The Triton

Chapter 9: Sasha

She stopped, the first tear falling down her cheek. Play the game, Sasha, play the game.

"Ger her," the Captain barked, and the six mercenaries pressed quickly into the room, tridents readied and pointed at the girl. She held her head low, letting the faked sob escape her and the tears flow from her eyes.

"What?" she asked, quiet, broken.

"Check on the Lord," the Captain ordered. "You, bitch, stay where you are."

She did as he instructed, weighing her options, but there was such little time.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"What is going on, Captain?" one of his men echoed.

He stuck his trident less than an inch from her throat, threatening to pierce her neck at the slightest movement. "I should've seen it, damn you, filthy bitch."

Creative, she thought dryly. On the exterior, her mask remained unbroken.

"This is Sasha. The Mask of Many Faces, the Blood Rose, among other names has many names. But it's said you only see her true face when she takes your life. Red hair, red eyes, red scales. A killer. The best the waves have ever seen. Never failed an assignment, so legends say. Quite the reputation."

He knew. Damn it all. Her mask of innocence was pure, perfect, but the Captain's steel-cold gaze leveled her, seeing through the buttressed exterior that she wore. She let it drop, slowly, her hands extending.

"He's dead," a mercenary called, standing from beside the Lord's bed.

"Don't worry, brother. Our little girl's killed countless nobles, influential men and women, soldiers, the rich, all in the name of the Usurper's cause."

"Usurper," she spat. "You know nothing, Captain."

He ignored her. "The bounty on her head, worth more than a hundred years pay from Grom. We just got rich, each of us." He turned his attention back to the half-clothed girl, his voice dripping in victory. "How does it feel, the predator now the prey?"

She eyed the tridents that sat suspended inches from her face. Useful in water combat, but inside, in the dry, they could be unwieldy.

"The bounty's on your head, little bitch, dead or alive. Looks like you're following that Lord and all the others you've killed to Hell. Think they're gonna love you, there." A thought struck him, and he laughed, a rotten, filthy laugh. "Before you go, would be a shame not to give you some fun on your way out, huh?"

Sasha smiled at that. "Yeah, some fun sounds...wonderful."

She removed her robe, dropping just as she did for the Lord, then unclasped her bra, slowly dropping it to the floor. Confusion rippled through the Captain's men...no one had ever just...given in before.

And no one ever would for these men.

Specter had taught her a great many things in their training, so many skills and manifestations of her own power that no others saw in her: To Step was to jump in space, a disappearance from one place and the appearance in another. To Mask was to change your form, either to the eyes of others or in the flesh itself, a tool she'd mastered from thousands of failures.

A small smile grew on her face. Her eyes locked onto the Captain's, and she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear, "You first."

Magic meant Eleanora might be here, but no magic meant death. The choice was simple.

Then she Stepped behind him, her back against his, in one moment surrounded by them, the next directly behind the Captain, and struck. The bra, its underwire was a sheath, a fine chord of Black Aerutan, a gift from Specter, no more than a millimeter in diameter, but stronger and sharper than anything man-made. On each side of the razor-thin Auretan wire were two handles that suddenly appeared at the base of the Captain's neck.