Before we start, a quick note from Nat - 

As of today, I'm excited to say that my beta reader and I worked overtime for a week to get ahead of our release schedule, and I've increased the Patreon to a full month of early access chapters, at least 8 chapters ahead at any time, all for just $5/month!

If you've enjoyed Wanderborn, please consider supporting my writing - even if you can't patronize me, you can always leave a rating, review, or even just a comment! I love talking to people that have checked out my works, and it's that sort of support that keeps me writing :)

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Allana leaned back against the table behind her, looking over the map Geoffrey was studying so intensely. They were in what she had come to think of as his war room, the place where he planned all of his operations. Off against one wall was a cluttered desk piled high with files, scrolls, books, and document cases. Allana had been surprised to find that the assassin’s trade was as much one of paperwork and study as it was subterfuge and killing.

Other workbenches scattered around the room held a hundred different items Geoffrey used in the course of his business. Some, like the multiple coils of rope, each of different textures and thicknesses, or the collection of grapple hooks and fine, glass cutting knives, were obvious in their use. Others, like the collection of broken, cloudy fragments of glass, held in an elaborate chain by brass wire, were more eclectic. The large center table in the middle of the room was kept mostly clear, as it was Geoffrey’s, and now Allana’s, actual workspace to prepare for their jobs.

The longest wall, opposite the door, held the most impressive feature of the room, a massive map of Emeston, rendered in greater detail than Allana had ever seen. The map stretched nearly from the floor to the ceiling, and was coated in some sort of alchemic substance that allowed Geoffrey to make and erase marks on it using a series of colorful pieces of wood. Together, they covered the map in an intricate series of symbols in several different colors.

The green marks were the most common, representing places monsters had been reported. There were, apparently, many more monsters in the massive urban sprawl of Emeston than Allana had ever believed, and hunting and killing them occupied much more of Geoffrey’s attention than contracts to kill other people. Allana had gathered, in the past several weeks helping him, that several others throughout the city did similar work, but that few took out as many of the naturally occuring dangers as Geoffrey. On the brightside, brick golems and dire vermin had proven to be excellent training opportunities for Allana, who had only really fought humans or wraiths prior to starting her work with Geoffrey.

Next were the red and blue marks, indicating Geoffrey’s more mundane targets and their known locations and haunts, as well as those of his most trusted allies. He accepted as many as three contracts at a time, with the stipulation that they’d be completed on his own timetable. Only dangerous or influential targets were brought to a man like Geoffrey, and it wasn’t worth his life to rush a job. Allana knew he was offered many times more contracts than he actually accepted, but he refused to explain the seemingly arbitrary conditions he used to choose those he would take and those he’d deny.

Allana didn’t understand the practice. It made sense to be careful and cautious in a job like this, she could accept that, and Geoffrey had taught her far more than she even knew there was to learn about the arts of intelligence gathering and location surveilling. But if it took that long to safely close out a target, why not focus on the highest cost bids? Why turn down an assassination of a vicelord worth twice as much money than Allana had ever seen in one place, but accept a hit on a chandler that paid barely a third the amount? Allana hadn’t even known what a chandler was until she spent a long pair of days in hiding, watching the old man make and sell his candles.

But then, one of the red circled targets was the familiar block of conjoined buildings that served as Telik’s lair, so she had little cause to argue.

Finally, least common on the giant map were the purple marks, which indicated the presence of outsiders. Those were the marks Geoffrey was focusing on now, a dissatisfied look on his face as he pondered them.

“I still don’t get it,” Allana finally said, after what felt like nearly an hour of silence. “So there’s not a lot of them. There shouldn’t be, right? We’re nowhere near a Waste.”

Geoffrey blew out an impatient breath and made a brusque gesture at the map. “There should be more than this though,” he insisted. “I’ve hunted these things for years, and this isn’t right.”

“Are they hiding then?” Allana asked the obvious question. Geoffrey often seemed to get distracted by these unimportant details. Who cared about outsiders? They were the wardens’ problem. 

“Maybe…” Geoffrey muttered, unconvinced. “These aren’t hags from the Chained World, though. Emeston is most closely connected to the Ruined World, and trust me, the undead are not very subtle.” His eyes flicked around the map. “Undercrawl, maybe?”

Allana shuddered. A coastal city like Emeston had to be built with measures to contain occasional floods. Those runoff tunnels combined with a bewildering array of sewers, dry docks, and natural caverns to form what the locals called Undercrawl. It was the most dangerous, not to mention disgusting, part of the city, and that was saying something. Allana had entered the topmost portions of that repulsive place a few times in her life, most recently with Geoffrey, hunting a nest of dire spiders, but she had no intention of delving any further into it any time soon.

“If you want to go plunging the depths of Undercrawl, feel free,” she told him. “Just give me something else to do while you’re gone. And a key to this place, in case you don’t make it back.”

Geoffrey threw a wry smile over his shoulder at the girl. “Yes, yes, I get it. I’m fixating. How about you call it a night?” The foppish man reached between the layers of this flowery tunic and pulled out a small leather bag, which he tossed to Allana. “Good work this week.”

Allana caught the little pouch, and tossed it experimentally in her hand, enjoying the soft clink of coins jingling against each other inside the pouch. Getting paid was new to her - previously, her money came from stealing, or from the occasional gift Telik saw fit to give her when she did something to earn his favor. 

Like a pet performing a trick. Allana grimaced, and tried to ignore the train of thought before it could build up steam. 

“I think you’re right, though,” Geoffrey said, his voice distracted, as Allana moved towards the entrance. “Might be time for you to start doing some jobs without me. Rogue knows you’re good enough.”

Allana cocked a smirk at the man’s back, somehow confident that he knew what expression she was wearing without him even turning towards her. “I’ll see you in a couple days, Geo.”

The blonde man lifted an absent hand in a wave, his eyes still studying the map on the wall, and Allana slipped away, her steps silent in the hall.

#

“I’unno if I need my meal anymore, Porg! I think this lil treat looks plenty appetizin’.”

Allana had been pondering the amber liquid in her glass, wishing it was as high quality as the liquor Geoffrey kept in his office and wondering if she could find out where he got the expensive alcohol, when the loud, drunken voice drew her attention.

She had no rightful expectation of privacy, sitting at a table alone in the middle of the Blackened Claw. The drinking hall wasn’t quite reputable enough to call itself anything as sterling as a “pub” or even a “tavern,” but it was a comfortable place that catered to many of the mid-ranked individuals within the more influential illicit organizations in Emeston. As a well-known thief and ward of Telik, that included Allana, and even in a room of dangerous criminals, her reputation earned her table a small, albeit respectable, amount of space. 

Of course, her reputation was an armor made of nothing but whispers and shadows unless she took steps to reinforce it. 

The boy - despite his sheer size, she just couldn’t think of Vernen as a man - swaggering towards her was also a part of Telik’s organization, as was one of the two smaller boys standing behind him. He was broad of shoulder, long of arm, and thick of gut, with a mop of lank, mud-colored hair. She was very familiar with both him and Porgit, the smirking, weasel-faced dirtbag standing with his arms crossed behind his oversized friend. They were around her age, orphans, like her, adopted as investments by Telik. Allana absently wondered if they were as oblivious as she had been to their patron’s true intentions for them.

She didn’t recognize the third figure standing near Porgit, a sweet-faced boy in all black, with an odd grayish pallor and a feminine flare to his hips she couldn’t help but notice, given the tight leather of his pants and vest. He was too soft to fit in with the two swaggering bullies, but he was pretty enough. She hadn’t realized Vern and Porg were moon lovers, but hey. Good for them.

Less good for the new boy. She had forced the two to back off of whores who hadn’t appreciated their attention more than a few times over the years.

“Really Vern?” Porg’s nasally voice joined his slurring friend’s. “Why would you wanna fuck an eggplant?”

Allana frowned. Jokes about her more unique characteristics as a wraith, like her deep purple skin, were far from new, but they grated on her every time. 

Vernen threw back his head in an obnoxious guffaw of a laugh at his friend’s joke, and Allana, never one to miss an opportunity, calmly tossed back the last of her drink and promptly pitched the empty glass at his throat. Her gift of poison had granted a moderate coordination boon, and the improvised projectile flew with perfect aim to shatter against his neck, failing to even draw a scratch. Unfortunate, but Allana had expected as much. Like her, Vern and Porg were Apprentice level, and she knew Vern had a resilience boost from his own ensouled item. Telik probably had planned for the oversized boy to be his full-time bodyguard, once he hit Initiate. Either way, against boosted resilience like his, the glass was unable to do much more than startle Vern.

Which it certainly did. The drunken boy’s head snapped down, fixing a glare on Allana. “You’re gonna fuckin’ pay for that, bitch,” he swore darkly. His next few steps were just as lumbering as ever, but much more purposeful. His ensouled items, a set of heavy steel rings, appeared on each of his fingers as he moved towards her. The idiot.

Allana may have spent the past weeks working directly with a dangerous professional killer, but Geoffrey’s lessons had been far more focused on the trade of assassination than anything else. No, Allana’s talent for violence predated her association with Geoffrey. Pretty girls didn’t survive in Lowrun unless they could take care of themselves.

The first rule of fighting a larger, stronger opponent, particularly one with a combat gift, was simple: don’t let them touch you. Allana didn’t have any convenient ranged abilities, but that was fine. She was plenty capable of improvising. The oversized thug only made it a few steps before she was in action, kicking her round table at him. The table staggered Vern, slowing him down for a critical moment, and Allana flashed forward, conjuring one of her own ensouled daggers and, coated in a slick, off-green liquid.

Instant Poison - Active, Manifestation - Manifest a simple physical poison that causes ongoing damage. Moderate quintessence cost. Increase cost to greater to increase the potency of the poison.

To be safe, Allana used the option she had gained at Apprentice level to make the more potent version of the poison. The augment of her two gifts allowed her conjured dagger to appear already coated in the poison, and by the time Vern batted the table aside with his boosted strength, she was inside his guard, dagger poised straight upwards under his prominent chin. 

The big idiot would never know it, but Geoffrey’s lessons had saved his life. Though he hadn’t taught her much about the actual how of killing, one of the recurring themes of his discussions with her was instead when to take a life, and why. It was those lessons that made Allana pause just before the tip of her dagger pricked his skin and exposed him to her poison. If she killed one of Telik’s wards, there was no way he’d continue honoring his agreement with Geoffrey. He’d come looking for an explanation, at the very least, and Allana doubted her ability to stay calm in the face of the crimelord if she saw him now.

“Come on Allana!” Porgit whined at her from behind his friend, with all the courage of the rodents responsible for his gift of the rat. Vern was holding his arms out wide in submission, and his steel knuckles had disappeared. The drunken bully seemed too nervous to even move. “He didn’t mean nothing by it! You know how he gets when he’s drunk!”

Allana snorted in derision and took a moment to decide what she could do to Vernen without drawing Telik’s ire. After all, if she just gave the huge boy some scars, he couldn’t be too mad, right? It would make Vern look more intimidating after all! It could even be argued she was helping his reputation. And her own, with how easily she had handled him.

She was about to ask Porg what he thought when she heard a soft voice, one that hadn’t spoken so far. 

“Then perhaps, as his friend, you should make sure he doesn’t go running his mouth.”

Allana smirked. Whoever that was had taken the words right out of her mouth. “Think you can manage that, Vern?” she asked him, trying her hardest to drop her voice enough to come off as gruff.

The oversized boy did his best to nod without pricking his chin on the blade, like the coward he was. Allana sighed and slowly relaxed, lowering her dagger, and took a step back from Vern - keeping her poisoned blade at the ready, in case he proved more stupid than cowardly. 

The moment she stepped out of his reach, Vern spun around to complain. “What are ya talkin’ about Seo? I was juss complimentin’ her!” 

Allana was surprised to note that the person Vern was protesting to, the source of the soft, mocking voice, was the last boy, the one she hadn’t seen before. 

Huh. Maybe he wasn’t just a new boyfriend for the two thugs. 

“You were dumb enough to hit on the one person in this whole fucking place who had people giving her space. And I’m pretty sure you knew how she’d react.” The boy, Seo apparently, smirked, looking from one bully to the other.

Porg had sense enough to look slightly embarrassed at being called out, but it just made Vern angrier.

“Whose side are you on, you lil twit!” The swaggering ass called out, finding a more acceptable target for his anger. He rolled towards the boy, continuing his tirade. “She’s just some wraith bitch, and you’re just some Novice newbie, you don’t talk to me like that!”

Allana tightened her grip on her dagger, ready to jump forward again. Telik or no Telik, she wasn’t going to let the drunken thug beat a boy just for talking back to him. 

Seo rolled a pair of startlingly bright red eyes, seemingly unimpressed. His gaze darted downwards and he made a quick gesture with one hand, as if miming a punch. 

Vernen just seemed to fold in on himself at the motion, sliding to the ground with a breathless wheeze. For a moment, Allana thought her control had slipped earlier, that her poison had been coursing through his veins since he held him at daggerpoint, and had only just worn through his resilience. Then she saw where the heavyset boy’s hands had gone.

He was clutching his crotch.

“M-my fucking balls!” Vern wheezed. 

“You little-” Porg pivoted on the other boy, his hand already transformed into the twisted, dirty claw of a rat. Seo responded with a sharp beckoning motion that sent a heavy tankard, still sloshing with ale, flying off a table behind Porgit. It traveled in a straight line ending in the back of his head, sending the smaller thug sprawling next to his partner in idiocy.

“What’s wrong?” Seo asked, a bright grin stretched across his face. “I thought I was just a Novice?”  Vern struggled to lift his bowed head, mouthing some foul invective, and one of Seo’s black leather boots lashed out in an abrupt kick that slammed Vern’s mouth shut with an audible click. “Rogue, you two are pathetic,” Seo mocked them as he stepped over their prone bodies, not bothering to give the two collapsed thugs a second glance.

Instead, his eyes slid appreciatively over Allana’s form. It was something she had grown used to over the past few years, ever since she really started developing. But whoever this Seo was, he did it right, in a way that lifted the corners of her mouth and brought satisfying blossoms of heat to her cheeks rather than making her feel dirty, the way Vernen and his ilk did. “Sorry about that,” he told her with a sheepish smile that Allana quite liked the look of. “I’m new in town. And clearly I made a poor choice in guides.” 

His smile turned from shy to charming. “Can I buy you a drink to make it up to you?” A man a couple tables away made a loud grumble, and Seo flashed him a guilty look, reaching up to run a hand through his shock of white hair. “And you too, of course. Sorry about your drink, but it was the best thing I could find.”

Allana rolled her eyes at his obvious flirting - but she found herself smiling regardless. She gave him a once over of her own. As she had noted earlier, the boy’s body had a distinctly feminine shape, with narrow shoulders and rounded hips. Combined with his face, sweet and heart-shaped but for his pointed chin, it gave him a noticeably androgynous appearance. His hair was bone white, worn long and tousled enough that Allana couldn’t decide if it was sloppy or stylish, and the tips of his ears poked out through the strands, delicately arching in an unusual way.

It was his ears that did it for Allana. Combined with the odd shade of his skin, somewhere between gray and tan, the color of his blood red eyes, and the stark white of his hair, those ears showed he was a wraith, just like her. “Sounds good to me,” she agreed, much to Seo’s evident pleasure.

By that point, Vern and Porg had stumbled to their feet. Before either could start blustering again, Allana idly pointed her knife, still coated in poison, at the pair. “Stop,” she ordered them curtly, trying to put a little bit of Geoffrey’s steely authority into her voice. The pair pulled up short, trading nervous glances. “Leave. You lost to me, then got your asses handed to you by a Novice. You’ve embarrassed yourselves, and Telik, enough for one day.”

The larger boy’s face reddened with a potent and aggressive cocktail of anger and embarrassment, but Porg put a hand on the larger thug’s shoulder. His own face had paled at the thought of Telik’s anger, as she knew it would. “She’s right, Vern. Let’s get out of here.”

Vernen’s childish faced twisted a few times, like he had eaten something both sour and rotten, before he finally spit, “You’ll get yours one day, wraith bitches.”

Allana rolled her eyes and turned back to Seo, clearly dismissing the two from her attention, and they stormed off without making a further display of themselves.

Seo finally released a long breath, visibly relaxing. “Thank the Mage they left…”

Allana arched an eyebrow. “Mmm? Seemed like you handled them well enough.”

He shook his head. “A couple simple force missles are one thing, but if either of them actually got their hands on me…” The wraith struck a little pose, gesturing over his slender frame. “I bruise so easily!” 

“I’m sure.” She drew out the last word speculatively, still laughing to herself even as she righted the table she had used as a makeshift projectile. Across the bar, she caught the eyes of Bors, the burly bartender. He had been smart enough to avoid entangling himself in a disagreement between three of Telik’s personal wards, but he still glowered at the abuse of his taproom.

Allana lifted the small leather pouch Geoffrey had given her a couple hours before, jingling it in midair with an apologetic look. After a long moment, the big man sighed in acceptance, and she happily held up two fingers, ordering drinks for the both of them.

Finally, she turned back to Seo. The two sat down at the table together, both of their eyes intent on each other, and for the first time she could remember, Allana didn’t mind the company.