Voices in a counsel room.
"We can take them! All we have to do is wait for Holly's band of bitches to arrive and then charge through! It's just the upstart Baron and his band of guardsmen, we have them outmatched!"
A second voice, deeper and with more authority.
"We can't rely on Holly. That whore has her own agenda, we're on our own."
A third voice, cold, dispassionate, emotionless, deadly.
"... Yes, you're on your own..."
A white mask emerged from the shadowy doorway, wreathed in a black robe and hood.
From the shadows of the robe two daggers flashed through the torchlight and struck the two bandits.
They fell dead, but one died with a scream on his lips.
The white mask disappeared back through the doorway into the darkness, but not before leaving the illusory image of a rose on the two bodies.
Through that same doorway came the guards who heard the scream, Christian easily hid from them in the shadows even as their torchlight passed over him.
Once they were in the room they saw their dead leaders.
Again the mask appeared from the shadows, a long bladed dagger was drawn from a well oiled and wrapped sheath, then it was sheathed again in the back of the rear guardsman, two more were ended similarly before they noticed that they were being killed... And when they turned and saw the white mask with the apathetic expression they promptly shat themselves as the reaper drifted like a ghost from one to the other before they all lay dead in pools of their own blood.
Christian wiped down his blade as he left the room... The carnage had only just begun and he had all night... All of this glorious night.
He strode down the hall and reflected... Yes, there was a warmness there in his chest, he hadn't noticed it had grown there and with it a bit of humanity... But he only noticed it
now because it was dying, being contrasted by the cold returning, being replaced by the piece of the void that was him.
He deftly stepped into the shadows and didn't have to wait long before one of the guards he so carefully timed and memorized began making his round past this spot. He was like a puff of smoke the way he moved rapidly yet silently. Pulling the man into the shadows and cutting his vocal cords before the man could make a sound, he then died a split second later.
The rest of the guards on patrol in the keep died similarly, their movements perfectly mapped and timed, not a single one came across a body before he got to them and took them out.
It was a quiet night, silent and peaceful for the bandits and almost an hour of this had passed.
An icy blue stare behind a grim faced white mask... and with every kill that icy stare just got colder, and colder... If an assassin weren't an occupation but a race alongside man or mer, this was it.
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Two bandits drinking together in the feast hall, one prattling on, the other silent and timidly nodding or chuckling whenever it seemed right.
"-So I say's to her, 'Ye can't breed a goat with a fecken horse!' an she just stares at me an say's, 'then git on top of me an prove it!'"
Christian pushed the doors open on squealing hinges, the two boisterous men paused in their revelry and watched the slow, steady, methodical step of the assassin as he entered the room... His blue eyes dead and seemed only to see the floor in front of him.
"Ey, who the ell are you?!"
The glint of the dagger, the blue eyes slowly slid up to stare at them with an equally monotone voice.
"Just like you said... Hell..."
Dropping their mugs and drawing their weapons both men charged, swinging their swords again and again, Christian was smoke, a vapor, a cloud, he moved with such slight and subtle movements and yet their blades could not reach him. nicking the edges of his cloak as he dodged and weaved around their slashes.
His blade whipped out and took the throat of the quiet one, blood sprayed into the eyes of the boisterous one as a second dagger took him through the underside of his jaw and out the roof of his head.
The screams attracted attention from those remaining in the keep, the body falling from a window on the second floor into the camp below attracted attention there.
Christian remained in the feasting room... only two doors to get in or out, and now everyone was coming here... A whole army to take out one assassin with dead eyes and a blood splattered mask.
Men filed into the hall to their deaths one by one at the edge of his daggers, their armor useless, their weapons finding no flesh to bite, their numbers mere casualties...
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Screams echoed into the night even reaching the Baron's camp.
Christian pushed open the doors of the keep and stepped towards the waiting forces outside, another army... But they made no move forward as Christian descended the steps, his dead gaze listlessly drifting over their terrified faces... The red mask with a grim face, two red blades, a man in black dripping in blood... And a rain of thorny roses falling from the sky.
Like animals trapped in a cage they attacked, trying to surround him, trying to overwhelm him, trying to get anywhere near him without being slaughter in droves! He was like a whirling dervish, his blades slipping past guard and shield, armor and instinct. Fifty became forty, forty to thirty, thirty to twenty, twenty to ten... And ten remained huddled against the gate, in utter terror that a one man army just decimated them in a mere two hours.
Christian was growing tired, but he had calculated their numbers and just how much effort to spend on each one, he economized his energy, never getting excited or flustered, never registering panic or doubt... Ten was enough, they will do...
"You survived to the last. You will be my elites... Eventually."
