– “The security of this place is supposed to be ironclad, instead is a f*cking swiss cheese! First the traitors and now this?” – Aside from the initial surprise, Lith didn’t know if to be angry with the guards or scared for his life.

– “Let’s keep our cool. If they wanted to kill me, they would have slit my throat on the spot. Then we would have discovered the hard way how tough my skin is and how strong my regenerative abilities are. Solus?”

“The bad news is that all their equipment is enchanted and razor-sharp. The good news is that inside the Small World they are just very sharp, very deadly weapons. These guys don’t have access to dimensional items or even their tattoos, for that matter. All they have is what you see.”

“Tattoos? What tattoos?” Lith had been so focused on the plague, to have forgot the details about the group of mercenaries that nearly killed him a couple of weeks before. Solus projected in his mind the highlights of their last encounter. – What they ignored was that for once Varegrave wasn’t the one to blame. The talons had spent a small fortune corrupting one of their old contacts, now in the administration department.

She had provided them authentic uniforms and IDs, otherwise going past the checkpoints would have been impossible.

Magic seals and documents couldn’t be counterfeited, and to have access to such tools they had to pay their contact enough gold to allow her to leave the country and live the rest of her life in luxury.

It was a sum that outshined even Lith’s reward, but they didn’t care, since it came straight from their contractor’s pockets. The mandatory use of the masks had made their work easier, allowing them to move unnoticed until they had found Lith’s tent.