“How are we supposed to sneak all this gear into the capital?” Sam asked, idly spinning the cylinder on a heavy-duty revolver with his thumb. They were hidden in the forest just outside the walls of Hope because Sam, a giant in full military gear with a big, obviously high-tech rifle stood out like a sore thumb.

Linquala had reluctantly left them there after an hour and a half of petting, departing with an offer for Sam to live in her forest for the rest of his natural life, if he chose. Or weekend visits, at least.

“Probably hide them under some farmer’s potatoes,” Faera said, shrugging the strap over her shoulder. “You’re gonna need a change of clothes, again.”

“Are you kidding?” Sam asked, glancing at his clothes. “These things are flame retardant. There’s no way I’m going back to being wrapped in a sheet.”

“Alright then, here’s the plan,” Faera said. “I’ll enter the city for recon, and you sneak in and meet me in that tower, two hours after midnight.” Faera pointed at the highest tower in the city, unarguably the best sniping spot, especially when the dragon was taller than any obstructing building.

Sam studied the stone wall surrounding the capital, which was patrolled by a guard every hundred feet or so. The security seemed a bit lax, probably because they were so far from the battlefront, but that didn’t mean it was nonexistent.

“I can do that,” Sam replied, folding his arms. “Just make sure you don’t get caught or killed.”

Faera snorted. “Out of the two of us, who’s come close to dying more often since we met?”

“I take that as a compliment,” Sam said.

Faera hid a subsonic pistol in her peasant’s garb, then draped a loose shawl over herself. She walked to the east and disappeared into the woods. Half an hour later, Sam saw her walking alongside a band of traders on the road to the main gate. He laid the VAMPR down and watched the exchange through the scope. The guards waved the group in when the caravan leader handed him a small sack of something or other.

In cities where bribes were commonplace, this exchange was no different than paying a toll; the gatemen were underpaid and compensated via bribes, which their superiors took a chunk of in turn. The money flow was a bit more… stagnant, but the flow was there all the same. It would do no good for Sam to report the gatekeeper for accepting bribes in a system like that.

Sam blinked and disengaged from that line of thinking. He was already outside the law. He was planning on assassinating the leader of the country; that alone had been unthinkable two months ago…

Sam’s hands began to tremble as he considered his purpose. He was going to topple a government. It was the exact opposite of everything he’d been created to do.

Enforce the law? Great! Investigate murders? Sure. Fight wars? Okay. If he killed the dragon, he might save a thousand elves, but the entire country would most likely be plunged into civil war. Sam had seen the uneasy fear of its citizens, and he knew dissenters disappeared, but the simple question that he had to ask himself was this: Would more people live if he didn’t kill the dragon?

Sam had never thought he would be responsible for that kind of decision. What was the proper course of action? He glanced up at the sun, which hadn’t yet reached its apex in the sky. He had a little over fifteen hours to think about it, so he might as well get started.

Sam slid back, deeper into the woods and out of sight of the wall, where he sat with his back against a tree, and closed his eyes. Uneasiness roiled in Sam’s gut, until he was struck by a moment of clarity. It was a perversion of the law to twist a country’s people into worship of a god-king.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Sam whispered, his eyes flickering beneath his eyelids. An immortal dictator was so far removed from humanity that he could not possibly be expected to understand or care for the people, viewing them only as possessions. If Tyranus continued to have his way, how would he shape the lives of his people?

Sam began to feel odd and dizzy, as though he’d damaged his inner ear.

He was suddenly standing beside a line of merry, grotesquely fat men and women. They wore expressions of ecstatic joy and excitement as they filed into the room ahead of them one at a time. None of them acknowledged his presence. Sam’s fingers slid through the apparitions, and he found himself drawn alongside a portly man as he waddled forward, laughing and chatting with the woman in front of him. Sam couldn’t hear what they said, and they didn’t acknowledge his shouts.

The gray brick of the hallway swept by slowly as they stepped forward, until Sam found himself pulled through the door. Beyond was a sparse room with a wooden desk, behind which sat a thin man with horn-rimmed glasses. He and the fat man Sam was following exchanged a silent conversation, then the fat man began to strip.

When the fat man was done disrobing, the thin one offered him a black hood. The fat man donned it without hesitation. The thin man guided him to the next door, and opened it. Sam’s stomach roiled. The hall was covered in blood, and a butcher was busily sawing away at the naked woman who’d been in front of them in line.

Sam began to hyperventilate as he watched the fat man sit down on a sticky table, his ecstatic smile just beginning to falter. As another butcher took position behind him with a knife, Sam felt a tap on his shoulder.

Startled, Sam opened his eyes and turned to his left. But he was still in the butcher’s room and the thin man stood beside him, smiling as he looked into Sam’s eyes. “You’re getting closer. Come find me when you remember, Sam.”

Sam’s eyes flew open. He was panting, sweat rolling down his forehead. What the hell was that? That went far beyond his imagination, and actually showed him something. Every second of it had been real to his eyes. Who was the thin man that’d known his name, and was what he’d seen real?

In a world where a man could make him pass out or change his appearance with a wave of his hand, Sam knew that he should be suspicious, but somehow he knew that was where humanity was heading under the direction of a dragon.

Sam took a deep breath to steady his racing heart. That settled it for Sam. The dragon needed to die.

He glanced up at the sun, but it’d barely moved since Faera had entered the city. Sam closed his eyes again, and steadied his breathing. Open the Sierra folder for review, Sam commanded, hoping he didn’t fall into another gruesome vision.

When the sun had been down for four hours, Sam hoisted Faera’s duffle bag of ammo and extra guns over his shoulder and began his approach. Between the VAMPR and the crook, his hands were full.

Sam walked through the open clearing outside the city, unhurried despite the risk of discovery. Skulking implied guilt. Maybe if someone saw him, they’d think he was lost or confused. Sam would ask where the main gate was, then disappear back into the woods. If they saw him skulk, the story might end differently.

The moon was helpfully absent tonight, and Sam was next to the city wall in a matter of minutes. He set down the crook, useless against a forty-foot wall despite the wood’s impressive resilience, before pulling up the VAMPR and holding it directly against the stone. Sam depressed the button, and with a rush of air, a large chunk of the wall disappeared, leaving a bore hole just large enough for Sam to crawl through with his gear.

Sam hoisted himself up and as he scrambled through the hole on his hands and knees, he reminisced about the search-and-rescue sims that had the team crawling through tons of collapsed stone to find objectives. Those were the sims that irritated Sam the most. There wasn’t really anything to fight, and one mistake would end up killing one or more of them, with no way to fight back or reverse the situation.

Reaching the end of the tunnel, he clambered out in the darkness. Sam fished a flashlight out of the duffel bag and took a quick look around. The wall was pressed against a stone house that had a two-inch disk taken out of its side. The space separating the structures was barely enough for Sam to move his elbows.

Not seeing anyone, Sam stowed the flashlight and recalibrated the VAMPR to purge with zero forward momentum. He then lined the gun up with the hole and depressed the trigger. With a crack of displaced air, the wall reappeared in front of him, about a quarter centimeter protruding.

A dog began barking at the sound, and sweeping up his weapons, Sam ducked his head and put as much distance between himself and the entry point as possible. It wouldn’t stand up under close investigation because the disk of stone gouged out of the house now lay outside the wall, but at a simple look, no one would assume the wall had been tunneled through. By the time someone took that look, Sam intended to be done with his work here.

He padded silently through the streets, craning his neck to make out landmarks as he walked. In the dark and at this angle, the city was so much harder to navigate. From the outside, Sam could point his finger and say, “I’ll meet you there,” but now he was just a rat in a maze, his vision obscured by stone buildings.

Another dog had picked up the call, and now people were shouting at each other. Were they security dogs? Sam didn’t have time to wonder; he needed to leave, but where to?

He took a deep breath and pointed his left hand at the wall to orient himself. He had entered the city at the point he’d chosen, there was no mistake about that, even in the dark. So, the tower should be ahead of him, maybe a quarter mile along the city wall.

Sam took off, leaving the calls of the animals behind him. After a quarter hour of walking, the tower appeared out of the corner of his vision, much deeper into the city, larger and taller than he’d expected, looming over the people like some malevolent watcher.

The tower glittered with light, making him feel like he headed toward a beacon as he turned right along the foul-smelling streets. The lights said to him that the tower was manned both day and night. And if it was manned at night, how were Sam and Faera going to meet there?

Sam shook his head. It wasn’t his job to bitch out and find alternatives, especially without a line of communication to his partner. It was his job to make things happen despite problems.

When he reached the tower, he realized the thing’s footprint was so big, he could spend maybe five minutes walking around it. The city seemed to have sprung up around it, and while there was a well-worn road in front of the massive double-doored entrance, buildings grew up along the tower’s sides like parasitic vines. It was those that gave Sam a way in.

Sam spotted the light of a lamp flickering in a small tower window, a building butting up against the tower just ten feet below. He followed the rooftop back with his gaze, finding where that one connected to another and so on, until Sam had his plan of entry.

With a grunt, Sam hooked his crook onto the roof of a squat and sturdy building. He climbed up the wood, hand over hand as the bag and rifle hung over either shoulder--a clumsy way to climb, but necessary. Sam pulled himself onto the roof, unhooked the crook and slunk along the rooftops, jumping up to the next tallest one as he angled for his objective.

Upon reaching the tower window, he crouched beneath it, straining his ears for any sign of an occupant to go with the gentle, flickering lamplight. Only silence came from the window above him. Sam craned his neck, looking up. The shutters had been left open, allowing the cool night air to drift through the portal.

It could be a trap. Perhaps they had a problem with people sneaking in, and so they left an obvious entrance, booby-trapped or guarded by men with nets--but it seemed unlikely. Sam shrugged his shoulders and decided to deal with it if and when it happened, rather than overthink things. He bent his knees and jumped, clamping his fingers over the window ledge before silently hauling himself up.

The crook, held to his back by the gun strap, tried to catch in the opening. Sam bent his shoulder low, allowing the heavy wooden staff to clear the frame, and clambered into the lit room.

Once inside, his gaze settled on a bed drenched in silks. A woman sprawled atop the sheets, and he experienced a shot of alarm. Then he saw what she was wearing: A sheer white robe that draped over her soft breasts, breasts that rose and fell as she breathed. She had light brown skin and full lips, with faint lines at the corners of her eyes that betrayed maybe forty years under the sun.

She was reading a book. The Knight of Passion was scrawled in gold filigree along the spine. On the desk beside her bed, beneath the lamp, there were larger books with more studious names, The Relationship of Elements and The Wellspring of Magic.

The thing that really caught Sam’s attention, however, was the attention of her searing brown eyes. “You’re not Aaron,” she said, setting the book down beside her. That she hadn’t screamed was encouraging. She slid off the bed, neglecting to close her robe.

“No ma’am,” Sam said, ducking his head in apology. “I’m just--”

“A thief,” she said, running her eyes down Sam’s outfit, “is what I would say, but you stand head and shoulders taller than an ordinary man, and you carry a relic of Elvenkind, the sworn enemy of my lord. Yet you cannot be an elf; you have neither the face nor the body of one. So, what are you?”

“Me? I’m a relic of humanity, you could say, just passing through.” He gave her his best innocent look.

“You would have no need to steal into this facility were you a true ally of mankind,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I believe you came here to steal the Blessing of Tyranus at the behest of your master, some half-elven noble fop from Mississippi.”

“I--”

“Unfortunately for your master, the Blessing cannot be stolen, and it cannot be shared. Your mission is as meaningless as Mississippi’s attempts to cow us.” The woman crossed her arms, looking at Sam appreciatively. “I have nothing but sympathy for one as pitiful as you, reduced to a common pawn by the corruption of elves, despite your magnificent human body. I am prepared to offer you lenience.”

“Oh?” Sam asked, trying to follow her bounding logic while wondering what the Blessing of Tyranus was.

“Attend me, then forswear your elven masters and surrender your corrupt elven magics to the Force of God, and there will be a place in this city for one such as you, by my side.” She raked her eyes over his body again as she took a step closer.

“Attend you?” Sam asked.

She shrugged out of the white gown hanging from her shoulders, revealing a mature but supple body, her hips flaring out in a way that lead Sam’s eye...

“Oh,” Sam said. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Maybe Aaron will show after all.” Sam turned toward the door, finally wrenching his gaze away.

Sam’s skin tingled in a pulse along his back as the woman snarled a distinctive syllable. It was one Sam recognized, having seen its effects three times. He leapt to the side and grabbed a small cabinet, tearing it away from the wall and interposing it between the two of them.

Five crackling spheres impacted on the cabinet, tearing the furniture to pieces in his hands. Sam plowed through the cloud of splinters, eyes narrowed to slits against the shrapnel. The woman’s eyes widened, although her startlement didn’t stop her from beginning another spell.

Sam threaded his fingers through hers, twisted her hand behind her, and clamping a hand over her mouth. The top of her head barely came up to his chest, so holding her steady should… Sam’s eyes widened as the woman began to pull her arm out from behind her back, competing with his superior leverage and muscle mass.

With a grunt, Sam exerted full force, his bicep bulging big as her waist as he brought her arm behind her again. The two of them stood there panting as Sam struggled to keep her still. His only advantage was his mass. Because he weighed more, she wasn’t able to knock him off balance and overturn the hold.

She began making motions with her left hand, and Sam took his hand off her mouth to catch it, disabling her fingers. She drew the hand in against her chest, and Sam was unable to remove it by force.

“You’re going to die slowly, young man. Your loyalty to the elves only speaks to your debased nature.”

“Where I come from, young lady,” Sam said, panting above the crown of her head. “It is a crime to coerce someone into conducting sexual acts using political or personal power.”

“What?”

“I’m speaking to your debased nature.”

The woman began to thrash in Sam’s hands. Her heels kicked back at him with surprising force, but without leverage against the ground, they only bruised. The woman was damn strong.

“I am the headmistress of the Tower of Blessing, Maria Ennore! Chattel like you--”

Sam interrupted her tirade with a sucker punch to the head. Maria went limp and her head hung down to her chest. She slumped toward the floor as if the strike had turned her into Jell-O. Sam hadn’t had Jell-O in five generations.

Sam lifted her up and laid her out on the bed, and after a moment of hesitation, checked her pulse. Still strong. Sam doubted the woman was entirely human; she had exhibited raw strength surpassing his own. Her only weakness was she weighed less than half of what he did.

He was going to need to spend a long time in the tower to get the perfect shot on Tyranus, and that meant he couldn’t have people looking for him while he was there. She’d thought he was a thief. What kind of thief camps out in the attic afterwards?

Sam needed to make the place look like it had been robbed, and that he had left shortly afterwards. So, he would have to steal some stuff. Glancing at the window, Sam got to work. He would have to stage a robbery before this Aaron guy showed up.

Sam opened her wardrobe, and spotted a beautiful red velvet cloak with gold buttons up the edges. The style matched Faera’s description of the sorcerer that had attacked her base. The woman called herself the headmistress, so maybe this was where those people came from, and the Blessing of Tyranus was… magic?

Sam tore a rent in the cloak and snagged it against a rough stone, letting it hang halfway out the window to make it look like it got caught on his way out. He grabbed some jewelry off a shelf and tossed the pieces outside onto the roof of the building below, before he rounded up the two books on the bedside table and tucked them in his duffle bag. Might as well take those. Faera might clam up when it came to magic, but she couldn’t stop him from learning somewhere else.

He grabbed some more valuables from the chest beside the bed, including some fancy-looking sticks, and shoved them in his bag before he checked Maria’s pulse one more time. The woman’s pulse was as strong as Sam’s own, and her eyes were flickering back and forth beneath her eyelids, meaning she would wake up any minute. Not wanting to have to knock her out again, Sam said a silent apology to Aaron, who was likely to have a bad day, before leaving the room via the door.

Outside the headmistress’s lamp-lit room, the halls were burnished a deep red by wrist-thick veins of glowing red crystal that striated the walls of the tower. Sam studied the glowing rock, and it pulsed--not anywhere near the speed of a beating heart, but it got a bit brighter, then died down a bit, and a few moments later, did it again.

Weird. Sam’s eyes followed the crystal up into the ceiling, and he wondered if the color had any significance, or if it was just because red was good for night vision. Then Sam put those thoughts aside and focused on looking for the stairs, or an elevator, or whatever people used to get around in here.

“Maria, by Tyranus, are you alright?” The muffled voice of a concerned man emanated from the door behind him, and Sam decided it was time to move. He picked up his feet, running down the hallway just slow enough to make each footstep silent, figuring he’d look for a way up once he was at least out of earshot. More than one person like her would be more than Sam could handle at any given time.

After a minute of searching, Sam came upon a massive spiral staircase that dominated the center of the tower. He leapt up the stairs three at a time, climbing ever skyward even as he heard voices raised in alarm. What were the chances Faera was waiting for him in such a heavily-guarded tower? In any case, he needed to get to a good hiding spot on the top floor.

He didn’t encounter anyone, and the staircase opened up on the final floor, emerging into an open air room that overlooked the entire city. The tower had gradually narrowed up to this peak, which was about ten feet across.

Sam heard shouting below him. Even if they believed he’d gone, it seemed they were still going to check each room.

Not having time to be impressed by their security, he brought the VAMPR display up and changed the shape of the target area to a cone, did some quick changes on the depth, and pointed the gun up into the ceiling near its center. From what Sam had seen, the tower had a conical roof above the last windows, where he currently was. Sam didn’t see any stairs or a ladder leading up to an attic, but he was sure there was a space up there.

Sam pulled the trigger, and a circular section of stone disappeared from the ceiling. Beyond the hole was an inky black void. He tossed the duffle bag up and in, then hooked the crook on the ledge and climbed up, carefully sliding the VAMPR inside before hauling himself into the space created by the roof’s frame.

Once inside, he released the cone of stone, and with a great deal of effort, managed to roll it to the hole. Sam’s muscles strained as he lifted and tipped the conical block. His fingers were starting to give out when gravity finally took over and slammed the stone chunk seamlessly into place.

He held his breath, hoping that the commotion downstairs had covered the sound. Sam couldn’t hear a damn thing, but he wasn’t sure whether that was because no one had noticed, or simply because Sam was now resting behind three feet of solid stone. He put his ear against the stone floor, but not a single sound disturbed the still air.

Air. That was an issue. Sam pulled out the flashlight and looked around his little hideaway, but didn’t see any air holes. And why would there be? They didn’t plan on housing anyone up here.

Sam saved the VAMPR’s current configuration to a ‘ceiling cutter’ preset, and then proceeded to make inch-wide air holes every meter and a half or so along the sloped roof. Once done, he laid down and got comfortable. No time like the present to get some sleep.

Sam had made it to the top of the tower, but Faera hadn’t. That didn’t bother him too much, because Sam knew what Faera’s plan had been. She wanted him in the tallest tower in the city to snipe Tyranus. Even if she didn’t show, this was still the one place he’d be able to kill the dragon, no matter where in the city he appeared.

Faera’s job would have been to give Sam information on when and where he might find an opportunity to shoot the dragon, but all Sam had to do was look through each air hole, which doubled as a spyhole, to check all the cardinal directions around the city. If he saw big red scales, he would shoot them. All of this assumed that the dragon made an appearance before Sam starved to death.

“I really hope I don’t have to drink my own pee,” Sam said, retrieving a water bottle from the bag and taking a small sip before putting it back.

The next day went by uneventfully, with Sam shuffling between spyholes. No sign of Tyranus. Sam was, however, able to observe life in the god-king’s capital, and it didn’t look like anything he wanted to be a part of. Sam saw people wearing simple blue sashes, or torn blue rags as they were whipped in the street.

In fact, the dye these slaves were wearing was more vibrant than most of the unappealing tans Tyranus’s people wore. Sam was watching four of these blue-clothed slaves carrying a palanquin when he realized they came from Mississippi, who had reinvented indigo dye ahead of the people of Sanctuary. That made sense. Even if the color is rare and beautiful, if you can’t have it, change the perception of it to that of a slave color.

Sam had no idea if the people in the tower underneath him were waiting for him like a spider waits for a seven-foot-tall death machine, or if he had actually managed to escape notice when he set up his nest in the roof. Either way, when the sun went down on that day, Sam decided to get some sleep. The stress had drained energy out of him like a bad battery.