Leaving Podrick to his own devices, Emily deftly weaves away through the crowd, borrowing from her observations of The Crystal Skull’s members to slip unnoticed between the densely packed people. She heads deeper into the bustling market before moving towards the edge and following a shady-looking, cloaked figure, slipping into a side alley close behind them.

  She walks silently through the alley as it curves away from the market street, pressing herself flush against the wall and hiding in the shadows when the person ahead gnces back to check for a tail. Having failed to spot Emily, the cloaked man turns to stop before a door and flips his hood down, revealing a rough face with a gnarly scar running from his to his ear. He knocks on the door twice before pushing it open and vanishing into the building.

  The moment he leaves the alley, Emily quietly approaches the door he entered, sing her surroundings for onlookers and finding nothing. She looks over the worn wooden door with a rusted dagger bolted in the tre, seeing no gaps or peepholes to spy her through, before pressing her ear to it. Ihe building, she hears faint music, overwhelmed by the sound of heavy boot-fall, indistinct chatter, and the occasional crash or shout.

  Standing away from the door, Emily reaches for the hawisting it sloushing, to find the door pletely unlocked.

  Musid an open door. Hopefully, this is a pub or something, not a private anisation’s gathering point.

  Emily pushes the door open, reag up with her free hand to adjust the scarf ed around her head, narrowing the slit she see through to make sure nothing but her eyes are visible. As she steps ihe sound stops abruptly and the room falls into plete silence. Her gaze quickly darts about, and she takes in the rge room filled with tables and shifty, rough-looking people with an assortment of ons on dispy, along with the busy, well-stocked bar and quickly firms her guess.

  A pub.

  She steps forward into the room and shuts the door behind her, and the musistantly starts again, the small three-person band standing on a raised stage in the er beginning again without hesitation. No one else returns to their usual activity though, all of them silently watg Emily with bated breath, hands reag for ons, as she slowly walks towards the bar.

  With a silent, rexed gait, Emily calmly moves past tables, filled with bulky men and women twice her size, without sparing them a sed gnce, her eyes locked on the bar ahead and the rge board beside it covered i part. Nobody moves to attack her, but every eye in the room follows her with dripping caution and hostility, and a few knives are drawn by the small group who move to block the exit.

  “Excuse me, but it’s on courtesy to remove your face c before entering,” the sy barkeep says with a tight smile as she approaches.

  Emily doesn’t araight away, instead, she ss the part wall. She reads several notes jobs to protect certain buildings, protect mert crews oravels, huai creatures, and even a few to kill particur people. Pi the top of the board, however, is a particurly ore, with expensive-looking gold detailing and two crests: one of the royal family; and the other of house Hedera, the house with ruling rights to Ashdon. The tre of the part has a well-drawily, her hair still as long as wheurned from The Gde, and the rest reads:

  Wanted (A):

  Dead or Alive

  Emily Coldstone

  Reward: 5,000G (Or resource equivalent)

  Description: 17, 180cm, brown hair, gree eye, blue right eye

  Notes: Always armed; highly dangerous; warn closest noble family if found, do not engage (1/5 reward to informant upon successful capture).

  Crimes: Treason, mass murder, mass destru of property

  They got my height wrong. Guess that’s probably the boots.

  “It may be,” Emily finally responds as she looks away from her wanted poster, the tension in the bar palpable. “But I doubt you’d like what would happen if I did.”

  The barkeep finally meets her eyes, his focus flickeriween both her exposed irises before he g the poster she was just staring at and reition dawns on his face. His whole body goes taut and a bead of sweat rolls down his brow as he flicks his hand in a dismissive gesture and turns to point to the wall of bottles behind him.

  “ I i you in anything?” he asks with a nervous cough to clear his throat.

  Emily slides into ay seat at the bar, ign the quiet mumblings returning to the room as the tension rexes and everybody finally looks away from her, the people blog the door returning to their seats with their ons stowed.

  It seems he has trol over everyone here despite how anxious he looks.

  “Give me something a little, dangerous,” she says, dist her voice with a touaa to emphasise her words with a cold, inhuman hiss, enjoying the visible shiver that runs down the barkeep’s spine. “I want something to properly pliment that warm wele.”

  The barkeep nods without a word and mao keep his hands stable as he grabs a wide gss as it down in front of Emily. He picks up two bottles of liqueur and pours them both into the gss, f a murky blend of amber and white before crushing up a dry, pale root and dropping it i, he reaches uhe bar and lifts up a rge jar of a translut, blue-tinted liquid with a fist-sized, bd brown scorpion suspended in the tre, twitg occasionally as its tail leaks a bright blue venom that falls to the bottom of the jar to create a deadly yer of toxins.

  The barkeep opens the lid and carefully dips a small shot gss into the shimmering liquid before pg it on the bar in front of Emily, beside the first gss.

  “That’s a venom bomb,” he says while closing the scorpion jar, visibly rexing a little as he starts to expin. “You drink it by dropping the smaller gss into the rger and drinking them both. If you drink them separately you-“

  “Feel your throat close up for a few seds before the antidote works, right?” Emily cuts him off, keeping him on edge as she picks up the shot gss and pulls her scarf down to uncover her mouth before downing it. “That’s a desert choker you’re extrag venom from.”

  She sets down the empty gss and, to the horror of the barkeep, she slowly raises the sed to her nose and takes a deep breath in.

  “Then this is the antidote,” she whispers in a dangerous hiss, swirling the drink and f her throat to remain open as the venom tries to close it. “I’m guessing the white liqueur was made from acradials, the yellow burnroot sap, and the root is from a starving mesquite.”

  She takes a long, slow sip from the gss, letting the cold liquid soothe her throat before she sets the empty gss back down.

  “Am I right?”

  “Y- Yes,” the barkeep stammers, visibly uled by her dispy. “The liqueurs hold all of the ingredients to make an anti-venom. Most of my ers just assume the root I drop in is the antidote, never realising that it’s the many pieces ing together in harmony that truly saves them.”

  “It’s a very smart drink,” Emily praises, a predatrin stretg her lips as she fixes the man with a cold stare aures to the room around them with a nod. “Do you believe your many pieces could e together in time to save you?”

  “No,” the barman says with a shake of his head, reag up to loosen his colr. “Some poisons are to for normal ingredients to bat.”

  “Very smart indeed,” Emily says with a nod, lifting her scarf to cover her face again.

  The barkeep takes her gesture as a good sign as out a tired sigh, his tightly strung shoulders dipping as he seems to defte.

  “Look, I uand the danger of an A rank threat. If we try to attack you, we’ll all die. Despite having the poster up, we really don’t want any trouble with you. As far as we’re ed, you were never here. Any enemy of the kingdom is a friend of ours,” he says, mixing another venom bomb for Emily as he tihe a helping to calm him down, aided by Emily’s mediate response. “Please just tell me what you want and then leave. No o me even saw your eyes or face, and I won’t say anything to the Hederas about you being here. None of my patrons will bother you while you're iy too, I promise you that.”

  Emily stays silent as he finishes, watg him add the final touches to the drink he slides across the ter to her. She picks up the shot of venom slowly as she siders his request.

  It would reduce the risk to our crew if I either kill him or reset after I get what I want, but I doubt we’ll be able to hide our route from the kingdom even if we don’t visit any cities on our way, so it probably won’t matter even if he tells someone I was here.

  She drops the shot gss into the rger gss, watg the swirling white mist within the amber liquid take on a blue hue as the venom disperses.

  “Tell me everything you’ve been told about me,” she says, looking up from the gss and not drinking it yet.

  “Of course,” the barkeep says with relief, polishing a gss to keep his hands busy. “I don’t know much holy. Some enforcers from house Hedera came in and gave me that poster, and all they said is that you’re an enemy of their family who destroyed one of their allies.”

  “So, you weren’t told anything other than what’s on that poster?”

  “No.”

  “What does the poster tell you that makes you so scared of me then? What does that A rank mean?”

  “A rank means a threat that could level a city. The only people given that ranking when they bee wanted are powerful nobles or soldiers from other tries, and even then, it's rare. I’ve only ever seen two posters with the same ranking, and one of them was when a bounty orzea’s guardian, Bellmont.”

  Emily raises a brow at the name, pride pulling at the ers of her lips.

  Christian Belmont, the right hand of Morzea’s current leader and a fourth circle mage. Did they give me the same danger ranking as a fourth circle mage?

  “Even with everyone in here,” the barkeep tinues, “I’d never risk an A rank request. Maybe a B at a push if the reward was worth it. Speaking of the reward, that’s the other thing that fgged you as an unapproachable threat. If the rank wasn’t enough, the note about resource equivalent is a dead giveaway that you’re one of those with special powers.”

  “Special powers?” Emily inquires.

  “Yeah, special powers. You don’t stay in this business for as long as I have without realising there are strange forces at work in the world,” he says with spiratorial enthusiasm, leaning towards Emily despite his obvious fear of her and speaking faster. “There’s a lot of debate over what it is exactly that you noble folk do: some say it’s magie say you breed with monsters and aren’t even human anymore; some say you’re all aliens and never were human in the first pce! Hell, I think a few of my best patrons are less than human, but they refuse to tell me anything when I ask. They get really touchy about it. Anyway, no matter what it is, the existence of these special powers is kind of an ope, and that suggestion of equivalent resources lets other special people know they’re after one of their own.”

  So, the criminals of the try do know of magic, but not what it is. I guess only normal oners are still in the dark.

  The bartender goes quiet, setting down the gss he olishing and pig up another, waiting for Emily to say something. Silently, she picks up the mixed gss oable and swirls it around, opening a tiny hole i of maa around her heart to let out a small stream of mana.

  They aren’t giving out any information about me at least, and even my description isn’t pletely accurate. It seems like they’ve just given the bare minimum for people to report when they see me, and if they suspect I’m on Calypso, they still haven’t publicly annou. I guess it’s reasonable sinortal or weak lone mage would be able to stop me.

  “Is that all you know?” Emily asks, notig two of the bar’s patrons fling and gng over as her mana signature is momentarily revealed.

  “Yes!” the barkeep responds with a firm nod.

  Emily recovers her heart and directs the released mana to her hand, fog on her uanding of id attributing it as it flows from her skin, ing the gss in a frigid air that forms densation oside and small crystals of i the liquid within. The bartender’s eyes open wide as he watches Emily raise the gss to her lips, pulling down her scarf before downing the drink aing the ice-cold gss down.

  “It’s magic,” she says with a nod and a dramatic flex of maa in her voice, before c her face again and turning to leave.

  The barkeep stands in stunned sileh his mouth slightly agape as she walks out, and none of the bar’s patrons move to stop her. The room goes quiet again as she opens the door to leave, but after she shuts it behind herself, she hears the hubbub quickly build within. She moves away from the pub with purpose, walking further away from the market and pretending not to notice the two forms that follow her out into the alley.

  I guess these are his less-than-human patrons. So much for none of them will bother me.

  Emily slips out of view into another alley and waits for her pursuers to catch up while using her maa to burn off the remnants of the alcohol she drank.

  I didn’t think it would affect me at all, but I guess mixing a magical venom and several its boosted its strength.

  Emily presses herself into a shadow against the wall as two people in dark cloaks e round the er, moving closer with hurried steps.

  They aren’t very good at tailing someone, I could hear their feet from across a field. And they aren’t observant. They aren’t professionals.

  The moment they step within a few metres of her, Emily bursts out of the darkness, her arms reag forward to csp both men by the throats. They both panid start struggling, grasping at Emily’s hands instead of attag her.

  “Idiots,” she mutters, g down harder aing the bdes at her wrists until the cold edges of her Cws press against their throats. “Stop struggling or these gh you.”

  Both men freeze immediately at her threatening hiss, raising their hands up in surrender.

  “Remove your hoods.”

  They both ply as Emily eases her grip a little, letting them breathe but still holding fast. As their hoods drnition fshes through Emily’s eyes and she ’t help but ugh.

  “Jeremy? Kyle? Haha, this is too good,” she says as she releases them and steps back. “Did you guys get kicked out of your families or something?”

  KeroKeron