudden conflagration, the woman skulked her way towards the table the royal ritualists were previously congregated at.

“Alright, first on the list was to switch up the instructions,” she whispered to herself. Rummaging through the loose papers scattered across the wooden bench, the [Rogue] found exactly what she was looking for. She took out a small bottle of solvent from her bandolier and began dabbing its contents over several of the symbols depicted on the parchment before following it up with a bottle of ink.

“Change this Iwaz to a ber… berker… bluetooth. Yeah, a bluetooth,” the woman repeated to herself as she carefully modified the ᛇ symbol into a ᛒ with a series of careful strokes of her quill. She even took extra care to copy the handwriting. “A tier 6 one, no less. Gotta stay accurate, after all. Can’t believe they broke those tier 5 runes out just for little old me!”

After completing several more of the changes, Ashley quickly moved onto the next item on her list, the paints. Taking out another vial, this one filled with a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, the woman poured it into the bucket filled with gold flakes and gave it all a stir. “Gold old aqua regina,” she chuckled to herself. “Stuff that can dissolve even gold! I’d like to see you perform your ritual without any gold paint, hehe.”

Her tasks done, the [Rogue] made ready to retreat back to a safe position, but not before performing one last trick. “[Conceal Meddling]. Damn, talk about a broken Skill! And I’m what? Only level 14?” The tossed papers returned to their original orderings and the gold paint’s brush rotated itself to its original position in the bucket, with the changes Ashley had made still remaining.

After a quick double check, the woman made her egress before the others could return, especially Lionel. Those free drinks were as good as her’s.