“I don’t think this is going to work,” Moxy said, standing with her arms crossed as she stared at the chalkboard Asher was drawing on. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before now, but this whole idea was flawed from the start.”

  Shaking his head, Asher sighed as he crossed out the name of another one of Vildelph’s senior assassins that Moxy had offered up. While he’d been working on it, he was no closer toward figuring out where the lich or demons were hiding than he was a few days ago, which meant they were stuck with boring old humans to try fighting against. He’d had the bright idea of potentially going up against a few more senior assassins, as nobody would miss any of them being taken out and they often proved to be exciting opponents. The only problem was…

  There wasn’t a single senior assassin Moxy knew of who she wasn’t confident either of them could take down entirely on their own, and she refused to try ganging up against them, on the grounds that it would be boring.

  “The idea is to try to find an opponent we can practice fighting together,” Asher reminded her, tapping the board with his piece of chalk. He’d been quite pleased when his request for ‘something he could draw on’ toward one of Donvath’s servants had resulted in the chalk board being wheeled into the beanbag-filled lounge, but it hadn’t been long after that before the problems started. “We’re almost certainly going to need to work together to take down a greater demon, and we need practice.”

  “Is that really the case, though?” Moxy asked. “I mean, you literally showed me your memories of your fight against the last greater demon you went up against. Sure looked like you managed to take it down by yourself just fine.”

  “He got ripped in half,” Samantha pointed out helpfully.

  “Okay, relatively fine,” Moxy corrected, waving a hand dismissively. “Regardless, the point stands. I don’t think this whole idea of putting together a team to fight against the lich and its demons is wrong, but I think you’re going about it the wrong way, if that makes any sense.”

  “Not really,” Asher said, throwing his piece of chalk at her and frowning when she easily snatched it out of the air. “Care to explain?”

  “You seem hung up on the idea of us all battling the greater demon together,” she said, tossing the chalk up and down as she thought. “But that’s not how we roll. Neither of us. We’re solo fighters. Always have been, and probably always will be. That’s not to say we can’t fight as a team when needed, but we shine brightest when we only have to worry about ourselves. Samantha might be all about providing support, but that’s not our style.”

  “So what do you propose?”

  “We fight together, but not together, if you catch my drift,” Moxy grinned, tossing him back the piece of chalk. “It sounds like this lich isn’t hurting for minions. Rather than trying to coordinate attacks or anything like that, it would make more sense for us to just do what we do best. If a greater demon appears with a bunch of lesser demons and imps at its side, we all focus on our own fights. You go after the greater demon, I go for the lesser demons, and Samantha takes the imps. That way everyone has a role, and we’re not getting in each other’s way.”

  “It sort of sounds like you’re just trying to make your own fight more exciting,” Samantha drawled, having gotten both more comfortable and a better understanding of how Moxy ticked these past few days. “In that same vein, I’m a bit surprised you didn’t declare that you’d be the one going after the greater demon.”

  “I want a hard fight, not to throw my life away,” Moxy explained. “Asher’s memories made it pretty clear that he’s the only one capable of fighting the greater demons. I don’t have any sort of method to counter how they can access the realm of ages, which means one of them could all but freeze time and rip out my spine while I’m just standing there completely helpless. Though if you’re capable of bringing me into the astral realm with you and the demon, that’s another story.”

  “I’m still not sure how well that will work,” he admitted, wishing he had a better method of testing the idea. Currently, with his Spatial Lock at level 26, he was capable of pulling the entire space within his barrier into the astral realm, at the cost of a significant chunk of energy. The problem was, that energy cost only went up with the more people he tried to pull in with him. He’d gotten lucky that greater demons barely seemed to impact how much energy using the evolved portion of the skill took, presumably because they already existed in the astral realm at the same time they did the material. He could pull another human over into the astral, as he’d already proven with the sand-based assassin who had attacked him in the palace the other week, but two people proved a bit much. He’d tried pulling both Samantha and Moxy into the astral with him the other day, and the attempt had consumed nearly half of his entire energy pool, which wasn’t really the best way to start off a fight.

  Especially when every movement within the astral drained one’s energy even further.

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  “Personally, I think pulling me in to fight with you is worth giving up a quarter of your energy,” Moxy repeated, crossing her arms. “It’s simple math. It might burn up a chunk of your own energy, but mine would be totally untouched. Then it would be a two-on-one fight, and we could take the greater demon down easily.”

  “You’re not wrong, the tricky thing is making sure you survived long enough to pull it off,” Asher tried to explain. “I’m unique in that the greater demons can’t actually kill me outright, because The Council of Death needs me alive in order to extract my element. The same can’t be said for you or Samantha, which is why keeping the two of you away from the greater demons is probably for the best. In order to nullify its ability to access the realm of ages, I need to get within twenty feet of the greater demon for my Spatial Lock to fit around it. At that distance, one of them could kill you before we could even blink.”

  “So we come up with some sort of way to surprise it. Catch it off guard,” Moxy argued. “I’m sure we can think of something.”

  “Either way, we’re getting off track,” Asher said, rapping his knuckles against the chalkboard and attempting to bring their focus back to the matter at hand. “We need to find some sort of strong opponent to try going up against. Ideally, one with a focus on being big and tough, to somewhat act as an imitation greater demon and let us practice. The only thing I can think of is one of the sea serpents near Poltar, though I’m pretty certain you’ll be all but useless underwater without any air to fight with, so that’s out even if we were to get you a water breathing potion.”

  “If Moxy keeps shooting down the senior assassins because they’d be too weak for all of us to attack together, why not look bigger?” Samantha asked. “I mean, it’s not like they’re the strongest ones out there. What if we went after the Fingers?”

  Asher stared at Samantha, shocked she’d even suggest such a thing. She’d seen firsthand the state he’d been in after his battle with Eight, where he’d had his hand blasted off by a flick of the man’s tail after transforming himself into a giant rat abomination.

  “Nine hells of yes!” Moxy said, laughing as she pointed at Samantha. “Now that’s an idea! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that, it’s perfect!”

  “As the only person in the room that’s actually fought and killed one of the Fingers, that’s a rather dangerous idea,” he said slowly, earning an apologetic smile from Samantha. The thought of going after another one of the Fingers made his own fingers twitch toward his daggers and got his heart pumping, but he wasn’t a giant fan of Samantha going anywhere near them. Demons were one thing, but human cruelty knew almost no bound. “Not to mention one rife with problems. For starters, the Fingers aren’t exactly any easier to find than the senior assassins are. We can’t very well take on an opponent we can’t even find.”

  “What’s the point in being all buddy-buddy with the High Prince if you don’t use him for stuff like this?” Moxy drawled. “Come on, the man’s got to have a bead on at least one or two of the Fingers by now, he’s got all those Truthseekers under him! I bet he’s probably even got a perfectly good reason for why his own people haven’t gone after them at this point, but we don’t care about that crap. Ask him where we can find one of them and let’s take them down!”

  “I know I made the suggestion in the first place, but it’s worth mentioning that the Head of the Assassin’s Guild is already sort of watching Asher,” Samantha added. “Technically, Asher is currently the Finger in charge of Whikoga, because of their stupid system.”

  “Seriously? Well that makes this even better!” Moxy grinned. “Come on, everyone knows the Guild fights among itself all the time. If you’re already a Finger, that’s the perfect excuse to go after the others!”

  “I’m not so sure the Head would see it like that,” Asher admitted, even as he realized he was quickly getting on board with the idea. “I’m pretty certain I’m long past the point of being accepted as the new Finger, seeing as a handful of senior assassins have already come after my head in their attempts to kill me and become the new Eight. Hell, I think the only reason we’ve gotten a bit of a reprieve from the near-constant attacks as of late is because we spend most of our time either here in the royal palace, or teleporting around the kingdom. We’re probably moving around too quickly for anyone to follow us.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think there are a lot of people who can teleport halfway across the kingdom on a whim. But if anything, that’s just one more reason why we should go after the Fingers!”

  “Because we can escape any sort of counter attack?” Asher ventured.

  “No, because it means we can hit them one after another before they realize they’re being targeted!” Moxy said, laughing at the idea. “Come on, let’s go check in with the High Prince!”

  “Why don’t we start with going after one Finger, and move forward from there?” Samantha asked, looking like she was beginning to regret proposing the idea in the first place. “No sense in biting off more than we can chew.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d love to see the person capable of fending off both myself and Asher at the same time! Then I’d like to fight them on my own!”

  “Yes, Moxy, we all understand you’re even crazier than I am when it comes to fighting people,” Asher said, shaking his head. “Though I do think Samantha’s idea is a good one. While I do love fighting, I also prefer when my fights actually benefit people as well. If we can take down any more of the Fingers and weaken the Assassin’s Guild, that’s a win-win in my book.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Moxy asked, already heading toward the door. “Off to find the High Prince!”

  Samantha shot him a look that said ‘you brought this upon yourself,’ and Asher could only sigh and nod in agreement as they followed after her before she could start shaking down one of the poor servants for Donvath’s location.

  Moxy better bring her a-game when it came to fighting the demons, or he was never going to hear the end of bringing her onto the team.

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