Magic levels are full, stamina full, nutrition looks good, not missing any blood, operation is a go.

I knelt on a roof across the street from Yaavtey's home, watching the stone structure and waiting in the darkness. His guards, both plainclothes and uniformed, walked a complex and reasonably difficult to avoid search pattern around the outside of the building while the inhabitants of the home did whatever it was humans did inside their homes for leisure. I could have jumped down and found a way to break into the home, but that wasn't the plan. I knew that eventually the lantern lights would go out, at which point I would be able to do what I came to do.

An hour passed and the lights were still on. The guards had long since gotten lax from the quietness of the streets, and the two out in front of the main building were chatting with each other quietly. I couldn't make out what they were talking about, but their body language told me it wasn't about their jobs. One of the plainclothes guards walked by and barked an order, at which point both guards stood up straight and stopped speaking to each other. So the plainclothes are the superiors? I noted, seems like a strange structure. Then suddenly the lights went out, and I moved to start the plan.

Getting down to street level was the first order of business. The roof I was observing from was a good vantage point with minimal outside visibility, but had no real path to Yaavtey's roof. The street was very wide, too far to jump across, so I would have to briefly walk along the ground with my rattling backpack full of metal. I climbed down until I was just over one floor above ground, then opted to drop to the alley below in lieu of making a more continuous noise. Upon landing I remained still for a few seconds, looking around for anyone who noticed me, and saw no one.

Crossing the street was easier than expected. Very few people were out walking and the guards had no interest in patrolling very far from Yaavtey's home, so I just walked half a block away then nonchalantly exited the alley and crossed into another. I had to adjust my stride to keep the motion on my back straight and constant, but it wasn't difficult, and not even a single passerby paid any more attention to me than anyone else. Once I was across the street, I found a point where I couldn't be spotted by foot traffic and immediately began climbing back up the nearest wall.

I knew from experience with Koyl that there might have been guards on roofs that weren't Yaavtey's, so I moved cautiously and quietly. I had good night vision, probably better than most humans despite how inferior it was compared to proper infrared imaging, but I still had to take a few minutes on each rooftop to ensure that there wasn't anyone hiding or looking for me on the next one. It's odd that there don't seem to be any out tonight, I thought briefly. When I finally reached the roof adjacent to Yaavtey's, I slipped my backpack off and then put it on backwards in anticipation of what was to come. Even though the roof I was planning to jump to was largely stone, I had to minimize noise, since it was possible that the guards near the house could be listening.

The gap between the roof I stood on and Yaavtey's was around seven meters or so. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able to make such a jump while wearing the amount of equipment I had on. However, I had force magic, so when I made my final step before my leap I shoved myself away from the foothold with much more energy than a human would have been able to. As I sailed through the air, I tucked my arms and legs in, securing the backpack against my chest, then oriented myself to roll as I landed on Yaavtey's roof.

Once the rolling finished, I sat completely still, ears ringing from my straining them to hear any potential sign that I was detected. Every footstep on the ground outside was scrutinized. The quiet creaking of a loose window fitting sent me on edge for a moment when I mistook it for a door. Minutes passed before I was finally sure that I hadn't alerted anyone and started to get to my knees. Opening the backpack and peering inside, I saw that everything had made it more or less intact, and so I looked around for a ventilation hole.

As it turned out, Yaavtey's chimney was a small bump that barely extended past the surface of the roof, with a grate over the exhaust hole. Vehrehr wasn't exactly a cold city, hovering around twenty degrees Celsius during good weather in the daytime and dipping to around fifteen at night. Only when it rained did people tend to burn wood to warm themselves, and the night sky above me was clear. Thankfully for me, the grate wasn't secured with anything and came off with just a pull. Looking down the chimney, I could see that the passage bent slightly, probably to keep rainwater from falling directly onto the fire, but otherwise looked unobstructed.

After doing one final check for guards on nearby roofs, I slipped on my gas mask and dumped the first bag of poison into the vaporizer. I had no idea just how much I would need to execute my plan, but I wasn't about to take chances. After attaching the metal spout tube I started cooling it, only stopping once bits of condensation started to form on it from the local humidity. Placing the spout into the chimney, I began the complex task of heating the main chamber with my left hand while cooling the metal tube with my right. It took several minutes to get it right, but the smoke began to flow as expected and poured down the chimney silently as it left the cool metal tube. Now I just need to wait, I thought.

Fifteen minutes later I heard a shout. Thinking I had been caught, I dropped the vaporizer and went prone, looking around for whoever it was who spotted me. Another shout followed the first, and I managed to determine it was coming from a spot in front of the house on the ground floor. Crawling on my belly, I approached the ledge and peered over it to see what the commotion was about. A guard had collapsed, and four more were surrounding him and trying to resuscitate him. The group was some distance from the front door, and I could see wisps of smoke snaking out from underneath it. That looks like all the guards, plainclothes included, I noted, this could be my chance.

Getting back into a crouching position, I collected the vaporizer, cooled it down, slipped it into my backpack, then dropped myself behind the house and away from the guards. Using force magic I managed to avoid making too much noise, but the fall still broke my ankles. Rapid healing had me mobile in half a minute, and I found the nearest window. With a bit of force magic I snapped the latch, then a cloud of smoke gushed out when I pulled the shutter open to enter. I held my breath, then tentatively inhaled. The air still stank, but I could tell that the mask was doing its job, so I closed the window loosely behind me.

I climbed inside, then activated a light orb to help me see through the smoke. The interior of the house was extravagant, every single wall had at least one painting on it and all the furniture was made of materials that looked at least a hundred years ahead of the average human textiles of Vehrehr. I drew my sword for safety and slowly began the job of clearing the ground floor. There were ten rooms including two storage rooms for food, and not a single one contained a human, living or otherwise. No beds either, I noted, they must sleep on the second floor.

The stairs creaked as I climbed them, so I climbed them slowly. Rationally I knew that the poison had almost definitely killed everyone inside, but my body urged caution regardless and I couldn't disagree with it. After all, Yaavtey managed to surprise me once, I thought, I should be careful of overconfidence. The smoke on the second floor was thinner but still fog-like, and four rooms awaited me through four separate doors.

The first room had no humans in it. I didn't know what the purpose of the room was exactly, but it seemed to be some kind of storage. There was a large wooden device of some sort situated in the rough center of the room, and an ornate chair in front of it. Deciding not to linger I went to the second room, and inside I found my first body. Laying in bed, covered in a sheet as though they were sleeping, was the adolescent male I had seen when observing Yaavtey's home many days before.

I crept up to the human silently in case he was still alive and nudged him. When I got no reaction, I brought my blade up to his face and sliced his cheek. No healing, I observed, definitely dead. Looking at the corpse, the human was around half of the total volume of Yaavtey, so if he had died it was a fair bet that Yaavtey was at the very least incapacitated. On my way out of the room I spotted a set of utility knives much like the one I was wearing, belt included, and decided to swap mine out for the boy's since he wouldn't be needing them anymore.

The third room was another empty bedroom. I did a full sweep just to be sure, and there were no humans inside. Who sleeps here? I wondered. The room looked like it hadn't been used in some time. I collected some money which was inside the drawers of the dresser beside the bed, then exited into the hallway to search the final room. I approached the door, reaching for the handle, at which point the door swung inward and I leapt two full meters backwards, sword at the ready.

“...shahv...” a nearly-naked woman coughed out as she walked towards me, hand outstretched. “...Yaavtey?” she asked, in between heaving breaths. I readied my blade and approached. “You're not-” the woman cried, stepping back and stumbling.

“No,” I said through the mask, then I swung my blade at her. Like a roach, the woman skittered out of the way of my strike with surprising speed. She entered her room, slammed the door, then I heard her bar it. My foot connected with the doorframe, shattering the wood, and before I could enter the woman rushed at me with a weapon of her own, screaming bloody murder as she tried to run me through.

I had no idea how she had so much energy, but her movements were slowed nonetheless. I stepped out of the way, crushing her face with the hilt of my sword and knocking her to the floor, then I stabbed her through the chest and pinned her to the floor with it. Blood poured out onto the lacquered wood beneath her, and she coughed more up into the air, spattering herself with flecks of it. Looking into the room I realized how she managed to stay alive: her window was open. I gazed upon the still form of a man in her bed, on the side not facing the window. Smiling under my mask, I walked over to confirm the identity of the body.

It's not him, I realized as soon as I saw the man’s face, rage and confusion bubbling up within me, why isn't it him!? The man, who was stone dead, was just another blonde human who looked nothing like Yaavtey at all. Angrily I shut the window and marched back over to Yaavtey's wife, who was still conscious somehow. I wanted to crush her, to kill her with my bare hands, but I needed information.

“Where is Yaavtey?” I demanded. Her eyes were visibly vibrating, and she couldn't summon the strength to look at me, with her head twisted limply to her left.

“...he's going... to kill... you...” she breathed.

“WHERE IS HE?” I roared, too angry to care if the guards could hear me. My ears rang from the volume of my own voice. I couldn't even tell if she heard me because the only parts of her body which were moving were her chest and lips, and the latter were turning blue.

“My... son,” she gasped, “where is...my son?” Clenching my teeth together, I forced my boiling rage to a simmer. She’s going to die very soon, I thought, I doubt she’s even rational. If I bring her the body, she might tell me what I want to know.

I marched into the adolescent's room and pulled the corpse from the bed, then threw it down beside its mother. “There he is,” I grunted, “now where is Yaavtey?” The woman didn't reply, but the tears that had been welling up in her bloodshot eyes began dripping slowly down her face. I paused, then pulled my sword from her chest and out of the floor. The wound didn't heal. Useless human idiot, I growled, smashing my fist into a nearby wall. The outer paint and drywall layer cracked, coming off in shards, and my knuckles shattered on the stone below, leaving a smear of blood behind.

He has to be at the guild hall, I raged, I still have more poison, I can still make this plan work. The smell of the gas was getting stronger in my mask, so I quickly wiped my sword on the wife's body and walked back downstairs to my entry point. After checking both ways for guards and seeing none, I jumped out into the yard behind the house and dashed off into the darkness. Damned humans, I swore, they always have to make everything more difficult than it needs to be.