The trouble with a hundred-year deal is that for an immortal, time doesn't move as quickly as one might want.

Time was definitely moving at a slow pace in a tavern with more rust than ale, something by the name of Blanched Duck or Bleached Duck...Faine wasn't certain. She had looked at the sign upon entering through the front door of the tavern, squinted at it, and decided it didn't actually matter what anyone called this place. She wasn't here to drink; she wasn't here to try their blanched or bleached duck; she wasn't partaking in anything other than trying to keep her elbows from sticking to the wooden table she sat at.

Little to her surprise, it wasn't working.

The hushed tones coming from the next booth, over the ripped brown cushion, and past the wooden partition, was her focus. Her back was to them but she slumped against the seat, hoping to make herself appear bored and lost in her thoughts. Taking occasional sips of the mead in the wooden tankard on the table in front of her appeared to do the trick.

"I'm telling you, we're out of time."

"If we don't learn how to do this properly; we can kiss our asses goodbye."

"We're one step away from spilling our throats."

Faine absorbed every bit of information and hoped it had something to do with what she was sitting in this disgusting tavern for. The sleeves of her black tunic covered her lilac skin from touching the wooden table but that wasn't enough. Grime seeped through and stuck to her thin fingers. In return, she pried her hand away from the tankard when she lifted it off the table for another excruciating sip.

Sitting in the corner, her back facing the rest of the tavern, no one had the ability to see her. No one-unless they were coming from the hallway her booth was crammed in next to. Even then, the dim lighting in the tavern from braziers and torches did little good when the booths were meant to hold secret meetings. It was possible the two men sitting past the partition did not understand she was there, listening to their every word.

Any time someone walked by, whether a hulking minotaur or a beautiful elf, Faine turned her honey brown eyes towards the table in hopes of avoiding eye contact. It didn't matter who she was; Faine was nameless in a crowd until she started looking around and making herself appear aware.

"We have one shot to get this right," one man spoke. His thick accent curdled the mead swirling with splinters inside the tankard. "If we don't, we're done for."

Faine bit her tongue. They were revealing nothing of importance and she was one breath away from standing up, making herself noticeable, and demanding the right information. What she wanted to hear. But she'd learned more than one or two things about being involved in a crime operation. Making enemies was just as dangerous as making friends.

"I've told you one too many times already," the second man retorted. His accent wasn't as strong and he spoke softer, forcing Faine to strain to hear his words. The sharp tip of her ear generated enough expanded hearing, and she turned her head to the side, acting as if she was examining the wall of whiskeys and liquor behind the bar, listening closely. "We might as well end her life now. Her family hired investigators to find her. We're screwed if they hired the right people."

"If we kill her, we risk being caught. Those investigators; they know what to look for." Despite not looking at the man's face, Faine could tell he was chewing on his lip, his brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to think of a way out of the plan. She hoped he kept talking. "We can offer her in return for ransom."

From the table shaking, Faine assumed the other man slammed his hand against it. She hadn't gotten a good look at either of them when she entered; they were hidden in the shadows of the booth so she didn't receive the chance to study them. A shaking table, one that was still trembling after the initial impact, told Faine enough about what type of creature was sitting at the table behind her, speaking in hushed tones. One she didn't want to mess with.

"Ransom gets us nowhere, you idiot. We might as well bring her to the front door and knock on it; carry her in ourselves if we're that stupid to ask for ransom," he hissed. "Kidnappings aren't supposed to go smoothly, but we made a mistake with this one." Exhaustion dragged down his sigh. "Never will we think of kidnapping a Lord's daughter ever again."

That was all the information Faine needed to know. She smirked to herself, and feeling accomplished with the facts laid out before her, took a final sip of the sour mead. The disgustingly warm liquid numbed her tongue and made her stomach rumble with discontent but she drank anyway. A job well done deserved something more than one simple drink.

Faine stood, shrugging on her black frock coat and buttoned the two lapels together over the middle of her abdomen. The two men in the booth quieted down upon seeing her there but she forced herself to avoid looking in their direction and pulled the silver strands of her hair from where they remained trapped underneath the collar of her coat, laying them against her chest.

How to appear bored out of her mind was not something Faine failed at. The heat of wandering eyes burned her slowly and carefully, studying her appearance. She finished straightening out her coat, her stare accidentally wandering to another booth across the tavern occupied by two men-one an imp and the other, a gadigator. The perfect split between man and alligator was staring back at Faine and to make her blood run cold, he pointed in her direction.

She'd been caught before. Had to fight her way out. This was no different. Faine appeared as though the gadigator's attention was nothing more than believing she was one of the prostitutes that worked down the hall. But there was only one problem. The gadigator and his imp companion were sitting next to her exit: the front door of the tavern. Faine judged the way they were sitting, one leg out as to intercept her when she walked by. That was out of the question, then.

"You going somewhere?" the man with the thick accent asked, directing his question up into the air.

Faine was too busy worrying about the two others sitting at the booth near the door that she hardly heard. "I'm heading home," she said sweetly. Neither man took offense, nor did they appear interested.

Now that the booth was clear for her to see into, the two creatures sitting before her weren't men at all. One was a minotaur, tall and broad, and the other was a mirror image to the gadigator sitting in the other booth. Their flat noses and flared nostrils, grey scaly skin, and tentacles hanging from their chins already created fear throughout the land, not just instilling it in Faine but everyone else that came near the beasts. They weren't friendly and from their strength alone; standing taller than man and even wider than the strongest Faine had seen, no one in their right minds went against a gadigator.

Compared to her own kind, that of the feliram, beasts closely related to the elf but differed by the thick, strong horns growing from the bases of their hairline, gadigators didn't see as much favor. In Faine's case, the white horns cascading back from the base of her hairline coiled loosely around her ear, the tips pointing in the direction her eyes looked.

The minotaur, sitting closest to the partition, looked over it and saw that no one else was sitting at the booth. "It's dangerous to go alone," he told her as if that was any piece of advice a woman would want to receive. "You should watch your back around this part of the city."

That was something Faine agreed with. The slums were no place for anyone to be alone, man or woman, but she took the piece of advice with a grain of salt. Smiles weren't easy for her to plaster on, but she did anyway and fluttered her long, dark lashes hoping her eyes did enough of the talking. "I appreciate your concerns, kind stranger."

The gadigator, two fins sticking out the sides of his head, huffed a mumbled response and went back to fiddling with the mug in his clawed hands. His eyes were a sickly golden shade bright enough to illuminate their dark corner.

Faine's best interests were never her strong suit. That appeared to make itself more prominent, shoving its way to the front, when she looked over to the booth across the tavern again and saw the two men were still staring at her. Her attention was not taken with a light heart. The imp grinned wide and revealed his sharp, misplaced teeth. The gadigator watched her, his tentacles slithering across his chin.

There was no way she was leaving this tavern through the front door. She had received the information she needed and would not give that up by walking past someone that desired to ask what exactly she was doing alone in the slums. That was their goal, wasn't it? Or did they realize she was visiting this nameless place for more than their bitter mead? Her clothes said enough about it; the velvet frock coat and bejeweled lapels, knee-high leather boots and golden piercings in her pointed ears.

She cursed herself. A hundred years of training and this day of all days she chose comfort over practicality.

Faine walked to the bar, sticky with ale, and deposited two copper coins where the barkeep could see she paid. Each move she made was as inconspicuous as the last, yet the heat of stares never left her back. They knew. No woman came to a tavern like this completely alone without a separate hand in another form of business.

The back door. The other exit was her only way out and Faine decided quickly the front door would only serve her as a last-resort escape route. As she made her way towards the dark hallway that led to the private rooms for prostitutes and a closet for storage, she heard floorboards creaking. The two men were standing from their booth.

Too many times had she faced the consequences of appearing too noticeable in a ruddy tavern. Long ago, her heart stopped hammering in her chest and she figured out a way to handle these situations without losing all control of her senses. The heavy weight of the two hidden weapons in her bracers became known and she rolled back her sleeves when the dark hall consumed her.

Without having to look back, she was aware of the two men following her. The hallway caved in against their presence, the light from the torches went out, and the heavy stench of saltwater and decaying flesh filled her nose quicker than she could whirl and face her stalkers. She didn't have to. The gadigator grabbed onto her arms, shoving her back against the wall right as she reached for the door handle in hopes of making a grand escape into the alleyway.

Faine was face to face with steaming breath, rough scales, and foul mead. The gadigator got enough, apparently. She tried to make herself appear scared; made her body tremble and forced tears to fill her eyes. The gadigator didn't relent.

"It's dangerous around here," he hissed. Down the hall, his imp buddy was standing at the end and holding a hand up to anyone that attempted to venture into the darkness. Faine knew all too well what that meant. If she did nothing to rescue herself, she wasn't making it out of this damp hallway alive. "What's a young feliram like you walking around the slums for?"

His thin, double-pointed tongue slithered out from his flat lips and Faine grimaced when it came close to her face. Gadigators were notorious for having the worst breath amongst all the beasts.

"I only came for a drink," Faine promised. Her voice shook with false fear. "I had a date with a rich man. He stood me up. I'm his mistress."

The gadigator growled low and his tail slashed against the stone floor, stirring up unwanted dust. Faine smelled the age of the tavern from that movement alone. He ran a claw down the white horn growing from the back of her forehead; the base covered by a strand of her silver hair. He traced the horn from that spot, following all the way around the loose coil on the side of her head.

"I suppose I can believe you," the gadigator whispered. It was difficult to discern a hiss from a whisper; Faine judged it by his smell of breath. "You felirams have quite beautiful faces."

Out of the corner of her eye, Faine caught the sight of the two other men in the booth next to hers. They were standing. Their words to the imp were muffled but their facial expressions revealed their association. Partners. Mutuals. Faine could stand against two monsters, but not four.

The chain hanging from the loose coil of horn, like that of a ram, clanked against the sharp claws of the gadigator. It wouldn't be long before he sank them into her skull. Thinking fast, she waited for the imp to return, humming an ancient tune that Faine recognized from the market the other day. Precisely where she gathered the intel that these two men, along with the other gadigator and minotaur, were involved in a young woman's kidnapping.

"What information are you looking for?" the imp asked. At least he kept a respectable distance.

Faine allowed her control to slip off its leash. "How do you know I'm here for information?" she asked. Not appearing like a bubbling mess was her first mistake. The gadigator grabbed onto her face, claws digging into her sharp cheekbones, and thrust her stare back towards his.

Rage got the best of the situation. She flicked her wrist, releasing the hidden blade in her bracer, and rushed forward. It took force, but the blade sunk into the gadigator's abdomen and he groaned, a shrill cry releasing from his lips when Faine yanked the blade back out and slashed for the imp's throat before he could sink his teeth in. In a matter of five seconds, both beasts were no longer interrogating her. She watched them fall.

"Get her!" The minotaur with the thick accent shouted. They pointed down the hall in her direction and Faine whirled, her timing perfect when they threw a knife at her head. She ducked out of the way and the blade smacked against the wood.

From the force of that blade alone, the door pushed open and became caught by the wind in the alleyway beyond the tavern. A fist closed around the back of Faine's coat and before she could fend off the unsuspected attacker from behind, all the while preparing for another knife aiming for her head like target practice, the fist tugged her into the alleyway and slammed the door to the tavern behind her.