While the mercenaries slept in the quiet village of Asphil, a few miles away, in the dead of night of the fortress town Yikensworth a hooded figure walked through an everlasting graveyard. It moved through the rows of graves, without as much as a sound escaping its footsteps as if it was revisiting its resting site.

The figure walked deeper into the graveyard, past the railings and rusted fences until it reached a large mausoleum with a padded lock on its front. Walking up the steps it inspected the lock and chains around its gate before attempting to smash it with the pommel of its short-sword. After a few tries, the lock finally broke, and the figure stepped inside. Its sleeve had rolled back during the smashing and was revealing a thin and pale hand with long and sharp nails grasping the weapon’s grip.

Stepping deeper into the tomb the person took off the hood to shower her pretty face under the moonlight rays coming through a crack in the roof. Her face was small, pale, and round, almost like a cat’s with matching orange-brown hair in a bob cut neatly ending where her chin started. She smirked to herself, admired herself before she began searching.

All the slabs for corpses were empty. The grave goods hidden in a small box beneath some of the deceased had long been stolen. Perhaps it was the scent of all the incense absorbed by the stones but a fragrant smell tickled the girl’s nose.

She furrowed her brows and followed it deeper into the tomb.

“Hm hm hm — hm”

The girl pressed on an unobtrusive carving as she hummed. As the carving moved, there was a clicking of wheels behind the walls; a moment later, the sound of stone grinding against each other filled the mausoleum slowly moving the large grave in the middle into a hidden place on the back-end wall. The moonlight allowed a stairway to be seen. It led below into the darkness and the woman smiled to herself again.

She sheathed her short-sword and descended the staircase, steadily moving in the darkness on nothing but her senses and instinct. The path curved halfway, and led to a narrow hallway beneath the earth; its walls and floor were made of chipped and chiselled rock. The wind blew at her face, it was cold and damp and smelled much like the rest of the graveyard, which meant that the wind had been blown from outside.

The stairway had led down to a lit, far-reaching hallway. Rushwicks were spread out in lines along the walls each one lighting itself on fire as she passed by, casting a large shadow of the woman on the worn red carpet.

Tuning her humming to silence, the woman slowly reached for the door and stepped into what lay beyond.

She was inside a large cavern. The area was illuminated by a green light coming from stalagmites on the ceiling and rocky pathways leading along the cave’s walls towards the large cliff protruding out in the middle of the cavern. At the bottom of the cliff was a large well where a hooded figure stood hunched – looking inside. The rest of the cave was a natural smooth slope leading to wide flat grounds

She climbed down the steps leading to a slope, and as she approached the brown cloaked figure in silence the quivering curls at the end of her lips morphed into a smirk, and that smirk spread over her face and morphed into a smile which then widened till it showed her teeth, by which time she was standing right behind the figure without its awareness.

Purple hues of smoke radiating from the well were directed towards the large orb with his right hand as he held it in his left. The shades of the orb kept increasing in intensity and darkness the more he repeated his movements and chants. The person was completely absorbed with what it was conducting in the well to notice her breathing down his neck.

Only when she whistled a tune did it sense her. It quickly turned around and swung his arm to attack, but quickly stopped when he saw who she was. His already pale and sour face turned for the worse. His popped eyes returned to their normal sunken state, his face wrinkled more and he snarled at her while placing some distance between them with an audible sound of displeasure.

“Che! Why are you here?” the man asked as he made a small motion with his free hand, causing a metal staff to appear out of nowhere.

“Why~? You don’t want me to be here~?” she said teasingly.

“You can see that I’m infusing energy into this thing so why disturb me. If you’re here to make trouble, I have ways to deal with that too,” the man narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on his staff.

“I’ve had more than one opportunity to kill you Willy~,” she placed a hand on her hip. “You always suck the fun out of everything!”

“Why are you here?” Willy questioned sternly. The woman responded with a Cheshire smile, her hands stroking her swords. Tensions rose as the man assumed a fighting stance and the two held each other in a standoff. After a while, she dropped her smile and looked down in disappointment.

*Sigh*“Fun-sucker, fine! I came to give you this,” she threw a large silver halo at the man’s feet. He kneeled to pick it up, not once letting his eyes leave her, and held the object between them to observe.

“Is…” Willy raised the halo near his head, “is this Jamal’s Crown? You remembered our deal.”

Willy’s voice was trembling as he inspected the object for any markings of ownership. The object itself was very modest, a silver halo with no jewels, no intricate design except a small octagonal shape on the inside of the halo.

“I found it on a pretty boy’s head, but he kept it locked up most times so I couldn’t get it so easily,” she said proudly. “Only after a few nights, a nice adventure...mmm~” she licked her lips and closed her eyes in remembrance, “and a dozen pretty lies later did he reveal to me where and how I could get it.”

“Did you take care of him?” Willy said, ignoring her as best as could while admiring the halo.

“Of course,” the woman blushed as she recollected how she did it. “I was on top of him~ and it was so nice~ oh, but then there was a knife and he was so~ terrified…Oh! His face when he found out where I’d stabbed him, mmm~ it was the best! I don’t who was in more bliss but it was wonderful” she softly giggled to herself until she saw the glare Willy was giving her. “Ugh, Yes! I took great care of him. Happy now?”

She returned Willy’s disgusted and crossed her arms across herself.

“Disgusting vixen, you were there as a member of the Sunlight Circle! Did you leave a trail?”

She smiled once more and continued on with ignoring him;

“Those people are too nice for my tastes, did you know they wouldn’t even kill anyone unless there was a week-long enquiry? I mean I could’ve killed someone in broad daylight and they still would’ve spent at least 10 days investigating it before giving me the old rope or blade across the throat.”

“Because they were in Ark. The Ark has some of the strongest warriors in the seven kingdoms, that’s why the Sunlight Circle, being the promoter of a false religion in all the nations, behaved so malevolently while you were there. Don’t think those circle hypocrites haven’t sent someone after you yet, what with you stealing the Circle’s most valuable treasure I’ll be surprised if that wasn’t the first thing they did after finding out.” She didn’t think it was possible but Willy’s face turned even paler than before. “Cleo, did you kill the prince perhaps?”

“Yeah~, he was such a cutie-,” she was suddenly interrupted.

“-Oh no, they’re going to send those brutes here after you, after me. Dammit, Cleo couldn’t you do it without killing that worthless prince?!”

“Why are you so afraid~? The fighters in the Ark are just a bunch of pacifists. I fought with one of them and was able to get rid of his eye before he stole my weapon, and he didn’t even beat me for cutting his eye out.”

“You fought with one of the Rijal 'Aqwia and survived?” Willy’s eyes seemed to almost pop out of his head.

“It was a practice round~,” she said in an innocent voice. “Also, I had the prince around my fingers so it was all sorted out in the end.”

“Then you didn’t truly feel the wrath of the Rijal 'Aqwia, they are direct descendants of one of the six Al-Majstayr fi Al-wahda, Jamal the Charming.” In a swiping motion he dissipated his staff and made to rub his eyes, but suddenly stopped. He peeked over to her direction and let his arms fall limb. “Out of all the six ‘Majstir’ that settled over the seven kingdoms, he is the one who had the most prosperous life. He sired several children, many of whose descendants now make up the Rijal ‘Aqwia. To have someone of their calibre coming after us means certain death.”

“Wait~” Cleo frowned. “Didn’t Jamal bloodline end a couple of hundred years ago?”

“Ignorant mother-*Sigh* A couple of hundred years ago one of the advisors to his sons took over the kingdom, not by fighting but by persuading the son and all his siblings that under his rule they would be better off. You see they were all really strong and charming like their father but unlike him, they didn’t have what it took to rule a kingdom. There was never any fight, only a peaceful succession.” Willy explained solemnly.

“Why did they agree so easily?” Cleo asked with a sarcastically interested expression. As if she was a child being taught the meaning of the world, but the man ignored her and continued;

“When you have the world as your oyster you don’t think of making a pearl out of it. They had all they wanted, land, food, natural-born power to topple other nations, they didn’t need to fight for more. So when Uthmal showed them the same lifestyle but without the burden of a kingdom, they all easily agreed. Since that day Uthmal’s descendants have had complete control over Jamal’s descendants. Those Rijal 'Aqwia, make up the elite guards to the king, they are stronger than any man or beast and loyal to a fault. And you just killed their prince, their future king…but you killed him while you were affiliated with the Sunlight Circle so hopefully, they wouldn’t be chasing you so soon”

“Now maybe is a bad time to tell you that~, I was already being chased by the Circle.” Cleo scratched her head in embarrassment. “I mean they already suspected me, so I thought why not go out with a bang.”

*Bang*

The place where Cleo had previously been standing was scorched in ash. The woman in question had cartwheeled away to avoid getting hit.

“Because of your stupidity,” Willy said with hate. “Not only will we have a person from the sunlight circle hunting us down, but also a man from the Rijal ‘Aqwia as well.”

“Hey, why not a woman-” *Bang*

“We will have to fake our deaths and go into hiding,” Willy smacked the staff on the ground. “This is going much faster than I had anticipated.”

After a few moments of pacing around he spoke once more; “To power the crown, I need at least 20 pure souls. Can you do it before the end of this week?” Willy raised his eyebrow in challenge, making his wrinkly pale skin stretch most hideously.

“Killing more will make it more powerful right?” Cleo smiled creepily as she caught the halo Will had thrown her way.

“The more the better,” Willy returned to the well and turned his back to her. “If you’re willing to help me, I can carry out the Ritual of Resurrection and then we can go our separate ways.”

“Sure…But I have to ask; why the astral mask?”

*Cough* “Wh-What?” Willy almost lost the ball in the well from shock

“Hehehe, I’ll see you in a week my lord~ship Wi~lliam?” Cleo sang sweetly as she walked up the stairs.