Chapter Text
James stands up and unsheathes one of his daggers from the scabbard at the base of his spine. The metallic shwiiing sound it makes causes everyone to pause eating their dinner and look up at him.
“Someone’s on the roof,” he states when he spots Martin’s raised eyebrow.
“The roof?” Seonghyeon parrots. “Who the hell would be up there?”
James glances up at the ceiling, dark eyes narrowing in the direction he’d heard the creak. Oooh, he almost hadn’t heard it!
“Gotta be the wind,” Keonho figures, trying to laugh off the sudden tension.
But it’s not. James knows what the house settling in the wind sounds like but trying to convince them would be a waste of precious seconds. Under his breath, he whispers a quick spell. The magic tingles on the tip of his tongue and then surges through his veins, filling him with power and making his entire body go cold. His physical form dissolves into vapor and shadow and he launches himself upward through the air, through the ceiling, through the ductwork of the air conditioning system and a thick wall of puffy insulation and then, at last, through the shingled roof.
The spell’s effects end and his misty form condenses into something solid. Something with mass. Something that can swing a blade.
With faster reflexes than James expects, the intruder reacts, twirling around and deflecting his blade with the metal bracer strapped to their arm.
Oh? They may actually be good.
James roundhouse kicks. Feels his heel connect. The stranger staggers backward, nearly slipping on the angled slope of the roof.
They regain their balance. They rush towards him. Their fists are fast and James lets himself get socked in the jaw just so he can get a feel for his opponent's strength. Their training. Their fighting style. He does not let himself get hit by the next punch. Or the next. He knocks their arm aside with his own arm but he hasn't thrown them off balance. They punch with a bit more speed and ferocity now, aiming for his chin, his chest, his shoulder, only landing one solid hit because James came so close to slipping on the roof tiles. As soon as there's an opening, he stabs his blade forward and his opponent leaps back to keep the weapon at a distance.
Alright. This isn't just some street brawler. They've been professionally trained, James acknowledges, which means the stranger is up here for a reason, doing Mother knows what in the dark.
So he starts taking this a bit more seriously.
There’s no moon tonight. James can’t see their face–if they’ve got one–and can only tell that they are wearing a rather tacky hooded cloak. He doesn’t waste time with questions, he just goes in for the kill. He leaps into action, rapidly slashing with his dagger. One attack gets blocked again by the figure's bracer. Another slash goes through their cloak, shredding a hole in the cheap, ugly thing. James can feel himself take the advantage. He makes the stranger step back, back, back, losing ground. James goes for a lunging stab that would have gone through the gut of anyone who had chosen that moment to blink. But the intruder recovers their balance and sidesteps just in time. James hears his dagger slice through the cotton of their shirt and hates that he doesn’t immediately shift his weight and carve a hole into their abdomen.
The intruder draws their own short sword and James can see their exhaled breath form a cloud in the chilly night air.
James moves first. Leaping. Slashing. The intruder lifts their sword to block at the last possible moment. There’s the sing of metal against metal and then James flips backward to keep the intruder’s heavy boot from connecting with his kneecap. When he lands, he’s already whispering his way through the syllables of a spell. The spoken incantation's heft and pull reacts with the ink on his skin, makes the tattoos on the backs of his hands and across his knuckles shimmer and glow. Bright blue flame swirls to life above his palm and he throws it overhand.
The intruder defensively lifts their cloak but the fire burns through the tattered cloth with wicked ease. Oh? Did they not get protection talismans woven into their clothing? On this side of town? What an amateur.
He's still got a bit of flame left so he squeezes it into a fireball and hurls it low, hears it whistle and pop and crackle like fireworks, but the intruder, even as the fire spreads up the back of their cloak, is paying enough attention to spin out of the way.
They are good.
He can stop holding back now.
James unsheathes his second dagger and sprints forward, ready to go for the throat. The intruder gives up on their blazing cloak and rips it from around their shoulders so it can drop to the roof in a shower of cinders and ash. The movement only took them three seconds but it was all the time James needed to get right on top of them. To swing. The blade in his left hand connects. Slices through the fabric of the intruder’s shirt. He sees a stripe of pale, untattooed skin. He sees the dark, muddy red of dripping blood.
The figure lets out a startled grunt of pain. When they swing their own sword to retaliate, James kicks their wrist. He hears the sharp crack of bone and doesn’t waste time watching the blade go sailing over the edge of the roof.
“Who sent you?” he growls out, properly agitated now. He’s not going to let his next strike miss a vital point.
The intruder clutches their arm and whimpers. They kneel on the roof and lower their head in a bow as if to seek clemency but James has a job to do. He stomps towards them. Closes the distance in a breath.
He lifts one of his daggers, ready to plunge it into the figure’s neck, but–
“James!”
In the eye of the Green Mother, what now? He turns his head long enough to confirm that it’s Seonghyeon on the roof with him now. He turns back around.
The intruder is gone.
A ghost? No. He touched it.
Did they use some spell to vanish into thin air? He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and looks up in time to watch them run to the edge of the roof and leap to the next building with admirable grace. When was the last time someone escaped him? No, no, no. James can't keep being impressed by his opponent! He reverses his grip on the dagger in his right hand, ready to throw it. The figure got some distance but he can still get his blade into the back of their skull!
“James!”
Seonghyeon’s right behind him and the sudden proximity of his shout makes James tense up with uncharacteristic surprise. That brief moment of hesitation is all the time the intruder needs to get two more steps and melt into the night shadows a building away. “What?” he shouts in frustration, whirling about. If the kit is here to help, he’s way too late!
“We’ve got a situation,” Seonghyeon says, smart enough to step backward out of arm’s length.
James spins back around, in case he can somehow spot the intruder, but they’re gone. He senses nothing. Well. No matter. A broken wrist and a fresh scar on their chest should make tracking them down in the morning quite simple. He will finish the job then. With far less hostility, he looks at Seonghyeon again and sighs. “I was in the middle of something.”
Seonghyeon shrugs, “The house can defend itself. Martin made me come get you.”
He won’t explain so James sheathes both his daggers and wordlessly follows him across the roof. They both get inside through an open window and when they make it downstairs, the other two have gathered in the foyer.
Martin glances over at them when they approach, his expression unreadable. Mask-like. “I need a second opinion.”
When he steps aside, James can see that they are standing over a simple cardboard package placed on the floor. Rectangular and flat. Unopened. Unmarked. Wrapped in simple twine.
Seonghyeon states, “This was on the stoop.”
“I just got back,” Keonho elaborates, “and it wasn’t there fifteen minutes ago.”
The first thought James has is that the intruder on the roof left it for them. The second thought he has is– “Something’s in there.” But he’s not being a boggart about it. Even without really putting his good sense to it, James can feel that the object inside has a great amount of magic emanating from it, warming his skin like heat from a hearth. He reaches out and, as a precaution, tugs Keonho back a step or two.
“So I was right,” Martin sighs. “I sensed it out there. As loud as someone banging on the door.”
“Should we open it?” Seonghyeon wonders.
“It sounds dangerous, though,” whimpers Keonho, shaking in fear a little.
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with until we get eyes on it,” Martin declares. He puts a hand over his right eye and mutters a quick invocation. Around him, the air sort of sparks and whirls before the tattoos inked across his chest and down both of his arms glow brightly enough to be visible through his shirt. It doesn’t take long for the air in the room to sweeten with his power. He and James meet eyes. “Back me up?”
James steps forward, readying a counterspell of his own.
After taking a steadying breath, Martin stoops down, grips the twine in a hand and yanks the poorly-done knot free.
The flaps of the cardboard box spring open like a trap, like a bomb, but the twisted magic emanating from inside doesn’t seep and spread and contaminate like they both expect. Several seconds pass but the magic sits still.
Martin lowers his magical defenses first and then he kneels down to properly open the box.
Inside is a severed arm.