30th of Ash, 4622
"Well, aren't I a lucky man today…"
It was a moonless night at Genteven; the usual silence & crashing waves that hit upon the cities docks became slightly more alive and chaotic as a shadow-cloaked thief was currently being pursued by a pair of brutish thugs whom he, unfortunately, managed to piss off when an attempted sleight of hand went wrong.
Getting caught red-handed was already a one-way ticket to getting your ass handed to you and your face smeared against the cold stone pavement, and Jared wasn't the kind to stick around. So when the brutes attempted to catch his wrist, it was already quite an unfavourable position. If he were a few seconds slower, the results would be far more different and bloody & a fight would break out.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck, come on, Jared, think; there is always a way out. Just find that opportunity, dammit!"
The amber-eyed thief mutters under his rapidly breathing voice, gasping as much air as his body can take as his black leather boots stomp along the wooden pier, which creaks under the heavy steps, followed by a trail of quickened stomping behind his tail. His honey-coloured eyes dart all over the place as his mind attempts to assess every angle possible to help aid his escape as the two men begin to close in the distance.
While Jared is a handy person by nature, that did not translate well to his ability to outrun a person, sneaking was far more practical for a thief's skill set. Still, one should remember to exercise stamina for cases like a chase.
"Come back here; you shit-stain rat!"
One of the brutes yells as they continue gaining ground on the thief. Spending what little time he could afford, seeking out what twist & turns he could take in his attempts to lose his pursuers. A turn into the dark alleyway was something he could use, even if it meant that there was possibly a dead end, but The amber-eyed vagabond could solve that issue with a quick survey of the surroundings.
Ducking into the darkness that looms over the alleyway, the two men immediately stop, peering into the night at one end of the street as they attempt to find the thief.
"Where the fuck is the gutter rat?"
"Don't know, man; he just turned here and vanished."
"Go ahead then; I will stand here if the bitch gets to make a run here."
From there, the two men split, guarding one end of the street while the other enters the moonlit streets with a slightly eerie vibe.
As Jared was hiding in a particular spot where the darkness was at its deepest, enshrouded by his Obscura. His Amber-eyed gaze watches as if a sinister creature was scheming for what possible things he could do.
Death was not off the table, but it would leave a trace, and trying to remove evidence was more work than the thief was willing to do at this point. So the best thing he could think of was knocking his pursuers out, taking whatever they had on their person & leaving them to deal with the repercussions when the guards or civilians pass by.
"Alright, let's see if the training has paid off or not…."
With a plan set in motion, the thief remains low to the ground as he pulls a small amount of ether into them and tries out something new that he recently gained from his dreams. Confiding in the shadows to create a ghostly visage of his imagination, the Nightfallen vagabond waits for the right moment when he steps closest to his position before launching his Confide at his target.
The burly man was startled for a moment as a blur of blackness began to rush at him as he attempted to defend himself from this sudden sneak attack. Then, Jared starts to concentrate on his Confide to suddenly disperse into the air while simultaneously focusing on his ether and compressing a viscous liquid into a thin lance-like object the size of his palm.
Once the Confide shadowy figure reaches arm's length, the shadow-veiled scoundrel lets the compressed umbral plasm evaporate into the air, creating a thick, billowing cloud of darkness that not even torchlight could pierce through Invert & Gloom. A new set of abilities that Jared had managed to hone after a restless night as his mark of Nightfall changed to something more ethereal in nature.
Invert was the ability to allow darkness to become more intangible similar to that of the darkness that people could see but not touch in nature which was the opposite of Compass, which focused on the ether-infused night to become a porous and vicious material that could be shaped and utilised to the wielders liking. However, there is a drawback to Inverting umbralplasm or devising darkness, from bits of experimenting; Jared could conclude that he could not reuse the gaseous state of umbralplasm once the Inverting process began though he could delay or accelerate the process with some effort.
Gloom, on the other hand, was able to thicken the veil of the night through the use of the dispersed ether made by Invert. The degree of how dark the shroud could vary on the experience of the user as it mainly tones back the colour of one's surroundings at first before being pitch black like the abyssal void that people fear when nearing their death, and the duration of this greyscaling alteration depends on how much ether was expended but with the proficiency of Nightfall can heavily affect the course of the effect as well lasting from a couple of minutes to tens or even hours.
In either case, Nightfallen magus was trying out his new tools of the trade & seeing what capabilities and usages could be used depending on the situation & application, of course. In this brief moment, Jared managed to spook one of his assailants & temporarily hinder their visual capacity, which greyed out the world in a deep shade that someone would be considered Achromatopsia—leaning more towards a deeper shade of grey & black, which would be highly jarring to anyone who was used to seeing the world in varying aspects of colours to determine depth & distance.
Wasting no time with this window of opportunity, Jared immediately leaps out of his hiding spot with his umbralplasm-infused blackjack in tow, arching a giant side swing to the right side of the disoriented brute. Using the additional weight provided by the Umbralplasm, the swing, while slower, provides a heavier impact enough to stagger or even knock someone out entirely.
Putting all his weight into the swing, the sizeable brutish man waiting at the end of the alleyway nearing the docks could hear a loud cracking followed by a heavy thud as it echoed down the alleyway. The other brute could only see a brief pair of shadowy figures merge into one before a thin silhouette figure backed away into the shadows, leaving. Still, his friend was on the ground, whose face was directed into the cobbled pavement.
At this point, the brute pulled out a dagger as he stormed into the alleyway, yelling for Jared to come out as he carefully approached his friend, who had not moved for a few seconds. As the brute closes in on his buddy, whose status is unknown to him but upon closer inspection, he is merely unconscious but heavily injured via a blunt weapon.
“Should have killed us here and then, buddy; When I will find you and feed your guts to the fishes.”
As the thug takes his stance, readying his serrated dagger & pointing it at any bits of shadows that eerily move beyond its nature. Jared takes a moment to scurry around the shadows, keeping a reasonable distance away as close-quarters combat may result in unnecessary injuries.
Creeping low to the ground, what was once the prey is now the predator who managed to lure them to a favourable advantage. So knowing when it is acceptable to run & fight is essential for those willing to charge into combat blindly are more likely to come out with lasting wounds.
Taking a moment, bring out an orb of Umbralplasm that Jared keeps stashed on the inner lining of his cloak, pointing to his index & middle finger whilst his remaining finger & thumb are tucked into his palm. The thief takes a moment to breathe before flicking his finger from right to left as if he was conducting the umbralplasm as an extension of his body. A smokey whip immediately snakes out of his cloak, spilling forward as globs of viscous plasm splash and paint the floor.
Just as the brute sees the tendril of thickened shadow approach him from the front, he attempts to brace himself only to feel like a carriage has impacted his abdomen before being flung into a nearby wall with force before slumping down onto the ground, barely moving from what Jared could see.
His Stratum conjured, slightly shocked at how much force; the sounds of heavy metal plates began to rush over as men began to yell out that they heard a commotion.
“Time to leave, Jared. Sadly couldn’t take anything, but getting caught is not on my agenda for today.”
With that, Jared quickly leaves the scene; Climbing rapidly with the use of his Umbralplasm climbing picks that he often would make to reach the Thieve’s Highway & observing from above for a moment whilst his Obscura remained active as with practice and mastery, the amount of effort to make his camouflage reduced the amount of burden his soul had to endure.
As the heavily armoured men scour the alleyway, discovering the two unconscious men, Jared takes his moment to scurry away from the crime scene; leaping into the air before landing as quietly as he can on the next building as his night of crime concludes with some potential issues coming back to bite his hand, but for now, freedom is bliss.
