One step forward, two steps to the right. Assassination is like a dance.
Your 'partner' zigs, you zag.
Paik tamped the beads of sweat on her forehead. She was not new to this, yet she always felt under pressure while on the job, however much she may have prepared. In the present case, she had cased the location before, as a maid.
She squared her shoulders and sprang into action: her hands fluttered in the night air and, with stars her only witness, she turned invisible.
She was standing near the portal to the garden in front of the mansion, a looming but graceful building, with its marble colonnades and stucco ornamentation. A building made from blood, as far as she was concerned: the owner, Viscount d'Esquina, was a murderer and a slaver. The Petals had proof enough... yet they knew it wouldn't be enough to get the man convicted, for he had money and allies.
The next step: turning into air.
Who said fire blasts are for unrefined mages? Just because I can melt near anything with my arcane talent... doesn't mean I don't appreciate subtlety.
A now gaseous Paik swirled up in a spiral. She slithered up against a column, looking for an open window. There! On the second floor. In, then up again through the stairs. She passed a guard who, shoulders stooping, was fighting to stay awake.
One more guard at the entrance of the noble bedchamber, but he never saw nor heard a thing - he simply felt a welcome breeze on his skin.
She gets in through the keyhole, crosses the antechamber, and once in the room, she makes sure the Viscount is indeed there, and sleeping alone.
She turns solid again, and looks at the slumbering form critically.
Focus inward, her flesh jiggles: she adjusts her appearance. In Paik's place now stands the Viscount.
1, 2, !
He casts without a sound, with simple, practiced gestures. Nothing much seems to happen, but the jerk of the body getting pierced by terrible flame; it would take a sight extending into the magical spectrum to see the bed erupt in a conflagration of red, oranges, golden flames; really quite pretty - an art amateur like the Viscount would appreciate, surely. For good measure, a second lance of fire, to make sure the job is complete. Touching the burnt body, he shrinks it and pockets it.
"
Guards, guards!! I've been attacked!" he then shouts at the top of his lungs.
He had taken the precaution of wearing a nightgown tailor-made - by him - for this act: it appears singed.
He has smeared some soot on his one side of his face, to make it more convincing. He starts to limp out into the antechamber.
Paik can be him for a few days. Enough time for him to repent for his crimes... and then disappear.