An Advantageous Mission


Ranko spun on her heel as she looked about the room she had been given.
No longer was she in Distanfae's quarters. She had proven herself and
been brought to the attention of the clan Matron. Now she was a
weaponmaster of the House Vitrue, though it was a provisional position,
as Distanfae had explained it, dependent on her continued performance.

In the meantime she had been moved to quarters more befitting her
status. Like Distanfae's quarters, her new rooms had, aside from the
bedchamber, what appeared to be servant's quarters, currently empty,
directly attached via an inner door, among several other rooms. They
also had a few features that had not been present in Distanfae's rooms.
Distanfae had ranted about the move at some length, for her new rooms
were near the other high-ranking warriors and far from his chambers.

Furthermore, she was now under orders from Distanfae to accept orders
from the Matron and those acting as her representatives. She had not
really been prepared for the transitive nature of owing allegiance to
one who himself owed allegiance to another. Now, in spite of her
success, she could find herself taking orders from Kliza, a thought that
sent a mental shiver of disgust through her.

Still, her rooms were an improvement. Instead of the simple servant's
room she had had in Distanfae's chambers, she now possessed a suite of
rooms that included her delight, a private practice chamber, apparently
a feature of most of the rooms given to the higher warriors. 

She also had a private bath, though she was willing to bet that the
running water was somehow powered by magic. Stone walls and floors did
not seem conducive to running pipes, though of course she had no
practical experience there to draw on. Perhaps they were merely run by
magic?

Distanfae had allowed her to pack all of the clothing he had prepared
for her, and it hung now in a large walk-in closet that included a
full-length mirror. There was another large mirror in the bedroom above
the large dresser that contained various undergarments and nightclothes.
Ranko smirked at the recognition that any girl would probably be
delighted with the facilities she had, but the girls she had known would
probably expect her to be disgusted with the mirrors and the clothes.

In point of fact, she felt the mirrors would be very useful. After all,
they would help her maintain the illusion of her appearance, and not
ruin it by accidentally letting her new blue surface on her face, or her
teeth be jade green.

She sat in front of the mirror now, and let the blue substance flow into
her eyes, replacing the usual jade. Her eyes were momentarily blinded by
the sudden light. When they adjusted, she realized that the substance
was still glowing. She cursed softly, realizing that blue though it was,
it would not serve well for her eye-color. She snickered, picturing
herself clothed entirely in a black ninja-suit, sneaking down a corridor
while the guards stared at the moving beams of blue light that blinked
in and out of visibility.

Smirking, she drew it out of her eyes, replacing it with quicksilver as
hues of energy slid smoothly into life around her. She brought the blue
out through her palm, forming it into a ball until she held all of it in
her hand, lighting the room with a soft blue glow. As she had
half-expected, there was an indeed an additional luminescence about the
sphere, indicating that it was in some sense magical.

When she submerged her senses into it, exploring it from within as she
had done with her quicksilver, she found to her surprise that it was
entirely lacking the skeins of magic she was used to. There were no
tight weaves that might represent triggers, nor even any threads.
Instead, it was purely and simply suffused with magic, glowing with
contained power.

"Wow," she muttered. "How much magic do you gotta have to just glow like
that? Or is it because you're see-through?"

She played with the sphere as if molding playdough, squeezing it in her
hand until it ran out through her fingers, pulling it like taffy, and
rolling it back into a ball, getting a feel for how it reshaped, much as
she had earlier done with the other substances that formed her. She
found this confirmed, at least to her mind, her initial recognition of
the blue as a metal. It did not try to constrain itself to hard planes,
as the various gemstones she contained did.

Having recognized the essential metallic nature of the blue substance,
she proceeded to put it through one of the general patterns she had
learned to use on metals, drawing it out very finely and then weaving it
as thread. Woven into a cloth as fine as her cloak of shadow, it still
shone with its own light, casting odd shadows on the walls about it,
shadows that writhed as if alive as she rumpled the cloth up and then
smoothed it out again, thinking about where and when it would make sense
to wear a glowing cloth.

Remembering the green light she had obtained from the enspelled diamond
she had absorbed, she formed a thin sheet of jade and held it over the
cloth. To her surprise, it blocked the light completely, looking black
in the solely blue light and casting deep shadows as she lowered it over
the cloth. Reabsorbing it, she considered the cloth. Mixing it with
threads of adamantite darkened the color of the cloth considerably, but
had no apparent effect on the light coming from it.

Taking the cloth in her hands, she pulled on it, feeling the lack of
give. Oh, it moved smoothly enough, but it did not stretch. Was that
normal? She drew forth a skein of her cloak and stretched it between her
hands, watching as the fibers thinned and the gaps between them grew,
and then loosened her grip and felt it flow between her fingers as the
threads returned to their relaxed configuration. She had not
particularly noticed the difference before, but now she considered it.
Was there any advantage to be had there?

She drew forth the blue strands out of the cloth and reabsorbed them,
her interest caught now by the potential of the elasticity she had just
observed. Thinking back to her sparring sessions with Distanfae, she
remembered the crossbow leaning against the wall. She absorbed the
wayward threads of adamantite, then formed a simple slingshot, two
upward pointing forks and a handle beneath. Her shadow cloak flowed up
to form a cord bonded to the upper part of each fork.

She hooked her finger in the cord and drew it back, stretching it
further and further, half-expecting it to break, not sure whether that
would count as damage to her or not. It held, though, and snapped back
lazily when she released it. She frowned and began adjusting the pattern
of the threads in the cord until she found a style that seemed to
maximize the snap back when she released.

Looking about for something to cast with it, she frowned in irritation.
There were no small stones or similar loose objects in the room that she
could use. She drew the diamond forth into her palm and looked at it,
but shook her head. It was part of her now and she had yet to find a way
to undo that. She was not even certain that she could, since that might
constitute harm and thus be prevented by her very indestructability.

The diamond vanished into her hand as she stood and strode to the stone
wall. Her eyes flashed as she verified the absence of magic, then she
held up her hand to the wall. Quicksilver flowed forth from her palm,
settling smoothly against the wall. With a wry grin, she reshaped the
quicksilver into the kanji for 'wild'. It sank into the wall, absorbing
the stone, then she withdrew it, leaving part of her name, engraved as
if by a master, smooth with sharp edges and a face so flat it gleamed
when she shone the diamond's light on it to examine her handiwork.

"Hmph, I guess Dist was right, I could make a living doing that."

Turning her attention back to the stone she had absorbed, she reshaped
it then released it onto her palm as a half-dozen perfect spheres. They
too gleamed with a perfect finish in the light of the diamond she had
not yet shut off.

Shifting one between her first finger and thumb, she closed the rest of
her fingers against the palm and slid the sphere against the cord of her
makeshift slingshot and drew it back hard.

Aiming at the wooden door, she let fly and grinned when the stone
thunked into the door. Stepping up to examine it, she found the stone
deeply embedded, though it had not managed to make it all the way
through the thick door. Quicksilver flowed into the gap, drawing the
stone out and smoothing over the hole in the wood.

Pausing, she ran her hand across the wood, feeling the slightly rough
texture of it. "That's something I don't have," she thought to herself.
"I've got no wood. I wonder if I should try to get some?"

The wood vibrated beneath her fingers suddenly and she jerked back,
confused, until the knock was repeated. Recognizing the sound now, she
pulled the door open and admitted Distanfae, closing the door behind him.

He turned to her. "Well," he queried, "how is it?"

She glanced around her, then nodded. "It's fine," she answered, stepping
over to set the stone spheres down on the tabletop.

"Good," he said, nodding sharply, and ignoring the soft clatter of the
stones. "Do you think you'll be able to find your way back here?"

Ranko nodded. "I'm familiar enough with it, I'll be able to get here
through the shadows with no problem. It will probably take me a bit
longer to get used to the halls, though," she admitted, shrugging her
shoulders.

"You'll learn the paths," Distanfae agreed, waving off that concern.
"Have you felt any scrying spells while you've been here?"

"No, nothing."

"That's good. Remember to watch for them. It is vital that you not be
seen shifting nor absorbing magic or magical items. Now, Kliza is on her
way here to test you again. I can't be there to coach you and I think
Matron Vitrue must have some idea that I can communicate to you
mentally, because Laermornan rather snidely hinted that they would be
testing you in a shielded chamber. This is very important! You must be
seen to have skill with a blade. I'm rather worried that they may
require you to set aside the katana and fight with a different blade,
since Laer is still convinced that the blade is granting you the skill,
so, just in case..."


As he unbuckled and handed her a scimitar, telling her to reshape it
into a match for her katana form, they both heard booted footsteps in
the hall. 

"Quickly now, send me through the shadows back to my room!"

---

Ranko opened the door before it could be pounded on a second time. 

"Come," Kliza ordered. Ranko followed without comment, noting as she did
the contingent of guards and smirking to herself. Apparently Kliza was
not all that confident of her superiority.

Ranko tried to keep a careful eye on their turns, watching for anything
that she could use as a reference point. The sooner she could navigate
these halls on her own, the better off she would be. Unfortunately, she
was hampered by the need to work on the blade. She had barely managed to
get the sheath and rough structure complete before Kliza reached the
door and there was considerable detail left to finish.

Finally, bare minutes after Ranko finally finished the last of the
details on the blade, Kliza led her into a room not terribly dissimilar
to the one she had trained in with Distanfae. The critical differences
were the higher ceiling and the presence of a variety of weapons hung
on the walls. The high ceiling arched over and beyond the walls, which
ended before they reached that height. Above the walls rows of stone
benches rose outward. On one side the benches were interrupted by a more
elaborate assembly of cushioned seating where Matron Vitrue awaited
them.

The group of guards that had accompanied them now spread out around the
perimeter of the room as Kliza and Ranko walked to stand before the
Matron.

Kliza turned and smirked at Ranko. "Good luck," she hissed, "you'll need
it." She stepped up to the wall and rose smoothly into the air, stepping
forward as she reached the top of the wall. She turned and sat in a seat
at her mother's right hand, her mouth set in a derisive sneer.

A door opposite the one they had entered through opened, admitting a
slender male drow, dressed in what Ranko took to be fighting leathers.
Though there were swords on the walls in profusion, he bore a sword
already.

Somewhat to Ranko's surprise, and contrary to what Distanfae had led her
to expect, though Laermornan, stepping forward to referee the bout, did
speak of her sword skills, he did not ask her to cast aside her blade.
That left Ranko wondering whether or not they did understand, and
whether she should take advantage of their apparent lack of awareness to
allow the blade she held to be knocked from her grasp, cementing the
lack of connection between them, or if that would merely raise greater
doubts about her ability.

Deciding against allowing herself to be disarmed, Ranko insinuated
tendrils of quicksilver into and through the sword hilt as she drew the
blade, then, while the blade was still in motion, slid a thin skein of
her surface over the blade itself, to ensure that it could not be
broken.

She stepped forward to face the leather-clad swordsman, who met her gaze
with wary eyes as he drew his own blade. She was grateful that by
Laermornan's words this was not a death-duel, but it was solely an
intellectual gratitude. Any emotional uneasiness she might once have
felt at the earlier possibility of a match to the death had simply not
been present, something she guessed and hoped was due to Distanfae and
not simply to a hardening of her own heart.

The drow sprang at her abruptly and as she parried his blow, she admired
his skill. There had been remarkably little indication of his intent in
his stance and in his red eyes.

Though her father had had little respect for weapons-users, he had not
been lax in her instruction even there, and while she might not have
been among the top in the world in skill with a blade, she was far from
a poor swordswoman. The drow was indeed skilled himself, but it was
apparent that he was used to moving faster than he was, and she
suspected some form of magical speed boost that he had been denied in
this bout.

As a result, not only was he not so used to fighting at his natural
speed, he was also slower than she had expected a skilled swordsman to
be. He obviously did not make use of ki to boost his speed, and even
with the loss of speed she had suffered, she was still sufficiently
faster than him to balance out any additional skill he had.

More to the point, perhaps, was her considerable, and clearly at least
to him, unexpected strength advantage. Even her blocks were visibly
jarring him, and her parries regularly knocked him off-balance. She
marked each such loss of control by darting her blade in to nick his
flesh, scoring tiny wounds as if marking up a tally. She could have
knocked his blade out of his hands entirely but she did not want to
antagonize the Matron by prematurely ending her entertainment, lest the
Matron insist she finish him in spite of it being a non-death match.

She deliberately held back on the flashy moves of the Anything Goes
style, sticking to the ground instead of taking to the air. Distanfae
had said they would be interested in a demonstration of skill with a
sword, and she needed to convince the matron that she was the right one
to wield the blade that Distanfae was claiming to have created, not to
prove that she could be perfectly lethal without one.

As opportunities arose, Ranko risked glances at the watching nobles. The
Matron's visage seemed carven from stone, so little did it change, but
Kliza's face was progressively darkening, while Laermornan just looked
ill.

Finally, Kliza could take no more and rose to her feet. "Let's see how
well you handle a group, then," she snarled, and shouted at the guards.
They rushed forward, joining the swordsman's assault on Ranko.

Ranko changed tactics. Sweeping the swordsman's blade wide, she spun to
catch the dropping blade of one of the guards with an unrestrained
parry, shattering the sword. She dropped slightly and came in under the
next sword as she continued her spin, and rising, caught him with the
back of her hand and the hilt of her sword in the chest, throwing him
backward into his compatriots.

With deliberate moves she began to disarm the rest of her opponents,
never needing more than a single blow, with the power she had behind
them, to remove the fighter, or the weapon, as chance and opportunity
dictated. The swordsman she merely parried, until she had relieved all
the guards of their weapons. The one guard who was foolish enough to
scramble across the floor and take up a fallen sword had it shattered in
his hands. The other guards left their swords where they lay. There was
obviously no point in wasting good steel.

When she finally disarmed the swordsman, it was with confidence that she
had controlled the tone of the entire affair and definitively proven her
skills with a blade. She was surprised and disgruntled therefore, when
she was casually dismissed by Kliza, in a manner that made it clear she
was supremely unimpressed. She mastered her reaction before it was
visible, however, knowing that Distanfae would be rightly irritated with
her if she allowed Kliza to gain satisfaction from her response. He
seemed to like his sister almost as little as Ranko did.

She was grateful that the swordsman and the other soldiers exited
through the far door, rather than the one she came through, and was now
leaving through, for she could feel their eyes on her until she was out
of their sight, and she did not care to have another altercation away
from watchful eyes. If Distanfae were to be believed, and she had no
reason to doubt him, an altercation in an empty hallway might yet be
observed magically by those in distant parts of the house. 

More to the point, perhaps, were his comments about the Matron
potentially reading his mind. If she could read his, she could surely
read that of a common soldier, which meant that Ranko would have to
avoid behaving suspiciously when anyone at all was present, even if she
could feel certain that there was no scrying going on.

Her earlier focus on reshaping the sword Distanfae had given her into a
proper replica of her own sword form had unfortunately, and in spite of
her best efforts, taken too much of her concentration away from noting
the passages that they took as Kliza guided her, and so she soon found
herself lost.

Attuning herself to the sensations that had earlier indicated that
someone was scrying on her, she examined her surroundings until she felt
sure that she was not being observed from afar, then, once no one was in
sight of her, she slipped through the shadows back to her room.

She was unsettled to find that Distanfae was not waiting there for her.
She had expected, given his apparent concern about it, that he would
want to know the full details of what had happened immediately. She
pondered what he might doing that was more important, then finally
dismissed that concern. There was little to nothing that she could do
about it at any rate. Ranko turned her attention back to what she had
been doing before Kliza's untimely interruption.

Sitting down at her desk, she picked up one of the spheres. She squeezed
it lightly. Even though she had earlier absorbed it into her
quicksilver, it did not flow as her own substance did. She could reshape
it with her quicksilver, but not otherwise. She pressed steadily harder.
With a loud crack, the stone gave way, shattering and sending shards
flying amidst a small cloud of fine dust.

Ranko smirked at the destroyed stone, pleased that she had clearly not
lost all of her strength, weakened though she had been by the loss of
her ki. Thoughts of her ki reminded her of the other unique attribute of
her quicksilver: the purple energy that she had found so easy to
manipulate.

Picking up another sphere, she again held it between two fingers,
applying pressure. This time, however, she deliberately grasped it
off-center, and as her fingers closed with greater force, they pressed
at an angle until the strain was too great and friction lost the battle.
Her fingers snapped together and the sphere shot across the room.

It rebounded but a short distance off the wall, but Ranko did not seem
disappointed. She had not expected great things from that attempt. It
was merely a gauge, that she might measure the effectiveness of her next
try. Holding another sphere, she drew up the purple energy and focused
it in her fingers, marshaling her intent as she willed it to manifest as
kinetic energy.

This time, the sphere shot off from her fingers with an audible crack,
and smashed itself to splinters against the wall, leaving a starburst of
white, chalky residue.

"One last try," Ranko murmured, her eyes alight with happiness. If she
could pull this next trick off, she would have stepped well beyond what
she could previously accomplish with her ki. This time she drew the
amethyst glow into her fingers as before, and also drew power from one
of her wands, forcing it into the stone itself, filling its center with
glowing power. It was tricky, since she was striving to impose two
entirely different intents on the two segments of power.

Her effort was vindicated as the sphere impacted sharply against the
wall. It was destroyed, much as the first, but whatever pattern it might
have left was entirely obscured by the circular sheet of ice that now
clung to the wall, centered at the point of impact.

---

Ranko rose in utter silence from the shadows. Glancing back, she grinned
at the impenetrable fence she had just bypassed. It had been wound about
with spells designed to prevent exactly what she had just done, cloaks
of shadow being far from unheard of. That had not stopped her. The
ability to directly see the weave of magic about the fence and her own
skill at manipulating energy had guided her to a magical variation of
the Umisenken techniques of her father. It was not the Umisenken, per
se. That was a ki technique. But it was built on similar principles,
using the magical energy she possessed to conceal herself from that same
energy acting elsewhere.

Though she kept to the shadows as she crossed the open yard, she did not
use the cloak to draw them about herself. Darkness being ever-present
here, it posed little barrier to most eyes. No, here it was the absence
of the illusion that gave her a normal seeming heat signature that would
most strongly ward her against watchful eyes, so long as she remained
out of the light. Not that there was much light to speak of, only the
faint glimmers offered by the decorative faerie fire that adorned much
of the structure.

She was grateful that this was an acquisition mission for Distanfae, and
not a mission for his mother. She shuddered, remembering the poor drow's
screams as fire consumed her in her bed. Too long she had paused while
contemplating the murder she had been ordered to perform. She had known
that Distanfae could activate her abilities while holding her. She had
not expected that he could do so from a distance, nor that the Matron
would have become aware of it and would order him to do so. The streams
of fire that had burst suddenly from her hands had been most unexpected
and she had barely escaped unseen.

Though she now lacked the wholesale prohibition against killing that she
vaguely remembered from before her death, to kill a sleeping person in
cold blood was still harder to contemplate, much less perform, than the
slaying of those trying to kill her. The matron's actions had made it
clear, however, that if she failed to deal out a swift and merciful
death, then her targets would die slowly, in great pain. She had since
become swift to kill, though both Distanfae and she herself were
disgusted at the Matron's seeming perception of her as an assassin,
albeit for different reasons. Her disgust came from her upbringing as a
martial artist, trained to protect the innocent, while Distanfae was
simply infuriated by the silent and inglorious nature of the actions. He
wanted recognition for his genius and anonymous executions offered
nothing of value to him.

Slinking across the grass to the wall, she rested her back against the
cut stone and, hidden by her back, extruded quicksilver to absorb a thin
layer of it to cover her surface in a miniscule skein of like-colored
stone. To get the stone spread across her surface, she discovered, it
had to remain in contact with her quicksilver, which ended up spread
around her body just beneath the stone.

The carvings on the outer wall gave her handholds enough for the first
part of her climb, though she was grateful they were not limned in
eldritch flame as was most of the larger statuary, but she soon found
herself lacking a clear upward path, as the carvings gave way to smooth
wall.

She tried to rise further by finding imperfections in the wall's
surface, but after wasting two minutes trying to secure a handhold, she
gave up on the idea. The wall was simply too smooth. So instead she drew
her quicksilver to the surface, careful to bring it up only on the inner
palm of her hand, lest watching eyes learn her secrets. Distanfae had
warned her that though she might expect to get past one house's secrets,
every house was watched by its neighbors, be they enemy or ally, and
that she would eventually be seen was almost inevitable. It mattered
little so long as she was not captured, and bore nothing that could from
a distance identify her as a member of House Vitrue.

Placing her hand firmly against the wall, she extruded the quicksilver
from her palm into the wall, then reshaped it into an angled depression
with a slight outward lip. The quicksilver drew back in as her hand
slipped downward into the handhold left behind.

Tightening her grip, she drew herself up then lifted her other hand and
repeated the process. In this way she reached the upper walkway in short
order. Her flight ring could have done the same, as indeed could the
levitation ability of any elf noble, but she was far more likely to be
seen when silhouetted against the lights or warmth of some distant house
then pressed against a stone wall, colored almost identically to it, and
bearing a heat signature that blended in perfectly with the ambient
heat. She would also have risked making an audible contact with the wall
due to her relative lack of experience with the ring's magic. That
raised the specter of alerting someone inside the building, leaving her
unaware and giving her opponents the opportunity to prepare an ambush.

She might have been able to jump that height when she was human, but
this was neither the time nor the place to test unassisted jumping,
considering the consequences of a failure, given her probable weight and
mass. Too successful a jump might send her smashing right through the
walkway, while a failed leap would end with a mighty crash, whether into
the ground, or the wall of the tower.

The walkway was not the same color stone as the wall, so she pressed
against the edge and shifted the stone she had collected back to the
wall. It was slightly less than it had been, a bit of it having been
digested during the climb by her quicksilver, but it had served its
purpose.

The long balcony was of a black stone, so Ranko did not need to bother
absorbing it, instead merely bringing adamantite to the surface and
drawing all her other substances beneath it as she slid up to hang from
the bottom of it. The rather elaborate balustrade actually extended a
bit below the bottom of the walkway, providing ample hand and footholds
as she began to work her way along it, clinging to the underside of the
walkway like a great black spider.

"I need to find and absorb one of those spider-cloaks Distanfae
mentioned," Ranko thought to herself, with a tinge of amusement. Its
list of abilities had rather put her in mind of the infamous ninja of
her homeland, and in particular, the two she had known personally,
Konatsu and Sasuke. Now she was acting as if she were one of them, a far
cry from what she had expected when Distanfae had taken her on. She had
pictured something more of a bodyguard or honor champion, not an
assassin.

Of course, this task was a thieving run, not even so noble a task as
eliminating her lord's enemies, a task she had not yet been given. She
did account it more honorable than the killings she had performed for
his mother. This assignment was more akin to the sneaky tricks she had
played when first learning the Umisenken, before she had faced Ryu with
them. Reaching the end of the walkway, she swung around the bottom edge
to cling to one side of the balustrade, and peered along the walkway.
Seeing no-one about, she lifted herself quickly up and over and darted
into the doorway.

Her eyes flashed in the darkness as quicksilver flooded them, showing
her the weaves of magic in the corridor. As Distanfae had indicated, one
of the doors in the otherwise empty hallway was far more strongly
protected than the rest. "Gotcha," she crowed mentally, as she
approached the heavily warded door.

She stopped several feet from the door, examining the tight web of
protective spells. Unfortunately, her general inexperience with magic
made most of the spells impossible to identify. By analogy to her wands
she was able to identify a portion of one of the spells that was
connected in some fashion to fire, but little else.

Her inability to identify the magics did not prevent her from studying
them closely, however. She would probably be triggering several of them,
and having examined the weaves before they were triggered might help her
to recognize them in the future.

Satisfied that she had observed them as closely as she could, she
approached the door slowly, waiting for any sign that she had triggered
the protective mechanisms. She hoped to enter the room without setting
the traps off, though she knew it was unlikely. As soon as anything did
react, she would have to bull forward with full force, trusting to her
invulnerability to protect her. She knew that if the worst happened, she
would need to snatch her target as quickly as possible, in case a
portion of the spells were transportive magics that would send her to
some other location.

Finally deciding that she was as ready as she was likely to get, she
moved away from the door to the wall it was set in. The walls were of
course warded as well, but not as completely. Distanfae had suggested
that the door would likely be sealed against all forms of entry, no
matter if she slid beneath it without touching, or slid through the
shadows, etc. Drow sorcerors knew spells to take on misty forms, or to
pass through solid walls in the form of a ghost, or to take the shape of
a small insect.

Distanfae had made it very clear that the only offensive ability she had
that she could be reasonably confident that a drow wizard would not
have, nor be likely to have specific defenses against, was her
quicksilver; both its reshaping, and the energy it held. Even those came
from beings that existed in this world, so it was possible for other
wizard to have access to them, though that was far less likely than the
probability of their having defenses against the wands and rings she
bore, which were well-known creations.

Kneeling before the wall, she rested her palm on the floor and
quicksilver flooded forth, reshaping the flooring, creating a thin,
buried channel and a tiny opening. She spread out the minor amount of
substance removed into a wide but very thin rise in the floor level,
blending it smoothly at the edges. The likelihood of anyone noticing
was, in her opinion, very small. 

Shifting the connection to the pool of quicksilver from her hand to her
foot, she stood and stepped away from the wall and stood facing the
door. A thin skein of adamantite trailed almost unnoticeably across from
the floor to link her and to conceal the hole beneath which her
quicksilver continued to operate. She braced herself, as she prepared to
slide under the wall. The slightest reaction from any of the wards and
spells, and she would have to charge forward, shatter the door, and do
what she came to do while at the same time reeling back in the tendrils
of her extended substance.

Tentatively, carefully, she slid a miniscule tendril of quicksilver
beneath the wall. Instantly she knew that her gambit had failed, as the
wards swirled and stabbed at her substance. She cursed softly even as
she passed instantaneously from stillness into furious motion.

The wards raged as her foot impacted the door. Her foot was swirling
with amethyst vapors as she poured her energy into it, shattering the
stone of the door and detonating a massive explosion. She passed through
the smoke and flame without harm, and was not so much as slowed by a
blast of lightning that shot from the far wall and lanced through her,
grounding to the castle walls through her metallic surfaces.

Her eyes swept the room, casting purple shadows around the room as she
channeled power into them to enable her to identify the magical items
within. A strange, sickly orange mist rose in thin tendrils from a
shattered alchemical apparatus to her right; a long sliver of stone from
the door lying on the polished stone table just beyond, amidst a pile of
scattered scrolls, gave evidence to the cause of the destruction.

Drawn inexorably to her left by a glimmering that teased her peripheral
vision, she was shifting her momentum in that direction even as she
frantically drew in the far-flung strands of her substance.

There! Beams of shining gold trickled from a drawer in the stone desk,
but failed to illuminate the drifting smoke. A flaring mote of flame
slashed through the air behind her as her foot dug into the flagstones,
driving her toward the desk. The far wall rumbled as the mote expanded
suddenly, filling the room with flame. She ignored it, having reached
the desk, and drove her hand through the stone to grasp at what lay
beyond it.

Even as her slender fingers closed about a pair of small, hard objects,
she felt the tightening of a web that had been strengthening ever since
she first breached the wards. The first defense, it was more
appropriately timed for the speed of a cautious thief, to silently
disable before entrance could be obtained, while the flashier and more
immediately deadly attacks had been triggered by her forced entrance.

It constricted her movements for only the barest instant but even as it
passed she was swept up by vertigo as the world changed around her.

Turning in a slow circle, Ranko cursed quietly as she gazed at her new
surroundings. "I sure as hell hope I grabbed the right things," she
muttered, looking down at her hand, still clasped tightly about the
unknown magical items.

---

Thick black mists hugged the ground, becoming visibly impenetrable after
only a few yards. All around the stones were tortured, shattered and
melted, blackened. The only growing things she could see were clumps of
pale mushrooms that shifted and swayed as in an unseen wind. The air was
still and heavy and occasionally an agonized scream could be heard in
the distance, though whether from human or bestial throat she could not
tell.

The mists glowed red momentarily, as a forceful hiss sounded nearby. A
brighter point of red light pierced the mists and landed nearby, an
incandescent stone ejected from the tortured ground not far away.

Ranko examined the two items she held. One was a clear gemstone, though
without a stronger light source it was impossible to be certain of its
clarity and lack of occlusions. The other was an intricately devised
amulet, made of precious metals--she recognized platinum, gold, and
mithril--and set with tiny gems of several different colors and cuts.

A broad grin lit her face as she sat on the rough ground, focused on the
amulet. It fit the description she had been given, and if Distanfae had
been right about it, it would be able to bring her home no matter where
that spell had sent her.

If it was what they thought it was, then it was both extremely rare and
highly valuable. The only reason it had been at all accessible, and not
even more securely guarded than the greatest treasures of their own
house was the experiments being performed using it, by a rival of
Distanfae.

She was, it seemed, not his only spy, and his other spies had been
observing this rival wizard's recent purchases. They had pointed at
outer-planar experimentation, something normally reserved to the
priestesses of Lolth. Distanfae had considered it something of a gamble;
he had seen it as equally likely that this wizard was either performing
illicit attempts at demon-summoning and binding, or that he was
legitimately performing tests or research with the priceless artifact
known to be in the possession of his house.

Realizing that she would have to absorb the amulet and probe it before
she could get out of this place, Ranko decided to attempt to ensure that
she was not disturbed, and so melted into the form of a pool of liquid,
sloshing about until she had managed to construct a believable
approximation of a true liquid's habit of seeking the lowest accessible
path.

Wasting little time, Ranko absorbed the amulet, sucking the gemstone
into an internal cavity to hold until she finished with the amulet.
Distanfae had supplied her with several small magical items, whose
energy she had drained to prepare her for this absorption, but if it
took too much, she would drain the magic from the gem to complete
matters. 

She would prefer not to, since she had not had a chance to identify the
clear gemstone yet. The items Distanfae fed her energy with were all of
little relative value, but the stone's worth was not yet known.

Mere moments after she had begun the process of assimilating the amulet,
she felt a presence approach. She felt a series of taps on her surface,
and from the lack of a mental connection, she surmised that they were
from a tool or weapon.

Without her concentration, her liquid appearance was belied by her
behavior. Her surface offered no give, as if she were a flow of lava
that had cooled slowly, hardening into an unforgiving approximation of
its former liquid state.

Though she paid little attention to it at first, when the presence moved
away again, she diverted a portion of her concentration, with
difficulty, into deepening her subsurface anchor, sending out tendrils
of substance both wide and deep to ensure that any attempts to pry her
up wholesale during her enforced distraction would fail.

She felt no desire to end up in yet another wizard's laboratory, being
experimented on.

Ranko smirked as she finished absorbing the amulet. She had not been
forced to drink the magic of the gemstone. Ignoring, for the moment, the
weaves of magic she could now feel within the amulet, she began
absorbing the gemstone. The amulet's purpose she was already basically
aware of, so all she had left with it was to identify the various weaves
and match them up to the powers it was supposed to hold.

The stone, on the other hand, was an unknown, tickling her curiousity.
With the amulet safely absorbed, she had her escape route ready. She
could take her a bit of time to explore the stone.

She brushed off the momentary distraction of a pair of presences
returning, ignoring them even as they pried and prodded at her and the
ground with metal implements of some sort.

Much to her surprise, the stone was proving a greater challenge than the
amulet, teasing her with hints of its great power. Unfortunately, it was
also taking more magic than she had expected. 

"I need to have enough magic when I'm done to power this amulet," she
mused.

The next time one of the implements touched her surface, she allowed it
to enter then quickly sampled it. To her delight, it was magical, and
she managed to consume nearly half the magic she felt in it before it
was jerked forcefully from her grasp. She ignored the reactions of
whoever or whatever had been wielding the object, focusing instead on
pouring the stolen energy into finishing her absorption of the gemstone.

Her attention was recaptured when a blast of magic impacted her
accessible surface. 

"Just give up already," she growled, drawing in a bit of the residual
energies from the blast. "Hmm, fire magic," she mused, sampling the
energy.

An even more massive blast shattered the ground around her, and she
cursed even as she took her deepest elements and drove them still
further into the ground, improving her anchorage as another blast
destroyed more of the rocks she had been nestled among.

"Haven't you idiots got anything better to do?"

Finally she finished absorbing the stone, and immediately she delved
into it. There was only one major weave in the stone, with the smaller
bits that she had learned to identify as triggers to start and stop the
larger effect. She fed a trickle of her quicksilver energy into the
weave, and activated one of the triggers. When she perceived no result,
she tried the other trigger. This time the larger weave drew in magic,
but she still did not detect any overt effect.

"Damn. I guess I'll have to wait for Distanfae to figure it out. I'd
better get back, then."

Giving up on the stone for the time being, she focused her consciousness
within the amulet, examining the myriad weaves within it. Here she was
greatly aided by Distanfae's preparedness. Knowing the danger, given the
focus of his rival's experimentation, that anyone violating his
protections might be evicted from the dimension, Distanfae had given her
a scroll to examine.

It was inscribed with a spell that would open a passage back along the
most recent path that had been opened. It was an iffy proposition at
best, since he could not guarantee that the amulet would have this same
spell, nor could he let her take the scroll, as it would be missed, but
it at least gave her a strong chance of recognizing the type of spell
she needed, or even, if worst came to worst, of attempting to accomplish
the spell effect herself by twisting her quicksilver energies, which
Distanfae claimed were a variant of something he called spellfire, into
a duplicate of the weave in the scroll.

As it was, she was in luck, for the amulet held a weave that matched
what she had memorized from the scroll very closely indeed. Now all she
had to do was get rid of these annoyances. She really did not want to be
responsible for bringing demons back with her, and she rather expected
that she had been dumped on one of the Abyssal planes, indicating that
the beings accosting her were probably demons of some variety. Dumping
them unhindered by spell contracts and summoning constraints into the
drow city might reflect rather badly on Distanfae, and the future of her
quest was dependent on his goodwill.

She had been quite perturbed when she discovered the extent to which
deception and intrigue seemed to form the very fabric of daily life in
the drow city, and so she no longer put great faith in Distanfae's word.
He would aid her, of that she had little doubt, but he might turn on his
word, if pushed far enough.

Now, she was torn as to how best to deal with the things attacking her.
So far they posed little threat, but if she used enough power to defeat
or destroy them, who could know what worse creatures she might attract.
For that matter, there was no telling if these beings themselves did not
have the power to harm her, and simply had not hit upon the right
technique yet.

Why were they so interested, anyway? Could they detect her magic? Or
perhaps she had some residue of another plane, so registered as out of
place? Could it be as simple as seeing her as a vein of ore?

"Should I act like I'm softening and then melting under this barrage of
fire spells? Or will that just encourage them further?"

Ranko was sure that were she still human, her head would have been
aching. "I'm meant for fighting, not thinking," she groused, trying to
decide.

Making up her mind, she surreptitiously formed an eye, hidden behind a
shield of green stone, and shifted it about until she could see them.
They looked almost black through the green filter. One of them was
small, a winged demon with a pointed tail and small horns, it carried a
short stave with a blade on the end.

The other was massive, and clearly the source of the fire magic. She
could not reliably judge height at the moment, but it was easily five or
six times the size of the smaller demon, and equally demonic in
appearance. She did find it curious that both, like the images Distanfae
had shown her, resembled the Western conception of demons more than the
demons she was familiar with. In spite of the horns and the bat-like
wings, the hair-less skin stretched tight over thick corded muscles gave
the larger demon the appearance of being a caricature of a Western
bodybuilder, of the sort that cared only about the appearance of great
strength, and nothing about what it was meant for.

The larger demon cast another fireball at her. The ball of flame spat
out from a long, curved, and wickedly barbed sword that was itself
wreathed in flames.

Neither was using its wings, though the little one was hopping about a
fair bit. The larger demon seemed to have basically settled into a
pattern, destroying the rocks and ground that Ranko had infiltrated.

Having decided to take them out as unnoticeably as possible, and there
being no reasonable way she could see of taking her drow form without
thereby giving them a way to escape, she settled for infiltrating the
ground beneath them. She extruded a thin tendril of substance, a dark
black, with a rough surface to break up the shine, up and around the big
demon's ankle. She drew it tight very slowly, stopping before he would
be able to feel it through the boots he wore.

Then she lay snares for the swifter, smaller demon, loops of black on
the ground. When he settled to the ground for a moment, she lashed out,
pushing hard to get herself wrapped around his foot before he could take
off again.

As soon as she heard its squawk of surprise, she tightened the snare
around the larger demon's foot, then quickly she looped her way upward,
binding them both in unbreakable strands, ignoring the screech of metal
on metal as the big demon roared and hacked at her surface with his
flaming sword.

She lashed out, twirling around his hand, forced to bring her own
consciousness into it, moving as if she were the strands themselves to
keep the focus she needed to maintain her speed. When she stopped
consciously moving and reshaping those strands, he was held fast, his
sword arm bound immovably to his leg, in spite of the improbably small
thread strung between them.

A loop around the head and jaw, tightening each time their jaw moved, in
mimicry, though she knew it not, of the way a python constricts its
prey, served to cut off their cries and guard against the arrival of
reinforcements.

She thought she had them, and was trying to decide what to do with them,
whether to slay them, or bring them back alive for Distanfae's study, or
knock them out somehow and leave them here, when the larger demon
vanished from her grasp, leaving behind a strange free-standing
sculpture of thin lines mapping out the shape of one leg and arm, and
one wire for the head.

Cursing, her options swiftly dwindling, she began drawing her substance
back into herself, taking her drow shape as swiftly as she could. She
released the little one as she took shape behind it, reaching out with
hands now, grasping its neck and snapping it cleanly. She cast it aside
even as fire took it, surging down from the sky where the larger demon
had vanished to. She spun, staring upwards until she spied it. She
activated the spell as the last threads of her substance whirled back
into her womanly form.

She dived through the portal that appeared, coming out of a roll in the
very room she had so recently left. The room itself was empty but the
air of magic hung heavy about it, and outside was a buzz of noise and
activity. She began sucking the magic in, trying to replenish herself
and close the doorway at the same time. She was too slow.

The large demon barreled through the doorway, slamming into her. She
stopped it cold, its mass no match for her own, though it did force her
to step back to keep her balance.

"Perfect," she crowed, as she realized where she was. She had what she
had come for, and the demon would keep the locals well-occupied while
she escaped. She had not known that she would come back to the exact
point she had left from, or she would have been far less concerned.
Distanfae's spell would only have brought her to the same general
vicinity, as it lacked the precision and strength of the amulet, and a
demon let loose on the streets of the city was far different from a
demon released in the house of an enemy well-equipped to deal with
extra-planar beings. They would doubtless be able to contain it, and any
censure for its presence would fall on them, and they would likely
suffer in restraining or defeating it, at any rate.

Using her greater mass against it, she easily threw the demon out the
door, then sank into the floor herself. Once within the safe arms of the
cold stone, she drew on her cloak of shadows, and reappeared within a
dark corner some distance away, but still within the compound.
Immediately she slipped away, racing through the darkness. 

Funneling a portion of her mass into her hands she formed a long pole.
She slammed it into the ground as she reached the outer wall, vaulting
herself up and over. As she passed over the wall she thinned the
substance of the pole, drawing it back and flattening into a blade as
she shifted her hands on it, powering it into a forceful swing. The edge
whistled as it whipped through the air, dirt flying from where she had
pulled it free of the earth. The blade slammed into the stone street,
carving a deep gouge. She pulled it free, drawing it back into herself,
and cursing softly.

She had forgotten not to change her shape while in the drow city. She
could not know for certain if she was being observed, particularly when
she was not paying attention to the magic around her. Effective though
it had been on the other plane, at least initially, she needed to tuck
that ability back under her hat. She could only hope that the Matron had
not seen.

"You are back!" A voice spoke into her mind.

"Distanfae. Yes, you were right. I was sent to another plane."

"And you have returned, so I assume you obtained the amulet?"

"Yes, and another trinket besides. I can't identify it."

"You are on your way to the House?"

"Yes, I'll be there shortly."

---

Distanfae hummed as he examined the stone lying in Ranko's upheld hands.
"It is too bad that you have already absorbed it," he noted, "though I
understand why you did so. Unfortunately, now that it is part of you,
there is no way for me to cast an identification spell against it alone,
and given that it constitutes your newest power, it is likely that its
abilities would be the last that any identification spell would report."

He smirked as Ranko frowned at the crystal she held. "I guess you'll
just have to figure that one out on your own. It will be good practice
for you at any rate, since you still have untapped abilities within many
of your items. I have not had the time nor opportunity to introduce you
to any of the summoning aspects of your wands, and other such high
magic."

"And you aren't gonna, are you?" Ranko asked, glancing at him as she
considered the tone of his voice.

"No, I am not. There is no way for me to precisely identify the
appropriate weaves, which means you would have to actually activate
them, as you did for the lesser weaves. A summoning here would not go
undetected." He looked at her sharply, and she nodded her understanding.

"No experiments, then."

"Not with any weave that is near the weave of the amulet in complexity,
or bears it any significant similarity," Distanfae responded.

Ranko nodded and Distanfae turned towards the door. "I probably will not
be around for a week or so. Keep up your training, but do not neglect to
watch for scrying."

He swept out the door without waiting for her to respond. He knew her
mind, and knew without question that she would do as he asked. Ranko
closed the door behind him.

She sat gingerly on her bed, and held up the crystal to the glow of
faerie fire that limned her ceiling, gazing through it. She saw nothing
different, so at the least she knew that it was not another gem of true
seeing.

Her eyes slid shut as her vision faded, giving way to the inner sight
with which she perceived the weaves of magic that filled her being.
Locating her gem of true seeing, she brought the two crystals together,
where she could more directly compare their weaves.

They were similar, in areas, at least in the larger of the two unknown
weaves. The smaller held little if any likeness to the larger weave or
to the weave of true seeing. She was actually somewhat surprised by the
similarity that she detected. She had rather expected that the crystal
would have something to do with other planes.

Though the larger weave was still less complex than the weave of true
seeing, it was not so much less so as to allow her to believe it to be a
mere subset. She had, on first recognizing the similarity, guessed that
the stone might allow one to see the true form of an outer-planar being,
giving it the connection to the amulet that she had expected from its
proximity in the lab. The weave seemed more complex than would be called
for thereby, however.

Drawing up the amulet itself, she examined the weave within it. It was
quite complex. Though on the whole there was little resemblance between
the amulet's magic and that of the two crystals, she found a small
portion that actually seemed to match exactly between the amulet and the
unknown large weave. It did not belong to that portion of the spells
that seemed related to the true seeing spell.

The confirmation of the anticipated connection between the two was
sufficient to put a stop to any experimentation she might otherwise have
engaged in. If the stone's powers related to planar travel, or indeed,
to the outer planes in any fashion, then she did not want to chance
using it and having some connection to the outer planes arise in her
bedchamber.

Submerging the three items, she drew up the wand she had used to seal
the wall of the tunnel with ice, examining its weaves and comparing them
to the weave of the amulet. As Distanfae had implied, there were weaves
within the wand only slightly less complicated than that of the amulet,
and others that were far more complex, none of which she could play with
right now.

Her eyes slid slowly open, coming gradually back into focus as she
released her inner sight. If she could not test her truly powerful
spells, she might as well practice with her quicksilver energies. She
felt the most comfortable with them, at any rate, being of all that she
had gained most similar to what she had known before.

Her extensive use of her ability to mold external matter in her most
recent raid had given her an interesting idea with which to extend the
utility of the marbles she had formed shortly after first obtaining this
room of her own.

Opening the topmost right drawer of her dresser, she lifted out a small
bag and loosening the ties, spilled a half-dozen mirror-smooth marbles
onto the dresser-top. Lifting one up, she smirked at it. The pattern on
its surface was sheared, shifted along a fault line a quarter turn from
where it had shattered on hitting the wall and she had bonded it back
together instead of fully absorbing and reforming it. That had been a
test, not of her absorptive abilities, but of a power drawn and filtered
through her wand of earth, but not actually triggering any of the wand's
abilities directly.

It was representative of a success that promised extreme flexibility in
what she could accomplish with her quicksilver. Drawing up unfiltered
amethyst energy, she drew it out of herself. As before, she was readily
able to form it into a sphere outside of herself, and move it with
nothing more than her will.

Now she slid the glowing sphere of light into the stone. With bright
anticipation glowing in her eyes, she lifted her hand, focusing on the
energy in the stone, willing it to perform as she desired. Her eyes
flashed and she broke into a beaming smile as the stone rolled forward
then lifted, at first unsteadily, then smoothly, gracefully into the air.

More spheres of light appeared at her fingertips, flowing across the
table and sinking into the marbles, which shivered, then lifted into the
air.

In moments, she had six stone spheres orbiting about an empty focal
point above her outstretched palm. Glancing at the wall beyond, her eyes
narrowed and one stone after another left the circling pattern to smash
against the wall as if shot from a gun, or from between her fingers, as
so often before.

When the dust cleared, she saw all six stones arrayed in a circular
pattern on the wall, embedded an inch into the hard stone. She waggled
her fingers at them and they shot out of the wall, across the room, and
stopped in front of her, hanging in the air above her palm, with a
popping sound that reminded her of her father when he got his hands on a
bit of bubble-wrap.

They were shattered, every one of them. Indeed, it looked as though
portions of several of them had been pulverized completely. In spite of
the damage each had taken, they held their shapes due to the energy
within them.

A rap at the door startled her from her admiration, and the spheres
dropped to her palm, still held together. She closed her hand around
them, feeling them grinding and sliding against each other as she stood
to answer the door.

Her eyes widened as the door slid open. Instead of Distanfae or Kliza on
the other side, as she had expected, possibly accompanied by another
troop of guards, there stood a single drow female, of low birth, if she
was correctly remembering Distanfae's explanations. She was carrying a
small valise. Her expression was one of fear and resignation valiantly
suppressed. Only Ranko's nuanced skills at reading her opponents,
activated by her half-formed expectation of finding Kliza once more
outside her door allowed her to recognize the emotions on the girl's
face.

"Mistress," the girl said, her eyes directed at Ranko's feet.