"So, where is this tele—"
The words died in my mouth as I felt a whisper of Cursed Energy.
I had just stepped into the penthouse Alex, Shelim, and I rented in Miami as our temporary base. The place was quiet in that sterile, expensive way that luxury apartments always seemed to be. I was not a fan of the white countertops and the overwhelming beige aesthetic, but it was leagues better than anywhere I had lived before, so I held my tongue.
The air felt wrong.
Only members of our little partnership were supposed to have keys to the place, which was why the sorcerer's presence alarmed me so much.
The signature was buried beneath a dense press of talismans designed to extinguish their presence, but I recognized the technique. I had done a bit of cloaking myself.
For a brief moment, I entertained the idea that Shelim was trying to bait me into another training exercise, but I dismissed it entirely.
This was either a betrayal, and some overpowered special grade was waiting to ambush me, or somebody had found us.
Either way, violence was the only acceptable response.
Pushing out a wave of Cursed Energy into the ground, I made the bathroom tiles shatter and morph into spears where the sorcerer hid, stabbing upward toward them.
The figure moved.
They blurred faster than most Special Grades I had seen, blasting through the bathroom's glass door. I twisted, producing a bone knife from my inventory and flung it, aiming slightly beyond where I expected them to be.
The sorcerer ducked underneath it, her jacket flapping as she moved.
I caught a full look at her face.
My peerless grip on my Cursed Energy control nearly snapped.
It was Priya.
That heartless, mutilating, two-bit scient—
No. Focus.
I let out a breath.
Capture her, then you can destroy her.
My palms came together as I initiated my latest technique: Boogie Woogie.
Suddenly, I was behind her, replacing my thrown knife as it hurtled toward the window.
I twisted my torso, my shin whipping into her midsection hard enough to displace the air and send her flying. In that same moment, I struck her with several precise cleaves that split her spine into three pieces.
The countertop exploded as she tore through it on her way into the kitchen, finally coming to a stop atop a pancaked oven that leaked gas into the room.
She tried to stand immediately, but her legs failed her.
Blood gushed from her chest and stomach, staining the ruined kitchen red. She looked up at my face and met it with a snarl of defiance.
My fist twitched.
My insides practically boiled with rage.
"How did you know about this place?" I demanded.
No answer came.
"I will not ask again."
A dismantle split a tile centimeters from her fingers as she tried to push herself upright again. Unsurprisingly, she did not flinch, likely used to threats and callous displays of violence.
"I was invited," she said slowly.
I could not tell if she was lying.
Her body was a shuddering mess from her wounds. Her heart pounded like a jackrabbit, and her flesh was already stitching itself back together without any visible use of Cursed Energy.
The vow Alex and I had taken with Shelim forbade unknown dealings and betrayals, but there were always loopholes, and Shelim was as slippery as they came.
"Somehow I don't believe you," I pressed.
"It's true!" a voice shouted from outside the apartment.
Shelim hurried through the door, the slightest smile playing on his lips. I doubted any baseline human would have caught it, except maybe Batman.
Priya was the first to point it out.
"Did you risk my life just to play with his emotions?"
"Of course he fucking did," I said.
"I totally did not," Shelim denied.
The denial was not convincing. His lips twitched slightly whenever he lied. It was something I had picked up after pushing my Seventh Sense to level seven.
"I just had to pop out and take care of a bit of business."
"Right before he arrived?" Priya pressed, her face hardening with every word.
"No offense," Shelim said, "but it's not like I can trust you these days."
She had no response to that, though she clearly did not buy his explanation either.
Shelim glanced around the penthouse and shook his head.
"The owner is going to blow a gasket."
I snorted as several pieces suddenly fell into place.
"That text you sent me about finding what I was looking for," I said. "It was not about the telepath, was it? It was about her."
Priya pushed herself to her feet, her spine and wounds already fully healed.
"Do not talk about me like I am not here."
It took a great deal of self-control not to remove her head from her body.
"What did he promise you?" I asked.
"That you would both free Ming and Fia," she said. "In exchange, I tell you exactly what Artisan is planning and how to stop her."
Shelim coughed.
"And," Priya added, "a specialized serum for your friend."
Shelim had promised a great deal when he signed up. To his credit, he had lived up to those promises at least partially. He froze most of her assets, identified her public puppets, and revealed the locations of several of her bases.
We drained five offshore accounts before she caught on.
Hackers rained down digital hellfire while she rapidly cultivated new pawns in the media, or perhaps activated old ones. It was hard to truly tell with how secretive and calculated Artisan was. They ran defense for every celebrity, athlete, politician, and personality we exposed.
Reliable pictures, video, and financial evidence were reframed as conspiracy theories and bigotry.
Some targets were undoubtedly torn down, but people were far more reluctant to destroy their idols. Nobody wanted to learn that their favorite actor had sold their soul to the devil or believe their religious leader had turned to magic to beat cancer.
The bases we visited were mostly empty, and those that were not, we stripped clean and destroyed.
None of the information we gathered brought us any closer to Artisan's real plan.
The most Shelim knew was that the ritual had already been in motion for weeks. He had personally witnessed three techniques Artisan used, and he had an inkling of how we could conceivably beat her.
Idle Transfiguration and Shrine had been obvious, but her third technique had thrown me for a loop. It was some kind of movement-based sorcery that allowed her to move based on how many frames there were in animation?
Now Priya stood here, offering to fill in the missing pieces, yet every instinct in my body screamed no.
Why risk ourselves when I could simply torture the information out of her?
And it was not like we could trust her to be completely honest, binding vow or not.
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