Despite knowing his Complete Resilience should give him plenty of time to make a hasty getaway in the event Draken decided to turn his Death Aura up to eleven, Asher couldn't help but feel nervous as the gang leader sat him and Kree down in his study and stood over them, staring down at them both with a large frown on his face. It had been years since he'd last been in school, but Asher couldn't shake the feeling he'd been caught doing something very bad and was about to be reamed out by the principal.

Poor Kree didn't even know what was going on, and the thief was all but shaking as he tried to keep on a brave face. Asher was surprised the man hadn't devolved into a pool of living shadow just yet, but he probably recalled Asher's warning the last time they'd come here that doing so might be seen as an attack and end up being the last thing he ever did.

"For starters, Kree had quite literally nothing to do with this," Asher said, hoping to at least spare his employee some future nightmares if at all possible. "I just brought him with me because I wanted to ask both of you some questions."

"I know I may seem like an understandable, and rather easy to get along with man, Asher. But I am still the leader of the largest gang in all of Whikoga's underside," Draken said, ignoring his statement entirely. "I've cut you a lot of slack due to your usefulness and unique abilities, but I have a line, and you have thoroughly stepped over it."

In the silence following Draken's dramatic declaration, Asher felt the frigid aura of death hang even heavier on his frame, and he grit his teeth as he realized Draken was basically doing the equivalent of pointing a gun directly in his face with his finger on the trigger. It was a display of power, pure and simple, and he wanted Asher to know it was solely by his own benevolence that he remained alive.

It was only the fact that Asher knew Draken had lost people close to himself in the past, and that this all stemmed from his fear of losing even more, that he didn't get up and make a scene. He could probably shrug off the death aura long enough to get a dagger to Draken's throat, but what would that end up solving? All that would do would be to weaken their already shaken relationship, and Asher didn't want that. Honestly, not even thinking about how useful Draken and his connections were, he liked the man. While Draken might be a bit too cautious for his tastes, he appreciated all the help he'd given him up to this point, and Asher respected how he worked to turn his rough situation into a chance to make the city a better place.

"I'm sorry Crush and I ignored your orders and went to tackle the senior assassin on our own," he said, trying very hard not to shiver at the frigid aura weighing down on him. "I understand I can't just do whatever I want when my choices put other people's lives at stake, but it wasn't just my choice. Crush was the one that got you hopelessly drunk and told me he wanted to help. Just because you don't want to pit any more of your men up against the Guild after what they did to you, doesn't mean you can control your subordinates like puppets without their own wants and needs."

Sorry Crush, but you did give me permission to throw you under the bus before we did all this.

Kree's eyes bulged out of his head and he tried to shove himself even further down into his chair as Asher dared to talk back to the irate gang leader. Yet to his surprise, rather than grow even more annoyed, Draken actually seemed taken aback by his explanation.

Blinking down at him, Draken's frown turned from one of anger to one of curious disappointment. "…You have an evolved death resistance, don't you? Or something similar."

"Huh?" Asher asked, surprised he'd been found out. "What do you mean?"

"I pressed my Death Aura down on you hard enough you should have all but felt the reaper's scythe pressing against your neck," Draken sighed, shaking his head. "You should have been begging for your life, or at least curled up on the floor sobbing. Not eloquently making a point. Don't get me wrong, I believe I could still kill you if I tried hard enough, but we're not quite at that point. Yet."

"Ah… I guess the cat's out of the bag," he chuckled, holding up his hands in a shrug. "It's not exactly death resistance, but yeah, I have a rather unique skill that functions similarly to it."

"Well now I feel like the fool twice over again," Draken said, finally taking his own seat and motioning for Thunder to bring him a drink. It would seem Crush was not out of the doghouse just yet, as the large elite stood quietly by the door, waiting to be called upon. "…Crush and Thunder filled me in on the insane plan you came up with after the three of you trapped the assassin. Seeing as you are still alive, I take it you either realized how ridiculous your idea was and abandoned it, or it actually worked?"

"It worked," he nodded, deciding he didn't care what Kree heard at this point. "The truthseekers interrogated the senior assassin and I got an actual lead out of it. The ink Eight uses to write their orders… It's made in the Frent estate."

"Of course it is," Draken sighed, grimacing before taking a deep swig from his glass. While he drank, Kree looked at Asher in confusion.

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"What do you mean, 'the truthseekers?' How do they come into all this?"

"Reap here decided to bring the senior assassin we took down over to the truthseekers in the hopes that they could get more information out of him than we could," Thunder explained, carefully placing the bottle of liquor back in the cabinet and locking it. "Crush and I kinda figured it was a suicidal plan… But it sounds like he actually pulled it off."

"You made a deal with the truthseekers?!" Kree all but shouted, the news enough to shock him out of his own terror of Draken. "Are you insane?!"

"Hardly. They're just people like you or me," Asher shrugged. "…Albeit people with horrifying skills and a hell of a lot of power."

"As much as I want to delve into the logistics of you actually getting the truthseekers to strike a deal with you, we have bigger things to worry about," Draken said, seeming to realize their current situation was more important than his own annoyance with Asher borrowing Crush and Thunder without his permission. "If Eight is a member of the Frent family, they very well may be beyond our reach."

"What do you mean? Come on, there must be a way for me to slip in there and take care of him, right?" Asher asked, frowning at the defeatist look on Draken's face. In a surprising turn of events, the gang leader looked as though he'd already thrown in the towel without even trying.

"You don't understand, the fourth ring is nothing like the rest of the city," Draken said, shaking his head. "I would know, I grew up within it. Getting into the ring itself wouldn't be that difficult, but each estate is functionally its own heavily guarded and enchanted fortress. They have trained guards with a wide variety of skills, more enchantments than you could possibly imagine, and the members of the noble families themselves have some of the most dangerous and unique elements and skills you've ever seen, of which they've spent their whole lives training to use. The head of the Frent family has the Dragon element, which is in no small part why she's considered one of the most dangerous individuals in the entire city when it comes to sheer power."

Huh, dragons are a thing? Guess I shouldn't be all that surprised.

"They're not the only ones with unusual skills," Asher argued, crossing his arms and flickering in and out of the astral a few times in quick succession to prove his point. "As far as I know, there's no enchantment or barrier capable of holding me. Not even the truthseekers were capable of keeping me locked up."

"Actually?" Draken asked, that revelation seeming to shock him more than hearing that Eight was potentially a member of the strongest noble family in the entire city. Asher supposed it made sense, as Draken probably had a better understanding of how powerful the truthseekers were than just about anyone. No doubt one of the unintentional side effects of having to speak with them anytime he wanted to leave his own home. "Still, there are skill-dampening fields that are capable-"

"I can get around those too," Asher said, deciding not to mention that doing so was extraordinarily draining, and not something he could do more than a few times before needing to rest. "I'm telling you, I can do it. If you can give me a run down on what to expect, I can make it into the estate and find Eight."

Draken hesitated, clearly at war with what he knew of the noble's defenses and Asher's own claims. Finally, after a few tense seconds, he sighed.

"Alright… I'll tell you what I know," he said, holding up a hand to halt Asher's grin before he could get too excited. "Fair warning though, it's been nearly two decades since I last set foot in one of the noble estates. If there have been any advancements or improvements made upon what used to be standard defensive protocol, I won't know about them."

"I'll take whatever information you can give me," Asher said, pleased to hear he'd have at least some sense of what he'd be getting himself into. "Kree, any chance you can give me some tips? Even if you haven't ventured into the fourth ring, you might actually be more up to date on magical defenses than Draken if you've ever tried hitting buildings in the third ring."

"I may have helped myself to an item or two here and there within the third ring," Kree admitted quietly, shrinking in on himself as everyone's attention turned toward him. "I've run into my fair share of magical defenses, and I think I can give you a heads up as to what to expect. At least for the most basic stuff."

"We might be able to help as well," Thunder said, stepping forward and scratching her head with her mace. "Draken, do you think it would benefit Reap here if we ended up making a scene outside the estate? Maybe draw some of their guards away and give him a little more freedom to make his way inside?"

"It's risky, but it would certainly improve his chances," Draken nodded, taking another slow sip of his drink as he thought. "The actual people with their wide variety of skills will be the most unpredictable obstacle, so the less of them wandering the estate, the more likely this will work. Honestly, if we could come up with something on the more absurd side, that would be even better. Attracting the guards' attention is one thing, but if you can grab the attention of some of the actual nobles within the house, Asher might actually manage to pull this off."

"Something on the absurd side, huh?" Thunder repeated, her eyes flicking over to Crush and his large form. "…I think I might have an idea."

Asher grinned as he glanced around the room, realizing he might have an actual shot of getting in and out of the noble's estate in one piece. He knew what he was planning was beyond dangerous, but he didn't have a choice. It was the only lead they had, and Asher would be damned if he didn't go for it. Samantha and Brian returning to their normal lives depended on it.

"Alright everyone," he said, rubbing his hands together and cracking his neck, that ever burning excitement in his core flaring up at the thought of finally getting a crack at the head of Whikoga's Assassin's Guild, and in their own home no less.

"Let's get to work!"

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