The Conviction

Chapter 7 - Tireur

"Do you want to tell me where you even got this place?" Alexandre asked skeptically, looking around the nicely furnished apartment complex as she pulled out some keys. She turned and gave him a look that only offered mere amusement before she popped the door open, revealing the messiest apartment he'd ever seen.

Alex's jaw dropped, but she only laughed at him, walking inside and throwing her bag on the floor. The night was still fairly young that night in Diyana, and she hardly seemed to feel drowsy as she leaned against the counter with a sly grin. "I know the mercenary who lives here. He's an old friend, you could say, and I told him that I needed a place to stay for awhile while I was in town."

"But in a place like this-"

"Diyana is cursed, Alex." Ashley said shortly. "By night it is the stuff of nightmares, but by day it appears entirely normal."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that during the massacre, some twenty years ago, one of the artifacts of Eden was used to enact the damage wrought upon this place." She explained, picking up a green apple and biting into his as if this was an everyday thing for her. "The reason that Diyana hasn't been discovered is that it's two places. One in the shadow plane, and one in the real world."

"So, we're in the shadow plane right now?" He asked disbelievingly. "I don't understand, how does something like that work?"

"Diyana is sort of like a broken mirror. One side is all cracked and marred, while the other is pristine, and completely normal." She bit into the fruit again, wiping her mouth with a nearby paper towel and chewing as she spoke, somehow quite fluidly. "There's nothing unique or special about it, other than the fact that its secondary dimensional existence makes its presence known in the physical world."

Scowling, he gave her a dirty look. "And your friend told you this?" He groaned, pressing a hand to his temple. "You're making my head hurt," he whined, sprawling out on the couch and propping his feet up.

"It's really not that complicated." She tried to say. "Honestly, just know that Diyana has a sort of built in sensor. If you arrive to do work in the dark side, all you see is the broken part of the mirror. If you come here to be semi-normal, you see the smooth glass." Grandmaster Dorian explained, throwing the core into the nearby can and yawning.

Alex only shook his head, messing up his hair and looking up at her, unamused. "I can't believe that you somehow managed to find this guy without me noticing, and that you actually trust a merc!" She nodded at him, unsheathing a large, jagged blade.

It glowed bright gold, tendrils of light stretching out to wrap themselves around the edges of the great sword, pulsing with a living energy. "I also consulted the sword of Eden," Ashley explained simply.

He scoffed again. "Oh yeah, because the magical, pretty sword can talk now, can't it?" he asked sarcastically, but watched her nervously as she twisted it about, her wrist moving fluidly.

It was her turn to glare at him. "Be mindful of what you say, Apprentice. I'll overlook your insolence for now, but the relics of Eden have a powerful connection with one another, but only if you learn how to access that power." Shaking her head, she sheathed the beautiful blade, and moved to go back outside. "I need to meet with Terrence. I'll call you when you're needed."

----

Several hours later, if for some reason you were up on top of buildings, and holding a pair of binoculars, an assassin could be seen watching her target earnestly, eyes darting from street to street, settled on her high perch, quite relaxed. It wasn't as tall as the clocktower in the distance, but it got the job done well enough.