Smoke filled the air around him, and Lucius wiped a hand across his sweating brow. He heard a shrill scream and then a chuckle after that. Madness.

War had engulfed the Sixth. Battles, flames, and all, yet Lucius could do nothing for that. So he rolled the dice instead.

“Sixes,” the attendant said, and the crowd roared around him.

Lucius laughed in relief. A hand clapped his back. He breathed in the smoke. It smelled of dream husk, and after several hours under the substance, his face had started to numb. Blissfully numb.

At the table next to them, men and women laid out cards and took chips. Attendants in red and gold suits walked around, greeting guests and eyeing hands for the tell-tale glimmer of Skills. Hells, even he was worried about getting caught for cheating.

He titled his face back, sucking in another breath of smoke and stale air. A great, golden chandelier hung above him, and past it, he could see the pale spots of faces looking down from the wooden terraces above.

Romano’s Gambling House, the greatest pit of sin in the Sixth Ring. Tonight, it was full of madmen. Madmen who were content to ignore the suffering around them. Among them was a specific man, one of the business heads of the Enchanters’ Guild, and it was on this night that Lucius would steal his face.

He stumbled away from the table, his handsome face smiling and greeting as he went. Where had he got this one? An actor, he thought. Real nasty piece of work, and that was just the acting, nevermind the murdering bit. Handsome fellow, though. Well, he was a handsome fellow. Now, Lucius wore his face as he’d worn hundreds of others.

A hundred years now he had been meddling, killing, and lying his way through the Rings at his master’s behest. The one time she let him do as he pleased, he had made a mess of it. Working with Ryu? The damn brute was a killer, not a spy. Oh, Lucius had watched his performance at the Contest. Real moving stuff, if you didn’t realize he was a killer hiding his true strength, yet for all his prowess, Lucius had not spotted an ounce of charisma on him.

One party. His partner had gone to one party and managed to run into the damned leader of the Lord’s Flock. Then the Bugs had attacked, and he was captured. Lucius suspected Keira’s hand in that, too, but there were none to hear his suspicions. At least, not yet.

Plan after plan had failed, thwarted by a mind as keen or keener than his own, and Lucius’s shape-shifting ways were all but useless. Until the attacks had started. His invisible opponent- Keira’s backer, he suspected- all but disappeared, leaving Lucius to meddle as he pleased.

His leather shoes clacked softly against the cherry wood stairs, his hand drifting along the gold-line rail at his side. To him, madness was gambling one’s wealth away in the midst of a war, but to the fine patrons of Romano’s, one night the odds would be in their favor. Eventually. Sadly, his target was not quite mad. No, Silus D. Wells was by all accounts as clever as he was eccentric, and his deductive Skills made him a paragon of business, if not wholesome hobbies…

Past one floor and up another, Lucius smiled, nodded, and waved his way to the gambling house’s fourth floor, where he was met by two helmeted guards. One walked forward, the jester face of his helm sliding back into his helmet.

Bored, apathetic eyes slid up to Lucius’s face. “Pass?”

He waved his hand, producing the enchanted slip of paper. “Yes, my good sir.” Stolen, of course, and matched to his aura with the help of a bribe.

“Nell, scan it,” the guard said, and his partner waved an inscribed metal rod over the slip of paper.

“All clear, sir,” the muffled voice of the other guard said.

The first guard huffed, as if disappointed. “Please hand over any weapons, storage devices, or harmful agents over at this point. Failure to do so will result in an early end to your night. You will be shown to a room. That is your room. Any attempts to enter another guest’s room will result in an early end to your night. The use of Skills, Techniques, or other abilities supernatural will-”

“Result in an early end to my night. I understand, sir,” Lucius said, throwing a storage ring, a sheathed dagger, and an enchanted necklace over to the second guard. “Now take care of my things, would you?”

The man grunted, unamused. “A servant will be waiting for you past the door. Enjoy your stay at Romano’s.”

“I certainly plan to,” Lucius said, stepping past the guards. He felt their gazes survey his form with the power of Skills, and then they turned, finding nothing on his person. And rightly so. Only an amateur would fail under an average guard’s eye.

The waiting servant led Lucius down a hall and past a series of doors, the floor’s striped wallpaper blurring together under the effects of the husk laced in the house’s smoky air. Men, women, and people of all sorts drifted in and out of the doors around, their only similarity their clothes- or rather, the lack thereof. When they stopped at a door and a key was pressed into his hand, he felt an odd relief. Close. But not done.

He entered the room, flopping atop a large bed canopied by red silk. The red and gold covers and sheets underneath him were as comfortable as they came, and for a moment, he considered relaxing. A blissful moment, but a moment all the same.

Under the roof of Romano’s Gambling House, several businesses thrived. There was gambling, of course, but also organized crime, a human fighting pit, and a floor dedicated solely to the tender- or rough, depending on one’s fancy- ministrations of certain lady and gentleman of the night. The fourth floor, as it were.

Now, this was far from Lucius’s first time in a whorehouse, thought if he was honest, it was rare that he was the customer instead of… Well, instead of the whore. Sure, he was far more interested in the spread of information rather than the other things spreading beneath the heavy covers, but hey, he would be the last man to kiss and tell. Unless, of course, it was his job to do so.

He rolled onto his side, grasping the small pamphlet next to the bed. In it was a series of portraits so real as to be the photos of old, and beneath them were small descriptions. A bloody menu. For whores. Not exactly the most ethical man, this Romano.

Lucius thought of the portfolio he had gathered on Silus D. Wells and flipped through the pamphlet. Perhaps it was enough to say the place catered to a wide variety of clientele, and amongst the portraits, he found what he knew the man liked. He rang the small bell on the nightstand next to his large bed, made his request to the waiting attendant, and settled into wait.

Some time later, a woman with long, dark hair walked into the room in skin-tight black leather. She looked at him expectantly, jutting her chin forward and pouting her painted red lips.

Lucius ignored the odd straps in her hands, patting the bed beside him swiftly. “Come here, sit for a moment, please.”

“I think you need to-”

“Enough,” Lucius said, snatching her hands away from his neck. “I asked you to sit.”

She sat. “Just for a moment then.”

“Tell me, what’s your name?”

“Julie, sir.”

“Alright, Julie. Do you mind if I ask a few questions? It, uh, makes me feel a bit more comfortable.”

When the woman nodded her assent, Lucius began asking her a series of questions about her life, and by the time her drowsiness had kicked in, he had all the answers he needed. When she passed out, he tossed the small needle in his grip away and laid her onto the bed.

“Julie, Julie,” he muttered, touching her face and pushing his mana into the form for Mimicry. Where his Technique Shape-Shift needed a person’s blood, Qi, hair, and life to store their form into one his body slots, Mimicry created an illusion that altered his appearance to match his target’s. It was easily dispelled by attacks and serious enchantments, but its time limit would last long enough for what he had in mind. After all, he would have a new form soon.

Half an hour later, he exited the room, flashing the attendant outside an illusory smile. “He has asked not to be disturbed. Must’ve really taken it out of him,” he said, [Warble] projecting Julie’s voice in place of his own.

The attendant laughed. “Of that, I’m sure. Madame Catto would like you to know that Silus Wells will be joining us later this evening.”

“And he’s requested me?”

“When does he not?”

“True enough,” he said over his shoulder.

He recalled the place’s floor plan in his mind as he walked, walking past and smiling at the various guests and workers of the night. Julie would be out for about two hours, which meant he had about one to steal Silus’s face and leave. Now, the room the man frequented was-

“Madame Julie,” a man said, grasping Lucius’s hand and kissing it lightly. He was short and wide, his tanned features unassuming and plain.

Inside, he wanted to stab the man, but he faked a smile, lightly tugging his hand free from the man’s. Prolonged touch could disturb his Technique. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“Oh no, my dear, the pleasure is mine,” he said. He leaned close. “Do you have anything to tell me?” He pressed a Qi crystal into his hand.

Of course, the woman Lucius was disguised as was involved in something shady. It was Romano’s. He would have been more surprised if there was nothing going on.

“I do, but not here. Perhaps after my next client?” The man’s hand had not moved. Ten more seconds and his disguise would start to fray.

The man gave her a long, measuring look. Too long. Lucius felt his illusion start to fray at the edges. “Of course, of course,” the man said with a smile, letting his hand go.

And then he was gone. Lucius let out a small, relieved sigh. That damn look. He must have messed up.

It was strange, really, the differences between how a man and a woman navigated the world of body language and conversation. They were small differences, of course. Everybody was in the same shitty boat of life, he knew, but there were differences all the same. Wider smiles, less of the head nods that dominated male nonverbal conversation, the polite measuring up of other women. None were noticeable things, but their absence or presence tickled the back of an observant mind.

Lucius was lucky the man had not noticed more. He smoothed out the illusion, plastered another smile across his false face, and continued walking, ducking in one of the dressing rooms and then out again to maintain appearances. After Julie woke up and the investigations started, things would not add up, but then, stranger things happened at Romano’s every day.

He continued down the hall with a happy whistle.