Mana inhibitors sucked. They always had and always would. It was a good thing that they were rare.

Serenity had to wonder just where people on Asihanya had gotten a mana inhibitor. They had to be made by someone roughly ten Tiers over the level of mana they were going to fully inhibit; at-Tier inhibition was more annoying than problematic. This felt severe enough that Serenity figured it had been done by someone of at least Tier Fifteen, and there was no way Asihanya supported a Tier Fifteen crafter, especially not one with the skill and time available to make a mana inhibitor of all things.

On top of that, why was there a mana inhibitor here? This was a street; as far as Serenity knew, there was nothing about it that was different from any of a dozen other streets he’d walked through on the way to visit Old Man Rinsetti. It was a little tighter than some of the others, maybe, but not very different from the others on the way to Rinsetti’s residence.

Serenity looked around as he continued to move forward. He hoped to get out of the inhibitor’s range before there were any problems. Even the first step told him he wa well inside the radius, because there was no change in the apparent strength of the inhibition; the edges always had a noticeable variation, even if it wasn’t always obvious how they were shaped.

He didn’t see any signs of anything going on in the area other than the sudden appearance of the inhibitor. He hoped it wasn’t there because he was there, but couldn’t count on it. If it was aimed at someone else, pretending he didn’t notice it might give him a better chance to avoid the fight that was surely about to happen.

Two steps after the inhibitor slammed down around him, Serenity started to smell a sickly sweet odor. With no one else in the street, that confirmed it well enough: this was an attack on Serenity. He didn’t know why, though he could guess who was behind it.

The question was which way they expected him to run. The natural direction was back the way he came, towards perceived safety, but ahead was faster since he didn’t have to turn. If they realized he was experienced, they might expect him to run forward.

Serenity didn’t have time to debate it, so he simply moved. Forward was still the better choice; even if they expected it, there was a chance they would be slow to react.

Serenity outran the first white ball that headed for him from one of the walls and managed to avoid the second, but the third caught him in the side. The ball poofed out in a small explosion and covered him in some sort of sticky liquid. It reminded Serenity all too much of the web attacks of higher-Tier spiders, especially since that single strike prevented him from straightening his arm.

The fourth shot came from the other direction and well ahead of where the first three originated. It caught him on his left knee and Serenity stumbled. He managed to not fall, but he could only move at a fast stagger after that instead of a run. Serenity growled to himself and released a Fireball centered directly over himself. If this really was spider webbing, it might well not burn - but it would probably become brittle with heat. That would help him get out of it, and if he didn’t get out of it he wasn’t going to make it out of here on his own.

Shapeshift would work to get it off, but his shifting was far too slow. Fireball would have to do.

The Fireball was slow to form for a Skill and weaker than it should have been for the amount of mana he threw at it, but he had far more mana than the Tier Three Skill was designed to take. Even with the inhibition of mana present in the area, the Fireball was stronger than a normal Tier Three Skill.

Serenity felt the heat wash over him and the webbing that covered him. One probably wouldn’t be enough, so he dropped another Fireball as quickly as he could, even as he grabbed for the webbing restraining his leg. That was the important part right now.

Serenity! I can make out some voices in the distance.

Aide’s words in Serenity’s vision drew his attention but he didn’t let them slow down his attempt to remove the webbing. Two Fireballs wasn’t really enough, but he was able to peel it enough that he could at least partially free his jeans. It was too bad they weren’t lighter material; if they were, he might have been able to rip them. It was also too bad he was in his more human form; his lack of claws right now was a severe hindrance.

The smell is a sleep agent of some kind, they want you alive. They’re watching the Skills you use and seem confident they’ll capture you.

They wanted to capture him? Serenity couldn’t say that was exactly a surprise; the inhibitor could have gone either way, but when people used restraints it was more likely to be an attempt to capture instead of kill. The question was whether or not he should let them take him alive.

It would be easy enough to do. All he had to do was pretend that whatever sleepy gas they were using worked. He didn’t know why it wasn’t working, but he didn’t feel at all tired. He could have Aide watch their location; there was almost no chance they’d take him somewhere he couldn’t either sneak or fight his way out of. Things that would hold a human simply wouldn’t hold a cloud of sentient smoke. He might not be able to get away without his shapeshifting being revealed, but he had every faith he’d be able to get away.

If he decided not to be captured, he’d have to get away conventionally. Anything truly unconventional that he could do was either too slow or gave too much away. Getting away seemed challenging; he wasn’t certain how challenging. He could probably manage it, but the first step would be to get inside a building and use it as cover; they’d clearly prepared for him to run down the narrow street.

It would be much easier to find out what they wanted if he allowed himself to be captured. It would also let him find out where they were; if he didn’t let himself be captured, he’d have to figure it out and probably defend against more capture attempts until they managed to figure it out.

That alone was enough of a reason. Now he just had to sell the fact that they’d won and that he hadn’t allowed it to happen. Not exactly his best skill, but he thought he could manage it.

Two more webbing balls hit Serenity and exploded; one was on his chest and didn’t really hit much, but the second was on his right, at the hip. It made his next step short; he turned that into a stumble, then deliberately landed flat on his chest. He might be letting them capture him, but he was definitely going to make them pay for using webbing!

Serenity hated spiders and this was why.

Aide, see if you can make anything else out. I’m going to send a message to Rissa and let her know what’s going on.

He was also going to pretend to be asleep. He’d managed it back at Djen’s on Zon. Hopefully he could manage it here.

As it turned out, pretending to be asleep while they pried his “unconscious” body off the cobblestone street was harder than he’d expected. It was funny enough that it was completely worth it, even if it did mean he was directly sprayed with that odd sweet-smelling gas a couple of times when he wasn’t good enough at not reacting.

Cymryn hated storage items, but storage Skills were far worse. No one walked around without money of some sort; this Serenity didn’t carry any. The lack of other items could be explained as leaving them behind; he did seem to have a secure base at the “Great Library,” after all. The lack of money couldn’t be. They hadn’t found anything the team artificer recognized as a storage item, though, so a storage Skill seemed the most likely.

The only way to get into a storage Skill was to have the person who owned it let them in, and that would give away too much. Well, not the only way, but the easiest way. Killing the person sometimes worked; it depended on the Skill. Killing Serenity would be worse than useless, however; talking to the dead sounded more useful than it usually turned out to be. Zombies were easy to fool but they also tended to not remember much.

As for convincing him to open it, they’d already pushed the bounds on what could be done with “friendly” information gathering by abducting the man. Pushing him to open his storage could easily make it impossible to convince him they were actually on his side, whatever that meant to him.

Cymryn sorted through the information they did have on him. First, he had a definite affiliation with the Mercenaries’ Guild. That was common outside the Empire; all it really meant was that he could fight and was willing to take money for fighting. They also ran the dungeons in the Font Sector. That wasn’t true everywhere, but it was relatively common. Mercenary Guild affiliation didn’t tell him anything.

The report from the only long-term agent he had on Asihanya told him more, but the biggest thing they told him was that the man had hidden secrets. A Tier Ten wasn’t terrified of a Tier Eight without a very good reason, and the forces that surrounded Serenity didn’t give that reason. Few were even Tier Five.

Serenity’s items, even without being able to get at the ones he’d hidden in whatever storage Skill he had, told a very different story, as did the fact that he’d nearly escaped from the trap. That shouldn’t have been possible for a Tier Eight; at Tier Ten, Cymryn himself couldn’t get close to tzekin gas without passing out. He’d only ordered the use of the mana inhibitor despite its expense because of Zanzital’s fear; he was glad he’d listened to his own paranoia. As it was, the “we found you passed out on the street and took you in to keep you safe” story had some significant holes.

The high-Tier manablade and antimagic ax were bad enough, but Serenity’s armor was incredibly revealing. A Tier Eight shouldn’t have dragonscale armor at all; it was nearly impossible to downgrade dragonscales far enough for them to be worn by a Tier Eight. On top of that, nearly all dragonscale armor was marked with a sign of enmity, a Dragon’s Mark; it took an extraordinarily high level of ability to remove that mark and not immediately anger any dragon that saw you.

This wasn’t just dragonscale armor. This was worse. It was dragonscale armor, yes, but it wasn’t just the scales sewn onto a backing; it seemed to have been made without separating it from the dragonhide itself. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to remove the Dragon’s Mark from dragonhide; the only way to get dragonhide without a Mark was to have it granted willingly.

The Sovereign’s Mark on the armor and Serenity’s chest were almost irrelevant. Cymryn didn’t know which four-planet empire he served, but he also didn’t care. The fact that he could obtain true dragonscale armor was far more important. The fact that the dragonscale armor was highly resistant to everything they’d tested against it only added to that conclusion.

The fact that the coloration of the scales matched the scales that dusted across a few places on Serenity’s body and face told the rest of the story. It was willingly given, then painstakingly - and expensively - lowered in Tier to match Serenity. It was a gift from a far higher-Tier relative. A draconic relative.

That alone was enough to make Cymryn concerned about his entire mission. Dragons were not to be messed with; any time they got involved, you had to be prepared to abandon the mission, no matter how much the Emperor wanted it.

Especially a mission like this one where he’d been warned that “certain other forces” were interested before he started. He hadn’t expected those forces to include dragons, but it did explain the warning.

Lillene

It only makes sense to scope out the competition. How could a measly Tier Eight from nowhere be competition? Well, obviously he’s from somewhere…