Assassin's Creed: The New Messiah
Berlin, Brandenburger Reich
October 31, 2367
'Ich folge dem Kredo für den Frieden in allen Dingen…' 'I follow the creed for peace in all things…'
'Nichts ist wahr; alles ist erlaubt.' 'Nothing is true; everything is permitted.'
These words filled my youth, though I hardly understood their meaning until my eighteenth birthday. Until then, my parents instructed me to repeat those phrases to myself every day until the words had no more to teach me. I would comprehend the significance in time, they assured me.
The second phrase was exceptionally interesting to me. Every morning, I contemplated the importance of the enigmatic words. It gave me an inexplicable sense of power, since saying that everything was permitted gave me the idea that I could live as I pleased without any contention! How naïve I was…
My name is Altaïr Krausmann. My first name is as curious as those mysterious words my parents told me to ponder, and both have the same explanation. But to explain it, I must first narrate to you the events of my eighteenth birthday.
Instead of our customary birthday greeting that had persisted since the day I was born – being woken up by rousing cheers and being escorted downstairs for birthday cake – my mother solemnly placed a hand on my shoulder, peacefully disturbing my sleep, and irrevocably changing my life.
I arose, rubbing my eyes groggily and followed my mother down the corridor, wondering what could be wrong. She betrayed no hint of her knowledge of the events about to transpire, choosing instead to build up a kind of suspense. She gave me a Yankee mouth-freshener pill, which I popped into my mouth, feeling the warm, minty taste of the expensive, imported oral cleaner, which my mother had clearly saved for this occasion. But she still gave no allusion of why she was behaving strangely and slightly erratically.
I followed her to my parents' bedroom: a small room with whitewashed walls and a foldable bed. My father always preached about the values of simplicity and freedom, and his choice of room decoration reflected his opinions. But today, the room looked even more bare than usual: the bed had been folded, and all the paintings and posters removed, except for one. The large woollen tapestry featuring a mysterious symbol was in its usual place, and the absence of any other decoration highlighted its allure. It was a laterally-symmetrical white diamond, with its arms forming a large bow at its base. A flaming torch, something I had never seen outside of a university text-pod, illuminated the darkened room from a bracket next to the tapestry. From this anachronistic light-source, I saw my father and two of his friends, wearing identical white shirts in contemporary fashion: hooded and long, standing guard near an open fire, heating a brand-ring. I swallowed; what was I doing here, I wondered? And more importantly: was I going to be forced to wear that ring?
My father's deep, commanding voice shook me out of my reverie. "Altaïr, meinen Sohn, today you become a man."