A wave of sadness rushed over her as she surveyed the devastation. Ash and soot from the dying fires were floating in the air towards her, but somehow seemed to avoid where she was standing. She could hear a small crashing sound as one of the still standing buildings gave up its struggle and collapsed. The village had been a large one, with maybe three thousand inhabitants, almost enough to be called a town. It had been a farming village that probably didn’t even have weapons beyond those used for hunting. Until a year ago, the people of the village had lived in peace and harmony with its neighbors.

Then there were the bodies. Some of them had been charred beyond recognition by the flames, while others had been hacked to pieces by frenzied people not accustomed to wielding weapons. Few unlucky ones had been made into an example. What remained of them was hung on the smoldering ruins of the gate of this poor village; a gate that had most likely not been closed for hundreds of years. She wondered idly if it was even capable of closing, with rust corroding the hinges. Now the inhabitants of the village would never know. The attackers had been thorough and not a single person was spared. The purge had been complete.

‘Is this what happens when the so called forces of good win?’ She thought sadly, and not for the first time. This was not the first time she had come upon the remains left behind by the purge. She had seen similar sights too many times already, and she was always too late to help. She’d walk among the wreckage and use her magic enhanced senses to try and find survivors. She so desperately wanted to find survivors, but she never did. One thing the angels were good at was leading these purges.

The former inhabitants of the village were a race of demi-humans. Part of their ancestry was human, but they were unfortunate in that they also had demon blood in their veins. This didn’t really show much, the only differences were different shaped pupils and some individuals with stronger demon heritage growing a pair of leathery wings or horns. They were some of the most peaceful inhabitants of this world, which already was a backwater planet that had not seen real war in eons. They barely qualified as demons but that barely was enough for the forces of ‘good’ that were reveling drunk in the sweet taste of victory.

As she tried futilely to find survivors, she remembered what had led to this carnage. The War in Heavens had raged for uncountable eons, claiming countless lives on all sides. Powerful individuals came and went, and if you asked anyone taking part, they would tell you that the war would rage on forever. What had tipped the balance had started as a rather harmless experiment. Harmless experiment that had resulted in something that no one could have imagined possible. The thirteen hells had been destroyed, taking the armies of Fallen, demons and devils with them. The four sided war had suddenly become three sided and the balance of power had been broken.

The demons and angels had always been the two sides most eager to carry on with the war, while the two other sides mostly just observed, only taking part when their own interest were threatened by the flames of war. There had been some alliances but those had lasted mostly for short periods of time. With the destruction of their arch-nemesis, the forces of ‘goodness’ and ‘order’ had decided to take advantage by making sure the demons never rose up again. Their solution had been the complete eradication of demons on any world within their reach.

They angels called it the Holy Purge. Their armies scoured all the worlds they controlled for any beings which could be classified as demons and eradicated them. On worlds where they didn’t hold enough power to bring in their own troops, they sent some of their angels to preach the ‘evils’ of demonic races, inciting the populace to do the dirty work for them. The angels always had their representatives present to cast the first stone, to fire the first arrow and to draw the first blood. This incited the mob into a frenzy, allowing them to let their bestial natures take over.

The result was what she saw around her. Peaceful communities destroyed for no other reason than having the wrong ancestors. She shed a small tear for the dead and wished them better luck in their next lives. She also felt the rush of guilt washing over her. ‘This is my fault.’ She thought.

Trying to find survivors was her way of trying to find redemption. There was a reason she always arrived late. What would she do if she did arrive in time? Should she kill the mob that was whipped into a murderous frenzy? Just pushing them away would only lead to more resentment and they would be back once she was gone. It wasn’t the fault of the mob, not really. How could a group of inexperienced and powerless peasants resist the honeyed words of the angels and their preachers? She suspected the mob might even be under a spell. They weren’t exactly innocent, but it was not really their fault either, at least not enough to deserve death. Even if she did lead the demons away from here, they would be hunted down mercilessly by the angels. One or two people she could protect, but thousands?

So she arrived late, hoping to find survivors. Unfortunately the angels had access to same detection spells she used, and the purge was always complete. “Nothing this time either.” She mumbled as if talking to herself.

Suddenly an androgynous voice coming from her chest answered. “I can’t detect any mana or ki either. As magical beings, they should have enough natural mana in their bodies for me to detect even untrained children. I understand that you feel responsible, but you can’t keep doing this to yourself. I can see it’s breaking your heart. You’re simply torturing yourself at this point. You did not cause this atrocity!”

“I have to keep going! Even if I can save just one, then the pain will be worth it. Please, I don’t care which deity of this world is listening, just let me save one!” Her desperate plea echoed among the ruins of the village.

Either because her yell stirred something, or because her pleas reached one of the local deities, she could hear a faint cry of a child coming from somewhere in the ruins. “What in the name of…?” She mumbled.

The androgynous voice hurriedly replied. “I still can’t detect anything. A village like this should not have the spells to block my detection. This should not be possible.”

She started running towards the direction where she though she heard the faint cry coming from. “Try searching for souls instead. Some of the souls of the dead should still be lingering around, but you should be able to tell the difference between a living soul and a dead one.”

The androgynous voice took its time to reply, and she could not hear the cry anymore. “I got something. That half collapsed building to your left. It’s hazy as if shrouded by something, but I think I could sense a living soul inside.” The voice finally replied.

She had left the detection spells to the androgynous voice simply because that wasn’t her specialty and the owner of the voice was very good at it. As she rushed into the house and used her magic to support the crumbling building, she came into a fairly large room with a body in the center of the floor. The body belonged to an old and disfigured woman. The body had not been disfigured by the attackers; rather they were old wounds from a long life. The woman had been killed with one strike to the heart, by an angel’s blade judging by the wound.

She looked around the room but couldn’t find any sign of the child whose voice she had heard. “I need a little help here.”

“Give me a second.” The androgynous voice replied. “Whoa! Whoever hid the child did a great job of it. I had to forcefully break the spell. Look under the floor next to the corpse.”

She rushed next to the body of the old woman. Now that she knew where to look, she could see some of the blood running unnaturally towards something under the floor. As she removed the floorboards, she could finally see a small bundle soaked in the old woman’s blood slightly twitching, making the faintest breathing sounds. The baby had been hidden for a while, and would have died in hours if she had not come along.

She fed some of her magic to the baby, trying to heal any wounds and diseases, and to provide the baby with some strength. Once she was certain the baby had enough strength to survive for a while, she laid a finger on the baby’s forehead and delved inside the baby with her senses, trying to find if there was any damage she had missed. She withdrew her senses as if in recoil almost immediately. “What is going on here?”

She used some gentle air magic to clear some of the blood off the baby and looked stunned for a moment. This baby clearly didn’t belong in this village. The foxlike face and white fur of the baby became clear once the blood and soot was removed. There were no races like this baby on this world. She looked at the magical symbols around the hiding place of the baby. The symbols were carved into the stone walls of the small cubbyhole. This was not something created in a hurry just before the attack, and the spells were foreign to this world. She recognized them though.

“What’s wrong?” The androgynous voice asked, clearly confused by her reaction.

“Give me a few seconds to piece this together.” She replied, while staring thoughtfully at the symbols.

Suddenly she turned towards the corpse of the old woman, and turned it around to get a better look. The old woman had hidden it well with magic, but she was clearly not a demi-human. This was a pureblood devil. The woman had lost her right arm at some point, cleanly cut off at the shoulder. There were numerous old but already healed battle scars on her body, and the woman had managed to lose an eye at some point in the past.

“They usually had a tattooed insignia on their right shoulder, but this one has lost that shoulder. By design I suspect.” She mumbled to herself.

“You’re not thinking..?” The androgynous voice asked, clearly knowing where she was going with this thought.

“One way to find out.” She replied, putting a finger on the woman’s forehead delving inside the corpse. Delving dead bodies was not a pleasant experience, but she knew what she was looking for, and found it immediately. There it was, a dormant magical insignia inscribed on the now dead heart of the old woman. A magical insignia that said a lot about the old woman’s origins.

“Is she really…?” The androgynous voice asked with trepidation.

“Yes. She was once a member of the Hounds of War, the elite unit serving the thirteen hells.” She replied, still trying to piece together what was going on.

“What was one of the Hounds doing in a backwater place like this? I thought all their members died either when the thirteen hells were destroyed, or during the first years of the purge. One would think the angels would make a priority out of hunting them down.” The androgynous voice wondered.

“I’m guessing it has something to do with this baby.” She replied quietly.

“The baby? Why would one of the Hounds care about a baby? I would understand if she was the child of one of the lords of the hells, but the hells fell several years ago and that baby can’t be more than a few months old.” The androgynous voice questioned.

“I don’t think that’s the reason. When I delved the baby, I noticed a few weird things. Firstly, there’s a reason why we didn’t detect any mana from her. She’s a psion, and thus has no mana or ki. Secondly, I couldn’t determine her race.” She replied thoughtfully.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that the old Hound was here to protect and hide the baby. There seemed to be no other purpose to hide in such a remote world, and the Hound seemed like she died without a fight, simply trying to avoid anything happening to the baby. That was not normal behavior for the elite unit that had claimed countless lives during the war, innocent and otherwise.

“A psion? Well that explains it, I suppose. Psions use their own form of power instead of mana or ki, which would make her hard to detect. Psions are extremely rare, but that hardly qualifies as something important enough for perhaps the last Hound to sacrifice her life over. The baby looks like a fox demon of sorts though, so I have no idea what kind of trouble you could have with recognizing her race?” The androgynous voice replied with slight confusion in its voice.

“She may look like a fox demon on the outside, but that’s not what I sensed inside her. She seemed like a mix of several races. I could detect at least five for certain, but I suspect there’s more. Those five are simply the dominant ones. It didn’t seem like a natural mix from breeding either. Someone made her that way on purpose. The only reason she looks like a fox demon of some kind is because the other races are still dormant inside of her.” She explained her vague feelings. It was difficult to delve a psion, because the psionic power naturally repelled the delving. She could force it, but that would hurt the child.

“Someone made her like that? What other races are inside her? And perhaps more importantly, for what purpose?” The androgynous voice questioned.

“I’m almost certain that someone went through a lot of time and effort to make her as she is. Time, effort and a lot of power. As long as the other races remain dormant, I can’t identify them without being too forceful, and that could kill the baby. As for the purpose, your guess is as good as mine.” She replied.

“You’re going to keep her aren’t you? Not that I mind, but the angels already dislike you. Harboring a few demons is one thing, but this will surely piss them off if they find out.” The androgynous voice pointed out.

“I asked for a survivor, and now we have one. I’m not going to throw her away after searching through all those fields of carnage and genocide. Whatever her origin may be, it is not her fault, and I wouldn’t be any better than those fanatical angels if I threw her away.” She felt some hope. Maybe this child would offer her a small chance at redemption.

As Haydee appeared through the portal, all she could see were buildings and people. The platform for incoming portals was a raised dais on a little hill, so it afforded her a pretty decent view in all directions. Everywhere her sight landed all that could be seen were buildings and people of various races. Dee had read a tiny bit about architecture, and though her knowledge was limited the view seemed decidedly odd.

It was not that the buildings were weird, but that there was no uniformity among them. Graceful wooden and screen doored pagodas were built right next to rundown and ramshackle sandstone blocks that barely qualified as houses. On one side she could see what looked like the grounds of a temple surrounded by a park, and on the other was something that could only be described as a cathedral. Not a very big one, but the design was there.

As more and more people passed through the portals, Dee was gently but firmly pushed to the side by the wave of travelers. Both the travelers and the people in the city were a stunning array of various races. There were elves, faeries, humans, naga and even few demons in the mix. Just with a quick glance, Dee counted over a hundred races within the range she could see. Some Dee could sense were beings that had only taken a humanoid form, either to hide or because their real forms would be too large to navigate the streets without trouble. She was pretty sure she could sense the presence of a dragon coming from one person that had come through the portals and disappeared into the city.

The most numerous people in this area seemed to be from various beast races. They ran the full range from werebeasts that were basically human or elven but with beast-like features, such as ears and tails, to demi-humans like that looked much like Dee herself, where they were humanoid in shape but looked more like beasts standing on two legs instead of humans. Though in Dee’s case, she wasn’t actually a demi-human, she simply looked like one. The lines between the definitions of races had always been blurry, since two beings could look almost the same, but have nothing in common when it came to their ancestry or abilities. Dee herself was perhaps the most extreme example of this.

As she waited on the edge of the dais, Dee suddenly realized that mother had not given her very good instructions when it came to deciding what to do after stepping out of the portal. That was very typical of Selvaria. As long as she knew what was supposed to happen, she also assumed everybody else knew as well. Normally Dee would be able to figure things out after some thought, but this time things were not as simple. Selvaria had handled all the arrangements and never bothered to explain anything to her. She didn’t even know where she was. Not to mention the city, she didn’t even know which world this was.

The only thing she knew was that someone was supposed to pick her up, but she had no idea how she was supposed to identify the right person. Or more importantly, how that person was supposed to identify her. Was she waiting for a man or a woman? Or maybe something in between? Genders weren’t all that clear to some races. Speaking of races, which race was the person she was expecting? When were they supposed to arrive? What was she supposed to do in the meantime? Next time she met Selvaria she’d definitely slip something into one of her experiments and have it blow up as revenge!

Hours slipped by as Dee sat and waited. She expected night to fall as the sun was setting, but to her surprise a second sun rose up on the sky. ‘So a world with multiple suns?’ She thought to herself. There were guards monitoring the platform, and they had noticed Dee sitting around. Finally one of them approached.

“Hey little girl. Are you waiting for someone?” The female weretiger asked.

“I’m supposed to yes.” Dee answered politely. The people here seemed to use the same common language that Selvaria had taught her. Apparently it was the most commonly used language in the universe.

“Who are you waiting for? Maybe we can help?” The guard asked. They couldn’t have children loitering around the dais. Even though Dee wasn’t taking much space, there was the possibility of her being a pickpocket or something similar. It would ease the minds of the guards if they could get her to leave.

“I honestly don’t know. Mother sent me through the portal and told me to wait for someone, but she didn’t explain who. She can be a little scatterbrained sometimes.” She replied, still remaining polite. Dee could sense the suspicion in the guard, even if the offer of help was genuine.

“I see.” The face of the guard darkened. Another suspicion had arisen inside the guard. Sometimes parents who didn’t have the means to provide for their children abandoned them near the portal stations in the hopes of someone picking them up. There was also a sense of finality in the act, because once the child disappeared through the portals, he or she would be almost impossible to find. This particular Gate had incoming and outgoing portals from different worlds and wasn’t exactly the most common location for such things, but it wouldn’t be the first time. “I’m afraid we can’t have you stay here any longer. This is not a place for children to spend time in.” The guard continued.

“I suppose you’re right. Besides, I’m getting hungry, and it seems whoever was supposed to be here couldn’t make it. Thank you for your patience.” Dee replied, and started moving off the dais.

She wasn’t lying when she said she was getting hungry. One of the problems with a growing body was the constant need for nutrition. Even if the guard did not come to shoo her off, she would have been forced to go and find some food quite soon anyway. The issue was, how was she going to find food? Mother might have packed some supplies inside the pendant, but as the pendant changed owners, it had turned dormant and become a tattoo invisible under the fur on her chest. Dee would not be able to access anything inside until the pendant came out of the dormant state, and who knew how long that would take.

She had gotten familiar with the concept of money, and realized the usefulness of such a thing to facilitate trade. However, she had never seen any and certainly didn’t have any either. As she walked the street, her observations told her that it was unlikely that any of the people selling food on various stalls along the street would simply give the products for free. She could try stealing some as her stealth skills would make that rather easy, but that seemed like a rather dangerous way to take her first steps in this new world. Making enemies on the first day seemed like a bad idea.

The next possibility was to either hunt, or to work for some food. The problem was that even though she might have the skills required to do some simple jobs, it was unlikely that anyone would believe her. Also, she needed the food now, not after she was done working. As she didn’t know anyone here, there was also the possibility of being taken advantage of. Dee was not naïve enough to think that people were above such things. That left hunting, but she had seen nothing but city around her from the dais. She had done some basic hunting in the pocket dimension mother had created to get used to her abilities, but there was no game inside the city.

Maybe she should try to find a higher place to see just how big this city was? The highest point she had seen from the dais was the pagoda in the nearby temple. She started to rapidly move towards the temple, darting around the people that barely even registered her passing. As she reached the park surrounding the temple, she noticed several monks going around tending to the plants. There was also a group of monks practicing some kind of movement on a large open ground between the buildings. Dee wasn’t sure if the movement was supposed to be some kind of synchronized dance or a form of unarmed combat. If it was the former, then it wasn’t all that pretty, and if it was the latter, then it wasn’t very effective. Maybe they were simply stretching and practicing balance? That seemed the most likely option.

As she got closer to the large pagoda, one of the monks spoke to her. “Greetings little sister. What brings you to our temple?” The monk said while giving a small polite bow.

Dee returned the bow before replying. “Greetings…brother? Would it be a problem if I took a look from the top of this building? I’m trying to find something.”

The monk gave a small smile. “As long as you don’t damage anything, then it is fine. Don’t enter any of the doors inside, as the people within don’t like being disturbed. Should I accompany you?”

“No need.” She hurriedly replied, and started scaling the outside of the pagoda, seemingly without any trouble.

“There are stairs inside.” The monk mumbled with a complicated look.

As she reached the very pinnacle of the pagoda, she started searching through her surroundings. The pagoda was not only tall, but also situated in an elevated place, so she had an unobstructed view all around her. And everywhere she looked, the only thing she could see was more city. Even while enhancing her eyes with her psionic power, the only thing different was a huge gray mass barely visible in the distance, in a direction she decided to call north for now. The mass could either be a mountain range growing straight out of the city, or it was the biggest wall she had ever even read about. She wasn’t exactly an expert, but were cities supposed to be this big?

She descended the pagoda even more confused than she had been before. As she landed next to the same monk as before, the monk could tell that Dee had not found what she was looking for. “Tell me about it little sister. Maybe I can help.”

“Well, I was looking for a way out of the city, but it seems this place is bigger than I thought.” Dee answered half in thought.

“A way out of…you’re a new arrival to the Pantheon aren’t you?” The monk asked in a sudden realization.

“What gave me a way?” Dee asked wryly.

“Well, if you had spent any real time here, you’d know there’s no way to see outside the city. We’re in the twelfth circle, rather close to the edge of the eleventh circle. If you started walking now, it would take you a thousand years to walk to the edge of the city. Though why you would want to exit the city is beyond me.” The monk explained with a smile.

“A thousand...how big is this place?!” Dee asked in shock.

“Well, I might as well tell you the basics since you’re a newcomer. The Pantheon of Heroes is a world as big as five normal stars. The world is divided into two cities, with one city covering a quarter of the planet’s surface, with a grand wilderness between the cities that are situated on the opposite sides of the world. You are now in the city of Day, while the other is the city of Night. Both cities are divided into thirteen circles, with the more powerful beings, societies, guilds and familia closer to the center.” The monk explained, giving Dee the basic rundown.

“So we’re rather close to the edge of the city, and it would still take me a thousand years to walk out?” Dee asked in shock. Now it started to dawn on her, why mother had said the angels wouldn’t be able to find her here.

“Assuming you kept up the pace and didn’t stop to sleep.” The monk smiled. “That said, I still have no idea why you would want to go into the wilderness.”

“I was thinking of hunting for food.” Dee mumbled still half in daze.

“Hunting? I wouldn’t recommend doing that in the grand wilderness. There are mostly just monsters of all sorts making their home in there. If you wanted to hunt, then I would recommend going to the southern section of the city. The southern section contains many forests and open areas with plentiful game animals. Our eastern section has something similar in the seventh circle, but I doubt you could kill anything there, as even the wild animals are rather powerful. There’s a chance to meet some game animals between the inhabited areas, but they are rather rarer than in other worlds.

Although I say that our city covers a quarter of the planet, my meaning of the word city might be a bit different to yours. Even though we call it a city, there are separate countries and even empires within the walls; mostly in places some race has claimed an area for their settlement. There’s even a large ocean in both cities. The reason you can’t see the edge of the inhabited area surrounding us is because the people crowd around the teleportation gates for obvious reasons. I suppose you could find some game if you get outside the inhabited area, but I doubt there is any in close proximity. Why do you want to go hunting though?” The monk asked in confusion.

“I’m hungry, and I have no money to buy food. Hunting is something I can do, so…” Dee’s voice trailed off.

“Oh right, I keep forgetting that you’re not from around here. Most stores take both money and power as payment. Even if you’re weak, you should be able to eke out enough power to not die of hunger.” The monk said as understanding dawned on him again.

“Power? How does that work as currency?” Dee asked, getting even more confused.

“Well, all work and items require either power or labor to produce. They require either physical work in the form of labor, or magical power to at least ease the work. Most crops are grown with the help of magic for example, and most items require power either to produce or to work better in the form of enchantments and so on. Even work that strictly speaking doesn’t require power is made easier by it. Many jobs are performed by magitech, and that requires power to run.

You can earn money with your work, or you can make your power do the work for you. A day’s worth of mana represents a day’s worth of work as well. As such, it can also work as a form of compensation. Nearly every store in Pantheon has ways to store power to be used later, so power can be used as currency. Most people prefer to use physical currency, but there are always people that would rather use power to pay instead.” The monk explained.

“Two questions. How is power as currency quantified? I mean people don’t have same amounts of power so there shouldn’t be a single amount for day’s worth of generated of mana. And what about people with no mana? I’m not a mage.” Dee asked, the explanation’s bringing even more questions.

“Power is power after it is stored, no matter the form. Mana, ki, I’ve even heard of priests using the power gained from their gods as currency. Once you send your mana or ki into the storage device, it transforms simply into power. As for quantifying it, there’s a standard measure in place. A normal human’s full amount of mana is valued equal to a day’s work. The storing devices themselves will announce the gold value of the deposited amount of power. As the production of those devices is heavily controlled and monitored by powers that be, the measures are the same.” The monk looked towards the funny moving monks in the yard and continued. “Now, I’d love to tell you more, but I have to get back to my training. Take care little sister.”

“Take care.” Dee mumbled back. There was something that confused her a bit about the explanation. The monk had mentioned something about taking a whole day to recharge their power, but wasn’t everyone’s ability to recover different? Dee herself only needed few hours to fully recharge even if her powers were completely drained. Would this not lead to a very unbalanced economy? Well, from everything she had read before, economy wasn’t something fair in the first place.

‘Time to find some food.’ She thought as she took a final look at the weird stretching exercise of the monks. It had started looking more aggressive now.

-----

As Dee walked down the street while munching on a fruit, she considered the price of the food she had eaten. She had eaten her fill and then some, and while the price had not been cheap in currency, it would only take her about thirty minutes to regain the lost power. Was this world going to be ok, or was she herself just weird? She would later on discover that the reason the economy of this world worked just fine was because the more powerful beings usually resided in the inner circles where the prices were adjusted to the average power level of that area, and the consumption of said power was much higher as the goods and devices consumed more power to produce and use.

She had been a little worried that her psionic power would not serve as payment, as the monk had not mentioned anything about psions, but that worry had been wasted. Power was indeed power no matter the form. Now with her food secured, what she needed now was lodgings and information. She could probably pay for lodging in a way similar to how she had paid for the food, assuming they would rent a room to a young child like her. The real problem was information. She had to decide what to do now, but she couldn’t make any informed decisions without gathering enough information. Plans would be cruddy plans if you had no information to base them on.

As she walked towards what she assumed to be an inn of sorts, she came across a group that seemed to be gambling in a game of some kind involving cards. She observed the game from behind the backs of the people for a while before coming to some conclusions. First of all, two of the people present were clearly losing, and more than a little desperate. Secondly, the other people gathered were working together to fleece the two. They were clearly cheating, but since they never cheated for themselves, but instead for the benefit of their comrades, it was a little harder to detect. A little harder, but not really that difficult.

Dee harrumphed. “This is such a scam. Well, if you don’t have the perception and knowledge to avoid it, you can only blame yourself.” Her voice was rather quiet, not really meant to be heard by anyone else, alas that was not to be.

One of the people being scammed as well as one of the people doing the scamming came from races with particularly good hearing. “What did you just say?!” One of the people being scammed suddenly asked with a raised voice.

“Get ‘er! Get the girl!” The scammer who had heard her words yelled. The surrounding people were part of a rather large gang operating in the area and they were used to following such commands. Several of the gathered people started moving towards Dee.

Dee could see the situation deteriorating quickly, and decided to quickly leave the scene. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t know the area and didn’t have the necessary experience to know not to run into the back alleys. She would’ve been better off trying to find people and slipping into a crowd, but she was thinking only of trying to use her abilities at concealment combined with her speed to run away, and didn’t consider the possibility of running into a dead-end after taking only two turns.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here? A nosy brat meddling in things that aren’t her concern. Now what shall we do about this?” A man’s voice came from behind her.

Dee let out a growl. This would not end well. She had gotten a look at the people pursuing her, and there were quite a few of them. Even if she was able to defeat any single person thanks to her psionic power, beating them all seemed rather unlikely, especially considering the difference in size and strength.

-----

A man with a human’s appearance dressed in black long coat and a rimmed black hat was returning from his business with the local gangs. His eyes were covered with round glasses that had such dark lenses that they could almost be called sunglasses. His forehead was covered in a frown as he cursed his bad luck. The business had been rather bad. The gangs were able to acquire many of the products that he required and didn’t dare to ask too high a price, but none of the products had been very high quality. They met the minimum specifications but only barely, and he didn’t have much hope for them.

His attention was drawn by a commotion coming from the back alleys, as he heard several screams of pain and some incoherent growls. Did the gangs corner some beast going berserk? Pure curiosity drew him towards the back alley, as he just wanted to get his mind off the business earlier and he also knew there was nothing in the twelfth circle that could hurt him. As he got a better look at what was going on, he could see that the walls of the alley were covered in blood and guts, and five gang members were pressing down something that looked like an adolescent Beowulf.

The Beowulf looked badly hurt, but was in much better condition than some of the gang members, whose blood and guts were now decorating the walls. That was about to change soon though. “Halt. Explain.” The man in black said in a calm voice that brook no resistance from the gang members.

The boss of this little group recognized the black clad man. “Lord Malik! This little ***** interfered in our business and we chased her to this alley to teach her a lesson about meddling. Who knew the little ***** would turn out to be a werewolf of all things. She used some strange power and managed to gut three of our brothers. We were about to return the favor. With her being able to regenerate and all, this might turn into a long and gruesome lesson.” The boss said grimly.

‘Weird power?’ Malik thought to himself and reached towards the wild creature with his mind. When he sensed psionic power, he immediately drew his mind back. ‘Can my luck really be this good?’ He thought happily.

“I will take her.” Malik said simply.

“Lord Malik, I know you buy children from us, but we have plenty of them gathered at the headquarters. I don’t know what you need them for, and frankly it’s better if we don’t, but you should not need this one. She killed three of our brothers and wounded others. We need to make an example of her.” The gang boss tried to convince Malik.

His attempts made it clear that the man was a low ranking boss at best; otherwise he wouldn’t be as foolish as try to argue with Malik. “You idiot. Quality is more important than quantity.” Malik waved his hand rendering the werewolf girl unconscious, and surrounding her with a magical shield that pushed the gang members away. “Not that it makes a difference.”

As he walked towards the mouth of the alley, with the magical cocoon surrounding the girl floating after him, the gang members were about to stop him until he spoke again. “Zabaniya. Kill everyone here, and everyone that might have seen, heard or detected any of what happened here. No one is to know of her existence.”

After he finished, several individuals covered in black clothes appeared seemingly from nowhere, and started their grim work.

As he walked away after stowing the cocoon in his dimensional bracelet, Malik gave a wide smile. ‘Master Sabbah should be pleased with my little gift. She’s exactly what master has been looking for.’

A very proper looking gentleman was standing before a pair of ornamental doors. He spent a moment to gather his thoughts and wits, while combing his hand through his dark hair before announcing his presence with a soft knock. There was no answer but the door opened by itself, letting the man inside. The room was decorated with a lot of expensive and unique art, while most of the floors were covered in pillows used for sitting. Most of the furniture was intricately carved noble wood. After verifying the position of the master of the room, he went on one knee, with his eyes closed, waiting for his master to acknowledge his presence.

After few minutes his master’s deep voice could be heard. “Rise Asahim, and state your business.”

Asahim rose and took a look at his master Hassan-i-Sabbah. Master was playing a game of Qadesh, while on the other side of the game board was an opponent that could only be described as an indistinct gathering of air. Asahim wasn’t sure if the opponent was an air elemental, or if the opponent was simply using magic to keep his identity a secret. The latter one would be a useless effort against the master’s skill of course. Master was just about to take his turn and Asahim didn’t want to interrupt, but he couldn’t delay either.

“Master, Lord Malik has sent word. He has found someone that matches your specifications.” Asahim said in a quiet voice.

Asahim was shocked to see his master’s hand freeze in the air for a moment, giving an almost imperceptible shudder that could’ve been from excitement. Master finished placing his piece on the board, and gave a small wave with his hand, dismissing the indistinct form of his opponent. This again shocked Asahim. The news was important enough to make master interrupt his game?

“Have you confirmed this?” Master asked now looking straight at Asahim.

“To the best of my ability.” He replied, which caused a raised eye-brow from master, prompting him to continue.

“The specifications mentioned by master are all present, but there are…discrepancies.” He hurried to explain.

“Elaborate.” Master said simply.

“The individual in question is less than five years old, exceeding the boundaries set by master. She is a psion as specified and has high level regenerative abilities just as specified, due to her heritage as a Beowulf.” Asahim started listing things off.

“A Beowulf? Excellent, that will fit our purposes perfectly. Their regenerative abilities are among the best, losing only to trolls and elementals that have access to concentrated mass of their own element to repair themselves. The specific type of regeneration also makes the individual in question easier to work on. You mentioned discrepancies?” The master asked, prompting Asahim to continue.

“Indeed, this is where it gets a little weird. Despite being so young, the child seems to already have psionic power matching a class 2 psion. Someone has definitely trained her foundations well, as she seems to be able to regenerate her pool of power in a matter of hours, which makes her rank only barely below master on that front. Her heritage beyond being a Beowulf is unclear and I was unable to fully figure it out. Her base race seems to be a mix formed mostly of a Rakshasa Rani while she also has a strong influence of a kitsune. There also seem to be other things mixed in that are still dormant.” Asahim explained, his voice betraying some uncertainty.

Master Sabbah thought for a while, obviously trying to consider all possibilities. “So. We have found a project that someone else has already started. The training suggests a good master, who might or might not be looking for her. Luckily the one responsible for creating her is most likely not going to come looking after her.”

“Master?” Asahim inquired with slight confusion.

“The combination of races suggests a demonic origin, as all the races mentioned so far are ones that are counted among the demonic races. I think we have stumbled upon one of the abandoned projects of the now destroyed thirteen hells. The timing fits relatively well too. I think the purge might have set her loose, and her master picked her up somewhere and brought her here to keep her out of the hands of Paradisia. How they got separated again is a mystery, but I don’t think it will cause us problems. I assume Malik made sure no one knows that we have her?” The master asked an obvious question, and didn’t really expect an answer. Lord Malik was one of the smarter underlings they had.

The master continued. “Have Malik watch over her, and work as her handler. We’ll start working on her immediately. This might work even better than I had hoped for. Not only does she meet my specifications, she exceeds them and most likely by a lot.”

Asahim had rarely seen his master smile like this. The only times he’d seen that smile before was when one of masters enemies fell under his blade. “Master, can I ask a question?”

“With news like this, how could I not share some of the happiness? Speak.” The master replied almost jovially.

“Why someone like her?” The Zabaniya were the most notorious and effective group of assassins in the entirety of Pantheon. They often trained and used child assassins, but master’s desire to find someone like the specimen they had now found went beyond that. He wasn’t interested in normal child operatives since their effectiveness was limited, but had spent a lot of time both searching and preparing for a specimen like this.

“I assume I don’t need to explain the psion part?” Master asked a little rhetorically.

“I can think of two obvious reasons. Firstly their ability to avoid detection and secondly their improved intelligence.” Asahim answered immediately.

“As usual, you are half correct but also half wrong. Not that I’m too surprised since the amount of proper psions is so small, so your mistake is understandable. Psions are great for avoiding detection, but that’s only part of it. What makes their powers so useful is their versatility. They can have the close combat prowess of warriors and can rain death from afar well enough to rival mages. Of course such versatility has its limits. Mages for example are able to do much more than just throw bigger and bigger fireballs. Mages can create things than can last for millennia, while you will not see a psion do anything like that. Of course, the psions have their own advantages, but I digress.

As for improved intelligence you’re not wrong but you’re missing something. The mind of a psion works faster than others and they have a better memory, but that’s only as useful as the person using that ability. That doesn’t mean they can make the right decisions. That is something that comes with experience, age and instinct. What makes them useful is their ability to learn quickly. It might take you years to absorb the necessary knowledge to make good decision, while it would take days or weeks for them.

But you’re not entirely wrong either. Their versatile toolkits and quick minds are what make them dangerous in our line of work, when combined with their ability avoid most detection. How about the part about regenerative abilities? Have you figured that part out yet?” Master asked, ending his little lecture. He could get a little heated at times something caught his attention. On the plus side, this also drove him into perfecting whatever caught his eye.

Asahim gave a small but nasty smile. “I’m guessing were going to rebuild her.”

“Almost right. We aren’t going to just rebuild her; we’re going to upgrade her. We’re going to forge her into our little masterpiece. We’re going to take up the work someone has already started and improve upon it, forging her into a blade we can point at enemies that we normally couldn’t touch. I am too obvious of a blade myself, so instead we’re going to forge a hidden weapon that we can pull out when necessary, and deny even having afterwards. And of course we wanted a child so we can start the forging process early.” Master replied.

Asahim was already considering all the plans he had seen master make, and could already see the direction this was going. His smile widened a little. He did not envy the future that little child had waiting for her.

----------

Haydee watched from her cell as another kid was taken out to be disposed of. This one was clearly still alive, but as often happened here, the child had given up. The child’s vacant eyes stared unfocused at the walls. It was clear that there was nothing going on behind those eyes anymore. Judging by the appearance, this one was a male human, but sometimes it was hard to tell in this place. It was often more dangerous to be female in this place, so some changed their looks and behavior to appear male.

On rare occasion there was a master or a guard that took a fancy to kids. It was not very common but it happened. It was hard to avoid completely in a facility like this, which was filled with children of various races in training. The place was also filled with people of dubious moral character. Girls were in more danger than boys, but not by much. There were sickos who diddled both boys and girls, as well as those who simply preferred boys. None of those types lasted very long though.

Oh, the other guards and masters wouldn’t do anything; they knew they didn’t have to. When you train children in the arts of dealing death, diddling them was bound to end badly sooner or later. That lead to the second way kids broke in this place. Someone pushed them too far and snap! A burst of rage ending in bloodshed. Even the strongest masters were vulnerable in situations like that, and the kids were taught to play dirty.

Interestingly, the masters and guards didn’t even punish the kids that managed to kill such people, provided that those kids didn’t go on a rampage afterwards. Dee’s theory on the thoughts of the other masters was that if a master got sloppy enough to be killed by one of the kids, then that master deserved to die and the other masters would simply enjoy it. It resulted in an instant promotion to everyone below that person and one potential threat gone for everyone above him.

In general the masters didn’t punish you for killing their own. This was a school for assassins after all and killing one of the masters showed your ability. They did however punish you for getting caught, mostly because that result would be the same on real jobs as well. Simply killing your target was not enough, it was perhaps even more important to get away without being discovered. Of course, all that didn’t do much for the kids that the bastard had diddled before one finally snapped.

Dee considered herself lucky in that respect. Masters and guards into kids were rare enough, but someone who was into females and whatever furry being Dee was supposed to be, at the same time? That’s like finding a needle in a very nasty pile of scum. There had been one that had tried to approach Dee, but that person changed his mind very fast after she showed a snout full of very sharp teeth and hands with claws that would make birds of prey jealous, as well as the willingness to use them.

That master had lasted only a week in this place. Apparently he had wide tastes, but wasn’t very good at discerning his targets. The kids weren’t the only ones that had a high death toll in this place. Only the strong would surface from this nest of vipers and became proper members of the assassin order. Even the masters of this place were considered to be acolytes. Good enough to teach and do missions in the lesser circles, but not good enough to deserve a full place in the order.

Despite her luck with the scum of this place, Dee’s luck was not as strong in other places. She had been in this hellhole for about five years now, and most of that time was spent in excruciating pain. The odd part was that none of the other kids went through quite the same treatment, though Dee knew the reason for that. At least one of the reasons. Unlike her, the others didn’t have her regenerative abilities. Still, someone really seemed to have a bone to pick with her.

The training was the easy part. She was already skilled with chemicals thanks to observing mother for so long, which mostly excused her from lessons involving alchemy, although she still learned some things. Unsurprisingly the alchemy lessons focused on poisons. She also knew better ways of cultivating her power, although her insistence on building her strength slowly and steadily earned her several beatings and even floggings. She was also skilled in stealth and camouflage. Surprisingly the masters didn’t have too many complaints on that department, mostly just being content at teaching some little tricks to blend in and to avoid certain mistakes that usually required experience to weed out.

The hardest part of the training, and what most often left her bruised and bleeding, was the weapons training and unarmed combat training. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a quick study, she could beat most of the masters at this point actually, it was that whenever she reached a level that they required of her, they raised the stakes and made things even harder. “Oh you can beat a master in unarmed combat? Well now you get to fight two, and still return bloody. Oh you can beat two with daggers? Well congratulations, now you get to fight four unarmed.” and so on. She had once considered not doing her best since she wound up beaten black and blue anyway, but the look on the master’s face had made it obvious that the result would be even worse.

The masters were big believers in beating the lessons into their students. They showed how to do something and then forced you to use it in a real combat situation. If you didn’t learn that parry or that method of deflecting with that precise angle immediately, you got hit by an attack that could have been parried or deflected with the move shown before. And then you got hit again, and again, and again. You either learned, or you got carried back to your bunk beaten black and blue. Or you did learn and got beaten anyway for being too slow.

Most kids couldn’t handle it and became apathetic like the kid that got carried away just now. Then they got discarded. It had occurred to Dee to also give up and just lie down and die, but that just wasn’t in her nature. Eventually there would be an opportunity to get out of all this. Also the beatings didn’t so much make her despair as they made her angry and vengeful. And she did get some small measure of revenge against some of the masters on occasion, when they underestimated her. She had killed her fair share of the masters, disguising them as training accidents.

Dee learned fast, but unlike the others, it wasn’t enough that she learned the move. She also had to be able to adapt the move into different situations, and come up with variations by herself to defend against new attacks. That was too much for her as well. But she did learn eventually, and next time she needed the extra variations, she had already figured them out while regenerating. Or she got pummeled again. Both happened just as often, but every time she did eventually get there, and she never made the same mistake twice. The masters may have been brutal but they were very effective.

The combat training wasn’t the worst part though. All the children got beaten bloody, although her case was even more intense. What made things really hard was the part that was reserved just for her alone. It seemed the scientists and researchers had set their eyes on Dee in particular. Almost immediately after she had been brought here, they had started making changes to her body, both surgically and magically or often at the same time. That wasn’t the bad part. Even Dee could tell that the changes were generally positive, although the exact extent of the changes was still a mystery to her. No, the problem was that she had to be awake and conscious during the process.

The reason they operated on her specifically, was because healing magic would return things back to how they were before, removing most of the work done by the researchers. The explanation for that was that you couldn’t really aim healing magic precisely enough, unless the healer was a real expert beyond the rejects found here. If healing magic was capable of fixing the person, it was usually a sort of an all or nothing deal. So if someone were to cut you open and carve magical runes on your ribs, the symbols would be considered an anomaly and be healed as well. Regeneration of her Beowulf heritage worked similar, except it was even more aggressive. However, it could be controlled to an extent. The only way to do that was when one consciously suppressed that portion of the regeneration, and you had to be fully aware and awake to do that.

After the first time an operation had failed, the man leading the whole effort, a guy the others called Lord Malik, had told Dee that they would simply repeat the process until it worked, so she better get it under control unless she wanted it to continue forever. The thought of going through such pain without anything to alleviate it was too much for Dee, and she had almost given up, driven insane by the pain. Even now the question of her sanity was open to some interpretation. She thought she was relatively sane, but then again so did every other person who lost their sanity, right?

Luckily, during the second operation she stumbled on a solution. Psions had the ability to separate their conscious mind from their bodies, leaving only the animal part behind. She didn’t really feel the pain, she was simply aware of it. It was like she only kept a toe of her consciousness within her body while the rest of her observed from the outside. The animal part of her still screamed and attempted to trash out of the restraints, but that was partially an act. She needed some of the pain to trigger the transformation to her werewolf form and thus boost her regeneration, because she couldn’t control the transformation herself. Thus she had to feel at least a small portion of the pain.

She also had to suffer a little of it because that was required to control the regeneration in order to avoid undoing the work the researchers and scientists did. The order was also big on causing pain to their acolytes. According to them, the acolytes had to learn to ignore all pain in case they were ever captured and interrogated. So the animal part of her screamed to keep up the act even if her conscious mind calmly observed the process. On the plus side, that saved her from the training against interrogations since they were already causing her more pain than any interrogator would.

The operations went on for about four and a half years, though there were some significant stretches of time between operations as they let the previous changes settle in while they planned for the next one. It had become obvious to Dee that whoever was planning these operations was playing the long game. They exchanged immediate gains for the good of the long term result, as most of the changes were things that would only show their full effect with time, instead of a boost of power right now.

While the body of a psion could not gather mana or ki, that didn’t mean it couldn’t utilize either. Most of the bones in her body were now decorated with elaborate magical runes that absorbed minute traces of power from the surroundings and used it to strengthen those bones. The important words were minute amounts and used. If the power gathered was too much, then that gathering of power would make her ability to avoid spells that detect mana and magic useless.

For the same reason the power was used right away to strengthen her, instead of storing it. Stored mana could be detected, but bones that had been reinforced with the help of mana could not because they weren’t actually magical. They were still just bones, even if in time they would grow in sturdiness to rival dragons. In a similar fashion, those same runes gathered ki and used that to reinforce her organs and muscles.

An added benefit was that because her body stored neither of those energies, she could use her psionic powers to strengthen herself normally, as any psion could. That was one of the only abilities she had learned as a psion. This added effect was mostly thanks to the powers being complementary instead of trying to do the same thing. The changes made by the operations rebuilt her, while her psionic power empowered her. At least that was the theory. She might have a powerful body in a dozen to a hundred years, but for now she wasn’t that different from the other children.

The one operation she hated the most was the one done to improve her fur and skin. The bastards pretending to be scientists mixed the blood of various beings that had fur strong enough to rival darksteel and had her submerge in the combined fluid. One of the mages among them would use magic to make sure she wouldn’t drown in the liquid as she screamed. As for the reason for the screaming, to get the best effect out of the liquid, it had to be heated to a point of boiling.

The mess was also quite stunning afterwards as she flailed in desperation. It took Dee days to get all the blood out of her fur, despite the fact that one of the things the organization didn’t skimp on was cleanliness. Cleanliness kept your body odor under control, and stopped the spread of diseases. The masters had no problem beating the kids to death but losing them to disease was a waste of resources and everyone’s time. It might also have something to do with the fact that the masters had very sharp sense of smell, as that was important for an assassin.

The end results of the experiments on her fur were interesting though. The fur didn’t turn rough or coarse; in fact it was almost the opposite. Her fur had never been as soft and silky smooth as this, which would make many noble demi-humans and werebeasts jealous. The experiments weren’t for cosmetic effect though. The real effect came out as she infused her fur with her psionic power.

With the power consumption being a bit too much for her current level, it was more effective to only enhance the point of impact just before she got hit. That problem would lessen in the future because her powers would increase while the consumption would not. It wasn’t exactly an equal to plate armor, but that too would improve with time. As with many of the changes, it was something with great potential but wouldn’t do much if she didn’t utilize it correctly. So it would be up to her how useful the end result would actually be, as the effects grew along with her own powers.

They also worked on her claws and teeth, although the assumption would be that she would use either a weapon or poison in the future. You should always be prepared to fight unarmed, even though an assassin who was unarmed was a failed assassin. You always had something in store and hidden for surprising situations, or you used items in the surroundings as a weapon. A good assassin would be able to turn everyday items into weapons. A really good assassin wouldn’t need to. Dee’s claws and teeth were a good enough so that she would never truly be unarmed.

The easiest part of the whole process were the drugs and chemicals. The researchers liked to feed several kinds of rather powerful drugs to the kids to speed up their development and increase their power. Many of these drugs were rather dangerous, but they were effective. These weren’t the types of drugs that altered the users mind, but the type that increased growth and development or other such positive effects.

Of course they usually also had negative effects that damaged the user’s body, but Dee’s regenerative abilities countered those. As a result, the scientists could use even more dangerous pills and chemicals and those sometimes knocked her out for days, or left her foaming at the mouth. The good side was that she was left alone during those times. The downside was that most of the positive effects were countered as well because she couldn’t stop her regeneration from erasing the effects.

As she pondered about the past, Dee suddenly realized that it was about time Malik had another mission for her. Even before the operations had been finished, Malik had been assigning her on missions whenever she wasn’t too bloody and twitching in pain to move, or training with the various masters gathered here. For about the last six months, the operations had stopped and her training was winding down. At least the training given by other masters besides Malik. It was rather embarrassing for the masters to be trashed by a nine-year-old, and the masters besides Malik were getting trashed most of the time now.

Malik himself never fought Dee. Instead he brought her to the full members of Zabaniya, and had her fight them instead, offering advice and corrections from the side whenever she eventually got beaten to a pulp. The worst part was that it wasn’t that she didn’t have the skill. She was just too far behind physically when fighting against fully grown opponents that were stronger, faster and had more experience. The point though was to learn how to fight against opponents superior to herself. She was taught how to gain victory from the jaws of a hopeless situation, to use her head and to use clever strategy. Against more experienced foes however, that was easier said than done.

She spent much of her time on missions now, and the portion of the time spent on them was increasing. At first, this was another area where she had a lot to learn from Malik who worked as her handler, but here she proved the extent of her devious mind. Soon Malik only asked for reports and provided alternatives that Dee might not have considered. Naturally as the organization was focused on assassinations, that was also the main focus of her missions. There were some instances of information gathering for other active members, but most of the time when she was sent out, someone ended up dead.

During her time being held by the Zabaniya, she had taken the life of over hundred targets. She had lost the exact count a long time ago, so it might be a closer to two hundred by now. Most of them were cases of assassinating a single person, but sometimes the targets were given in groups. At first the tally included some guards and the occasional family member, but nowadays Dee prided herself in her ability to take out her targets and no one else.

Sometimes she felt that she had lost something important as she no longer felt sorrow while taking the life of another person, but at the same time she felt that there should be more to it. Some of it was because she could rationalize things to herself. Many of the targets, though not all, were not good people. Most of them deserved to die. You have to really earn the hatred of someone to force them to seek out the services of Zabaniya, which didn’t come cheap. This usually meant that you were a very bad person, but sometimes it also meant that you were a person of principle that made a stand against the wrong people. Dee also rationalized that if it wasn’t her, then it would simply mean that someone else would be sent, and that someone might not make it as painless and might target their family as well.

That was only a part of it though. Some of it must have been her nature as a demon. Despite years spent being raised by Selvaria, she was not at her very core a good person. Perhaps not an evil one, despite all that she had done in the order, but not a good one either. Demons weren’t all bad, and many races of demons were as normal as any other humanoids, a mix of good and bad. However, the races making up Dee’s heritage were not among those demons. Most members of the races that were used to create her had a penchant for violence and death. Not all of them of course, no race is entirely evil, but a majority of them.

There was also a certain numbing effect in seeing that much death and suffering. Not just those that she caused, but also the death and suffering of the other children in the order. The order also had their ways of encouraging this numbing. Only the strong ones would survive seeing their compatriots and friends die around them. They would pit the children against each other in a fight to the death. Usually the first time you killed someone was the hardest, but the order forced the issue when two kids entered the ring, and only one of them walked out, now having performed the first difficult kill. If the kids refused to do it, both of them were killed. As one could imagine, the order went through a lot of kids, but with a planet and a pair of cities this huge, there was no shortage of ‘products’.

For Dee, this first kill had actually been one of the easiest. She suspected that it wasn’t an accident that her opponent had been an Archon, a race of lesser wingless angels. Normally people would have trouble killing angels and their sub races, but for Dee it was all too easy. All she had to do was to remember the destroyed village where Selvaria had found her as a baby. The order usually also made sure that the first few mission targets were palatable. No innocents or children, just the scum of the Pantheon. Child assassins weren’t very good at taking out high value targets anyway. That would come later if they survived long enough.

Although she didn’t feel much when taking the life of another anymore, that didn’t mean she was emotionless. One of the worst parts of being among the Zabaniya was the loneliness. There was no point in making friends with the children because they would very soon either die or betray you. The masters were also out of the questions as they would take that as a sign of weakness. Spending five years without meaningful friendly contact was excruciatingly painful for Dee. On the nights she wasn’t either unconscious or in too much pain to think, she often silently cried herself to sleep while remembering the soft touch of Selvaria and the kind words of the pendant.

A telltale clack of shoes on the stone floor took Dee out of her thoughts again. It was easy to recognize the owner of these steps. The weight, pace and confident attitude matched Malik. No one else could be as carefree in this den of murderers, where even a child could take your life. The familiar form of the black dressed man appeared at the door. “Time to work Wraith. I think you’ll like this one.”

Oh right, the bastards had given her a new name. You left your old name and identity behind when coming to this place. You earned a new name with your actions. Wraith was the name given to her, due to her ability to slip into anywhere she chose, and only kill the designated target and no one else. An arbiter of death that no walls could stop.

They had tried Furball, but four dead trainers, two dead scientists and one dead full rank Zabaniya had convinced them to come up with something better. Malik had been rather amused when the enraged Dee had torn the Zabaniya to pieces with a surprise attack after their usual training session had ended and the man’s guard was down. Apparently her handler seeing the whole thing didn’t count as getting caught for the purposes of punishment.

The names were something that could not be revealed even under torture. As the enemies of Zabaniya would really like to get their hands on certain people to exact revenge, the order did something that Dee wasn’t able to recognize when the names were officially given. It had to be a spell of some kind, but Dee couldn’t tell any details. In any case, none of the members were able to reveal the person behind any of the names even if they wanted to. And they didn’t want to because they knew the Zabaniya would hunt them down and kill them slowly if they did.

‘Time to reap another life.’ Dee thought glumly.