Sindre adjusted his grip on the sack he carried, taking care to hold it slightly away from his body to avoid his shoes catching any of the mess dripping through the fabric. He strolled into the magistrate’s office at the base of the castle’s left tower with practiced ease.


    The kill had been embarrassingly simple.The human, charged with murder of a palace guard, had pled for his life. “Please, you must understand, I was only trying to protect my daughter from that man,” he’d said.


    Sindre, though, hadn’t felt anything for his quarries since Nar Atsa nearly three years prior. That fight had left him bloodied, body singing out at being pushed beyond its limit, but when he’d finally gotten the last member of the Tyrant Clan on his back and had plunged an arrow into that cruel heart, the euphoria he’d felt at finishing his father’s mission had won out beyond all else.


    This target hadn’t even had the decency to put up a fight, instead merely raising his hands in surrender.


    Sindre had grimaced and promised, “I’ll make it quick,” just before swiping his dagger across the man’s throat in a final caress.


    He was even more annoyed with the target now as its blood had somehow failed to congeal despite the hours that’d passed since the moment of death.


    The magistrate, an older human woman with the grizzled face of one who’d seen prior battles, glanced up at Sindre as he entered her office with gift in hand. “That was even faster than usual,” she said, tone bordering on impressed. He was the only one of her mercenaries that ever got this sort of approval.


    Sindre flashed her a winning smile. “Try to find me a more interesting one next time,” he replied, once more craving what he’d felt with Nar Atsa. What joy it was to accomplish one’s true purpose in life, and how empty one felt once that purpose was gone.


    He reached into the sack and pulled out the head he’d stashed inside, gripping it by the blood-soaked hair.


    The magistrate sifted through the papers on her desk for a moment before bringing up one in particular. She glanced between the WANTED poster in her hand and the severed head in Sindre’s before giving a short nod, seemingly satisfied. She opened the top drawer of her desk and set the poster inside.


    Sindre was dimly aware of the clinking of coins as she counted out his compensation, but his attention was pulled by the repulsive feeling of something wet dripping onto his foot. His lip curled in disgust as he noted a spot of blood now tainting the top of his left shoe, an unsightly blemish on the otherwise fine leather. He shoved the head back into the bag and set it by the door with a grimace before wiping his sullied hand with his handkerchief.


    “Your payment,” the magistrate said.


    Sindre eagerly accepted the handful of gold proffered to him. At the very least, he could buy some new shoes with this, ones that hadn’t been so rudely bled on. “I’m not kidding, Madgey, my dear,” he said, taking pleasure in the way her lips tightened at the nickname. She didn’t have a given name, as far as her mercenaries were concerned, and he’d grown tired of having no casual way to refer to her after all these years. “I really do need someone more interesting to chase. I may perish from sheer boredom at this rate.”


    The magistrate looked for a moment like she might prefer that, but eventually she huffed out a sigh. “What do you know about Una Naru?” she asked.


    Sindre raised his eyebrows. “As much as anyone,” he replied, at least halfway honest. “She’s a legend.” The great liberator, whose final treasure had never been found, whose death nearly a millennium ago had signaled the end of the Age of Adventurers. Her tale was pervasive across all five continents, and Sindre, like most children, had dreamt in his younger years that perhaps he would be the one to finally uncover her lost treasure. It’d been a foolish fancy made possible only in youth, and once he’d reached adolescence, he’d abandoned the idea in favor of finishing his father’s work.


    The magistrate nodded. She plucked out one of the sheets before her and passed it over to him. “This was recently stolen from the keep,” she said. “It’s rumored to have belonged to Una Naru.”


    Sindre studied the illustration before him. It showed a compass set in a gold cover, a relatively standard piece of navigational equipment, save for the very unique engraving on its jeweled bevel. His heart began to race. He knew that marking, that peculiar design of a sun etched into the metal with thick, swirling rays surrounded by a halo of fine lines; it was the symbol of Calavén?, the Sun Goddess of Old.Stolen novel; please report.


    Long ago, before humans or dwarves or even elves, there had been the Sun and the Moon, Calavén? and Isil. The Moon, lonely with only her sister for company, infused her very soul into the land, the sea, the sky, and through her, life was created. The Sun, longing to play with the Moon’s creatures, sprinkled magic throughout the world. For centuries, there was peace, there was prosperity, but then the minds of Isil’s creations began to sour, fermenting their good natures into greed and distrust. Worst of all was the Tyrant Clan, who claimed to be favorites of Isil to spread their hatred across the continents, using her name to justify their destruction. Sensing the danger of this clan, the Sun and the Moon bestowed their blessings on their Champion, who came to be called Una Naru, who went on to liberate the oppressed kingdoms, who amassed a treasure so great as to rival the might of a goddess, who was put to death at the hands of the Atsans for her bravery. As she took her last breath, the Sun and the Moon retreated into the sky for their long slumber, lying in wait for a new Champion to emerge, to find the treasure that hid the key to their reawakening.


    Of course, only the elves born in Southern Diantha remembered this true history, as their longevity allowed them to recall that which the rest of the world eagerly forgot in favor of the lesser, weaker gods they worshipped now. Humans and the like considered the Old Religion to be dead, if they knew of it at all, and only focused on the Champion’s treasure rather than her blessed nature, selfish creatures that they were.


    No doubt the mark of Calavén? meant little to most who would see this compass, but to Sindre, who’d spent much of his childhood in Southern Diantha learning of the Old Religion from his father, there was a significance to this engraving that struck him in his very core. “How was the compass guarded?” he asked.


    If she was surprised by his question, she kept that entirely to herself. “There were no physical barriers protecting it,” she said.


    Sindre looked up, brow furrowed.


    “It was imbued with such strong magic that no one could bear to get near it,” the magistrate went on, “so it was simply displayed on a pedestal in the keep.”


    “How did it get on the pedestal in the first place if no one could handle it?”


    The magistrate shrugged. “I’ve heard rumors of a servant’s hands being sacrificed in order to move it shortly after Naru’s death, but since it’s been down there in the same spot for centuries, it’s hard to really say.”


    Sindre considered this. “And you say it was stolen?”


    She nodded and passed over two additional sheets of parchment.


    The first sheet showed a human, no more than eighteen, with an impressive smile that caused their eyes to crinkle in the corners, expression of overt delight at odds with the WANTED printed neatly at the top of the page. Their cropped hair was unruly and a few shades darker than their skin, flowing wildly as if being ruffled in a firm wind. Their name—Baz—was listed just above the call to bring them back, dead or alive.


    The second poster showed a nameless man—another human, perhaps a few years older than Baz—with shoulder-length hair white as starlight and eyes as deep as the night sky. He was not smiling, and there was something decidedly cruel about his illustrated gaze. Sindre felt something deep in his core; he told himself it was disgust, that the heat spreading through his chest wasn’t excitement. There was no mistaking it: this man was an Atsan, a tyrant who’d somehow dodged his family’s fate, and that meant that his work wasn’t finished just yet.


    (He wondered if this one would fight as exquisitely as the last, if killing him would bring about the lingering satisfaction he so craved.)


    He realized he was gripping the poster tight enough that his thumb tore through the paper, creating a hole at the level of the Atsan’s heart.


    The magistrate quirked a brow up at his little display. “I’d nearly forgotten your thing for the white-haired ones,” she said. Ironton had been liberated from Atsan rule far before Una Naru’s death and was far enough away from the continent of Atserale which had previously been under their control that few of its citizens even knew of the Tyrant Clan’s distinctive features. As far as Madgey was concerned, Sindre apparently had some sort of fetish for people with white hair and dark eyes. “Those two broke in two nights ago, incapacitated the guards, and made off with only the compass.” She nodded toward the posters in his hands.


    “But since it has that protection magic on it,” Sindre started.


    The magistrate nodded. “Yes, they either suffered through the consequences of it, or one of them was able to wield the compass without harm. There were no reports of screaming that night, so I’m inclined to believe the latter.”


    Sindre ran a hand through his hair. The blood-red locks were getting slightly longer than usual, just enough that they were able to fall over his eyes. He was certain that only one blessed by Calavén? would be able to handle the compass without harm, which could indicate that perhaps she was beginning to stir from her long slumber and was working on selecting a new Champion.


    How in the goddesses’ names, then, did an Atsan get involved? he wondered.


    “It seems that you’re already taking this personally,” the magistrate noted. “Good. Perhaps that means that this will prevent your death from ‘sheer boredom,’ as you put it.”


    Sindre attempted to relax his expression, but he could tell that his eyes were still tight around the edges despite his efforts. “I’ll find them,” he promised, “and I’ll inflict the justice they deserve.” At the very least, he would attempt to figure out just what these two criminals had to do with the Goddesses of Old.