Rise of the Living Forge

Chapter 212: A little help

For the next few minutes, Leena and Riker did absolutely everything in their power to kill the armored man. They tried combining their attacks. They tried talking to distract him and going for cheap shots. None of it worked.

Leena stood across from him, panting to catch her breath. Thick scars covered the man’s armor. It had been dented and scratched apart, but it still held. The only time the man had bothered trying to dodge at all was when they’d tried to attack his unprotected feet.

At the end of the five minutes, despite her absolute best efforts, she hadn’t drawn so much as a pinprick of blood. She braced her hands against her knees as she caught her breath. All her training told her it was a terrible idea to show weakness before an enemy, but at this point, it didn’t even matter.

The man hadn’t tried attacking them once. All he’d done was jot down notes and make snide comments about his own armor. That was it. It was almost as if they didn’t even exist to him.

Feet scuffed against stone. Leena’s head shot up and she dropped into a fighting stance, only to find that the man had turned and set off without another word. She stared at his back in disbelief. Then, slowly, she looked over to Riker.

The other assassin just shook his head in disbelief. Neither of them could manage a word. Leena wouldn’t go so far to call herself an experienced assassin. If she was honest, she’d only gotten her class a year ago.

She’d been on a number of jobs. She’d had some solo hits. Most of her fights had been against monsters — but still, she wasn’t completely new. Riker had more practice under his belt. A single look into his eyes said everything their words could have.

Neither of them had ever seen anything like this. It was just beyond logic. It was almost beyond comprehension. Not only did The Order have an information leak in it. Not only did they get one of the strangest jobs Leena had ever heard of. Not only did their target know that they were being targeted — he’d actually shown up to let them try to kill him.

And, somehow, they hadn’t even injured him.

It was nearly a minute before the silence finally broke.

“What… do we do?” Leena asked.

Riker pulled his gaze away from the empty alleyway where the man had left. There was no point chasing after him. The contract had been for five minutes, and five minutes were up.

“What can we do?” Riker asked. He slid his sword back into its sheath. “We come back tomorrow.”

***

Leena sat on a rooftop beside Riker once more. It wasn’t the same rooftop they’d used the previous night — it wasn’t smart to attack from the same angle — but she wasn’t so sure it would matter.

Their report to The Order the previous day had gone nowhere. The job remained. For whatever reason, their superiors just didn’t seem to care. Perhaps they’d also been corrupted. Leena didn’t know, and Riker just kept repeating —

“It isn’t our job to think,” Riker said. “We just kill.”

“We didn’t kill much of anything last night,” Leena said, unable to restrain her irritation. She turned the dagger over in her hands. Its edge glistened in the moonlight, coated with a bright silver powder. “There’s no way he’s going to come back, is there? It’ll be someone else.”

Riker just looked at her. It was hard to tell what he was thinking with the mask covering much of his face, but Leena still had a pretty good idea. She glanced up at the moon. Its pale sheen glistened far above, nearly perfectly in the center of the sky above them. It wouldn’t be long to midnight. If the man was actually going to come back, it would have to be —

Footsteps echoed through the square. The back of Leena’s neck prickled slightly. She leaned forward, breaking a rule and risking revealing her position in her impatience. Riker did the same.

“What the fuck?” Leena whispered.

It was the same man, but it took her a moment to realize it because of his armor. After all the damage it had taken in the previous fight, it was only logical that he need to replace it. Leena just hadn’t expected the replacements to be so significant.

The helm, gauntlets, and greaves were now all made from the same material, a swirling mixture of a faint rose gold and dull silver. The armor was sleek and more than a little form fitting. Small red gems studded the sides of the greaves and the knuckles of the gauntlets. His helm had the same form as the previous version and the only change seemed to be its material.

The strange metal the pieces were made from had ripples running through it like waves that forced Leena to squint to remain focused on the man’s actual form. It wasn’t enough to completely throw her off, but it did cause a dull throbbing ache to build behind her eyes.

Their target had foregone his barefooted approach from the previous night and now wore plain silver boots. The only piece he hadn’t changed out was the chestplate, but it looked considerably different than the last time she’d seen it.

While the armor was still made of tarnished green scale and bore wave patterns reminiscent of the other armor pieces, the gemstones had been removed from its center and shoulders.

Instead, a number of much smaller, white gemstones had been embedded along the wave patterns to accentuate them. Leena couldn’t tell if the armor was beautiful or gaudy, but she was leaning toward the latter.

Is he planning to work at a burlesque club after he walks out of here?

Her lips pressed thin. That wasn’t going to happen. She’d failed once, but not again. No target of hers was going to flaunt like this and get away with it. Riker gave her a slight nod. He felt the same way.

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This wasn’t just a job. This was their pride on the line — not to mention their money. The Order got paid to kill people, not inconvenience them. Leaving a contract unfinished would have dire consequences.

Leena’s stomach twisted. She quashed the feeling and focused her attention on the blade in her hand. Worrying about potential failure would only distract her. All that mattered was the job. All that mattered was killing the man below her.

Riker caught her eye and the two of them nodded. They readied their weapons in the guise of night while the man waited beside the fountain. The previous night, Leena had thought he’d been unaware of their presence.

Now she knew he was just indifferent to it.

Tonight, that would change. As one, she and Riker leapt off the building. Five minutes to regain their honor and finish the job. That was more than enough. An assassin didn’t need five minutes. They only needed seconds.

Tonight, the armored man would die. Leena swore that to herself.

Come tomorrow, there isn’t going to be anyone walking up to this square. I’m going to go treat myself to a night out in town. Maybe visit that burlesque club. It could be fun. Anything other than sitting on a damn rooftop waiting for this bastard to come mock us.

Tonight, he dies.

***

Leena was sitting on a roof again. Her lips were pressed so thin that she could have crushed a nut between them and she was pretty sure that steam was going to start coming out of her ears and inflating her tightly wrapped clothes.

Somehow, the previous night had gone even worse than the first. Not only had she and Riker completely failed to land a single good blow on the armored man, but his armor had barely even been damaged.

She had absolutely no clue what his class was, but it felt like fighting a stone wall. Powerful swirls of wind batted away her thrown weapons. When she finally got close, it had felt like she was fighting a wraith.

Half the time, he wasn’t actually where she thrust her blade. It just passed harmlessly through the air, leaving her exposed. The man could have killed her a dozen times over in the fight, but he never did.

All he did was jot down notes on his damned notepad. To make matters even more infuriating, Leena or Riker actually managed to land a blow, the armor went off with a brilliant flash of light that blinded them and disabled [Shadow Walk] while rendering them unable to fight properly.

That night had ended in complete humiliation. Before the five minutes had even ended, the man turned and walked off without a word. Neither Leena nor Riker had the will to follow after him. She was pretty sure that literally all three of them were thinking the same thing.

There’s always next night.

And now it was next night.

Leena stared at the dagger in her hand. The poison coating it hardly felt even close to sufficient. She had several extras hidden in sheathes all across her body, as well as a pouch of poison dust.

I don’t even know why I bothered with the powder, actually. It’s completely useless with that wind magic of his. It’ll just blow it back into my face. Fuck. What’s the point of this? Is he just playing with us?

Riker wasn’t in much better shape. He hadn’t even bothered trying to prepare anything new. His main strategy the previous night had been caltrops with paralyzing acid stored within their core.

The man had just crushed them under his feet. Leena wasn’t even sure if their seemingly immortal foe had realized what the caltrops had been meant to be.

A heavy air rested on Leena and Riker’s shoulders and bore them toward the ground. There just didn’t seem to be a point… but they still had a job. The only solace was tonight would be the last night. After this, she’d be free — one way or another.

Footsteps echoed through the alley. Leena dragged her eyes over as the figure that had been haunting her dreams stepped out into the market square for the third time. One of her eyes twitched.

He hadn’t even gotten hurt last time, but he’d still changed out his armor. Despite her anger, Leena’s eyes widened. The man’s armor was now all made of the same rose-gold material, but it was incomparable to what it had been before.

It wasn’t just metal to defend himself with anymore. It was a piece of art. Small white gemstones made twinkling stars across the shoulders and chest, turning into streaks that ran down into the gauntlets, whose knuckles were still studded with matching gems.

Beautiful silver patterns traveled down from the lower half of the chestpiece and down the greaves, running all the way to the boots, where more white stones accentuated his knees and shins.

Strangely, the armor felt out of place on the man. Leena couldn’t quite place why. It was feminine, but that wasn’t the reason it felt odd. It almost seemed as if he were wearing armor that belonged to someone else.

Leena dropped down from the rooftop without even bothering to hide her presence. Riker did the same. It wasn’t like their target didn’t know they were coming.

Time was ticking. Riker lifted his blade. Leena readied her new daggers. The man raised his notepad.

The fight was on once more.

Leena and Riker flashed forward, drawing every scrap of power they had in them. They’d learned from their previous battles. There was only a single way left that they’d been able to determine had a chance of success.

An all-out attack. One where every scrap of their power was put into a single blow, with no thought of survival or what would happen after. And that was what they did.

Weapons whistled through the night. Leena activated [Piercing Strike] and poured all her magic into the blade with a scream of frustration. She thrust it for the man’s chest while Riker drove his sword for his back.

The man didn’t move. Their weapons struck the armor. Leena squeezed her eyes shut in time to avoid the brilliant flash that tore through the night like a miniature sun — but that didn’t prepare her for the immense thrum that ripped down her dagger and into her hands, vibrating her body so violently that her teeth felt like they would dislodge themselves.

Leena opened her eyes, hoping to see at least something as a result of her and Riker’s efforts. She regretted her decision immediately. There wasn’t even so much as a scratch on the armor.

She crumpled to her knees. All her energy was spent, both mental and magical. The fight was over. Riker hadn’t had any more luck than she had. He’d fallen to his backside on the other side of the seemingly immortal man and just sat there in silence.

“Finding a way to bounce back magically enhanced physical attacks… successful,” the man said as he wrote. He snapped the notebook shut. “Well then. I think we’re done here.”

Is he going to kill us now?

Leena tried to gather the energy to rise, but she’d thrown so much power into her attack that her body just didn’t respond. The only thing she could manage was to look up into the shadowed face of the man above her and squeeze out a single word.

“Why?”

“Needed a little help with testing,” the man replied gruffly. He reached into a pouch on his waist and dropped two bags of gold on the ground beside them. “Thanks for working with me. I appreciate it. There’s the pay for the completed job I placed.”

With that, he turned and walked into the night.

“Did — did he just say that he placed a hit job on himself?” Leena asked once he’d left, his words bouncing around her head like hyperactive toddler.

Riker pushed himself upright with a groan. He knelt, grabbing the bags of gold and tucking them under one arm, before helping Leena to her feet. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“Come on,” Riker said, breaking the silence. He jerked his chin toward an alley. “Sometimes, the best thing you can do is forget. I’m going to waste all this on burlesque dancers and alcohol until the last three nights get wiped from my mind. Want to come?”

Leena looked off in direction the armored man had set off in. Then she turned back to Riker. “Yeah, I think I do.”

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