“Nicknames are sort of a common thing once you grow some rep in this line of work. Oftentimes though, those nicknames could lead to stories that were often overexaggerated and overembellished over time, but at the same time, there’s generally some kernel of truth to be found in them regardless.” - Harun Abu Saeed, bard from the Caliphate.

It was a couple years after they lived in Knallzog – mostly based from the northern town of Falaston, to the east of Bærengant, where Grünhildr’s great-grandfather lived – as adventurers that Salicia and Grünhildr met with another woman who would later become a lifelong friend of theirs.

The two were on a mission that happened to take them to Motstadt, a smaller town further north of their usual base, and were reporting its completion on the local branch of the guild there when they witnessed a fracas that took place by the guild’s request board. While normally such incidents were relatively commonplace and weren’t worth paying attention to, something in this one caught Salicia’s eye.

Partly because from the looks of it, a group of local adventurers were making fun and jeering at a young woman – Salicia thought that she was probably around their own age or thereabouts – who just sighed irritably at their behavior. A couple of the older locals also saw the scene but had not raised a finger to do anything, other than to cover their faces, for reasons Salicia learned a moment later.

Once the jeering got too annoying, the young woman moved with swift, decisive moves and dropped the whole party of six that were bothering her within seconds.

It was quite something to witness, as even if the ones she dropped were relatively amateurish in their skills, there were six of them after all, and they fought back, or at least tried to do so. The woman acted almost as if she had eyes on her back, however, and easily avoided the worst that her opponents could throw at her while accurately landing her own blows with vicious precision.

A quick inquiry with the local guild’s staff member allowed Salicia and Grünhildr to learn about the other woman’s – who they learned was named Elfriede – situation. The girl had apparently first arrived in town two years ago, and sought out work as a mercenary right away. There was one major problem that the girl faced, however.

Namely that she was blind and thus unable to read any of the requests on the board, having to rely on asking others to read them for her.

Other than that, the girl had an exemplary track record with the missions she took, with the only blemish on her record being that she often seems a bit too happy to kill her targets – or robbers that got in her way during escort missions – at times. Still, her disability does at times cause issues like what happened that day, when some newcomers – mostly those from out of towns, as the locals had time to get familiar with her by now – picked on it to their own detriment.

Something about the girl piqued the interest of both Salicia and Grünhildr, however, and they took that chance to not only help the girl – Elfriede – with reading the available missions, but also invited her to a meal to get to know her better. Elfriede was pretty taciturn at first, and seemed pretty uncaring about things other than to earn money to fund her relatively simple living in town.

Salicia and Grünhildr offered her a temporary partnership with them, with the promise of quicker, well-paying jobs. The two of them had regularly taken part of the darker side of the mercenary trade from time to time, as it paid better. While the guild in general did not openly advertise that some of their members took jobs that were closer to assassinations and the likes, it was pretty much an open secret amongst the community.

The pay was naturally higher, but the jobs were also riskier at the same time. Given Elfriede’s penchant to killing to begin with, combined with – what they later learned – her ability to just seamlessly go around any place like it was her own home, without the need for any light, meant that she was a natural for that sort of job, just that the small guild branch in the small town she lived in had little work of such nature.

Their gamble proved right, as Elfriede was indeed a natural for such jobs. While they undertook such jobs relatively regularly, Salicia and Grünhildr were rather picky ones, as they had their own lines they did not wish to cross. As such, they made sure to check the background of the requests to make sure that those they killed would be people who should have been killed off way earlier, or never reached the position they were on, had the world been a better place.

People whose deaths would indeed, leave the world a better place.

Corrupt officials or other people who abused their powers or riches tend to be the sort of target they mainly went for. Of course, not every mercenary was as discerning as they were, and as such those who undertake assassination work were generally cast in a negative light overall. Due to their selective criteria on the jobs they would take, though, the three were seen more positively overall.

Within a year of Elfriede’s joining, their group even gained some nicknames, at times whispered by others during conversations, as the “Three Reapers”. Salicia was called the “Silent”, as when she killed, generally the only sound that took place was that of an arrow piercing flesh and her target toppling over. Grünhildr the “Severing” owing to the fearsome ability of her weapons – which she clad with her inborn void magic – to sever anything in its path, and Elfriede the “Sightless” due to her blindness.

Unfortunately for them, while the pay for assassination jobs did indeed allow them to live comfortably with less effort, and gaining a positive reputation was a good thing, it also attracted some negative attention their way, as they found out the hard way some time later.