Legend of Ransera

The roads were long, but most places were a mere step away for a Railrunner of his power. Of all his tricks, traveling was the one he held in the highest regard. He didn't joke about it, didn't diminish it; perhaps that was due to the way it had been earned, and the way it had been taught. Two had been etched upon him with only the most dubious of consent, one had been transactional, beguiled out of a godling to help protect a dangerous artifact. But Valencia was his teacher, a person who had invested herself in him, and he didn't truly know how to handle that. Eshar was a godling themself, and he thumbed his nose at them to prove he wasn't the victim of the long grifts of the divine. But as he swaggered into the Menagerie, a smirk on his face to receive the looks of admiration and gratitude - they knew who had saved them from the Mists - the edges of his mundane illusion grew brittle.

Aurin sat at the table across from teacher and god as if he were their equal or more. With a showy snap of his finger, a bubble-like ward came into being around their table. It muffled sounds coming in so only a strident call would catch their attention, and the same going out. Their conversation would be private - barring any expert lip-readers - but they could call for more drinks at will.

With his back to the door, Aurin's senses sembled all around. He could afford to seem unconcerned; his senses were keener than if he had actual eyes on the back of his head.

"A man knows he has made it when two lovelies demand a date with him at the same time," he drawled rakishly. Somehow, he managed to walk the knife's edge - it might be hot or, barring that, it would at least be amusing. Of course, Valencia hadn't taken their relationship to that level; he supposed that could muddy the student-teacher relationship, although he felt as though his power at traveling was beginning to match hers, if not his skill. And Eshar, well, Eshar was a creature of desire and pleasure, and it was rare for Aurin to escape their presence without a solid fucking.

"Or did you just want me to kill someone for you...?"

As a self-proclaimed 'bad man,' Aurin gathered that he was never going to be able to come to the Menagerie without getting laid if such was his desire. But he was fortunate in that he was one of the few men living who looked good wearing smug like a mantle about his shoulders. Here, his swagger seemed entirely justified. He had saved the coven, and he had saved the coven's patron deity. If he and said deity had spent time out of time licking their emotional wounds, nobody else needed to know that. Hero was a mask he could wear with aplomb.

"Of course, I came," he chided Valencia behind the safety of his own wards. A man who boasted of no tethers, he had risked everything for a coven that had only just recently and with many reservations allowed him into their confidence. He winked at her, code for 'glad to see you too,' though who knew if she would read it as such.

"And here I thought you just wanted a wild romp and to roll the dice for my babies," he scoffed, opening the packet and examining it with what was an almost terrifying focus if one could see that gleam in his eyes. There was a feral glint in his eyes when he looked up from the intelligence, glancing first at Eshar, whose pleasure in the idea of murder struck a disturbingly similar chord within him, to Valencia, who was practical or ruthless depending on one's perspective.

"I assume with how quickly word of his death will travel, you don't require his head or his junk on a silver platter to prove my effectiveness." He shut the packet, though he would study it with something akin to obsession if he chose to take this job. His lifeblood is fairly black and white—or scarlet, anyway. What information do you require? He's got Order flunkies, surely. Some of the few not sucking your precious Science Minister's brother-in-law's half-elven cock, in fact. So they will be running scared, attacking with prejudice, and on alert what with your precious First Minister eating high-ranking cunt for allies among the powers that be." He was terrifyingly well-informed at times, or at least well enough that his slanderous conjectures couldn't be easily tossed aside.

"But yes... what information do you require, and what do you offer as payment. I'm not the easy peasy little slut who gutted a Vigilant to join your little clubs."

Aurin merely nodded, but when Eshar asked for it slow, his smile sharpened as well. No doubt Valencia was less than pleased at how well he and his fellow Myshalarai got along, and he had to wonder how much Valencia knew about their own personal minor Mistlord. He knew she was older than she seemed, as was Eshar. He was the youngling at the table, but they needed his help. They would have it.

"I will need to know which documents," he reminded them. His mastery of the Railrunner's craft was such that he could open portals and shove any and all documents he found into a private pocket of the void and then escape once the murder and larceny were done, then return and let others do the work of hefting it out of his magical storeroom. He had even considered taking Torin's basement out of space, so those hiding there, and those things hidden there, would be well and truly out of reach. But that was for the future... "And, I suppose, a ranking of the documents in terms of how important they are. If it's a mobile library, the set up will take up more time. And I don't know what your time frame is."

This was a job made up of two jobs, and he had to know priorities in case things went sideways. Most likely, the general's death was priority number one, but it was best not to assume.

"And I'm not that greedy," he said waving away his earlier challenge. "Monies and influence will do nicely. Although, I would also like you," he continued, looking at his teacher, "to do what you can to ensure my name remains uninteresting to Angevin. I'm not trying to do anything to endanger any Zaichaeri citizens in general, nor the covens either. But I'd like to remain chummy with Dornkirk.

"And I would like you," he said to Eshar.

His innocent smile was patently false. But negotiations for how much of Eshar he got could be conducted at another time and place.

"Understood," he said, and knocked back his drink. That done, he stood and gathered the dossier for study. "I have a... hm... would-be apprentice back in Kalzasi. Would make a good assassin, so I might bring him around at some point in the future. Gotta give back to the covens, eh?" He nodded to the pair and departed.

Of course, later, he vaulted into Eshar's chambers, playing some sort of line about heavy balls making it difficult to think clearly. So he did quite a bit of his study naked on satin sheets.


Ernst Klein was just another soldier exiled to Kathiid while General Overmann waited for whatever intelligence would galvanize him to march them back to Zaichaer where they belonged. There were enough soldiers that nobody knew all their names and faces, and he was friendly enough that he didn't have much trouble wending his way through the ranks. He also seemed quite accustomed to Kathiid's culture, and so he moved around the city with less friction than his brothers-in-arms. As such, he was able to case the "temporary" camp, as well as the buildings offered to Overmann and the more important members of the Zaichaeri contingent by the obliging oligarchs of Kathiid.

He learned patrol schedules. He located the cache of documents. He made friends.

That night, he was going to "flub" the assassination, make a scene, make his date, and then abscond with those documents. But Overmann was already a dead man walking, those members of the Order still loyal to him were congregating elsewhere, and the chaos he left in his wake would make it all theatrical enough to please Eshar, who he assumed would be watching somehow, and perhaps even inspire something for Kathiid's stages in seasons to come. Or perhaps the Pfenning if it ever re-opened, a nice cover for Railrunner dealings.

When that night came, he found himself climbing out one window of the building where Overmann lived to scale the wall two stories to where Ernst Klein would have no reason to be, no reason to pass the guards without killing them. That was an added challenge, but one he relished: murder his mark without any collateral damage. It was more elegant, more masterful that way.

He was just glad he spent so much time on Kalzasern rooftops with Rivin and hadn't let Traversion become such a crutch that he couldn't climb a wall when the need arose. The need had arisen. Even if Overmann didn't have a huge assortment of Order mages, he had some sort of artefact that prevented teleportation within its sphere of influence.

And so, he proceeded the old fashioned way.

Once he was inside the proper window, he perused the documents on Overmann's desk. Finding nothing from the list he had memorized, he swept them off the desk in a flurry of papers, then went about making a quiet mess of the place looking for expensive or interesting souvenirs to steal until such time as Overmann came to bed.

Perhaps he should have worn Overmann's face and form instead, but he hadn't gotten close enough to prepare a reasonable facsimile. She was good, but he was better. While he might have bought her a drink had they met at a bar, they were meeting where he planned to do a murder and she was Order besides. Valencia was working with them to some extent, but she wanted Overmann dead so she wasn't going to fault him for this. Of course, he had intended for there to be no collateral damage, but ... well, perhaps he could manage. While she tried to make a quick calculation of him, he was extending his glamour. Klein seemed to stand still in shock and terror while, unseen, his knife spun toward her.

His initial aim had been her throat, but at the last minute, he readjusted his throw such that, barring any sudden movements, the hilt would hit her between her lovely eyes. He didn't mind terribly an audience. He was, after all, laying out a dramatic mise-en-scène. She just had to be unconscious, which was more difficult than dead.

But even as the knife went flying, he gathered himself and sprang toward her, invisible to the eye and leaving behind the image of himself - of Klein himself - behind to hold her attention. Even his footfalls were silenced. Time almost seemed to slow down, but surely that was his version of a battle fervor. The excitement of a job, of being powerful, and holding life and death in his hands was a heady cocktail.

Whether the hilt struck her unconscious or the blade struck a mortal blow - or some other eventuality - he would be closer to putting his hands upon her. Not for the first nor the last time, he wished he had demanded the voice trick from Arry in exchange for the glamour trick. It would have been easier to play her mind like a puppeteer. He could even have compelled her to play out a farce for him with Overmann, used her hands to kill him. But whatever happened, Eshar wanted it to linger, and Aurin could be such a generous lover when he wanted to be.