Moyra crouched in the shadow of a tree in the library garden. She steepled her hands and said the words of her order. Her shadow drew in around her shrouding her armor and features. Up came her mask and with a glance to make sure there were no eyes on her she sprinted to the wall of the library. There she let her shadow meld with the wall to hide her form and using her claws she dug into the spell formed stone.
Up she went. Still a novice with her own magic she didn’t trust herself to maintain the balance of her cloak while using another prolonged spell such as silence so she focused on moving as quietly as possible. Her years of training in stealth proved invaluable as she passed several smaller study areas still bustling with activity. Higher she climbed, her mind focusing on her magical senses to make sure that she didn’t dig too far into the stone and trigger some sort of magical alarm. She could feel just such a spell weave there, as Taoren had warned her. If she was more confident, more experienced, she could bind herself to the stone which would make for an easier climb.
When she reached the windowsill that she would use to stage her entrance she huddled in a corner to rest. Her muscles ached from the tenuous climb as each hand and foothold had been so shallow that a strong breeze had her clenching to maintain her hold on the wall. She drank water and cleared her mind. Then she waited. When the great clock tower struck ten of the night she scrambled over to the opposite corner where the window could open from the inside for cleaning. Out came her tools and the slid a thin metal rod through the seam to undo the latch. She slipped inside and closed the window behind her.
This window was meant to allow light to fall onto the second and third floors of the five story library. The gap between the window and the floor of the second floor was ten feet across. Moyra leapt out, landing on the railing like a cat. She prowled down to the floor then into the stacks. As Taoren had been busy bartering for the books they honestly wanted he had allowed her to look around for anything that the order may have found of interest. She had discovered six such books, two scrolls, and a small statue in a display case. Taoren may have been denied his treasures but she would have hers.
She had three of the books and both scrolls when she reached the display case. Her hand glided across the glass and she extended her magical senses. She sniffed her fingers and sure enough she found spells and wards protecting the case. They were far too complex for her to disarm but she could disrupt them. She decided to save this task for last, just in case. On the third floor she collected two more books then she crept up to the fourth floor. There she located the sixth book.
It was in the hands of a young man in brown robes. Moyra threw herself back against the side of the stacks. No one was supposed to be in the library at after hours and no novice would be allowed on the fourth or fifth floors unsupervised. Yet here was this young magus where he shouldn’t have been. With the tome she wanted no less.
Moyra thought to let it go, to go take the statue, and leave. She peered around the corner at the young Magus. He didn’t look like an apprentice and his robes were not of any of the guilds she knew off. There in his hands was the book…her book. She had found it, climbed up the side of the library, broken in, and she would not be leaving without it. That book belonged to her.
Before she realized what she was doing she had scaled the stacks and was prowling toward the unsuspecting interloper. Above him she flexed the fingers of her hand. She dropped down from the top of the stacks seizing the back of the man’s head and slamming it into the table. Moyra snatched up the book as the man fell limp at her side.
“Mine,” she whispered. She was running back to the end of the stacks when she skidded to a stop.
“Dammit Brinn what was that noise,” asked another young man that appeared at the end of the stacks. He rounded the corner opposite of where Moyra had witnessed the first man and he had a sac filled with items. His looked past Moyra to the unconscious man at the table then his eyes locked on her. “And just who the hell are you?”
Moyra moved the book to her satchel but never took her eyes off the newcomer.
“A fellow thief. Ah good. I thought you were some magical guardian or perhaps some creature Brinn had conjured by accident. To know you are just flesh and blood will make this easier,” he said as he dropped his sac and produced a sword and dagger. Then he began to advance slowly toward her.
Moyra matched the inflection of his accent as she lowered her voice in an attempt to garner a sense of brotherhood with the newcomer. “They say there is honor among thieves. Let me pass and tend to your friend. We can both leave with what we came for.”
The newcomer rolled his weapons in small circles as he advance but he slowed his pace. “You see that may have worked friend but for the fact that you have seen our faces. Our employer said to leave no witnesses. Besides, that bag of yours looks too small for the book you just dropped into it. I think you might have a few items of interest to me.”
“You don’t want to do this,” Moyra warned.
This thief was older and taller than her by almost a foot. “It’s not about want boy. A job’s a job” he said as he lunged forward.
Moyra’s swords appeared in her hands as she set herself to fight. The newcomer’s blades came in as a double thrust that Moyra parried and countered with a stab under slash combination. Her attack wasn’t meant to kill, simply to force the newcomer back, which it did as he disengaged to fall back to an even fighting stance.
“Ah, so you have a minor talent in combat,” he said as he came on again.
This time Moyra struck first. She snapped one sword forward to stop her opponents advance then went into a dance, rolling her swords in quick stabs to back the newcomer down the isle. He was on his heels in seconds backpedaling with his blades just inches from his chest in defense. Moyra pressed forward replaying his words in her head. “Minor talent.”
“Brinn!” the newcomer yelled. “Brinn get your ass up!”
“Can’t handle a minor talent on your own, friend?” Moyra taunted.
Anger flashed on the newcomer’s face and he lashed out. Moyra drummed her blades against his sword and dagger forcing them back to the their previous defensive positions just as Oliver had done to her a thousand thousand times. He grunted and she flipped her sword to palm the hilt of the weapon before smacking it against his forehead. The newcomer fell back with a howl of pain and surprise only to find Moyra standing calmly and waiting for me.
“Let’s resume, shall we?” she asked as she fell back into her dance.
The song of steel on steel played and Moyra found herself adjusting her pace, slowing her strikes to maintain a beat, and kicking her opponent’s feet into place. To keep him balanced. All the while he was calling out to his unconscious companion while she offered him a lesson after lesson on how to fight properly. They were almost to the end of the isle where she could break away when she realized that she was toying with her opponent. This man had been on his heels the entire fight and she was purposefully matching his pace to keep from overrunning him. Why?
“Brinn do something!” the newcomer screamed.
“Too bad this library is warded to prevent sound from entering or leaving. Someone may have come to aid you by now,” Moyra scoffed.
She batted aside both of the newcomer’s blades leaving him open for a killing thrust. Instead she lifted her foot to kick him in the in the chest. Before she could connect something rammed into her back, lifted her into the air, and threw her over the newcomer to crash onto one of the study tables. The sturdy wood must have been reinforced with magic as it didn’t even creak when she landed flat atop it.
Pain settled into Moyra’s bones as she lay on the table. She groaned as she slowly worked her way up to her knees. Oliver’s voice came to her then, “I’m teaching you to kill. When you parry, break their rhythm. When you counter, take control. When you attack, kill.”
“Lesson learned Master,” Moyra grunted to herself.
“About damn time you got up. You couldn’t have blasted him with a fireball?” the newcomer argued.
“A burst of wind was good enough to get him off of you,” said a new voice. “Believe me I wanted to but that would have hit you and the loot.”
“And now?” asked the newcomer.
Moyra looked up to see a pea of light flying at her. She grabbed the back edge of the square table and rolled over it, enhancing her strength as she fell to flip the table onto its side. Her feet hit the ground and Moyra threw herself against the underside of the upturned table just as flames erupted around her. Heat bit at her but the flames were diverted by the makeshift barrier.
“Lessons learned Master. Let me prove that you didn’t waste your time,” Moyra said as she rolled forward. She couldn’t maintain more than one prolonged spell at a time but she could still fight using steel sorcery. As the flames died away she slashed the air with her blades injecting her mana into the world through her steel. She found the essence of air in her swords and used them to pull air to her. Rolling up to her feet Moyra began her dance while forming the signs of air, bull, and hammer in her mind. Whirling back toward the upturned table she pulled even more air to her then pushed it all forward with a double thrust of her blades.
The air she had called coiled to her chest then rushed forward to blast against the underside of the table. The gale flung the table end over end down the isle toward her two opponents. It skipped across the carpeted floor as it careened ahead. Both the mage and the fighter leapt to either side to avoid the table. The table crashed between them smashed through the railing behind them to tumble to the floors below.
The two thieves looked up at Moyra. She stood surrounded by the flames of the mage’s fireball. A shadowy figure with no eyes and no features. Just a set of blades and casting no shadow.
“Is he a mage?” Brinn asked?
“Does it matter? He’s seen us so he dies,” said the fighter.
They scrambled to their feet, the fighter rushing forward while the mage fell into spellcasting. Moyra dashed ahead, her swords low at her sides. The fighter passed the spot where he had dropped his stolen goods and skipped into a head long thrust of his sword. Moyra met his charge by hopping up, kicking off the lip of a bookshelf and cartwheeling over the fighter. He managed to look up at her as they passed each other. She sheathed a sword as she landed in a crouch next to his stolen loot, then snapped up his sac, and shoved it into her satchel.
“Vahlyanis taught me to take what I wanted,” Moyra whispered. She felt the heat rise behind her and leapt into the air. A bolt of fire scorched the floor as Moyra flipped to face the mage. “Taoren taught me to deal with the mage first. And to respect books!”
She flung a knife at the mage and it bounced off of an unseen barrier. Moyra’s second sword vanished as she formed the signs of air, falcon, and arrow in her mind. When she touched the steel of her knives she again found that essence of air then used the motion of her draw to pull air to her call. Her arms began pumping and a stream of spell propelled knives rained down on the mage. The first two bounced off of the barrier, then a knife stuck there exposing running lines of mana like cracks in glass. Two more knives sunk into that pane of mana sending cracks surging along the air.
The frightened mage shrieked and tried to turn away as his barrier shattered like a broken window and Moyra’s knives began hitting him. She still wasn’t use to fighting with the added power of her magic so her knives, though accurate hit with the butt or side rather than the blade in most cases. One sunk blade first into the mage’s shoulder and another into his foot. It was the knife that sunk into the back of the mage’s hand pinning it to a shelf that had her smiling to herself.
Moyra came out of her flip and landed across from the mage. She marveled at her speed in throwing her knives but growled when she realized that only three of the dozen thrown had hit. Oliver would have scolded her. “Because you taught me to kill and I will use that lesson now,” she said.
Before she could draw her swords she threw one wrist up to block the fighter’s dagger and her other wrist to block his sword. The metal of his blades met the steel plates of her bracers. He kept attacking while she kept blocking and backing away. On instinct Moyra had hardened her bracers, as she was unsure if they would hold out against being struck by the fighters blades. Hardening was a prolonged spell and as she focused on it her shroud began to tatter. Swaths of her shadow hung from her wrists and hands like cut ribbon.
“What’s this? Is your fancy armor falling apart?” the fighter mocked her.
Seeing her unraveling shadow she panicked and in that instance dropped the hardening of her bracers. The fighter’s sword darted in and when she blocked she heard the sound of metal grinding against metal. Sparks flew up and she jumped back fearing her wrist being slashed. She grabbed her wrist but there was nothing resembling the pain of a cut or broken bone. There was no time to really assess the damage as the fighter came charging at her. Her fingers and hands still worked so out came her swords and they crossed blades.
The song of steel played again and Moyra found herself pressed. Where earlier this fighter had been slow to her now he was forcing her back. Moyra focused on his movements and found them as sloppy and as slow as before. He wasn’t the problem, she was. She felt herself breathing hard and her movements felt as though they were being forced through water. She recognized it as mana stroke. She had overtaxed herself and now her body was assaulting itself with its own mana trying to create a balance again.
“Not so clever or talkative now boy?” the fighter taunted again. “You’ll die here soon. You’re out matched and outnumbered.”
“Unless your friend has a wand he won’t be casting with that hand of his,” Moyra snapped.
Moyra’s eyes caught a glimpse of the mage with the impaled hand. The pain in his eyes, the anger on his face, the foam dripping from his mouth.
The wand in his free hand.
With a scream of foam and spittle he let loose a torrent of fire. His arm was shaking with rage so the flames acted more like a whip arching through the air to crash against the book shelves before bouncing to the other side of the isle. Moyra kicked the fighter in the stomach, knocking him back a step as she turned to flee from the flames.
“What kind of idiot uses fire magic in a library?” she yelled. She saw the flames arching at her from her right so she fell down and let them pass over her. The torrent had stopped but now the isle was on fire.
Moyra leapt to her feet to find the fighter was okay and mage was standing with her knife still in his hand. The enraged man was leveling his wand at her and snarling like a maniac. “Die you bastard.”
There was no table to hide behind this time as the small bead of fire flew at her from the tip of the wand. Moyra turned and ran. Her body was just finding its balance again so she was still slow. Her body felt heavy and her muscles didn’t want to move. Then the fireball exploded she had just barely made it beyond the radius of the flames. But the burst of heated air threw her down the burning isle. She hit the ground tumbling head over heal. Keeping her head she managed to hold her weapons and force her feet beneath her. She absorbed the momentum of the roll to push herself to her feet as she skidded across the floor and managed to stop just a few feet from the broken guardrail.
The entire isle was ablaze. The mage and fighter were arguing with each other. They probably thought she was dead. Moyra looked around at the library as the fire spread to the other floors. Her eyes scanned over the ledge to see if she could find an escape route.
“Why wont you fucking die?” the mage screamed.
Moyra whirled around to see two magical bolts coming at her. Over the ledge she went dropping to the third floor and landing hard on her feet. She felt better but she wasn’t sure about using magic again as she looked at her shadow splayed out as ribbons around her and growing. She looked up to find that the two bolts of magic were diving after her. She started running and they pursued her. One bolt smacked into her head and the other into the small of her back sending her falling to the ground.
She heard the footsteps as the mage and fighter came down the stairs. The mage fired off another pair of magical bolts that struck her in the chest. “Why can’t I move right?” she asked.
“Dead! I want him dead!” the mage screamed.
“Everything is on fire, we have to get out of here,” the fighter argued.
As they argued and the library burned Moyra racked her mind for an answer to her mana stroke. “I need to find my balance. I used too much mana and I panicked. Fix the shroud. Say the damn words Moyra. Say the damn words.”
Two more bolts hit her, knocking her onto her back. Moyra growled but forced herself to focus. She let herself fall into the words of her order and tried to bring herself back to balance. “I am the shadow among shadows. I am the blade that cuts both the righteous and the sinful. I am death’s right hand and god’s mercy. I serve no king, have no honor, and care not for glory. May my path be long and my adventure never ending.”
Her shadow drew around her body and with a sigh she rose. The mage was leveling his wand once again. It was time to leave. Her swords vanished into their sheaths as she turned and sprinted away. The heat around her, already burning at her skin, rose. She looked back to find a sphere of flame the size of a wagon coming at her. She fell to all fours and ran like a wolf. Leaping at the guard rail she grabbed it with her hands and launched herself toward the window. She tucked her legs and kicked off of the railing to add to her momentum.
Behind her the sphere exploded into a burst of searing air and flames. The blast sent her flying through the glass and out into the night sky. The heat pealed back her skin in several places, causing her to loose focus once again. Her shroud of shadow fell apart around her exposing her as she fell amid flame and glass.
The ground was too far down and she didn’t have the control needed to harden her body and soften the earth below at the same time. In desperation she formed the signs or air, feather, and vortex in her mind as she drew her swords and whirled them around her. She pulled air up to her in a tight rotation to create a wind funnel as Oliver had taught her. The ground was racing at her but as the seconds passed her decent slowed. She kept moving her arms to pull more air up to slow her fall but she was still descending too fast. She spun her swords faster to gather more air and gradually she slowed herself enough that hitting the ground wouldn’t kill her.
A shard of glass impaled through her collar into her shoulder and Moyra screamed. She let go of her swords, dropped her elemental control, and crashed into the trees below. Somehow she settled into a set of branches with her legs sitting above her head. She was upside down and able to clearly see the burning library.
On this night Moyra had disobeyed her master’s order, disregarded their warnings, and contributed to the burning of one of the greatest structures in the free cities of the Shattered North.
“Taoren is going to kill me,” she said to herself.