“I wanna go get pasta!” Xet whined once again.

“And I said last time, we don’t have the money to cover dining out. You went out drinking with the last of it two days ago!” I all but shouted back, so tired of having to explain the same thing for what had to be the millionth time.

This was not uncommon these days. It’s been almost six months since I joined this crazy woman as an assistant, and the number of times my earnings saved our backsides since I joined was pretty high. Xet had no concept of saving or preparing money for bills… so I became the accountant.

“But what about the secret stash you keep in your closet?” Xet moaned, acting like a petulant child.

“That’s there for bills. Speaking of which, you have a renewal coming up for your hunter’s licence in a month or two, don’t you?” I said, trying to get my point across.

Xet sat there for a moment. “If… if I find us a job that promised to cover the house payment, repairs on Reina, and my renewal, would you be willing to pay for pasta for lunch?”

I looked at her, doubt showing blatantly on my face. “You know of something like that?”

Xet passed me a paper she had pulled out of her bra. “I got this last night at the bar. You get the bonus of it smelling like my boobs!” She looked just so pleased with herself.

I opened the folded paper and reviewed the contents. It seemed on the level, standard hunt request for an abysspyre that had been terrorizing the lower end of downtown. I didn’t see anything that made me think it was out of the ordinary… except maybe those smudges at the bottom… it looked like Xet had sweated some of the ink into a blur.

“Your boob sweat makes this hard to read. But fine, we’ll start this immediately after lunch.” I sighed eventually. It was easier not to argue with her at a time like this.

As we walked out the door toward the best noodle shop in town, I reflected a bit on my time here with Xet.

On the one hand, I think I’ve definitely changed, I thought. I know I’m not the quiet nobody I used to be. But then again, maybe I was a nobody because of the people I lived with. A clan of killers for hire really enforces the ‘you are a ghost’ idea when training, and maybe that made me into the angry, quiet kid. I know Xet doesn’t try to silence me… hell she makes me talk more than I like to some days.

I glanced at my partner for a moment. Then again, she’s also not what I thought I’d be getting out of a partner. Sure she’s really good at killing things, but her attitude is that of a big teenager. So whimsical and crazy at times, but all in all she’s a decent person. I wonder if mom was like this when she was younger…

I was shaken from my navel gazing by a flash of shadow off to my left. I slowed my pace and checked what was happening without turning my head. I could swear there was a figure… crouched near the rubbish bins? No, around the corner there, that shadow is a set of fingers.

I made a low whistling sound, a code Xet and I used to convey danger when out in public. She whistled back at a higher pitch and we walked just far enough to be past the field of vision for any creature in the alley. I then silently moved myself to the wall next to the alley as Xet rounded the other side to sneak up on the hiding whatever it was. Moments later I heard a shuffling and Xet shout from the other end of the building. I waited a second and a half before extending my arm, but when I did put it out a humanoid figure’s throat slammed into it.

The creature fell to the ground, grasping their neck, looking shocked and in pain. Their eyes flicked toward mine, and I saw the telltale rim of purple around the iris told me this was an abysspyre. I slammed a booted foot down on the figure’s face as I reached for the raw magic in the air. Not more than a second or two later I had coalesced a solid spear of ice, ready to be slammed into the heart of this beast.

“I hope you enjoyed your time here, you inhuman maggot.” I spoke down to the abysspyre before I drove the spear through its heart.

The creature convulsed under my boot for a long enough time for Xet to get back to the road.

“You going to pull the teeth or…” Xet asked, seeming to wonder how we would present the “trophy” required to confirm a kill with the guild.

“Almost.” I said, shifting the ice from a spear to a sword. I took a brief moment to line up where I would need to cut and then I parted the head from the body and froze it.

“You take this to the guild hall, I’ll throw this body in a dumpster on the other side of town, and we’ll meet back for pasta at Revolis. And don’t you dare spend a single copper before we eat lunch.” I handed Xet the frozen head and started to drag the body off to one of the numerous unmarked dumping sites in the city. Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought, I just killed this poor sucker without even confirming if they were the target like it was nothing. That’s pretty cold for a person who claims not to be a killer anymore…

I arrived about twenty minutes later at Revolis and waited. Xet skipped up the path toward the restaurant about five minutes later, a bag of coins half the size of her head jingling along in one hand. She looked so happy about it, like she didn’t think a single bad thing could happen to her while she broadcast the exorbitant fee we just received.

We entered the restaurant after I removed the bag of gold from Xet’s grasp. I knew, based on the posting, what we should be looking at. And there was almost another half that amount in the bag.

“Xet, you didn’t steal any extra gold from some poor sap again… did you?” I asked quiet enough that nobody else would hear as we were escorted to our usual spot.

“I didn’t steal anything, I just happened to run into a very rude man who was exiting the guild hall who just happened to drop his sack of coins. By the time I picked them up he had already left the area.” Xet cooed, pretending to be innocent. It was more likely that she had started a fight with the guy and stole his purse as he walked away.

“I swear to all that is good, if we have another incident where somebody chases us down for your actions…” I started to say, but I saw the waitress coming to get our order.

While Xet enjoyed lightly flavoured foods with heavily flavoured booze, I was partial to foods that had more substance and body to them. So when Xet ordered a chicken broth noodle dish with a strong ale, I knew I’d be acting like a crutch on the way home. I took advantage of that to get a sauce heavy dish that relied on the individual spices to bring out the flavour hidden in the noodles. Xet normally complains when I get very aromatic foods, but if she was getting drunk, she knew I would complain about her smelling like alcohol… talk about preventing a problem with another problem.

An hour and a half, and six pints later, Xet and I stumbled home. For being so thin, she weighed a fair bit more than I did, and she smelled like a distillery by this point. These factors made progress slow, and when we finally got to the house, we saw a note on the door. That’s a guild insignia on the wax… are we in trouble?

I grabbed the note, got Xet inside and into one of the armchairs we owned, and went to the kitchen to open the paper. I started to read the first few lines, same old boring greeting… enclosed is your renewed license… free of charge? What for?

Eventually I got to the what for, it has been reported that you have taken an apprentice without them having attended the academy. For this reason we are sending a field trained instructor, to remain in residence for eight months, who will determine if your apprentice will be certified and at what level. For this reason we’ve reinstated, and promoted, your current license. I pondered that, they’re not punishing her for keeping me hidden?

I knew I had to inform Xet once she woke up, since she appeared to have passed out thanks to the booze, so I set the letter on the table in front of her chair. I then went out onto our enclosed porch that had been converted to a training area for us to keep up on our skills. I figured I would try working on a special magic I had heard about while I was still with clan Ymir that ran in the blood of the Miza, hellfire.

I hadn’t thought about it much until recently, a fire created in the bowels of perdition that had been gifted to Retzer to end the great war… it sounded like a fairy tale. But for some reason, recently, it had nagged at the back of my mind. Is that what kept me alive those three weeks I was encased in ice? Could I wield it with the skill I have with wind and ice? Only one way to find out.

Stepping out into the back, I raised my hand skyward. I began to concentrate on what little information I had to go on, and improvised some other parts I needed to understand to get the full effect. See, magic is a constant force in the world… drawing magic to you requires a little bit of manipulation of the forces around you as well as a sliver of your own will. When I use wind magic, I’m manipulating air in the atmosphere to do what I want. When I use ice magic, I force the water molecules to coalesce into a shape and slow their movement to the point of rigidity… and I make an insulating layer that prevents my body from freezing to the ice.

I closed my eyes and used all of my mental facilities to summon this unfamiliar power… but to no effect. I hadn’t even managed regular fire, not that I was gifted with the ability to do that anyway. My skills were limited to wind, ice, and healing… I guess that’s all I can do for the time being.

Who dares call upon the power of the Miza?

A voice rang out in my head, the sound was a raspy hiss, but it was clear as day. I almost freaked out, but I took a breath and steadied myself. “I am Bex Chaotix, heir to the Miza blood line.” I said aloud.

You, young Miza who seeks this power, shall be tested in the coming months… for this reason I shall grant you a portion of my energies. Extend your hand!

I did as I was told, more by reflex than by choice, and I felt a white hot power forming at my fingertips. As the energy moved itself down into my palm, I could see tendrils of black creep down my skin. These tendrils seemed to leave a stain where they touched, a stain that resembled flames. It hurt so much I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t even take a breath if I’m being honest. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped.

I looked at my hand and saw no markings whatsoever, but I could feel a difference in my senses. Imagine you walked around your whole life with a fishbowl over your head, and then one day it breaks and you can see and hear correctly. That’s what this feeling was, like the veil over my eyes and ears had been lifted. Inside my mind I could feel the secret of the hellfire sear itself in, and I knew why it was so obscure. This power didn’t rely on your location, it was with you always, eating away at your very soul. Not like I was using it anyway.

Taking a deep breath, I focused once more on trying to summon the hellfire. This time a blast of purple and black flames erupted from my hand. Unfortunately, I had no control of it. The stream of energy tapered off when I closed my hand, but as I surveyed the damage it had caused, I was glad we lived behind the abandoned warehouses.