15Regal, heavy movements, of one accustomed to easy power. A bulbous waistline, caused by lack of discipline and assumption of safety, protruded offensively outward like an emperor of warts. Glaze's lip curled in disgust, yet he knew not to strike just yet, to wait for the moment with the least publicity. At the time, however, the fat aristocrat enjoyed the guidance of several grim lipped bodyguards. Allowing himself a sigh, the hunter shook his head. An easy arrow could take the governor in the heart before any of the guards could mount a defense. Yet a troublesome bother it would be to avoid their vengeance… indeed, Glaze easily imagined hosts of other possible opportunities more appealing.
So he waited.
Stalking through the streets, no casual glance sensed anything strange about this man. However, when someone looked closer, dared to hint his face, they often as not drew back in disgust. Then they would move hurriedly to catch up with a friend, still glancing uneasily at him. Occasionally one or two would even start at him threateningly, but a sense of awe and fear stopped them.
In all honesty, their behavior was well founded. Dark, jagged stripes much like black lightning streaked across his face. Cold, numb eyes caught every glance and look before disregarding it as unimportant and unthreatening. Something in the way he moved, blending easily with the shadows in his broken color cape, spelled danger to those with enough brains to sense it.
Keeping the governor just in view, competing plans raced through his mind. With deliberate slowness and lethargy, Glaze allowed them to surface one by one before discarding it as useless. In the meantime, the sun sank down below the horizon, casting eerie shadows across the town. Glaze used these like natural cover, easily blending back into the weird glow. During which, he observed the fat governor stumble into the house, and his guards take up various sentry positions. Finally, the time to strike presented itself.
Slipping over the garden wall , Glaze dropped soundlessly into a bush creeping up the wall. Barely five feet away, an alert guard on night shift stood. His neck craned this way and that, searching through the murk to find any intruders. Glaze's eyebrows met. A common man, not guilty of anything but his need for a paycheck, continued on his guard undisturbed. With all the stealth blessed on his race, the assassin slipped away through the gloom.
Seeming to melt into the shade, Glaze navigated the seemingly open yard like a racoon or other bandit of the night. In a way, the governor's paranoia made his task far easier; each of the many guards felt their numbers were more than enough to stop any intruder. Not to mention their complete ignorance of the importance of silence while playing sentry.
Glaze also considered the fact every guard was a mortal. Obviously, power over demons was not one of the governor's strong suits; any respectable magician employed various demons to guard their walls.
Effortlessly, Glaze crept through the hall, having memorized their confusing depths by bribes and blackmail. A heavy door lay ahead of him as he slunk past the dining hall. Dark wood, with whirls of lighter tones, made up the body of the door, and a heavy bronze knocked in the shape of an elephant lay on both left and right door. Heavy hinges on either side barely squeaked as Glaze eased the door open.
The room lay deserted in the moonlight, as Glaze had hoped. A smell of incense rose from one corner, where a pile of books lay and the edge of a silver ring poked out from under the mound. Common aromas to hold off demons, such as pine ash and Saul's Cradle, nothing for higher spirits.A beautifully formed desk, made of soft rosewood and with an intricate map carving. Quilts and mantles lay carelessly over a mattress of cotton, with handcrafted pillows of violet. Walls with oil paintings surrounded him of the man's ancestors and various landscapes.
After absorbing all this, he crossed the room and hid himself. Crouching behind a silk covered chair Glaze rose himself so alert, he could hear the guards outside the closed window, their insignificant little movements. Nothing to worry about, unless of course they arrived in serious numbers. That, of course, would cause retreat. Glaze, as an assassin and warrior, was an experienced fighter, but even he could not topple that many foes.
Back to the matter at hand for now. A loud, proud step slowly approached the closed door at the end of the bedroom. Grunts of exertion, and then the door swung open, revealing the same governor Glaze saw earlier on the street.
Involuntarily, Glaze's teeth grinded together and his lip curled back like a wolf. His arms tensed, but reason mastered him and the magician walked in unscathed. So far.
Suddenly, a small creature reminiscent of a spider climbed to the magician's ears and whispered the presence of the intruder to his mammoth master. With no choice, Glaze rose from the darkness, his hands nocking an arrow to the bow in a well-practiced move.
A shriek of horror emitted from his quarry, but stopped in shock and simply became an unbelieving look of revulsion as he recognized the face. With a wicked sneer plastered on his face, Glaze rose his bow and aimed.
Then the governor caught up to the situation, and called out a pair of names. Two demons rose from nowhere, one a hulking minotaur with curled horns and shocking red fur. Steam rose from its moist snout and gleaming fangs curved out of its mouth. The other seemed to be only a shadow, a mere flickering specter that flickered like a black flame.
A single shot from the longbow, aimed for the governor's throat. However, the minotaur leapt in front and the missile bounced of his maroon fur. Another arrow rapidly followed the first, this one with a heavier tip. Misjudging the target, the demon-piercing arrow, with a specially shaped tip that slit a demon to its core, slid under its narrow forearm, and slammed into the demon's chest and penetrated deep.
Suddenly the darker demon moved, and a silver gleam shot towards Glaze. Dodging with in the ecstasy that precedes a kill, Glaze heard the magic hit the wall and expand into an icy spider web. Another arrow and the governor turned away from the door in fear as it slammed into his collar and pinned him to the wall.
But the darker demon was reasserting itself, and uttered a complex incantation. Faster than possible, Glaze measured the angle of the magical assault, his own arrow, where the governor struggled uselessly against the imbedded arrow. Within those few seconds, he drew an arrow in a special separate container all by itself. The arrow leapt. The magical bullet drew near.
Arrow met the magic and did not turn a degree, whilst the supernatural beam absorbed itself completely in the point that seemed to dance and glimmer in the darkness….
His arrow hit the magician right in the stomach, even as Glaze dove to cover behind the desk.
A colossal explosion racked the room from the demon's magical blast. While the minotaur simply disappeared in a cloud of maroon smoke, the shadow figure cried out in pain and contracted upon itself. Glaze watched as it suffered the pain of killing its own master, then finally vanished to whatever worlds demons haunted outside Merembia.
As for both magician and arrow, the only remains of either were the platinum arrow tip, now discharged of the afrit's magic, and a white wood staff that had hung next to where the magician was pinned. As for the wall, a small crater dented it, despite the platinum arrowhead that slightly contained the force. With all the speed his race granted him, Glaze swept up both staff and arrow tip, collapsing his bow in a second after.
Luckily, the door was nearly unscratched, and Glaze placed a chair under both handles while guards pounded from all their posts to their master's bedroom. By the time they broke through the haphazard barrier, the only trace of an intruder stuck in the wall opposite the door. A single black arrow.