Desmond glanced around subtly, that is, as subtly as the situation and his abilities allowed.

He didn't know who was following him, or why.

But they were at least two people, and he could get an idea.

They were not officers of the city guard. That much was clear. Otherwise, they would have been all over him by now. Cops had to not endanger citizens; he wouldn't, under any circumstances, but they couldn't know that based solely on what happened at the docks.

That might explain their behavior.

Following him, saying nothing, doing nothing.

But if they saw him as a threat to the citizens, well, they had nowhere safe to start a fight with him already being in the city.

No, if they were cops, they would have already acted. As he had thought from the beginning.

And if they weren't cops, there was only one possibility left.

Criminals.

Roman's men, more specifically.

Only they could have anything to do with him.

Desmond took a deep breath.

He continued to walk quietly through the streets, as if he had seen nothing.

He had no desire to draw attention to himself.

Not only that, but he wished to conduct his business as quickly as possible and then get the hell out of this damned city. Nothing more.

If he ever saw this city again, it would be too soon.

Always. No matter how many years passed.

He'd had enough for a lifetime.

He felt like breaking into a run, but he just picked up the pace of his walk. It would do him no good to run, to draw attention to himself.

He could lose them even by walking fast alone.

With a little luck. And a little skill.

Or not lose them, but... get rid of them as fast as possible.

Desmond stepped into the first alley. He rounded the corner and stood there waiting, back against the wall, gun drawn. He put the gun to the temple of the first man to pass. The man froze. His companion was slow to do the same, but not much. How quickly any situation can change, so much.

Well. Not that they'd ever had power over him in the first place.

"Why are you following me?"

Yeah, that was a good question, now that he thought about it.

They were just two people. Possibly some more pursuers would be around, watching, posing as normal citizens. Still, it wasn't enough to put up a fight. So it didn't make sense that they were Roman's men looking for revenge, or looking to restore his gang's reputation, or both.

If they had seen him fight last night, in the harbor, they knew they couldn't fight him.

That even if they brought dozens of people with them, they wouldn't stand much of a chance. So what were they doing here? Why were they behaving so strangely? What did they want?

"You're the mage who killed Roman, aren't you?"

As if he didn't know that for sure.

But hey, Roman hadn't brought his entire organization to the port, far from it.

It was only natural that many of them hadn't even seen him.

So he supposed that answered the question he'd asked himself.

"So what?"

"We want to... propose a deal to you."

"Oh?

He hadn't expected that.

——

"We'll compete to see who can hit the most... or miss the least, depending on how you look at it. It'll be more fun that way.

Right after she said that, Christina missed a shot for the first time.

The ninth ball flew over her arms and hit the back wall. It narrowly missed her, in fact.

Seeing that it would miss, Amy hadn't moved.

Still, you could tell it had been close.

In the end, Christina only missed six of the thirty throws. It would be hard to top that. She'd never been to a batting center, either.

But it wasn't all about winning or losing.

Amy was fine with either outcome. For a moment, she thought about losing on purpose, if she came close to beating her friend.

She decided that wasn't a good idea.

If she lost on purpose, Christina would notice and, knowing her, she wouldn't take it well.

Amy and Christina traded places.

Amy had never played this, but she had seen other people play. In the past and just today, in the other booths.

Was that the right word, "posts"?

It didn't sound right to her.

In any case, what she was getting at was that while Christina had a fairly loose stance the whole time, Amy tried to adopt the proper posture.

The second round would start in about ten seconds.

It was reflected on the wall. Numbers appeared and disappeared above the magic circle from which the balls shot out.

When it marked four, Amy took a deep breath, preparing herself.

... She was already taking it more seriously than she had originally intended to do.

Anyway. Some things never change.

She was a competitive person, she was hopeless.

The countdown reached zero. The first ball shot out.

Amy swung the bat.

——

Fortunately, she managed to hit the ball.

It was easier than she had thought, actually.

Good.

To be honest, she had been worried that she wouldn't get it right and be publicly humiliated.

But it looked like she could do it, at least, decently.

Unless it had been a stroke of luck.

But it proved not to be.

She got the next four balls right, too. One after another. She was getting into the rhythm. Precisely then, Christina spoke up.

"Desmond was trying to fill, needless to say, the hole Abigail had left him."

Amy was tempted to respond with something like: are you trying to distract me to win?

She kept her mouth shut. There was no way to answer that. At the same time... We always have to talk about something serious, don't we? Moments of pure happiness, of pure fun, seem too fleeting.

It was just as petty a thought as the answer she had withheld from Christina.

But she couldn't help thinking it.

Amy couldn't help feeling the way she felt.

"He told me straight out that any woman would do. But, when she showed up, and he chose us, came home, I started to get my hopes up. You know what I mean? I think I'm smart. Rational. But at the end of the day, I'm as prone to fall into those traps as anyone else."

"I thought so, too. That we were never going to be apart," Amy said in a soft, almost inaudible voice.

"And I was... At first, I was just trying to fill the hole Adam left me."

As they talked, Amy missed two of the throws.

But the third one since they started talking she hit it with all her might, it flew out-and-out of sight.

She couldn't concentrate on the rhythm of the game. That simple repetition.

"Adam is... I guess when you heard a man's name, and heard me talk about a hole in my heart, the first thing you thought was that he was my boyfriend or that I was at least in love with him."

Yes. The truth is that she had thought that.

"It's not true. I've never been in love with anyone. Adam. To me, he was kind of like a big brother. He trained me in the use of my magic."

Wait. So he was another shadow magic user.

Adam. Why, after knowing that fact, did his name sound so familiar? Christina gave her the answer soon after. An answer as simple as it was devastating, just like the blow of a hammer.

"Adam committed suicide. He couldn't bear the burden of his magic and in the end took his own life."

The burden of his magic?

Wait, what did she mean by that? Suddenly her mouth was dry as esparto grass. What exactly does that mean?

"At first, well, even now I see Adam in Desmond. Because they really look alike. It's not just crazy ideas of mine. Desmond was like a shadow that could disappear at any moment. I wanted to be near him. And, as arrogant as it sounds, save him from himself. Or something like that."

Christina looked away, turning to the barred wall beside her.

But she could see it.

Even though she had her gaze averted, her long hair covering her face, she saw that Christina had tears in her eyes.

Amy swallowed hard.

At this point, she had forgotten all about the game.

Occasionally she would hit a ball, but instinctively, without even really noticing it.

"I was quite a fool, yes. I won't be the one to save him when I can't even save myself. But..." She took a deep breath. "But I hope someone can. That it's not already too late".

Amy shuddered.

——

"By killing Roman, you've left a hole of power that everyone will rush to be the one to fill," one of the men said. The one at gunpoint, to be more exact. "We know you want to get to the Empire. We will procure your passage. In return, all we ask is that you finish what you have started."

"What does that mean?"

"You know what it means. Tear down the foundations of his organization, so that it can never rise again. And so that another can take its place."

That is, them.

Desmond nodded slowly.

"Let me make you a counteroffer. Give me what I want, and in return, I won't destroy you."

The man smiled. Sweat glistened on his face.

"I refuse." Still, he had the courage to deny him outright. Desmond supposed he could respect that, to a point.

"You are in no position to refuse anything."

"If I shouted this is the man from last night, the city guard would be all over you."

"You wouldn't care. Your brains would be scattered on the ground by then."

"Yeah, but you're not going to pull the trigger. Not when you're aware of the inevitable consequences. And you had nothing to gain from it, but the other way around. Besides..."

Desmond wanted to pull the trigger, so badly that he imagined it vividly.

The shot. The sight of that man's head exploding like a melon.

It was such a vivid illusion that he came to believe, for a moment, that it had really happened. But it hadn't.

The man was still there. Alive.

Pretending to be strong under the shadow of the barrel of his gun.

——

"Wait a minute, Christina." Amy approached her friend.

On the way, she dropped the bat from her limp hands.

She pushed the distraction of the game aside, which all it did was provide her with an excuse to delay the conversation, to not face what she had heard.

Amy couldn't afford excuses.

Couldn't afford to delay this.

The balls kept being thrown. One after another. The noise of that, like the noises made by the other people playing in this center, seemed to come from another world.

She was beginning to realize the implications.

That... that...

Is it that nothing can go right for very long?

Amy didn't sit down. She stood in front of Christina.

"The weight of his magic? You can't even save yourself? What do you mean?"

Christina opened her eyes wide. She put on an embarrassed expression.

"I've said too much."

"No. Explain."

Christina lowered her gaze to her lap. She hated seeing her like this, hated how far the situation had warped in such a short time. Sometimes she hated Desmond for making the decision he had made and then she hated herself for feeling this way. She didn't know how much more of this she was going to take.

She really didn't. But... At the same time, she needed to hear the answer. She couldn't pretend she hadn't heard anything after Christina dropped hints of something terrible, without realizing it.

"Shadow magic allows you to feel the emotions of others as if they were your own," Christina explained quietly. "By using magic on someone, but also passively. All the time. On people within your reach. That... was too much for Adam, and he ended it all with his own hands."

Amy froze.

Yes. She'd heard it in the past, once. An out-of-place conversation at a dinner party.

About a shadow magic user who had ended his life.

About an Adam.

She'd heard his story before...that is, the sad ending to his story. Now she remembered it. However, it couldn't have occurred to her that it had larger implications. She had never connected what happened to Adam.... No, what had been done, and Christina.

Now...

Now, now, now, now, now!

"Can the same thing happen to you? "Her voice didn't sound like her own. It had a strange echo.

It wasn't the best way to handle such a delicate subject, of course. But her shock was too great not to do it awkwardly.

"No," Christina said flatly, to her surprise. Maybe it's just what I'd like to think, but I would never kill myself. The constant assault of other people's emotions, however, that can have effects on me. And it may have already." She shook her head, "I live in fear of disappearing beneath those waves. And, at the same time, of having already done so. Because I can never be sure."

How could one answer that?

It was one thing after another, non"stop. It's falling apart, she thought.

All of it.

How to pick up the pieces? She put a hand to her head. How to even start?

——

"You consider yourself a good person, don't you?" He asked Desmond as if he were mocking him. No, no 'like', that's how it was. "Many innocent people will suffer in the war to fill the power vacuum. Inevitably. But, the sooner it's over, the better for them. And if it's over before it even starts...."

He was persuasive.

Not him, but his boss, whoever he was. He was hearing the words, the reasoning, of the head of his organization through the lips of the man he had under his gun. And he was right, in part. He had killed Roman. The consequences of that act were his responsibility, morally speaking. It would be up to him to end it all.

So that the number of people who had to suffer would be as few as possible. Roman's men were criminals. Still, he couldn't say that they all deserved to die just like that. He didn't want to slaughter people because it suited him.

If they attacked him, that would be another story. He would cut them all down without hesitation.

However, actively going after them was another story. As criminal as they were, he couldn't be sure they all deserved to die. He wished Abigail was here, to ask her advice. He hadn't heeded her last advice, and she might be a little angry, but she would help him anyway. Regardless, considered asking for her advice, but dismissed that idea.

"If I do that, nothing will change. I will just give the keys to the city to another bastard like Roman."

"We're not like him," he objected almost immediately. The man, who wasn't at gunpoint, hadn't said a word since Desmond had turned the tables on him. "But you have no reason to believe me, so it's only natural."

"You're not doing a very good job of convincing me, with an answer like that."

"There's nothing I can say to convince you that we'd be any better for the people of this town. I could take you to our base, have them show you how we operate, what we plan to do. And yet..." His voice trembled slightly. He showed vulnerability for the first time. "You wouldn't believe me."

He finished with a few harmless words.

But, from the tremor in his voice, Desmond was sure that he had thought he would kill him. That he had been about to say it.

"You don't have to believe that we're an improvement. Isn't it enough to think that we're at least as bad as Roman? No more, no less? Our city would be..."

"The city doesn't belong to you. Not to Roman, not to any of you. The city belongs to the people."

"What are you saying? " It was impressive that he had the balls to talk to him like that, knowing that he was a tenth of a second away from dying. "The city never belongs to the citizens, but to the lords and ladies at the top, controlling everything. Taking advantage of everything. If anything, we will return the city to the people."

He stared at the man.

"Is that what you tell yourself, so you can sleep at night?

"Do you agree?" He took a deep breath. "Or you don’t accept?"

He was afraid, but he was counting on him not pulling the trigger, because of what he had described to him before.

Desmond slowly lowered the gun.

"Wise decision," said the criminal.

Accept? Accept what?

Be his attack dog? Operate like a hired killer?

A spawn with no scruples, no dignity, no soul?

The man opened his mouth to say something.

Desmond called the sword into his hands.

Before any sound came from his throat, before he realized it, Desmond unsheathed the sword and buried it in the criminal's chest, pushing him against the wall with the force of the blow.

The criminal gasped, his mouth filling rapidly with overflowing blood.

His eyes were wide open, practically literally popping out of their sockets.

He looked at him as if asking for an explanation, so....

"This is my counteroffer."

He gave it to him.