Enter the Emerald Scarves!

-Dalen Capital, Lower Quarter. Night, 2 DSTR-

“You don't really live here, do you, Gular?” Kalena asked as she slid down from her mount and handed the reins over to one of her men. She wrinkled her nose at the gods-awful stench that pervaded the night air. The place was an utter embarrassment to the capital's cosmopolitan image of taste and prosperity crafted by the Queen, yet she knew that every large city had its poorer quarters.

"Kalena, do you know this area well enough to keep me from having my wonderful life cut short?" Lafayette asked, only half-joking.

“I'm afraid not,” she replied, an adventurous smile curving her lips. “But if Gularzob is a proud denizen of these slums I'm sure he'll be pleased to be our designated tour guide. No offence, Gular. I don't mean to come off as a snob, but this place is really rather disgusting.”

“Laffy, keep the horses. Herod and Froggy, keep a watch on the flank,” Kline said.

Kalena drew her long duelling sabre and followed Kline under the bone arch, her black cloak rippling behind her. There was an eerie sense to the empty narrow streets that her own atavistic instincts chalked up to unnatural sorcery, confirmed when Lafayette pointed out some of the street lamps that gave off an eldritch, ghostly light; like a will-o'-the-wisp trapped inside a glass jar, she thought. She shrugged at his question about why some were magical and others merely ordinary candles, and trained her honed assassin's senses around to pick out any lurking threats. She reflexively moved the instant that she heard a crossbow being loosed.

Ktunng!

“Take cover!” she shouted as the first heavy bolt came out of the dark shadows and hit Lafayette square in the chest. What a pity, he had been such an amusing fellow, was the only thing she had time to think as three more shafts shot forth from the tenebrous gloom of the decrepit buildings.

Ktunng! Ktunng! Ktunng!

Two accurately struck the houndsman, and the last impaled one of the City Watchmen, then quite suddenly the lithe forms of the dark elves materialized, eerily seeming to step from the very shadows. Their weapons all had the tell-tail green ribbons attached, identical to those conspicuously left at her guesthouse, Kalena noted with wrathful fury.

“Remember, no need to die here,” a female one said. “If you lot want to turn back now, we promise to let you go.”

“You'll pardon us if we're not inclined to be so charitable,” Kalena retorted viciously. And then to the others: “We only need a few of these vermin alive for interrogation. Kill the rest.”

The remaining City Watch officers, a bit unnerved by the demonic laughter that rang out, advanced behind Kline, swords clutched tightly in their white-knuckled hands. One of Kalena's crossbowmen from her estate fired at the approaching fae, who easily dodged the speeding bolt with supernatural grace.

Far from intimidated by their inhuman aspect, Kalena surged smoothly forward with all the bold confidence of an apex predator, leaping at the first of them with a spinning stroke that would have decapitated the fae man if he did not so swiftly parry her incoming blade. The sabre had more reach than his short sword, but he was a master of his weapon and blocked her skilled and ferocious attacks with deceptive ease. The scars on his body hinted at many past fights and foes slain.

I'm not exactly a novice myself, she thought with a hard grin.

The poison-laced short sword flicked out at her, almost a blur in the glow of the overhead lamplight. She deflected it with her sabre and thrust the mithril-forged point at the fae's chest simultaneously, inflicting a minor injury through the thin chain-mail mesh he wore.

He winced in pain and she next aimed a crippling slash at his knee. But moving faster than humanly possible, he knocked the sabre aside, evaded a kick from her upswinging boot, and stabbed his sword hard into her breastplate. The armour successfully turned the blade, but it left a small gouge, and a trace of poison—the very same kind that had killed Van, if her nose was any judge.

Kalena tensed angrily and the fae's short sword flicked out again, this time at her face. She ducked and swept out a long leg, managing to take the fae's feet out from under him and send him crashing to the ground. She was thankful that some of her fighting moves were unfamiliar in this part of the world. As he landed, she pounced on him in a catlike spring and brutally smashed the pommel of her sabre into his nose with all the force she could muster, knocking him out cold.

Looking up, her gray-green eyes widened with alarm when she saw Kline engaging multiple opponents, fighting like a demon; behind him the two City Watchmen were both down for the count, bleeding from terrible wounds and convulsing from the poison. She pulled a razor-sharp throwing knife from her baldric and expertly flung it at one of the fae standing over the bodies. The knife spun through the air and caught him in the back of the neck. At this, two other fae rushed her with their poison-laced blades.

Well now, Kalena thought, slipping into a low defensive crouch. Taking on two at once was going to be bloody difficult. They were good and very fast. She spared a look around. Where had those humongous hounds run off to? The dogs were not just superb trackers, but powerful beasts quite capable of subduing a full-grown adult lion. If she could sic them on the Fae this whole fight would be over with rather quickly.

The two Fae attacked with overwhelming speed and fluidity. Retreating, she ran and hurled a throwing knife up at the nearest streetlamp. When it struck the magical orb, there was a blinding explosion of blue and white sparks, momentarily dazzling them as they closed in behind her. She immediately opened her shut eyes and spun about on her heel, casting two throwing knives at the Fae whilst they were still off balance. One blade sank to the hilt in an elf's slender shoulder and he collapsed with a stifled cry, but with a flash of a sword the second Fae batted her other knife aside with ease.

“Nice trick,” she said. “Though hardly original.”

“Who do you people think you are?” Kalena demanded.

“We're the Emerald Scarves. We own these streets.”

“No, I rather think that would be the Queen.”

The fae woman laughed. “Here our control is greater than Thalia's and all the more so every day.”

“Well, I'll be sure to tell her you said that -- when I present her your head!” Kalena leapt, her sabre arcing through the air. The fae woman parried it and the two whirled and clashed with deadly elegance, neither giving or offering any quarter.

<Tag – Kline, Lafayette, Gularzob, Eliza, and optionally, perhaps, Celestia?>