He looked up.

His father stood over him with a worried face, and the boy could see all the rough contours lining up along his cheeks, blurring once in contact with the red war paint that crossed his face.

"Are you alright, Atasá:ta?" His father asked.

"Why are there tears in your eye, my son? Do you not understand that this is a sign of weakness?" His father continued. Ata hadn't even realized he was crying, he had totally forgotten where he was. He looked around and saw the sprawling forest, as well as the endless floor around him. He noticed dirt had been kicked up everywhere he sat, and soon realized that he had fallen.

It all soon came back to him as his father helped him up. They were practicing running through the trees, he had missed a step onto a branch and fallen, hitting his head on the way down. A roaring ache surged through his skull as he regained his footing. He put a hand up to his forehead and realized that he had a nasty cut where his head hit the tree. A trail of blood flowed slowly down his face.

"Do not be discouraged, my son. This will be the first of many falls. You will fall in the woods while we are training so that you will not fall on the ground when there is a templar blade at your throat" his father told him. He stifled back a tear in response to his father's words.

He looked up again

The sky was a shade of gray that he had never seen, or rather noticed. The perfect line between black and white hovered over everything he saw like a warning to him, to tell him that what he thought to be true was only a piece of what actually was. He looked back down to the man standing a few feet away. He noticed his body had conformed into his natural prowler stance and he remembered, or rather, was reminded of what was happening around him. The buildings cascaded around him like a circle of onlookers waiting for a deadly blow, and as the rain dripped off of them, the man who stood a few feet away came rushing forward with a knife in his hand.

Ata did what he had been trained to do, and his body moved in an exact flow of movements that corresponded to the man across from him like a choreographed dance. But the dance they performed wasn't a friendly one. It didn't bid good will to the participants or anyone watching. The man was close enough now to slash at Ata. Ata responded with flawless dodges, but then the man stabbed forward too fast for Ata to move. Ata instead grabbed the hand before it could sink the weapon into his chest, and twisted it as far as he could get it. The man was too well-trained to be phased by the move however, and quickly moved his hand away. Before he was a safe distance from Ata's reach, Ata grabbed the man's shoulders and shoved with all the strength he could muster. Using the diversion, Ata flicked his left wrist down to reveal a familiar blade, but no blade showed. He looked down in confusion to remember that the blade's mechanism had been badly damaged by the man just a few minutes before. Ata invoked a curse from the spirits upon both himself and the man, and reached for a more familiar weapon, the skinning knife he had owned since he was a boy.

Ata wasn't certain how effective it would be against the man clad in black across from him, but he had run out of options. The man had gotten back up, and the two now circled each other as they waited for each other to make the first move. The man in black pulled down his hood to reveal a pale complexion. The man's race didn't surprise Ata, the templars were known for their preference to Europeans. Ata sooned realized he was being given a sign of respect, so he pulled down his hood in a similar fashion. His hair had grown far beyond the tribal style he wore just a year ago. The man's face was still covered in cloth, but Ata could still see the concentration within the tense contortions of his profile. Both of the men were hunters, and while their respective allies may jeer and shout at their enemies, both of these men knew that a man must be silent to catch his prey, but who the prey was, was still meant to be seen.

The man in black suddenly burst forth in a barrage of attacks that Ata struggled to dodge and deflect. All at once he was too slow, and a wild swing of the knife put a deep gash into Ata's shoulder. Ata winced in pain, but he knew he couldn't let the man get the advantage. In less than a second that the man stopped to see his handiwork, Ata kicked his legs out from under him and the man in black fell along the cobblestone path face first. Ata quickly used the diversion to turn the man over and press the knife upon his neck, but before he could take the man's life he stopped.

"Wait… I know you"

End Chapter 1