“Nothing here,” Merdon sighed, rising from his knee and looking around the forest once again. The shady forest had given them about as much to work with as an ocean. What evidence there may have been to find was buried under brushes, and every brush they checked had revealed nothing. It was like fishing for clues in a vast sea. Even Sarel had come up empty-handed in her search. The thief had circled the treeline looking for tracks leading in or out. A caravan of knights and equipment would have to have made some sign of their passing in the dirt, the grass, broken branches, yet they'd seen nothing.

Merdon took another deep breath and looked up through the canopy overhead. The sunlight danced between the leaves and glinted off his armor. The contrast in weather between the plains and the snowy mountain was so great he almost forgot about the mark on his face. Hidden as it was under his helmet, the scar was easy to forget in the temporary moments out on the field. When it was quiet, however, even for a time, he remembered. That dark, dank room in a catacomb under some unnamed mountain would linger in his mind for the rest of his life, and that mark on his cheek would serve as a reminder. Was it so disfiguring? Not at all, but the emotional impact it had left on him was enough that even a fraction of the mark that would be left on his visage would remind him well enough.

He glanced at Red, the mage doing her own searching. She'd voluntarily withdrawn from him. Her silence as they walked to the woods, her wordless nod when he'd suggested they split up, spoke loud enough for him. Regret was a powerful thing. Even if Sarel wouldn't forgive her, Merdon knew the red-scaled kobold felt bad about what she had done. There was as much reminder for her on his face as there was for him. Once in a while, he saw her glance over her shoulder at him before looking towards Sarel. The thief had come nowhere close to leaving the two of them alone. Merdon could guess both of their intents.

Red wanted to apologize once again for what she had done. It wasn't her intent to burn him with her claw, but that was what happened in her lapse in judgment. Merdon wasn't in the mood to forgive her any more than his blue-scaled mate was. Her apology would be wasted on him for some time to come. They needed space, yet Verist had haphazardly thrown them together without any thought or concern for how they might have been feeling. In fact, Merdon realized, she hadn't even asked them about what happened. Either she didn't care or had put two and two together. He was figuring the latter and it only made him angrier to consider. Verist wasn't stupid. Naive, absolutely, but she was quite smart. Many people were book smart and emotionally stunted, he'd seen it often enough in mages and priests. Verist was on another level with her blindness.

“Nothing around the edges of the grove,” Sarel said, stepping back into the middle and putting her hands on her hips. “If they came through here they were stealthier than assassins.”

“Considering they were going to assault a village and make it look like orcs, I doubt they were that lightly armored,” Merdon admitted.

Red stepped over like the ground was made of rice paper, as gingerly as possible, before suggesting, “Should we see what Verist has found?”

Sarel repressed a scowl while Merdon looked at the village in the distance. “There might be something on the other side,” he considered.

“I will find out,” the blue-scaled kobold offered as she walked over to a tall tree to climb it.

Merdon sighed again and flexed his fingers, his gauntlets making a small noise as he did. His armor needed some maintenance.

“I could fix that,” Red offered in a soft voice, trying to keep her eyes on the thief climbing the tree.

“It's fine,” Merdon replied, his voice even colder behind a layer of steel. “The upkeep distracts me when we have downtime.”

Red nodded and looked over in the direction Verist and the others had gone. “I hope they're having better luck than we are.”

Merdon grunted in agreement. “Some kind of lead would be nice.”

Shade was knelt in the dirt, rubbing the track through the grass with her fingers and trying to determine which direction they were heading by their curvature. If they were going towards the village, they'd have been driving that way, but the tracks were pointed elsewhere. She glanced at the field nearby and hummed. They had already checked it and found plenty of evidence someone had been camped there. A lot of someones by the way the grass was stamped flat still and a fire pit had been hastily filled back in. These trails in the dirt, if they held up, would be their ticket to the king's death squad, and hopefully some answers. She didn't fancy trying to find the Eyes' hideout even with Verist's magic. Or maybe because it was Verist who was looking.

The witch in question came over and looked at the tracks herself. Thickhide was standing nearby on a hilltop, scanning the area, trying to make sure they didn't get jumped by the men they were looking for. After a short exchange between Verist and Shade, the black-scaled kobold called to Thickhide and started leading them herself. She was much better at following tracks than either of the others. It was almost nostalgic for her. Following the divots in the earth of a wagon loaded down with supplies, knives sharp and ready to gut the first slaver she saw. Now she was doing it with more purpose, towards a greater goal. It put a smile on her face imagining the shocked soldiers when a pair of kobolds beat them into the dirt.

Thickhide, in the meantime, was focused on their surroundings. Rolling hills and empty grassland, the warm sun shining on the verdant fields was relaxing. Too relaxing. He had to regularly reassert what they were doing to himself, mentally. Merdon wasn't there to watch their backs. It was on him to keep these two safe, to be a knight, stalwart and defensive. Laying down his life to make sure nothing bad happened to his companions. Of course, the amount of time he spent drifting between lulling off and focusing himself might have been where he missed the awkward patch of grass to their side. Raised just a little suspiciously.

Shade noticed it too late as well, her body turning to strike as a cover of faux grass and dirt was hurled towards her, knocking her down and revealing Rebeun. The Eyes assassin moved with a speed Thickhide would have had trouble following without his armor. A crystal was cast towards Verist while the man rushed Thickhide, a shield materializing from nowhere and slamming the armor-clad kobold onto his back and sending him tumbling. Shade recovered and swiped at their attacker, her crooked orcish dagger singing in the air with each missed strike. He was so cocky, smiling as he danced back out of her range, his longer legs giving him an advantage over her speed and agility. She had to get closer or make him move towards her if she wanted to land anything serious.

While Shade fought with the assassin, Verist frowned and watched the thrown crystal with curiosity. She had sensed magic the moment it was released from his hand, yet it only laid on the ground. The witch tapped it with her foot, confident it would have already exploded if it were something so dangerous. It didn't budge, even when she pressed against its side. It wasn't large, no bigger than a child's hand, and it hadn't sunk into the ground when it landed. Humming, she reached out and found her hand stopped cold by an invisible wall. Verist smiled and gave the barrier a tap, causing energy to ripple out from where her knuckles landed. Crystal magic, a very rare and expensive form of spell that confirmed only one thing. This assassin was telling the truth about his position in Avant. The king wouldn't give something like this to some lowly contract killer.

Thickhide, in the meantime, had recovered and was going after Rebeun with Shade. Neither of them could get at him. Without the element of surprise that Shade had the first time they met she was evenly matched with him, and Thickhide was not helping her as much as he thought. His sword swings were timely, but swords had more reach than daggers, and Shade was spending as much time trying to stay out of his arcs as she was avoiding their enemy's attacks. Finally, she slipped around him, trying to sandwich the assassin, but he wasn't letting that happen so easily. He moved between them, constantly putting them shoulder to shoulder, limiting their movements. Rebeun dictated the pace of the battle.

Nothing showed that fact more than when he parried one of Thickhide's strikes, blocked Shade's dagger, and then put the armored kobold on his back. Before Shade could react, he had a sword down against Thickhide's armor, which sadly was not nearly as reinforced as it could have been. There were no smiths at Verist's tower after all. The armor had been created magically, which gave it some helpful advantages with weight but was also not up to every possible standard. Moreover, the blade Rebeun held against Thickhide's chest plate was large and heavy, easily capable of crunching through the armor like a giant fang.

“And you lose,” the man said with a smirk. “As kobolds are meant to do.”

Shade scowled, trying to think her way out of the corner without sacrificing Thickhide.

“This spell is impressive,” Verist said, looking at the assassin's weapon. “Where did you learn that?”

“The court mage gave me the crystal to-.”

“No,” Verist said sharply. “This crystal is about as interesting as jewelry. Expensive, intricate, but well understood. I mean your summoning.”

Rebeun frowned. “Trade secret, witch.” He looked at Shade then and ordered, “Drop it, or the dumb one gets it first. I'm not sure which of you two I mean yet.”

Verist crossed her arms, restraining her bile, but waited to see how things would unfold first. The disdain in his voice set her on edge. She had done things she now found regretful, but she did them out of love. Kobolds suffered so much she couldn't imagine they would want to remember their suffering. This man, however, purely despised kobolds.

Shade dropped her dagger but kept her wits about her. She didn't need a weapon to kill him. She watched Rebeun with murderous intent, claws at the ready even if he was watching them. All she needed was one good looking opening.

“Good, keep doing what you're told and maybe you'll get a nice lord to put you to work,” he taunted. Always so confident when he was winning. He grinned and stomped on Thickhide's chest a few times, making the kobold groan as his body was shaken in the armor. “Probably no help for one like you though. A few too many rocks in your head if I had to guess.”

“I'd wager they're both smarter than a dolt like you,” Verist called, her eyes thinning to slits as she summoned up her powers in silence. Her magic slipped out and reached towards the crystal near her feet. It may have kept a lesser mage entrapped, but she was no lesser anything.

Shade glared as the assassin pressed the tip of his broadsword further into Thickhide's armor, starting to press through it. “What was that?” he growled.

“Allow me to rephrase,” she said, stepping back, her hands up as in surrender. And then she unleashed hell.

The prison she'd been placed in exploded in a very violent way, the crystal at her feet bursting into shards, the release of energy flattening the grass for miles around all radiating from Verist's body. Rebeun stumbled back off of Thickhide as Shade was blown totally over trying to stand her ground. As the human assassin recovered his footing, bolts of lightning fell from the sky, leaving him with little choice but to dart about madly to avoid them. Verist watched his frantic movements with serene fury. She thought of that green kobold on the grass, she recalled the blue thief's broken arm, and she channeled those emotions into her magic. People often saw mages as volatile, and there was a point to it. Emotion gave weight to their powers. An apathetic mage would be bowled over, without significant training, by any mild practitioner fueled by sheer trauma. Though it was not her trauma she was funneling, Verist had seen the memories of hundreds of kobolds. Memories of men like the one she had running scared, of humans like him. It had only been Merdon's words that showed her the truth. Erasing their memories meant nothing, but she could do more. She could simply flay those troglodytes herself.

“You think that kobolds are stupid and that gives you some right to insult them?” she yelled out over the thunder she was causing with her electrical attacks. “Then does that mean I've the right to torment you for being stupider than me?”

Rebeun replied by conjuring a pair of thrown weapons and launching them at Verist, both of which were shot down into the dirt by a barrier she placed herself. She watched them get recalled by whatever power he held and smiled as he scowled at his inability to fight her.

“What's wrong? Did you think the court magician's trap would really hold me of all people?” she taunted him now. “His magic is a pale shadow of what's possible, assassin. Let me show you.”

Verist extended both of her arms and began to move them as if conducting an orchestra. Fire surged from the ground, appearing out of nowhere and burning the peaceful landscape with blistering flames. Lightning continued to crack from the heavens, scorching the earth black where it landed, turning up chunks of dirt from the impact. Icicles were flung from the witch's hands as she slashed the air with her arms as if cutting him from afar. Each new attack caused a different response, ranging from blocking the ice with a shield to deftly dodging the dangers she summoned with unearthly speed. Verist was learning a lot about their opponent from watching him flee.

“How does it feel to be the rat in the trap now?” she yelled over the raging destruction she was causing. Verist was actually starting to enjoy displaying her power. One errant blast, however, blocked him from her sight. When the tower of fire receded into the charred landscape, he was gone. “Tsk,” the witch clicked her tongue and then walked over to the kobolds, kneeling to help Thickhide to his feet. Her furious elements dissipating with a silence that belied the devastation they caused.

“What happened?” he asked with a groan, peeling his helmet off and rubbing his head. “I heard the sounds and just stayed still.” Looking over at the blackened soil he was reminded of the beach and the glass that Red had left behind from her assault.

Verist put an arm around him and cooed, “It's okay little one. I had to show the Eyes just who they're messing with when they attack you.” She looked over at the same broken landscape with a smile. This was a testament to her resolve, a mark upon the land itself of what she would do.

Shade recovered her dagger and whistled at the sight. “Guessing we need you around more often when he's going to show up, huh?” she commented. “You could have stepped in a bit sooner though.”

“Indeed I could have,” Verist admitted. “I was hoping he might let loose a little more information before getting abusive. Although I do wonder about his power.”

Shade hummed in both agreement and thought. “Maybe he's been resurrected,” she proposed.

“Yes, those blessed by the gods in such a way do tend to return with substantial power, but I would have heard of that,” the witch insisted. “No one would have kept that kind of event quiet.”

“You're right,” Shade agreed after thinking it over. “We would have heard about it up in the orc lands too. Its been a few hundred years since anyone's seen Ethral, let alone gotten revived by her.” At least a thousand since that. It took someone doing something extraordinary for the gods to even take note of them. For them to bring back the dead required a good show, some humility, and a lot of faith in the gods.

“We should return to Merdon,” Verist suggested, helping Thickhide stand up. “We were ambushed looking for those soldiers. I would imagine if they haven't teleported away as the assassin did, Merdon might be in trouble.”

Shade whipped around in the direction of the forest Merdon had been searching. “You think the soldiers turned back?” she asked in shock. It was possible.

“I don't know,” Verist replied, her tone sharper than a lemon. “And I don't like not knowing things.”