(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 48

It felt like something old, something known. Something that had happened before. It felt... familiar. That was not a good thing.
The late afternoon sun still shone through the treetops, but the forest outside the giant wall was so dense it barely even mattered. The sky was visible. The ground nearly wasn't.
Back inside the wall, the horse beast had been very confused at being let loose, but tying it up seemed utterly cruel. Nobody would be coming for it. There was no reason to leave an innocent steed to die, even if it was bred and trained by cruel people. Or maybe they weren't, there was really no way of saying. The Skillwalker and Donlarn had seemed cruel and hostile at first, too, and honestly still seemed more than a little shady. In the end, it was not about taking sides in a battle between two unknowns. All it was was an old man and his friends pointing in the direction of another great wall, one that had a far more thriving society inside it. Hopefully.
If Aldric had read the interrogation right, these huge walls were a defense mechanism in more than the immediate sense. An old war, centuries before this, had nearly wrecked everything. To constrain their world from repeating that kind of war, surviving rulers had granted the construction of a hundred walls. Inside a wall, a ruler reigned absolute. Outside the wall, he ruled over nothing. Should one try to expand beyond his wall, the rest would fall on him like a plague of locusts and rip him apart. This secured a semblance of peace. And inside their walls, some thrived, while others withered. It had been bad luck that the first wall had been a withered one. If the Skillwalker spoke the truth, and if nothing there had changed, the next wall would not be guarding a dead city.
But the forest was the first challenge. The rulers had their walls, true, but there was plenty of smaller riffraff between those walls, in places like this forest. They never grew all that powerful, or nearby wall rulers would snuff them out. But they were dangerous enough for a lone woman in the forest come nightfall. Every noise in the foliage sounded like a threat, every silhouette passing between the trees a potential attacker. None of it felt very safe.
North-east. The sun over your left shoulder. That was the bulk of the old man's instructions. It was very little, although at least, it was easy to follow! He had also said something about carrying the wood piece, but that had been a bit more obscure. The wooden pieces he had handed over, the beggar tokens carrying a hidden message, were simply clacking along on their rough strings by the belt. He had made a big point about the wooden piece knowing the city, but the details had been fuzzy. Perhaps a key of some sort, or simply a strange way to explain that the wooden pieces would attract the right people who knew it. Or the wrong. It never seemed like a warning, but this place clearly was not what it seemed all the time!
If anything, the old nutcase could at least have provided some form of light. A lantern, perhaps, or some magical stone that glowed in the dark. He hadn't. He had been adamant that the wall was easy to find, and that the wooden pieces would help with the rest. The dark, he said, would not be a problem. It was starting to look like trusting him on that had been a grave mistake. Emphasis on grave.
And like that, the sun finally got low enough to cover the ground entirely in shadow! Up above, the trees up high were still bathing in the warm glow of an evening sun, but none of it reached the ground any longer. Dense growth, tall trees casting long shadows, it all conspired to leave everything below in darkness. And sounds were beginning to creep out of the woods already.
The ground itself was tricky in the dark, crawing vines and roots catching a foot easily. This had been a horrible idea from the start, the wall had been safe enough far from the battle, safe enough for spending a single night and gaining more daylight to reach another wall. This was suicide.
Something growled. Something big, something hungry. Vague outlines in the dark were nothing to go by, it could be any one of them. Yelling proved useless quite quickly, a lone voice doing next to nothing in the massive woods. A very nasty ending to a trip, and this close to answers. Words like futility came to mind.
The wooden pieces were a little smaller than a palm. They felt soft, spongy, perhaps from having been gathering dust and humidity for longer than they were intended for. But they held together, even when smacked together. And the loud clack echoed quite effectively amongst the trees. It seemed like agood idea, a good scare tactic to keep lurking predators at bay. But the reason it worked came as a surprise!
It came on a bit slowly. The loud clack caused commotion with the wildlife, but there was nothing running that sounded big enough to have made that growl. The second clack was even louder, but by then, the weird effects started showing. Tiny blue vapors in the woods, dancing amongst the trees like giant fireflies. The moist air made them light up like burning fogs, droplets of early dew catching their light and reflecting it in every direction possible. They danced without moving, their light flailing softly like vaguely defined limbs. And the moment the wooden pieces were hung back to dangle, the blue glow disappeared.
"Carry the wooden pieces..."
Something had gone wrong in translation. This should have been easy for the old man to explain clearly.
"They know the city walls..."
Holding the wooden tokens, even just one of them, made the glow return, and faster this time! They were all around, floating amongst the trees, hanging still in the air. But some were glowing more than others. And as the eyes adjusted to the sharp contrast between black forest and blue lights, that difference became a pattern. A single line of sharper defined lights. A guide.
With the lights as a line literally drawn in the air, lighting the nearby forest well enough to see one's own feet, at the very least, the trek through the forest was completely different. An hour passed, maybe a little more, and the blue glow intensified until it lit up a wall like a mystical fire.
And this wall was cleared, a wide swath around it completely cut down, leaving only grass for some animals to apparently graze from, and bare dirt. Clear of brush, the wall could be seen all the way up. It was tall, perhaps taller than the one around the dead city. And even in the dark, lit only by small torches up high, guards could be seen walking near the top.
By the base of the wall, little clusters of tentswere set up. They looked like camps, the sort one might find in the desert or on the plains, nomadic people or a travelling party needing a place to rest and perhaps let animals graze. A camp like that, leaning against a wall, looked out of place. But a little more strangely, the few people that were awake, wandering the camp with small lanterns, paid no attention to the blue glow. There were bigger lanterns on poles, much like streetlights, and the blue glow was no longer needed, so the wooden tokens were put back on their strings. But that nobody reacted still seemed a bit odd.
Then again, it seemed nobody reacted to a stranger suddenly appearing, either, which made walking along the fairly well lit path a lot easier, and gave a feeling of safety. Guards, walking single here and there so casually it made them almost glow with an aura of confidence and security, took no notice when passed by in the coolevening air, many of them either looking utterly bored or spending their time talking to others in the camp. Their language was as nonsensical as that of Donlarn and the Skillwalker, but the tones sounded chummy and polite.
"Do you understand me?"
It was a shot in the literal dark, but not testing the guard's language seemed like a dumb idea. He just stared, though, confusion in his eyes. Showing him one of the wooden pieces changed that. He touched the piece, his eyes looking over the old jumpsuit. A beggar's token, and of course he looked to see if a beggar was carrying it. He seemed to think so, likely due to the state of the jumpsuit. Whatever his motives, he said a few incomprehensible words and pointed off in the distance, adding a point at the lit path and a few more words that made no sense. It seemed needlessly impolite to let him know that. The message seemed clear enough.
What he had pointed to turned out to be another tent, larger and in slightly worse condition than many of the rest. Old people and dirty children could be seen sleeping on piles of old cloth, wearing patched and stained clothes themselves. Beggar's token. Beggar's tent. It made sense. And yet, it felt wonderful to simply sit down on an empty pile of old cloth and feel every leg muscle finally relax.
The joy was shortlived, though. Barely a minute after sitting down, a woman, young but with old eyes, came by with a very uncertain look on her face.
"Itasin botayme?" she asked, it only being clearly a question from the intonation and the expression she wore. With no chance of answering, the best option seemed to show her one of the beggar's tokens. Her eyes immediately became calmer, looking perhaps even a bit tired, as she took the token. As she walked away, a dreadful thought occurred! Every muscle that had finally begun relaxing felt like stone from standing up suddenly, but as she disappeared into the large tent and the smaller ones around it, the thought of having lost part of a secret message trumped the pain!
The large tent was an obstacle course of sleeping people clutching old blankets to keep warm in the cool night air. Here and there, a small group or perhaps family, including children, were huddled together for added warmth. The tent had equate protection against the gentle winds that were often enough to turn a warm bed cold, but the air came in, everyone effectively sleeping near a draft. It was painful to see, many of them causing images to dance by of the work The Embassy did. The lost, the broken, the abandoned. They were everywhere, and in every age.
The woman was in a smaller tent, one connected to the large tent by a short cloth corridor. She was talking to a tall man with broad shoulders and a myriad of fine scars across every patch of skin exposed. He looked old, his short hair nearly white, but there was nothing feeble or sorry about him, quite the opposite! And the glare he sent went straight through skin and bone.
"Eolu," he grumbled out loud, holding up a single finger in a manner that looked very foreboding when coming from him. It apparently meant stop, because stopping on the spot made him return his eyes to the woman. She, on the other hand, spoke a few hasty words as she looked over, and it was impossible to not see that something was going on. The man turned again, his eyes this time piercing, looking like some strange, upright animal on the verge of attacking. Sounds began to come from everywhere, incoherent mumbles and shrieks, climbing, climbing every second, drilling themselves through skullbone and brain matter, rising in a crescendo of grey noise!
"Who are you?"
The voice seemed to come a little from him, a little from everywhere, all at the same time, like someone speaking through a long tunnel. His eyes were calm, but still piercing. They appeared to be a brilliant green.
"Marie. I'm... a traveler."
The man nodded, hesitantly, as if to say that it sounded like a plausible claim, but nothing else.
"You are different. From the others," he said, or the voice said, sounding more like a question than information. He was speaking, that much was clear. His lips moved. But they did not match the words. Translation, just like the Skillwalker.
"I come from very far... wait, what others?"
For a moment, he was silent, the piercing eyes still looking, studying. Then he waved the woman away with a light gesture of his hand, almost dainty. She left with no protest, although she did deliver one final, very skeptical glare before disappearing back into the larger tent.
"Yalent sent a few before you, carrying much the same message," the man said, the lips still not matching up, and the faint sound of his real words slipping through as he stepped closer. It sounded like a badly dubbed foreign film. It was distracting, but the translated words could still be heard over it.
"Yalent?"
The man hesitated, seeming to doubt that there was anything to question about that name. "Is Yalent an old man, one who uses skill?"
Whoever this person was, he clearly disliked the mention of skill. It was something entirely different in their language, little or no chance that anyone would overhear and understand, but something instinctively made him uncomfortable.
"Yalent knows we cannot come to rescue him," the man continued, blatantly ignoring his discomfort about the word. "He gambled and lost. We have no..."
He stopped in the middle of the sentence, entirely of his own will. His eyes were shifting from piercing to an uncertain gaze, as if a question had gotten stuck in his brain and now tampered with his speech.
"You are not one of his," he simply said. His gaze became more and more creepy, once more piercing but this time in an almost threatening manner. "You are not one of ours."
It started as a slight blur, a tremor at the edge of sight. It quickly escalated, however, as the world seemed to twist itself like a painting being wrung and shaken. And then, like leaves in the wind, everything blew away. Everything except him. There was nothing but an empty darkness and him, his piercing stare illuminated by some invisible lightsource.
"Who are you?" he asked, in a voice that was far too calm for the thing that had just happened. "What are you?"
Answering was impossible. He had brought that on himself. It was impossible to keep the brain from grappling with the suddenly, allencompassing darkness. And even if it had not been, his questions made no sense.
"Are we in my head? Please don't tell me we're in my head, 'cause, you know, very empty in here..."
In the absence of anything else to compare him to, he seemed like a giant, monstrous, his form filling every corner of this empty void, the mind failing to acknowledge anything else. As he stepped forward, he only loomed larger over it all. Over the nothing.
"No, girl," he said in a booming voice, as if the empty universe itself had started speaking, "this is my domain. Your mind belongs to me in here," he explained, dramatically waving his hand to point at all the nothing. "I control this. You cannot escape."
For some reason, taking a step back did nothing at all. He was no farther away, and yet he seemed to know about the vain attempt.
"No escape, girl. Now tell me, who and what are you? Why would Yalent send you and not a trained messenger? Tell m..."
A glimpse of brownish green, colors smeared across the emptiness, interrupted him. Blurry shapes began appearing, twisted versions of the world he had made vanish.
"Uhm, I think your domain is broken."
He didn't answer, only  sending an angry glare. But this time, there was something behind the anger in his eyes. Fear. Confusion and fear.
"What are you doing? What skill is this?" he asked, his eyes squinting in a vain attempt at regaining the threatening quality they lost the second he lost control of whatever his domain was. His anger clearly boiling over, he reached out his hand, the fingers appearing to grow twice their length as they came closer. The feeling of them wrapping around the throat was disgusting, unnatural. But it only lasted a split second. They had barely even touched skin before the dark void cracked and blew away like sand in a storm.
The small tent was almost back, flickering into the dark. Between sheets, sheltering those inside from the outside chill, distant trees could be seen. In another direction, the mighty wall.
"What did you do?" he hissed. It was hard to keep a sinister face, the entire situation being as baffling as it was. But the tables had turned. Whatever the reason, there was nothing to do but seize the moment.
"Your trick is falling apart. Tell me what I want to know or it won't be the only thing falling apart!"
It was a risky bluff, dependent entirely on whatever was happening to not suddenly end on its own! This man was clearly taken aback by it, but that was no guarantee that he would continue to be confused. For the time being, luckily, he was.
"What?! How dare you make demands? Who are you? Why did Yalent send you instead of a messenger?!"
His voice was breaking. He was breaking.
"That's my question. Why did he send me to you? Why not a messenger? Who did he send before me?"
The questions came lightning fast. It threw him off, kept him from regaining his wits. Bu tmost of all, whatever was happening might suddenly stop. Or it might go through to its logical end, which could be anything.
The ma just gave a glare of resentment. His powers had been questioned. He was clearly not a fan of that.
"He's an old fool," he finally snarled. "We fight for our lives here and he runs away and hides with his flunkies. And then he sends messengers for us to pull him out of the fire when things go wrong.""
"Why me? What messengers?"
"His people. They come back, we take them back in, keep them safe, more than he ever did."
"Fine, whatever. Why me? Why send a nobody he doesn't know?"
There was no answer to that.  The man fell quiet, looking nauseus, perhaps even constipated, with no answer to offer.
"Why me?!"
"I don't know," he hissed, looking on the verge of throwing up, "but this might be why." He gestured at the void he had made, the void that was quickly falling apart around him.
"I... destroy magic? I destroy the skill?"
Something changed in his eyes, something angry and threatened, but before he could answer, the void collapsed completely. The tent was back entirely, sounds flooding in of night guards passing, beggars sleeping, and nature waiting just paces away in the forest.
"How?!" he bellowed angrily. "How did you do that?!"
He was not quite shouting, but his voice was loud. It seemed like someone should come running, but nobody did. Leaving no time for answers, he spoke a few words and did something with his hand. A glow appeared, coming from inside the jumpsuit, and it was followed by a painful heat. The strange string thing, from the fallen horseman! As the man fell to his knees, dry heaving, the thing sputtered and sizzled. Even pulling it out and throwing it on the ground was painful. For a brief moment, tiny colored dots appeared, single atoms ripping themselves out of time, going back. But it never escalated beyond that. Those atoms would be joined when this trip of madness ended.
"Why do you... carry counterskill?" asked the man as he stumbled to his feet again. There was no good answer. The illusion of power was broken.
"Who are you?" he asked again as he limped forward. His eyes burned with anger, or even hatred, and his body was softly coiled, like a wounded predator looking for a chance to strike.
Then, he reached out. The second his fingers wrapped themselves around the collar of the jumpsuit, he cried out in pain, pulling back and staring in disbelief at them. Before his eyes, wounds began to open across the palms of his hands, and like flowing blood, their red lines in his skin began to run down the length of his forearms. He screamed, buckled over in pain on the ground, blood beginning to flow from the arms.
Somebody would come. Somebody would be there very soon.

The gate through the towering wall was not that far from the beggar tent. In the commotion from the man's sudden screams in the night, nobody paid attention to a single person walking to it, but the gate itself was heavily guarded. The massive door itself was closed shut, with heavy bolts that were obviously just there to declare that it was not opening. There was, after all, no point in bolting any door from the outside, when keeping people out.
By the edge of the huge door, however, a number of guards were positioned at a much smaller door, one actually set inside the large one. It took a bit of watching to be sure, with one eye still on the direction in which the tall, bleeding man's beggar tent stood, but it soon became clear that the small door still let people in and out. It was less clear who could pass.
"Eulo," said the guard. Stop. The string of words that followed were far more difficult to grasp. When he finally stopped, the only thing that came to mind was to show him the wooden tokens that still dangled on their strings, in the hopes that they served some kind of permission. From his frown and how neither guard moved aside, they sadly didn't serve that function, though. It was only when the guard was shown a few of the copper pieces that Donlarn had been kind enough to donate that the guards stepped aside. They took none of them, but it appeared that having some money was a prerequisite for entering that particular wall.
Behind the door, that was confirmed quite massively! Even with the night sky black as tar, the street ahead was flooded in light. The flames of hundreds, perhaps thousands of torches danced in the dark, chasing it away. Storefronts were open and active, drawing a crowd more often than not. But what was most overwhelming was how close this shopping street started to the wall. Only a minute's walk was left between the wall and the first shop, just enough to see fields behind them, beyond the street, the spilled light from the torches giving the low grain an eerie blue color against the light of the half moon. The people gathering around stores would never notice it, the shops built wall to wall, all but the outermost of them going as far as to stack one atop the other. A myriad of creative staircases allowed the top ones to still catch a shopper's eye and then guide them up to make the purchase. It was all in wood and stone, but it broke any expectation to wha could be done with that.
From one shop, a voice called out, a large woman that clearly had a talent for being heard! Meeting her eyes, even briefly, was like having an entire conversation, but her lightning fast words were the same, or some other, local language, and completely incomprehensible. She quickly realized this, turning her attention and her voice to others with better odds of understanding her. She did manage to make her establishment stand out, though. It sold beverages, teas from the look of it. Apart from a quick drink of water at the beggar's tent, it had been too long. Hydration was important, after all.
"How much?"
The man walking around, serving the handful of sitting customers, just looked a bit nervous and very uncertain of what to do. He was old, a bit older than what one might expect from someone serving. A short man who moved in a fairly fast and oddly flowing way, every bit of clothing kept so neat it looked like he only pretended to work. He spoke a string of strange words and pointed to paper hung with impressive precision on the wall, not one sheet crooked or not matching another in size. A few people were looking at them. Menus, it seemed.
Mingling was a strange feeling. There was a static in the air, a crisp hum that seemed to follow every step. It had been there in the tent outside, but only in the distant background. This was different, and it felt that every second, people were noticing. There was no point in tempting fate in a small and immobile crowd.
The crowd in the street was not only mobile, constantly shifting and people changing, but it was also loose, a little more room to move. The hum toned down, but it never disappeared. It felt like an unwanted companion, some animal that had landed on one shoulder and now refused to leave. It did nothing, not a parasite or an attacker. It just hung there, making the air feel angry and tense. Even toned down, it clearly shifted with the nearby folk, as if they caused waves in the hum, like ducks in a pond. But it never hinted at what it was.
And then, out of nowhere, there was a push, a shoulder or elbow in the crowd just forcing itself by, crude but essentially innocent. A simple distraction. The sound of quick footsteps that followed was all the reveal that was needed! And a speedy pat on every part of the jumpsuit confirmed it. The copper coins, all of them in the same pocket, were suddenly lighter!
The crowd suddenly felt denser, like it was closing its ranks, masking the thief's escape! It wasn't, of course, but piercing the crowd with sight alone was suddenly a challenge. The sounds were masking everything, too. And still, kneeling down to look at legs rather than bodies, there they were. Two small feet, slipping in and out between larger ones. Nimble, fast, focused.
"Excuse me! Sorry!"
The words meant nothing. Nobody understood them, all they saw was a woman clumsily trying to push through. A few took a single look at the dangling wooden tokens and frowned, looking like they might even refuse to step out of the way. Beggar money, a worn down jumpsuit that looked nothing like what anyone else wore. They saw someone they felt no need or reason to respect. It didn't help the chase!
When the crowd finally opened up, the thief was gone. The large market square, as bathed in the light of torches as elsewhere, looked like some strange construction site, shops and other places stacked and racked any which way. Like some deranged godchild's building blocks, they were placed wherever space had once allowed it, and some looked like the stack of blocks might fall over without warning. And yet, nobody seemed to worry. People went about their way with what seemed like barely a care in the world. Of course, apart from two who stood near a twice lifesize statue of some unnamed god, not a guard was to be seen. A place well designed for thieving.
It was the shoes that gave him away. A boy, perhaps ten, walked through the crowd. His eyes were not quite on the same goods and posted offers as everyone else, but his shoes were what stood out. The rest of his clothes were simple, but on his feet he had meticulously made shoes, with thin, delicate weaving of leather without a hint of fraying. Everybody else had either obviously expensive boots or hastily fitted wrappings. His were cheap, but unusually functional. The thief had been wearing the same.
Stalking him was surprisingly easy. His eyes were on the people around him, no doubt prospecting targets for nimble fingers. He never looked over his shoulder. And when he finally found one he seemed to like, he followed the target quietly. The target was a gangly man in older nice clothes, someone who had money but wanted to look as if he had more, causing him to wear the same too expensive outfit likely every day, just to get its money's worth. Vanity, flaunting both a measure of wealth and a heap of poor planning. And as if to underline that, he turned to walk down a narrow street, empty and poorly lit. The thief had seemed mighty swift when grabbing those copper coins, but this target took barely any skill, it seemed!
The narrow street, basically a dark alley, was long enough to let the well-dressed man walk at a slow pace and not be half at the end of it before the thief entered. Walking into it felt somehow in poor taste, like walking up to a car crash merely to gawk at the fire. And when the man reached the end of the alley, he turned, looking right at the thief. And then, he smiled! As he looked up, over the head of the short, young thief, meeting his eyes felt immensely wrong. So did the feeling of taking a step backwards and hitting what at first felt like a wall that had not been there before!
"Meyiko lateo" was all that could be clearly understood from the large man that had snuck up and now blocked the exit. He added something after that, but his rumbling voice and the foreign language combined to make it unintelligible.
With no way out and no real option for calling for help, there was little to do but stay and watch as everything unfolded. The young thief, who upon closer examination appeared to be a young girl, darted swiftly by to see if anyone around the bend of the alley was coming to watch. The older man said nothing but simply stepped aside as a hooded figure seemed to take form right out of the shadows. The way every bit of the person's body was covered in some form of clothing, it was impossible to deduce a gender. When he or she pulled back the hood to reveal a shaven head covered in tattoos, it helped very little.
"Emik suoalen bahen," said the androgynous person, the voice giving no further clue. Judging from his or her eyes, it was a question. It seemed to offend or frustrate the person when there came no answer. The person then reached out to touch the dirty wall of the alley. Without warning, a hazy ring of symbols appeared on the moldcovered brick. And the ring rotated slowly, a living piece of softly glowing, purpleish graffiti. Sounds began to come out of nowhere again. Voices, mumbling and ranting in a hundred languages.
"Trying to find the right language?"
It was getting hard to talk, for some reason. A pain formed, below the chest, between the lungs. It flowed like an ether into every organ and limb, dissipating as it spread.
"You are used to this magic?" said the person, the lips, again, not matching the words and bits of his or her rea language seeping in. Just like before. Well, not entirely like before.
"I thought you called it skill?"
To the apparent confusion or surprise to the others, the androgynous one chuckled. It was becoming increasingly clear that this was a very private kind of magic.
"Maybe your mind translates it differently," the person said. "Or maybe we just don't have to give a crap. No point in hiding one's crimes behind words when they stick out so clearly in action, is there?"
As the person spoke, the tattoos seemed to gently breathe, the intensities of colors rising and falling ever so softly. Sharp even became dull and dull sharp. But the overall designs and hues stayed the same. The signs and pictures never moved.
"Why do you follow us?" the person asked, still keeping a calm and collected tone.
"I followed a thief who stole from me."
It was clear that the answer seemed too little for the person. Moving the hand on the wall made the ring of softly glowing symbols shift as it rotated, and either the symbols or the person's tattoos, or both, gained some intensity.
"You stink of strange magics," the person said. "You bleed essences like a broken bottle. And the beggar tokens you carry are practically dripping with more of it. What do you want with us?!"
The calm was quickly evaporating from his or her voice. An anger had already crept in, but more than that, a fear was in there, trying desperately to stay hidden!
"Look, man, I don't... I mean, man or woman, it's all fine. I don't want trouble."
The ring on the wall flared up, and it was as if the flare soaked into the tattoos.
"Trouble wants you," the person hissed, taking a step forward and letting go of the ring of symbols, which promptly disappeared. The tattoos still seemed to smolder and fume, though!
One of the others, perhaps the man in the old, nice clothes, tried to say something, but the androgynous one had no time to listen. The outstretched hand had a faint mist around it, a swirl of faded yellow, and it was going for the throat.
"You will tell me who..."
That was all the person managed to say. Moments before the feeling of strangling fingers around the neck, there seemed to blow a strong gust of wind through the alley. The mist around the person's fingers refused to be controlled and erupted briefly, fading away entirely as the person gave out a yelp and stepped back, hands across the face for protection.
The older man said a few hushed words as everyone stood deathly still.
"The one from the tent outside," said the androgynous one. Red splotches marked his or her face where the strange mist had burned the skin slightly, but he or she was actually smiling.

They had to be insane.
"You have to be insane. I'm not doing this."
The name of the androgynous one was apparently Kehu. The gender was still up in the air.
"You came to this place with nothing but beggar tokens. Is that how you want to survive?"
Kehu was passing on the words of the older man in the old but nice clothes. Timnas, he said his name was. It was a challenge to not simply call him Thomas. The names were becoming frustrating, too many of them cluttering up the mind.
"So you want me to rob someone? I don't know you, and I don't know him. Why should I even believe you?"
They had been very excited about the whole tent thing. Apparently, word traveledfast in this place, and the word of someone making magic fall apart traveled even faster. The man in the tent was known in the circles these people traveled in, his magic was used among the poor. It was illegal, but the city let him do his work outside the wall, to keep the poor he treated from finding their way in. He had been hurt long ago, and his arms had been healed with magic. Apparently, some of the damage was still held together by it, and the anti-magic, as they seemed to call it, had undone that. The word now was that he was being treated. Their word. What could and could not be trusted was hard to say.
"Magic is outlawed," Kehu said softly, this time not speaking on behalf of anyone else. "And still, he hoards it. What is in that house could help feed hundreds, but to him, it is just another way to hold power."
It was still night, but there was a difference to the dark. The mansion was outside the city, just beyond the lights of the thousands of torches, and the night sky was visible again. The horizon had a purple tinge to it. Dawn was coming. Slowly.
The mansion itself was close to being more a small palace. White marble on a dark stone foundation, pale red tile roofing, small towers at several corners. What really struck was its size, though. There were no doubt villages out there smaller than it.
"Fine. Whatever you... whatever you say."
An ache. It was back, swirling through veins and tissues, the faint sensation of fading. One atom at a time, its anchor across time burning out. None of this was standard Embassy procedure, and very little of it was even considered acceptable. But the pieces still did not fit. Aldric's interrogation of the captured time traveler had given many vague and incherent answers, but also a few fairly clear landmarks to seek out. Something was hidden in this world, something that tied the massive machines across time to these strange abilities, these spirit magics.
"But it has to be tonight. It has to be now."
Kehu said nothing in words, but the eyes said everything needed. The others slowly caught on to something being wrong, but when they appeared to ask Kehu, they got no answers.
"It has to be now, Kehu. My time here will soon end, I cannot afford to be patient."
With a nod and a skeptical look, Kehu translated and explained the situation to the others. An argument immediately broke out, the pointing back and forth telling all the story that needed to be told. But it was all brought to an end quite effectively, by the one person there that said nothing.
The big guy, Latoro, moved silently through the grain. The fields around the mansion were not far from harvest, and whatever the grain was, it was tall. Latoro was the only one to have his head be above the top of it, and his massive physique cut apath through it for others to easily follow. There were some hushed cries of protest from the others, but it seemed the big man had had enough of the debate. He was ready to act.
The small one, the thief called Ovolli, made a quick dash through the grain at Kehu's command, disappearing amongst the tall grain stalks like a ghost. Timnas followed the marked path along the field to the road that went from the city to the mansion. There was a plan at work, even if only they knew it.
What Ovolli and Timnas were doing was impossible to say. Latoro, however, marched silently through the grain, towards the house. He never turned to look if anyone even joined him. His mind was set.
"Stay close to him," said Kehu, now in a voice more subdues and hushed. Not as if to not be heard, but more serious, more focused. Perhaps even more tense. "Your strange ability will guard against their magics, and his strength will guard against their weapons."
"And you? What will you guard against?"
"Their cunning," he answered, making no attempt to sound dramatic.
As Kehu slipped away, falling back and hiding within the tall grain, his words became a frightening reality! Large figures, hidden in the dark that surrounded the mansion in all places but the road leading to it, rushed in. Some awkward sparks flew in the air, like fireworks that fizzled and died before truly detonating. And yet, they felt like needles. Like needles going straight through every limb and organ. Quick pains, too quick to allow for any great reactions before they were gone again. And amidst those awkward sparks, colored dots. Atoms breaking their bond on this time, returning. The pains were no doubt atoms in those same limbs and organs urging to join them.
Wasting no time, Latoro grabbed the figures, reaching his hands into the darkness of night and ripping them into his sight. They were smaller than him. They had counted on magic to do their dirtywork for them. Now, they were just toys for him to throw about. He punched one with his free hand, then threw him over the shoulder and grabbed another, one that he could pull in and headbutt into submission with just one try, then drop him on the ground. It was hard to see, but the sound of steel on steel rang out quite clearly as he raised his arm against someone coming at him. Something, perhaps a simple metal stick hidden in his sleeve, took the brunt of a small axe swung over the attacker's head. Latoro showed no sign that it worried him. The attacker was down a moment later.
Sounds soon could be heard from other parts of the mansion. Commotion, people reacting hastily to things too far out of sight and too far into the dark to see. Ovolli, no doubt, causing a divertion. Or perhaps she was the real mission. Perhaps this was the divertion!
"Follow me," came Kehu's voice out of the air. Latoro reacted instantly, calmly turning in the direction that the voice seemed to flow from. The mansion was close now, and the voice seemed to lead to a small door. A door one floor up, on a balcony! Latoro wasted no time climbing the wall, his massive hands grabbing decorative protrusions as his legs supported his body against a tree too far away from the wall for anyone even the slightest smaller than him to make use of. Swinging his massive frame over the edge of the balcony,he reached down a hand to assist the climb.
"Follow me," Kehu's voice repeated on the balcony. Kehu was nowhere to be seen.
"Latoro, wait!"
The big man stopped, his feet needing a full three seconds to slow his hulking, lumbering mass down before coming to a full halt.
"Why is there no defense here?"
Looking around for a moment, the man silently pointed to symbols painted in delicate colors along the edge of walls. They flickered, like lights unable to turn on right. Colors that just seemed wrong crept through them, like oil through water.
"Am I doing that?"
The man nodded.
"Then why can Kehu still..."
Finishing the question was difficult. What Kehu was doing was hard to find the proper words for. Latoro, though, seemed to understand perfectly.
"Weak magic," said the voice of Kehu in the air. "I am in your mind. It takes skill but not power. Their defenses take power, not skill. You only ruin strong magics, not my delicate work."
Looking at Latoro unintentionally confirmed it when the large man nodded slowly. Then, he walked towards the door that opened with a loud click.
The inside of the place was, for lack of a better word, splendid! Tapestries ran the length of the halls, doors were heavy and yet delicately carved wood, not one door made from the same kind as the next. Carpets were thick and embroidered, patterns that ran the entire length of a hallway. And on the walls hung large paintings, paintings that showed scenes of war and what looked like celebrations of victories. One had a castle on fire. Another showed the spectre of Death creep over soldiers painted as brutish and crude. Not a single picture was simply a portrait or a tranquil landscape.
"How did you get in?"
Kehu was standing on a flight of stairs, looking at an old suit of armor mounted on a giant board. The armor looked made of leather and wood, not metal.
"They rely on old magics," said Kehu, not looking away from the armor. "Your... skill made them fail. That made it easy for someone with more... elegant magics to find a way inside."
Even Latoro looked when Kehu pointed down the hallway to what looked like the main door. Timnas was standing there, looking far too hardened for someone of his face and fashion.
"Take this down," said Kehu in a gentle voice, sounding almost like a question. At first, the remark seemed aimed at Latoro. It was not.
"Why?"
"Because it is drenched in protective magic," Kehu replied. "The owner cares nothing about the laws regarding magic, I doubt he cares about laws regarding life."
Very little of that made serious sense, but it seemed prudent to be done and leave quickly.
The armor was in tatters, clearly a collector's piece. The same feeling of ethereal needles rushed through hands and arms when reaching for it, but at the same time, things in the board sputtered and howled. Time energy, anti-magic, Fifth Force, it all pushed against the others, ripping and clawing.
Out of the blue, a thin stick appeared! It took a second to notice the tiny blade that had shot out of the board and now dug into the stick, causing its wood to crackle and complain!
"I told you," said Kehu, "you disarm their magics, I disarm their cunning."
Pushing the blade back with the slowly splintering stick, Kehu nodded at Latoro, and the big man handed over what looked like a piece of old and dirty rope.
"Bind it up in this. Then, we leave."
Kehu's promise was enough to spark renewed motivation. The place had a creepy aura to it, the walls themselves feeling unnaturally alive. Pulling the old armor down and binding it up took no more than a few seconds with the thought of leaving waiting at the end.
None of that lasted longer than the time needed to get halfway to the main door.
"Magi," growled a man easiy the size of Latoro, but strapped into armor that was not nearly as quaint as the collector's piece now bound in old rope.
With a few waves of arms and legs, Kehu made the air itself simmer with a teal flame. The bits of fire flowed together, additional gestures seeming to bind the heat much the same as the rope had been used to bind the old armor. Tattoos along Kehu's arms and hands, the few that could be easily seen, became briefly brighter as the fire gathered.
It took the large man a single swing of a long baton covered in dark strings to rip the spell apart in the air! The flames scattered with a sputtering sound, charring clothes and walls wherever they hit. But before the next swing could land, Latoro stepped in, knocking the man's spell-destroying baton aside. Even though clearly matched, he did not hesitate to step in and grab the man at the throat, swinging for a punch. The man pulled out of the grip with ease.
"Kehu, why did I understand what he said?"
Still stunned and off balance, Kehu said nothing, choosing instead to mumble what sounded like some kind of chant. Blurry symbols, tiny and looking warped, began searing themselves into the wallpaper, making a crisp and sizzling sound in the process. In spite of the compulsion to ask again, it suddenly felt prudent to take a few steps back. Even though Kehu doubtlessly did not mean to, the appearing symbols felt like they burned, as if they were made with hot coals. Nobody else seemed affected by that. It had to be a time travel issue.
Up the stairs, out on the balcony, the door still stood open. It took no time for the symbols along the walls, the alarm system of this place, to react, sounds coming from them that sounded wrong, their color turning sick and pale. And for every anti-magical effect they suffered, the burning dug deeper into the skin. Even climbing down became too much, ending in a fall with still half the way to go!
At the foot of the house wall was gravel. Tiny jagged edges cut into the skin, but they felt cool. The burning was still there, but it was not getting worse, and the cool gravel soothed the skin. It took a few seconds to even notice the sounds of guards approaching fast. It took a few seconds more to notice what they were likely coming for. Luckily, the old collectors armor seemed to have taken no real damage in the fall.
Whether it was lucky or not, Ovolli was suddenly there, too, stepping out of the long grain not far away like some agrarian spirit! She looked around, saying nothing, then darted over and grabbed the armor, gesturing what seemed to mean "stay quiet, everything is under control". It was hard to believe her, but it was even harder to stop her, and there seemed to be no use in trying.
The noise from inside the house was spectacular. Crisp zips, loud pops, screams of anger between screams of pain. Scrambling into the crops was a risky strategy, so easily detected, but the guess that the guards would go for the loud sounds and ignore the rustling of grain was right. From between the long straws, it looked like a small army descended on the place.

Dawn was breaking when Kehu showed up. The torches in the city were beginning to be extinguished as natural daylight made its way through cleverly placed gaps between the stacked shops and dwellings. Arrays of small mirrors caused redirected beams of light to dance in the streets, as beautiful as they were convenient.
Ovolli had been waiting back near the road that went out to the mansion. She said nothing, perhaps knowing that there was no way for her words to be translated and useful. Instead, she seemed concerned, giving a gentle examination, without words, to check every slight burn and scrape. The damage was minimal. The fall from the wall had been painful, but the jumpsuit beneath the covering rags had taken the worst of it.
Kehu looked in worse shape. The two of them sent each other glances and exchanged a few words, but every breath from Kehu looked like its own bit of torment. The tattoos looked pale, as if they were dying, and the bruises were many. It took some close looks at their body language, but one topic seemed to be the stolen armor, which Ovolli no longer carried. That, however, did not cause much concern, so it had to be somewhere safe.
"What happened back there, Kehu?"
The bald mage said nothing, looking confused for a moment. Then, he or she made some gestures, wincing in pain through most of them.
"What did you ask?"
"What happened back there"
Kehu looked a bit unsure, as if having to remember or at least phrase it all properly.
"The guard showed up," came the final answer. Then, Kehu said nothing, looking instead at Ovolli as she put some bandages on a bloodied tattoo. As the fabric wrapped around, it seemed to fume slightly.
"I could see that much. Kehu, I understood the man, the large one. He called you magi. That is Latin. It means sorcerer."
Something in Kehu's eyes flashed, an anger that was clearly not meant to be shown. It quickly faded, though. Or perhaps Kehu simply suppressed it expertly.
"I told you, magics are illegal. We are seen as traitors for using it."
"But that mansion, it had..."
"Trophies," interrupted Kehu. "They hunt down and kill those of us who use magic. Then, they take any items as a trophy. Some use these to defend themselves."
"That seems..."
"The word is hypocrisy," Kehu hissed, at first seemingly at pain from the bandaging, but on second thought, perhaps more an angerh at the topic.
"So how did they stop you? I saw him cut your spell right out of the air!"
Kehu looked up from the bandages as Ovolli seemed done with the one arm and about to begin the next.
"Anti-magic," Kehu answered, short and firm.
"Like mine?"
There was a pause. Kehu did the best to make it seem like Ovolli's bandaging was the reason, but again, any closer look revealed that it was not.
"Like yours. But they use cursed objects."
"The baton..."
Kehu nodded. But more than that, Kehu sent a look at the jumpsuit, at the pocket where the small woven stick from the horseman was wrapped thick in leather.
"Why don't you use the same against them"
"It is costly. Only the very rich can afford it."
Reaching in to pull out the horseman's little trinket felt dangerous, rebellious, even, knowing what conflicts apparently surrounded it. Not only did Kehu's eyes follow it as the leather was unwrapped, but Ovolli stopped the bandaging and stared at it, as well.
"I took this off a mere bandit."
Their eyes widened at the thought.
"How can a mere bandit be carrying something that costly?"
Neither one answered. Timnas stepped through the door at that moment, his eyes immediately fixated on the small trinket. Latoro, looking in poor shape, followed him.
"They mine it," said Kehu, eyes still fixed on the trinket. "They mine black dust to give it the anti-magic."
"Where do they mine it?"
Their eyes finally, and almost simultaneously, broke from the trinket.
"Maybe the question," Timnas started, "should be, where did you get that?"