Help
A knock on the door shook Fate out of his reading-induced imagination. Marking his page and closing the book, he opened the door to see Venden Grendeven on the other side, hair as well-kempt and clothes as devoid of wrinkles as you'd expect from a nobleman.
At a glance, he appeared the same as always. But the shifty look in his green eyes as he scanned Fate's room, the unhealthy sheen of his skin, and the small, almost unnoticeable splotch of blood on his robes just above the hip was enough to put Fate on guard.
Even as Fate watched, the bloodstain shrank. The robes' magical cleaning abilities were nothing if not efficient.
"What is it?" he asked the noble. "Your family send that assassin yet?"
"We should talk inside," Venden said quietly, entering the room of his own accord and shutting the door.
He turned to Fate, glancing at the enchanted window before his eyes landed on him. "Yes, they sent someone after me. As soon as I stepped foot outside of the Academy gates, an arrow came from the rooftops.
"My Skill saved me from the worst of it, but I feel… something in my bloodstream. The arrowhead was poisoned."
Venden Grendeven's Skill was one Fate had had quite a lot of trouble with last week. The young ex-noble could see a few seconds into the future, which would help with sneak attacks.
"Then go to the nurse," Fate said. "I don't have anything here to help you."
"I can't!" Venden exclaimed. "Look at the arrow!"
Flipping his hand over, an arrow appeared on his palm. From tip to feathered fletching, everything was a stark black, so black as to appear two-dimensional. The arrow was like a piece of space plucked from the sky and given shape.
The tip glowed softly with a sickly green light, the touch of Mana faintly felt within the depths of the arrow. This Mana was dwindling as Fate examined it, the tip dimming along with it.
"What am I looking at?" Fate asked.
"This," Venden said seriously, "is the arrow of the Black Dragon."
"Which is…?"
"The Black Dragon?" Venden asked incredulously. "The only organization that has survived the Empress' constant attempts to destroy them? A group of people so good at their jobs that they have a 100% success rate? You don't know them?"
"I'm not someone that can just casually order a murder," Fate replied. "In case you haven't noticed, compared to nobles I'm piss-poor. And you still haven't explained why you can't go to the nurse."
"She won't be able to do anything. The Mana within this arrow is of the Master Stage, and she's barely an Adept."
"And I'm just a Journeyman," Fate stated. "What am I supposed to do?"
"I need you to go into town and get a cure for this poison. We don't have long, this arrow is designed to fade away after a set amount of time. Once it does, the poison in my veins will take full effect and I'll be dead in minutes.
"I can't go or they'll just kill me then and there."
"Why don't they enchant it to disappear as soon as it nicks you?" Fate asked. Why give your target a chance to survive?
"The arrow is just a warning," Venden explained. "To let me know that they're after me, and they won't stop until I'm dead.
"They like to leave these things behind to throw their marks into a panic and make things more interesting, but I refuse to do that. And don't ask me to request help from the Academy; their only business is what occurs on campus or between students."
Fate scratched his neck. "It's pretty late. I doubt anyone's open right now."
"There is one place," Venden said, staring at Fate's enchanted window. It reflected the gloomy night outside, the clouds in the sky thick and heavy with rain that would fall soon. "She should be up right now, worshipping her ancestors. Whether she'll help or not is hard to tell, but it's the only chance I have."
Fate could hardly hear himself think over the roaring of water smacking into the concrete around him.
The rain was coming down hard, so strong that Fate could only see a few feet ahead of him. With every step, he splashed water into his boots and left an awful squelching feeling in his socks, inaudible over the storm around him.
He plodded through the dark alley with a thin barrier of Mana above his head, shielding himself from the downpour. Water vanished around him shortly after hitting the ground, the city's Imprints working overtime to stop a flood.
But even the industrial-strength Imprints left an inch of water over everything, making Fate's task all the harder for it.
He arrived at his destination, a discrete wooden door at the end of an alley of other, similar doors. Trash was piled up next to each door, but this one had the most, a pile as tall as Fate's knee that stunk horribly even through the cleansing rain.
A nail was embedded into the door at head height, from which hung a small metal charm of a thin, twisted rectangle with a round hole in the center, which is where the string looped through to hold it aloft.
It was a deep forest green with edges painted a woody brown, and a faint, soothing hum came from it that Fate could hear even over the pouring rain. It was a gentle, disarming sound that calmed one's mind and made one appreciate the beauty of one's surroundings.
Fate rapped on the door, repeating the process after ten seconds of no response.
"Go away!" a high-pitched, throaty voice yelled through the door.
"Miss Jkn-ala, I require your assistance!" Fate replied, shouting to be heard over the rain and through the door.
"Too bad! You humans only know how to take, and I'm done giving!"
"I can pay you for your services!" Fate told her.
Silence, then the door opened just as Fate was about to knock again.
A waist-high fregog with blue skin appeared, blue eyes with horizontal, rectangular slit pupils looking behind him before glaring up at Fate. Grabbing him by the waist of his robes, she dragged him inside and slammed the door shut behind the two.