Tim's POV
The cart was comfortable, cushioned seating, suspension that reduced the road's contribution to the journey's physical experience, curtained windows that could be opened or closed depending on the preference of the occupant. It was comfortable and it was soooo slow, and the slowness was the problem that the comfort couldn't solve.
I had been in this cart for three days now.
At my running speed, the capital was approximately one day of travel. At the cart's pace, it was five days. The mathematics of this were not complex, and the result was that I was spending four additional days in a moving box to preserve the appearance of arriving in the appropriate manner for someone who had received a royal invitation with a royal cart provided for the purpose.
Appearances mattered. I understood this. The meeting with King Ramposa III would be shaped by how I arrived at it, and the king had sent the cart as a statement about how he wanted the meeting framed, and accepting the cart was a response to that statement.
I yawned and looked out the curtained window at the road.
Night had came, the darkness outside the cart settling into a silent darkness, the moon providing the primary illumination, the sounds of the horses and the cart's movement and the night insects creating the ambient texture of a journey that was proceeding without incident.
I had been tracking the three people on the cart's roof since approximately the fourth hour of the third day.
Not continuously, they had been at distance for most of that period, pacing the cart at the range that maintained invisibility while keeping the target in sight. The approach to the cart itself had happened over the final half hour of their preparation, the movement careful and professional, the three of them coordinating the boarding with the practiced silence of people who had done this kind of thing enough times.
They were good.
A person handling the driver, the quiet neutralisation, the cart slowing to a stop rather than crashing, which told me they had instructions that included keeping collateral clean, No dead horses, Presumably no dead driver.
Someone had thought about the optics of the assassination and had produced a plan that minimised unnecessary evidence. That level of operational planning suggested professional hire.
I had stepped out of the cart approximately thirty seconds before the door opened, the shadow merge taking me to the road behind the cart while the three of them were still in their approach positions. The night and the technique made me invisible in the specific comprehensive way of *Perfect Unknowable* combined with the darkness's natural cooperation.
I watched them open the door.
---
Tira's POV [level 28]
The cart was empty.
I stood in the doorway with the Vampire Blade in my hand and the specific cold feeling of a situation that had just changed from controlled to uncertain, looking at cushions and traveling food and the absence of a target.
The voice came from behind me.
"hello there"
I have been an assassin for twelve years. I have been the triplet that specialised in close-range engagement, Tia was the mid-rangle specialist, Tina was the support and distraction, and I was the one who closed the distance and made the kill. Twelve years of being the close-range specialist had built into me reflexes that operated faster than cognition, the response to a voice behind me while I was in an operational situation being one that had been trained to the point of being automatic.
I swung.
The Vampire Blade was the finest weapon I owned, a dagger with properties that went beyond the physical, the blood-drinking enchantment leaving no evidence of the wound on the body, the kind of weapon that was designed for exactly this kind of work. I put the full force and speed into the swing.
Tim avoided easily it.
Not stepped back, *avoided,* the body moving from the path of the blade with the ease of something that had not needed to think about the movement, as he avoided by an inch.
Tia came in from the left. Tina from the right. We had been working together since we learned to walk, the coordination between us something we did not need to discuss because it had been built from childhood, the three of us operating as a single organism when the work required it.
He avoided all three of us simultaneously.
The expression on his face was not the expression of someone fighting for their life. It was not the expression of someone engaged in a serious challenge. It was the expression of someone who is mildly bored.
"ladies, you know I was avoiding your attacks to be nice right?"
He said it with the specific quality of someone stating a fact rather than making a threat, the tone that was somehow worse than a threat because it was accurate.
Tim stopped moving.
I pushed the pace. The Vampire Blade found his neck, his neck, which was the kill point, the spot that ended things regardless of what the target's capability was, The impact travelled back up my arm the way you hit an iron wall.
He had not moved.
Tia hit the back of his head. Tina hit his ribs. I registered the impacts from my sisters peripherally, the sound and the body language of contact.
I swung the Vampire Blade at his eye.
The eye was the universally vulnerable point. Not skill-dependent, not protected by armour, and a blade going into an eye ended the engagement regardless of how strong the body around it was.
The Vampire Blade broke on his EYE BALL.
A broken piece flew past me. I felt the cut on my cheek from my own weapon's fragment, the specific sharp sensation of an edge that hadn't been meant for me.
Tim didn't even Blink.
I had swung the Vampire Blade at his eye with full force and it had broken on his eye and he had not blinked.
I processed the information, as panic set in.
"Retreat. Now."
---
We ran.
The three of us had practiced retreat as seriously as we had practiced engagement, because good assassins understood that the success rate on any mission was never one hundred percent and that surviving a failed mission was as much a professional skill as completing a successful one. We were fast. We were coordinated. We had a route.
The world blurred, as I feel my body being pulled forcely.
I do not have a better description for what happened in the interval between running and being tied up, me and my two sisters
I tried to pull on the rope, and it was a normal rope....?
Tim was standing on the road looking down at us.
"I am going to let you gals live, as you three didn't kill my driver, so I will take this assassination as a small matter, but I will kill you next time"
He got back in the cart.
The cart started moved away.
I watched it go and thought about several things simultaneously. The broken Vampire Blade, The fact that we were alive and tied up on a road rather than dead in a ditch.
The specific expression on his face that had been, from the first moment to the last, somewhere between mild entertainment and mildly boredom.
"Is anyone hurt?" Tia asked.
"My cheek," I said. "From my own DAMN Blade."
Tina said nothing for a moment. Then: "How did he tied all three of us before we could react."
The statement sat in the road between us with the weight of information that required processing.
I thought about the Bloody Emperor Jircniv Rune Farlord El-Nix, who had commissioned this mission with the specific confidence of someone who believed that the finest assassins available were a solution to the problem of Tim. I thought about what report I was going to send and what the emperor's response to that report was going to be.
The relative assessment was clear.
"Starting today," I said, "we do not take missions with Tim in them. Ever. Regardless of who is asking or what they're offering."
The rope was tied half-assed. We easily broke it.
The cart had disappeared around the bend in the road.
Above us, the stars were out.
---
Tim [level 97]