Inari’s Gift

For the next several days, everything seemed quite peaceful to Cera, much to her surprise.  She’d expected some kind of fallout from being spotted, or having threatened that noble.  Instead, silence.  She went outside town to practice and had no trouble with the guards, possibly due to Laura’s mother, though she wasn’t sure, as she didn’t pry.  She went to the healers’ guild and mages’ guild to earn money and practice.  She also spent the evenings teaching Laura.

She couldn’t help but ask, however, why she’d been sent to Laura’s room the first time, but every time since, had met her in a public room, with guards either directly present, or right outside the door.  The response surprised her; Laura had, apparently, not bothered telling her parents until after Cera had arrived that first day, making use of her delay at the door and the existence of remote communication enchantments in their home.

Cera couldn’t help but shake her head at the woman’s choices, and told her outright that if she’d been hostile, there’d have been nothing to stop her in that case, except the man who’d let her in.

The day she was meant to teach her normal group of students, however, ended up a bit chaotic when she returned home.  Her lesson went fine, but upon returning home, there was an eerie silence.  She was sure a normal human wouldn’t notice, but with her enhanced hearing, having the sounds from downstairs cut off like that was extremely worrying.

True to her nature, she immediately went into full paranoia mode, cranking her defenses to maximum and increasing the strength of her illusions.  Furthermore, she shifted her illusion to the side slightly, and did her best to hide her true location.  The key made no noise when it scraped against the lock, nor when it turned.  The door was completely silent, no creak from the hinge.  The streetlight that normally shone against the ceiling was absent; instead, total darkness.

Even as she registered the abnormal lighting, a dagger slammed into her shield half a dozen times, coated in chaotic energy that scrambled her shields significantly.  Fortunately, she was hardly an easy target, and despite the effort put into destroying magic, her shields didn’t entirely fail, two of the nine layers surviving until the end of the assault.

Barely visible, even to her enhanced vision, was a blurred figure, clearly using multiple types of magic to make themselves harder to detect.  Unfortunately for the would-be assassin, it was Cera they were up against.  Though her first thought was to kill the intruder, just before her foxfire covered their head, she paused.

Before they could react, she reduced the strength of her personal shield, dropping it down to the two layers that survived the attack, plus a third that had regenerated.  The rest of her strength, she turned into an inverted skintight shield over the attacker, preventing any movement, though it took a great deal of effort and focus.  She carefully expanded the restraint very slightly around the chest and, after realizing her mistake, put a small gap with a very fine grid to avoid any possible projectiles, of course, over their nose and mouth.

To make things easier, she also shoved the figure into a fetal position so her shield wasn’t so large and she could reinforce it further.  As they fell to the floor, she thanked the silence enchantment they had, since few would notice the vibration without it producing a loud noise.

After glaring at them for a moment, she focused more on observation than immediate survival, noticing that the assassin was a relatively young female, though they did have their face entirely covered by a featureless, eyeless porcelain mask.  With a small change in her focus, the mask popped off, pushed through her shields, and fell to the ground.  As it separated from the woman’s face, the silence broke, as did the gloom that blocked the external light.

“So…  It appears someone wants me dead, since there’s no way you’d just attack someone at random.  I’m going to make a guess here, and if you’re lucky, you might even leave here alive,” Cera snarled at the woman before describing the noble from the other day.

When the woman remained silent after several seconds, Cera simply summoned fire inside the shield, covering both their hands, while also shifting her inverted shield to hold the woman’s mouth shut and prevent sound from exiting.  After several seconds, she dispelled the flames, then waited until the woman’s face began to turn purple before allowing her to breathe again.

“I was too kind to the last person to try to kill me, and you came much closer.  Don’t think I won’t kill you if you don’t cooperate,” she said as she crouched down and reached through the shield to heal the woman’s hands.

“Now then…  We have a few options here.  You can serve me and live, you can refuse and die, or you can pretend to serve me, run, and I can track you down and kill you for your attempt to kill me.  And if you serve me, you can even make quite a bit of money, and no one has to know you were bested,” she continued as the woman glared at her.

Careful not to become too complacent, Cera then shifted back into a crouch, ready to dart in any direction if needed.  Several seconds of silence followed before a deep sigh came from her captive.

“Fine, what are your terms, mage?” the woman spat out.

“First, mind your manners.  You live by my will alone.  It would be easier and safer to simply end you.  Second, the noble I described is the one who sent you, correct?” Cera responded much more calmly.

Several more seconds passed before the woman shifted her head slightly, clearly trying to shake it as she answered, “Fine, I value my life more than my contract.  Yes, she’s the one who sent me.”

“Excellent.  Now then, you seem to have significant experience with killing people, don’t you?  I want you to kill her, and in exchange, I won’t kill you, nor will I report you to anyone.  Your silence enchantment means no one heard me take you down, and despite your clear hatred of your situation, you haven’t been loud enough to alarm anyone since I removed your mask.  Next, let me make things easier and more appealing,” Cera began.

As the assassin frowned, Cera began describing the path she was led when she was taken to the noble, along with the hidden weapons and the woman’s hidden safe.

“I know roughly how much she had in that safe.  I expect you to bring me at least twenty percent; everything else is yours.  Don’t make me hunt you down,” she finished.

While the assassin remained silent, Cera sighed, as she hadn’t yet figured out how to actually leave magical trackers in this world, and hated deceiving others.  On the other hand, she hadn’t outright said she could or would track the woman.  And it was easy enough to form an illusion of a magical brand and let it sink into the woman’s arm, the trick completed with a flame hidden by another illusion burning the symbol into her arm.

“If you try to harm me again, I won’t give you a second chance, so don’t try anything,” she added, summoning up several ice spikes as she took a few steps backward.  After seeing her captive shift, barely able to nod, she nodded herself and removed the inverted shield, swiftly rebuilding her own defenses as strong as possible.

She was somewhat surprised to see the other woman warily grab her mask and dagger before backing away toward the window, focused intently on the floating ice spikes even as she reached behind herself to unlatch the window.  It was also quite surprising that the woman simply shuffled upward and out the window, letting herself drop, despite being well above the ground floor.

After several seconds, Cera carefully moved toward the window, strengthened the shield around her upper body, and leaned out.  Seeing no trace of the other woman, she relaxed somewhat and straightened, then shut the window.

While she was very stressed out after her encounter, she didn’t want to risk anything, and kept her illusion and shield as strong as she could, rather than spending time brushing or hugging her tail like she’d prefer.  Instead, she sat down on her bed, snarled at the woman’s actions since it meant she couldn’t sit cross-legged like she’d prefer without being more at risk, and then tried to meditate while keeping her eyes on the window.

As she stared at the window, she kept her ears perked, listening intently to the background noises of the lower levels of the building, ready to bolt if silence returned.  After several hours, she finally relaxed enough that she felt she could sleep.

Despite her desires, she remained paranoid enough to keep her illusions and shields as strong as she could, glad that she had the ability to keep them going even while unconscious.

The following days, her students noticed her wariness and commented on it, but she merely told them that she’d received some worrisome news.  It was true, after all, she’d learned that someone wanted her dead.  She’d simply learned of it directly rather than vocally.  She also had Ann send a message to Laura that she couldn’t visit for a few days.

Eventually, she heard people on the street talking about a noblewoman being murdered, and her home ransacked.  She had no visitors at night, however, nor any messages left at either the mages’ or healers’ guilds.  After several more days of constant vigilance, she finally began to relax, though she was irritated.  The assassin had clearly struck as she’d demanded, and stolen the woman’s money, but had then decided to not follow through with giving up a share to her.

Cera eventually decided maybe it was for the best, since that meant there was nothing to link her, if the coins were enchanted in some way.  But it meant that she’d been treated as a fool, and since she couldn’t actually track the woman, there was nothing she could do.

Despite relaxing somewhat, she maintained fairly strong shields at all times, despite it being tiring.  She did, however, resume taking her illusions down when behind locked doors, and spending time brushing and hugging her tail to make herself feel better.

Eventually, she decided to bring things up with Ann the next day, since the woman had proven trustworthy so far, and had actually recommended more violence before.

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