Hollyhock opens the car door for me.

“This is the first store we’re gonna check out. Then we’ll-”

“STOP BISCUITS!” A voice shouts. A creature runs down the sidewalk towards us. People just barely get out of the way for it.

“Watch this,” Hollyhock says to me. She stands still as it gets closer. “SIT!” The creature sits. It looks like a weird, skinny, short-haired wolf. She pets it as it obeys, parking itself in front of her. A little girl runs up behind it.

“Biscuits, I told you to stop running!” She grabs a leash attached to its collar. “Thank you, miss.”

“No problem. You just gotta be firm with dogs. He’s a Whippet, right?” The little girl nods the way kids do when someone guesses correctly.

“Mhmm, it’s my first time walking him by myself!”

“Really?” Hollyhock kneels to be at eye level with the kid. “Well he’s a big dog so wrap the leash around your hand like this.” She shows her how to do it, stands up and ruffles her hair.

“Alright, kid, get out of here.”

“Thanks again miss!” They walk off.

“She called me ‘miss’. Gotta love kids,” the assassin remarks.

‘That was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.’

“That was a dog?” I ask instead of commenting.

“Yeah, you’ve never seen a dog before?”

“No, the people back home keep more eccentric creatures as companions. Such as wolves, or Farnooks.” Hollyhock narrows her eyes at me.

“What the fuck is a Farnook?”

“That’s a bit of a debate actually,” I start. “See they-” Hollyhock shakes her head.

“Y’know what, forget I asked. I don’t want to have nightmares from whatever awful thing you’re about to describe,” she interjects. I shrug.

“Your loss.” The assassin holds the door open for me.

“After you,” she says.

As we enter the store, Hollyhock leads me to the front.

“Excuse me,” she says, leaning on the counter. The clerk is turned around, is folding something.

“Give me one second, sir,” she says without looking back. Hollyhock turns to me just to raise an eyebrow. The clerk turns around to see the person attached to the voice. “Ma’am,” The clerk clumsily corrects herself. Hollyhock waves of the apology.

“Don’t worry about it.” She must be used to people making that mistake, with her voice being so deep and scratchy. “My friend here is new in town, figured I should get her some new outfits. I was hoping you could get someone to help her out,” she explains. The clerk quickly looks at Hollyhock’s arm. Not to observe the impressive amount of muscle, but the Bay Leaves tattoo on her deltoid.

She quickly swallows.

“Certainly ma’am.”

“Do I look like a “ma’am” to you?” Hollyhock asks. The clerk is unsure of how to respond. “Anyway, money is no object. So make sure she gets taken care of. “ the clerk nods and speaks into some device on her shirt. Another employee comes by and whisks me away from Hollyhock who just winks at me.

The employee takes me around the store asking a variety of questions I’m unsure of how to answer and showering me in compliments.

“What are your sizes?”

“I don’t know, all my clothes are tailored.”

“Really?” She looks me over like she’s trying to create a solution in her head. “Where are you from?”

“A small town, it’s not even on the map.”

‘Technically it’s the truth.’

Between her questions and showing me different garments, I peer over to Hollyhock who’s been standing in one section, looking at jackets. She’s testing each one with strange criteria. Rubbing the fronts of them between her fingers, I have no idea what she’s looking for. I’m taken to the other side of the store for more clothes.

When the employee decides she’s picked out enough, she stuffs me into a small room with a mirror and curtain.

“I’ll go get your friend, you just try on the first outfit!” She says from the other side. And so, for the second time that day, I strip for no particularly fun reason. I make sure that I don’t turn so that I can’t view my back in the mirror.

‘I’ve seen it enough.’ I browse through the collection, putting anything that’s backless to the side.

The first thing I pick is a black sheer lace blouse. The fabric is soft against my skin, going up my arms, and travels down to my hips. Loose enough around the waist that it flaps a bit as I turn.

Paired with it are shorts that have a flowing stretch of fabric attached to the back, giving it the feel of a skirt. The heels the employee picked fit well, even if the straps do bite into my skin.

“You wanna show me what you picked out, or do you want some assistance?” The assassin says from the other side of the curtain. I step out. She whistles, looking me up and down.

We’re the same height, but these heels give me an inch or two over Hollyhock.

‘I like them.’

“Damn girl, let me get your number,” she says.

“My number?” She dismisses my confusion with a wave of her hand.

“Never mind, let me see the back.” She twirls her index finger in a circle. I turn around and feel her gaze pan over me. She moves the fabric from the back of the shorts. “Mmmm, your ass looks good in those,” she says.

“Why does that matter? Are people going to look?”

“Oh yeah, asses are the new tits.”

“...I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life.” I just roll my eyes at her. “Does that fit okay?”

“They’ll fit fine. I’ll modify them later.” She raises an eyebrow, a question forming in her mind but she decides not to ask.

“You want to try on anything else? We have all day.” I shake my head.

“I didn’t come here to try on clothes. Show me around your city.” Hollyhock flashes a smile at me.

“Alright, Witch-Hazel. We still have a few things to pick up, but I’ll show you around.” She grabs the attention of another employee. “She’ll wear these out,” she says.

Back at the counter, she pays for my clothes and the black jacket she picked out with a fold of hundred dollar bills.

She deposits the clothes into the back of the car and we take off. Despite the heat, she puts on the jacket she purchased.

“I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about cities like this, Witch-Hazel.” She rolls down her window, leaning on her arm. “You can judge any city by its infrastructure.” The street ahead of us is mostly empty and she slows the car down. Hollyhock waves her hand out the window. “You’ll notice there aren’t any public buses here.”

“What’s a ‘public bus’?”

“It’s a communal car for people who don’t have one,” she explains. “Anyway, that’s fine because we’re in Saffron Cro, the ‘nice’ part of town.” The edge with which she says ‘nice’ doesn’t escape my notice but I don’t comment on it.

“Everyone here can afford a car ‘cause they all have nice jobs, there are plenty of supermarkets, private schools, and the emergency services have a 5 to 10 minutes response time,” she lists.

“All in all, it’s a fine place to live, if you got the dough,” I raise an eyebrow at her “money,” she explains. I nod, understanding.

“Tell me, you got money back in Ironhenge?”

“We do have currency,” I answer. “A system of bronze, silver, and gold coins. But mostly we trade goods and services. No one really cares about coins,” I explain. Looking out the window, I observe the tall buildings as we cruise along. There’s more steel and glass than I’ve ever seen in my life all on one structure. Buildings back home are much wider than they are here. Smooth roads, rather than the weathered cobblestone streets I’m used to.

“Hmmm, well out here everybody cares about money. It determines everything. If you can keep a roof over your head, have heat and power, food in your stomach, and clothes on your body.”

“But people need those things just to live,” I point out.

“I know, shit’s fucked,”

“Surely they can’t cost that much.” Hollyhock merely scoffs.

“Sorry, I don’t wanna be rude,” she says while she turns the car. “I’m getting off-topic. Outside this little slice of easy living, you’ll find things are quite different.”

The street under us elevates to an incline that takes us up to a long narrow stretch of road, separate from everything else. Hollyhock speeds up enough that I’m pushed back into my seat.

A few moments of driving, she speaks up again.

“This is the real Oleander City,” she points out my window. The cityscape is much less impressive than the one I just saw. The buildings and houses close enough to see look rundown, much like the one I first set up in. What I thought was an anomaly seems to be quite standard. Splashes of graffiti all over, cars with no windows or wheels, cracked pavement, the look of downtrodden people fly by as Hollyhock presses harder on whatever makes this vehicle move.

Despite the subpar conditions, I sense what rests under the city. The intricately woven strands of pure magical power that crisscross our planet; Ley Lines.

‘They’re so rich and deep here’ I pool magic behind my eyes. The Ley Lines of Oleander City spring to life before me. Iridescent light of every possible color across the spectrum bathes the city. I’ve seen Ley Lines before, but never this many or so untapped.

They meet the blue sky at the horizon, one pure color of reality clashes with an eclectic blend of color that can only exist with magic.

“It’s beautiful,” escapes from my lips.

Hollyhock scoffs again.

“Then Ironhenge must be a true shithole,” she remarks. I pull back the magic from my eyes, blinking away the excess smoke.

“You just don’t see what you have. The charm’s underneath it.”

“Yeah, if you can get past the sixty-point-nine murder rate.”

“I don’t know what that means but I’m sure you’re not helping lower that statistic, right?” Hollyhock cocks her head to the side and shrugs.

“That’s fair,” she says with a chuckle. The assassin turns the wheel quickly and the car heads down a ramp to the “Real Oleander city.”

Closer up, the city does seem to be in dire straits. It’s a sorry sight compared to Saffron Cro.

Sometime later, Hollyhock stops the car and gets out.

“I have to get something real quick,” she says through my open window. I get out to join her. She opens her mouth to protest but decides against it. We walk into an alleyway, on the left wall is a simple iron door. Hollyhock knocks on it six times in a pattern.

Two quick, one, two quick, and one again.

A panel slides and a pair of eyes look at her for a moment before the panel slides back into place. The door opens on what sounds like a thoroughly abused hinge. We enter a backroom filled with metal crates except for a desk, behind which sits someone poring over a book. The pair of eyes that let us in is perched on a crate, doing something on their phone.

We walk over to the desk. Upon closer inspection, the book is a ledger; encrypted with some kind of cipher. If I cared enough I could definitely break it, but I don’t. Besides, a cursory glance around the room suggests it is for the import and export of whatever is in these crates.

“Hello Hollyhock,” the man writing into the ledger says without looking up.

“Hey Clingstone, surprised to see me?” She asks.

“Why would I be surprised? You always come by after you finish a job.” He finally looks up at her with a confused expression. This man, Clingstone, is bald but has large, wild, brown eyebrows. They remind me of Magipillars, little fuzzy creatures that love places of potent magical energy.

Something tells me that his forehead isn’t one of them.

“I guess I do,” Hollyhock comments. After her betrayal last night, she’s suspicious of everyone it seems.

“So,” he closes the ledger and gives me a look over. “Who’s this?” His voice of as smooth as his head.

Pt 1 End