"Dear Hartog,
You can no longer continue the narrative of representing the poor and forgotten while the Church's forces are in town.
Please be careful with your younger members too, they might start trouble.
The Inquisitor force has raided our guild already, demanding information on a flame-haired Crusader with gold eyes and a very specific sigel. This will be the sigel of the messenger that delivered this message and who you would have noticed fits the other characteristics of the wanted person.
Please help this adventurer and his party escape Tariak.
Be careful Hartog, the Church has grown strange these past few months.
Best wishes,
Almanac the Unworthy."
As soon as Kenji finished reading the letter aloud, he used some candle wax to reseal the letter. checking it over, you'd never be able to tell it was opened at all.
"Why did you open it?" Tenko asked. Violet meanwhile had finished packing up their things.
"Wanted to know if we were heading for a trap. It would have been easy coins to hand me in - instead they're helping us out. And I knew these two were working together! They're 'Guilds' must be just about stirring up fake rivalry to make the guild members more committed. A good idea really, we could learn something from them."
"Let's get going Kenji, it'll be dangerous the longer we wait," Violet said, shoving a travel pack at each of them. It had taken the rest of their coin, but these fourth hand adventurer bags, satchels and old provisions would see them travelling for a few days at least.
"It was nice of Almanac to give us that discount. These cloaks as well," Kenji pulled his dark green hood to obscure his fiery hair and marched out into the night air. The reason he wore the form of the boy knight at all was so if they were discovered he could lure the enemy away, then transform into another form and return. A last-ditch resort, but both Tenko and Violet knew not to follow him if it came to that. Behind him came Tenko with an Azure cloak and Violet in a dull daisy coloured cloak.
"Really, as if they didn't have purple?" She grunted, then noting Kenji's chuckling sniffed angrily and hurried along. Together they went into the already packed streets, everyone out and about, the talk of 'Warden Company' thick in the air.
After barely having left the guild, the sound of marching filled the streets. Eight of the Lord's soldiers and eight Crusaders with billowing gold and red capes shoved aside the crowd en-route to the Golden Goose Guild. Kenji pressed himself against a stone building and pulled his hood low as did Violet and Tenko. The company of enemy troops crashed on by, a pair of particularly heavy steps amongst their number.
Only once they passed did Kenji peer over, to find a huge man with raven black hair, no insignia and golden chains binding his arms at their back.
"Let's go," Kenji whispered as the troops charged within the Guild Keep. At least they had their weapons sheathed...for now.
Winding through the streets they found the occasional Lord soldier and no few patrols of vicious-looking men and women often accompanied by a snooty priest or crusader. They halted everyone that passed by, interrogating them, and taking some few for further questioning elsewhere.
Taking the back alleys, Kenji had little trouble winding his way- Tenko pulled them into the dark of a building. Before Kenji could say a word he felt her trembling uncontrollably, her eyes staring up to the roof with raw terror in her eyes.
There Kenji spotted a dash of darkness against the starry sky. The black shape grinned with pristine white teeth, a glinting blade in either hand. For a moment that figure sucked in the fear of the crowd, before dashing across several more rooftops and away.
"W-we should go," Kenji whispered, the strange figure had chilled him to the core. The speed of the creature's step, the aura of....death. Whoever that was, it would have killed all three of them without resistance. Kenji was certain.
"Get OFF her!" Screamed a familiar buck-toothed boy.
Leaving the relative safety of the alley, Kenji discovered a dozen brutes had blocked off a street. In the midst of them all, a shaved haired woman with the symbol of the Three cut into her forehead held the twisted eyed Headless Hunter girl in the air.
"Come with me boy, and your sister can live," the woman said grinning as if she were a witch trying to entice children to come to her cabin in the woods. The buck-toothed boy, in turn, rose his stave, a lick of cold wind building up in its end. Behind him, several younger children quivered and cried, no few clutching at the buck-toothed boy's clothes.
"You let Charlie go or I'll freeze your balls off!" Scag screamed, eyes filled with an equal measure of rage and terror.
"Don't do it Scag! This bitch is crazy, run for your life!"
"Violet, Tenko, get the children out of harm's way," Kenji whispered as he stepped forward. Violet held him back, "Kenji don't do it! Those are the ones that stole from us, and you'll be tortured and killed if they catch you!"
"'If' they find me. And don't you want to help them too?" he could see in her eyes that she did. "Good. Now when I return, you might have to convince me to change back if I appear as Ash, ok?"
Without waiting for a response, Kenji ran into the fray. The thugs stank like absolute hell as he got closer - actually one was missing a jaw, another had a puss filed eye and a third only one arm seeing as the rest of him was cut clean away. They were undead, in the dark, Kenji hadn't realised.
"Who are you- GET HIM!" the woman screeched, throwing the girl aside and pointing. Immediately the undead attacked while dozens of skeletons crawled out of the shadows to grapple at Kenji's feet.
"[Blessing-fire]!" Kenji announced, his legs becoming covered in holy flame. Running for his life, he crashed through each skeleton in turn, a pack of rather pissed of zombies chasing after him.
Luckily for him, Kenji was faster.
"Oh Albion, please catch this rat for me," the shaved woman laughed, a hulking barbarian sauntering out of a nearby alleyway. Behind him arose fresh zombies, Kenji snarling as he recognised them as townsfolk.
Yet Kenji hadn't the time to be angry as the barbarian roared like a troll with glass in its throat and charged faster than a rampaging bull. As it charged the zombie barbarian's limbs swelled, eyes flared red and huge claymore seemed to weigh as much as a feather.
"Oh fuck that," Kenji said, running as far as he could before he dived into a nearby alleyway. Immediately upon entry he became the Corrupt Spirit Tree, and used his mass of vines and roots to encircle the alleyway's mouth. Barely a moment later the zombie barbarian arrived and dumbly charged right in.
Constricted by a dozen vines and roots, Kenji then abandoned the Corrupt Spirit Tree body. That meant the vines would continue to hold the barbarian for a while, but that form would take an entire day until his Forbidden Replication Slot could replicate the body again Vs if he had reclaimed the form after use.
Using Ash he watched for a moment as the dead piled up on the other side of his hastily made barrier of wood and decided the sacrifice easily worth it. He just hoped there wouldn't be more fighting because as he watched, the zombie barbarian was breaking off the Corrupt Spirit Tree's stranglehold one root at a time with its bare hands and snapping teeth.
Slinking away into the night, Kenji headed on light elvish feet to the Headless Hunter Guild.