Ves'ra left the warehouse soon after, the elf had been surprisingly well informed, apparently he was an informant of the underground chief of the city, planted in the mages guild to hear about interesting rumors and such. Well, he obviously wasn't a high level member of the organisation, and had been terrified that she would torture? him. Why would she hurt someone to get information, that seemed just cruel, especially because she was going to kill him after anyways.

Well, the night was young and the underground guild knew of her village, and for some reason they wanted to find and hurt her family. While she knew it was very unlikely to find a random kobold village more than a month of travelling from here, especially because she didn't give any directions, humans had already proven resourceful, so she better take care of them.

The elf only knew about the headquarters where he reported, so she made her way back into the respectable part of the town, avoiding the guards much like the thugs that transported her. With her smaller size she had it easier moving through the streets, and the guards weren't really perceptive anyway, so she managed to arrive at her destination, a large building only three streets from the main square, half an hour after she set out.

Seeing anything but heat was really hard in the dark, so the only impression she got from the building was huge and sturdy. Well, she could see two human sized heat signals directly behind the door. They were obviously standing watch, so she’d have to do something about that. If she was being honest with herself she didn't want to kill more people than necessary, and she was sure she’d manage to subdue the two silently.

Ves’ra sneaked up on the door and started funneling water through the slit, turning it into a fine mist upon entry. She had the mist creep up the two men’s bodies, slowly forming transparent sheen of water in front of their mouths. The two didn't notice a thing as she slowly decreased the amount of air entering their mouths.

After a few minutes she saw the two sitting heat-signals slump together, indicating they lost consciousness. She continued for a few minutes just to be sure before she turned her attention to the door. She didn't feel any magic from it, so she just sent her energy through the door and lifted the bar blocking the door, slipped in and closed the door behind her.

Without the thick outer walls restricting her vision Ves’ra could see almost everyone on the floors above and below her. While both the floor she was in and the one above were fast asleep she could see quite some activity below her. Most were people sitting at their desks, but some were patrolling the floor or equally useless stuff. Well, she’d have to get to the third floor underground, so she’d have to pass them.

It would be easy, these people obviously didn't suspect anyone entering their stronghold and were quite lax. Better for her. Ves’ra took quite some time searching for the entrance into the cellar, finding a trapdoor under one of the knocked out guards after returning to the entrance in desperation. Moving the guard without waking him up was quite the challenge, but she entered the cellar not soon after.

Even though the cellar was full of light, strange heatless torches flickering on the walls, it was quite easy to slip past the guards as the shadows were even deeper and perfect for a small kobold to hide in.

While she knew the location where to find the leader in she hadn't asked the elf for a floor plan, so she had to backtrack several times, just to find the way down, it was a bit harder, but in the end she managed just fine. The second underground floor was smaller, with nearly no people still moving, so she had no problems navigating it, bypassing the few guards in front of what she assumed to be underground warehouses.

The elf told her the third basement floor was solely for the leader of this branch to use, as such it was the smallest, with only a guard, who she took out in much the same fashion she did with the other two.

There were only three other sources of heat on the floor - a slowly cooling fireplace, a person and what she assumed to be the office. The last one was strange, normally heat originated from a single, small source, but the whole office seemed to emit the same heat as the person sleeping in the other room.

She was certain there was magic involved, so she ought to be extra careful. Ves’ra entered the room and indeed, the man sleeping on the bed resembled the one the elf described her. She inspected him for magic, and sure enough she could feel a thin strand of energy going off into the strange warm room.

She had had a bit of time to learn about humans, and was sure whatever happened wouldn't be pleasant for her, even if it only alarmed the humans above her, she had little hope to fight all of them off, even if she could get herself to kill them. A plan was needed. She probed the spell attached to the man with her own mana, analysing it to the best of her ability.

She completely lacked magical education, but she did find out that the spell would send out a signal if something happened to the man, and that the energy used to cast it wasn't his. That meant he was no mage, so she wouldn't have to worry about waking him up with her probing.

Well, the trigger certainly gave her ideas, perhaps she could design one herself. She definitely did not have time to design one as complicated as this, completely independent from herself and able to stay active for that long, but she wouldn't have to, just long enough to escape the compound and trigger it herself. She was pretty sure it would be impossible to hide his death, so she used half her energy to attach a spell to the man that was sure to kill him. The spell wouldn't go off until she wanted it to, being tethered to her with a strand of energy noticeably bigger than the one connecting him to his office.

She’d have to see about getting a human to teach her magic, it seemed way too useful to let up on but they’d probably want a lot of money. Perhaps it was time to hunt for something tasty? She didn't join the adventurers guild for fun after all.

Yes, she would do just that, getting out to hunt a strong monster, giving Arvog the chance to move around a bit more too. Well, first she had to get past the first floor again, this time with less concentration as she had to concentrate to keep the thread of energy from snapping.

Ves’ra took nearly an hour to sneak past all of the humans on the upper two floors and leave the building, locking it behind her again.

Holding up the thread of energy had been getting increasingly harder, and she didn't trust herself in holding it up until she reached the next corner, so she triggered the spell and legged it, not waiting for whatever was happening.

She immediately went back towards her inn, entering in the same way she had been forced to leave and going back to sleep. It had been quite the exhausting night so she fell asleep quickly.