- The Book of Prowlers

She stared down at the roof of the Three Anchors. Below her lay a hatch in the roof directly above the room she needed to go into, at least if her memory was correct, bolted down and locked with locks that emanated magical power.

"That's a pain. Guess there's no chance of doing this quietly, is there?" she complained under her breath.

She stood motionless, her mind racing through images of the tomes of knowledge she had seared onto her memory.

The lore harnessing the dark element, her preferred element to use, had no tools for subtlety regarding problems like this in the books she had read. Rather, the subtle nature of darkness was merely a weapon used to more easily kill enemies of the reader.

Reaching a dead end, she turned to water.

"Wasn't there something in one of the books... course, it was never widespread. Maybe I'll just have to rip it off," she complained as she rested her head on a hand, teetering on the precipice of giving up and solving the problem with brute force.

Her facial expression changed suddenly. Her eyes widened, and her lips slowly spread into a wide smile.

There was a small paragraph in one of the books. Due to the tempestuous, rapidly flowing nature of water, one wielder created a method of harnessing the element to drive the magical energy out of an item, instead replacing it with their own. Sadly, the idea had no official spell, having been used for the sole purpose of committing sins of lust, at least according to the book.

Tess quickly thought of a plan of action, and began putting it into practice.

She would approach the locks with her hand, gently pouring a measured amount of magical energy infused with elemental water out of her fingertips before overwhelming the locks with just enough power to crack them.

The one problem, that she found while attempting the method, was that she had no idea how to control the power she would output. Maybe it was because it actually had a base spell with an incantation that neutered the ferocity of it, but she had been lulled into a false sense of security by her modified 'shadowshell' that she poured a reduced amount of magical power into.

She gritted her teeth and let out a low, animalistic growl as she concentrated harder, trying to stem the flow of power. Her hand became consumed by pain. The ligament in the wrist exploded into pain, the load of the magic taking a toll on the untrained ligament. Her fingers began trembling due to the pain caused by the immense pressure of the magic pouring out of them, a pain that throbbed through each finger, threatening to crack each bone in each finger.

As the intensity of the power grew, Tess began to feel her chest constrict.

'Shit. Shitshitshit.'

Her breath became intermittent and raspy. She closed her eyes, pouring all of her existence into stopping this fountain of power. After all, if she didn't that existence would stop.

As though she was holding something back, she fell backwards as the power cut off. She tried took a moment to recover her breath, but sprung back up at the appearance of a loud cracking noise. She gently ran a hand over her body, fearful the sound was caused by her body giving out after the effort.

Satisfied that she was fine, she began to stand, only to freeze a moment later.

The building was what caused the cracking sound.

Seemingly beginning at the hatch, a sizeable crack had emerged in the roof of the building, running to the side and seemingly tricking down as well.

She rushed to the now-detached hatch and pushed it aside before dropping into the room below, her body still shaking from her previous effort.

The walls of the room were packed tightly together, giving Tess a feeling that she was being crushed.

In front of her lay the door to the room. Unlike the outside view, this side of the door was basic, including no grand designs nor any ornaments. To the left, the wall was covered by a bookcase, sparsely displaying books between various ornaments and other items that Tess could only think were trophies of some kind. On the wall to her right there was a large artistic portrait that displayed some faraway landscape.

It was a large field, scattered with a variety of different things such as grass and constructed rock formations. To the left of the portrait, a small amount of water could be seen splashing into view, implying a large body of water just outside of the painting. In the background, the viewer could see through a small valley created by a large, wide mountain. Atop both peaks stood two large towers, one white and one black. Connecting them, and both sides of the peak, was a large, indigo bridge.

As she turned around, she was greeted with a desk. Just like this side of the door, the desk also didn't contain any decorations of grandeur. Attached to the near side of the desk and curving back over hung a thin, green lamp. Behind the desk, on either side, stood two identical windows, each letting in merely a trickle of moonlight.

Flopped open atop the desk lay a large book, bound in a tough leather coat.

Approaching the desk, Tess spun the book around and ran her eyes over the words etched into it.

The page it was open on documented financial transactions, operations, and names ordered neatly into a table. Flicking through the pages, she saw more of the same things on more pages. Eventually, she found a large title page, titled "Benedor". After the page, the organised tables resumed. Flicking backwards, she found another title page. This time, the title read "Mathiel".

'These must be the members of the syndicate,' she thought to herself. She quickly closed the book and tucked it under her arm, before returning to the roof through the hatch.

She made her way back to her room in the inn via the rooftops, taking care to cross gaps with room to spare.

The room was simple. Most of the space was occupied by the large bed in the centre. There was a small amount of space available on the side of the room closest to the windows, and the rest was taken up by an open wardrobe on the other side of the bed.

Upon arriving, she slipped into the room through a window she had left open, expecting to need to enter unseen. As she looked up after landing on the floor of the room, she saw a figure sat on the bed. She instinctively stood up and held up her hands, expecting the figure to be an enemy.

"Chill out, Tess. I'm not here to fight."

"Wil?"

"I was nearby so I was sent to assist you. I've heard someone was looking for you back East, so I can take over here if you want to go back. You can also take the kid back if you want. Speaking of, who's the kid?" he asked, gesturing to the child who was asleep in the bed.

"Just some kid. The syndicate were looking to recruit someone so I sneaked into one of their buildings. They were basically slavers, so I killed them. The kid had nowhere to go, so I brought her with me."

"You did what?" he asked, rising to his feet.

"They were going to join the syndicate. It was a valid action to take."

"How? Your job was to observe and gain intel. If they find out we're moving against them, then we're finished. That was a bad choice."

"It's fine. I've got a book with everything. Names, transactions, everything."

He paused for a moment. "Okay. Take it back East, I'll take over here. While you're gone, think about what you did."

"What I did was fight against our enemy."

"What you did was jeopardise the nation for the sake of a handful of people. That's the job of the Guard, not us. We do what we must, no matter the cost."

He threw her a small bag.

"Take this. Get some transport. Let me handle the situation here."

"All right," she said, shaking the girl awake. "Don't mess it up."