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Deep in the bowels of Halunder crawl the Cowled Spiders: the secretive magi whose command over the blackest arcane metalwork makes them feared and despised by the general populace. Their assassins, shorthanded as 'sins', are a breed apart.
You are one of them: a newly inducted member. Your skin is still aching from the pain of your first latticework augment, and when you scratch you feel cool rails interspersed with warm flesh.
You take a deep breath as you crouch in an alleyway. You can feel the arcane force of the dimensional steel jittering through your senses. Extraplanar whispers nibble at your consciousness. *Turn, tú. Kill him, just to try. The latticecraft woven in his skin can make you all the more powerful. It'll be so easy and he won't expect it. Not from you. Not yet. Right there in the throat. Clean cut. Blissful bleeding. Surprise him and tear the—*
"You shouldn't listen to them," says your mentor, Duchine. His purple eyes flick to you as he adjusts his hood, his lips quirking in a grin. "I would have to kill you if you tried whatever they're thinking of, and dead Hatchlings are a nuisance to clean up. Not to mention, unsightly."
He checks over his blades, then produces a folded piece of paper from his cloak. "Ready for the rundown?" [](#'tú is a Hatchling: an apprentice of the Cowled Spiders. Duchine is a senior sin and tú's mentor. This is their first assassination contract together. Duchine has mentored many Hatchlings before and will be prepared if tú decides to strike him. He will not take it personally if tú does so, only reprimanding with his usual pitch-black humor.')
