It was a bit of a surprise when Lucas awoke peacefully late in the morning. Whether he’d truly conquered his traumas or his body and mind were just too exhausted to dream at all, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he was content with getting another sound night of sleep, even without Fay resting beside him.

  Though, as he awoke, Lucas found himself missing the warm presence of his blonde girlfriend beside him. It had only been a couple days, but having Fay beside him had been comforting in ways he could hardly explain. He’d almost gotten used to waking up next to her.

  It really was a shame that they’d pushed so hard to get back to Helstrum as quickly as they could. Lucas would’ve given just about anything to have one more night out with Fay before they had to get back.

  While his mind was well rested, Lucas’ body still felt a bit sore. He and Fay had pushed themselves hard, running most of the way back to Helstrum and covering a pretty huge amount of distance in ten hours of near constant travel. They hadn’t even stopped to eat, just slowed their pace to a speedy walk. Fay had really been disturbed by what she’d seen during their hunt, and Lucas trusted her judgement enough to agree that something was likely wrong.

  He would have been content to lay in bed a bit longer, but the choice was taken away from him as a paw swatted at his hand. Once, twice, then three times until Lucas finally looked over and spotted his familiar. Dusk pawed at him again, her nose twitching as she turned her head towards the door. Lucas realized why after a few seconds as he smelled the familiar scent of breakfast cooking.

  “You’re such a glutton,” He groaned, slowly pushing his body up and out of the bed. Dusk, on the other hand, showed none of the same tiredness as she eagerly hopped out of the bed and paced in front of the door impatiently. When he didn’t move fast enough, she yipped at him and pouted. Or at least, Lucas felt like she was pouting as best as a fox could.

  “I know, I know. You’re hungry,” He rolled his eyes and opened the door. Before he could even get a foot outside the room, Dusk was already dashing down the hall.

  Lucas joined his familiar a moment later in the kitchen, smiling as he spotted Lissa and Magnus at the table.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Magnus joked.

  “I was wondering which of you two would wake up first,” Lissa commented as she plated up a heaping portion of eggs, potatoes, and bacon for him.

  “Fay still isn’t awake?” He asked.

  “Not yet. Doubt that’ll last long, though,” Magnus replied.

  As Lucas took a seat, Dusk quickly hopped up into his lap and gave him a pleading look. He chuckled and rolled his eyes, scratching behind the fox’s ears.

  “Can Dusk get a plate of bacon all to herself? She earned a reward during the hunt,” He explained.

  Both parents chuckled at that, and Lissa was quick to get a plate of the delicious pork ready for the fox.

  “Magnus told me you two got back last night. How did the hunt go?” She asked.

  “For the most part it went pretty well. It was a lot of fun,” Lucas replied.

  He began to explain how things had gone to the two. How he and Fay had found a Direboar and decided to use it’s meat as bait, how they’d set a trap for the Direwolves, and even how the fight had gone. He could see the worry in the eyes of both parents when he described the fight and his injuries, but he saw genuine excitement from them both when he mentioned that he’d managed to use his Darkness affinity.

  By the time he’d finished, Dusk had long since finished her bacon and Lucas had finished his meal as well.

  “I’m just glad you both are alright,” Lissa said.

  “You definitely slipped up in that fight, kid,” Magnus scolded. “But you already know that, so I won’t be too harsh on you. We’re going to be going over what happened and what you could’ve done better tonight, though.”

  That much Lucas had been expecting. He even welcomed it. He knew he’d made mistakes, and he didn’t want to make them again.

  “It’s a shame you didn’t grab more of that boar, though. It would’ve made for a delicious dinner,” Lissa chimed in. Lucas had to agree with her since the boar meat was delicious.

  Before the conversation could go any further, Fay dashed into the room.

  “Morning mom, morning dad! I’m gonna go grab breakfast with Sasha and tell her about the trip!” She said in a rush as she grabbed an apple from the table and sped out of the room.

  Both humans and familiars in the room just blinked their eyes in surprise at the sudden, short encounter. But then, Fay blurred her way back into the room a second later.

  “Oh! By the way, I’m stealing Lucas later so no training with him tonight, dad. We’re going out on a date.”

  “Wait, what?” Lucas asked, just as surprised as Lissa and Magnus were.

  “Mhmmm. You’re taking me out on a date tonight. Better be ready by six!” She chirped, grinning as she leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek.

  As Lucas felt his cheeks heating up, Fay vanished in another blur of her Speed magic, leaving Lucas alone suddenly with his girlfriend’s parents.

  His head turned almost mechanically towards the two. Lissa just looked amused while Magnus was shooting him a glare.

  “Oh, look at the time! Thanks for breakfast but I gotta go drop off these potions to Wren. Bye!”

  Anyone watching would think that Lucas also had Speed magic with how quickly he rushed out of the house.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Getting to Poisons and Potions didn’t take long, especially with Lucas making the trip in a dead sprint. He’d have to deal with Magnus later, but that was a problem for future Lucas.

  The shop was empty early on a Wednesday morning, and Lucas was surprised to see Wren actually behind the counter.

  “Oh? You’re back already?”

  “We kinda rushed to get home last night,” Lucas replied as he walked in. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out the endurance and mana restoration potions that Wren had given him and placed them on the counter. “I wanted to give these back to you.”

  The old woman looked over the two potions and her gaze immediately flickered to Lucas himself.

  “What happened? I can see that the healing potion I gave you is missing, so what happened?”

  It wasn’t so much a question as it was a demand for answers.

  “I got cocky,” He admitted. “I found out how to use my Darkness magic and thought that I could take on the world. I got my arm chewed on because of it and we had to use the potion to make sure I didn’t bleed out.”

  He still felt guilty for that. The terror and worry in Fay’s eyes were not something that he wanted to see again anytime soon. As brutal as Magnus’ training was going to be, Lucas looked forward to it if it meant he could make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

  “And what did you learn from that all?” Wren asked.

  “That I need to learn more still. How to fight better, how to use my magic better, and how to use more types of illusions.”

  The old woman cocked an eyebrow at that. “Oh?”

  “My illusions worked a bit, but the Direwolves were able to see through my visual illusions after a bit. I need to learn how to trick more of the senses and make my illusions better,” He explained.

  The potion maker nodded, her white hair bobbing as she stepped out from behind the counter. She passed Lucas and grabbed the sign on the front door, twisting it from ‘open’ to ‘closed’.

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  “And what do you want to learn? What senses do you wish to fool and manipulate?” She asked.

  “All of them. I need to learn everything that I can to trick anyone or anything. I want to make it so no one can tell what I’m doing in a fight.”

  The grin that spread across Wren’s face as she listened to him wasn’t a kind one, but she didn’t say anything until he’d finished.

  “That’s a lofty goal. And you still wish to learn all of that despite the things that illusions can do? The pain and suffering that they can inflict upon others?”

  There was something in the way that she asked the question, something that kept Lucas from just immediately agreeing. He thought over the question for a bit longer while Wren silently waited for his answer.

  “Yes. You told me the sort of things that I could do with an illusion and I need to learn how to do it. I don’t want to hurt someone to that extent, but I need to learn how to in case I’m ever truly in danger and need that knowledge.”

  There was no laughter from the woman as she listened to him. Instead, she simply nodded her head and took a seat behind the counter once more.

  “Your answers are still as good as they were when we first met. Good.”

  Something had been bothering Lucas about the entire conversation and the temptation to ask finally boiled over. He had a question in his mind that he needed an answer to.

  “How do you know all these things about illusions? And how do you know how to do them yourself?” He slowly asked.

  The woman sighed and seemed to visibly age before Lucas’ eyes, looking every bit her nearly two hundred years of age.

  “I was wondering when you would ask that,” She muttered. “Lucas, I have lived a very long life, longer than anyone else in Helstrum. My life hasn’t been a good one and my story isn’t pleasant. Are you sure you want to know?”

  He took a moment to consider if he actually did want to know more. But his curiosity won out in the end and he nodded.

  “Very well. The short answer to your question is that, before I came to Helstrum and set up my shop, I was an assassin for a group that called themselves The Black Hand. The long answer is much more complicated.”

  Wren offered him a seat and Lucas slowly took it, his mind whirling as he struggled to think of the snarky, little old lady before him as an actual assassin.

  “I was recruited when I was young, earlier than ten. I was an orphan at the time, and my mentor offered me a home and ‘family’. I foolishly agreed,” She shook her head ruefully.

  “The group believed that raising a person surrounded by individuals with similar affinities would make those same affinities more likely to awaken in a person. There’s no actual proof that it’s true or not, but their methods did seem to result in a lot of children manifesting poison related affinities when their magic awoke. I was one of those children. My magic awoke at the age of fourteen and I was immediately a target of great attention. I had the Poison and Illusion affinities, the same as the man who had ‘adopted’ me into the group. He was one of their best, the son of the leader of the group, and he was terrifying.”

  “My days became focused on training my affinities and teaching me how to be subtle and quick. Sneaking a few drops of poison into a drink, poisoning objects and learning how to create all kinds of poisonous substances. My nights were spent with my mentor teaching me all he could about Illusion magic and the silent, untraceable kills that could be performed with it. The man had made it into an art form, crafting horrible illusions that would pray on a person’s worst fears. Push things far enough and you could even give a man a heart attack with no signs of poison or any wrongdoing. And once he got to the most advanced lessons, he taught me how to craft illusions so powerful and perfect that they could even fool the body into harming itself.”

  Lucas listened silently, taking in Wren’s story as she told it to him. He’d known that the magical world he’d stumbled into was far from perfect, but hearing about an actual organization of assassins was more than a little bit terrifying.

  “I worked with them for years, listening to orders and taking on assignments to end the lives of plenty of people. My kill count is well over a hundred people on both sides of the Mirrors.”

  That threw Lucas for a loop. “What? What do you mean on both sides?”

  “Not all people hide their magic, Lucas. For those who knew where to look back in the day, there were ways for Ordinaries to hire The Black Hand for assassinations. Magic is hard to do on the Ordinary side of the world, yes, but it’s not very hard to create a potent poison on this side and then slip it into a drink on the other side of the Mirrors. Some important people were likely killed thanks to magic over the years.”

  Lucas was stunned when he heard that. His mind began to race, wondering if the deaths of important figures throughout history could have been attributed to magic rather than natural causes. And he couldn’t help but wonder if Wren was responsible for any of them.

  “Are you-“

  “No,” She cut him off before he could finish. “To my knowledge I never killed anyone especially important in the Ordinary side of the world. Most of my assignments were on this side of the Mirrors.”

  For some reason, that didn’t reassure Lucas as much as it should have.

  “As I was saying,” Wren continued. “I was working with The Black Hand for years, decades even. I watched as my mentor grew older and took over the organization. And I was content doing my work. It was what I’d been raised to do, after all. Why would I question it.”

  “But you still left,” Lucas mumbled. “Why?”

  Wren smiled a bit, her first smile since she’d started telling her story. “I made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” He asked.

  “I underestimated one of the targets I was sent after. He had an affinity for poisons as well and had worked to develop an immunity to as many toxins as he could. My attempt to poison him got me caught instead and led to a fight. It was only because of my Illusion magic that I was able to kill him in the end. But by then, he’d wounded me quite a bit.”

  “So, you left because you almost died?”

  That got an actual laugh out of Wren and she shook her head. “No, child. I’d come closer to death than that during some of my training sessions when I was younger. No, it wasn’t due to my injuries, but they did lead me to the reason for me leaving. They led me to my husband.”

  It was the first time that Lucas had even heard about the woman having a husband. Sure, he knew she had children and grandchildren, but he’d never seen or heard of husband being around the shop.

  “The fight between me and my target had drawn a bit of attention. A man had seen what was happening and had watched from a distance. When my target died and I collapsed on broken legs, the spectator showed himself. Instead of accusing me or even killing me himself, he grabbed me and took me back to his clinic. He was a healer and promised to heal my wounds if I would tell him my story.”

  “Just like that?” Lucas asked.

  “Just like that,” Wren grinned. “He was a strange man, he didn’t judge me when he learned that I was an assassin. By all means, I should have killed him for telling him that much. I even planned to do so after he finished healing me. But he treated me differently. For the first time in my life, someone was kind to me. He sympathized with me, asking me questions that made me question if the life I was living was actually a life at all. He treated me like a person, not as a tool to use and throw away.”

  “You ran away with him?”

  Wren grinned again, but this one was far less kind. “No, I didn’t. Not yet at least. I spent a day with him recovering. His magic wasn’t especially strong, and he couldn’t heal as fast as others, but I appreciated it all the same. It gave us more time to talk, and he broke down my walls. By the time I was fully healed, I realized that my mentor and The Black Hand had used me. I was just another disposable tool for them. I was angry and ready to leave, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Lucas questioned. “Couldn’t you have just run away with him and hidden away somewhere?”

  “I could’ve,” She agreed. “But they would have found me eventually. I knew the only way that I could live happily with the man who had saved my life was to take out the people who would hunt me down. So I returned and I did my dirty work.”

  Lucas’ eyes slowly widened as he listened. It took a moment for him to realize what Wren was suggesting, but he quickly caught on.

  “You killed them. All of them.”

  “I did,” She confirmed. “I’d learned everything that my mentor could teach me. I was his equal in magic. But while I was in my prime, he had grown old. And above all else, he believed that he had my loyalty. In a single night, I wiped out The Black Hand. Every other assassin was killed, whether by me or thanks to my magics making them fight one another. By the time the sun rose in the morning, I was the only assassin left alive. And I left.”

  He couldn’t help but ask. He needed to. “How man-“

  “Seventy-four assassins, including my mentor,” Wren replied.

  “Then what?” He asked slowly.

  “I returned back to the man who had healed me. I told him what I’d done and he accepted me. I told him that I had no name of my own and he gave me one. He named me Wren and I fell in love with him. We moved to a small little settlement that was just getting started and made our little shop in a town called Helstrum. He was the one that encouraged me to pursue potion making, as I’d ignored my Brewing affinity my entire life.”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard about your husband, though?”

  The far off look in Wren’s eyes told more than her words ever could and Lucas felt his heart sink. She confirmed his suspicions a second later.

  “He died years ago. The fool went to offer aid after a disaster caused by a powerful Elemental. What he didn’t know was that the Elemental hadn’t been defeated yet. He was caught in the destruction and was killed.”

  “I… I’m so sorry,” Lucas apologized.

  There weren’t any tears, but he could see the sadness in the old woman’s eyes as she recalled the death.

  “Thank you. But that is my story, you now know more about me than anyone other than my own husband did. Even my children haven’t been told about my past with The Black Hand,” She explained.

  Lucas was baffled and thrown off by the admission. He had figured that her own family would at least know of Wren’s story, but instead he found out that he was the only other living person who would know.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you will be my last student that I ever teach. I wanted a student that I could teach what I know to. As dark as my knowledge is and even with all the evil that it’s been used for, I don’t wish for it to die with me. But I needed a student that I could trust wouldn’t abuse that knowledge. I knew after our first meeting that you would be that student.”

  Those old blue eyes met his and Lucas shivered at the intensity of her gaze.

  “So, if you’re still willing to accept this old killer as your teacher, I will teach you everything I know about Illusion magic.”

  It was a hell of an offer and Lucas could feel the weight behind those words. He could have said no and walked away, maybe he should have. He could have even made a snarky comment about Wren’s age.

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

  “Teach me. Teach me everything you know.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  how she knew all this stuff about what illusions could do. After all, a normal potion maker doesn't have a reason to know how to kill someone with an illusion...