Laz looked down over the city. The night was young, and the sky had only just darkened to a deep purple, the glittering Godslight River visible far above the clouds. In the crisscrossed streets below, townsfolk celebrated the week's end by drowning themselves in liquor. Mugs of alcohol sloshed and spilled onto tavern floors as patrons danced awkwardly to their own discordant singing.

Disgusting.

The busy night, as obnoxious as it was, provided the perfect cover. Bright lights on the street below made it difficult to see Laz creeping across the rooftops, and if they stumbled, it wouldn’t be heard over the noise. Yet they still scowled as they made their way through town, looking down on the city with scorn. Useless people making themselves more useless by drinking alcohol that dulled their senses and made them loud, their drunken shouts like nails on a chalkboard. Laz couldn’t understand why so many people indulged in such things.

They silently made their way toward their destination, nimbly leaping over gaps between buildings and across narrow streets. While they enjoyed the freedom of sneaking around unseen, annoyance still pulled at them. They knew their mission tonight was noble, and necessary, but the reality was that their mentor had made a mistake. No, more than that—he was a traitor, who had gone against all their teachings and put the Vastra’s entire mission in jeopardy.

And now Laz was responsible for cleaning up his mess.

As they approached their destination, they listened for music, and eventually, a familiar tune could be heard above the din of the townsfolk below. As much as this night would be a pain, going out on a job had its perks.

Cresting over rooftops and climbing dusty brick walls, Laz dashed toward the sound of the music and knelt at the edge of a building, looking down. In the center of the square below, Felix was already at work.

Gods, she's beautiful.

She wore a different self than usual tonight, but Felix was dazzling no matter what she looked like. Tonight, she was tall, slender, human, with long brown hair that cascaded down her back in waves, braids and flowers woven into it. Her long, layered skirt flounced around her as she twirled and danced, lute in her hands and illusory baubles of light shining onto her.

While their job tonight was an irritation at best, getting to watch Felix in her element was a good tradeoff, and they allowed themself a few moments to watch her perform. While Laz crept in the shadows, Felix thrived in the spotlight, a glittering star at the center of a whirling galaxy of admiration and delight. She smiled, strumming an upbeat rhythm into the air as the audience sang and clapped along.

Absolutely stunning.

In the front row was a handful of young children, doing their best to mimic Felix’s dancing and occasionally stumbling over themselves. Laz smiled. There was plenty to hate about people in general—outsiders were tedious at best and actively dangerous at worst—but they still had a soft spot for children. They hadn’t interacted with any in years, but Felix always spoke about how much she enjoyed performing for little ones; how they smiled, how they laughed, how they loved things with a passion that so rarely survived to adulthood. Eventually, that fondness had rubbed off onto Laz, and now they often paused to watch children playing while out on jobs. There was a simplicity to them—a charming innocence in the way they moved through their lives.

Felix had once confided in Laz that she wanted to have children of her own someday, and wondered if the Vastra would allow it. Laz had stayed quiet, but their heart ached at the thought of raising children alongside her, or maybe even helping her bring them into the world, if such a thing was possible. The Vastra’s rules would never allow for it, but…

Stop. Now's not the time for idle fantasies.

They shook their head and forced the thought back. Fantasies should be left for storybooks, and tonight, they had a darker task in store.

Standing up at the edge of the roof, they eyed their destination—a corner house at the end of a row of narrow, conjoined homes, just down the street from Felix's concert. The top floor windows were lit, a warm glow shining faintly through the curtains. Their target was exactly where Laz expected her to be.

Laurel Creed—titan researcher and professor at Sereth University specializing in dragon biology. Lives alone. Arrives home at sundown, prepares dinner, then spends the rest of the evening in her study.

The job would be simple. Laz had scouted the building in advance, even sneaking in and familiarizing themself with the building’s layout earlier in the day.

Today is the last day of her work week—ideally, it’ll be several days before anyone notices her missing. I should be able to get in and out easily enough, but just in case…

Laz had crafted a new appearance for this job, one that was just eye-catching enough to give anyone who might see them multiple obvious traits to remember. Their eyes were a bright, verdant green, with long silver hair tied back in an intricate but functional braid. Their ears were pointed, elfish, and their body was masculine, tall, with a muscular chest and broad shoulders.

It wasn’t an appearance they liked, but they wouldn’t need to wear it for much longer.

Below them, Felix’s song finished, and the jaunty lute music gave way to delighted applause. She took a moment to look around, and despite the many lights trained on her, she locked eyes with Laz on the roof, and winked. A wave of heat bloomed across Laz's face, and they turned away, embarrassed. Felix smiled, and as she began the next song, Laz slipped away under the cover of darkness, toward the home of Professor Creed.

Holding their breath, Laz pushed open the window they had left unlocked earlier that day and slid inside. The room seemed like a guest room, though it was mostly being used for storage. Papers and boxes and books and other detritus were piled up against the walls, with a bed shoved haphazardly into the corner, more piles on top of it. Quietly closing the window behind them, they stepped lightly across the room, peering into the hallway. At the other end of the hall, warm light shone under the door to the study, and Laz could just barely hear the scratching sound of pen on paper.

They remembered the layout of the study—the desk the woman would be sitting at faced the door. Her back would be to the windows, but Laz had deemed entering that way too risky—thick curtains were always drawn closed, which prevented them from seeing inside, and the sound of the window opening would give them away. The safest option was to draw their target out.

Looking around, Laz eyed a small, square portrait hanging on the wall. Carefully and quietly, they stepped around the mess, crept out into the hall, lifted the portrait to remove it from the nail… and dropped it to the floor with a thud.

The sound of writing stopped, and Laz swiftly stepped back into the guest room, ducking into the shadows. They listened intently to the scraping noise of a chair being pushed backwards, the muffled footsteps of slippers on wood, the click and creak of the study door opening. Light flooded into the hallway, soft but warm, and the shadow of Laurel Creed stretched down the hall.

“What in the world…?”

Laz listened from feet away, holding their breath as footsteps approached the fallen portrait. Clothes rustled as the woman knelt to pick it up.

“How did this fall? Draft, maybe…?”

As she hung the portrait back on its nail, Laz tensed, a viper ready to strike. They pulled their dagger from its sheath, and in a single, swift motion, stepped out from their hiding place, coming up behind the woman and pressing the dagger to her throat.

She stiffened in shock. “Ah—!“

“The Vastra sends her regards.”

With a practiced turn of the wrist, Laz sliced the knife across the woman’s throat. Hot blood gushed from her neck and splattered onto the wall as she fell, coughing and twitching. She lay there for a moment, clutching her throat as blood gushed between her fingers. Laz merely stood over her, watching.

They didn’t have to wait long before the twitching stopped.

As Laurel Creed’s body fell still, and the life faded from her eyes, swirling wisps of blue-green light began to emerge from her corpse, like trails of faint, glowing smoke. Already her Dying Lights were beginning to escape.

No time to waste.

Laz stepped over the body, rolling the corpse onto its back and stabbing their dagger between its ribs. Blood gushed forth from where the blade entered, but Laz paid the substance no mind. As the colored light continued to waft from the body, Laz adjusted their grip on the knife. Carved around the end of their dagger was a delicate ring of arcane runes, with a small gap making the ring incomplete. Laz pressed their thumb to the gap, and with the circuit completed, the runes began to glow, the spell activating. Keeping their thumb held to the circle, Laz watched as the colored wisps of Dying Light were drawn into the dagger, siphoning it from the body and into the blade, making it glow with an unsettling light.

Laz knew that if Laurel Creed’s body was left alone, it would continue to emanate light for close to two days, until all that was left of its magia had dispersed. Sappy types like poets described the Dying Light as “tragically beautiful; the sign of a Shardborn’s soul passing on, reuniting them with the Ancestral Gods”. Laz only saw it as an annoyance. Investigators at crime scenes could often use the Dying Light to determine how long it had been since someone died, if they found the body quick enough. However, the daggers the Vastra equipped her assassins with could absorb a body’s magia in only a few moments. Laz had never asked what their master used it for; they didn’t need to know, and didn’t care.

Laz knelt next to the body, thumb held on the pommel to keep the absorption spell active, watching the trails of blue-green light get drawn into the blade. They looked down at Laurel Creed, her pale face pulled into a grim expression. The woman was a scholar, one whose studies had drawn the attention of the Vastra some months ago. Laz’s mentor Oren had been tasked with killing and replacing her assistant, stealing her research, and, if possible, killing the subject of her studies; yet somehow he had fallen in love with her instead. And, if that wasn’t enough, he had leaked several of the Vastra’s secrets to her. Even now, Laz was still in disbelief, their thoughts spinning as they watched the life drain from their mentor’s secret lover. What could Oren have seen in this woman that was worth betraying the Vastra for?

And how had he managed it in the first place?

Laz wondered if, when they returned to the sanctum, the Vastra would show Oren the knife. She had already spent days torturing him as punishment, but surely it would only add to his suffering, seeing the blue-green glow of their secret lover’s soul shining within the blade.

Then again, Oren wouldn’t be able to recognize the color. Normal Shardborn didn’t have visible Auras. Their soul’s colors were only revealed in death.

As the last wisps of light were absorbed into the blade of Laz’s dagger, they pulled it from the body, wiping the blood onto the dead woman’s skirt before returning it to its sheath. Taking care not to step in the blood that pooled on the floor, they moved around the body and into the study.

The book the woman had been writing in was still open, and Laz flipped through the pages, quickly skimming the entries. It was clearly her research journal, filled with writings and sketches of the dragon she and Oren had spent the last several months studying. Yet, more recent entries mentioned Oren‘s name with increasing frequency, and in one of the last entries, the text included a word that caught Laz’s eye immediately.

“Vastra.”

Laz snapped the journal shut and tucked it into their bag.

Their mission having been completed, all that was left was to return to the sanctum. Walking back to the guest room, they reopened the window and began climbing back onto the roof.

Their exit was interrupted by shrieking.

“There! See?!”

3 stories below, a woman pointed up at Laz, frantic, with a guardsman standing next to her. The woman—likely a neighbor—must have seen them when they snuck in and called the guard.

Dammit. What a pain.

Their cover blown, Laz flipped nimbly out the window and up onto the roof, looking back just long enough for the guard get a good look at their face before making a mad dash toward the sound of Felix's music.

“Hey, you! Get back here!!”

The guard’s shouts faded into the distance as Laz ran, their long braid whipping behind them. Damn, this thing is annoying. How do people live with hair this long? Leaping across a gap between rooftops, they glanced down and saw a few more guards approaching, shouting and waving their spears.

Within moments they approached Felix's position, her audience surrounding her makeshift stage and clogging up the roadway. Laz watched the guards get slowed to a snail’s pace as they fought their way through the crowd, shouting and pushing people aside. Felix, though she was mid performance, seemed to notice, and momentarily locked eyes with Laz. She flashed a mischievous smile. Laz’s face warmed.

She’ll be teasing me about this later, I’m sure.

Coming to a stop over a narrow alleyway, Laz dropped from the roof and landed silently between buildings. Out of the guard’s view, they changed. Their long braid unwove, their hair shortening and darkening to a deep black, and their sight blurred for a moment as their irises dimmed from green to brown. They felt their limbs shorten, muscles shrink, and their facial features shift, tingling all over with numbness as the nerves adjusted to their new shape. Standing, they took a moment to stretch, quickly feeling out their new body and getting used to how it moved. The transformation completed, they walked to the end of the alleyway where Felix’s audience danced and cheered, and casually joined the crowd.

At the edges of the gathered mass of dancing bodies, Laz could hear the shouts of the guards, demanding that people get out of their way. One passed just behind Laz, his head swiveling back and forth, eyes frantic.

“Dammit! Which way did he go?!”

“He dropped into the alley, I think!” shouted another.

Laz glanced over their shoulder, watched the guards sprint into the alleyway they had just walked out of, and smirked. Idiots.

They made one last look at Felix, glittering as she danced, and gestured with their usual hand sign.

All done here. I’ll meet you back at the sanctum.

She gave a subtle nod and continued playing, her singing echoing through the streets as Laz wove through the crowd and made their way out of the city.