Mystic heists part 3

Quietly, Emily crept through a door and entered a thin corridor lined with empty bottles. Somehow, she had gotten into the distillery proper without alerting anyone, a feat she could mainly attribute to the numerous overhead pipes and ledges throughout the area. She could tell that the rune was in a room nearby, but unfortunately, it wasn't the room's only occupant.

"The patrols will be going through Bottle Street on Monday, the back alleys on Wednesday, and they'll be searching the distillery on Thursday. You may want to take your men on a field trip, Slackjaw."

Through the wall, her void gaze identified the speaker as a man in black robes and a gold mask. An Overseer...what's he doing here?

"Thanks for the info. I know it must be hard to sneak away from your sermons." The other speaker, Slackjaw, responded, a sort of authority in his voice.

"Well, as long as you keep alerting me if you find charms like these, and keep my family safe, I'll be entirely willing to take the risk."

Emily's heart skipped a beat. They were going to take her runes away!

As Slackjaw replied with "Heh, trust me, from what I've heard, these rune things are not worth the effort." Emily frantically looked around for a way to get them out of the room. Fortunately, one found her. "Hey!" Whispered Thomas, creeping up behind her. "You won't believe what I just found!"

She held up a finger to shush him. "Can you cause a distraction for me again? Let some more rats out?"

He grinned. "Oh, I can do better than that." He opened a fist to show some sort of dart with a pale blue liquid in it. Emily recognised that at least. "Whale oil?"

He nodded. "Incendiary dart. It was in that launcher I was fiddling with, meant to booby-trap the entrance. Fortunately..." He pulled a slingshot from a pocket. She looked at it in surprise. It looked far more... Well-built than she'd expected from a street rat. He smiled, looking down at it. "I carved it myself. Climbed to the top of a ship coming in from Serkonos to get the wood for it. It can fire a pebble hard enough to smash a bottle at 20 metres. With this little beauty..." He fit the incendiary dart to the string and grinned at her. "Give me thirty seconds."

He vanished down the corridor. She shook her head as she looked after him. He was just so... Cheeky! And she was sounding like mother!

That train of thought was interrupted by an offhand remark by Slackjaw. "Must be an awkward job. Hasn't Daud started rounding up everything heretic-like recently?"

Emily frowned. That name...

"That name..." The Overseer muttered just as the thought passed her mind. "Perhaps I'm too superstitious, but even saying it makes me worry about knives in the dark."

Slackjaw laughed. "Really? Ain't he just some other gang leader?"

"Hah!" The Overseer exclaimed. "Just another... No, Daud is no mere man. If only you knew of the texts in our library, the things he has done... Grit and steel can only take you so far, and he goes further with each new tale. There can only be so many reports of teleporting assassins before it stops being mere fabrications."

Emily's breath hitched. Teleporting…No... Daud had...

Suddenly the sound of an explosion rocked the room from the courtyard. With a few words a girl her age should not be hearing, Slackjaw and the Overseer sprinted outside to find the cause of the disturbance, and Emily shook her head, not wanting to waste her opportunity. She entered the room.

It seemed to be some sort of office, with a desk, various posters and news articles pinned to the wall behind it. A contraption with a nozzle was sat in the corner, labelled 'bootleg pourer' and she was tempted to take from that as well, but was soon preoccupied by the objects resting on the desk. Another rune, first and foremost, and on top of it, something creepier. It looked a sort of fabric, wavering despite the lack of any breeze, and bore resemblance to the translucent materials Emily had seen in complex dresses at important parties. Stuffing the rune in some fold of her dress, she picked up the fabric (which was practically bleeding the Outsider's power) and gently blew at it. It didn't respond. She tried to look through it. It made her eyes hurt. Shrugging, she pocketed it.

"What's going on here then?"

Emily sighed and turned around. "Thomas, I told you, stop being so...loud." She saw a bowler hat, a torn up suit, a bottle of whisky, and a rusty looking cleaver. Suffice to say, it wasn't Thomas.

._.

Emily struggled fruitlessly as the man pulled her into a courtyard. Unfortunately, he had grabbed her marked hand, and any grapples she attempted would likely pull him with her, leaving her special powers remarkably useless. As a result, she could do little bit follow meekly as the man called out "Hey Slackjaw! Come look at this!"

The man in charge turned around and raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? Hey boys! Looks like our favourite little thief has a girlfriend!"

Emily glared at him. "He's not...What have you done with Thomas?"

Slackjaw chuckled. "Put a bullet in his head." -Her jaw dropped- "Is what I'd like to have said, but that little rat keeps getting away from me. Nicking my elixir for his pathetic little buddies. You aren't so quick though, are ya?" She struggled against the grip of the man who'd grabbed her, who gruffly stated "I found 'er in your office Slackjaw."

"Really?" Slackjaw leaned down in front of her. "So what were you doing in there? And who are you?"

"Let me see her!" Yelled a voice from the back of the newly assembled crowd, and the Overseer from earlier shouldered through. Emily took one look at him, realised what he was going to see, and resumed struggling. At a particularly violent jerk, something was pulled out of her pocket, and she grabbed it with her free hand automatically. When the Overseer froze in front of her, she knew he recognised her. A little girl in a white dress with a marked hand and a rune in her grasp. "You..." He snarled.

"Please don't." she mumbled, but he was having none of it.

"Don't what? Reveal your heresy? The only thing I won't do is be merciful, little witch!"

Slackjaw put a hand on his shoulder and led him back a few steps "look, buddy, the girl's like ten, she just nicked that from my office, that doesn't make her a witch..."

Unfortunately, that left Emily alone with a group of curious gang members. "Aww, she's cute!" Chuckled one.

"Blow off, chopper!" Came a response.

"I meant puppy cute!"

"She will watch as the rats pick at our corpses!" Came the Overseers voice from a few metres back.

Surrounded by the chaos, Emily collapsed to a kneeling position, unwilling to meet any of their eyes, instead staring at the rune in her hands. It sung, softly, exuding some of the muffling calmness she had felt in the void.

"Hey, d'you reckon she can dance?"

"Maybe she can sing for us?"

Sing... For some reason, it felt like a good idea. Slowly, she opened her mouth. "What will we do, with a drunken whaler, what will we do with a drunken whaler..."

"Holy cow, she's actually doing it! Hey Slackjaw, come look at this!"

The Overseer stared at her in shock. "No, you mustn't let her sing! You mustn't-"

"Way, hey, and up she rises, early in the morning..."

Her voice somehow began to drown out all their muffled complaints, and the strangest thing began to happen. The rune in her hand began to disintegrate, the whalebone dust swirling about her as her mark glowed a bright blue. And people started screaming.

._.

The Overseer panicked, attempting to remember the tune the music boxes played that warded against the Outsiders magic, but somehow he couldn't think, could barely move, the notes from her tune crashing into his head like hammer blows and bringing an undefined terror. He stumbled backwards, covering his ears in a vain attempt to ward off the beautiful, horrible music, and the moment he was far enough away to trust his legs, he ran.

The scene he left behind was a gang of hardy thugs cowering before young Emily Kaldwin.

And the name i chose finally makes sense. Emily gets a new power, and it won't be her last. Please leave a review if you liked it, or can think of any other 'little girl' esque abilities, and i will see y'all next time!