The font on this may be annoying. If it is I'll try and change it. Chapter posted 18th of July.

Whenever anybody asks me about the Irish character I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious."

-Edna O'Brien

I remember on the second of February 1908, my first lesson.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

A man in a dark green coat, with a white hood told me this. My mother had died a week before (I discovered why years later) and he offered to take adopt me: an orphaned 14 year old.

I was desperate for food, living on Dublin's cold streets. I didn't care who he was, or the fact that he could be a murderer of children. He looked rich and I was hungry.

So I sat in a large- slightly damaged looking- Manor on Dublin's outskirts eating dinner, him sitting across from me. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

That was the first time he had spoken since finding me in the doorway of a house and offering to help me.

I heard the door open, and then slam shut downstairs.

"Liam are you here!?" the voice shouted, with a Dublin accent.

"Aye that I am!" the tall man next to me replied in a Waterford accent, standing up and walking down the dusty oak staircase, "I'll be back in a minute- Barry was it?"

"Brian. Brian Byrne." I managed to say despite my anxiety, taking a drink of the warm tea to steel my nerves.

I finished my dinner, unable to make out what Liam was saying to the other man, because they were downstairs, whispering in Gaelic.

Liam was back a few minutes later, with his hood down, revealing blue eyes, dark hair, and a face that looked like it was in its early thirty's.

"Bed. I'll explain everything in the morning." he said, sounding smug like he had won an argument. And he had. By god he had.

The room looked like it had seen better days. (But was still better than the apartment I had lived in with my mother)

The bed had a mattress, sheet, and quilt which was more than the pair of thin blanket's I used to sleep on. The room had a chair, desk, nightstand, and wardrobe. The window was boarded up. This room alone contained more furniture then me, and my mother had ever owned. For the first time in my life I fell asleep without my stomach grumbling for more food.

3rd of February

I woke up and went out into the Manor house's front room. The tile on the floor were cracked yet looked like they were expensive and well made. To the left and right of the thick, green front door were a pair of staircases, though one had no banister and was caved in down the center. I went up the left stair instead, to where the dining room was.

Liam and another man sat at the table eating eggs and bacon. Well, Liam was eating, but the other man had his feet on the table, chair leaned back, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper.

"Get Brian his breakfast, John," Liam said, breaking an egg with his spoon.

"If he wants breakfast he can get it himself," John- who I now realized was the other man from last night- replied, nodding at a plate of food in the kitchen, through the door.

I went over and fetched it, sat down, and began eating the best and largest breakfast I had ever had at that point in my life.

"Why am I here?" I asked blunt as a hammer.

"I like this kid. No fancy words. Reminds me of me," John chuckled.

"He doesn't remind me of you. He's not an eejit for a start," said Liam, getting an eye roll from John as a reply.

"Before I divulge all our secrets, I need you to deliver this letter for me to a woman on Sackville Street."

He handed me a letter, then pointed at the door.

"How will I know what she looks like?"

This was very confusing. Lots of women would be there.

I had once delivered a letter to the wrong person, for a man (It turned out delivering to his lover, was different from his wife) I didn't want a similar beating.

"You'll know. Or maybe you won't and if you don't know, come straight back and don't give it to anybody."

So I found myself underneath Nelson's pillar wondering who I should give it to.

Ever since I was young, I have had a strange ability. When I really focused hard, I could see in a different manner. I could see sounds and hear shapes. The world would turn grey but things I needed would be perfectly visible. I used this ability to find the woman. She leaned against the other side of the pillar, earning a few stares and mutters about having no sense of decorum or how to be a lady. She was dressed in fine, red and white clothes and a hat, that were the latest fashion in London. I walked up to her.

"Excuse me Miss, I have a letter for you...I believe?" I held out the piece of paper.

"Ahh yes that would be mine. Here's a few coins for your trouble. Oh, and tell my brother that this sort of information, should not be put in writing."

She smiled, taking the letter and walking into a nearby alley. Nobody else saw her, but she began to climb the wall, like a spider.

I took this as my cue to leave.

The walk to the house was long and exhausting. Mostly because I got lost and had to use my ability to find it.

"Well, well, well he returns!" Liam said as he opened the front door and checked to see if anybody was watching.

"She said to not put that information in writing," I told him, as he closed the door behind me.

"Of course she did... Did she pay you? Was she wearing fine clothes?" I realized I hadn't checked how much money she'd given me.

"She was wearing fancy clothes sir. She gave me...Three pounds!?" I gasped. One pound was an average man's weekly pay. Three pounds was more money than I had ever held.

"Lucky devil" he chuckled.

We went into a room at the end of the hall, on the ground floor. John was there, drinking a whiskey. A fire burned in the hearth and two swords hung crossed above the mantel piece.

"I'm a man of many vices, Brian. Not the really, really bad ones though. I have strong mor… morals," He said, looking fairly sober.

"That's only because you're banned from all the brothels in Ireland!"

Liam laughed and hit him on the shoulder.

"Now sit down Brian. I have a long story to tell. Bits of it are interesting, some bits, I can't remember because I fell asleep when I first heard them," Liam said this in a very serious tone.

"John and I are part of the Assassin Brotherhood. An assassin is a killer"

"I'm in a room with two killers! I knew I shouldn't have went with him..." I thought.

"Of course you want to know who we kill don't you? Our enemies are known as the Templars. They try to control the world and everybody in it. To some extent they do. King George is a Templar. Many of the Landowners, British army officers, MPs… are Templar's. Anybody can be a Templar, as long as they have wealth and power. Or they could be a pawn and paid by them. We kill the Templars to keep the world safe."

This was only the beginning of Liam's story.

He told me tales of Altair who made the brotherhood what it is, and Ezio Auditore da Firenze who fought the pope Rodrigo Borgia, in a fist fight for an object made by "Those who came before". A pirate who killed a traitor assassin, took his robes then became an assassin himself. His quartermaster, who freed hundreds of slaves. Achilles' Davenport and the savage monster he created, that won the American Revolution. Arno Dorian and... The French people waving flags around.

The fire burned low at this point, and John had fallen asleep from drink and the boredom the words "Connor Kenway" incited.

"Well Brian it's time for bed," Liam said, getting out of his armchair slowly. He had sat there for several hours.

"Oh and...do you want to join the brotherhood?" He asked.

I thought hard. They had sheltered and fed me, but would in all likelihood stop doing so if I said no. The stories he had told me were amazing and I asked myself: If I join them, could somebody tell such stories about me in a hundred years? Or I could not join them, and the only story told about me, will be how annoying it was to move my frozen corpse from somebody's doorway."

I smiled. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."