2

My shadow leapt up to stop his blade. Not because I was afraid that the guard might hurt the mighty dragon. More because I was afraid of what the mighty dragon would do to him.

"Are you trying to damage my property?" The flat way my voice fell had a good amount of legitimate rage in it, "I would have advised against striking him so hard since he's unusually sturdy had you told me of this foolish plan of yours."

The guard that I'd spoken to first laughed aloud. He seemed to expect this kind of foolishness from his partner. He checked Wyatt's collar as well before focusing on me.

"His collar appears to be working," He slapped his partners blade away, and gave him a dirty look, "Don't cause any trouble in the city, and I'm sure that this unusual slave of yours will be overlooked."

He waved us through without giving us a second thought. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. I guess a part of me thought I wouldn't be able to pull this off. I didn't have the same confidence that Wyatt did when it came to this plan of his. The fact that I could pass for a less than average lower elf was lucky.

The fact that he thought of this crazy plan on the fly when he saw me was kind of crazy, but I guess some crazy ideas worked just because no one thought someone would be crazy enough to try it. I watched the people on the street warily while still trying to appear confident.

"Water master," Wyatt suddenly offering me water startled me a little.

I wasn't actually thirsty, but I leaned down to take the water skin anyway.

"You're too tense," Wyatt whispered once we were close, "Relax. They believe our little charade."

I took the water skin gently, and pretended to take a drink before handing it back. Wyatt was able to perform the motion smoothly without stopping. We set to work on selling our product. The first blacksmith shop we stopped in at wasn't interested at looking at our product let alone buying. Artificial cores weren't all that popular.

They were harder to manipulate due to the pure nature of their mana. This downside made them harder to work into metal, and the weapons were good for elemental blade casting, but were weaker structurally. Only an expert blacksmith could smith artificial cores into metal without losing the metals strength. We visited two more before selling one of the higher quality cores. It's pure fire based mana made it look like the heart of a fire.

He was impressed with the quality, but had recently bought a good number of cores, and couldn't afford more until he sold some of his weaponry. Wyatt seemed more interested in the sickly dwarf blacksmith in the back. We used part of the money we earned to pay for a room in one of the better hotels. Night was falling so we didn't have time to make any more sales pitches. We booked one of those rooms that contained mana within so that you could practice spellcasting in one side of the room, and sleep in the other without disturbing anyone.

The entire room was contained so that no mana would leak out, and that meant we spent most of our money reserving it for the next three days. We needed the room for Wyatt to make mana crystals. The room didn't have any windows either. The fact that Wyatt had a spatial affinity meant he could get out of the room no problem, but getting back in would be a problem.

"Sleep while you can," Wyatt sat down on the side of the room meant for spellcasting, "We'll be doing reconnaissance tomorrow night. I want to make contact with a few slaves tomorrow if at all possible."

"So you're going to have me sneak around with you?" I asked.

"You posses darkness affinity, and can sneak around well enough," he shrugged, and closed his eyes to concentrate, "You've also been raised in slavery so you'll know what to say to make them believe us."

Wyatt held out both hands, and produced two masks from his spatial bracelet. It was actually a ring for his horn, but in human form it worked better as a bracelet. It was made from his scales, and blended with his outfit well. You wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it. Both masks were black in color with golden markings.

One was a fox the other a wolf. He tossed me the wolf mask, and placed the fox mask halfway over his face. I realized then that the fox mask only had one eye. Once the mask was on you would only be able to see his brown eye. He probably chose that eye because it was the more common color.

It also gave the impression that he only had one eye. Revealing both eyes at once would give him away the moment he looked an enemy in the eye while he wasn't wearing the mask.

"Why are you the fox?" I asked.

I was genuinely curious why he would give me the wolf mask instead of keeping it for himself.

"Wolves, and foxes are both creatures that hunt right?" He glanced over to me to see me nod, "But foxes are known as deceptive creatures, and wolves are more loyal to the proud hunter image. My thought was that if I'm going to deceive everyone here all the time then I should be the fox while you are just here to hunt."

I could see the logic behind his decision as he set to work on creating more mana crystals. His whole plan relied on deceiving everyone. Fox's were said to be sneaky deceptive creatures. Even if elves didn't understand the symbolism the humans would. They would probably either overlook the fox mask entirely or instinctually trust me more then Wyatt.