Fight! A voice called to Delta. It felt familiar, not so strange like the other voices she sometimes heard. That of one of her closest friends, now apparently dead. Does it matter that I’m dead? I failed my mission, but you are far from done yet with yours.

“What can I do?” Delta whispered. A part of her knew this voice in her head wasn’t real and only a trick of the spirits.

Fight! What else can you do? Get out of this city. They need you right now.

His voice came to her like her own faith. For once, she found the voice in her head to be encouraging. She wanted so bad to listen to it. She cradled the Sacred Stone around her neck and breathed in.

Just ignore it, and maybe he will stop, Delta thought. She quickly scanned her surroundings, seeing the eyes on her, waiting for her to spring to action.

They may not know it, Mason’s voice continued. But you’re their only hope now. You’re the only one in good shape to lead. So lead Delta. Be the hero today.

Being the hero today might mean being the villain tomorrow if I let him slip.

There was a tongue click in her mind, an almost too perfect reflection of the sound Mason made when he grinned. You can handle yourself, Del, but the others can’t. They need you. Now more than ever.

Delta lifted her head. “Quin, what’s Dean’s condition?”

She decided to abide by the words and proceed with skepticism of the voice’s validity. With all the death in her head, could Mason’s voice really pierce that cloud?

Quin was on the floor, tending to the prince’s knees. “I think his knees are in too bad of a shape to stand. He’s in no condition to fight.”

Delta nodded. “Quin, it’s up to you to protect our guests, alright? To the death, do you understand?”

Quin nodded. Though she wasn’t an agent, she proved her use. It was Mason’s idea in the first place to have her follow Dean, and her contributions were arguably the greatest out of all the agents. She not only saved the prince’s life but the rest of the squad as well. If she hadn’t trailed the scouts, Delta and the others would be waiting endlessly for their return, and the operation would have failed.

Delta slipped on her mask to conceal her hair and ears. She left through the back door, jumping to the stone street. She turned to the carriage ahead, which continued to pursue the door ahead, stuck in the halted traffic. The gate was closed, and all, including the agents’ carriages, were all pulling off to the side. There was complaining all around, but Delta shrugged them off.

She knocked on the door to Kylo’s carriage.

“Delta?” the gold bearded brute said. His mask wasn’t silver or plastic but of black cloth with a white glyph, easily mistaken for Dormoor’s colors. His beard was too thick for a mask similar to Slater’s or Delta’s, and he refused to shave, even for the mission. “What’s going on? What are we going to do?”

She stepped in, moving to the back, speaking into the driver’s ear. “Fred, are you listening?”

“Yes mam,” the driver said.

“You are now off duty.”

“What are you doing?” Kylo asked. He grabbed at her shoulder, almost crushing it under his mythstone coated gloves.

“Pull off to the side of the road,” Delta instructed, brushing Kylo’s hand off of her. “unhook our horses, and retreat to the other carriage. Unless you are feeling bold.”

“I’m as bold as they come, madam,” Fred replied.

“Good, so listen up, then,” Delta said, turning to the two agents behind her. “Kylo, if you haven’t noticed, there’s a massive wall in our way.”

“And?”

“I need that gone, and I think you wanted to punch something on this mission, right?”

Kylo’s cheekbones pushed up to form a visible smile under his mask. “Tetreo’s Fists! I’m on it.” He turned to the door—

“Not so fast,” Delta said. “Listen to the rest of the plan, alright? After you tear down the wall, I’m going to need you to take one of the horses and run as fast as you can. Do you know your way back?”

“I should,” Kylo said.

“What ‘bout me?” Slater asked.

“You are posing as Belch,” Delta smiled behind the mask. “And you are riding with Kylo. If you two get caught on the road, I’m sure you two are more than capable of handling a little trouble. You are light enough to fit on a warhorse, even with Kylo’s weight.”

She patted the front of the carriage. “And our driver will bring another horse just in case.”

Fred turned into the square window, showing his thin mustache and excited grin. “Will do.”

“So, Slater’s posing as a girl?” Kylo bellowed out a laugh.

Slater’s brows raised under the holes of his mask. “Why?”

“Because their description of her will be, ‘young girl, around five feet tall, and long black hair.’ You’re perfect as a decoy.”

Slater nodded reluctantly. “Other than the ‘act I’m not a damn girl,” he muttered.

“What about the others and the target?” Kylo asked.

“We’ll escape as planned through the other carriage. Do you three understand?”

They all nodded.

This is dangerous; a different voice other than Mason’s hit her mind. You could be sending them to their death.

She—like she usually did—ignored the voice. She wouldn’t bond with the spirit, no matter how long it harassed her.

Delta returned to the other carriage. As the horses seemed to pull off to the side of the road, the street came more clear. Walking down the street, alone, was a man in a dark blue cloak, the size of a swole, strolling down the road.

Montra’s Mercy, she cursed in her head. That had to be Cyril, Aidan’s personal mage. Kylo wouldn’t be able to break the gate in time, not before Cyril would approach. The reports said he was a mage, so Delta believed that he was proficient in the same kind of magic as Delta.

He had to be stopped by any means necessary, but preferably the least.

Delta had only a minute or two before she could act. She approached Penod, the driver of the other carriage, who also pulled off three carriages apart from the one currently dismantling. She explained their plan, informing him of what to do. “… then you’ll leave, hopefully with everybody else. With how many carriages here that want to leave, they should attempt to leave within minutes of the gate being torn down.”

“I understand, miss,” Penod said. “I’ll explain it to the others. But what about you?”

“Well,” she said, noticing her mask gave her away, especially with Cyril sauntering down the street. The civilians started to diverge away as Cyril and city guards began barking orders. With her options limited, she decided that she couldn’t risk reentering the carriage with Quin and them. “It looks like I’m going with them instead. Take care of them for me, okay, Penod?”

“Sure thing,” Penod said, bowing his head.

Delta moved away, centering herself down the street.

A hundred feet or so away, Cyril didn’t seem to notice her conversing with Penod, which played nicely into her hand. She walked down the street, ready to engage the mage.

She grasped the Soulgem hooked to her wand in her right pocket, ready to draw it.

Delta stood stationary. Cyril’s face started to draw closer, and she couldn’t tell if he was old or if being half a swole did that to their skin. Perhaps, that was why Kylo refused to shave. With his blond beard, Kylo looked thirty, but without it, he might look fifty like how the mage did in front of her.

“Stop!” Delta commanded, raising her voice.

“Excuse me?” Cyril frowned. He continued to approach. “Ahh, you are wearing an identical mask to the assassin who almost took my life. Now, give us back what is rightfully ours, and perhaps we could mercifully ransom you back to wherever you came.”

Delta drew her wand, pointing. “That’s as far as you go.”

“Are you threatening a mage? With magic?”

A full-blooded elf should be stronger with elven magic than a half-blooded one. Delta had to remain confident in her abilities. Her training prepared her for everything under the sun she might find in Valoria. But, other mages weren’t something ubiquitous among the human land.

Cyril drew his own wand. A larger, medium-sized Soulgem hooked into the back of the twirling stick. He smiled. “It looks like my Soulgem is bigger.”

Hers had the size of two small Soulgems merged, giving her about a fourth of Cyril’s reserve for magic. Soulgems were like batteries, each depleted with every second of use. But Delta practiced efficiency with her power, making more with less. A lot more. Having a smaller Soulgem meant precision, whereas larger Soulgems couldn’t conduct pinpoint accuracy quite like how she could. But the larger ones were stronger outright.

“Go, Cyril!” a cheery voice said from the roof to her right. A man with a white mask and bandage on his right wrist.

That must be Kiba. This is bad. I have to keep them away from Kylo.

Cyril grimaced upward toward him. “Are you going to help me, or are you going to stay useless forever?”

Kiba pointed with his uninjured arm to his wound, tilting his head. “Sorry, but I’m incapable of working when I’m injured. You’ll have to make do by yourself. Aidan gave me permission to watch, so don’t die now. Our injuries won’t heal themselves!”

“You’re always useless,” Cyril grunted. He stared Delta down. “So you are a mage too, are you? That’s exciting. In Dormoor, we’re the farthest from the source of most mages. Are you a human, lucky enough to tap magic? Or are you an elf?”

She didn’t respond. Cyril could use anything she said against her and her country, Soucrest.

Behind her, loud bangs started erupting from the gate. Kylo was getting to work.

“Interesting plan,” Cyril said. “ What is that behind you? A battering ram? You are stalling me, aren’t you? Well, I guess I’ll have to get this over with. Let me show you the true power of an honored mage.”

Cyril flicked the top of his wand against his wrist, striking a flame of a patch on his cloak. “Fire,” he said, drawing in a large breath. He pointed toward Delta. “AND AIR!”

The flames intertwined with a massive gust of wind, forming spinning, infernal spirals coiling toward Delta.

She didn’t blink, pointing to the ground and willing the moisture in the air to turn into a wall of solid ice, quickly rising to block the flames. The flash of fire brushed past Delta, but she was left unscathed. The ice was impossibly hard to melt, especially with natural fire. Only when the magic bonded inside the ice faded would it revert into water.

If Cyril were a fire mage, not a wind mage creating gas to mix with natural fire, he would stand a chance of at least melting her wall down. But, fortunately for her, wind mages were among the weakest mages out there, at least in terms of killing.

On the street, the civilians rushed off and away, most choosing to run through the alleys to escape the chaos forming around them. Luckily, Cyril’s attack didn’t harm anybody. But, Delta doubted Cyril’s mercy.

Everyone of Gemkind had an element bonded to them, even those without talent for magic. Hers was water, which enhanced her power to create ice with the wand.

“Clever contraption,” Delta noted, stepping behind her small wall of ice. The flame off the top of his wand was gone, meaning he had to ignite it again. Otherwise, he would send only air her way. Still, he converted his wind attack into a fire-filled one, which would demolish most battlefields easily.

Delta was a bad match for Cyril.

Cyril grimaced. “And that’s a big wall you built. If there weren’t so many damn people in my way, I would have sent a sea of flames at you.”

So they are merciful to their people? Delta thought. That’s surprising. I thought they were all straight evil.

“But now that I’m warmed up, I have just the perfect attack to send at you, something so powerful, if your wall doesn’t melt, then it will crack!”

He flicked to his wrists, igniting again. Before he could follow through with his promise, Delta decided to act. She aimed to the ground in front of herself. She would have liked to send a spike of ice his way, but if she missed, the velocity of such things could carry on a great distance, and she didn’t want to kill anybody unnecessarily. Delta drew a rectangle across the street, creating a divider. Before Cyril could bend his wrist to snap his attack, Delta hid behind the ice wall she had already constructed.

The flames again failed to melt her ice, let alone break it. As far as Cyril was concerned, her wall was practically mythstone. Nothing he could throw at her could damage it.

Cyril didn’t know as much about magic as he did about Gemchemy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be muttering confused right now. Delta’s ice countered fire since its base was simply water. Real ice would melt, but this was ice Delta built with her will.

She willed her construction to form with her drawn plan in front of her. Slowly, the earth trembled before her. The ground quaked as the ground turned to ice. She peeked her body around the corner. The ice slowly started to rise. Cyril looked shocked. Worried, he flicked the tip of his wand on his wrist again, sparking his wand lit.

“Not so fast!” Delta snapped, whipping her hand herself. She cut portions of the lifting wall she created and pushed a thin stroke forward to disrupt Cyril. It looked like smeared paint, dripping from excess, gliding ever along, aiming for his upper body. Cyril dropped to the floor out of pure instinct to survive, keeping his head on his shoulders for another day. Before he could stand up, Delta’s sight of him was devoured up by the pale-blue ice wall, separating him from her team. For now.

She heard muffling curses from behind the wall. The mage would have to spend minutes navigating around the alleyways to find his way past the wall of ice.

Kiba, the same monster who had taken Vason and Meek, laughed at the failure of his own ally. “What were you going to do? From what it looks like, you’re as useless as me!”

“They’re going to get away!” Cyril yelled up to him.

Kiba shrugged, pointing again to the bloody bandage over his wrist.

She wanted more than ever to throw a spike his way, maybe catch him off guard. But she felt empowered, coming to a realization. The voice in her head was Mason’s. Otherwise, the voice would have screamed for her to avenge him.

Not today. Delta wouldn’t fall for it.

Delta turned, running away, heading toward the gate. The spectators on the street looked at her with either awe or disgust. Elven magic did that to people, split them on whether or not it had been something cool or the power of devils.

“This door stands no chance against the Fists of Kylo!” Kylo laughed, having the time of his life, pounding shards of gate away to create an opening.

“Del!” Slater called out to her. “What are you ‘oing!”

“I’m coming with,” Delta said. She turned to Fred, saddling up the horses. “I’m riding with you, Fred. I hope you are as good on a horse as you are steering them.”

“Get on,” Fred said. “Kylo’s almost done with the wall.”

When Kylo finished, the lower half of the door was completely clear, allowing the carriages to enter through. The civilians applauded, elated they could finally leave. The carriages pulled off from the side of the road all at once. They all might have been scared of the giant ice wall behind them. Fear and panic played perfectly into their hands. Nothing could have played out better for them on a mission that should have failed.

Slater hung on to dear life, playing that of a scared girl behind Kylo. Or maybe he was genuinely frightened. Delta would be, too, being on the back of Kylo’s warhorse. The horses kicked the ground under them, running wildly out of the gate. Fred and Delta followed close behind the other pair, her hair flowing with the breeze of night.

In the line of carriages following them out of the city, Delta spotted the carriage carrying the young girl they had rescued. They had successfully blended in with the others. All was good for now.

Thank you, Delta thought to her Sacred Stone around her neck. There were many volatile aspects of life. The agency entered Ryuso as a team of seven and left a squad of four. Her best friend died, all without a proper goodbye. And yet, some things simply stuck with her. The thing first and foremost, her faith.

She believed the Gem God saved her life today. When she was ready and willing to give up, He briefly brought Mason’s voice back into her mind, encouraging her to fight on.

At least, she prayed it was the Gem God.