The following morning's breakfast has us all deep in thought. Even I have been distracted enough from last night's events to drop my character for a time, letting the line blur for a short moment.

The others are probably struggling with emotions different to mine. This little piece of their day is an opportunity for them to experience some normalcy. Forgetting the rebellion, forgetting the risks, forgetting the consequences, and even forgetting their actions, like a bad dream they've just woken up from, already fading away from memory.

But some dreams are not so easily forgotten, burying themselves deep, waiting, creeping at the edges of your consciousness. You might forget them for a time, but eventually, they always emerge. I prepare to say something but change my mind. I'll let them have peace for a while longer.

Nilla fills the day with the orders she got yesterday. I keep her company for a while. She tries to pry some more information from me, conversing with me barely affecting her efficiency. Under a layer of obfuscation, I let some things slip. My healthier interest in knowledge and discovery, my recent culinary awakening, someone very important I've met.

Harrn and Tiff are officially recovering for a few days. Unofficially, too. While the dungeon they delved was trivial for the two fighters, the training they performed inside was not. The father and son laze around for a bit and then go out and about the city. I keep an ever-watchful eye on them.

The day passes slowly, as if reading the wants of each dwarf, letting them enjoy it for as long as possible. But the night arrives all the same. Nilla moves us to an empty field.

I flick a finger. The motion removes some soil and uncovers a familiar bubble containing a large bag. I pull the bag out and start rummaging around. Pieces of enchanted clothing are passed around. Tiff segments the space with opaque walls made out of illusion magic, giving each of us some privacy. We change. The new clothing is all similar. Dark colors, but not black. It obscures our features, somewhat blending into whatever is around us. It blocks out the heat and sounds we might produce. It even dampens our footsteps. Overall, a nice supplement to Tiff's illusions.

We stow our regular clothes in the bag and hide it again. After we are covered in a twisting dome of magic, Nilla moves us to our target.

We are next to an ordinary building somewhere in the capital. We are waiting just outside an invisible barrier I can hardly feel with my mana senses, and I cannot detect with any of my sensors. The seconds tick away.

A distant explosion pierces through the night's silence. Followed by a few more which get drowned out by the one nearer to us. The opposite side of the building lights up from a fiery blast. A ripple runs through the building's barrier. Tiff thrusts a hand inside, splitting the invisible surface and creating a passage. We quickly pass through. Tiff, now on the other side, pulls his hand out, and the barrier snaps into place. We wait again. Our breaths held, our muscles tensed, ready to react. The seconds tick away.

Nilla teleports us inside the building. We start moving swiftly and silently. Unseen.

Through a door. Wait for a moment. Down a corridor. A dwarf blinks into existence next to us. The seconds tick away. He disappears. Through another door. Down a flight of stairs. Through a final door.

We are in a large space. There are rows and rows of tall shelves, stacked to the top with thick tomes. Each tome contains valuable records concerned with the empire. From personnel to dungeon resources. This is one of several places that serve as archives, collecting and protecting the information that comes trickling in from all around the empire. It is also one of several places being hit tonight.

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While this whole charade won't really conceal our activities that much more, it does help sell our successes as much as possible. I am not the only smart person on the planet, after all. The less reasons I give people to start asking questions, the better. And added benefit, it rattles the emperor even further. I can certainly relate. All this valuable data going up in flames hurts me too.

Right, before I forget... Boop. Records digitized. Now I fell better.

The door behind us shatters into pieces. As dwarves start rushing in and, at the same time, materializing out of nowhere, Nilla and Tiff, with some assistance from me, start throwing fireballs around. Compared to theirs, mine are on the weaker side but still do their job sufficiently well.

Shelves get pierced through and burned, a few get saved by hastily constructed barriers. Harrn punches a shelf protected by a barrier so hard it clears a straight line through the space. It and every other shelf in its path crash against the far wall and explode from the force.

A pulse of mana ripples through Tiff's illusion bubble. The magical construct deforms and dispels, revealing us fully.

Nilla conjures a barrier of her own. A few elemental attacks hit the barrier with enough power to crack it. Nilla splits her shield into multiple segments, intercepting the subsequent barrage of attacks.

Tiff and I throw some more fireballs around. The tons and tons of paper records are now either incinerated or burning, releasing black smoke into the confined space, raising the temperature of the air.

In a flurry of movement, Harrn sends a few of the dwarves flying. Our strongest fighter is carefully regulating his strikes, making sure not to permanently take them out of the battle. He was very insistent I not kill anyone tonight. I guess my choice is once again correct. I sure hope I don't break my streak anytime soon.

The seconds tick away.

A dwarf crashes through the ceiling. The new arrival unleashes a spell.

Ravenous darkness starts expanding from the dwarf, ignoring his allies, but consuming everything else in its path. Harrn appears in front of the spell. His fist impacts the churning blackness. A segment of emptiness is momentarily created inside the spell's influence. The enemy caster channels even more power, trying to compensate for Harrn's next attack. A bigger segment gets filled even faster. But the darkness continues to grow.

After another strike, Harrn dives into the encroaching void. The spell loses some stability, halting its movement. Tiff takes advantage of the weakness. He strains and the darkness disperses into nothingness, revealing Harrn struggling against glossy, black tendrils that are coiling around our melee fighter.

Tiff concentrates again. Nilla flicks her hand. A nearly invisible shape of pure force crashes against the dark mage, embedding him inside a wall. Harrn rends the magical tendrils into pieces. The enemy mage fails to engage another spell. Him and Tiff are tangled in a clash of skill and willpower. Harrn appears next to us.

Nilla closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and starts concentrating, blocking off everything else but her inner awareness, letting it all fade away into the ether, putting her very life in our hands. As she exhales, mana bursts into action. Like a clip riddled with jump cuts, the scenery around us flickers from one location to another, making our ears pop from the constantly fluctuating air pressure.

The final teleport spits us out deep inside an old forest. The trees are thick and gnarly, and yet, they are still delightfully pleasing to the eye. The sun barely pierces through the thick canopy. The change in intensity of our immediate surroundings does not affect the three dwarves whatsoever.

Nilla still has a smidgen of stamina left, quickly following Tiff into an illusion and away from the spot we arrived at. Harrn stares at the same spot in anticipation, ready to engage the moment anything changes. They don't need to worry, the few mages on scene that were capable of teleportation couldn't even go to the second location Nilla took us through. As the moment stretches and nothing emerges for us to fight, Harrn allows some emotion to seep through his battle-ready state and into his body language. Genuine shock. And then, admiration. Not even he expected this level of power from his daughter.

I produce an audible yawn, the sound traveling inside the cavernous woods, breaking up the silence. "Nice work, lassy," I say. "We're good."

Harrn turns to me in surprise, a little frustrated with my unconcerned demeanor. But as the fight, and a big helping of adrenaline, start draining out of him, he begins to chuckle softly. In a blur of movement, he changes location to somewhere behind me, hugging the air. Tiff's illusion breaks and the air shifts into two dwarves getting squished in their father's strong arms.

I hear the chuckle turn into subdued sobs. My gaze is fixed away from them, allowing the moment to remain as private as it can.

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