Date Night

The two of them crouched behind a table filled with a wide variety of what appeared to be ceremonial knives, some in better shape than others. Elemiel peeked around the corner, staring at the duke and his people intently.

One of the disreputable-looking lackeys Sharky had presumably hired for this caper dragged over a chair, and Ditherington sat. Sharky walked over and the two men spoke together in low, hushed tones. Elemiel caught the words, "Are you sure?" and saw the Duke's blonde head bob in a nod.

Sharky gestured to a lackey, who lifted something from the table, brushing aside the smashed glass from the object.

"Are those... forceps?" Asper asked, sounding confused.

Indeed, the black-clad lackey was holding what appeared to be a pair of medical forceps. They were heavy and expensive-looking, the metal plated in gold and the handles carved from gleaming ivory.

Elemiel watched in mounting horror as Sharky produced something from his pocket. It was a tooth, silver and gleaming with a pale glow as if suffused with bottled moonlight.

"That's it," said Asper, drawing in a sharp breath. "That's got to be what he pulled from the tomb, in the wilds past the Godswall."

"Are you certain?" Elemiel asked.

"Yes. Can't you feel it?"

Indeed, Elemiel had to admit there was something disturbing about the tooth. It was long and sharply pointed, a canine belonging to what kind of creature Elemiel did not know. The elf stared at it, disquieted, as Duke Ditherington opened his mouth and leaned back in the chair.

"Hold him," said Sharky, who accepted the forceps from the lackey. The gnome climbed into Ditherington's lap while the two henchmen held the duke in place.

"I wish I could say this won't hurt," said Sharky, sounding very much as if that wasn't something he wished at all, "but I think it probably will."

"What in the name of Solana's creamy, well-fucked cunt lips is going on here?" Elemiel hissed.

Asper looked at her like she had suddenly grown three heads.

"What?" she said crossly. "I thought I had already proved I had a dirty mouth, didn't I?"

The duke let out a thin, reedy scream as Sharky did something with the forceps in his mouth. There was a wrenching motion, and the gnome pulled out a bloody shard of white enamel. Sharky tossed it aside and placed the silver tooth into the clasp of the strange forceps, then put them in Ditherington's mouth again. Even crouched behind the dagger-table, Elemiel was able to hear the click as the odd tooth slotted into place, filling the freshly vacated gap in the duke's mouth.

"All done," Sharky said, clambering off Ditherington's lap. "Now comes the hard part. Let's get out of here."

"Damn," hissed Elemiel, turning her head to speak to Asper. "We're outnumbered two to one. Maybe we can call the museum guards and- Asper you fool man, what are you doing?"

With the threat of his quarry escaping, Asper stood up. He snatched a curved dagger from the display table and brandished it threateningly.

"Not so fast, Nigel," he said, stepping around the table to face the duke.

Ditherington leaned against the chair for support, blood dripping from his lips. His eyes went wide when he caught sight of Asper.

"DeNallare!" he exclaimed, shock making his eyes wide. "You're alive? Impossible!"

"Good to see you too, Nigel. We have so much to talk about. For example, what did you just put inside your mouth?"

"Shit," Elemiel swore under her breath. She'd forgotten that Asper had taken off the glamor ring, and Ditherington had clearly recognized him.

Well, no point in deception anymore, she thought. The jig was up.

Elemiel rose and snagged a dagger from the table, then went to stand by Asper. The knife felt good in her hand. It had been a while since she'd held a blade, but it was said that you could take the girl out of the adventure, but you couldn't take the adventurer out of the girl.

"Elemiel!" It was Sharky's turn to be shocked. The wretched little gnome grinned at her in pleased disbelief.

"I didn't expect to see you here, but I can't say I mind a bit. Gods, when was the last time we spoke to each other? Oh that's right. You were singing for your supper at an inn on the way to Twinbridge. Fortunes have changed for both of us since then, eh?"

Sharky gestured to his finely tailored black suit, and gave her a lascivious wink. He'd always been a lecherous little asshole, who enjoyed the sound of his voice far too much.

"You're looking less tattered than usual," she said evenly.

Sharky grinned. "I recently came into a spot of good fortune. The good duke here is awfully generous with his friends."

"How nice for you," she said. "But instead of a suit, I think you should've used that money to buy a personality."

The shit-eating grin fled from Sharky's face. He scowled.

"Still the same mouthy cow that I remember. I hoped you might've learned some manners, but you knife-ears are all the same. Prancing around, thinking you're better than everyone else."

"Oh, not everyone else. Just some people." The line of her lips pressed into a nasty smile.

"Right, that's quite enough," said Ditherington, recovering from his earlier surprise. "We've gotten what we came for; the mindwrack worm tooth is mine, and the next phase of the plan can begin. Sharky, will you please kill these people for me?"

"Seems a shame," Sharky said, clearly enjoying the way that Elemiel's dress clung to her curves, "but you're the boss. Lasra, cut the lights."

One of the henchmen, a thin woman dressed in black, stepped forward and raised her hands. A thick, unnatural darkness descended upon the room, choking out the light so that even Elemiel's keen elven eyesight couldn't penetrate it.

Instinct took over, and Elemiel was moving. She dove to one side while Asper shouted, "Shadow mage!"

Yes, obviously, thank you for that, she thought as she rolled. The elf hoped Asper wasn't foolish enough to keep shouting and give away his position in the thick, tenebrous darkness.

There was a ripping noise, and Elemiel stifled a curse as she felt her dress suddenly hanging looser. Something had torn, and damn it, she'd liked that dress. Air caressed the skin of her left breast, and she guessed that one of the straps had been snapped by her sudden movement.

She heard the sounds of a scuffle, and guessed Asper had engaged one of Sharky's lackeys. It was impossible to see in the pitch blackness, but Elemiel was an elf, after all. It wasn't just her eyesight that was keen.

Elemiel concentrated on the sounds in the room. She heard a set of rapidly receding footsteps that she assumed was Nigel Ditherington, and the grunts and heavy impact of Asper's fight. Sharky was more difficult; as a gnome, his tread was lighter, far more subtle than a human's clumsy footfalls. But still, she thought she might...

There.

Elemiel whipped out a hand. The dagger left her fingers and sailed through the darkness. There was a pained yowl, and suddenly the shadow spell lifted. Tendrils of black melted away, and the glowstone light of the room returned to reveal that her dagger had managed to find its target.

Well, a target, Elemiel corrected.

It seemed that she was a little out of practice, since the blade was currently protruding from the thigh of the female shadowmancer, and not Sharky Houndstooth as she'd intended. Still, it hadn't been a bad throw.

As the shadowmancer screamed and fell to her knees, Asper finished with his opponent, and for the first time, Elemiel got to see the Sunstriker in action. He fought with a grim, ruthless efficiency. Asper jabbed his fingers into the other lackey's throat, and then pulled the man's face into his knee. The black-clad man crumpled, and Asper turned his gaze to Sharky.

The gnome took a look at his incapacitated peons, and swallowed. "Right," he said, slowly inching towards the back of the room where Ditherington had fled. "I'll just be going now."

He reached into a pouch and tossed something on the floor. It exploded with a terrific bang and a cloud of acrid smoke. When Elemiel's vision cleared, the foul little gnome had vanished, abandoning his two groaning henchmen to their fates.

"Damn it!" Asper swore. He made as if to follow, then paused when he saw the elf. "You're, ah, spilling out a little there, Elemiel," he said delicately, nodding to her dress.

The elf sighed, tugging at the broken strap with resignation. "Yet another garment that isn't up to the task of containing my charms."

"Urgh," gurgled the man that Asper had chopped in the throat.

"Auuugh," whined the shadowmancer, piteously cradling her dagger-struck thigh.

"Halt! Stay right there!" someone shouted.

Elemiel turned to see the burly minotaur mage from the reception hall leading a cohort of uniformed museum guards through the doors to the room. His nostrils flared angrily, and the gold-shod tips of his horns did nothing to conceal their wicked sharpness. He didn't look very happy to see the two of them.

The guards quickly sealed off the exits and began to take stock of the damage. The mage clomped over to Elemiel and Asper, who were corralled by a loose circle of museum security while they waited for the City Watch to arrive.

"What in the name of Bullroarer is going on here?" the minotaur demanded. His eyes narrowed when he saw Asper. "Hey, aren't you the one with the melted cock?"

Elemiel giggled, and the minotaur turned to face her. "And you! I hope you have a good explanation for all this. You stand accused of... of..."

Elemiel let the broken strap of her dress fall, and the minotaur trailed off.

"My eyes are up there," she purred, and it was Asper's turn to snigger.

"Perhaps a few days in an Iron Ward cell will help curtail your sense of humor," the minotaur said with a glower, eyeing Asper ferociously.

The knight spread his arms and adopted an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to antagonize you. Look, I think we've gotten off on the wrong foot. Let's start with introductions; my name is Asper DeNallare."

The minotaur blinked his bovine eyes several times as the name sank in. "Aren't you dead?" he said.

Asper's grin widened. "Evidently not."

Cat's out of the bag

It took a few hours, but eventually the constables let them go with a minimum of fuss. Sharky and Ditherington were long gone by then. The City Watch found an old sewer access point in the museum's basement, which the men had presumably used to escape. It seemed appropriate.

Sharky was always a gutter rat.

The two captured henchmen, for their part, weren't talking, but not because of some sort of misplaced loyalty. They literally had nothing to say as their tongues had been cleaved to the roofs of their mouths by some sort of Thieves Guild geas. The constables said they wouldn't have access to a spellbreaker to deal with that until at least the next morning.

The lead detective from the City Watch had recognized Asper immediately upon her arrival. After several rounds of questions she waved both Elemiel and the knight away, once she'd secured Asper's promise to report to the palace the next day. It seemed that the knight would be expected to explain himself and his absence to his aunt, something which Asper did not look overjoyed about.

Talina smirked at the two of them when they returned to the carriage.

"I told you not to make a mess," she began in elven, but Elemiel put up her hand.

"It's no use," she said with a sigh. "He speaks elvish." She jerked her thumb at Asper.

Talina's dark eyes bugged. "This whole time?" she asked, scandalized.

The elf and the knight climbed into the privacy of the carriage. Elemiel was still positively bursting with questions, such as what in the nine hells a mindwrack worm was. The museum curator who had attended the scene to evaluate the break-in had told them that the forceps Sharky used on Ditherington to insert the tooth were meant for performing magical transplants, although Elemiel could've guessed that for herself.

As for the duke himself, there wasn't a shred of evidence to implicate the man. No one had seen him enter or exit the party, but Elemiel hoped that Asper could put that clever tongue of his to work tomorrow and convince his Aunt that the man was up to no good. There was still a plot afoot, and Elemiel could smell the adventure in the brisk night air.

"Take me back to my room, if you don't mind," asked Asper when they were comfortably seated.

Elemiel's violet stare was incredulous. "Really? Back to that dump? The jig is up- by this time tomorrow night, the entire city will know that the famous Sunstroker-" his mouth twisted, and she rolled her eyes, "alright, Sunstriker- is alive and well. Why not just go back to the Emerald Palace?"

Asper gave her a pained grimace. "Look, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to avoid my aunt as long as possible. Explaining what I've been up to is not going to be a pleasant task."

That was fair. Queen Annabelle was known for being a reasonable, evenhanded monarch, but even someone as level headed as the Queen was probably going to be a little upset that her own cousin had faked his own death without telling her.

"Fine," Elemiel said magnanimously, "but I'm not having Talina drive through north Tin Town at this hour to bring you back to that flea-infested hovel. No. You're coming home with me."

Asper's eyes glittered storm-grey in the shadows of the carriage. "Can't get enough of me, eh?"

"Do shut up," Elemiel said. With a single, elegant movement, she shrugged out of the tattered remains of her dress. It slid down her body, pooling at her waist.

"Right now?" Asper asked, his voracious, lovely eyes fixed hopefully upon her generous bust. Elemiel's skin seemed to glow in the moonlight streaming through the coach's window.

"Don't worry," said the elf, and her smile was wide filled with mischief. "Talina can be very discreet."

Elemiel straddled the knight, then thumped the roof of the carriage. Talina cracked the reins, and they sped off into the wet night.

To be continued...