My love,
As I write this you are asleep. If the light wakes you, I will have some explaining to do, but at this moment you are sleeping peacefully. Tomorrow is the day, it seems - the culmination of five long years, our moment of revenge. So why can I not quiet this part of me which fears that, at the tipping point, you will flinch?
Is it that I fear you loved my father less than I? Or that I doubt your resolve to strike the killing blow? I do not think so.
Rather, I fear that you have lost so much already, that you cannot bear to lose more. I think that you would let Germain rule France if you thought that it could save me. Have you ever known me to need saving? Have you ever had cause to think that I would accept it if it were offered?
My fate is my own, my choice is my own. If somehow we both return from this, I will burn this letter. If you are reading it now, then I made my choice there in the Temple. Know that I made it gladly, and do not take the burden of it onto yourself.
Be at peace my love, and walk what path you will.
All my love,
Elise.
A tear dropped from her eyes, smudging the ink as Elise lifted the pen from the table. Everything they had accomplished over the past 5 years seemed to meet together at one point - tomorrow. What would happen? What will fate decree for the two of them? Another wave of sadness washed over her as she looked upon the letter once more. She could imagine Arno sitting inside their old house in Versailles, drinking himself to sleep over her death and this letter. Trying to forget the pain that Germain had brought upon him through her death.
A sob racked her body, and with shaking hands, she folded the letter - slowly, methodically, until she felt a hand grab her shoulder.
Elise flinched, twisted around and tried to push off from her captor, only to find Arno standing behind her, a mask of emotions upon his face.
"Elise," he whispered.
She looked away, tears still evident in her eyes.
Arno lifted a hand and cupped her cheek, gently lifting her head toward his.
"Elise, look at me, please," he said.
Elise looked up, and found nothing but pure conviction and love. She watched his eyes light up, and sank into his embrace as he pulled her closer.
"No matter what, I will not leave you," he said.
"And Elise, I swear upon my life that we will walk out safely from the Temple, and that Germain, will be forever buried within it."
His face moved even closer to hers, until their lips were barely an inch apart. The gap quickly closed as Elise felt Arno place his lips upon hers, and for the first time ever, opened herself completely to another person.
-LINE BREAK-
Elise woke to Arno's calm breathing, and gently untangled herself from his arms. Arno grunted and pushed himself up. The night had been long, and they were as ready as they could be. She smiled and stretched before pulling on her standard attire. Without words, she found Arno's hands and stepped out, absorbing the warmth of the sun.
Together, they climbed up upon the roofs of Paris, and ran in the direction of the Temple, a stone monolith that towered over the city of Paris. Just looking at it brought dark memories and dangerous thoughts to her mind. Their boots thumped quietly against the shingles, each step barely making a sound. From afar, the two may have looked like wraiths gliding in the dawn.
Before she knew it, they reached the Temple. The two stood there, quiet, enjoying the silence while it lasted.
Elise broke it first.
"You get a chance at Germain? You take it," each word sharp and empty.
With a leap, she ran off toward the stronghold, ignoring Arno's hurt look upon his face as he registered her words.
--LINE BREAK-
Arno stared at Elise's figure, slowly growing smaller and smaller as she sprinted off towards the distance. A pang of guilt shot through his chest as he lifted his eyes to the castle.
His eyes flew across the terrain, surveying each guard's position and looking for a routine or pattern. There were almost none.
"Germain isn't playing, is he?" Arno muttered to himself.
Slowly, Arno stood up, balancing lightly upon the wooden planks underneath his feet before jumping off the building in a spread eagle. He felt the slight impact as his back slammed against hay.
No guards saw or heard him.
Quietly, Arno slipped out from the hay and moved to the wall, waiting for a group of guards to pass by before grasping the stone and pulling himself up onto the wall and knelt behind the cover of a few barrels.
In the distance, he could see one of the snipers making a circuit, about to reach his hiding place. Arno readied himself, muscles relaxed, breathing quiet and methodical. The man closed in, step by step. Two meters remained, then a meter, only then, did Arno dart out, grab the man, and silence him with a blade to his throat.
He moved carefully, avoiding loose bricks and taking light steps. One by one, the men guarding the walls fell without a sound as Arno made his own circuit around the fortress. He didn't stop until every single one of the guards had died.
Only until then, did Arno drop to the courtyard, his boots slightly thumping upon the ground. Quietly, Arno donned the outfit of an extremist and began listening in on a conversation.
"Did you hear about the Assassin?" one asked
"Who?"
"A man who has killed almost all of Germain's supporters. Germain warned that the man would be here today," he lowered his voice, "Germain also said that this man can singlehandedly free an entire castle, like this one."
"Hah! With sixty guards? Unlikely!" his partner continued, "Besides, the real worry is Germain himself! Have you seen the tower? Sometimes lightning just streams out of nowhere and hits it!"
"That's normal," he retorted.
"Yes, but the lightning comes out of the tower, it goes upward, and it appears in the middle of day!"
What is Germain up to? he questioned himself. His mind entertained dozens of far fetched ideas, but none seemed logical. Slowly, he began to drop back, only to quickly sprint to catch up with the guards.
"Do you know of Germain's current location? I have a message that I must deliver to him."
The guards looked up in surprise, "Germain remains in the summit, but to see him you need clearance."
"Thank you, my friend," Arno began to turn.
"Wait! Who ar-"
The men failed to finish their sentence as Arno silenced them.
"Merde," Arno swore under his breath, it would be seconds before their bodies were discovered, he would have to move quickly.
Immediately, Arno sprinted towards the citadel, found a handhold, and began to climb. One hand after the other, one foot after the other. His thoughts wandered and his fingers ached, but he ignored them.
With each passing second, Arno worried that a soldier would spot him and shoot him, but he continued his ascent.
-LINE BREAK-
After a good fifteen minutes of painful, rough climbing, Arno pulled himself up onto a ledge at the summit of the citadel - only to come face to face with Germain.
Arno stood, dumbfounded for a millisecond before Germain pointed the blade at him. Something deep inside him, an inexplicable feeling of shock and nervousness much like the ability to see things that many could not, awoke, and right before the crackling bolt of energy speared him through, he dove into the cover of a large stone column. The lightning smashed into the stone and immediately cut through, leaving a crater where he had stood mere seconds ago.
"What the hell was that?"
Slowly, he peeked around the corner of the pillar, only to be met by a bolt of lightning again that just barely missed and streaked off into the distance before dissipating into the atmosphere.
This was a weapon that could kill in an instant. A weapon that could take on whole armies. And only then, as his heart continued to rise in his chest, did Arno realize the full magnitude of the situation and how dangerous this mission truly was for Elise and him.
"A weapon of the Isu..." he whispered.
As he stood with his back to the pillar, Arno contemplated just how ridiculous his and Elise's plight now seemed. Arno had hoped by all hopes that as a relatively standard Assassin, he would never have to face against a weapon of the magnitude that Altair and so many other great Assassins had faced. The very fact that he would have to accomplish something only the greatest Assassins had ever accomplished almost diminished all his hopes of assassinating Germain.
But then Elise's face appeared in the midst of his worry. And his resolve steeled.
As the smoke began to clear, he sprang forward, ignoring all rational thought and charged Germain. Time slowed down. Germain lifted the sword. Arno's eyes widened as he saw the swell of energy travel through the sword - and just as the light began to concentrate into one focused pinpoint of energy, he dropped to the ground and slid. The bolt of electricity just barely passed over him and dissipated into the air around him, leaving a metallic smell.
The moment he saw the opportunity, he took it, and leaped out of his slide. Time slowed even more as he watched Germain's upturned face, a mask of pure shock. Then he descended and slammed the wrist blade into Germain's chest.
But it never reached its target.
Germain's sword seemed to throw out a force field, and Arno was thrown backward into the pillar behind him. His head slammed into it with a nauseating konk! and his vision swam before nearly blacking out.
When his vision cleared, Germain had disappeared and teleported a hundred meters away, underground.
-LINE BREAK-
Elise sprinted across the dead fields, wiping tears from her eyes. She heard the clang of blades and the thunk of bodies as Arno easily killed the groups of guards watching over the courtyard.
She ignored the fighting and continued running, one destination in mind.
A separate tower that her father had shown her when he was still living.
I am so dumb for even suspecting this, she thought to herself but continued anyway.
It was tall, made of stone, and blended perfectly with her surroundings. No one would suspect anything about it, even an Assassin. The only people who knew the truth was the current Grandmaster and Elise herself.
Her fingers brushed the worn stone, looking for that slight imperfection. She continued to probe the stone until her fingers hit a slight opening, inside it, was a small sheet of paper with a diagram upon it.
"ut pater intellectus dirige nos, may the Father of Understanding guide us" she whispered, speaking to the paper.
Runes glowed across the paper and the wall of the tower, garbled words of the Templar Order - Egyptian hieroglyphs, lost dialects that even Elise didn't recognize, Arabic, English. And then it began to crumble, bit by bit, revealing a massive chamber. A blast of cold air hit her face, the smell of rotting corpses and papyrus and oil.
A wave of uncertainty passed over her, was this the right chamber? Had her father betrayed her? What if this was a trap? But she forced these worries down, this may be their only shot at Germain, and if the rumors were true, there would be no other way.
Breathing deeply, she took her first step, the sound of her boots echoing across the entire chamber. Then another step, then another, and on the seventh step, a whoosh rushed through the room, and the impossible happened. No longer was the chamber dark and dead, but beautiful and clean. Braziers surrounding the entire room lit, casting light upon the center of the room - a circular dais that held an orb with intricate designs all over it.
Surrounding the dais was one sentence, written in Latin, "When all seems lost and the foundation of the Order is corrupt, remove the orb and you will see the truth, but be warned, knowledge can be painful and one must endure pain to achieve it."
Once again, a wave of anxiety rose, but she steeled herself, and reached out towards the sphere. Elise barely touched it before pain shot through her entire body, a hot wire that seemed to replace her spine. She screamed, and screamed until her voice grew hoarse and she collapsed upon the ground, eyes squinted shut as if the loss of vision may subdue the pain.
When the pain subsided, and she opened her eyes, the world had changed. Screams rang from outside, massive balls of fire sent quakes through the ground. Elise examined herself, no longer was she human, but a ghost.
Walking was nigh impossible as well; her entire body felt as if she was encased in glue. Instead, she willed herself to go forward, struggling to reach the exit. And she saw something that would haunt her memories forever - which might not be that long.
Thousands of men lay strewn across the battlefield, screams that had been subdued by the tower's walls rang out, now amplified. The air was smoky, probably from the fiery rocks that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Earth as they landed upon the castle.
And then Elise sensed something, she didn't know what it was, but it was powerful, a sense that grew by the second.
Far off in the distance, a man appeared. Slowly his face came into view. The man was tall, about Arno's height, maybe a little shorter. He had broad shoulders and a cape that bore the Templar cross and wore chain mail armor. In his right hand, a simple, menial sword. In his left, he held the codex of the Templars.
All of a sudden, the windows above him broke as an Assassin, albeit a fat one, dove into a hay bail and ran off, a surprisingly golden sword in hand. Immediately, the man gave chase, the sword was obviously something of great importance. Elise willed herself to fly after them, watching the battle from afar.
Slowly, the Templar closed in and drew his sword. He roared and lunged at the Assassin, who somehow resembled Thomas de Carnillon - maybe he was just a lookalike.
The battle was over before it began - the Templar easily overwhelmed the overweight Assassin and casually disarmed him. Stooping, he picked up the sword, a beautiful blade coated with gold with runes that seemed... familiar somehow. Elise's eyes were captured by the beauty and the runes etched upon the sword.
"Snap out of it Elise, this isn't even real," she snapped at herself.
And then the world exploded in a halo of light.
A bolt of lightning streaked towards the Assassin and sent him flying.
The pure power of the discharge sent a shiver down the back of her spine, leaving her speechless.
Seconds later, the world disappeared in a flash of light, leaving only blackness.
A voice rang out, deep, slightly disorienting, "You see the dire situation you are in, the sword that you see, is known as the Sword of Eden a weapon that one of my kind created and intended to be a weapon of vast incomparable power."
The voice continued, "When used correctly, nothing can stand against it, but you may have a chance."
Strings of incomplete thoughts rushed through her mind, The old Legend? The Father of Understanding? Jupiter?
"No, I am not the Father," he responded, as if reading her mind, "I am Jupiter, and the old Legend as you know it, is somewhat of the truth."
"I am also not truly here, for my race was entirely wiped out millions of years ago."
"Before, we had weapons like these, many of them, but only a few remain - the apples of Eden and the Shroud of Eden are examples of our existence," he continued, "We are known as the Precursors, and our history is much too long to explain in words, or even in views, but, I can lend you the memories."
"Do it," Elise said.
"However, the process will leave you disoriented, and possibly unready for the coming fight that you know may end your's or your lover's life."
This was the one piece of information Elise had to understand, and as much as she knew she would regret her choice, she responded.
"I am ready."
"So be it," Jupiter acknowledged, a hint of pride within his eye.
He lifted his arms and his eyes grew larger and his pupils turned white. Immediately, a bolt of pure energy connected the two, and at first, Elise felt nothing.
Then the memories came, blocking out all vision and feeling.
Somehow, over the surge of knowledge, she heard Jupiter's voice, "Be forewarned Elise de La Serre, the path you take is not one that you may return from safely, I wish you luck."
He disappeared in an instant, but Elise didn't notice, she had already fallen unconscious.