No one steals from dragons

Nightingale

Giza was really starting to wander if the hundred gold coins were worth it. As she jumped over a fallen tree and sank almost up to the knees into the sludge of mud and wet leaves, she decided that no, they were not. The roar that came from behind her just affirmed that thought.

Running through a forest, at night, during a thunderstorm, was stupid enough by itself. Doing so while holding the stolen tooth of a nightingale was just plain out idiotism and Giza knew that. But the team needed the money, and the witch that had offered it hadn't seemed like somebody who was used to not getting what they wanted.

The snapping branches behind Giza were the only thing that alerted her the nightingale was near. Those wolf-like beasts, even though they were the size of horses, had the ability to blend in the darkness so well that they became almost invisible. The sole thing that gave them away was the faint glow of their red eyes, and that was only noticeable if you could see in the dark. And right now, thanks to the thick curtain of the rain and the blinding lightnings that pierced the sky, it was impossible to see anything, night-vision or not.

Giza almost slammed into a tree as she took a sharp turn left and her foot slid in the mud. She managed to keep her balance, but the turn had slowed her down. The beast was not more than a few feet behind her now. Giza could almost feel its giant teeth sinking into her throat.

White hair flashed in the rain, and then a blinding ray of light shone through it, bathing everything in a golden glow. Everything, including the nightingale.

The beast let out something between a hiss and a shriek as the golden beam blinded it. Giza turned just in time to see it baring its teeth, the light reflecting of the two long, sharp ones sticking out of its upper jaw, same as the one she was holding in her hand. Except that instead of bone like all the other teeth it had, those ones were made of black iron.

That was the thing with nightingales. Their fur, their claws, even their bones possessed magic. Their teeth, however, were the most valuable. They could hold magic from anything and everything, harness it for ages until somebody decided to use it. They were not illegal, but getting one was so hard that they didn't need to be. Nightingales changed their teeth every hundred years, and kept the ones they had lost the way a dragon keeps its treasure. Very little people were brave or stupid enough to cross paths with one of those beasts.

That was why the witch had hired them. To get the tooth. Giza wasn't sure if it was because of their reputation or the fact that no one else had accepted.

The nightingale took a step back, then another. The ends of its fur were blurring, trying to blend into the shadows, but there wasn't enough darkness around. It turned and ran back into the forest with a growl.

The golden light disappeared, and at the place it was coming from now stood a white-haired boy, his piercing blue gaze pointed at Giza.

"Thanks Kiran."

He sighed and walked over to her, scanning the tree line behind. Then he turned back to Giza.

"That-Kiran said-is the most reckless and dangerous job we have ever taken, and so is your plan."

"But it worked." Giza tossed him the iron tooth. Kiran caught it and raised an eyebrow as he turned it around in his hands.

"All the ruckus for that?"

"I don't doubt it has more to offer than what meets the eye. Where's Cass?"

"Standing on watch. I doubt that there is much point, since we are kilometers from the city, but you never know."

Making their way back through the forest was harder than expected. The rain had made everything slippery, and everything looked the same. At some point Giza was pretty much just sniffing the air to find the way they had come from, and helping Kiran not get lost or fall in a ditch somewhere. Azakir, even though they were great warriors, did not have the sharpened senses demons and elves possessed, and their eyes couldn't adjust to the dark.

Finally they came out of the tree line and on the field that stretched for kilometers and kilometers around it. The forest was a weird one, growing in a circle in the middle of nowhere. But magic worked in strange ways, and there was nothing that dwelt in that forest that didn't possess at least a bit of it.

They found Cass sitting on a tree branch just at the border of the forest. The half-demon had felt that they were there long before Giza had noticed him in the tree, which meant that he had watched them go in a circle for five minutes and said nothing.

"Will you please get down?" Giza said, more tired than annoyed, crooking her head backwards to stare at the tree. Two yellow eyes with vertical pupils stared back, then a white grin flashed and Cass jumped from the tree, landing without a sound.

"What took you so long? I got soaked." Indeed, his black hair, normally wavy and flying in all directions, was now damp with rainwater, and so were his clothes.

"We were busy trying to not get eaten, and Giza was making that harder than it needed to be." Kiran groaned from behind.

"Shut up. Let's just wrap this deal up and go home."

Cass nodded and outstretched his hands. The ground beneath them darkened and then disappeared. And then they fell down.

This type of jumps were one of the things demons could normally do. Cass had inherited it from his father, but more than two jumps usually drained him to the point of nearly passing out. They had used the first one to get here, and the second to go to where they had agreed to meet the witch, a lake at the outskirts of Nyx.

The light of the moon glistened over the obsidian waters as the three appeared out of the shadows. Giza scanned the shore, her eyes stopping on a hooded figure that looked almost surreal, as if it was not quite there. That must have been the witch, then.

Giza signaled to Kiran to give her the tooth, then pulled her own hood over her head and walked over to the witch. She didn't doubt that if she wanted, the witch could easily know her face, but Giza wasn't planning on making it easier than it already was.

The exchange happened without a word. Giza gave the witch the tooth, who turned it in her dark hand covered in golden bracelets, then quickly handed over a leather pouch full of glittering golden coins. And then she was gone, as if the wind itself had carried her off the shore.