[IRP] Smugglers, Saints, and Spears

[Breadophile]

Ray was surprised he was up in the mountains again. And unexpected destination, but it was sort of comforting to feel atmosphere similar to home. The breeze was soothing. The somewhat chilly air, albeit a little warm for him, was a pleasant refresher to help him think straight.

He pondered why he took this job. He hated working with a team unless he was the group leader. Over his life he had developed a huge complex about being subservient to someone else, mostly thanks to his sister. Perhaps it was because it paid so well for such a simple mission. For that reason, Ray just kept this to himself. Some financial security never hurt, after all. Ray was naturally suspicious about this amount of payment for such a simple job, but he figured that was just how crime organizations operated down south. Since being found meant certain death anyway, there was no reason to be scared of using magic to blast his opponents into big baby chunks. And at the very least, they'd be in Bern at its conclusion. It would be much easier to travel through that country and go to Pherae from behind than it would be to go in the front.

What was really unnerving about the orders is that they were being given by a woman. Ray had a complex about that too. While Kalin was the worst offender, her other female friends like to poke fun at him as well. All of the bullying made him wish he could do the same back to them, but because of how weak and frail he was, he couldn't do much. But now with his magical knowledge, he could light them on fire and see them run around screaming in pain. And if he had a darkness tome he could also give them nightmares. That would teach them. Fortunately for Ray, he was smart and willful enough to contain his sadistic streak.

The other scenario was, after all, having a male leader. Ray didn't like interacting with men because of his looks, so a woman was the lesser of two evils. Of course, there were men who didn't think with the lower half of their bodies, but there was a size-able percentage that did, and it made for some rather... annoying scenarios. He couldn’t afford to take a chance.

In any case, the desire to set someone on fire was always an omnipresent entity.

His partners, presumably, could tell he was a mage. The leader certainly could. He had, however, kept the information about his Meteor tome to himself. One never knows when they'll be robbed blind for a rare tome. Same for his cloak, but despite its looks it was tightly wrapped. Not even the magical assassin or thief or whoever she was could rip it off. It looked like a normal cloak anyway, so until some elder magic bullshit failed to blast him to smithereens no one could tell it was any different than a normal cloak.

"Oi, are you going tell us what to expect? That seems like too important of a detail to gloss over. Sure, the woman over there and myself combined could simply set everything on fire, but you would be greatly surprised at how ineffective complete and total annihilation is these days.”