Byulla left yet another early-morning meeting in a mood both fair and foul. The news had been both positive and relevant, so overall the hassle had been justified in her opinion. Several of the highly regarded active Explorers had investigated the surrounding tribes and had found them to be swarming with activity. All but the goblin camp and the kobold caves, which were found almost entirely devoid of life, just as described in Byulla’s reports.

She couldn’t help but think about the cause of those reports as she walked. Two tribes wiped out by a pair of adventurers. They’d been joined by two more on their second outing, but that hardly made the feat less absurd. There was also the issue of the mountains of materials they’d brought back, and the need to pay for them. Magic stones were always in demand, so that wasn’t a burden to the guild’s coffers. The goblin horns were harder to shift, but they weren’t too bad. From adhesive to cleaner to decorative element, there were so many uses for horn that, combined with the fact they stored easily, everyone knew they’d be bought up in a timely manner.

The real trouble was the kobold pelts as there were now hundreds of them, and all in pristine condition. That level of quality meant that the payout to the dark elf twins was absurd, but conversely it also made them harder to move. Not only would they need treatment to turn them into leather, and soon, but only specialists and luxury goods producers had a demand for whole pelt. The need for scraps, however, was endless, yet no one would want to reduce a pelt to bits, since it would drop the value by an unpalatable amount.

All of which meant Byulla had to suffer the headache of listening to her co-workers complain incessantly about their woes for the past week. Fortunately, the guildmaster had put hunting those specific monsters on hold for the time being in response, while all the other hunts were being reviewed. If the twins wanted to continue destroying the tribes, there was a whole lot more trouble ahead for the guild.

In spite of the good news – and it was good, because dead monsters couldn’t threaten good people – Byulla had not been able to sleep in as she normally would on a day off. Nor did she have the pleasure of her darling family waking her with excited demands for the usual seventhday morning pancakes. She expected to return to the kind of temperamental fit only two young girls could produce, with a flustered husband trying his futile best. Fortunately, there was still time enough to buy a remedy. Their favorite treats from the bakery downtown would go a long way to keeping them happy, she knew.

Leaving by the employee entrance into the early morning sunlight, she headed towards the shopping district but was soon brought to a halt. A crowd had formed by the main tavern entrance, which was unusual only for that time of morning. Adventurers being a rowdy bunch, Byulla had no doubt it was just egos clashing like always until she spotted the towering figure at the center of the mob. She used one of her Skills, [Pathfinding], to wind through to the front where she found little Anise in the shadow of the cheerful golden-haired giant. They were being aggressively confronted by three no-longer-young men that she recognized, at least by face.

Byulla couldn’t remember their names, they rarely came by in the mornings during her shift, and were simply too nondescriptly ruffian to bother with besides. The three of them, low E-rankers if she was remembering correctly, were trying their best to intimidate their targets. It was a stunt they often tried on new people, giving advice and then charging for it. The guards certainly didn’t care, even if the ones doing it did overstep themselves from time to time, and Byulla couldn’t do anything because they knew where the line was with the guild.

The three thugs were hardly alone in their little racket, as it was an unfortunately all too common phenomena among the weaker ranks of adventurers. The gathered crowd was there for the entertainment, many of them clearly hoping for a fight, because the trio would be well within their rights to retaliate if Anise and the golden twin got rowdy, as would sometimes happen among those who didn’t know the rules. Which is why it was fortunate that her help wasn’t needed, as watching the performance for even a brief moment made it clear to everyone that the ruffians weren’t having any success at all.

“Why?” Her voice was surprisingly girlish for her size, as she easily towered over even the tallest men in the crowd.

“We have explained this already: it is because you owe us!” The shield-bearing [Guard] of the trio grated out.

“Why?” She was so cheerfully bright that Byulla had to fight back a laugh, with snickers from those assembled proving she was hardly alone.

“We gave you all that good advice since you’re just a novice!”

“Why?” She asked, with seemingly all sincerity.

“Novices need advice, else you may end up dead before your time,” said the spear-wielding [Fighter], gesturing with his weapon in an obvious attempt to threaten. “Would that not be the most terrible shame?”

“Why?” The girl asked again. Byulla snorted, inordinately amused since for once it wasn’t she who was the target of the why game.

“You have to pay for things, girl!” Their other [Fighter] said, losing his temper. It was clear the men had no children of their own, a dark mark against them indeed given their apparent age, else they would never have been so harried by such a thing. “Did your parents never teach you that?”

“No,” she chirped with seemingly all sincerity. “I didn’t have any parents, and sister Mea told me that sirol don’t use money.” Byulla took a look around at the mention of the woman’s name, but failed to spot the terrifying twin anywhere nearby. That absence gave her a truly ominous feeling.

“Well we do!”

“Why?” Most of the crowd was openly laughing at that point, the three antagonistic elves darkening with obvious embarrassment. They knew better than to draw their weapons, so Byulla felt safe letting the situation resolve itself. She could not, however, shake the feeling that she had to find the silver sister. It was the familiar sense of dull pressure from her [Intuition] Ability. A warning that she had to act, else things would take a turn for the worst. It was her most important and valued talent, as it had saved herself and those dear to her on many occasions.

She followed the feeling into the bar and immediately found her target seated at one of the tables and curled around a bottle. She had changed a great deal since the last time they’d met, with arms and hands completely covered in heavy cloth sleeves and gloves and the plain but serviceable traveling clothes that matched her twin replaced by a loose dark robe. Byulla didn’t know what had prompted that, but it hardly mattered and wasn’t relevant. It was the drink that the woman had chosen that had really caught Byulla’s attention, the smell potent from the moment she entered.

Byulla liked her drink well enough, but that loathsome and odious brew she knew to steer well away from. It was all hurt and no flavor. If the woman was knocking that back, it was no wonder she hadn’t come looking for her sister. It was normally served in small shots, so how barkeep Voughem had been convinced to part with the entire carafe of the dreck known as Lush’s Penitence was beyond her. In any event the woman was likely too far gone to even notice that the place had emptied out, but it might explain that unceasing feeling of danger Byulla was getting. Someone so soused presented ever greater threat the more powerful they were.

“Worthless,” the woman said with more rancor than usual, knocking back an amount of the vile stuff that would’ve sent even the stoutest dwarf to the floor. “Can’t feel it. Barely even taste it.” She let out a long sigh that Byulla would have sworn she could actually see lingering in the air before carefully tipping the empty jar over with a studied negligence. “Whatever.”

Byulla considered leaving because she didn’t really want to watch that kind of self-destruction. More than that, it was because – even had she wanted to intervene – it simply wasn’t her place to do so. Ultimately, she was not related to the situation with those twins in a personal capacity. But in spite of that, in spite of herself, the foreboding pressure was growing stronger. Byulla drew a breath to call out, but was interrupted when her target suddenly slapped the table and stood before turning to leave.

As the woman walked towards the door, and therefore towards Byulla herself, she was startled to realize that she had reverted to her bad habit of using [Stealth] and unintentionally hidden herself again. The woman simply unnerved her that greatly. She calmed herself to try again when suddenly the pressure from [Intuition] spiked, urging her to make an immediate move to prevent whatever was going to happen. She stepped forward just as a long dagger sprouted from Mea’s chest, followed by an arm, then the rest of a man appeared where there’d been only air before. A gloved hand blurred up and caught hold of the man’s wrist, though all too late.

“Assault!” Byulla backed away and called for help immediately. The crowd outside would hear that, though what truly concerned her at that moment were the larger repercussions. Those girls were explicitly under the protections of the crown, and now a man in the colors of the town lord had assaulted one of them. She wondered if maybe she and her family would need to move out of town, because she had no name for the kind of trouble she could see brewing.

The assailant startled and stared; he was evidently elven, thin, tall, carried himself with the poise of a high ranker, and was cloaked from head to toe to obscure his identity. As neither had been able to notice the other prior to the attack, Byulla gauged that they were roughly evenly matched. Though without arms or armor, aside from a slim blade she used for work that she surreptitiously slipped into her hand, she had little chance.

“Under attack in the tavern!” She called again and the man swung back into action, attempting to retrieve the knife. The unusually high angle that the woman’s height had created, and the grip on his wrist, kept the two locked in place. Mea stubbornly remained standing, though it was clear at a glance that it was not a stalemate that could last long, as the weapon had gone straight through the heart. For a strangely long moment, killer, victim, and witness stared at one another as all three waited for things to change.

Then they did. People rushed in, but hesitated at the surreality of an adventurer being so viciously attacked in the midst of the tavern they had all, only minutes prior, vacated. The strangely frozen scene was soon surrounded, a dark mirror to what Byulla had seen outside. It was obvious the young woman was dead standing, but what to do about the assassin hadn’t yet become clear.

Under normal circumstances they would detain the man and hand him off to the city guard, but in the morning meeting it had been confirmed that no one had seen any members of the guard, aside from the commoner auxiliaries who manned the walls, in several days. What muddled the situation further was the fact that the assassin was wearing the lord’s red and blue, which may have meant it was a legal hit. Legal or not, the situation couldn’t continue as it was and it didn’t.

Someone began to laugh.

It started out low and hoarse and indistinct, the timing inappropriate and its character clearly sinister. The crowd pulled back, veterans of every sort eyeing one another and the assailant himself, searching for the culprit. But as it grew in volume and pitch into a skin-crawling cackle, it became evident that it was coming from the dead woman herself. Her long silver hair danced merrily about as she forced the man to his knees by the hand which she had prized off the knife, laughing all the while. It was a technique Byulla had never seen before that twisted his wrist and arm to the point of breaking, but she had no time to appreciate it as the dark-skinned giant ended her outburst with a shriek.

“Ahh. Pain!” The way she said the word was so indecent Byulla could hardly credit her ears. “This world is dull, dull, dull; made of paper and vapor and creeping grey.” Her voice, normally frosty and disdainful, was positively saccharine and playful.

Somehow that was worse.

“It’s been so long since I felt anything with such vivid clarity! That’s why I’m going to thank you.” She plucked the long knife out of her own chest with her free hand and seemed to admire it, though her face remained obscured behind that fall of hair. Byulla couldn’t help but notice with a sense of unmitigated horror that the blade was unmarked by blood.

“You should be dead!” The assassin sputtered.

“Dead?” She laughed again. “How could I be dead when I’ve never felt more alive! Now, normally I’d just have done with you immediately, but,” she bounced the flat of the blade off the man’s cheek, “I’m feeling ever so grateful right now. Besides,” she continued, gestured around theatrically. “I have this lovely audience here, so it would be a shame to waste the opportunity for a lesson.” The man tried to use some sort of Skill, at least to judge from his mask-muffled voice and the way his body tried to slither out of the hold. A sudden crack from his wrist put a quick end to that.

“None of that,” her voice became lethal for a moment before bouncing back to sweet. “Now, what’s your name? You’ve been so nice to me, after all.”

“I have,” he said between heavy breaths, “no name.”

“No no no. That won’t do at all!” She said, with another audible crackle from the man’s arm. “I’ll just have to call you darling, then, won’t I?” She said with another bounce of the dagger that had been lodged in her heart. The assailant shuddered at the tone and touch, and was not alone. Even Byulla felt her skin crawl from the performance but, like the rest of the crowd, was unable to intervene. The lord’s law was absolute and brooked no interference, neither to help nor hinder.

“So, darling,” she said, drawing out the word while tracing a delicate pattern with the tip of the blade over his chest, “who owns you?” He said nothing. Nothing until there was more twisting and a little grunt of agony.

“What? I do not,” he panted, “understand.”

“Your leash, little doggy. Who holds it?” She asked sweetly, like a lover might.

“What?”

“Boss, chief, head honcho?”

“What?” She evidently got tired of that response and whipped around to pin him face first against the floor with his arm twisted in a new way and a knee to his back.

“I really am feelin’ awfully generous here, so I’m going to give you one more shot, darling. Who is your employer?” The woman had affected a bizarre accent Byulla wasn’t familiar with, but that just added to the creeping discomfort of what had obviously become a show that Mea was putting on.

“Lord Kuelli!” He shouted. “Are you blind, woman? I wear the lord’s colors and do his good works and yet,” he had to pause to draw a ragged breath, “you dare?”

“Oh, now darling, talking back to me like that will cost you,” she said, shifting to draw the dagger across the back of one knee, severing all the connective tissue. The man hissed through clenched teeth, but didn’t cry out.

“Now you’ll never walk again, isn’t that awful?” She giggled. “It didn’t need to be that way, though,” she seemed to ponder for a moment, newly reddened dagger waving lazily in the air. “Perhaps it did, since you serve that lord guy, hm?” Her voice lost all its sickly-sweet cheerfulness all at once, reverting to the cold deadpan Byulla was more familiar with.

“I suppose you’ve served your purpose then, haven’t you? Suppose I should get on with the lesson then.” In a single smooth motion, she stood and raised a leg to bring her foot down on the man’s head.

“Mea!” A high voice called out from the entrance, sending a twitch through the woman and diverting the descending death sentence to smash apart the flagstone floor. The force of it made the entire crowd flinch back in alarm, some of them choosing to immediately make themselves scarce. The golden-haired twin parted the group and, shadowed by Anise, hurried onto the scene.

“Yes?” The monstrous woman asked innocuously, standing up straight and brushing the hair from her face.

“Mia doesn’t understand what’s happening,” she said, taking her sister’s hand. The one that wasn’t still holding the dagger.

“Good question,” she hummed to herself a bit, the atmosphere of naked aggression subsiding as she took a moment to wipe off and then tuck away the long knife in the bag she had slung across her back. “He attacked me on orders of that lord guy; you remember we heard about the ruler of this town the other day?” The bright gold ringlets bounced about as the girl nodded. For twins, Byulla thought, they could hardly be more opposite.

“But I suppose that’s only the who and what,” she continued, “not the why. Don’t really tend to care about things like that,” she trailed off with a disinterested shrug.

“Why not?” Mia asked, head tilted and openly curious. Being dispositionally indifferent was an unusual trait among Explorers. As an Explorer herself, Byulla didn’t actually understand that lack. The world was vast and strange and, though no one would or could know everything, to not be interested in anything at all was beyond her. But her husband was very stubbornly that way – the man just wanted to be pointed in a direction with a task to do – so she was at least familiar with it.

“Why only matters if you want to predict future behavior. Something like why is irrelevant if there is no future, and I tend to solve all my problems immediately and permanently.” The woman said, looking down at the assailant who had yet to move at all. The back of the crowd was beginning to peel away, unwilling to be associated with what was going on, or bored since the show seemed to largely be over. Byulla wasn’t in either of those camps. Despite having her family waiting for her at home, she was positively in thrall to the strange twins and their outrageous lives. It was, perhaps, the best drama she’d ever get.

Drama or not, the woman was a serious concern. Byulla hadn’t seen Mea’s status a second time, but she had to be higher than level eighty now or her card wouldn’t have turned purple. It was in fact a deeper shade than Byulla’s own, though she was barely ranked B at eighty-one. That kind of change in a mere few days wasn’t impossible of course, as levels – and the ranks that reflected them – were just a way that the system indicated existing strength. A fact she’d discovered after her curiosity had been piqued by her first encounter with Mea, whose disparity between status and obvious ability had been too strange to ignore.

That kind of jump was most common amongst upper nobility, who trained their children intensely and gave them secrets that commoners like herself would never have access to, but who never let their children fight monsters until they had reached full adulthood. Byulla had to wonder if the two girls were aristocrats of the black city, but put that thought aside. With the way that goblin camp had been so thoroughly eradicated it was obvious that Mea had talent and strength in abundance, far outstripping what any card stated.

It wouldn’t surprise Byulla if she soon attained the orange of A-rank.

But what really bothered Byulla was the switch from unrestrained casually murderous aggression to complete docility when her sister appeared. It was unnatural and, as the woman herself had suggested with her comment about whys, indicative of potential problems in her future behavior. Fortunately, there would be no additional reports on that matter. Or at least, none made by Byulla. The guildmaster had made it clear the twins were a very special diplomatic case and not to be bothered.

Still, Byulla was too curious to leave things alone and decided to just watch. Many in the crowd clearly shared her sentiment. The sinister sister, the silver one, seemed entirely unbothered by the entire thing, but the other one looked to be lost in thought.

“If you want to know the why, how about asking him yourself Mia?” Mea said, appearing to notice the same thing. Mia said something unintelligible, though with a great deal of cheer, and squatted down next to the man. Strangely enough she kept hold of her sister’s hand, but perhaps that was a leash of sorts. Byulla held that thought up as particularly comforting.

“Mister?” There was still no reaction, and she began to wonder if he was unconscious. Without her keen senses to detect that his chest was moving, she might have believed he was dead. A small ah noise came from Mea and something Byulla hadn’t noticed before it changed dissolved into sand from around the assailant’s neck and limbs where they had clearly been anchoring him to the broken ground.

“I keep seeing you do that, but I’m still not believing it,” Anise said in a very small voice standing behind the twins. Byulla knew the culai girl was a mage, and Mea’s status had indicated she had the class as well, so perhaps it had been magic.

Except Mea hadn’t used a command.

“Never seen anyone use earth magic like that before,” Byulla heard from someone behind her. Some of the other mages in the crowd were muttering much the same to themselves and each other, so that must have been it.

“Mister?” Mia tried again, still crouched down while poking the man, who finally stirred. He stood up slowly and with obvious pain, taking particular care to cradle the arm that had been twisted, and Mia stood as he did.

“Why did you hurt my sister?”

“Why?” He croaked out, sounding decidedly the worse for wear. “You ask me why, girl?” He stared down his nose at her with all the haughtiness he could muster, which for a pawn of the lord was quite a lot. The effect was only somewhat spoiled by the fact that he hardly came up to her bust.

“I do my lord’s bidding. That is why,” he said, voice gaining strength as he spoke. “Curse your own poor behavior, or your own misfortune in crossing the Honorable Lord of Venbuelli Township.” He seemed to be warming up to his own rhetoric as he continued, and Byulla saw several more people peel off from the crowd and flee. She could hardly blame them. If it was going to turn into some supposedly stirring oratory about the local nobility, she’d give that a hard pass.

“Completely useless,” an icy voice of scorn cut directly across the man’s growing momentum. “You can see why I didn’t bother,” the butcherous woman said, taking a step forward. She turned a dismissive shoulder to her would-be killer and addressed her twin. “Not that it’s always such a worthless endeavor. So. What next? The lord seems set against us for unknown reasons. Shall we leave and find some new town? Go back up the mountain?” Mia shook her head at that, golden ringlets flying.

“So you would rather we stayed and sorted this out?” The girl nodded, though slowly and without confidence. “Then, if we want the actual reasons, we’ll have to find out from the man directly. Let’s not waste any more time here.”

“What about the man who hurt you?” Mia wondered, obviously concerned. Her sister just shrugged.

“We could drag him along, I guess, but since he’ll be reporting back to the lord guy anyway, I don’t see why we should bother. He’s pretty useless, so I’d rather we just go straight to someone who can actually help and talk to him instead.”

“Okay,” the girl said, whatever that meant. She seemed obviously conflicted, but didn’t contest her sister’s decision. With that the twins left; gone like a summer storm, Anise trailing in their wake. Everyone else pulled away from the man still trying to get up off the floor, not wanting to be dragged into that affair. Like the rest of those present, Byulla was eager to chew over the gossip, but with the main event over she had a family to attend to and ducked out of the tavern and headed off to the bakery. She’d get a chance that evening, when she planned to meet up with some old friends, to talk about what had happened. She hadn’t seen any of them in the crowd that morning, so she was looking forward to serving up a retelling over drinks.