Blades in the night.

---

Our mission hammered home the shortness of personal, it was also something I was sure we could handle, void fog and monster clearing.

Exactly like we had on mid-tier but without other teams as support or a safe camp patrolled by other teams.

We would have one team to watch us if we were lucky. And a low tier one at that, just there for guard duty

We completed our work, free to unleash our skills, but exhaustion still had us as we staggered into camp, greet our guards, promptly passed out in Kay's surprise, a luxury tent, one worthy to be called an artifact all on its own, limited running water each day, lite and compact for carrying, it wasn't quite an inn or home but it was damn close for a tent.

Sadly we were too exhausted to really appreciate it.

"Fuck I thought I was done feeling this way after a mission. Mir, if it works, don't wake me up, there is nothing in the tank right now."

I understood what Kay meant when I followed her into the tent and felt the familiar submissive mood take me, or try too. "It did but if either of you touch me and get me going, I'll stab you for robbing me of sleep and I won't heal it til morning."

The only one with any energy was Rox and that had to be the god blood, but even she was too tired to risk playing, " No worries here, an gonna cuddle, if that counts for the stabbing, I'll cuddle Rook."

I would have normally insisted we do normal guard rotations, but none of us could in any real fashion.

So we'd have to trust this team and Rook's instincts to keep watch.

----

After that mission we got in a bad habit of trusting the guards assigned to us, we were slowly gaining more stamina, Roxy more than us, but by the time we could have started running our own guard shifts, the habit was there.

That's probably why I was awoken by Something pressed against my neck.

"Where are they,"

"Where's what??"

"The artifacts, we know you have more than you pretend, tell me and I'll make it quick, make me get the answers and I'll make sure to take my time and I'll let my men do the same with your girls, so where are they?!"

When I found out who tipped these idiots off I was killing them.

"Right here,"

His look of surprise as I forced myself up, the blade cutting my neck was only matched by the surprise of the knife I summoned and planted in his stomach between the seem of his light armor.

'howl, wolf fang'

And he knew no more as a sound pressure wave erupted inside him, ripping out his back, gore painting our tent.

My vision was starting to blur from the blood loss before I raised a hand to it and healed the damage.

Roxy, Rook, and Kay were awake now.

Rox summoned her armor and I could see her assailant being covered in frost.

Kay simply touched hers and all her weapons glowed, imparting on the dumb bastard every wound she had healed and stored in her daggers.

Rook just growled, waiting for a chance to help. When the enemies were dead he came over and nudged my side, offering comfort.

I gave him a playful pat.

"You two good?"

"Yeah... No, fuck, this is going to be hell to clean, Mir you got bits of bad guy on the ceiling of the tent, you are so cleaning that up.

"I'm fine Miranda, not the best way to wake up, but fine."

"Sorry, let's check for more, our guard better hope they're already dead, or I'm going to make them wish they were."

They weren't dead, they were missing, so maybe dead.

No other assailants...

"Rook, can you lead us to where this came from?" I say holding a peice of bloody cloth.

The spell that tamed him should have imparted basic tracking but we'd not tested it yet.

---

Well at least we know where the guard team was, locked in cages, unconscious, I did not want to know what the black market had in store for them.

There was only one enemy left.

I motioned to my team, I wanted to get info, so we circled around until we surrounded him, and then slowly approached.