Riki sat up in bed. She has had trouble sleeping since the whole soul incident. Not because of any issue, but from anticipation. She had finished her reconnaissance and it was finally time to act.

Riki moved the drapes to the side as stood up, then looked over at Dez. He was still out cold with a frown on his face, which made Riki chuckle. Dez’s face had been absolutely priceless when they entered the room to find the frilly bed still there.

Riki didn’t have strong feelings for the bed one way or another, but it was starting to grow on her just because of how much Dez seemed to loathe it. It would likely die by fire soon, but it was amusing well it lasted. Maybe she should get drapes for the new bed?

Riki moved over to the wardrobe and started to get dressed. She put on her black leather armor followed by metal bracers, pauldrons, and a chest guard that covered her front. The metal was also black and was forged by Barco.

Dez and Barco were apparently acquaintances of some sort. How Dez had managed to forge a connection with the Empire's best blacksmith was still a mystery to her. But she wasn’t above using the connection to get top-quality gear for cheap. Equipment was a hunter's live blood after all.

Riki finished gearing up and walked outside. It was still early in the morning, with an hour and a half left before sunrise. The large moon wasn’t out tonight but the fragments of the broken moon still provided good visibility.

In truth, both she and Dez had just laid down to sleep, but with her Constitution sleep was more of an indulgence than a necessity. Though Dez was insistent on getting his 8 hours when he could.

Riki activated a lesser version of Shadow Cloak and began walking down the street.

***

Riki slowly removed a grate from the top of the building. This led to an air vent shaft which was the only secret way to enter the structure since it had no windows. There was only one door in and out of the premises and Riki didn’t want to test the enchantments there. She was already going to have to deal with several detection enchantments in the air vents as it was, but nothing she could handle.

Riki slowly and carefully worked her way through the air vent before finding the entrance to the main hall. Here she stopped and reached out to the shadows. She could feel 12 people, this included the Overseer who was already in his office and the old lady that manned the front desk of the shop.

Structures like this usually utilized obfuscation arrays that would block magic detection skills like Riki’s shadow scene. But this compound was a secret base and therefore didn’t have that luxury. It chose to go with the hide in plane sight approach.

Knowing that the cost was clear, Riki slipped into the hallway and put the grate black into place, more out of habit than anything else. She walked to the door of the Overseer’s room and stopped.

She took a moment to calm herself. This is where things were going to change, and she didn’t know if she was more nervous or excited about it.

“Come in.” Came the Overseer’s voice from beyond the door.

Riki entered the room and closed the door behind her. Despite the early hours the Overseer was looking down and writing on some parchment at his desk. The moment Riki entered the room she could feel the difference.

The oppressive feeling that the Overseer had always given off was not there. What hold he had over her was gone.

“It’s done,” Riki said plainly as she quietly locked the door.

“I’m guessing you’re referring to the Desmond contact,” the Overseer said as he looked up from his desk. “Since the city isn’t in chaos.”

“Of course,” Riki said as she looked at the Overseer in a new light. Had he always been this weak? Was it really just the soul brand that gave him power? It all seemed so flimsy.

She knew the Overseer was a dark since the Black Hand would never give power and authority to an awakened. At least not one within the Empire, so far from their power base. But even still she had thought the Overseer was strong somehow.

“Good job,” the Overseer continued. “Now you just have to wait for Ace to contact you and we can move on with the second contract. I have developed a plan for getting to Queen Morg-”

His words were cut off as Riki quickly moved forward and smashed his small pair of glasses into his face with her fist. The Overseer was sent tumbling backward with his chair. He hit a bookshelf behind the desk and collapsed to the ground.

“What the, how can you,” the Overseer mumbled as Riki walked around the desk. Only now did he seem to notice that things were off.

The Overseer slowly stood up on unstable feet. “I order you to kneel!”

Riki felt nothing. Slowly a smile came to her face, she was free!

This smile had the opposite effect on the Overseer as a look of absolute horror crossed his own face. Then a piercing pain hit him in the gut as he was smashed back against the bookshelf once again, but much harder this time. He collapsed onto the floor unable to stand and only vaguely aware that he had been hit again.

Riki took her time and started looking through the document laid out on the desk.

“I have been waiting a long time for this,” Riki said, not bothering to even glance at the Overseer on the floor. “How the tables have turned.” The documents on the desk didn’t seem to be important.

“How did you get rid of it?” the Overseer asked between painful breaths of air. “No, that doesn't matter. They will come for you. You haven’t thought this through. You can still make-”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Riki said slowly. “That’s all you ever do.” Riki moved over and kicked the Overseer in the jaw, hard. Sending him smashing against the bookshelf once again. “There, now there is no more talking.” She then turned her attention to looking through the bookshelves as the Overseer lay groaning on the floor with a broken jaw.

Riki finally got the reaction she was looking for. She had been observing the Overseer closely with her shadow sense while looking through the bookshelves. He had stopped groaning and had slowly worked his way over to a small cabinet in the corner of the room.

Just as he was reaching out to open it Riki appeared beside him. She brought her foot down and smashed his outstretched hand into the floor. She could feel the bones break in his hand on impact. The Overseer screamed out as his hand was crushed.

“You know, I have been looking for this,” Riki said as she inspected the cabinet. The cabinet was designed to look normal, but upon closer inspection, Riki could feel several different enchantments on it. This must be where the important documents were kept. She could get the Overseer to open it, but there was a chance he could activate some type of self-destruct in the process.

A risk she simply didn’t have to take. It would require some time, but she could get the cabinet open herself. This did, however, make the Overseer useless now. Riki glanced over to the man holding his broken hand on the floor. He seemed to have understood the look.

“Please, I can help you,” the Overseer begged and mumbled through his broken jaw. “I can still control the other assets. I can call off Ace, or even have her turn sides to help you.”

He made a good point, but Riki knew better than to trust the man. As soon as Ace was here he would feel like he was back in control again. He was a liability now, and Riki didn’t need much of an excuse to kill him.

Riki pulled out [Blood Letter] as she approached the Overseer, but then after a moment, she put the knife away, much to the Overseer's relief.

The act somehow felt dirty, and she didn’t want his blood on her good knife. So she pulled out her beast-skinning knife instead. Now, this would do her nicely.

***

Riki was crunched down examining the cabinet. She slowly ran her mana through an enchantment, prodding it for weaknesses. This was the final and most difficult of the enchantments on the small cabinet.

After a few moments, there was a small sizzling sound as the enchantment faded, it was done. Riki opened the small unassuming cabinet.

Inside the drawer, she found bank notes, several artifacts, a beast core, and most importantly documents. She wanted to go through them right away, but this was neither the time nor the place. Riki quickly moved all the contents of the drawer into her Shadow Storage.

Riki stood up and looked back to the desk’s chair. The chair was sitting upright behind the desk with the mutilated corpse of the Overseer still tied to it. There was nothing left for her to gain here, so it was time to finish things up.

Riki retrieved her skinning knife that was still lodged in the overseer's chest, and after cleaning it she returned it to her belt. She was happy that this room was so isolated as no one a disturbed her for the past few hours.

Riki reached out to the shadows again this time only finding 11 other people. She would leave the receptionist as she didn’t want to test the enchantments guarding the main entranceway, but the other 10 would have to go.

***

Riki entered a rowdy tavern, one of the few that severed the strong liquor needed for a high-tiered hunter to get drunk. Maybe it was her time spent as a hunter in the Lodge but she found places like this helped her think.

It would seem that news of the emergency request had spread as it was literally the only thing she could hear people talking about, or yelling about in most cases.

Riki found a deserted table in the corner and sat down. She got the stack of documents out of storage and set them on the table in front of her. For some reason, it was only now that she felt truly nervous. This was supposed to hold answers, but what if it didn’t?

“Hey beautiful, can I get you a drink?” came a drunken voice.

Riki was surprised for a moment as she looked up at the man. Then she noticed the bronze plate around the hunter's neck and it all made sense. He was new.

This was not the Lodge out in the Expanse where she knew most hunters personally and the rest through reputation. Here there were idiots, and it had clearly been a while since she had made an example out of one of them. But today she was not in the mood.

Riki ignored the man and looked back to the documents on the table.

“Hey, I was asking-” the man started to say.

Riki looked up in irritation and let some of her mana leak out. The drunk hunter collapsed backward onto his ass, suddenly much more sober than before. He quickly backed away which caused many of the surrounding patrons of the tavern to laugh and jeer at him.

Riki returned her attention to the document in her hand. The interruption had calmed her somewhat as she began to read through it.

Suddenly a cold shiver ran up her spine as she processed what the document meant. She quickly put the documents back into storage and ran out of the tavern with a new purpose, [Blood Letter] already in her hand.