Quest Thread

[Arganaut]

Characters: Felix of Assassin Quest and Salem of Mage Quest
Authors: Arganaut and ewuvi

Rain

There were some days where the axiom ‘when it rains, it pours’ just found itself to be the absolute truth. For Felix, standing mere blocks away from his intended target’s home in the midst of a terrible rain storm, this truth was a very bitter pill he had to swallow in order to continue his lifestyle.

A month or so ago Felix had been tasked with assassinating the entirety of a family within a village bordering the Cerric Kingdom, a massacre that was meant to silence this group of upstarts before what they knew could be let out. As Felix ground his teeth together, he couldn’t help but bitterly think of why he was silencing them.

Was it state secrets they had that needed kept quiet? Oh no, far too good a reason. Perhaps religious upstarts trying to overthrow the church? A little more grey, but hardly something to be oh so torn up about.

Instead, one of the children was hot on the trail of a counterfeiter. One whose activity had been severely weakening the stability of the Cerric Kingdom’s currency. Of course, the counterfeiter had to have been an influential noble, one with enough legitimate coin to silence any sane person, but the boy either had a moral compass of gold, or wanted more. So the noble family wanted the boy, and all of his immediate family quietly ‘disposed of’.

That was what Felix was here for. Instead of dirtying their own hands, they decided to call out an assassin. Which left Felix to get his own hands soaked in this poor family’s blood. Sighing as he focused, knowing this was the life he led, Felix slowly approached the home, his steps barely making a sound about the continuous pattering of the rain on the cobblestones.

He looked around the building, a nice enough home for a family the size he had been told of, and tried to figure out for himself the best way of entering. Deciding the least he could do was go about this quietly and kill these people with them barely being aware of it, Felix moved around the house and slowly snuck in through one of the back windows. An aging man was sitting at a desk. He heard Felix and turned towards the intruder, a look of exasperation and slight amusement on his face.

“Benjamin, what have I told you about-” he started, his voice fatherly and warm, only a hint of reprimand present. Felix was at first taken aback by the man’s town, his own father’s voice ringing warmly in his ears. Still, Felix pushed through this feeling, approaching the aging man even as he spoke. With simply a slash of his arm Felix produced his dagger and struck it through the old man’s neck, severing his vocal chords before he could allow another sound to pass through in his last moments. The man looked up in horror, bleeding out quickly. In a last attempt at resistance, he shoved a vase off the desk, making it shatter loudly on the hard floor.

“Papa?” a young man called, footsteps indicating that he was approaching the room. “You okay?” Felix’s head snapped towards the entrance of the room, the assassin quickly moving to press himself up against the wall that supported the door’s hinges. The door opened slowly as the boy peeked in. “Oh God! Papa!” he ran into the room towards his dead father.

Mid-step the boy’s movements were brought to a halt, Felix quickly stepping from behind the opened door’s protection to stab the boy in the back of the head, before quickly wrenching the dagger free. He collapsed forward, landing with a thump. Felix swung his dagger, the blood flinging off as he pulled out a second, quickly if silently moving through the house.

The rest of the family appeared to be in a sort of living room, gathered around a fire.

“Will, I’m worried about your father,” a motherly looking woman was saying.

“Mother...I think we should get out of here,” the eldest looking boy said, looking uneasy and stepping back, away from the hall where Felix was hiding in the shadows. Felix punctuated this note by slowly setting himself up to step away from the shadows, throwing both daggers towards the unassuming skulls of two of the family members before brandishing his short sword. The two boys were hit squarely, one in the head and the other in the throat. The former died immediately, but the other one choked, trying to pull the dagger out of his throat. The mother screamed and the remaining three boys around the fire burst into motion, rushing towards Felix to try and tackle him. In the chaos, the eldest boy disappeared silently, Felix only noticing as a door latched shut.

Felix had an inkling that he was the main target here. Although it made him sick to his stomach, he knew he was going to have to slice his way through these four quickly if he was to reach the eldest son in time to keep him from getting away. Felix took the three charging sons in stride: the first boy was brought down quickly enough when Felix simply sliced his short sword across his neck, pivoting on his feet to slam the pommel of the short sword into the next’s face before forcing the blade through. A small tussle occurred with the last, but it was over the second Felix threw his shoulder into the final son, pulling his short sword out of the second and driving the edge of the blade across and quite cleanly through the last attacker’s neck.

The mother stood in a state of shock, tears running down her face as she watched her children murdered so coldly. Felix kept his hood down, barely being able to stand the look of the mother as he simply walked by her towards the latched door, quickly running his blade across her neck in her state of shock before moving on towards the door.

By now, Felix’s stomach was forcing itself into so many knots he thought he might fall over and pitch his last meal at any moment. However, his assassin training forced him to overcome this, forced him forward. Felix sliced his sword across the latch of the door, before pressing it open.

The eldest boy was waiting for him, his arms crossed over his chest and a look of sad acceptance and...hope... on his face. “You are a monster beyond words,” he told the assassin.

Felix kept his blade at the ready, standing firm as he took a deep breath. “And you are either very brave or very foolish.” Felix said, nearly choking on his words as he slowly stepped to approach the young man.

“I have morals. Something you could never comprehend,” the man replied, not taking even one step back.

“I applaud you.” Felix said simply, continuing step forward. “I will make your stay in the real world as short as possible.” Felix muttered as he quickly stepped forward and slashed at the eldest son’s neck. The man was faster than Felix had anticipated though, and grabbed his arm, redirecting the blade to stab through his stomach rather than through his neck.

“My name is Tam Marion,” he uttered, his voice agonized. “My brothers were Benjamin, William, Darren, Henry, Jakob, Andrew, and Avery, and we will all watch as you burn in Hell for what you’ve done here.”

Felix watched as the life drained from Tam, his blade slowly sliding out from the young man’s stomach as he dropped to the ground, collapsing in a heap as Felix merely watched, his chest tightening as he nodded.

“Such a fate would be the least your family could be given as repayment for this.” Felix muttered quietly, placing his sword back in its scabbard as he prepared to hand out his prayers for the gathered dead.

A strangled scream came from an armoir in the corner of the room, the doors bursting open. A small girl, maybe ten or eleven years of age emerging. “You devil!” she screamed, launching herself at Felix. “My brother! My Tam! You killed him! You killed them!”

Tam groaned, looking up in horror as his baby sister, whom he had wanted so badly to protect, rammed into the assassin. Felix took the blow easily, stumbling slightly as the young girl set upon him. With the practice of a child with so many elder brothers, she kicked the sides of his knees, knocking him to the ground and pummeling his face with her small fists.

“Kill you! Killed them!” She sobbed inarticulately as she hit him. Felix just sat there numbly, taking her hits as the young man just seemed to space out. If he stopped her, grabbed her fists and kept her from striking him, he’d have to kill her. As far as his assassin training could take him, Felix couldn’t even entertain the thought of killing such a young girl, younger than Alecia even...

The girl sobbed with frustration as she battered her knuckles on his bruised face. “You! Will! Pay!” she screamed and grabbed his head with both hands, slamming it hard into the floor. Felix felt a stab of pain, and then everything went dark.

When he woke up, the house was empty, the bodies removed, leaving behind only bloody smears behind. The first thought that entered Felix’s mind was that this was Hell, where he’d have to live forever more in the home of those he had so brutally slaughtered. Taking some time to work the spinning out of his head, Felix realized that he was alive... which, by all rights, he shouldn’t be.

‘The young girl didn’t kill me while I was unconscious.’ Felix thought to himself, no amount of relief in his thoughts, but great amounts of grief and guilt. Felix checked his things and, finding himself mostly there, quickly moved to leave the haunting estate. When he opened the door and stepped out of the house, he saw ten graves, each marked with a crude cross. Sitting on one of the fresh mounds was the girl, watching him with hollow eyes.

“You will pay for this. Some day, all of what you have done will come back to make you suffer. And my family will watch from Heaven as you do, and your screams of agony will be music to their ears.”

Felix stared at the young girl, the rain that still refused to abate soaking them both to their bones as he did. Felix looked at the graves... she had done a good job, all things considered. Felix walked over to one of the graves, staring down at it as, within his head, he offered the entire group the Guild’s prayer, as he felt this girl would not welcome him vocally offering it. As he finished, he cast one last look over at the girl before walking for the street. A small rock bounced off the back of his head, but he shook it off and walked more quickly, trying to escape the scene of the massacre.

When it rained, it poured, and when Felix’s career as an assassin came to offer its due to reality, the fine was steep.