"To this very day, rot affinity mages are treated like pariahs in the empire at large. The wound is far too fresh in the minds of many to forgive. It saddens me that the act of one man resulted in hatred towards an entire group, warranted or not, but I have found that such is the nature of the average person's mentality." - Lucea Mile Tessarii, Lacerta Rex Imperatrix, Second Empress of the Third Elmaiya Empire.

Inner Fort of Fort Asconix

Eastern Elmaiya

Second Elmaiya Empire

6th day, 2nd week, 7th month, year 80 VA.

Like shadows in the night, the agents of the Death's Hand sneaked through the corridors of the inner fort. While they were uncertain where exactly their target was located, they were reasonably certain it was somewhere within the inner fort. As such, they had split into five teams that spread out and searched the fort.

When they ran into sentries, blades flicked out, and sentries were silently dispatched before they could make a sound. Aideen was with one of the teams, but stayed in the middle. She would be there if they have a need for more overt violence. The covert silencing, she left to those trained for it.

Although the Death's Hand were primarily battlefield assassins, they were also well trained for espionage and covert action, and here that training proved their worth. Sentries were dispatched before they could raise an alarm. More often than not before they even noticed their killers.

Several times they ran into maids and manservants instead. Aideen could only turn her eye away as those men and women were similarly silenced. She was too aware of what was at stake, and refused to let her own sentimentality jeopardize the mission.

The inner fort itself was only lightly defended, other than sentries every now and then. The rangers had focused their defense on the outer fort, and many of them were probably sallying out to chase the elves anyway right at that moment.

Aideen and her team had gone for the stairwell leaning to the uppermost level of the fort, having left the two floors below to the four other teams. They ascended the stairs silently, their intrusion so far undetected as they had left no witnesses alive, and halted right around the corner.

One of the wind mages amongst the agents silently signaled the presence of six guards just around the corner, four guarding a door on the left, another two before another on the right. This was the highest floor of the inner fort, and there were no other rooms other than these two.

More signals in sign language were exchanged, then the agents firmly nodded. Two of the agents readied themselves, one the metal mage with over a dozen knives hovering around her, the other a death mage with bolts of death energy in each of her hands.

As if on cue, both agents rounded the corner and attacked. Blades of metal found purchase in soft flesh, while bolts of pure death magic corroded living tissue. Four guards clutched daggers that had pierced their throats and mouths, while the heads of the other two were reduced to a mere skull in short order. Several other agents rushed in, with absurdly silent footsteps for how fast they moved, and caught the bodies before they could make a noise by falling down, placing them gently on the floor.

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The wind mage of the team inspected the insides of both rooms from the corridor, using wind to sense what was inside. The room on the right he found to be empty, looking like a bedroom of sorts. On the other hand, the room on the left was set up like a laboratory, and there, the wind mage found a broad, short figure busy at work on one of the tables.

Their target, Aegon Rowliss, was a dwarf, so the figure was likely him. As they know that their target was a rot mage whose expertise lay in diseases, the plan was to have Aideen - who by her unliving nature had the least to worry about any disease, even the plague - go in and apprehend the target alive, if possible.

Aideen signaled her readiness, even as other agents in the team rummaged through the other room in search of anything that might be useful. In one smooth motion, one of the agents silently unlatched the door to the lab, and Aideen barged in with her weapon in hand, the door closed behind her by another agent.

An old dwarf with sunken, red eyes turned around when he heard her enter. His eyes bulged wide when he saw her. On reflex, the dwarf conjured a cloud of putrid miasma between them, and his already wide eyes further widened when Aideen just rushed through it without a care, the cloud of pestilence that would have been enough to drop a grown man in second not bothering her in the slightest.

"Ally of the knife-ears!? You will not take me alive!" Yelled the old dwarf, madness and desperation in his eyes. In the moment Aideen needed to reach the dwarf, his hand had grasped one of the carefully sealed vials on the desk, with what looked to be black sludge inside it, and smashed it to the ground. "I will avenge my family!"

"What the hell did you just do!?" Aideen asked sternly as she grasped the old dwarf. Despite his build he gave barely any resistance. More worryingly, she felt hideously uncomfortable moments after the dwarf shattered that vial. As if something was trying to corrupt the mana in her body, but failing to take hold.

"Unleashed my masterpiece… now… neither those cursed knife ears… nor corpse lovers… will exist no more…" said the dwarf haltingly. His condition deteriorated horribly fast even as Aideen tried to heal him, his mana revolting within, causing blisters to break out in moments, and blood to flow from his seven facial orifices. "Now… you all… shall pay… the price… heh… heh… heh…"

Aideen could only look as the old dwarf expired in her hand. Shaking her head, she searched through the lab, taking any notes and samples she saw. The dwarf's storage artifact had several notebooks within, which she prayed were his research notes, and it was only after she thoroughly rummaged through the lab and took everything that might be of use, did she exit, and hurriedly closed the door behind her.

"Quick! Hose me thoroughly!" Aideen commanded the death mage. If whatever the old dwarf unleashed was some kind of disease, she would likely be entirely covered with it. The agents had worked together to keep the room sealed while she was within just for such an eventuality, and so was this.

Without missing a beat, the death mage did as commanded and bathed Aideen in a cloud of pure death mana. It corroded her flesh down to the bone, only for her to regrow it moments later, but more importantly, she felt the discomfort ease, before vanishing entirely after a while. She made sure the storage artifact and her weapon were properly cleansed by it as well, before the cloud finally lifted.

"Can you cleanse the room as well?" Aideen asked even as she pulled out a cloak from her storage and wrapped it crudely around her naked body. The cloud of death magic had corroded all her clothes, since it had also corroded her flesh down to the bones.

"I'm sorry," said the death mage with a shake of her head. "Whatever you got on you took most of my mana to kill off. I barely have any left in me."

"Well, shit," cursed Aideen vehemently. "At least we have confirmation that whatever it was, it's killable by death magic this time. Target killed himself with it, though I got everything I can find with me."

"We should move out, I guess, and get this information passed on as soon as possible," she added as they started running down the stairs. "Any of you feel the slightest bit ill, inform me immediately. I've seen what the disease he worked on can do, and it's far worse than what we're dealing with so far."

Nods were given in reply to her words. The agents quickly reassembled, the wind mage sending silent messages to their counterpart in the other teams as they passed by, and soon everyone was gathered by the well they first entered from.

Aideen threw one last sad look of apology for all the civilians who had just lost their lives that day due to their actions, before she went down the well, other agents following her in order. They soon reached the water and swam back out the way they came in.

None of them realized at that moment the significance of what their action had done to the region.