Edric took Koralheim's hand and closed his eyes. Reality twisted.<br/><br/>His stomach followed suit.<br/><br/>Teleportation was always a deeply unpleasant affair for the uninitiated. Those rare few who studied and mastered the craft were quick to insist that it carried no lasting negative side-effects, but this was a poor consolation when the initial backlash could generously be described as "the aftermath of consuming a putrid mixture of rot and manure, while one's innards are hand-stuffed with live insects". Still, such words failed to accurately describe the feeling, as they played upon physical sensations that one simply did not experience following a successful teleport. Koralheim claimed that it was possible to build up a tolerance, but also that doing so was a matter of magical adaptation, and a strong physique was of comparatively little use. Since the assassin lacked both, he was disinclined to believe it.<br/><br/>Once the unnatural feeling had passed and his dignity returned, Edric spared a glance at the city beneath him. Rez Lagoon was a curious place, filled with many curious things, all of which possessed the loathsome tendency to involve themselves in one's discrete businesses whenever possible. It was also mankind's foremost hub of blind, religious zealotry, as the grandiose chapels dominating the cityscape were quick to remind him. That would certainly complicate his task, for although the church's power - or perhaps merely its presence - had waned elsewhere over the years, it was still strong in Rez Lagoon. The clergy would not look kindly upon Koralheim's return, and while Edric still had the freedom to act outside of their notice, his employer no doubt wished to be accompanied somewhere instead.<br/><br/>Edric prided himself on having a reliable network of contacts living in the respectable half of the city. He was sure he wouldn't see a single one before the merman's business was concluded.<br/><br/>"You seem eager," he said to Koralheim, whose expressions remained readable only through years of depressing familiarity. "Shall we be wading through a disgusting maze of uninhabitable muck first, or would you prefer to be ambushed in the streets instead?"<br/><br/>Koralheim stepped up next to the assassin and pointed across the gap between towering apartments, a rather outraged looking man across the way staring at them from a level below. "That's the Grand-Bishop under the Father Regent himself. So we might assume that they'll know we're here." he responded. "I'll have to take out some extra cash for the guards, I'm sure. Bribing my way around was always such a hassle here."<br/><br/>Edric squinted at the man, who was really quite close despite the considerable drop separating the two of them. "I could hit him from here," he mused, stroking his chin beneath the hood. "They'd find the body, but it<span style="font-style: italic">would</span>buy us some time."<br/><br/>"It will cause more trouble than it's worth to have him dead. I don't mind the church knowing I'm here, but I will mind them having a much more urgent reason to send the guards after us. In fact, all of my neighbors are clergy. I personally just like vexing them for the sake of my own amusement." Koralheim offered. "I'm sure that surprises you." he added, his voice flat and even in the human's mind.<br/><br/>Edric reached into his coat with both hands, retrieving a thin needle in one and a stoppered vial in the other. Using his teeth, he opened the latter and quickly dipped the needle within, pulling it out and flinging it away in a single rapid motion. It soared from one balcony to the other in a perfect arc, striking the Grand-Bishop in his left shoulder as he attempted to run back inside his home. The man stumbled for a moment, grasped futilely for the projectile, and collapsed onto the floor face-first.<br/><br/>"So kind to your enemies, merman," Edric taunted, returning the poison to its place underneath his coat. "But you needn't worry. He'll be insensible for the next two hours and have a headache for the rest of the day, nothing more."<br/><br/>"Oh, efficient as always. And of course I'm kind to my enemies." Koralheim responded, opening the doors to his immense, lavish apartment, filled with antiquities and fine furniture. "Enemies become customers with enough time. It's... a merfolk thing, I suppose. After all, someone hired you to kill me when we first met, and now look at you. Well, I suppose you wish you were dead sometimes."<br/><br/>The merfolk looked over his apartment and chimed into the human's mind again. "Or more likely, that I was dead."<br/><br/>"It would certainly solve many internal conflicts about whether I value my finances more than my sanity," Edric answered dryly. "Still, what of the man who hired me? No mercy for him, as I recall."<br/><br/>"That wasn't simply an enemy. That was competition, Edric. There's a substantial difference that I'm sure a businessman such as yourself can recognize."<br/><br/>"In my business, one's enemies are rarely as forgiving as you, and their approach to torture is often much more<span style="font-style: italic">direct</span>."<br/><br/>Koralheim laughed lightly in the assassin's mind. "Well in<span style="font-style: italic">my</span>business, once you get wealthy enough, you just pay more qualified people to do the torturing."<br/><br/>"Will anyone other than myself require that today?" Edric asked. "You've neglected to tell me why we're here, as usual, but I know someone nearby that we could hire on short notice."<br/><br/>Koralheim didn't respond at first, apparently considering how best to explain. "We're here to check on something. Or, more accurately, to retrieve something from the Undercity. Call it an heirloom, perhaps, but it will answer many questions, and give us something of a leg up in dealing with things once the Fifth comes back."<br/><br/>"The disgusting maze, then," the human sighed. "Find me a sword, if you have one. I'll be waiting outside."<br/><br/>For any man who preferred to stay clean, healthy, and alive, the Undercity of Rez Lagoon was a place to be avoided at all costs. A subterranean sprawl as deep and wide as the city itself, it consisted primarily of poorly-maintained tunnels and dilapidated buildings which had, at some point in the past, gone through multiple cycles of collapse and shoddy reconstruction, only to end up in half-finished states with the new additions built literally on top of the old. The native flora, which grew unabated across all but the most heavily polluted areas, was a collection of dangerous fungi that suffused the atmosphere with poisonous spores. Most humans couldn't reasonably expect to survive a week in the depths, although most humans also possessed the enviable privilege of not needing to visit them in the first place.<br/><br/>Still, the environment was not what concerned Edric. Despite its uninhabitable state, the Undercity served as home to an unknowable population of sentient zombies, all of whom were freed from servitude during mankind's age-old initiative to abolish undead slavery. Some used to be the former property of nobles, while many more were forcibly "liberated" from necromancers and relocated to Rez Lagoon as a gesture of apology, and to provide them somewhere to seek out a new purpose for themselves. From there, they were corralled underground to be forgotten by the rest of the world, and eventually created the worst slum that history had ever known. Edric didn't know whether they had been driven insane from isolation or bitter from their treatment, but quite a few of the residents were openly hostile towards the living, and there was no regulation to keep them in line so long as they remained within their own territory.<br/><br/>As the assassin descended the stairs leading out of his employer's apartment, he performed another lengthy check on his equipment. If Koralheim didn't have some sort of plan, the two of them weren't going to get far.