Sorcerer… Cyborg???

Chapter 154: Luon

Kothar stood amongst a stand of trees that covered the upper part of the hills that encircled the small town below. He had split up from the Nighthawks a few days ago, fifty men was far too many to continue being clandestine. Some had stolen horses and made for the vassal states far to the east. 

A string of murder, assassinations and theft that spread slowly from west to east would be far too obvious. It had only taken Kothar half a day in foot to get to  the town of Luon, and then he had camped out in this stand of trees. 

Thankfully the citizens of the town didn't seem too interested in hunting, their food and grain arriving in large river barges, via the river that the town stood on either side of. 

The town mined emeralds, and the deep scars that were gouged into the hills evidenced that, Kothar found himself watching the miners off in the distance when he ate his dinner, usually a small bird that had been unlucky enough to be zapped by one of the Stunning Surges he sent spinning through the trees. 

The town itself was modest, mostly wooden buildings that the miners would fill in and out of at dawn and dusk. The town itself was covered in a thin film of grime that was thrown up by the mines. There was a single Earth Mage whose job it was to move aside the larger obstructions, but from what Kothar had seen she was not very powerful, only able to float a small boulder away at a time.

For what competent Mage would work in the mines, when they could easily be the bodyguard of nobility or a wealthy merchant.

AS for those houses that were made out of the stone that was occasionally quarried out of the mines, those were occupied by the initial prospectors who had founded Luon, it being a young town of only about sixty years. 

Within one of those houses also lived Kothar's target, the nephew of the Prince of Downe, who had been gifted these lands forty odd years ago, as a gift, when it was believed that there had only been a single vein of emeralds in the rock. 

Fortunately for the young Earl, what had been a courtesy parcel of land had made him far richer than many of his peers. However, he lacked ambition, and had decided to spend his days lounging around the town of Luon, which made him so wealthy to begin with. 

He was mostly left out of the power struggles within the Principality, but would be a target ripe for inciting a war, because only a foreign nation would target him. 

[Don't you feel guilty, Kothar? The man is innocent, all he has done with his wealth is live a life of luxury and excess.] Silane had been reluctant in crafting a plan to infiltrate Earl Dubois' little estate, now that she had developed her own compass of morality.

[This is far better than the indiscriminate destruction of entire planets we carried out for the Alliance. Sometimes I wonder if many of the battles I fought were truly for the benefit of the Alliance, or were merely fought according to the whims of the Council.] Kothar responded, and while Silane didn't reply, he could feel the guilt radiating from her. As a pair, they had been the perfect sentient killing machine, Kothar with his razor sharp reflexes and intuition for battle, yet with much of his mind and emotions dulled by hormones and drugs pumped into him. And Silane, who could instantaneously compute the ridiculous trajectories required for interstellar combat, while also directing Kothar to the next target that the Alliance wanted gone. 

[The way I see it, Silane, is that there can be no privilege without risk, the greater ones' privilege, the greater the inherent risk to their life. As a noble, Earl Dubois should be well aware of the fact that he may be a target for assassination. After all, why else do the nobles of this world build such great castles and keeps, and even the politicians of the Alliance, why else did they insist on armed escorts and radar jammers around the Garden. It simply is the price they pay.] Kothar had thought long and hard the couple of days he had been waiting in the small stand of trees, watching the comings and goings of the people of the township, and the few soldiers that were likely the town guard. 

It wouldn't be a difficult mission, the only requirement that Kothar enter and leave completely unseen.

As night fell, Kothar made his way down the gentle slope of the hills, walking next to one of the many streams that fed into the river below, eliminating much of the traces he would leave behind. 

Getting his boots wet was a small price to pay in exchange of not being pursued, and soon enough, a string of assassinations across the Principality would leave the army effectively crippled, wondering which way to direct their retaliation. 

A quick portal allowed Kothar to enter the town completely unnoticed, and he found himself in a back alley, behind one of the rickety wooden houses the miners lived in.

Fortunately for Kothar, there wasn't much in the way of criminals in the backstreets, the miners that lived in the wooden houses had little in the way of possessions, many of them slaves purchased from the Empire.

Another portal, and Kothar was on the roof of the house, crouching as he passed through the portal, not wanting to create a racket on the roof and wake the miners.

From here on, Kothar could see the small estate at the center of the town, it was made of a fine white stone, and a series of small gardens surrounded it, and finally a wall twice the height of the average man. 

Kothar smiled, this would be even easier than he had first imagined.