"Guilty of existing. That is the unforgiveable crime I committed." - Anna

Jay strolled into the enchanter's guild lobby shortly after all five support teams had forced their way in. He had to step carefully over the smashed security glass that was once a set of automatic doors. Looking to the center of the lobby he noted all the people that were bound, bagged and gagged, laid out on the floor right in front of the reception desk. It was mildly amusing to him that so many innocent bystanders happened to be witnesses to part of this raid, even if it was a small part.

Once more he had to watch his step and navigate the rows of people, he didn't want to accidentally step on anyone. He rounded the corner of the lobby to see his teams loading into the elevator banks and descending. Waving his hand, he bid them farewell as the doors closed and the counter began to count down as they headed to the basement level.

Walking up, he hit the up button and waited. Thankfully it was a short wait, and the door dinged open a moment later. Jay studied the rows of buttons a moment before trusting his gut and hitting the one for the thirtieth floor, guessing the person he was after would have one of the large suites at the very top of the building.

Jay heard the rest of his reaction force coming up behind him and caught sight of teams three and four as they finished sweeping the lower levels between this upper lobby and the lower one which housed the public shops and offices of the guild. Just then, the lights all flashed in a repeating pattern while a voice he recognized announced something about 'scrape protocol' in one of the non-Earthling languages.

While riding up in the elevator he briefly wondered what was on the other floors. He liked to think it was offices but also couldn't fathom an enchanter's guild needing so much space for administration. Unless these intervening floors were more workshops? He didn't know and at that moment, didn't care. All would be revealed shortly as far as he was concerned.

He felt the elevator begin to slow slightly as the display ticked up to twenty-nine. Pulling his hands out of his pockets, he shook out his arms. "Ok, you can do this. Simple two-way return." He muttered and raised his hand just as the doors opened to the thirtieth floor and a terrible sound greeted him.

The hail of bullets fired at Jay was intense, coming from at least a dozen different shooters. It was also very short lived as the portal spell he had cast was actually two portals. The first one absorbed all the incoming projectiles, and the second one returned them on their original vectors.

One second after the door had opened, a host of armed men opened fire, then all almost immediately died as their fire was returned with unerring precision. The 'almost' caveat was only due to a couple of them having defensive items that prevented them from dying immediately to their own attacks. Those few were silenced a moment later as portals opened below each of them and they were dropped through the void between worlds, dying agonizingly slow deaths in the vacuum of absolute nothingness.

Jay continued his leisurely stroll into the reception lobby and stopped at the counter next to a glass security door. "Hello, I am here for my appointment with the guild master." He said to the receptionist, who was huddled under the counter. "Can you buzz me in?"

The young man reached a trembling hand up and pushed a little black button, causing a soft click to come from the closed door. The entire time, the receptionist didn't even look up to see who was talking to him.

"Thanks." Jay said and opened the door. He stopped a moment before walking through, leaning back out to talk to the person doing their best impression of an armadillo. "By the way, you might want to just lay face down on the floor with your arms spread. That way the people behind me won't think you are up to something."

Jay then continued on his way into the office, catching a reflection of the lobby and noting the young human scrambled from behind his desk to lay in the middle of the room. That was all he saw of the situation before the angle wasn't right anymore. He also took note of the language that he saw on the signage and posters around the office space, all of which matched the announcement he heard earlier. It was a language he was familiar with and even spoke rather well despite it being from a world he had never been to.

Everywhere he looked, there were a whole host of beings in various types of formal attire and all of them were frantically moving around their workspaces. Almost all of them were trying to bring stacks of files and paper to the trash chute and dispose of them to the lower-level boiler room. A room that was likely already under his control judging by the conversations going on in his earpiece.

The workers scrambling around and shouting at each other in a variety of panicked tongues and dialects didn't even pay attention to Jay as he calmly strolled over to the large corner office. He could see several figures inside, backlit through the frosted glass due to the lights from outside the building.

After pausing to let some sort of siren rush by with an arm load of scrolls and then helping up a harpy who tripped over a dropped bag, Jay finally reached the office door. He didn't bother knocking, just sliding the glass panel out of the way and waltzing in. He then closed the door behind him, cutting off all the sound from the office outside. The sudden noise then silence alerted the people inside and they all turned to look at him.

Standing around a large table were a wide array of beings. Two orc's in very fine robes were flanking a small feathered and scaled being of the Talsaka race. A notoriously reclusive and interesting species from a hot world that was almost all either mountain or swamp. Across from them was a dwarf wearing what looked like a soft armor vest over his dress shirt and slacks. While these four were interesting, the person Jay was after stood at the head of the table, leaning over a microphone.

"Hello Gasnathal." Jay said with a wide smile. "It has been many centuries since our last meeting." He spoke in her native language, making sure to use the proper inflection to make it clear he was speaking down to her.

The fey stared at him with a mix of hatred and shock on her face. Jay only knew it was those emotions after spending a rather unfortunate decade with her on a joint project over a thousand years before. She was tall, neatly seven feet when you counted her elaborately styled hair that rose between her antlers. The skin that he could see was still the same oil slick color under her nearly transparent scales.

Gasnathal finally blinked her pitch-black eyes and raised one of her six fingered hands, pointing at him. "Jahamet!" she half screamed, half growled. "What have you done?" Jay didn't miss that the two orcs had reached into their robes at his entrance, though they didn't move past that.

"Me?" Jay asked, feigning ignorance and surprise at the accusation. "Surely you accuse the wrong being of treachery. I have yet to do anything of importance this day." He readied himself to fend off an attack as Gasnathal's facial scales rippled. It was one of her tells that he knew well and was happy to see it hadn't changed.

What he didn't notice, as fixated on her face as he happened to be, was that her hand had slipped closer to the microphone and one of her fingers tapped a little black button at the base. He heard the click of the microphone just a second before the others drew weapons. "Severance protocol." She said as the lights alternated flashing red and white.

Following his game plan, Jay cast two spells, or rather manipulated space in two ways. His first spell was the same as he used in the lobby, creating a portal that would return any fired projectiles to their original owners. The second spell was actually him expanding then collapsing the natural voids that separated molecules. It just so happened that these particular molecules happened to be inside the bodies of the people before him.

His offensive spell caught the two orcs and the talsaka completely unprepared, their internal organs suddenly no longer being where they had been a moment before. The dwarf, however, was unaffected by his spell, likely having a talisman that prevented outside magics from invading his body. Fortunately, the giant lead ball he fired from what looked like a triple barrel shotgun came zipping right back and hit him between the eyes.

Gasnathal naturally had her own magical defenses and was familiar with Jay's particular brand of spatial manipulation. He had developed some new tricks since he last saw her and was curious if she had developed her gravitational magic at all. She waved a hand at him, palm down like she was trying to press something under water that was naturally buoyant.

The sudden pressure around him told Jay that she was still practicing the strange magic, though he wasn't sure to what extent. His body suddenly felt three times as heavy and was steadily getting heavier. It was her signature fight opener, making the opponent so heavy they could barely move by manipulating the fabric of reality around them.

There was one little side effect that she never quite figured out how to counter, however. As gravity bent around him, Jay also had time bent around him, seeing things in a strange slow motion. Truthfully, if any of her enemies could fight while being significantly heavier, she would be screwed, but most beings weren't designed to handle much more than normal gravity. However, the abilities that Jay wielded didn't exactly have weight to them.

Tracking the fey as she darted to his right, aiming to either move in close and attack or to simply get around him and run, Jay cast another spell. He extended his index and middle fingers, pointing them straight out while aiming for a spot in front of Gasnathal. Then he summoned his energy and projected it from his fingertips in a straight line, ten feet long and as big around as his fingers.

The sudden beam of void cut across Gasnathal's path and she came to a sudden stop, mere inches from touching the stretched micro-portal. Then she retreated, almost turning to run as the completely black beam moved toward her. There was no light, no color and nothing to really see other than there was absolutely nothing there. That sight was only half the horror of the ability, however.

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When Jay manipulated his energy in this way, there was a certain sound. It was a rushing noise that went along with all the matter that crossed the event horizon of the void being sucked in and ripped apart. The air roared and howled as he swept the blade around, breaking her concentration and freeing himself from the oppressive weight of her spell.

"Gods damn you Jahamet!" She screamed over the noise as she made another gesture from several paces away. The spell she cast rippled across the space, leaving a visible shockwave as it crossed the distance between them. It was one of her stronger spells that worked more on the concept of density rather than gravity by suddenly changing the density of whatever it hit, usually ripping it apart.

Jay once more deflected the spell, casting a plane of nothing that flickered between them like a shield and nullified the effect. "Surprised? Yeah, I learned a thing or two since we last met in the Aegean." The look on her face was priceless and he smiled while canceling his void projection and punching forward with a jab to the empty air between them.

Gasnathal got lucky and flinched at the gesture, letting the projected bubble of a portal miss her head by inches as she dove for cover behind a couch. The little fist sized ball of blackness hit the concrete support of the window behind her and rapidly expanded in a pulse of the Vanta Black colored sphere. When it receded, there was nothing left of the wall or the window, or even half the floor on that side of the room. It was just gone, suddenly and without warning as there was a secondary rush of air and a clap of thunder from the sudden displacement.

"Tsk." Jay sucked his teeth and summoned another shield while making the void beam reappear from his hand to slice the couch in half. "Come on Gas, let's just have your surrender, and we can put this all behind us." He shouted over the ringing in his ears, he hadn't remembered that spell being so loud. Or had he never been so close to it?

Suddenly an arm appeared from behind a low shelf that separated the sitting area of the office from the conference table section where he stood. Where Jay had been expecting a hand cast spell or even a wand, there was suddenly a very large machine pistol. A Mac of some model if he wasn't mistaken. Regardless of the model, the range was such that almost every shot was coming straight for him.

Crouching behind his shield, Jay weathered the hail of fully automatic fire. He felt a few stings to his lower legs from where a bullet had splashed and the fragments skipped off the polished concrete floor of the office. Still, after a second, the shooting stopped, and he looked from around his shield to catch a very heavy fist to the face.

"Bastard!" Gasnathal screeched as she followed through, showing great technique in her hand-to-hand fighting.

"Cunt!" Jay shouted back, circulating his mana to shake off the effect of his head suddenly weighing a hundred ponds. His retaliatory words also came with a gift of his own as he slapped her second strike with an open hand. His open hand, which happened to be supporting a small portal.

As Gasnathal's hand sank into the portal, her eyes widened, and she tried desperately to pull out of the strike, but the momentum of hitting nothing meant she sank in past her elbow. She screamed preemptively as the portal suddenly collapsed, causing everything below her shoulder to suddenly vanish.

Gasnathal didn't feel a thing, not even a pinch as the arm was suddenly severed, lost to the void. All she could do was try to seal off the stump with her magic. Still, she didn't let up and lashed out with a front kick that caught Jay in the chest, forcing the air out of his lungs and driving him back.

Unfortunately for her, Jay trapped the foot, wrapping his hand around her ankle as he fell backward. He pulled her down as he rolled, trapping her ankle and twisting as he landed atop her. The move didn't do anything to disable her, but it did put him in a better position to follow up.

Jay sat on her hips, shoving her one arm aside and pinning it across her chest while suddenly feeling like he weighed nothing. He had to cling to her with his knees and his leg wrapped around her while striking at her with his fist.

Predicting the attack to her face, Gasnathal rolled her head to the side, showcasing an impressive amount of flexibility. She predicted wrong. Instead of her face, Jay's fist slammed into her sternum, right where her collar bones met. She tried to scream but only managed to open her mouth as the top of her chest and lower neck were suddenly deleted… along with a everything behind her.

Blood gushed from the sudden hole in the body formerly known as Gasnathal. Jay was both chagrined and thankful of the eight-inch-wide hole that bored its way through several floors. Naturally, it was where the vast majority of the blood began to pool before flowing downward in a shimmering purple river.

Sighing heavily, Jay stood up, shaking off the aftereffects of the fight. It had been frantic, high stakes and oh so short. He looked down at the body and head of the woman who had once been an ally but had then become more antagonistic than anything. He would have liked to take her alive, but after sending her arm to the lobby when he 'caught' her punch, he knew it was only in death that he would take her.

Sure, she could have been saved but Jay had precious little in terms of healing items and even less in the way of motivation. He frankly didn't care if she lived or died as a person but was slightly put out that they couldn't interrogate her. Even if that interrogation would have been difficult due to her particular magical talent.

He quickly peeked out the door to see all the staff still frantically running around and decided to loot the office, seeing what goodies he might come up with. From the sound of things on his ear bud, Kurt and company were doing just fine and didn't need his help.

While passing the microphone on the desk, he wondered what those codes were. He thought about trying to find out but also assumed that he didn't have any way of countermanding them. "I hope we aren't in for any more surprises." He muttered while opening a drawer and smiling at the contents. "Well, not any bad surprises, at least."

*****

Anna sat on the pathetic excuse for a bed that she had in her cell. The mattress was both lumpy and thin, more like a stiff sleeping bag than padding. It was one of the many things she bemoaned while crying softly to herself. She briefly lifted her head from her knees as she curled over her legs, hugging them close to her chest. For probably the thousandth time, she looked over her cell, seeing the open toilet, sink and shower next to the one open front shelf with her spare tunic in it.

Seeing nothing in her cell had changed, she went back to thinking about the nightmare she found herself in. It was all she had to do while waiting for them to retrieve her for a shift at the work bench. She just hoped that she wouldn't be tortured too bad after her ten-hour shift. Maybe Goreg is on duty? She always preferred him beating her with a cudgel over Lamanel flaying the skin from her body over and over.

"What the fuck?" Anna whispered to herself. When had she developed a preferred torture to go through? Apparently, sometime in the past five months.

She lowered her head again and tried to keep her tears from matting her fur, which was a nearly imperceptible fuzz. It was uncomfortable and would only be irritating and distracting while she tried her best to make something the guild wanted.

She just wished that she could enchant something that wouldn't get her beaten senseless and tortured for hours on end. But no matter what, she couldn't copy a design or even keep an item from warping. She suspected that it was from her father's side of her heritage, fey were always strange and unpredictable, more so when she only got half of a fey's magic.

Anna wondered if the other people in the cells next to her were having it as rough as her. She had never seen them and never talked to them, but she also knew the cells were occupied. There were four other closed doors out of the eight total cells in this hall. Something about the cells prevented the occupants from talking to each other and it wasn't just the large expanse of concrete between each door.

Suddenly, through her closed eyelids, she saw the flashing lights and climbed to her feet to stand in the red square in the middle of her cell. It was an action so automatic that it wasn't until she heard the words 'scrape protocol' that she realized there was a pattern to the flashing light. This wasn't the normal wakeup signal. In fact, it was an entirely new event compared to what she had seen so far.

Then her ears perked, swiveling to pick up the faint noise echoing through the halls and vibrating the walls. Fighting, lots of fighting. There was the soft smack that reminded her of something small and hard impacting stone. Then the thump of something large…No, two somethings that are large.

She really wished that she could take the suppression collar off. She desperately wanted to summon her familiar at this moment. She hadn't been able to summon or even communicate with him since they locked the collar around her neck. Or maybe it was because of the device they planted near her spine?

A moment later, there was a much louder sound. It sounded like something crashing through a wall, crushing most of it but leaving a few bits of masonry to crumble and fall. That crashing was followed by the screams of something that sounded like it gurgled concrete for breakfast, deep and filled with fear. The sound of gunfire and explosions followed over the next few seconds, which felt like minutes in her heightened state of awareness.

As the moments slipped by and the sounds of fighting grew more intense, she wondered if this was how she would finally escape this place. That idea made her suddenly sad as it dredged up her previous thoughts of 'escape' but there was nothing she could use to quickly end it, and the guild was too quick to let her use a slower method. Still, it made her wonder if she would be rescued or if this would only lead to her capture by another organization that would treat her just the same. After all, who would want a half breed fey?

She then saw another pattern of flashing light and heard a new phrase. She didn't know what 'severance protocol' meant, just like she didn't know about the previous one. It now sounded like there was some sort of magical duel happening in the room just beyond the corridor, through the door to the main work floors. She fought the urge to run to the bars and try to peek, knowing that there was nothing to see.

Then, the other door, at the end of the hall on her right, burst open and one of the guards rushed out. Anna could just barely see the elf as he stopped at the first cell and fumbled with something. She wondered what it was until he backed up with his arm extended, pointing at the cell. There was a loud bang and his hand flew upward, showing the massive revolver he was holding.

Anna froze, rooted to the red square in her cell. She wanted to move, was desperate to do something, anything. Yet, for all her instincts screamed at her to move, she couldn't because of the spell rooting her in place.

She waited in silent horror as she heard three other bangs, each one moving progressively closer. She could see the guard now. That bastard Lamanel was standing right in front of her cell with a grim look on his face, replacing the sneer that normally was permanently stuck there.

He pointed the giant revolver right at her chest, only feet away, there was no way he could miss. Just then, there was the sound of a door being kicked off its hinges. Lamanel turned his head, looking at the source of the noise and his arm lowered slightly. His eyes widened in shock and Anna saw him jerk, followed by a spray of blood as he was peppered with several bullets.

His hand clenched and Anna watched in slow motion as the cylinder slowly came around and the hammer drew back. Wanting to scream but unable, she was helpless as the hammer descended, and the muzzle flashed as the bullet was fired. She felt like something had punched her in the gut, like a hammer blow just below her ribs on her right side.

The strength left her, the magic that had been holding her in place suddenly cutting off as both she and her jailer fell to the ground, collapsing in slowly growing pools of their own blood. There was the sound of shouting as someone yanked the door to her cell open and a man was suddenly looming over her. He was talking to her, saying something about how she was going to be fine and to just hang on. He said that something might hurt?

Anna just watched numbly through slowly fading vision as he rolled her onto her back and placed something on her. She briefly wondered where it came from, she hadn't seen him pull it from a pouch. It just materialized in his hand. She thought it was strange and was curious as to what it was. But her thoughts were cut off as there was a sudden and biting pain in her stomach. Oh, right. He said it might hurt. This time, she did scream.

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