Silvara stared up at the tall building while she waited. What passed for a “tall” building in this area was really just an overgrown town home that some rich guy had decided to spend money on. The building was about five stories high, with widows on the top three levels to let the light in (and no windows at the lower part for safety) during the day. This residential part of Sigil usually catered to one- and two-story homes, which made this one stick out that much more. The owner, a wealthy merchant who traded in exotic antiques to the rich crowd of Sigil, fancied himself “Frugal” by living in this district instead of the high priced areas closer to the government district.
That was part of the draw that brought Silvara here this evening. Ever since she turned twelve she wanted to be a famous cat burglar. She had been honing her skills on the streets and with a few of the thieves’ guilds in the city, but all that was past. Today was her twentieth birthday…and it was also her “Debut.” She had chosen her symbol, a small silver pin shaped like a dagger called a “Siade,” and her calling card, the Siade stuck into the wall through a small silver wreath, above whatever she had taken. The silver wreath was a symbol of excess here in the Sigil (and elsewhere) and the Siade was a tool of the working class used for all manner of simple cutting, whittling, scraping, and the like. Thieves had also taken to using them in their lock picking sets.
She hoped to sufficiently humble these wealthy merchants while at the same time appealing to the local populace. Not that the second part mattered much to her. She would achieve her goals with or without the approval of the masses. Losing her parents so early in life, living on the streets, and her mentor had taught her to live for herself.
The evening was wearing on, and her time was approaching. She was wearing a deep lapis colored cloak to hide her striking features. Her tiefling heritage gave her pale white skin, silver hair, small horns that jutted out of her forhead just above her temples at the hairline, a reptilian tail, and eyes that reflected the colors near her. She pulled the hood closer around her head to make sure her eyes didn’t give her away. Leaving witnesses behind on her first job wouldn’t do at all.
She had goggles that she wore, specially made, to help hide her peculiar eyes and to extend her darkvision. When she wore them she could see farther than anyone else she knew in complete darkness.
The street had finally emptied out and she was ready. She put her goggles on, made sure her daggers were strapped to her legs and set out. She swiftly and silently crossed the street to the alleyway to the right of the house. About halfway down the alley she found handholds, and put on her gloves. The razorvine in Sigil was an ever present weed and would lacerate anyone’s hands who tried to climb a wall where it grew without gloves.
She made quick, silent progress up the wall. After the second story she no longer needed to be so careful because the wealthy merchant had paid a wizard to exterminate the razorvine above that point.
“Rich people…” she muttered under her breath and shook her head.
Silvara reached a window on the fourth floor and stopped at the sill. Her informant had said this floor was the most likely one to find goods to fence. She drew one of her daggers and began a quick search to make sure the window wasn’t trapped by normal or magical means. Finding nothing, she quickly lodged her dagger in the window sill and pried it open.
The room inside was dark, just the way she liked it. This room was a sitting room decked out with beautiful furniture and the like. She wasn’t here for furniture though. She made her way to the other side of the room where the door was. She listened and hearing nothing moved through it into the hallway.
The house was as silent as death. The Sigil day had been a warm one and Silvara could feel the remnants of that warmth in the house. A small bead of sweat made its way down her spine. She wasn’t nervous exactly, more excited than anything. She made not a sound as she made her way down the hallway.
She checked each room along the way and only found guest rooms and a washroom. Her informant had either lied to her or had bad information.
Oh well, she thought, time to improvise.
She made her way up the stairs to the fifth floor. If there was one place there would be goodies it would be there. From her own surveillance she knew that the fifth floor was where the master bedroom was located.
Bound to be goods up there, she thought.
The first door she came to was an office. The room was decked out with tapestries and fine furniture, like the rest of the house, but the desk held more. On its polished grimwood surface, there were a few items of interest. One was a small statuette of an angel raising a trumpet with wings unfurled. It looked to be made of solid gold.
Silvara moved to it and inspected it for any cleverly hidden traps. She found none and was about to grab the statuette when she noticed a small plate set into the floor in front of her. This plate was designed to spring some release she could tell. Upon further inspection she found that the plate released a bottle of gas into the room. What the gas did was any ones guess, but she doubted it would be friendly!
She sidestepped the plate and grabbed the statuette. Once it was safely tucked into her backpack, she placed her calling card on the desk. The small Siade was pinned in the center of the silver wreath like a dart on a bull’s eye. She smiled.
That’s when she heard a scraping sound out in the hall. Silvara quickly melted into the shadows near a tapestry on the wall. Peering out the crack made by the doorway into the hallway showed her nothing. She heard the scraping sound again, but it sounded further away.
She moved to the door and looked out into the hallway. She heard scuffling coming from the end of the hallway and then a loud piercing scream. She immediately took off down the hallway toward the stairs hoping to avoid whatever was going on. Loud thumps followed her as she ran and then the sound of boots on stairs coming up from below.
“This is bad!” She said.
She looked back the way she came, seeing nothing but still hearing thumps. The way forward was more boots and now shouts. From the sound of their voices they sounded like an organized force. That meant Mercykillers, the group that more or less passed as the local militia in Sigil.
Choosing the way back, she ran down the hall toward the thumps. She pushed through the door to the master bedroom and was greeted by a grisly scene of blood and gore. The bottom half of the merchant’s torso was directly in front of her and the other half was hanging off the top of the canopy bed. His wife’s body was still whole, but that was small consolation, for the creature perched atop the body clawing and biting at her intestines was both feral and foul.
It had dark skin that could have been brown or black, a muscular body, and claws at the end of both arms and legs. It wore what looked like workman’s pants and the tattered rags of what must have been a shirt at one point.
She gasped as she took all this in and the creature turned to gaze balefully at her. Its eyes glowed a sinister yellow and its face was a cross between an ape and a cat. Its razor sharp teeth glinted in the light coming in the window as it snarled at her.
No sooner had she drawn her daggers than the thing leapt at her, clearing the twenty or so feet between them in one bound. She threw up her daggers in a block meant to catch both claws but as they were about to collide the creature just…dissipated into mist and was gone.
Confused, heart racing, breath coming in gasps, Silvara stumbled forward and almost fell. She reached the window on the other side of the room and had just opened it when the Mercykillers entered the room. She dove out of the window without a second thought.
Falling she drove both daggers into the wall to slow herself, the she kicked off the wall to push herself across the alleyway onto the roof of the building next door. Silvara let her momentum push her into a back flip. She hit the ground feet first and rolled backward into a somersault twist to land facing away from the window where she had no doubt the Mercykillers would be. She landed and took off in a sprint.
She had to find a safe spot to figure out what happened and what that creature was doing there. How did the Mercykillers show up so quick? Why were they even there? Too many questions, and the buildings whizzing by as she ran, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, offered her no answers.
The wizard looked down upon the thrashing creature in the cage and smirked. The test had been successful and no one in either the so-called Mercykillers nor the government would be any wiser to his plans, thanks to some careful maneuvering and planted information. Information was power after all.
He looked down at himself and saw that he still had his bloodstained apron on and shook his head. This was a bid day, he needed to go change, there was much celebrating to be done. Months of hard work had finally paid off, and his creature was complete.
Now all of Alokraza’s enemies would know the pain of death at the claws of a beast most foul, one impossible to track and untraceable to him. His smile widened as he remembered the look of surprise on the poor idiot thief’s face as she saw his creation disemboweling that pompous merchants’ wife.
“Hahaha, so delightful!” He said, “Sigil will know fear like it’s never known, Lady of Pain be dammed!”
As he left his lab, the creature below stopped thrashing and began to change. It first shrank, its muscles stopped bulging and then its skin changed from a matte dark color to ebony black. Its cat/ape face changed into the angular features of a drow and as the transformation completed the drow reached up toward the ceiling before collapsing on his face.
