Olivia 

The girl called herself Olivia Clerk.

This time, the former path-changer had decided to be a simple middle-class lady from Oxfordshire looking for a job in the great city of London.

She found her train cabin empty, and she dropped her heavy luggage on the seat next to hers. Sweat was rolling down her forehead by the time she was finished. The stupid dress was just as tight as the previous centuries, but also heavier and made impractical by a large set of pants hidden underneath. The colour was also so dull it made Olivia's heart hake. Gray like her hopes. This new life was not starting out great.

Olivia did not like to think of the places and the personalities she left behind.

The girl dropped her stupidly large hat on her suitcase and untied her long blonde hair. She changed often from blonde to red to black, but never brown. No, her real hair colour reminded her too much of the forest, the home she has long left in favour of a cursed immortal life she did not want. Her hand travelled to her wrist, where the mark of the mist people signed her forever as one of the unworthy. Cursed her to live as a mortal, able to suffer as one, but never to die.

No one ever came for her, not her family, not those who she had considered friends. Not that she could remember any of them, her memories lost like her hopes.

The immortals had forgotten her, so she would forget them.

She had tried to blend in with humanity, but the more she tried, the less she succeeded. She knew too much, saw too much for someone who looked barely like an adult. Being a girl also did not help, and no one seemed to take her seriously when she talked.

If she had a coin for every time she knew how to solve a problem and no one listened to her pretty face, she would be rich by now. The fact that she was rich, was actually thanks to the people that underestimated her.

Yes, she liked blonde more than the other colours. People spent little time wondering if a pretty blonde doll had a brain to begin with. She could rob them under their nose as long as they kept dozing off in her brown eyes.

A young woman entered her cabin with grace. She was lovely, her green eyes sparkling with interest for every detail of the cabin. Her full lips arched in a polite smile as she saw her staring, stalling a bit too long on her own lips. Olivia noticed the fine dress and the heavy diamond earrings she was wearing and smiled back.

Not her most common pray, but most definitely something she could work with. London was bound to be expensive.

Olivia played with her hair, wrapping her fingers around her curls and pretended to look outside the window as the train started to move. The English countryside was one of the many reasons why she decided to move to the country for her new life. She had heard for years of the green and yellow of the hills and the short forests that underlined them. Maybe she couldn't step inside one, but she could admire them from afar.

The girl seemed too shy to start the conversation, so she took the role upon herself.

-That is a lovely necklace you are wearing- she said pointing towards it. The girl blushed without replying. -I know my husband would never buy me one. But then again, my husband doesn't do a lot of the things I like -

She winked turning the other girl's checks a purpleish colour. Olivia could have rolled her eyes to the lack of reply she was getting. The girl was obviously interested, why wouldn't she let herself be seduced and robbed like any other decent mortal?

A man knocked on the cabin door, reducing her chances of getting that necklace to less than zero. He was dressed entirely in black, from the velvet hat to the velvet shoes. His eyes were pale and distant and his face did not betray any emotions. Olivia felt a weird tinkling sensation at the back of her scalp.

-My love, that is not our cabin I am afraid - he said to the young woman. It felt as if he said the word love like he could have murder or ... cereal. Olivia never felt love, but she was sure as Nature that was not what it looked like. Love was what Amore and Psyche had, the breathtaking statue that her fiancé showed her a long time ago.

The girl nodded obediently and raised from her seat without as much as a nod towards her.

Olivia could have gone back to staring at her own reflex on the window, or looked for a different pray on the train. Pickpocketing was also quite easy those days.

But something kept making her feeling uneasy. She kept shifting from position to position, her arm marked itching horribly. Before she knew what she was doing, Olivia raised from her seat and into the corridor of the train.

The other cabins were all filled with laughing people, mostly countryside men trying for a shot at a better life in the big city. The smell of cigars and sweat was mixed together in a deadly combination that made Olivia bring a tissue up to her nose. The industrial revolution had brought so much to the human race, but hygiene was not one of those things.

In the back of her eye, she saw the man in black almost dragging his companion into one of the cabins. For some reason, the windows towards the corridor were obscured by a sort of dark veil. Olivia looked around to see if anybody was watching, and stalked the man towards the entrance of the cabin. She waited a few seconds and the knocked.

Once. Then twice.

At the third knock she heard a whimper from inside. Was the man hurting the young woman? She was no fan of the human race, but she would not let another mortal suffer for nothing. Pain for the purpose of pain was such a waste.

The tinkling sensation increased as she forced the door open.

At the sight of the corpse, Olivia emptied the content of her stomach on the floor. The young woman had been drained of every liquid in her body from inside out, leaving her an empty shell of frail skin and bones. Her eyes, once so beautiful, looked like dried fruit. Her mouth was open in a silent scream. Her arm was scratched in multiple places, black liquid pouring from each of the places the skin was pierced.

The man in black was comfortably sitting in the chair opposite to the entrance, calm as if the corpse was just another luggage.

-Great, another one - he muttered to himself getting up. His movements were smooth and silent, his eyes empty of feeling.

In an istant, Olivia realised that he was referring to her as another bin to dispose of. 

-You are a path-changer! - she blurted out, knowing it was the truth. That was the ending she would have condemned Guglielmo to if only she hadn't stopped the poison. The man was an immortal, the first she had seen in over a century. -I am one too.-

The man eyed her up and down, clearly unconvinced of her statement. - I don't think so -

-How else would I know about you?- she objected. He esitated. - I am a path-changer, I was sent here for your same assignment, in case you failed. -

Olivia had never heard of a path changer failure before hers, but maybe it wasn't so unthinkable that the mist people would have started to adopt a safety net for failing immortals.

The man in black did not think so.

-This is my 245th assignment- he replied with an empty smile. -The mist people trust I can recognise truth from fiction. So you either are a very stupid mortal, or an incredibly stupid unworthy.-

Olivia did not expect hope to arise under such circumstances, but her heath leaped at the thought that there could be others like her. Other unworthy immortals walking on Earth. But 245 assignments ... this path-changer must have been much older than her oldest family. He was no amateur.

-I would prefer you refer to me as incredibly gorgeous creature - she replied with a dry smile. - Nothing unworthy of notice here -

His hands curled to reveal the poisonous nails. The time for talking was over.

Olivia opened the door with her shoulder and evaded the man's grasp. She would have screamed, but what could other mortals have done to protect her? She run down the train and unlocked the door on the connector between carriages. The strong wind caught her dress and almost blew her off the train. Her hair flew wildly in front of her eyes, the sound of the moving wheels the only thing she could hear over the roaring current. The countryside speeded along, the hills melting with the blue of the rivers.