Ida
```Agan Road, XX Kilometres West from Tonwu, Upper Mentia. 1458 hours. 9°C, 81% H, 13 km/h NE. Rain, ~2mm per hour.```

*As some rushed to the nearest point of shelter, a certain runaway noble carefully navigated the muddied road that connected different civilisations and eventually reached Middle Mentia, her new Area of Operations. The Ekremi had been surveying the geography of the area and the political situation, and decided to return to Middle Mentia where she would probably be more needed if things kept going the way they were. The unrest in Upper Mentia seemed to mainly be one between two different Clades rather than a social issue, and although she would love to help out all revolutions against unjust rulers, she could only be in one place at a time.*

*Covered with a cloak that only revealed a small portion of her face, the Ekremi had mostly avoided getting fully soaked but the humidity trapped within the cloak was starting to get uncomfortable. She should not walk for much longer without a break, but getting to the forest furthest west where she could conceal herself as she rested was wiser than stopping in a plain with no shelter from the rain. Her endurance could still carry her further, but the moisture was making a compelling case for stopping.*

*Astrid distracted herself from thinking about the condensation by focusing on the road ahead instead of the unchanging mud, that's when she spotted a trio of what appeared to be young adventurers at a first glance, but upon focusing at the scene it seemed more like a duo of bandits attacking a lone adventurer. At first she decided to not give it much thought, closing her eyes thinking the tussle would be over before she could get close enough to do anything about it, but when she opened her eyes perhaps a minute later, she was perhaps four dozen metres from the situation.*

*By now she had decided to intervene, walking towards the bandits as she pulled a dagger by the blade from a drop leg sheath.*
Doug
"C'mon, you'd be better without 'em don'tcha think? Lighten your burden, make the travel a bit easier! We'll even watch out for ya on your way through these lands!" *The voice was rough, uneducated, and would sound almost friendly, were the person it originated from not holding a club. Clothed in worn, poorly-kept leather armor, he stood a nearly half a foot above the subject of his intimidation, flanked a second, slightly smaller individual who held a pitchfork—younger, not speaking, but pointing the fork of the farm tool toward the man opposite him.* 

*This one was about the same age as smaller one, shorter in height, but held himself differently. He was tense, preparing to spring into action, by the looks of things—whether through flight or combat. Shorter than Astrid, even, he was rather slim, but the exposed areas of his tattood arms betrayed a chorded musculature that showed he was certainly not helpless despite this, helped by the bow slung over his shoulder, and the sword on his back, not to mention the armour he wore. It seemed to be made of various pieces of a fuller armour—plate, perhaps?—worn to protect certain vital areas, the rest of his body covered in thick cloth or cured leathers. Despite the seeming readiness at which he was to initiate combat, he didn't seem to be reaching for his sword, shrugging the bow off his shoulder, or doing the hand signs for a spell. Instead, he glared up at his accoster, stating,* "I'm fine with them on, as am I with keeping my gold. I don't deal with highwaymen." *His accent was odd, a mixture of Mentian with definite Hasaapian elements.*

*The larger one stepped toward this man as he said what he did, a smirk across his face, bouncing the club head of his club in his free hand as he glowers down at him. The one with the pitchfork gave him a quick, almost worried glance before turning his focus back onto the armored man.* "And who said anythin' about 'ighwaymen? We're just two individuals *Very* Concerned

For the safety of those who walk our roads! Ain't that right, Pelus?" *The larger man slaps the back of the smaller one—Pelus, presumably—and Pelus quickly nods.* "See! Well, now that it's settled we ain't 'ighwaymen, I think it's time you properly *Paid* For the services of our protection, no?*

*The two bandits, their backs turned away from her, didn't see Astrid as she approached. But the tattooed man did, his glance shifting from that of the man with the club to Astrid. The look he gave her wasn't a long one, nor one of entreatment, but it did say that he was aware of what she was preparing to do, the luck punctuated by an extremely quick and sharp nod. A grunt escapes the larger man as both of the highwaymen glance behind them at whatever—or __whoever__—he was looking at.* 

*The man with the bow takes this moment where they've both dropped their guard to strike, dropping into a lower stance, combat-ready stance, bringing his right foot back. As he does so, he lowers his back, reaching up with his right hand to grab his sword by the hilt. As the sword is pulled free from it's sheathe, he continues the motion forward, aided by the positioning of his back, continuing it into an explosive horizontal cut aimed directly at the man's arm. It cuts through the wrist, just barely not enough to sever it, but more than enough to have the man drop his club, the hand hanging from his arm by a strip of flesh. The man with the sword allows the the momentum to continue as he withdraws his body from the highwaymen by leaning backward, entering into an ox stance—the tip of his now more visible sword pointing toward the two of them, its slim, curved edge pointed up at the sky. He gives another glance toward Astrid, waiting for her to act—or, possibly, for her not to.*
Ida
*As soon as she noticed the men turning towards her, the hooded figure quickly launched the dagger towards the head of the smallest bandit, Astrid did not care about the background of neither the man or the boy, but she categorised the younger one as a more dangerous threat because he had a longer weapon, imbuing the dagger with a necrotic spell whispered while she walked with weapon in hand, if the young one didn't die upon impact, he'd slowly lose all strength and perhaps even start decomposing if he had low magical resistance.*

*As for the older bandit that no longer had a functioning hand, the Ekremi leaped towards him as she pulled a sword from a sheath at the back of her waist, revealing a black sword with some red and gold accents and what seemed to be a coat of arms at the crossguard. Astrid aimed the sword straight for the lungs of her target, the tip of the blade easily going through the practically unprotected bandit as the sword with a broadening blade caused serious internal damage. With her body practically centimetres from the bandit, she leaned into his ear and whispered another necrotic spell as she slowly rotated the blade inside the bandit so that the tip was aiming at the ground in a 45 degree angle. Waiting briefly for the magic to kick in, she used the back of her right heel to sweep the bandit's left leg, pulling upwards as he fell to the ground, swiftly and cleanly removing the blade with a reverse grip from her right hand.*
** **

*She approached the dying kid with the knife embedded in his skull, although he was unmoving, he was still breathing although unconscious from the impact. Astrid knelt by his side and whispered some words in his ear no one but she and the kid could hear, no spell was activated this time. Astrid seemed to show some heavily contrasting mercy and gently inserted her sword into the young's chest to end the slow death she herself had caused. With the sword soaking with blood, she dragged her index and middle finger through his face to close his eyelids before removing the dagger that landed on the right side of his skull. The white-haired assassin now pulled the blade from his torso just as gently as she thrusted it in, standing back up after the entire blade left the subject.*

*She threw the dagger into a pothole on the road, the object of crime disappearing beneath the muddied waters. Turning towards the Macen as she wiped the blood off the sword with her grey cloak, her face was briefly exposed, showing a few strands of silvery hair and a pair of red eyes accompanying an imposing stare and an expression unbothered by the atrocity she had committed.*

"Are you uninjured?"

*Astrid expected to leave without any more fanfare, simply asking a question out of courtesy after a life-threatening situation, although the Anti-Monarchist seemed to be unfazed by the whole situation. She began walking in the direction she was originally going without waiting for an answer, her light steps seldom leaving footprints on the softened earth as she resumed her travel towards the forest in hopes of resting there until morning. Leaving the scene of a murder behind as the corpses of the victims rapidly decomposed from the humidity and the necrotic magic.*