“Help! My husband’s been stabbed!” I heard Elendria call out to the first set of guards we had come across. Our plan was to lure as many into alleys as possible for quiet disposal, and feigning injury was our plan. Which is why I had bloody robes on, and the hilt of an ice dagger sticking out of my stomach. Seconds later, Elendria entered the alley flanked by two guards with chest armors. Both were women, and both immediately headed to my side to assess the situation.

“The dagger still in there?” The first asked, and continued at my pained nod, “Good. Remove it, and you will bleed out before we can get you to help. I’ll stay here with you. You’re doing just fine.” She kept trying to reassure me.

“Ma’am, stay here and I’ll go-“ The partner managed to get out before Eelendria stabbed her in the chest with a glowing dagger.

“What the?” The guard who was checking my wounds immediately turned to her partner, and in that moment of distraction I struck. A simple blade of conjured spirit speared straight into her chest, and she fell down, unconscious.

“You’ll take care of safely removing the rest of the creature?” I asked Elendria as I rolled the guard off my legs.

“Already on it.” She muttered, focusing on her patient. I nodded, and winced when I looked at the results of moving my guard. Her hair had landed in some unidentified liquid, and judging by the smell it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Thing surprisingly continued in that vein for quite a while. We managed to take down three more pairs of guards, bringing the total number of guards in the garrison down to what we assumed was ten. Things were looking good, but the next set of guards we saw had something different. These guards had the same half plate, but it was a bit more ornate than what the first sets of guards we met had on. These had ridges jutting out above the shoulders, as well as a pair of lizards eating each other’s tails as they formed an infinity symbol. Black lizards on a field of green. While most of the guards wore simple truncheons, these had studded theirs with metal rivets.

“Elendria.” I said quietly, pulling her back into the alley. “Do these guys look a bit different in your sight?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “There are at least two long appendages boring deep into their souls. They also seem, greasy.”

“Greasy?” I asked.

“Yes.” She confirmed. “Like there is a sheen of oil covering their souls. If you can’t safely kill their passengers, kill the elves. They aren’t destined for the deeper hells, but I can sense they will head to a lesser hell.” She took a deep breath to firm up her resolve, then plunged headfirst into danger once again.

“Sir! Sir Guard! You have to help me! My husband’s been stabbed!” She sobbed, slamming into one of them, who reflexively put an arm around her before grinning at his partner.

“Whoah there, ma’am.” He said, rubbing her back a little. “I need you to calm down a bit. You said someone was stabbed? Where?”

“My hu-. Husband. Stabbed in the stomach.” She sobbed. “Please, you have to help him! He’s just in the alley there!”

“Sure, we’ll be glad to help. It’s what guards do.” He said, slowly leading her to the alley. They got to where they could see me feebly kicking my legs before sighing and shaking his head. “Oh dear, that’s a right fatal stab. Wouldn’t you agree Kel?”

“Yep. Ain’t nothing worse than a stab to the gut. Guaranteed infection, hell. He could take up to six or seven weeks to die, sufferin’ all the while.” Kel said, spitting out the side of his mouth. “He would be a total drain on everything you got. Money, time, emotion. Prolly be best if we just put ‘im down now.”

“NO! You can’t do that!” Elendria cried, turning to the partner, only to be stopped by a hand around her waist.

“Easy there, sweet cheeks.” The first guard grinned. “See, right now you only owe us for our professional diagnosis. If you were to do somethin’ stupid, say, assaulting a guard? Well, then you’ld be in a whole world of trouble.”

“Professional diagnosis? What professional diagnosis?” She snarled, turning on the rage perfectly. She turned back to the first one while Kel sauntered up to me.

“Professional diagnosis.” The first one said. “See, before we were guards, we were mercenaries. Seen a lot of fightin’, seen a lot of dying. Ain’t never seen someone come back from gut stab before, at least not without a lot of expensive materials. Tell me sweet cheeks, you got the money to pay for expensive materials? Or would you pay in other ways?” He asked, drawing out the last few words in a sleazy manner while running a hand along her chin.

“Get your hands off-“ I started, stopping as I faked a pained wince.

“Ah, ah. Easy there kiddo.” Kel said, wiping a bit of gunk off of what I assumed was some sort of trash canister before he sat down on it, crossing one leg over the other. “See, talking and yelling forces a lot of muscles in the stomach to clench up, and well. You’ve already seen that it can be painful. So I’ll give you a choice.” He paused to spit a bit, then bit into some plant stalk that looked like black licorice. “So. Choice one, we go ahead and put you out of your misery. Nice and easy like, one good whack to the skull outta do it. After that, who cares? You’ll be dead. Your lovely wife there will pay us our ‘fee,’ and we’ll go on our way. Or you can go ahead and try living, running up the bills and leaving your wife with nothing. I’ve seen it before, it’s such a sad tale. Woman spends all her time and money pining over her slowly dying husband, and when he finally goes? Well. She has no job anymore, cuz she was pining over him. She has no money, because they were spending it all on keeping him alive. So what’s a girl to do?”

“This.” I snarled, shooting a blade at the chest of the unsuspecting elf. Elendria sensed the change in my voice, and slammed her own spirit blade into the chest of the one who was holding her close.

“Ah, you bastard!” Kel screamed, drawing his club as I scrambled to my feet.

“Bitch!” I heard the other snarl and a gasp of pain from Elendria, but I trusted her. She was already inside his guard, and he wouldn’t have room to draw his main weapon and none of the guards carried any knives.

“Heat metal.” I said, focusing on the rivets of the club he wielded. Unfortunately, I felt the magic slipping off.

“Hah! You think a guard would take a weapon that wasn’t enchanted to resist enemy magics?” He chuckled, stepping forward and thrusting at me with the sharp point that was at the very end of his club. I batted it away, but he kept up the assault, throwing new attacks at me with a roll of his wrists. “How did a no talent hack like you ever land such a beauty? No matter, Clive will have her squealin’ soon, and we’ll take real good care of her. It’s always fun, breakin’ ‘em the old fashioned way.”

“If the likes of you could have broken her, she would be a husk by now.” I said calmly, dodging a backhanded swing and sending a bullet into the elf’s leg.

“GAH!” He grunted in pain, dropping to a knee as his femur was now broken. Before he could recover, I sent a compressed blast of air into his forehead, sending him sprawling. Once he was on the ground, icy shackles formed around his joints, locking them all into place.

“You ok?” I asked Elendria, noting the body behind her. I couldn’t see any blood, but it was a dark alley.

“Yeah. Bastard thought pulling my hair would be enough to stop me. I had to shred the creature in his chest, but he is neutralized for now. Let’s get this guy taken care of.” She said, kneeling down next to him.

“AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!” He screamed, back arching in agony. As quickly as I could, I set up a spell to isolate us and keep the screams from getting out.

“By Shalora!” Elendria swore, her face looking shocked. With several deft slashes with her spirit blade, the body sunk back onto the ground. “Sean, this is horrible!” She said, carefully trying to pry into the chest with different shaped blades. At my confused expression, she explained, “Those two things that were embedded inside the soul. They are, I guess the closest I can come to is calling them vampiric. They were draining the guard’s soul in order to ensure the creature’s survival.”

I shuddered. “Is there anything we can do other than sever the cords immediately?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She said, and I noticed tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t even know what will happen if the body dies with this thing in it. Can they keep the soul here, forcing the body to move? Will they eventually take over all the connections of the soul to the body? What about skills? Those are imprints into our souls.”

“All good questions.” I said, placing a calming hand over her shaking ones. “Questions we will get answers too, probably far sooner than you realize or want. We just have to be aware that sometimes the answers won’t be what we want to hear.”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“It probably takes quite a while for these things to take over. By that time, it’s probably learned all it needs to in order to fake being the person it is now controlling. At that point, unless they need the soul for skills, it is useless to them. Something to be consumed.”

“And the ones who have been controlled the longest.” She trailed off.

“We’ll come to that when we need to. Right now, let’s see you save this guy, though I would rather remove his head from his shoulders.”

It took nearly a half hour for Elendria to get done with Kel, and just about that long to remove the last bits of the creatures from Clive. By the time Clive had finished with his surgery, Kel was starting to come around.

“Wha? What happened?” He asked, wincing as he tried to move. We had replaced the ice cuffs with stone, fusing him to the sides of the nearby building. His legs were mostly free, leaving him sitting on the ground with his legs extended.

“Hey there, Kel, right?” I asked, squatting down so that I was at his height.

“Yeah? Who the fuck are you and how long do you think you’re gonna live after kidnapping a city guard, moron?” He snarled.

“Name’s Sean, but that’s the last of the answers you’ll be getting from me. Instead, I need to ask you a few questions about this thing.” I said, using telekinesis to lift up the remains of the creature that was removed from Clive. It was more intact than the one that we had removed from Kel, and more importantly was still sticking out from the armor.

“What in Shalora’s name is that?” He asked, horrified.

“That, well. We aren’t quite sure what it’s called. We do know what it does. See, it starts out by wrapping around your soul, then it sticks these two reaaaaaally long teeth into your soul, and starts using your soul to power its own growth. Or at least, keep it alive if injured. We need to know how fast they grow?”

“Look, how the hell am I supposed to know how fast these, these, whatever they are. How fast they grow when I’ve never seen them?” He asked, confusion and pain written on his face. “Shalora, how am I so exhausted?”

“It drained a bit of your soul before we could kill it.” Elendria explained. “Now-“

“DRAINED MY SOUL?” He screamed, horrified.

“Easy there, it’s dead now. I need you to-“ Before I could finish, he fainted. I looked at the other guy, but he didn’t seem like he was coming around.

“Damnit.” I swore, releasing the stone cuffs from around him. “Alright, your plans?” I asked.

“I don’t like going in without information, but I like them getting wind of what’s happening even less. We’ve taken out half the garrison, and the rest are probably getting ready to switch patrols. We’re going to be discovered sooner rather than later, so I say we attack the barracks.”

“I was hoping you would say that.” I nodded. “We can press the others at the seer’s guild for more later. I’m more concerned with how you want to handle the enemies?”

“If they have the weak armor, a simple chest strike will take them down. Those with more elaborate armor, I’m sorry to say but we just don’t have the time. Unless you see a way to quickly incapacitate them, we’re going to have to kill them.” She reluctantly said.

“Fair enough.” I nodded. “Get as close as we can, save the weaklings while killing the strong ones.” I had to bite my tongue from adding ‘easy peasy’ or some other jinxing saying onto the end. “You ready for this?”

“Not at all. Let’s go.” She said, and I saw a bit of fire in her eyes. It didn’t matter how horrible it was going to be to her, there was a job only she could do, so she was going to see it done. Who wouldn’t admire resolve like that? I followed her out of the alley, and to our surprise the bazaar type area we had lured the guards from was mostly empty. Of course, arrayed against us were ten more guards. Only three had the weakest armor, while five had the slightly evolved form. Leading the group were two that were obviously well along in their conversion. A female elf with next to nothing on seemed to be the leader. Her chest was covered in the lizard infinity symbol, with a leg from each lizard conveniently covering a nipple. She had a cape that was swaying oddly, as there was no breeze, and leather pants that were covered in sheaths full of throwing knives judging by the lack of a bulky handle, and at plenty of odd angles to assist throwing from unusual positions. The man next to her was what would have happened if you gave a tall elf the physique of a dwarf. The lizards were tattooed on his unarmored chest, along with several different arcane circles. His hair was cut short, his legs covered in the same style of leather as the woman, only he also happened to be carrying the thickest war bow I had ever seen. Six feet tall and possibly as thick as my bicep, he smiled as he noticed me looking at it.

“Impressed?” He asked.

“Those two.” Elendria whispered, horrified, “They can’t be saved. The creature is already inside them, wrapped around and penetrating their souls.”

“Pretty much. Yeah.” I nodded. “I think I might have seen a ballista with a smaller draw weight.”

“Ha! Flattery, though appreciated, will get you nowhere.” He called out, drawing an arrow from his quiver. “Have you slain all my men?”

“On the contrary.” I said, smiling. “We simply removed the black creatures feasting on their souls. You can check, Clive and Kel are in the alley back there recovering. It’s a bit of a shock though. If you want, we could try the same with you two. Though, in your case I doubt you would make it through the procedure whole.”

He simply shook his head. “Lies. We were warned that blasphemers were infiltrating our cities to sow discord. To think, that they would have come all the way out here.” I frantically started condensing the strongest mana shield I could as the tattoos on his body glowed, allowing him to draw that beast of a bow. He held it at a full draw for a full three seconds before sending it screaming in our direction. “Piercing shot,” was the only skill he said aloud.