A tender wind swept the clouds and half of the moon peeped out from hiding, like a little child's head looking down at them, watching what they're doing. It illuminated the night enough for Minos and Rei to see the entire manor and what surrounds it.     "So..." Minos faced Rei, impressed with himself. "Breaking and entering. That's your expertise, right?"     Rei dismissed Minos' comment and went up to the window quietly tapping its iron-framed glass. After a careful study, he pulled out the tools he had hanging by his belt. He rolled out its cloth-wrap over his arm, revealing a diamond-edged glass cutter, a small file, narrow scissors, and lock picks of various sizes.     Rei picked up the cutter and worked his way to the glass window,

With a flick of the drow's hand, all the floating furniture coalesced around the center of the room, and then she smashed them all towards the main door of the manor. "No one leaves this manor until I say so."     The drow mage cancelled the spell and then cast another one. One of the linens covering the divans flew towards Cassana and wrapped around her neck. With a motion of the drow's fist, the blanket tightened and lifted her up to the ceiling. Cassana instinctively grabbed on it with her arms, but it wouldn't nudge. Her head began to bloat and the white of her eyes started turning red.     "Such determination. Such will. If you were a drow, I would feel bad for you." The mage released her spell and Cassana dropped onto the floor, the white cloth spreading around her leg. She gasped for air and held b

Cassana's eyes could not believe what she was seeing. There on the floor, in the private gallery of Otheric's father, laid her staff. Fashioned from elm wood and measuring five and a half feet in length, it held her focusing stone in its head, made of sapphire synthesized in the frozen tundras of Xian.     She had this staff during her second year in The Tower. It was the most expensive thing she had bought at that time, bought from money she earned from working part-time in a saloon in Ad-Nilem. This was her most prized possession, and she did her best to keep it safe. The gemstone it carried was also uncommon in this side of Windcoast, and she doubted if she will ever have the money to replace it with something similar on the chance it gets exhausted. For that reason, she rarely used the staff for her spells, opting instead to use tiny nuggets that she came by cheaply.

A haze of orange light was breaking through the dark blue canvas of the sky above. Minos felt the misty breeze touching the back of his neck. All the windows in the manor had been shattered, and he could see outside where the walls and trees that surround them.     Watching Cassana's sob over Otheric made him feel sick so he stepped back and turned away, scanning the destruction that their fight had brought instead. On his left, where the door to the gallery once stood, he could see the bodies of the two drows they encountered last night, half buried in rubble. To his right, another drow laid on the floor, this one appeared to be a woman.     He approached her and quickly realized that she was still breathing. He turned her head to face him and he felt his stomach lurch from the sight he beheld

"What are you doing here?" Minos asked the cloaked figure.     "Looking for you." The figure stepped closer, pulling down the hood of her cloak. She was a drow, tall and lanky, with a skin that glowed like an amethyst under the sunlight, and long wavy hair dyed a dark brown.     "And how did you find me?" asked Minos again.     "You really have a knack for asking the stupid questions..." the drow mocked.     "Smart men ask stupid questions."     "Said who?"     "Read it in a book, some philosopher. He said people of great intelligence know that they don't know everything, hence they won't shy away from asking questions, even those that others might deem, stupid"     "Kind of ironic, coming from you."     "As if you were surprised."     The female drow slowly stepped