Focus. It is the dead of night, and my target is asleep.
Focus, remove the light and embrace the darkness. The world darkens around me.
Focus, remove the sounds, and even my heartbeat disappears.

I am ready.

Exiting the hideous, I run through the back alleys, trusting the darkness to hide my existence. The lord's mansion grows closer. Scaling the walls as if they are flat ground, I find myself in front of a closed window. The locks are honestly pretty disappointing for a city’s lord, my shadows simply opening it. Enchanted to ward off magic, luckily my shadows aren’t magic.

Feeling the guard approaching I make my presence unknown by crawling on the ceiling. The guard passes by as if on a morning stroll. I suppose he is to be relieved by the next guard soon, but that is no excuse for leisure.

Deeper in the mansion I find the door I’m looking for. The lock is better than the one on the window, but still, I expected more for what is behind it.

In the middle of the room my target lies alone on a large bed. Closing in on him, I banish all sounds in the vicinity, not just the noise I make.

My blade finds his weak spots, and I feel his shocked scream being erased. Before long, he succumbs to tranquilizer, leaving him to bleed out.

Leaving the mansion poses even less of a challenge than entering it, with the guards once again failing their jobs.

Back at the hideout, I once again step out of the shadows, and the world lightens again.

I look over to my partner for this job. I have worked with him on a few jobs before and like me, he is shrouded in shadows, though unlike me, he uses mana. This way we have the tools needed to circumvent all defenses.

The job this time is to steal the defense plan of a newly built fortress. This consists of a few different aspects, primarily the floorplan and the guard rotations. 

Normally espionage is done by others, but our particular skills were needed for this job, since if we are spotted, they will change the plans, making the whole endeavor worthless.

The plans are located at the manor we are looking at through our spy glasses. The manor looks undefended, but the defense plan was leaked when someone else bribed a butler.

The change of guards is now, so we make our move. Faster than most would have realized, we make our way there. The walls stop neither of us as we make our way to a secluded window on the third floor.

Being slightly too small for us, the window doesn’t stop us, as partly melding into the shadows allows us passage. It is draining to do, but accounted for in our plan.

The washroom we arrive in marks the separation of our goals, with him heading to the office of a military officer, and me to the one belonging to the architect.

The glowing crystal placed on the walls are decent at fighting away the night, but hiding in imperfect shadows is only slightly more difficult. Most do not realize it, but if you can manipulate the shadows, you can also manipulate the light. Over my career I have learned that matching the existing shadows are more effective than altering them to be darker.

I have to cling to the ceiling on a couple occasions, but by the time I arrive at the door I need to unlock, the guards are not aware of my presence. Since this lock is enchanted with mana, including an alarm, I need to utilize my mana absorption device in conjunction with my shadows. The clever device was provided specifically for this job by the guild, the same is true for the device I then proceed to use to copy the plans. Careful to not leave any trace of my presence, I let the device re-enchant the lock on my way out. 

The way out provides little challenge, and I am left slightly disappointed. The device made the entrance to the office a little too easy, and the guards were not as alert as they should have been.

We are not set to reunite until we are all the way back at the guild when the morning comes, after we both have taken a long winding route to throw off any potential trackers, on the off chance they notice us after the fact.

Daytime jobs are usually boring, but necessary to maintain a cover. This time I am a wandering monk that is helping the martial drills of the local militia.

A few of the people in the group in front of me were present when I stole the blueprints, and now I am leading them in meditation and close quarters combat. Mastering the body and all that stuff.

I am not sharing the advanced techniques, both because they are not good enough and because those are my advantage over others. So we only go through the basics of body hardening and sense enhancing.

The captain who asked me to lead this exercise is really into it and absolutely loves the bullshit about inner peace. The only things that really matter are practice, focus and persistence. If you have those, you will go far, but you will only reach the top if you have true talent.

After the event, he invites me to the tavern with the rest of his men, but keeping true to my disguise, I decline the earthly pleasures and go on my way.

The general ruling the newly built castle seems to have pissed off some demons, of all people. Or maybe it is a prelude to war, though that matters not to me. I kinda have some sympathy for the demons, with most non demons treating them with hostility simply because they were born demons. I would never associate with them though, because, you know, they are demons. Not Xhoråp though. I have professional respect for them, having run into them on a few jobs.

The job this time is to end this general, and being covert is apparently optional. Basically the equivalent of a smash and grab for assassins.

We are a whole team this time with a broad skill set, ranging from killing with poison to killing with physical force to killing with explosion. None of us are bad at stealth, but I’m the specialist.

We have the floor plan which shows defenses, magical and otherwise, as well as the guard rotation. Most of the others are going to create a racket, while Me and the one that helped me steal the plans actually do the assassination.

Me and the shadow mage hang on the outside of the castle wall, just below two different portholes, and just as planned, the chaos unfolds on the other side of the castle.

Sneaking under chaos is different than under the darkness of night. To start with, it happens at a much higher pace, and we do not have to worry about tripping alarms, as they are already blearing.

We rush down the planned route, hiding from larger groups and ending the smaller ones in our way. Locked doors have their locks sliced open, by me if it is magical, by him otherwise.

After a couple of minutes, we arrived at the room where the general was supposed to be. Instead we find a guard captain struggling to put on his armor. A flick of an arm and a dagger flies at his throat and surprisingly he jumps such that it hits the chestplate.

Following that, a short fight ensues. My partner, not being as skilled in close quarters combat, throws daggers and sharp spells at the guard, while I occupy his entire focus with two sharp knives enchanted with my shadows. He manages to get a punch in, before being felled, but I shrug it off.

A moment later of wordless conversation, and we go off in separate directions to find the general. Him to search the upper floors, me for the lower. Improvising makes it more fun, but also more dangerous. No door stops me as I either unlock them or cut off their hinges. 

After going through half a dozen rooms, some of which now have corpses in them, I find a guard with nicer than normal armor. He fought back a bit, but he is soon pinned to the wall so that I can ask for directions to the general. I offer to spare his life in exchange for the information, and he agrees. There is a hidden room in the dungeon where he hides. 

I consider honoring the agreement for a moment, since he has not seen me, courtesy of my shadow, but end up ending him anyways.

I find the hidden room soon enough, and within it is a cowering man wearing a highly decorated formal robe. He is also missing an arm and wears a highly decorated eyepiece that emphasizes the large scar on his face. 

His strength seems to be on par with some of the weaker guards I trained as a monk, so the assassinations take but a moment, and that moment was courtesy of the pretty strong enchantment on it and not the man himself. I take his thumb as proof and crush the crystal we use as the retreat signal. If one of them breaks, they all break. 

The clock is now ticking and I have a couple of minutes to get out of the castle before the agents of chaos withdraw. 

Escaping is probably not the right word since nothing is really trying to keep me here, because most guards are now outside, trying to get the chaos under control. I do get to dispatch a few stragglers though. Soon enough I find a suitable porthole in the outer wall and squeeze through it.

I will call that a success, though I would have chosen a different approach had I been in charge. Glad I added the hazard fee for non stealth tasks with the guild.

As per agreement, I don’t stick around to wait for the other, and disappear into the night.

Kamba

Feedback is appreciated on these shorter stories.