A young teenager wearing ragged clothes as she ran for her life through the street. Not an uncommon site here.

  I ran and ran, weaving through narrow alleyways until I found myself a suitable hiding place, though not the most pleasant one. I lay in a large crate of leftover semi-rotten food from the market the day before as I listened to the heavy footsteps that had tailed me run by, not stopping to look down the narrow gap in the buildings I lay hidden in. I was severely out of breath, but I couldn't make a sound, holding my breath until my whole chest felt like it was burning.

  Upon a satisfactory amount of silence, I released my breath, gasping for air, yet choking at the foul smell of my hiding place. I lifted myself out of the crate, and onto the solid dirt ground.

  This was not how I had expected that day to go so far, as I'd not planned to be caught, but it was fine. My plans hadn't been destroyed yet, so I just needed to return to work. I brushed myself off in a feeble attempt to remove at least some of the foul smell from myself, but I couldn't do much without a bath.

  I checked my pocket to make sure it was still there, check. I then pulled it out of my pocket to inspect it, probably a bad idea, but I wanted to make sure it was still in good condition, and it was. An insignia, beautifully crafted out of a Mithril-gold alloy, depicting a snake wrapped around a branch.

  A badge that showed allegiance to the goddess of deception. It belonged to a high-ranking member of a cult in our town, Raine, that worshipped said goddess. I, however, having no allegiance to this goddess, was contracted to steal this insignia from its holder.

  I stuffed it back into the pocket of my tattered cloth coat and reappeared into the street, acutely aware of anyone who I may have drawn the attention of. As I travelled down the street, I noticed a few eyes tracking me as I walked, but this was likely due to my suspicious appearance.

  My haggard look, however, would soon be amended, as the person who had hired me to do this job had promised a large amount of money for the insignia. To be quite honest, I had no idea why this item was so important to my client, but all I knew was that I wouldn't be living so tough any more after this job. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't exactly be rolling in money, but it would at least be enough to support the one person I cared about, and at least make somewhat of an appearance out of myself.

  I travelled further through the street, constantly aware of the people around me. Every person who laid their eyes on me in any way I deemed suspicious was accounted for. This continued until I'd reached a much quieter part of Raine.

  Eventually, after travelling past the fish market and the refugee camp and weaving through the central north housing estate (home to some of the richer, less tolerable people) and down an uninteresting side street, I entered a small distillery. The smell of strong wax candles and fresh woodwork I was immediately greeted with made me halt for a moment before walking in through the door and closing it behind me.

  I looked over to the only other man in the room. A large, well-built man who looked as if he hadn't washed in weeks. Upon receiving eye contact, I simply nodded my head, and he nodded back, and I walked through the door to a small room filled with barrels. With the way the room was lit, nothing was out of the ordinary, but from a certain angle, a gap in the barrels, just barely big enough to fit through, was visible.

  The narrow passage gave way to a small staircase that led down into the basement, cold stone walls closing in on the space, and an arched roof that left just enough room to stand upright. I carefully walked down each step, avoiding the places I knew would creak, lest I aroused suspicion, until I reached the door at the very bottom of the staircase. Before I gripped the heavy metal handle of the door, I took a deep breath of confidence.

  I pulled down the door handle and pushed the door forward. I was then faced with a large hall, filled with chairs, and a statue at the far end. The death shrine, it was called. It was lit only by dim candles, which were sparsely scattered around the room, but more heavily concentrated around the statue to ensure it was fully visible from any angle. The statue was a depiction of the goddess of death, Nethraea. The statue itself was surrounded by four hooded individuals who, immediately upon my entrance, all looked straight at me.

  “Elise. Do you have the insignia?” A raspy voice echoed through the small chamber.

  “Yes.” I said in response.

  “Show it.” the same hooded man said.

  And so I carefully slipped the insignia from my pocket and held it towards them, its intricate, shiny surface sparkling as it reflected the candlelight.

  The man’s bones creaked as he hurriedly walked in my direction.

  “Hold on.” I said, halting the man in his steps. “I have proved my end of the deal. Now it’s time for you to prove yours.”

  A tinge of impatience was painted on the man’s wrinkled, shadow-covered face as he turned away, his cloak floating behind him as he walked towards the man on the right. The other man gave something to him—impossible to see in the dark—and he rushed back towards me. His sudden approach put me on edge, as I positioned my hand above the handle of my dagger that lay under my coat.

  The man eventually stopped short of me and presented the item he held. If I had to guess, he looked about sixty years of age. His face bore wrinkles from decades of stress, and his right eye had an odd streak of white in the iris. His cold, wrinkled, spindly fingers wrapped around a poor quality leather pouch. The man shook it a little, and the shake was accompanied by the sound of coins. I hastily presented the insignia once again, and both myself and the man reached for the others’ offering and took it.

  I looked at the man, and he looked at me, before I looked inside the pouch. Shining gold coins. Twenty rels to be exact.

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  We both quickly took a step back from each other.

  “Pleasure doing business with you.” I said

  “Likewise.” the man responded with a hint of disdain in his voice.

  I slowly backed away as the man just as slowly turned around, clutching the insignia. As he walked back towards the statue, I turned around fully towards the door, and exited the basement, quickly walking back up the stairs, out of the back room, and out through the main entrance of the distillery.

  - - -

  The smell of the damp alley greeted me as I walked outside. As I reached the main street, I heard the first claps of thunder in the distance. Looking up past the houses to the north-east, dark clouds were gathering in the sky, a distant storm. A faint rainfall had already been present for most of the day but, judging by the direction of the wind, it was due to get much worse further towards the night. It was mid-afternoon, with the late-winter sun barely peeking through the light clouds in the west, and I was likely expected to be home very soon, and so I continued through the streets and down through the central market, making a left and walking through the central housing.

  I had entered an area with almost no one around, a narrow street with large rows of terraced houses on either side. At this point, the wind was almost non-existent—like the calm before a storm—and the slight rain from before had ceased for now. Something was off, quite clearly. I wasn’t sure what until I was just turning a corner.

  The man used my own weight to grab me by the collar and spin me around so he could pin me against the wet cobblestone wall. Looking at him immediately refreshed my memory, but he decided to introduce himself anyway.

  “Remember me?” he said.

  He didn’t actually let me answer before speaking again.

  “You do.” he continued, “I know you do.”

  I looked past him, his head shaved and sweat covered, nearly making contact with my own, and could see his two other accomplices—a tall, dark skinned man to his left, and a large, strongly built woman.

  “No, I can’t say I d-” I was cut off.

  “I want my insignia back!” he shouted.

  He quickly snapped his fingers and a small flame appeared and burned at the tip of his gloved thumb.

  “And I will burn your eyes out if I don’t get it”

  The man pressed me harder against the wall. With him being much bigger than me, I couldn’t move. His face was the type that was hard to distinguish the age of, looking both juvenile and senile at once.

  “I don’t have it.” I stated

  As soon as I said that, he pressed the flame into my exposed collar bone. As much as I tried to hide the pain, in truth, it was excruciating. I felt the flame quickly burning through my skin, exposing the nerve endings, before he released it once again.

  “You should know better than to say something like that, because I am not joking. When I say I will burn your eyes out,” he moved the flame closer to my face, “I will do it.”

  “Fine. I’ll give it back to you.” I said

  “Finally, some common sense.” He replied

  Carefully, I reached my hand into my pocket, keeping eye contact with the man as I searched inside. Moving aside my recently acquired pouch of coins, I felt around until I grabbed a small, innocent-looking rock, and I pulled it out of my pocket with my fist closed tightly around it. The man held his hand out for me to place what he thought was his insignia in his hand.

  “Well, come on then.” he urged me.

  And so I complied, and placed the smooth black stone in the palm of his hand.

  I had acquired this stone from one of my close friends, who lived on the same street as me at the time, a few days before this altercation. I had wanted something that could provide me with a getaway opportunity if the need for one arose.

  Clearly I wasn’t the only one familiar with this kind of item. The man’s face was suddenly turned from one of confidence to one of shock. He clearly knew what I’d just placed in his hand.

  Before he even had the chance to move, I spoke the incantation I needed to put my plan in motion under my breath, swiftly but clearly.

  “I call upon the goddess of flames.” I chanted.

  ‘Bestow upon me: a spark.’

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt a surge through my whole body. It felt like a surge of fire that coursed deep through my bones, travelling outward from the top of my spine to the tips of my fingers and toes, leaving a sense of numbness for just a moment. All this happened in an instant before snapping straight back to reality.

  In that instant, a spark of fire appeared right where the stone was, and it ignited, bursting into a pungent black smoke that immediately spread through the street.

  ‘I swear, that is the last time I’m calling upon the gods.’ I thought.

  Before the thick smoke completely blocked my vision, I saw the man wince and flinch back from the pain, clutching at the hand that I had just ignited as he let out a cry. A just punishment, I thought.

  With that, I started to run down the street in the direction I was originally headed. The black smoke was heavy, so as it dispersed, it tended to hang lower to the ground. Just as I’d travelled far enough for my head to start peeking out of the smoke, I heard a shout from behind me, assumedly from his female companion.

  “Hya!”

  A thwip of the wind sounded out through the street. I knew what was coming. I turned around to look behind me and saw an invisible swirling mass hurling towards me, displacing the smoke around it. A gust of wind, concentrated into one area, and aimed at me.

  Before I could move, I was knocked down, flat onto my front. The initial impact knocked the breath out of me as I’d landed hard onto my chest, but luckily nothing was broken.

  I could hear one of them running in my direction, their heavy boots pounding into the ground with each step. Hearing them coming, I hurriedly gripped the handle of the small blade that previously lay hidden on the inside of my coat—a last resort of sorts—and pulled it out as I pushed myself off the ground.

  I managed to get myself upright, my legs bowed against the ground, just barely keeping balance in that first moment of standing up. As soon as I turned in the direction of the woman charging towards me—she was coming in for a tackle—I held the blade up out of instinct. She clearly hadn’t noticed the blade, no thanks to its small size, and kept charging towards me.

  Before I could move out the way, she barged into me, her solidly built arms wrapping around me as she tackled me to the floor.

  We hit the floor, but something was off. Her full body weight was on me, but she wasn’t moving. My hands suddenly felt warm, and I looked down. The blade was plunged into her neck, his crimson red blood oozing down my hands and soaking into the ends of my sleeves.

  Upon realising this, I leapt up, rolling the woman off of me, the knife still embedded in her neck. Looking down the street, the two other men stood in shock, but it wasn’t just them there. A passer-by, walking down the street at the end of the road, had witnessed it.

  Without skipping a beat, I pulled my hood over my head and darted up the road in the opposite direction. My destination: home, and as fast as possible.