Marin had a fairly eventful night. He spent most of the time cleaning Eisen’s house, going over the notes Travis had drawn up, and periodically checking on Gus to monitor his status. Eisen had stayed up late to continue analyzing Marin’s samples, but at some point he too hit the sack.

  It was finally morning, and the doctor’s house was in a state of cleanliness and order that it had not been in for quite sometime, according to Eisen, when he admired Marin’s work as he first woke up.

  “If you ever want to quit being a King and become my maid, I’ll definitely hire you,” Eisen joked.

  The work was well done, but it was time for Marin to prepare for the mission he was about to embark on. His biggest worry was not finding his necklace in the stockpile Travis all but guaranteed it would be in. If that were the case, Marin feared he would never see his item again.

  He even danced around the idea of trying to buy it at a premium price at the auction if it came down to it. Anything he could do.

  Eisen brought cooked food home from some local takeouts in Tarenfall, since he had all the knowledge in the world besides knowing how to cook. He had also bought extra for Gus, who was on the road to being completely recovered. Marin was happy to know that Eisen was smart enough not to risk Gus with some sort of mad-science cuisine he might attempt.

  Marin and Eisen had some brief discussions as the hour neared for Travis to arrive. The doctor was on the road to some conclusive answers about Marin’s current state, but had a few more tests to run before he was ready to confirm much of it.

  Eventually, the hour was at hand, and a knock sounded at Eisen’s door. Marin rushed over. He swung the door open, on new hinges that made not a sound.

  There was Travis. He had on attire not seen before. Instead of the leather jacket, jeans and cowboy boots, he wore slim black leathers that looked close to those of the Scarlet Eye, but had not the purple trim. Before Marin could comment on the fact, Travis lit up.

  “The door’s fixed!” He noticed. His head turned to gaze inside. His eyes opened wide, and stepped inside.

  “Damn! Who cleaned this place? Is this the same house I was in yesterday?” Travis scanned the living room, which used to be in complete disarray. It was now tidied up, and looking well off. Marin had organized bottles, dusted, cleaned trash that included carcasses of dead animals, wiped away stains and suspicious fluids, among a slew of other tasks.

  “I had some extra time on my hands,” Marin admitted.

  “Extra time?” Travis shook his head trying to comprehend. “Did you even sleep last night?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps? That doesn’t sound like a yes.”

  Marin was quick to change the subject.

  “What are you wearing?” Marin asked, eyeing Travis’s current getup.

  Travis looked down. He realized it was a surprise to Marin.

  “Oh, this. This is what I wear when I run one of these missions. I look a lot like a member of their org. Helps things go smoothly.”

  Marin nodded. “I see.” He stepped outside, not giving Travis another chance to have a tour of the newly cleaned Eisen residence. “Let’s embark now, I want to waste no time. You can’t imagine the anticipation I’ve had for today.”

  “Alright calm down, everything will be fine,” Travis explained as he stepped out to the porch with him. Before he closed the door he asked, “are you ready to go? Do you have everything you need?”

  Marin confirmed.

  Travis shut the door, and stepped down to the walkway. “Let’s be off, then.”

  The sun was at peak height in the sky when Travis and Marin hit the road to start the mission of recovering his necklace. Marin’s nerves were at a high that they had not been since he could remember. For Travis though, he thought nothing of it. This was a regular occurrence for him.

  The two had some distance to cover. Travis allocated two hours for them to reach the entrance of The Scarlet Eye’s headquarters in King’s Row. Under regular circumstances, it would take them just over an hour to get there.

  During the walk, both of them talked more.

  “How many times have you done this now?” Marin inquired.

  “More than I could tell you.” Travis had been extorting the Scarlet Eye for several years now, as he explained, and he carried out several missions a month, sometimes for himself, but most of the time to recover lost items from a client.

  “I understand that you stumbled upon me when I was in need. Is that how you find most of your customers? Or is there different ways?” Marin asked.

  Travis nodded. “It’s certainly a large percentage of my work, finding those who lost their possessions, but I also run several ads in community centers. I brand it as ‘Lost and Found’. I should still have a few fliers and posters in some of those buildings.”

  “It pays more than any regular job, I’d imagine,” Marin stated.

  “You’d be right.” Travis produced a cigarette, and sprouted a flame at the end of his finger to light it.

  Marin could tell based off of his tone, that Travis wasn’t entirely comfortable discussing his work. For some reason though, he felt the need to probe more.

  “How did you feel about your parents doing illegal work with the Scarlet Eye?” Marin continued asking.

  “It is what it is. I don’t blame them for taking the opportunity to get a higher foothold in this world. I’m really just upset that they were betrayed by the very organization they worked for. It wasn’t right,” he explained.

  “Do you know what they had done to earn their death?”

  “That’s enough, Marin. I’m not saying anything further. Let’s just get your item and be done with it.”

  Marin had struck a chord finally with Travis, but he felt as if it was for a different reason than the obvious. Travis’s tone about his work and family had been ominous, but at this point, the King was not able to feel him out any more than that.

  They walked in silence for a while. Travis continued to guide Marin the way they needed to go. The crowds were large, people walked in all directions, some selling, trading, talking, or moving items to new locations. Marin had gotten used to it all, finally. He must have spent quite some time in isolation if he had been as sensitive to large crowds as he had been earlier, he realized.

  Travis inhaled the last of his cigarette, and produced a new one to start on. He seemed nervous recently. Marin took note that he tended to smoke faster and back to back whenever this was the case.

  Marin decided to strike up a different conversation.

  “What made you decide to learn the fire element?” He asked.

  Travis turned to look at him as they walked. He thought for a moment.

  “Literally this.” He sprouted the same flame on his finger as he had for lighting every cigarette he had smoked in their time together.

  Marin was dumbfounded. “You became a fire elemental just to light your smokes?”

  Travis grinned with the paper-wrapped smoke in his mouth. He nodded.

  Marin looked away. He tried guessing if that was the truth or not. Then again, Gus was impressed over ice cubes in his drink. Maybe some people entered the elemental field just for a basic task at first.

  He shrugged it off.

  “We’re approaching the gate into King’s Row. Keep your head high, and arms to yourself. There’s more guards here than in any other district. Don’t do anything more than walk with me, and we’ll be okay.” Travis flicked his cigarette as they crossed into the new district from the Slums.

  It was an odd name for a district, seeing as Tarenfall was an independent city without a king or a kingdom for that matter. While Travis explained it was the section of the city which housed the barracks and city hall, Marin couldn’t help imagining that at one point, perhaps there was some royalty here. Many years ago, perhaps while he had been dead.

  “Not many come to King’s Row without a good reason. So if we’re asked, I’m going to say we have an appointment with Magistrate Hayes,” Travis explained.

  “Magistrate Hayes?” Marin repeated.

  “The magistrates live in the city hall. It will give us our reason for heading all the way back there.”

  “And do you know this Hayes?”

  Travis smiled. “He’s known to be the most secretive magistrate out of the group. No one will risk questioning what I say, for worry of pissing him off.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ve never met a guard to inquire further than that.”

  Guards stood stationed at every corner. Fancy nobles in rich clothing strolled the streets. A duo were having a conversation about money and economics, something akin to what Harrel and Helva would discuss back at his kingdom. They walked by a few other guards off duty, who strolled by leisurely without their helmets on. Travis gave them a nod.

  “They see me here a lot. I think most of them know me at this point,” Travis slyly stated to Marin.

  The district was even more orderly than Taren Heights – and a lot better looking. Most of the buildings were made of stone brick, and were kept in good condition, a massive contrast to the slums before it.

  As they passed a large open square, Marin peered off in the distance to see new recruits being trained, receiving their orders from a superior officer. Travis dared not to look in the same direction.

  Travis had them turn several times, weaving in between the facilities of the functional district, avoiding too many sights and encounters. Eventually they made it to a back street behind a large fortress.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “We’re getting close. Down a little further on this road is a – damn. There’s a guard coming. There’s never guards back here usually,” Travis muttered. “Keep walking.”

  Marin did his best to look unassuming, as he had been this entire walk so far. Travis had planned to stop half way down this road, but now had to keep walking, and acting as if he was off to somewhere else. When they got close to the guard, he had hoped they would silently pass each other, but that was not the case.

  “Oi, what are you two doing back here?” The guard asked as he got close.

  “On our way to see Magistrate Hayes. He’s expecting us,” Travis cooly stated.

  “Town Hall’s down South Street. What are you two doing behind Fort Emerald?” He probed, looking at Travis with a suspicious eye.

  Travis sighed. He was not liking how things were unfolding.

  In a quick, improvising attempt, he roughly grabbed Marin’s arm, who was still shrouded in beggar’s clothes. His undead body jolted at the sudden grasp, and for a moment, Marin overcame an instinctive thought to defend himself with a chilly ability.

  “This homeless man has been found wandering back here looking for scraps, and the Magistrate has had enough of it! I have finally apprehended him, and Hayes has demanded that I present this poor beggar to him. If I were you, I’d stay away. I don’t know how dangerous he could be!”

  It was a stretch, but maybe it would work.

  Marin had not a word to say, and was wise enough to not impede Travis’s attempt to evade trouble.

  The guard pondered for a moment.

  “Well, if that’s the case, I will see to it that he gets delivered safely. I will be escorting you,” he stated in a commanding tone.

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” Travis tried.

  The guard unsheathed his sword.

  “You two are coming with me!” He declared.

  “Ice him,” Travis quietly said to Marin.

  Marin didn’t need to hear the order twice. Within a second, his hand extended, a cool blue mist erupted. The guard who was in a hostile stance instantly froze over, his entire body head to toe covered in thick, clear ice.

  “Come on, hurry!” Travis yelled. He ran forward to a pothole on the ground. He looked around to see if anyone else was witnessing the events, and as he expected, no one else was. Travis flipped the pothole over to the side, revealing a hole that led to the city’s sewers.

  “We’re going down there?” Marin asked.

  “We need to hide this guard. I’m thinking we push him down there.”

  Marin was a little shocked. He looked down the hole, which from the sun now shining in, was dimly lighting the mossy bricks below. Was this the only choice they had? He stood there still for a moment, trying to think of something.

  “Marin, we don’t have a better option. Unless you can cloak him somehow, or… I don’t know. What else are wizards capable of?” Travis tried.

  Marin sighed. “Fine.”

  The two of them pushed the frozen guard into the hole. When the pillar of ice was directly over the pot hole, it fell in, landing sideways on the ground of the sewer tunnel.

  “C’mon, quick, quick. Before someone sees.” Travis gestured Marin to follow down in a rapid manner. Marin sat on the ground with his legs hanging into the hole, and slumped in. Travis followed suit, and on his way down, grabbed the metal cover of the hole, and slid it over, hiding the fact that anyone had traveled down there.

  When Travis covered the hole, all the light from the sky was lost, and the sewer became pitch black.

  That didn’t last for more than a moment, however. Travis produced a floating flame in his palm, that shown brightly enough to illuminate all of their surroundings.

  The flame reflected itself in the mirror-like ice that held the unfortunate guard hostage.

  “How long will he be frozen?” Travis asked.

  “What would be a good amount of time?” Marin responded, feeling deep sorrow for the man who was just trying to do his job honestly. He stared down at him.

  “I’m thinking six hours.”

  Marin wiggled his fingers, and the ice crackled as its composition changed. The experienced wizard was able to adjust the length of time his ice would take to melt – it was no easy task for any elemental, but for Marin, it didn’t take him more than a thought.

  “There we go,” he stated to himself, but loud enough for Travis to hear.

  “That’s not going to kill him, is it? Being in ice that long?” Travis asked.

  “I’ve altered its properties so it won’t. But he will be quite cold once it melts enough for him to move around,” Marin explained.

  The duo gathered their bearings after the quick events that had just unfolded, and Travis began guiding Marin down the sewer path. In the tunnel they were in, waste water flowed by down the center to some exit point, and the two of them walked on either side of that.

  Travis’s flame illuminated the sewer quite well. On the walls were torch holders that would once light this tunnel a long time ago, but no one came down here regularly enough to have them stationed any more.

  “We can relax a bit now,” Travis breathed. “We’re going to be the only ones down here for a while.”

  “Are you aware that the guard will defrost and report who you are and what you look like?” Marin bluntly pointed out.

  “Don’t remind me,” he responded in a dreaded tone.

  “Yet you didn’t ask me to kill him. On the contrary, you seemed quite concerned about his well being,” Marin added.

  “Yeah? What’s your point?” Travis asked slightly annoyed.

  “You’re not such a bad person, I don’t think.”

  Travis shook his head. “Drop it.”

  Time passed as they navigated the sewers under King’s Row. Despite the maze-like layout of the underground, Travis knew every turn they had to take. Every once in a while, a rat scurried by their feet, or a skeleton was found lying on the cracked brick flooring. It was the remains of some poor soul who dared cross the establishment – whether that was the Scarlet Eye or some other shady order. Bodies were regularly discarded down in these abandoned rat ways, according to Travis.

  After walking for a while longer, Travis suddenly halted. He held his arm out to stop Marin from advancing further.

  “Look down at that,” Travis instructed.

  If he hadn’t stopped him, Marin would’ve completely missed what his more perceptive partner had noticed – an almost invisible trip wire about three feet from where they stood.

  “I’ve never seen them set up traps this far ahead,” Travis said to himself.

  Travis took a step closer to analyze the wire. “Marin, don’t move an inch closer. Just wait a sec.”

  Marin watched as he stepped over the wire, and began shuffling his feet on the stone bricks below him. He crouched down and looked above. After that, he took another step, and slid his feet on the bricks ahead of him. Halfway through feeling them out, a single brick pressed in.

  When that happened, a large metal rod shot forward with a spike at the end of it. If Travis had been standing some few inches closer, it would have grazed him.

  “Wow, they’re getting good,” Travis stated while grabbing the rod, and yanking it from its base in the wall.

  “Marin, would you step back a few feet?”

  He obeyed, and walked backwards a bit.

  Travis took the impaling rod he held, and tripped the wire that he had stepped over previously with it.

  Nothing happened, even after several seconds.

  “Yup, that was a dummy trap. That trip wire did nothing, it was the brick pressure plate ahead that would’ve killed ya,” Travis explained.

  Damn, Marin thought. This order was no joke, and Marin lacked all of the knowledge Travis had to counter all of their set ups. He would have really gotten his body into a terrible predicament if he had tried pursing them himself.

  “You see,” Travis continued, “they counted on you noticing that tripwire, avoiding it, and letting your guard down thinking you had outsmarted their set up. Only to meet your demise a few seconds later.”

  Travis tossed the rod down to the ground aside to him. “It’s time for me to be even more perceptive than I’ve been before, seeing as we’re now in their territory.”

  He gestured Marin to keep moving. As they started to walk again, Travis’s attitude had changed, he had become far more quiet and serious as they neared the end of their journey to the Scarlet Eye’s headquarters.

  Marin was sure to keep his guard up too. He tried his best keeping his eyes peeled in an effort to assist Travis with finding any traps laid out, but he feared his untrained eyes would miss even some of the most obvious set ups.

  Sure enough, Travis called out all of them far before Marin could. He was fascinated as he watched Travis disarm several different types of traps, all of which he freely explained as he did so. Marin was shocked by some of the designs and cleverness these rogues possessed. Travis informed him though, that these were from blueprints refined and handed down through many generations, and mastery of these traps hadn’t been developed overnight.

  Travis explained that while the Scarlet Eye wasn’t a very old organization, they had been given knowledge and resources from higher up roguish factions, which they would continue to pay back to in the form of money that they earned.

  “You know so much about the Scarlet Eye,” Marin pointed out.

  “I would hope so, seeing as my parents were involved with them, and me doing what I do,” he responded while popping several springs out of a clamping trap.

  They continued onward. Eventually, the met their first torch that was burning in a holder on the wall. It was a sign that they had made it close to their entrance. Travis extinguished his own flame that had granted them sight this whole time in exchange for the more dimly lit alternative.

  Since the rogues were in this area enough to warrant a permanent lighting fixture, the two of them didn’t need to be spotted from far away with a large bright light of their own.

  “Listen, Marin,” Travis started as he realized they were about to greet the entrance of the Scarlet Eye’s home. “There’s a very real chance one of us could get killed in this mission. It’s a low chance, but one regardless. I just want to offer you one last choice to sit this out and let me handle it. I’m used to doing this alone.”

  “Out of the question. And, I will be sure that harm doesn’t come to us. You have my guarantee,” Marin responded, wondering why Travis was just now telling him this.

  “Don’t guarantee things that are out of your control,” Travis warned.

  That sounded a bit ominous, but Marin thought not much past that. Instead, Marin began to explain yet again that there were two very specific rogues that had earned their death sentence, and he would not stop until he saw it through.

  “Okay. This is your choice, then. I hope you find who you’re looking for.”

  The two crept forward, slowly advancing. Behind every corner was another lit torch that had been burning for hours now. Travis was expecting at any moment to have an encounter with a rogue who was patrolling the sewers they walked in.

  Meanwhile, Marin began wondering why Travis sounded so against him joining the infiltration all of a sudden. He even had tried scaring him with the chance of death. Was it that Travis had begun to care about Marin, and was against the king risking his life for some revenge? Or was it due to some other reason that he had yet to figure out.

  The way he said that things would be out of his control sounded threatening as well. Marin even toyed with the idea that maybe Travis was wise of a plan that was going to get Marin killed, almost as if the Scarlet Eye knew he was coming, and Travis gave him a final offer to be free of it.

  These thoughts troubled the ice wizard, but Marin reminded himself that these were petty rogues compared to the power he wielded. Even the woman who was a senior member of the organization was no match for him, despite all her jumping and evading tactics.

  Marin would see this done. There was no plan that was good enough to see his demise. He was stronger than anyone else here. Even if they managed to stab him, he was already dead. What more could they do?

  The robed King balled his hands into fists, flexing them.

  They would all see ice.

  They would know an ice age never seen before, moves of an elemental they wished they hadn’t messed with. It would only be some time now before it began.

  “I wouldn’t worry about any danger, Travis,” Marin finally said. “If they had any idea what was coming – even you – you would all stay out of my way.”