Bitter reality

“Let me lay it out for you. Your job is helping us slip through and handle close-quarters work if it comes to that. Open combat — I’d say we’re better suited for that than you are.” One of the five spoke, a small group that read as spies and infiltrators by trade. Their leader was a man somewhere in his thirties, carrying an easy, almost warm authority.

“Understood. I’ll work the contract as written.” Piccaron’s answer was short.

The contract had them slipping into a military outpost belonging to the Kingdom of Elmar. The request came from the nation of Hanger — a country from an entirely different region than the one surrounding Baum Goldenir. The territories near the guild fell under what was known as Bleu Weiss. Hanger’s region shared its designation with the Kingdom of Stella: Bleu Gelb. Working a contract that could be read as a betrayal of his own region didn’t trouble Piccaron in the slightest. A contract was a contract.

They slipped out from the hills and folded into the night’s shadow. Stealth work, careful and deliberate — footsteps softened to nothing, small blades doing quiet work across exposed throats. Piccaron proved himself skilled at this particular trade.

“You’re good at this, friend. How many throats have you actually cut?” The leader — Range, by name — asked it almost casually. The other four went by numbers instead of names, two through five.

“Couldn’t tell you. More than you, probably.” Piccaron’s tone carried something almost childish in its lightness.

They reached the first outpost and put every guard inside down without incident. A scroll turned up among the wreckage, detailing troop movements — written plainly, legibly, no coded cipher at all. That struck Piccaron as strange; Elmar’s scrolls usually required specific magical technique just to read.

“Roughly ten thousand troops moving toward the Stella border and the smaller kingdoms surrounding it,” the intel read.

“Starting to make a real move on other regions, are they.” Range’s voice carried quiet interest.

They pushed on to the next outpost. Clearing it proved no harder than the first.

“Looks like Timurr’s sending five thousand men to help Elmar take Stella.”

By the time they reached the third outpost, Piccaron’s instincts had started to itch.

“This is too easy.” He glanced at Range. “What’s your read on it?”

“Could be. Or maybe my strategy just caught them flat-footed while they were weak.” Range shrugged it off. “Either way, this intel’s worth its weight in gold. Doesn’t it bother you at all, working against your own region?”

“We don’t belong to anyone.” Piccaron’s answer was flat. “Whichever kingdom pays for the request, if we can do it, we do it.”

They reached the third outpost, a full kilometer from the last. Something about the layout snagged in Piccaron’s mind — the terrain, the positioning, all of it carrying a familiarity he couldn’t place. He turned the feeling over and over, and a colder thought followed close behind it: being here as support, not as lead, had dulled the sharpness he usually kept for exactly this kind of danger. He hated himself a little for that. The cold wind did nothing to settle the unease now lodged deep in his chest.

“Development on replicating the fae-forged blade has failed. They were unable to locate the primary material.” The moment his eyes caught that line, something in him went red. He turned on the outpost guard without mercy, fists landing with a savagery that left Hanger’s spy team staring in confusion.

“Bastards. This is a trap.” Piccaron’s voice had gone sharp with anger. “Who’s behind this?”

“What trap?” Range’s panic was immediate.

“All of this intel is fabricated. Your source was compromised. This entire setup—“ Piccaron didn’t finish.

“That’s impossible. Our intel has never been wrong. What the hell is this—“ The five of them went rigid with shock.

“A scheme like this — Elmar’s forces—“ Piccaron started.

“Took you long enough to catch on, little bird from Baum. Ha.” The guard, his face a ruin from Piccaron’s fists, managed a broken laugh.

Piccaron’s patience snapped. He drove a fist into the man hard enough to silence him.

“Maybe there’s a code buried in it. Maybe there’s still something worth pulling from that first scroll.” Range’s mind was already working the angle.

“Fine. Do whatever you want with it. But remember — I take no responsibility for what happens next. My contract’s nearly finished. Let’s move.”

Piccaron pushed the pace now, breath coming ragged, and the thing he’d been dreading arrived exactly on schedule. Enemy soldiers poured in from every direction. He and Hanger’s team broke for another route, and running the terrain map through his mind, he angled their escape toward a small stretch of open ground.

“You lot were so confident about open combat.” His voice came out bitter.

The path he’d chosen turned out to be a grave someone had already dug for them.

This ambush — someone senior planned this. A commander, maybe a general. It’s too clean. Barely a gap in it anywhere. Someone predicted exactly how Hanger’s team would move, and exactly how I would. Who is this? The thought ran cold through him, sweat already soaking through his clothes.

“You led us straight into this. Damn you.” Range’s voice cracked with fury.

The ambushing force had mages among them — enough to unleash elemental magic on a massive scale, aimed squarely at Piccaron and the Hanger team.

“Damn it. No choice, then.” Piccaron raised his hand.

The instant the elemental spell tore loose and came screaming toward them, Piccaron drove himself into it — not into the mages casting it, but into the spell itself, the raw construct of magic now hurtling through the air. He seized it from the inside, wrenched its shape around, and sent it back the way it came, as if the spell itself had simply changed its mind about who its master was.

“This—“ Range stared, stunned.

The redirected elemental attack tore through the ambushers’ own ranks, buying Piccaron and the Hanger team the opening they needed to run.

“You’ve all seen what I can do now.” Piccaron’s voice cut clean and sharp. “By rights I should kill every one of you for it. But this damned contract—“ He shook his head. “Forget it. If you’ve got any sense of gratitude left in you, keep this secret buried. I could kill you all just as easily as I saved you.”

Piccaron returned to Marauder looking hollowed out. He drank his cold beer in long, slow pulls, trying to fill something that wouldn’t fill. Right now he felt entirely empty.

“And you didn’t kill them?” Marauder’s voice climbed sharp.

“The contract required them to leave Elmar alive. I could’ve hunted them down after.” Piccaron kept his head lowered.

“To hell with the contract. You know the rule. Whenever you use that ability, every witness needs to be eliminated where possible. That’s exactly why you’re supposed to have one of our mages with you every time — to cover for it.” Marauder’s voice cracked like a whip.

“I’m sorry.” Piccaron stared into the bottom of his empty glass.

A man stepped into a well-kept office, offering a sharp salute to the figure seated across from him. The seated man studied the report in his hands, a slow smile spreading.

“Good work.” The man was General Hennesy, of the Kingdom of Elmar.

“I saw it myself, General.” The messenger’s voice carried something close to reverence. “The magic-nullifying ability resembles the ancient bloodline magic of the Luna Pienna royal family. But this — this was something else. He didn’t touch the caster at all. He reached directly into the spell itself, mid-flight, and turned it against its own maker.”

“Injection.” Hennesy finished the thought for him. “Like a virus — not attacking the host, but hijacking whatever the host produces. No mana fluctuation, no leakage detected anywhere in his own body, because the infection never touches him. He can’t cast magic of his own. But give him someone else’s spell already loose in the world, and he can seize it, rewrite it, turn it into his weapon instead.” Hennesy paused, something almost fond crossing his face. “A man like that is a natural predator to every mage alive — provided the mage has already cast something for him to take.”

“No matter.” His smile deepened. “I can work with that. Piccaron… little bird. We’ll be meeting soon enough.”

Piccaron lay flat on his bed, body drained of everything, and this time fresh blood ran from his nose.

It’s been a while since I used it on this scale — this massively. God, it hurts, like the virus is waking back up inside me, turning against my own body’s functions. That’s the same reason healing magic never works on me. The rejection alone does more damage than whatever wound I started with.

He turned the thought over slowly, staring at the ceiling.

He knew he couldn’t keep leaning on potions either — not without consequence. Enough of them, and his body’s own metabolism would start to buckle under the strain. This time, he’d need to fight smarter. Not just throw himself into the open and let chance decide the outcome, the way he always had before.