Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 2

25th Day, Upper Wind Month, 1 CE

“Next.”

A sheathed dagger was placed in front of Liam. He drew the thirty-centimetre-long blade, examining its honed and oiled edge. After a moment, he reached out for the vial resting on the table by his right arm, opening it to apply Wyvern Venom to the dagger. He resheathed the weapon and presented it hilt-first to the waiting Rogue.

“Next.”

The line shifted forward. Another sheathed dagger was placed in front of him.

After Helama’s hurried takeover, Ijaniya and the local collaborators from the Draconic Kingdom took a few days to review their opening operation while the Royal Army of the Sorcerous Kingdom repositioned its forces. Despite taking many casualties over the rushed and chaotic night, there were few fatalities – probably also because it was just as chaotic for the Beastmen.

He applied Wyvern Venom to the next dagger, resheathing it and presenting it hilt-first to the waiting Rogue.

The line shifted forward again. Another sheathed dagger was placed on the table.

Liam was enacting one of the many improvements to their next-to-nonexistent procedures. An embarrassingly large number of allied casualties resulted from local Rogues crippling themselves while attempting to apply the potent venom provided by the Sorcerous Kingdom to their weapons. To prevent that, he was tasked with pre-applying it before the night’s activities.

“Next.”

A wooden plank was placed on the table. Liam looked up at the burly thug who put it there.

“This is a board.”

“It’s got a nail, see?” The man pointed at a crooked, rusty thing sticking out of one end, “You can poison that, right?”

“I thought Helama provided everyone with proper weapons,” Liam said.

The man opened his coat, revealing several daggers.

“I got me some, but I like that one. It’s lucky, yeah?”

Liam applied Wyvern Venom to the board-with-a-nail. The fact that the thing could shatter at any point aside – and the fact that the venom was probably worth a thousand times more than the makeshift weapon – he supposed that it had better reach than a dagger. Ideally, they’d use polearms to counter the significantly longer reach of their Beastman foes, but one couldn’t blend into the local population well with a spear. A board-with-a-nail could be concealed in a bundle of planks, or something…

“Next.”

A quiver with two dozen quarrels was placed on the table. He looked up to see a dusky, dark-haired girl about his age standing in front of him. The girl frowned back.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

He looked back down at his work. Once each of the forty-centimetre-long projectiles was tipped with Wyvern Venom, the girl hefted her quiver and offered him a smile.

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh. Next.”

The girl’s smile turned into a frown and she left in a huff. What was that all about?

His shift ended three hours later. Kai, the Ninja overseeing the ‘workshop’ waved Liam over. He led him over to the office on the balcony overlooking the warehouse, where Tira was sprawled lazily over a couch.

“Pretty sure he’s got it, boss.”

“Great,” Tira didn’t get up from the couch. “Get him started on the next phase.”

“What did I get?” Liam asked.

“A Job Class,” Kai answered. “Well, a certain Ability that comes with a certain Job Class. You’ve been applying venom to weapons for four hours straight. Grats.”

“…I don’t get it.”

Tira turned her head slightly, cracking open a single coral eye to regard him.

“The chance of not having an accident while applying venom to weapons for four hours straight is pretty much zero,” she told him with a yawn. “A kid like you’d get yourself one in twenty times at the bare minimum. Assassins have a passive Ability that prevents them from ever having an accident while applying venom to weapons.”

“I’m an Assassin now?”

Elation rose within him. He knew it: fighting was way better than studying.

“Yuh-huh. Good timing on your part, too. Experience is the best teacher or something like that…”

“Do I start Ninja training now?”

“No, you pretentious little shit,” Kai said. “You start Assassin training. Assassins can do a whole lotta things that Rogues can’t. Where should we start, boss?”

“Well, since we’re doing what we’re doing for the next few days, we should start with studying.”

Liam froze. He was bad at studying. Why did fighting lead to studying?

Tira turned away from them, pulling her blanket over her shoulders. Kai led Liam back out of the office. A strain of music filtered through the air as they entered another part of their safehouse in Phelegia. The notes didn’t make much sense, and neither did the lyrics, but Saye’s Song of Healing worked nonetheless. Most of the injuries that their forces had received in Helama had been healed in less than a day.

They had just snuck into the city so there was nothing for her to heal, but she practised anyway. Since she had received the Ring of Sustenance from Lady Zahradnik, Saye went crazy and worked nonstop.

His sister didn’t like being interrupted during a performance, so Liam and Kai went to join a group of Ijaniya’s Ninjas in a corner of the warehouse.

“Oh, so he didn’t stick himself,” Pon turned from his conversation with two other Ninjas. “Grats.”

“Does everyone know about that?”

“We are an Assassin organisation,” Pon said. “Of course it’d be common knowledge to us. Us not knowing’d be the same as Wizards not knowing they can cast spells. Still, I can’t believe how far you came in a few months.”

“I heard our Adventurer Guild’s members get strong super fast, too,” Liam said. “Like Copper to Silver in half a year or something.”

“Hmm, yeah. Now that you put it that way, I guess you’re slow. You were a Rogue before you got dumped on us.”

How the Sorcerous Kingdom broke down and categorised everything that a person was was a bit scary. Everything was a ‘Job Class’ or a ‘Skill’ or an ‘Ability’ to people like Lord Demiurge. The scariest part was that they weren’t wrong: things more or less worked according to their expectations.

“So I’m an Assassin,” Liam said. “What can I do?”

“Well,” Pon said, “an Assassin is sort of a step up from a Rogue. If you compare the two, a Rogue is like a sampling of what us sneaky types can do. They’re ‘generalists’ the same way that a Wizard or Fighter is a generalist compared to a War Wizard or a Weapon Master. Or even a Blacksmith compared to a Weaponsmith? Anyway, the way an Assassin specialises is right on the cover: we get better at doing stuff that revolves around killing people. Cloak and dagger with a fancier dagger.”

“What happens to all the stuff I learned as a Rogue?”

“It’s not as if you just forget it,” Pon said. “Like I said, it’s a step up. You still get better at a lot of that stuff, plus you get fancier shit.”

He wasn’t sure if it was a strange way to think about things, but, for the first time, Liam felt like he was in a real profession. Artisans, Adventurers and other people had a sense of progression. Blacksmiths got better at crafting and worked better metals the further they went. Warriors like Fighters and Rangers learned Skills and Martial Arts and became experts in the fields that they specialised in.

As an orphan who grew up rough, he was always a nobody who had no future. Everyone saw him that way, including himself. But it turned out that that ‘nothing’ actually led to something.

“Then what can I do right now?”

“Hmm, well, on top of all the things you can already do that you’ll keep getting better at, you become more and more resistant against poison.”

“But I can’t get myself with my own venom.”

“Well, people can still get you. Plus, that’s not the only benefit of enhanced poison resistance. It helps with harvesting reagents and brewing stuff. You can use performance-enhancing substances and shrug off their detrimental effects. We do that on jobs once in a while, but that can get expensive.”

“You can also drink people under the table,” Kai added.

“Which also can get expensive,” Pon said. “Also…”

Pon leaned closer to Liam. Liam swallowed and leaned in to hear what he had to say.

“…you can study.”

Liam drew back with a screwed-up expression.

“This is some sort of inside joke, right?”

“It’s no joke!” Pon held out his hands disarmingly, “Well, it sounds like a joke. It’s kinda weird to outsiders. Assassins gain the Ability to study their targets, identifying weaknesses to exploit that others just can’t. When you perform a Sneak Attack against a properly-studied target, bam – instant death. That sort of Sneak Attack is called a Death Attack.”

“If we Sneak Attack someone,” Liam pointed out, “they’re usually dead anyway.”

“If they’re chumps, sure,” Kai said. “Around Silver-rank in Adventurer terms, targets get sort of…chunky. Gotta stick ‘em four or five times if you’re around the same strength.”

“It’s not just instant death,” Pon added. “You can make it paralysis if you’re just trying to incapacitate someone.”

“Which is useful as well,” Kai said. “I’ve kidnapped like two hundred people using that.”

Liam frowned and looked around. What they were talking about was all in a day’s work to the members of Ijaniya, but it would sound horrifying to most. Nearly everyone was busy resting or getting ready for the night’s operation, however.

“So,” Liam said. “You’re telling me that I can hide, ‘study’ some guy for a bit, then walk up and instantly kill them.”

“Yup,” Pon said. “Only works for melee attacks, though. No cheating with ranged weapons.”

“It won’t work if they know you’re there and a threat to them,” Kai told him. “It can also be resisted. Rule of thumb is that you got a fifty-fifty chance of landing it against someone on par with yourself. Odds go down if they’re the more robust like the warrior types. Odds go up against flimsy sorts like Wizards.”

“Which is great,” Pon nodded. “Those damn finger wigglers usually have all sorts of magical protections, but a Death Attack don’t give a shit about ‘em.”

“I guess I should study how to, uh, study,” Liam said. “How do I start?”

“You should already be able to do it,” Kai said.

“Huh?”

“Kinda like Sneak Attacks,” Kai told him. “You just do ‘em. You’re with me tonight, right? I’ll show you what it looks like.”

Liam was left feeling considerably less enlightened than he had been before. He went over to where Saye was playing her lute to get his bags. His sister stopped strumming the instrument and watched him prepare.

“Not going to say anything to me?” She said.

“The last time I tried talking to you,” Liam replied, “you got mad.”

“That’s because I was in the middle of work. If I stop performing, people stop healing.”

He sat down on a chair across from Saye. Potions, scrolls and wands were neatly organised on the wooden table between them.

“So,” Saye said, “what were you talking about?”

“They said I’m an Assassin now. I was listening to them tell me what I can do.”

“You’ve already been sneaking around killing people,” Saye said. “What makes you any more of an Assassin than before?”

“I think it’s because I’ve been sneaking around killing people that I’ve become an Assassin? Anyway, I have some things that they say prove that I am one.”

“I wonder if they have anything like that for me,” Saye idly tuned the strings of her lute.

“What, being able to perform Spellsongs isn’t enough?”

“That’s just ‘Bard’,” Saye said. “But do Bards become something else? Like going from Rogue to Assassin.”

“Bards can become Assassins too,” Tira’s voice came from behind them.

The leader of Ijaniya stretched languidly, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. If she was out and about, it meant that it was almost time to start.

“How?” Saye asked.

“By doing what you need to do to become an Assassin? Take it from me, a lot of things are simpler than smart people try to tell ya. You do the thing, you become the thing. Easy.”

“Should I do it?”

“That’s up to you,” Tira said. “There are pros and cons. Could go either way with the type of work that you like.”

“What else could I become?”

“Well, the Bards in Ijaniya are usually informants and undercover operatives, so they stick to being just good ol’ Bards. A few become Assassins if disguises, poison or being able to kill people helps them do their jobs better. I wouldn’t limit myself to just that, though – someone in the Sorcerous Kingdom might have a better idea of what’s possible.”

Over the next half-hour, local collaborators started to filter in from the surrounding neighbourhood. Much like Helama, the Humans of Phelegia had been pushed into a single quarter of the city when the Beastmen occupying the province moved in. Unlike Helama, most of the clans fled when they were warned of the coming ‘Undead horde’. Only one remained: a Dog-type Beastman clan that stubbornly refused to give up its territory.

In many ways, it made things easier on Ijaniya and the collaborators from the Draconic Kingdom. It was not without its problems, however.

While the Gao were not as physically powerful as the felid Beastmen races, they had a keen sense of smell and hearing. They also had far greater endurance than most of their felid counterparts. The exception to this were those of the Con: the Cougar-type Beastmen were capable of covering twice the distance of the Dog and Wolf Beastmen – around eighty kilometres in a day. Fortunately, the Con clans had made their stand at Helama, so they didn’t have to worry about them running all over the place.

“Alright,” Tira clapped her hands twice, “gather ‘round, boys and girls. Any of our daytime observers see anything out of the ordinary?”

In addition to the Balik ‘Family’ from Blighthold and the local family in Phelegia, they were joined by the families from Helama and Orsport. After their success in Helama, they had so many volunteers that they had to assign about two-thirds of them to the towns in the surrounding province. Ninja ‘officers’ were dispatched to oversee the operations in each town, which meant that the number of Ijaniya agents available for Phelegia had been reduced.

Still, they weren’t in the hurried state that they were in Helama. This time, they would try to do things as originally planned.

“There’s been some infighting with those dogs,” one of the observers piped up. “A few groups want to escape, but they won’t let them out of the gates.”

“How many did they lose?” Tira asked.

“None. The ones who wanted to cut loose backed down.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About a half-hour ago for the most recent ones. Looks like they were trying to get out under the cover of darkness.”

“Hmm…that’s still good to know. We can use that. Do you know where those ones are staying?”

A discussion of the aforementioned incident ensued. Contrary to the image painted by their notoriety as an Assassin organisation, the vast majority of Ijaniya’s work lay in non-combat operations. Performing espionage, sabotage, spreading misinformation and doing sensitive courier work were far more frequent than kidnapping, assaults and assassinations. This was especially the case with the Sorcerous Kingdom since they had more than enough brute force already.

“So it’s a tribe and not individuals trying to leave,” Tira idly twirled one of her kunai. “Let’s see if we can push them over the edge.”

“What do you mean?” The observer reporting the incident asked.

“The Royal Army’s expeditionary force isn’t here to just kill these Demis,” Tira answered. “They’re here to learn as much as they can about them. That goes double for us. We still got half the country to clean out and we’re going to be working behind enemy lines after this. The members of the night team need to orient themselves before we start, so we’ll see if we can’t start some crap in the meanwhile.”

They split up into their teams, which were instructed to leave the area five minutes apart from one another from different alleys in the district. Liam was assigned to Aykut’s team since he was familiar with them already. While they were waiting, Kai walked over to Tira.

“Hey, boss.”

“Yea?”

“New guy wants to see how ‘studying’ works.”

Tira turned her head to look in Liam’s direction.

“Sure,” she said. “Now’s as good a time as any. Come with me.”

They left the safehouse through a third-floor window and silently made their way out of the district. The smell of rain filled the air, though the skies above were clear and a field of stars winked down at them from above. Moonrise was still hours away, making it an ideal time to look around with limited risk.

If one had a Darkvision item, at any rate. Aykut and his men, as well as the observer guiding Tira, were limited to the faint glow of magical lighting coming from the streets below. It was a good thing that they would be working in a few hours when the light was better, or maybe that was a part of the plan all along.

“We’re here,” the observer said in a low voice. “Across the street. There were a few hundred in that tribe, so they should be occupying the whole block of shophouses.”

“Thanks,” Tira said. “We’ll take it from here. You can watch from a distance or just go home. Up to you.”

Without another word, Tira gestured to them and snuck across the street. They scaled the buildings on the other side before heading further in. A modest courtyard with a few trees lay inside the block of buildings, and over a dozen Gao were gathered under the boughs. Tira squatted at the edge of the rooftop. Liam strained his ears to hear what was going on.

“What do we do?” A distressed female voice rose from the gathering, “We can’t stay here. You heard what those people coming through over the past week said.”

“I’ll try and talk some sense into them later tonight,” a male voice replied. “We just need to cool off and try again. The Clanlord’s just being stubborn. You understand, right? We came out all this way and won a land of our own. Giving it up without a fight is…”

“This isn’t the same as fighting another tribe! They’re Undead. Undead. You heard the stories, right? They’re not here for territory, they’re here for us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Beastman or an animal, so long as you’re alive. And when they get you…”

Dog-like whining noises rose from below. Liam silently shook his head. Lady Zahradnik was scary even when she wasn’t trying to scare anyone. She was doing it on purpose now, and every single Beastman was visibly gripped by terror. No one went outside if they could help it, and the city was frozen in fear.

“Fine, I’ll go right now. Wait here and don’t do anything rash.”

A large Gao with reddish-brown fur and floppy ears turned from the gathering, walking through the alley below them and out into the street. They followed him from the rooftops as he circled the city blocks for a good thirty minutes, his gaze focused on the pavement all the while. When he finally stopped circling to head towards the city centre, Tira held her left hand out by her hip.

–alright, watch this.

After one last look around the empty street, she made some hand signs and vanished. The Gao started as she popped out of the shadow of the lamppost in front of him. Tira reached up and gave his nose a pat.

“Boop,” she said.

The Gao collapsed to the cobblestones and lay still. Liam frowned at the result. Tira knelt to pull a cobblestone from the street and whacked the dead Gao in the back of the head. She used a Trooper’s Towel to clean the scene as she leapt into the shadow of the lamppost and reappeared in front of Liam.

They settled in a safe distance downwind to see what would happen. Liam peered at the fallen form of the Beastman.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How did you do that?”

“It was a Death Attack,” Tira said. “Once you’ve studied your target, you launch a Sneak Attack in melee.”

“That didn’t look like an attack at all,” Liam told her. “It was a…a…boop.”

“We did the same thing for Sneak Attacks back when you started training too, right?”

It did happen, but the explanation wasn’t satisfying at all. Sneak Attacks happened when one was caught unaware or otherwise preoccupied and unprepared. That included when one was fighting and they knew the attacker was there, but couldn’t do anything about it.

Throwing a pebble at the head of an oblivious target in plate armour would usually just have the pebble bounce off of their helmet. If the person throwing the pebble was from a vocation capable of Sneak Attacks, however, the power of that person’s Sneak Attack would be applied to the pebble. If it was thrown by a sufficiently powerful Rogue, the pebble would go straight through the helmet and kill the target.

“So can I do that, as well?”

“Not as you are,” Tira said. “I’m strong enough that a regular slap from me would have killed that Beastman Lord anyway, so the Death Attack was pretty much guaranteed. It was a demonstration of what’s possible. As an Assassin, going full force with everything all the time is usually a waste of energy. The vast majority of people are weak and there’s no reason to stab them so hard that they explode. That’s actually detrimental most of the time: it’s flashy, makes a mess, and raises a big stink. Ah–here we go…”

The smell of blood eventually drew a Gao from a nearby alley. It raised its nose in the air, sniffing as it cautiously circled the body. After several minutes, it finally decided it was safe enough to approach. More Gao had appeared by then, running up to crowd around the dead Lord. A few ran in two different directions: one group went the way he came from, while another group headed towards the city centre. The fallen Lord’s tribe appeared minutes later.

“No,” the female from before cried mournfully, “No! Why…who would do this?”

Glares were levelled at a few of the Beastmen who had come out from nearby. They made hurried gestures.

“It wasn’t us! He was already like this when we came out to see where the scent of blood was coming from. Do you know what he was doing out here?”

“He went to talk some sense into the Clanlord less than an hour ago,” the female replied.

“Maybe the Humans attacked him,” someone suggested.

“There aren’t any Human smells around him. Plus, it looks like he went down without a fight. Someone just ripped a chunk out of the road and…Humans aren’t strong enough to do that.”

Another group of Beastmen came jogging in from the city centre. The dead Lord’s tribe tightened ranks and glared at the newcomers.

“You did this!” The female howled.

“Bashed him in the back of the head, too,” someone said. “Honourless mongrels.”

“Let’s not be so quick to blame others, shall we?” The largest of the second group replied calmly, “We only heard about this just now. If it was us, the wounds would be different.”

“A likely story,” the female’s voice came back thick with distrust, “we’d obviously know who did it if you fought normally, so you did him in with a rock!”

“I don’t have anything like that on me.”

“You probably hid it somewhere.”

“There isn’t even anyone else’s scent on him,” the Clanlord noted.

“And that’s extra suspicious! You probably found a weird Human item.”

“What motive would I have to kill him? We need all the people we can get to resist the Undead horde.”

“Because he wanted to leave. You killed him so he wouldn’t influence everyone else.”

The Clanlord stared at the female for a good long while, which only seemed to antagonise her even further.

“Look,” he sighed. “We can’t afford this right now. The Undead will be showing up any day and I don’t intend to do the killing for them. You need to go back to your dens and not cause any trouble. That goes for everyone else, too.”

They watched the Beastmen slowly disperse. A few of the Clanlord’s escorts carried the body of the dead Lord away.

“So what did that do for us?” He asked.

“Our founder once said that a single Ninja can take down a fortress through misinformation and manipulation alone,” Tira told him. “That’s what we’re doing here. We were in a rush in Helama so that wasn’t possible, but things are pretty ideal in Phelegia. Baroness Zahradnik is very good at what she does: she’s already primed the pump for our operation.”

“She did?”

“The one thing that all living beings have in common is fear. Fear is what keeps one alive, and Zahradnik’s pushed all these Beastmen into survival mode. How each race and individual acts when they’re dominated by fear depends on their nature and experiences, but we know that these guys are basically an undisciplined mob. They aren’t thinking straight anymore.”

That much he could understand. When Humans let fear rule them, they became hysterical, saw things that lined up with their fears and acted irrationally in general. Humans were only one of many races in the world, so to do their job properly as members of the Sorcerous Kingdom’s intelligence arm, they needed to learn how to operate around as many races as possible.

“Got it,” Liam said. “What do we do now?”

Tira’s gaze went up the street to where the dead Lord’s tribe had turned the corner.

“Now,” she said, “it’s your turn.”

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