Hazen trotted through the streets aimlessly. He had no luck finding a second flunkee from the Order. His attempt to write a message and leave it for the ‘magicker’ resulted in another bout of screams which made Hazen’s head ache.

He was invisible, and his companions in the area were dead. 

He was invisible, and no one would be out looking for him…

His stomach growled and he considered for the first time the possibilities that came with him being invisible.  He could steal apples from the food stall, he could swipe the simmering steak off a restaurant patron’s plate. He could waltz into a bank and walk off with as much gold as he could carry- and he could carry quite a lot.

Those didn’t seem like the most heroic things to do though. Even if no one saw him, or knew him as a hero, he at least still knew. And if he didn’t see himself as a hero…Then who was he?

He leaned back against a wall, and let himself plop to the ground. He ignored the crumpled paper and rotting vegetable beneath him. They were barely crushed as the enchantment muffled his impact..

He put a gauntleted hand to his head and lost himself in thought the way he had lost himself in the city. He could go back to Master Anders, try to communicate with him via writing. Master Anders would know what to do. 

He could slip a message into a mage’s robes and hope they read it after crossing into the Order headquarters.

He could-

He bolted to the right side, away from a streak of yellow cutting through the air. A man had come up to the wall to pee and Hazen barely noticed in time. He staggered into the middle of a crowd, heart thumping at the close call. 

The crowd parted as he walked by. Hazen looked down- he was still invisible, no miracle had happened. They couldn’t see him. 

But they were clutching their noses. He’d dodged the urine, but after a full day wandering around the city, drenched in the blood of friends and wolves, he was starting to reek. 

Hazen started off towards the public bath. He didn’t have any money to pay the entrance fee, but his smell was starting to become a public nuisance, and that was worse. And though he was invisible, and could take a dip in the river without folks noticing, it was looking rather green and brown these days, and decidedly not in the way that trees are green and brown. 

He slipped into the mud-brick building, trotted past the off-white marble foyer, and into a changing alcove outside the bath. He could see a light film of steam rise from the marble floor.

He pulled at his green cloak. The peppermint odor wasn’t enough to mask the smell of the blood and muck splattered on it. It was an expensive cloak though, and his only memento from his erstwhile companions. He’d need to wash it out.

“WHAT!” a half-dressed man screeched from the neighboring alcove. 

Hazen reached for his helmet, reaching to pull it off when he noticed that the man was pointing at something.

At him. 

“Where did you come from?” the man said. “How did you-”

Hazen was already running, bolting out of the bath before he could be accused of freeloading. He clutched the green cloak in one hand, except it wasn’t green- it was see through. But he wasn’t.

Rosalia had asked them to wear green so she could better cast the spell. The green clothing was the real focus of the spell. So when Hazen took the focus off, he was visible again. He’d worked all this out in his head in the time it took him to make it back to the boulder. 

“I’m here,” Hazen said. And he could hear his own voice. “I’ll make you all visible again. You won’t be buried anonymously. It’s the least I can do.” He sounded sad, but there was triumph in the grief. He felt light- his audience was deceased, but he was being heroic. 

Hazen didn’t want to see his companions’ wounds, but he had to free them from the spell. And maybe four green cloaks of near-total invisibility could come in handy.

He reached out beside the boulder to pull off Tano’s cloak.

There was nothing there. 

He circled the boulder, feeling every open space, and then running circuits around it to make sure he hadn’t missed something. He rubbed every inch of soil and rock. 

The bodies of Tano, Dina, and Rosalia were gone.