Chapter 263: Raen

“Arwin?” Rodrick asked, concern passing over his features as he paused with a piece of meat speared upon his fork halfway to his mouth. “Are you okay? Do you recognize the guild name?”

“I’m not sure,” Arwin said slowly, his brow knitting together. He saw the same expression passing over Lillia’s features from where she stood in the doorway. She was thinking the same thing that he was — and neither of them could tell if they were pulling things from nothing or not. “The name Setting Sun is startlingly similar to... something that Lillia and I recall from our past.”

“Before the... thing?” Rodrick asked, glancing at Esmerelda before looking back to Arwin, his eyes widening. “You think Twelve has something to do with that?”

Arwin shrugged helplessly. “I have absolutely no idea. Neither Lillia nor I have figured out anything about the whole situation or how it happened in the first place. We haven’t been strong enough yet. Pushing that question would have led us to more trouble than we were ready to handle. But is Twelve really that strong?”

“I... don’t think so.” Lillia shook her head. “I’ve been around a lot of powerful people. Powerful monsters, too. Twelve wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination. He’s definitely a very dangerous opponent — but he’s not at the level that could ever hope to be involved in a conspiracy as large as this one. I don’t think he’s anywhere near as strong as we were before the explosion, much less stronger than we were.”

“Maybe he’s just weak for his guild?” Reya offered. “The others could be stronger.”

“It’s probably safe to assume they are. But if they’re that much stronger, why would they keep Twelve around in the first place?” Olive asked with a frown. “It doesn’t seem like he’s just a chore boy to be pushed around. He’s got his own agenda. It’s possible that this is just a coincidence.”

“Rarely in life have I ever found anything to just be pure coincidence,” Anna said. She pursed her lips, then shook her head. “But I don’t think speculating about it is going to be of much help. We need concrete information, not conspiracies.”

“A truth potion would cause the words to spill from his lips like a rushing river. I could have one made in just a moon,” Esmerelda offered, an uncannily wide smile pulling across her wrinkled features. “It would only cost—”

“I doubt Twelve is going to drink anything we offer him,” Arwin said dryly, shaking his head. “And even if he did, truth potions are easily cheated. You just start speaking about anything and everything. They make you tell the truth — but they don’t make you answer questions.”

“Not to mention he’d probably kill all of us if he found out we did something like that,” Rodrick added. “Whether his guild is part of something greater or not is anyone’s guess, but we can’t take him on in a direct fight. We don’t have any reason to. Thus far, Twelve has only tried to hire us. He’s not looking for a fight right now.”

“Maybe that’s what we need to use.” Arwin rubbed at his chin in thought and his eyes drifted up the wall as he dug deeper into his mind.

“What, you want to tell him we’ve got the heart?” Lillia asked. “I think his willingness to talk will drop drastically the moment he realizes we have it.”

“I think we need more information before we decide anything,” Arwin said. He nodded to Rodrick. “I have some thoughts bouncing around my head, but nothing that can be acted on yet. I need to know what Twelve is like — and what his relationship with Jessen is, if there was one.”

Rodrick took a bite out of the food on his fork and chewed for a moment before swallowing and giving Arwin a sharp nod. “I’m already on it. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to find on Twelve’s personality, but I’ll dig on him and the Setting Sun as a whole. There have been harder jobs. He’s been hanging around the Ardent Guild, so I have a place to get started.”

“A lot,” Lillia admitted. “More the stronger I get. The skill I got when I reached Novice 7 is called Pierce the Veil. It gives me information about everyone that enters the Devil’s Den, though I get a whole lot less the stronger someone is.”

“I suppose it would have been too much to ask for you to have been able to read anything about Twelve?”

Lillia gave him a sheepish smile. “Unfortunately not. He’s at least a full tier stronger than we are. I couldn’t get any information on him at all.”

Arwin let out a snort and shook his head. “If anything, that’s just expected at this point. It’s fine. No point worrying about what we can’t control yet. For now, we can focus on improving what we can until Rodrick finds—”

A knock rang against the door.

Arwin and Lillia exchanged a glance. None of the Menagerie would have knocked other than Madiv, and the vampire would probably have been calling to be let in by the time his knuckles met the wood.

Reya and Olive were also meant to be making sure nobody tried to get into the inn while it was under construction — though, given Twelve’s visit the day prior, they weren’t having the best of luck with their task.

Is it Twelve?

Arwin approached the door and pulled it open, preparing to summon his armor at a moment’s notice. It didn’t seem likely that the assassin would just randomly show back up the day after he’d last paid them a visit, but he wasn’t about to dismiss the possibility.

But it wasn’t Twelve that he found on the other side of the door.

Before them was a tall, gaunt man with sallow cheeks and a ropey scar running across his nose. One of his eyes was covered by a band of black cloth that ran along his face and over a nest of long, blonde hair. He was unarmed and stood with his hands crossed behind his back in parade rest. He wore plain but well-made blue and white sparring clothes and a guild badge depicting a yellow sun on a blue shield glistened upon his breast pocket.

“You would be Ifrit, then?” the man asked, his head tilting to the side.

“I am, but I think you’ve got me at the disadvantage,” Arwin said slowly. “Who are you?”

“Raen,” the man replied, extending a hand toward Arwin as a thin smile pulled across his lips. “Raen, of the Dawnseeker guild. I believe we may be able to help each other.”