"Of course, you will find no fault in the discretion of House Arkona!" The man declares, giving a deep bow as he leaves.

A couple of his bodyguards peel out from the shadows to escort him back to Old Korvosa, lacking the same presence to her sense.

Time to tail the girl, since the guy (possibly lying??) gave away his affiliation.

Invisible again, even though the magic costs add up fast to keep it up for long and she's already spent a few big chunks.

The girl waits for the man to leave. Once confident he has departed, she unlocks the warehouse with the key she has received, then steps aside from the door. Out from under her cloak she draws a pair of serrated single-edged magic swords, wielded with reverse grips, then slips inside the warehouse silently. 

Once inside, she moves her swords in hypnotic motions, and three blood-red horse-sized giant praying mantises step out from thin air next to her. At her direction they split up to explore the building, stalking through it in search of any ambushes or traps left behind by the previous owner.

Turning invisible does not stop Weiss' rat stalker from following her. 

Fuck. Yeah she's pretty sure it's an imp. She read up on them a bit after the magic shop, and believes the 'summoned' line.

Okay, several things are going on here.

Decisive action!!!

She turns and lunges suddenly for the rat.

The rat is caught in her claws, and proves far more durable than a rat should be! 

It immediately shifts back into the form of an imp, confirming her suspicions, and then transforms into a giant boar to try and burst out of her grip. Its wounds are already healing. 

She's not really worried. A straight brawl is fine. Just hit and be hit. Anger and blood rush. Tooth and claw! Simple as.

Claw strike. Bite attack. Blindness sphere.

Even in boar form, this isn't a fight the imp can win. Soon she has it knocked out, at which point it reverts back to imp form.

Coup de grace.

Her heart is pounding, her head feels dull and empty. There's a thrill in her heart that was absent since the crypt. She's at about half magic.

...Then back to check out the warehouse again.

She's nervous. Summoning weird monsters is a pretty intimidating ability. It feels like Cryptid stuff. But when has being nervous stopped her from doing what none other can? And the goal thus is investigstion.

The near entrance of the warehouse has a single door, leading into a reception room with a long wooden desk and a sign on the wall reading 'Arkona Imports West Dock'. The pink-haired woman and her mantis minions have already passed through the curtain on the far side of the room into the warehouse proper.

Hello invisible Large fox wants to know what's going on in here. Is it murder? She feels like it might be murder. Or maybe burglary.

There is no scent of blood on the air, only spices, exotic wood, and sawdust. 

...Not quite no scent of blood. There is a hint of it, muted and long-dried, off in a crate in one corner.

One of the mantises is roaming the leftover crates of the warehouse at ground level. Another has risen, wings buzzing, to check on the catwalk. 

On the far side of the warehouse is a set of stairs up to the second floor, and a cargo lift in a room lined with wooden lockers. The woman and the third mantis cannot be seen on this floor.

She quickly illusion-scries both through the cargo lift and up into the second floor - those are usually just a tiny corner office, in warehouses.

It feels like there's no time to be careful, here, whatever's happening is already in motion.

The upper floor is all beige tile and whitewash, with two gazelles rampant on the door. As expected, they are offices, cleared of paperwork. Unexpectedly, they are unoccupied.

The cargo lift has risen to the second floor. The woman Weiss saw is not in it. She is descending the shaft revealed underneath it on the back of a summoned mantis, a descent of at least thirty feet straight down into the stone of the warehouse foundations.

This is starting to make her nervous. On the one paw, in for a penny in for a pound, on the other discretion is the better part of valor...

She's still invisible, and can always retreat to the Between if things get hairy. Or pop a Sinnah's Fly wand charge.

For now, she will descend by claw-hold on the wall, very carefully muffling all vibration, and keep following the suspicious character and their remaining mantis monster(s).

The shaft descends down to a chamber with scuffed stone walls. To the south is a smaller room smelling of spices, to the east another storage area that looks to have been in the process of being expanded, and to the north a room laid out with cabinets and benches. Unless interrupted, Weiss' quarry will proceed to check out each of the rooms with great care as though expecting a trap, though none reveal themselves. Her summoned mantis will disperse back into a fading bloody mist partway through the process.

.............This is surprisingly boring for a high stakes assassin thing?

She makes an impulsive decision she may yet come to regret (many such cases), and from a corner of the room where she is not, fades in an image of herself standing casually and unbothered, walking around a corner and drawling,

"What'cha lookin' fer, red?"

With incredible reflexes the woman whirls around, raises her weapons, and Vanishes into invisibility with a quick spell. Since Weiss is paying attention, she'll be able to notice the vibrations of her moving a few steps away and throwing her voice.

"Who's asking? Did the Arkonas send you? And it's Cinnabar, not 'Red'."

Cinnabar is unaware of Weiss' own misdirection.

Hah. Same tricks, different players. Her whisker-sense is plenty enough to track invisible people, though it is slightly more difficult. She has her avatar keep looking at the spot she disappeared from, glancing around a bit as if looking for signs.

('Arkonas'. They, who own this place. Merchants? Nobles? Meh.)

"Well you don't know my name either apparently, and you're wearing red. Maybe I'm just curious why someone's stalking through the place looking like they're plotting murder, after bribing their way in."

"Then you're not with the Arkonas, because what you just saw was them finally finishing the sale of this place to me."

She prowls the room silently, sawtooth sabers tracing through the air.

Eh. Smells like a lie, but not one she's super confident in or that she can immediately rebut. She (has her avatar) giggles.

"Oh nooo, I'm trespassing~ I guess I'll just apologize and head out then, huh?"

She sounds completely, utterly unworried. Her current real body, the giant fox one, pads invisibly silently into the room after Cinnabar, as the illusion nonchalantly starts walking to the door, posture loose and tail wagging slightly.

Her invisibility ends and she reappears somewhere the illusion wouldn't be able to see. In silence of her own, she weaves her sabers through the air points-down in a fascinating motion like prayer.

Make that 'Fascinating'. There is a supernatural component to the motions, one that would leave most watchers staring blankly at the hypnotic mantis dance. 

She was already mostly passively watching, and will keep doing so. She remains invisible, a great enough shock could shake the slight tendril of focus it takes, but invisibility is long habit to the point of near-reflex. Wow, pretty.

(The illusion's last instructions were to walk out and back to the elevator, so it continues doing that.)

Cinnabar stalks after the illusion and into the elevator, continuing her dance. When the illusion goes still on reaching the end of its instructions, she circles around it, scrutinizing without touching.

Her cold expression shifts to one of bafflement as it remains opaque to her sight despite her strong suspicion of it being illusory, and tactile when she lightly taps a leg with her toe to avoid interrupting the dance. 

"Not an illusion... Then how were you caught without facing me? An Arcane Eye?" She mutters under her breath, inaudible to normal hearing. 

The double of Weiss is subjected to further inspection, checking the designs of her jewellery and nodding in recognition. 

"Protection and Splendour..."

Satisfied, she moves around to back behind the illusion with one last flourish of the saber to conclude the dance, then drags the serrated blade of the other across the double's throat in a vicious sawing motion, her knee against its back for leverage!

The blade and her knee meet a moment of resistance, like cardboard, then go right through without actually dispelling the image!

-okay, that was fucking murder. And ANOTHER weird fucking Charm type spell! Combined with MURDER. 

She sticks a tracking illusion to this person's weapons and fucks off into the Woods Between, still invisible. 

A round later, the fake Weiss explodes in a small blue fireball, just enough to ignite.