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Hello, and welcome to the introduction to my story, "An Assassin's Redemption", as written by ME, Josh / Adarajin. This story has been long in the making, however I have finally got a finished manuscript and the artwork is commissioned, so I'll hopefully be publishing soon. Below is an introduction to the story, to heighten your interest, until the full book has been published.
An Assassin's Redemption
This would be Seeche's first deliberate kill. The young half-elf could not afford to fail. Lord Spichot would not be pleased if she did, and she wasn't certain that she would live to survive his expression of displeasure. For the last hour, hidden in the shadows outside of a slightly opened window, she had perched precariously on the rain-slicked, mossy tiles of the shale roof, waiting for the trader Torchentor to come up to his bedchamber. On her way climbing up the ivy-covered garden trellis to reach the roof, she had seen him lounging in an overstuffed armchair in front of the fire downstairs, stroking the calico cat which lounged languorously across his lap. Internally, her mind was racing in turmoil for all the long wait. "I've never been a killer, last time was just an accident, but now it's going to get real. I need to do this, it's him or me, and I don't want to die which is what will probably happen if I fail." Now, soaked to the skin in the cold bitter rain, what little patience she had left was finally rewarded when Torchentor arrived upstairs with the cat cradled in one arm, and a lit candle in the other hand, which soon revealed an elegant bedchamber on the other side of the window.
Pulling out one of her perfectly-weighted darts from a pouch at her belt, she began to rise from her tortured squat, wincing from the stiffness and hoping that a shiver would not ruin her aim. "Come on Seeche," she muttered to herself, "you can do this. It's just a single throw like you practiced and then it's all over with. You can do this, just take the throw." Having hyped herself up to the extent that she could, she took a step forward preparing to make her throw into the heart of the old man. As she took her step though, her foot, which had fallen asleep in its worn-leather boot, slipped on a slick patch of moss throwing her to the side. Stifling herself so as not to release the oath that wanted to scream forth from her throat, she pitched over sideways and off of the rooftop. During her fall to the ground, she caught her leg on the garden trellis before landing in a large, prickly ornamental shrub at the bottom. Extracting herself from the shrub took but a moment, but pain made her grab her leg and she discovered a long gash had been torn from knee to ankle. Retrieving a corked vial from a loop at her belt, she uncorked it with her teeth and poured the contents onto a miraculously clean rag that she pulled from her pocket. Swiftly she wrapped this around her wounded leg and tied it tight, before hobbling out of the yard. Moving into the shadowed alley nearby, she fled before anyone could investigate the commotion that she had already caused.
As Seeche hurried down the dank alley cobblestones, splashing through water, muck, and who knows what else, she pondered the best way to improve her situation. First, she would have to convince Lord Spichot to give her another chance to redeem herself, rather than punishing her. He had growled at her the time before, and that was when less was on the line. This was the first time she had been asked to kill someone, so who knew what his response would be? It should have been a straightforward task for her, despite it being the first of its kind. She had proven adept at throwing darts in the past, having a strong throwing arm, stronger than that of many men. But alas, almost nothing had gone as planned. Hopefully her stomach would settle a bit since she hadn't actually managed to kill anyone tonight, as the very thought of it had made her queasy.
Few would have missed the trader Torchentor due to his reputation for shady dealings. None would miss Seeche, living off of the streets as she was, assuming they even knew about her in the first place. This was not the first time that Seeche had been asked to do Lord Spichot's dirty work, and hopefully it would not be the last, for all that she despised the tasks that she was given.
Her leg ached, and she hoped that the salve that she had applied would take effect soon - it was supposed to be a magical healing salve, and only the good reputation of the merchant that sold it to her had convinced her to part with so many of her sparse coins. Life on the streets was hard. Seeche considered herself lucky that she had managed to catch the local lord's attention with her skills as both a pickpocket and a thief. The extra money from doing Lord Spichot's tasks that he would rather not be associated with made life a lot easier. After all, there wasn't much hope for a half-breed like herself in a town populated almost exclusively by full-blooded humans.
Seeche limped along the familiar damp cobblestone paths and dank smelling alleyways, sticking to the shadows whenever possible. Suddenly, her ears perked up as she heard someone pounding down the main road yelling something unintelligibly, but clearly alarmed. "Oh no! I've been discovered!" Was her first thought, thinking that she was about to be in deep trouble. Trouble indeed it was, but on a far greater scale than she had previously imagined, as a moment later the man came close enough for her to hear what it was that he was shouting.
"Run! Run for your lives!" the man shouted. "Junta is returning!" Over and over he bellowed his call, stopping every now and then to bang on the door of someone or other prosperous enough to warrant special attention. In his wake, windows were opening as people shouted first at him for disturbing their sleep, and then for their families to gather their things and run.
Junta was an older green dragon, one which lived several miles upriver of the town of Thalao. He came down to raid the town for a snack every few years when he had cleared out enough of the animals in the area to make hunting more difficult, or when he desired to add a new piece of treasure to his hoard. Rumor had it that dragons found elves to be a tasty snack. While Seeche was only elven on her father's side of her heritage, she didn't doubt that Junta would eat her if given the chance. After all, Junta never turned down the chance to eat one of the local humans who invariably had at least one of their number be foolish enough to stay out in the open when the dragon came to call.
Setting aside the pain in her leg, Seeche began to sprint awkwardly for her bolt hole, hidden several blocks away in an old warehouse cellar behind a rusty grate. The bolt hole contained all of her worldly possession. These included the broken set of scales that had been a gift from the trader family that had raised her; the rag doll that Seeche's mother had given her; and there also was the faded ribbon with the green stone in a bronze clasp on it that her mother had said had once belonged to her father - although she wasn't entirely certain she believed the last. Perhaps it was a trinket that had been gifted to her mother when her father was trying to gain her mother's attention, but Seeche doubted that she would ever know the truth. It had come from her mother anyways. These were Seeche's most prized possession.
In addition to these, there were a few other odds and ends that she had collected over the years. There was the copper pot that only leaked slightly and the steel knife with just enough handle left to hold on to. There was the bedroll that she had stolen from that visiting traveler long ago, and the blankets that were just slightly more material than hole. Then of course, there was also the rest of her collection of perfectly-weighted darts, she couldn't forget those. On more than one occasion they had earned Seeche a bit of extra coin in competition with the other townspeople.
Knowing that for a dragon who could sniff her out, Seeche's bolt hole was hardly a safe place to hide, Seeche swiftly gathered up the belongings that she wished to keep and fled for the forest. Behind her, Seeche heard the rest of the townspeople fleeing towards Lord Spichot's manor. It hadn't been attacked before. However, she wondered that if this time with no easier prey available, the dragon would attack and destroy the manor itself with contemptuous ease. She hoped that with far more easily accessible prey the dragon wouldn't notice her.
Seeche was so distracted with putting as much distance as possible between herself and the town, that she never noticed the gnarled root sticking up out of the ground. Catching her ravaged leg on the root, she fell hard, the agonizing pain making her curl up into a ball, her arms clutching her leg rather than trying to break her fall. Seeche felt a sharp pain in her head, and then all she knew was darkness.
When Seeche finally awoke, it was to see an elf she did not recognize bending over her. It had to be a stranger, there were no other elves that lived in her town.
"That was a nasty fall you took, although I wonder where you tore up your leg. It certainly wasn't from an old worn tree root," he said.
Reminded of her leg, Seeche gasped as it started to throb in pain, if not nearly as much as she had expected it to despite having treated it earlier with the salve. Reaching down to investigate, she discovered that the elf had re-bandaged it. Or, to be more precise, he had properly corrected Seeche's makeshift job.
"Who...who are you?" Seeche asked blearily, still feeling somewhat out of it from her fall. Based upon his clothing, well-made despite showing a considerable amount of wear, she guessed that he was a traveler of some sort. He only carried a small backpack, with no sign of a pack-animal which a merchant would be bringing along if they weren't packing all of their goods on their back. The answer she got shocked her out of her daze.
"My name is Dronja."
Just four words, spoken softly, but the elf might as well have screamed it at the top of his lungs. She pulled away, fast. Seeche may have lived her entire life in a small town, but the name Dronja was very well known in dark tales used as threats by bully boys everywhere. Dronja the Assassin, the deadliest person in centuries, and quite possibly the deadliest assassin to ever live.
According to the legends, in the early days of his career he had been known as Dronja the Betrayer, for the way that he had first claimed his title as an assassin. The unwritten code for a killer wishing to join the ranks of the assassins is that they must kill someone for no other reason than to become an assassin. Most picked a target at random, however Dronja had taken it a step further, and a lot more personal than most. His target, or to be more accurate, targets, had been his closest friends and traveling companions, who he murdered in their sleep. Only one had managed to escape, having been lucky enough to be attending to the call of nature when it happened, and having also been quick-witted enough to flee on horseback as soon as he realized what was going on. Seeche had heard one version of this story from an ancient elf merchant who claimed to have heard the story directly from this survivor in the distant past. According to him, Dronja had been acting oddly in the weeks since their last stint in the army, which inspired the lucky fellow to flee rather than try to figure out exactly what was going on.
Seeing Seeche's reaction, Dronja backed off a bit, giving her some space. "Easy now. If you aren't careful, you'll just hurt yourself some more. I've fixed you up once, but I'm not that interested in practicing my healing skills to fix you up again. Anyways, I've told you my name, what's yours?"
"My name's Seeche," she spat, "and I know who you are, murderer."
His eyes drooped, like he was remembering the past with sorrow. "Yes, I once was a murderer, an assassin. But that was due to a dark priest's spell on me, countered years ago. I have tried to put that all behind me, but some have long memories, not that I blame them. After all, few have heard of the more recent accounts that tell another tale, as opposed to how far the stories of my past actions have traveled. I will never make up for all that I did during those years, although I have tried my best."
"Now why should I believe that?" Seeche demanded.
"Well, for one thing, I just spent my time and energy to heal you of a torn-up leg and a cracked skull. Will you at least give me a chance? You have nowhere to go; the dragon destroyed the town and killed everyone in it." His voice was still calm, but now slower, and a bit halting, as if uncertain how his words would be taken.
For a moment Seeche was undecided. But he was right, she thought, he had helped her and he deserved to be given a chance at least. Besides, he was known as a methodical assassin, working for hire and taking out his target with a minimum of fuss. He was definitely not one known to kill random strangers who just happened to get in his way.
Moving carefully, Seeche got up and looked around. Her bag was a few feet away and didn't look to have been tampered with. Few knew the knots that she used to close her bag, and she figured that if Dronja hadn't tampered with it yet, he was unlikely to mess with it at all. More importantly however, she needed to see for herself just what was left of her town.
Leaving Dronja behind, Seeche wandered in that direction, climbing a mound at the top of the bluff to get a better view. She clung tightly to the trunk of a gnarled old tree, bracing her feet against the ground she was standing upon trying to contain her shock as she stared in disbelief down into the clearing.
The town was...destroyed. Utterly and completely gone. There didn't seem to be so much as a single building left standing, much less intact. The manor was gone, its stones scattered all over the place; docks and warehouses smashed and burned to the ground. And then there was the marketplace and homes, there was nothing left of them. Nothing living moved down there, not even a dog or pig or goat. Nothing. Everything that Seeche had ever known was now gone.
Dronja had walked quietly up behind Seeche, and now he gently took hold of her shoulders and held her. Surprising herself, although perhaps not him, she pulled free just enough to spin around, then threw herself into his arms and wept. Normally she would have felt some apprehension at a stranger being so close to her, but for now, all she could think of was what she had just lost. Seeche may have hated and despised her home, but it was still her home. An indeterminate time later, Seeche could finally cry no more. She shrugged out of Dronja's embrace and went to sit on a nearby log, looking out straight ahead, but not seeing anything.
Interested in reading more? Email me at adarajin1988@gmail.com and I will try to make a note of you to send you an email when the full book is published.