They never see me coming..., The assassin's way of life. Options

[Illydoor]

Black as a star-reaped nightsky. Eyes like the ember jewels of the hearth. Quick as a scream. But silent, silent like the desert zephyrs.

They never see me coming.

Lithe, velveteen blackness covers me like a second skin, the colour of ebon gloom. Against the inky backdrop of a typical Cyrodiilic night, I’m just another shadow. I can feel my eyes smoulder like furnace coals in the dim moonlight.

To watch, to wait, there is no time. I’ll have to take in the scenery later. Running, low, swift as quicksilver, racing across the rooftops. The guards are startled; believing a ghoul is upon them. A quick daggerstroke to the jugular confirms – and silences - their fears. My once perfect gloom-coloured shroud is painted with vivid red spiders. Thrice-curse my carelessness.

They’ll be found in the morn. But the future holds no relevance tonight. The dagger is sheathed. It may yet make another appearance tonight. The moon is moving, and sithis’ calls, the rooftops patter with the sound of fleeting footsteps again.

The alarm sounds, like the bleating of a startled sheeps. And like sheep they pour from the barracks, armed with spears, halberds, rusty scimitars and flimsy shields. Time to hide, not enough arrows in the quiver to put down this flock.

I time the jump expertly, which transforms into a dive as the lakewater rushes towards me. I enter the brittle water almost soundlessly. Darkness, icy and numbing, engulfs me.

Rippled reports of waving flamed torches tell me the patrol is nearing. They pass by with coarse shouts, boasting of my capture and disposal. Floating just beneath the surface, I watch their blurred, maladroit outlines blunder around gracelessly, dull eyes searching for something darkness.

One of them notices something. A ripple perhaps, a stray bubble or a riverweed that’s not quite where it should be. The water claims him before he can voice his concerns. The torch hisses and spits as its life too is drowned beneath the murky depths.

The moon is still moving. No time for fun anymore. Sithis’ calls are getting more urgent.

The water releases its clasp on me, and I emerge once more into the midnight blackness, immersing with the shade. Avoiding the wan globes of light that the street-lamps cast, I make my way through the cobbled pathways, a lone phantom of the night
.
Swiftly, swiftly, the brotherhood grows impatient. I scale the drab grey walls without effort, claws finding easy purchase on the thick rock. Forty lengths up, you would think such a distance was improbably high. That is what he believes.

I see him now, through a thin stone slit of a window. Sithis’ prize. Guards surround him like the lapdogs they are, bristling with weapons and obedient minds.

Enough games. Magic isn’t used for fun. With a whispered invocation I turn into a thin film of black dust, but two red eyes amidst a thin wisp of ebon-shaded mist. The feeling is indescribably but pleasurably peculiar. The touch of Sithis’ sorcery invigorating.

I slip through the rib thin opening while the magic lasts. I can feel the raw power ebbing away already.

Using the hot air that exhales from the aflame inglenook at the centre of the room, I rise to ceiling, where strong-strutted beams escape into the roofed darkness. Unnoticed, in the gloom of the ceiling where the light of the fire cannot reach, the breath of smoke makes a strange transformation. It settles like a drape of shadow on one of the wooden beams, and begins to grow. Feet, shins, legs and torso, thin-fingered hands and an unrecognisable face, are formed from its essence. My eyes remain the same, blood-coloured and glinting like coals in the enveloping gloom.

So close to my target, the thrill is exhilarating. I can feel brotherhood edging me on. Hot blood runs like lightning through cold, deadened veins. My fingers twitch.

No, not yet. The kill will have to wait. To be seen is to be human. That which commands the greatest fear is the unknown, and the unknown is my crude title.

The two guards go first. I finish deciding which eye the arrow is going to go into and one of them drops, a soundless scream still clinging to his lips. The other, trying to find where the deadly arrow has come from, dies a second later. The other eye this time.

Now it’s only him left.

I can smell the fear that exhumes from him. He staggers back, seeking refuge in the shadows.
But I’m already there. The dagger is excited, eager to prove it’s worth a second time. It finds flesh and skin and bone, the steel painted a deep crimson as it drinks deep of his blood.

“Sithis claims you…” A voice says – my own? I am never sure.

Guards burst in, but I am already gone, like a wisp of smoke – magic smoke. Out the window. The moon is still moving, and so am I, pitter-patter of a ghouls footsteps across darkened rooftops.

Red as a murderous dawn. Eyes dull, like dark green pebbles. Sharp as a scream. But still silent, silent like the desert zephyrs.

They never see me coming.

This post has been edited by Illydoor: Mar 29 2010, 12:35 PM