With a final concerted effort I lifted myself up and onto the ledge of the watchtower. Even with magic, climbing up ten stories of sheer smoothed stonework was quite the ordeal, but it was only my first obstacle of the night. The petite girl wielding a crossbow on the opposite end of the tower would be the next obstacle.
She was staring absentmindedly at the fort below, wiping her crossbow with a cloth. Her blonde pigtails blew gently in the cold midnight breeze, and the way her tight uniform clung to her supple body was accentuated nicely by the light of the full moon.
I kept low and crept up softly upon her. The soles of my boots were padded, and she would need to be far more astute than she was to hear my approach. She was fiddling with her crossbow when I saw the bronze hilted curved dagger at her back. Clearly the blade wasn’t standard issue, and it was probably virgin as well.
Blades are after all, a lot like women: you never know how well a virgin will hold up after the first time, but that doesn’t mean you don’t relish the opportunity. When I was close enough to hear her breath, I quickly grasped the ornate handle of her little dagger, and covered her mouth with my palm. She tried to resist, but before she had a chance to react, I unsheathed her dagger and stabbed it half a dozen times into the side of her slender body. With each penetration I felt a muffled scream of hot wasted breath on my palm.
With the last stab her resistance quelled substantially. I pulled out the dagger and lifted it in front of us. We both saw the pink viscera on the blade: a telltale sign that I had punctured her lung. I wondered how she must have felt when she realized her life was ended by her own dagger. I myself was quite impressed with its make. The breathing turned to wheezing, and then subsided as her young body went limp in my arms. I gently laid her on the ground, and wiped her blood clean from my new dagger on her cute little uniform.
She was a zako. A magically summoned girl with all of the emotion and personality that comes with it, but without any freedom. Wizards used them as servants and guards because the mana required to summon them was a trifle. This blonde was the late property one Bafford The Bountiful. They say he earned his title from his fertile sack; I think it had more to do with his heaving belly, and voracious appetite for young women, summoned or otherwise.
But I wasn’t here to judge Bafford on his taste in women, or how indulgently he outfitted his guards, that was not my profession. My job was simple. Kill the wizard.
I assumed the zako’s previous position, and scanned the fort. The wooden structures showed obvious signs of aging, sagging here and there and showing various bits of discoloration beneath chipping paint, but the stone foundation the place had been built on stood strong. There were a few other watchtowers like the one I was perched on, and various structures below for barracks, hospital, mess, and whatever other places one would need to field a guard of almost fifty girls.
The wizard himself was stationed in the center of the camp, in a small building of pure stone with guards watching every entrance in threes: an impossible number to finesse quietly. I turned my attention to the mess. This would be my point of ingress. I paid good money for a reliable tip about a secret tunnel dug during the fort's construction between the larder and the lord’s private quarters. Perhaps it was meant as an escape route, or perhaps just to sell tips to resourceful assassins.
I lingered a little to see if any girls came in or out of the mess, and it looked like midnight snacking was off limits. Probably to maintain their slim figures. I whispered a short arcane chant and hopped a little in place to make sure the slowfall spell was active. Satisfied, I leaped into the night air. I fell softly with my arms outstretched. This way I could glide just enough to land where I wanted to, right by the cook’s entrance to the mess. As soon as my padded feet hit dirt I slid behind a crate of rations. It was a good thing too, because the door opened just after.
A girl stepped out in uniform, the only difference between hers and the others was a little white chef's hat on her head. This one was a redhead, and she moved lethargically to the crates I was hiding behind. She was hardly paying attention and leaned against them to catch a break from what I’m sure was a long night cooking. It would be her last night of course, but I couldn’t risk leaving a puddle or spray of blood out in the open, so I would have to get intimate.
I stood up slowly, and reached my hands out from the shadows towards her exposed neck. I could snap it like a twig, but that might make too much noise. This one wouldn’t die a swift death. I grabbed her by the neck and lifted her light body before pulling her back behind the crates with me. She tried to scream, but my strong fingers were already crushing her windpipe. All she could do was wiggle pathetically beneath my weight while I choked the life out of her. Her blue eyes looked up at me accusingly, then beggingly, then emptily. A single tear dripped out her dead eyes and down her flustered cheek.
I couldn’t leave the body here, so I dumped it in a nearby sack of cabbages. Surely no one would sneak a cabbage as a snack. With that taken care of I crept back toward the door and put my ear to it. I shut my eyes and whispered a spell to improve my hearing. My stomach twisted a little when I heard five distinct voices in the small mess hall. There was no way I would be able to locate my secret tunnel, or kill them all without making any noise.
Noone said silence spells were only for wizards, though casting it would eat up a considerable chunk of my mana. No matter, this was the only way and I was two bodies deep, far too committed to back out now. I pulled a crystal from my pouch and whispered an eldritch phrase before entering the room. The silence spell would last all of two minutes, and only encapsulate the mess, so none of the zakos inside could be allowed to escape.
I walked quickly into the room, and picked up a loaded crossbow that happened to be next to the door. Such tight security. I found the girls eating at a long table. One of them, a particularly large chested brunette, was about to take a bite of bread before I gave her a mouthful of bolt instead. The point pierced the back of her neck and stuck, killing her instantly. The other girls stood up and screamed, but no one else would hear them. They turned to see me drawing my rapier and scampered to their weapons that lined the walls.
I moved to intercept a short blonde and came between her and her spear. She raised her hands as if that would do anything, before I thrust the point of my sharp blade into her heart. She dropped to her knees as her life ended, and now it was me and three armed zakos. They formed a defensive posture quickly, and moved toward the door. I bounded quickly to put myself between them and their exit, fending off a few attacks they lashed out at me. They backed up, confident that reinforcements would arrive to save them. How wrong they were.
There are a few steps to fighting multiple opponents. First: Don’t. If you’ve failed that simple advice then your next step would be to use magic. I didn’t have much more of that so I was left with the third option: let them flank you, then fight one by one.
I picked up a cup of something hot and threw it at the tallest. She moved to block it with her sword but was too late. The steaming liquid caught her pretty face and, based on her screams, burned hot. The other two looked to one another with a nod and started to encircle me. Just what I wanted.
I leaped over a table with a speed I hadn’t shown to them before and took a stab at the burn victim. She moved to dodge it, but I followed up with a precise slice at her throat. Blood sprayed from my clean swipe and she dropped her sword before grabbing at the gushing wound with both hands.
There were two now and they sprung their attack. They moved in at either side of me with shields raised and swords behind them ready to strike. My rapier was an excellent stealth weapon, and functionally worthless against a shielded opponent. Rather than get spitroasted, I opted to hop over the girl who lay on the ground with her throat slit. She rolled under me as blood gushed all over the stone floor. My pursuers gave chase, but when they went to step over their writhing comrade I pressed the attack.
My rapier pierced the air right in front of one of the girls. She stepped back in response, and tripped on her writhing friend. Her other foot slipped in the blood, and so she went spilling backwards onto the table in an almost comical display. The other went to hold me off, but I pressed my weight ferociously against her shield. She had no room to aim a swing or a stab at me, and I forced her to the floor. Her strawberry blonde hair soaked in red blood, and my rapier drove right into her pretty green eye and stuck there.
There was no time to unstuck my blade as I leapt at the tripped girl just now righting herself. I grabbed at her wrist and snapped it at a painful angle. She dropped her sword with a scream, and that scream was cut short when I slammed her head into the table. She made another noise so I slammed it again. I heard her muffled cries above the sounds of screaming and gurgling so I slammed it again. She was somehow still conscious, so I grabbed a dull cheese knife and set to sawing open her throat. Finally her screams subsided so I dropped the knife and left her there to bleed.
I retrieved my rapier from the green eyed girl's face, and gave her the mercy of a final stab into her heart. Now there was silence, and just in time too as the spell was about to fade. I took one last satisfied glance at my violent handiwork, and looked at my ruined rapier. The blade was bent and no doubt dulled from the fighting. I frowned as I sheathed it. I suppose the dagger would have to do for the rest of this misadventure.
The larder was tiny with dirt floors covered in rat feces and spilt grain. I focused my vision on magic and found a rune tucked away in the corner. I wondered for a beat why the wizard hadn’t found this obvious security flaw, and then, as I started digging through dirt and rat shit, I realized why. This really was a brilliant hiding place.
The rune could be activated with a simple touch, and a small crawlspace revealed itself in the stone. It must have been an illusory wall this whole time. The rats had found out about this place long ago, and escaped their tunnel around me as I crawled on my belly toward the wizard’s private quarters.
My crawl ended in a walk-in closet stuffed from side to side with expensive robes and the kind of shoes you collect rather than wear. I heard faint sucking sounds as I stood up quietly and checked myself for rats. Luckily clear, and very curious, I tip toed to the closet door and peaked through one of the many slanted holes.
There he was, Bafford The Bountiful in all his nude glory, sitting comfortably on a bedside couch while a raven haired woman of exceptional figure set about sucking his bountiful cock. There were no guards in the room, I guess he liked his privacy, and besides the cocksucker no other servants either.
If I charged him he would have at least five seconds to respond, and that whore might get in the way. Plenty of time for a wizard of his caliber to turn me to soot. As much as I disliked the idea, it seemed the best option was to wait. Wait and watch until Bafford the Bountiful reaches orgasm. Then surely he would be too distracted to notice my dagger going for his throat.
So I waited, and as the pauses between the harlot’s exaggerated gagging became closer and closer together my heart beat faster. The kill was soon. Bafford moaned, the slut took him deep, I stepped quietly out of the closet. Bafford let out quite the rapturous sound as he expelled his bountiful seed. I would think that having a dagger thrust into your heart and thereby dying in the middle of orgasm would be the best way to die, but sadly Bafford was no longer available for opinion.
I pulled out my dagger from his fat chest and the mighty wizard fell back onto his lounging sofa, dead. The cocksucker went to make a noise, but I silenced her quickly with a swipe of the bloodied dagger. She held her ruined throat, now full of blood and cum, and tried to scream. Unfortunately her mouth was full, and she would die well before anyone knew what happened in this room.
As for me: my job here was done. I grabbed Bafford’s staff from beside his bed and used the last bit of mana I was saving to recall myself to a location well outside the fort that I had planted in advance.
Nine kills, and one of them a wizard. Not bad for one night's work.