Cheers, Mates!
I like that much better than any of my other intros.
At the time I'm writing this, views have reached 147.
My old record of views was four. It feels great to know people are reading my stories.
But of course, you're not here to hear my crap.
You're here to hear my story's crap.
:)
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Arno and Harper were doing a bit of parkour on the rooftops. The trip to Paris had taken a while. It was 7 pm, and they were still training.
Harper was slowly getting the hang of reckless climbing and swinging, and slowly abandoned her slow climbing style.
There was a castle far off in the distance, a landmark Arno knew well.
The Bastille.
They paused for a moment to look at it.
"Feel like taking a look inside?"
Harper looked at Arno like he was a madman. "The hell, Arno? We'll get shot up!"
"Not on my watch."
Arno grinned at her expression. "I run around in there sometimes to practice my fighting and parkour. I don't want to get all rusty."
A fifty seven year old man running around in the Bastille.
"Bullshit."
"Yes, but it's my bullshit."
He had a point. Every piece of bullshit turned out to be true.
"Follow me."
Arno ran along the rooftops and leapt down into the street, behind protestors.
He motioned for Harper to follow him. She decided to jump into a hay cart to smooth out her landing.
She clumsily rolled out… And tripped a guard. A revolutionary.
"I'LL HAVE YOUR HEAD!"
Arno hopped down into the Bastille's surrounding moat, thinking Harper was behind him.
This is it. I'm actually going to die.
One revolutionary was a brute, the other was one of those top hat ones that threw stun grenades.*
She had backed into a wall, still on her butt.
The top hat raised his sword.
Harper moved, but he still grazed her in the waist. She cried out and flailed. A little noise rung out, like some kind of dart.
The top hat had a hidden blade in his head. He fell backwards, blood squirting from his forehead.
She'd shot the hidden blade on accident.
Tears came to her eyes as she remembered…
"YOU BASTARD!"
"I'm sorry ma'am! It was an accident! I swear! No… No please! I have a family! No"-
Harper stabbed him with her pocketknife right in the forehead.
Harper came out of her little flashback to find it was raining. The brute was cowering in the corner.
"Magic! She's a witch!"
Brutes were stupid like that.
Her tears mixed in with the rain. Every time she was reminded of her first kill it broke her spirit.
Arno was waiting at the secret tunnel in the Bastille. Surely Harper would be here by now? It had only been five minutes.
Trust your instincts. Take a look.
Arno climbed up the wall, then sprung off and snagged the drawbridge, pulling himself up. Luckily, a few civilians were close up and he blended with them. He had to find Harper. Hopefully the trail hadn't got stale.
He used eagle vision. Everything dimmed. There were little bright bits everywhere. Harper. He sprinted to a wall. Not running into it of course, but finding a trail there. There was a brute there. He was cowering in a corner. Arno grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall.
"WHERE IS SHE?!"
He saw the blood.
"She went"-
Arno stabbed him in the throat with the hidden blade just as he was about to speak.
"Fuck!"
"Are you alright, sir?"
"No! I mean yes! I mean…"
Arno ran off, trying to follow the rapidly fading trail.
"I'm lost. I'm actually lost."
What was that horrible stinging in her side?
Harper had been so worried she'd forgotten all about getting grazed by the sword.
The rain was mixing in with her blood, making little slightly red tinted drops with blood swirling around in them.
The streets were almost clear because of the rain. It was getting dark now.
Harper expected the drunks and criminals to come out.
She put her hand around her knife in her pocket.
"No. I'm not killing anyone else today."
There was a tavern/inn in the distance. Maybe she could rest there.
Inside, it was settling down. The guests had gone to their rooms, and the drunks had gone home. Most of them at least.
Harper put her knife on her belt. No one was going to mess with her now.
She saw a few strange looking characters.
At first she ignored them, and it sort of bugged her.
And then again… Arno always taught her to trust her instincts.
She sat on the barstool second nearest to their table.
The bartender was kind of staring at her getup. No doubt she looked pretty weird.
The people all looked somewhat drunk, except the hooded one. Besides the hood, he had a black mask that made him look like he was a faceless man in a hood.
There were seven others at the big table.
The one at the end of the table sitting beside the masked man was in orange silk robes and a purple turban. She was adorned with gold jewelry and had a pouch made of silk encased in chainmail with a gold lock.
The pouch seemed to be slightly glowing.
There was a heavily built man in a black jacket with a machete on his back. Looked like he had a falcon as well. Ugh… It was staring right into her eyes.*
Across from him was a man who was wobbling around like he was drunk. He looked- Harper almost screamed. He was in an iron mask and tan coat. With a spiked club on his back, as well as a rugged looking axe that made a cross of weapons on his back.*2
To the iron mask's left was a very gaunt man. He had a rifle, and an eyepatch. His other eye was a cataract. He looked pretty old. She wondered how that worked.
There was a man who was dressed like an assassin, with tan robes with brown trim. He had a spear with a golden spearhead.
Across from him was a man in a fancy sort of French lieutenant outfit, complete with a bicorn. He looked very handsome.
The last one was in strange looking light armor, made of leather. She looked as if she was Japanese, with a staff and two slightly curved knives on her belt.*3
They were all wearing gold necklaces with crosses on them.
Templar crosses.
The gaunt one was speaking. "I don't care how old he is. He's an assassin. A threat." He had a very menacing British accent.
"He's a retired old man living alone in a manor in the middle of nowhere. I would hardly call it a threat." The lieutenant spoke up.
"I will kill him slow. He will die in agony. A very fine trophy." The Japanese one said. Was that haiku?
"He wouldn't be worth your time, Hikaru." It was the masked man who spoke up. His voice had a Russian accent.
"Tobias will deal with him." The masked man motioned towards the boy in the tan assassin robes.
"Why should we let the rook go after him?" Parrot man said. His was an African accent, very deep.
"My name is Lynx*4, not Tobias. And we were just speaking earlier about how he wasn't a threat, weren't we? How he wasn't worth your time?"
"We have more pressing matters to attend to. This isn't about petty arguments." The turban woman's voice was quiet and calm. Beautiful, you could say.
"Arno Dorian is as good as dead. I'll be back tomorrow. Might just bring one of his bones for Terminus to gnaw on…"
The iron mask nodded wildly. He seemed to be salivating.
Lynx, the tan robed assassin was just leaving.
Suddenly, the doors to the tavern burst open.
Lynx was knocked down.
It was Arno. "Thank god, Harper, I thought you were dead."
The Templars and Arno remained quiet, staring at each other.
"Attaque!" One of the Templars yelled.
Terminus the iron masked man ran forward, taking his spiked club in his left hand and his axe in the right.
Harper got off of her stool and stabbed him in the back with her hidden blade. It didn't seem to do much, but then he stumbled into a table, knocking it over and flipping over it, crashing into a barrel.
Arno grabbed Harper and ran out the door. He fired his phantom blade behind him, and there was the sound of pierced flesh. Whoever it hit, Harper didn't care.
They all looked about the same level of deadly.
Arno finally reached a seemingly safe rooftop. He waited a moment for Harper to catch up, and in about five seconds, she ran beside him.
"We can exchange stories later. Right now, we have pursuers."
He sensed two of them. Lynx and DeFalco.*5
Lynx jumped down from a rooftop above them and drew his spear. DeFalco climbed up the building and drew his machete, his falcon ready to spring.
Arno went for DeFalco, hoping Harper could hold off Lynx for a bit.
Arno's cutlass and DeFalco's machete clashed, sparks flying. Every time Arno and DeFalco locked blades, DeFalco pushed him off with immense strength. He had to stay away from the edge of the roof…
Lynx was very speedy, for a spear wieldier. Harper dodged attacks left and right, stabbing at him every time she got close enough. She always missed… He had the advantage of long range. She had an idea… She backed up, and charged.
It looked like suicide.
Lynx readied his spear to impale her.
The second he struck, she slid under.
She stabbed his right leg with a knife, and when she was behind him, stabbed him in the lower back with her other knife. He groaned, twitching every once in a while.
Arno was being pushed to the edge of the roof. If he took a hand off his blade to try and get Defalco with his hidden blade, he'd surely get pushed off… But maybe…
Arno kept his right hand on the handle of the blade, and took his left hand off the top of the blade, where the blades were touching. His was horizontal.
Arno moved right, but kept his blade in front of DeFalco. Defalco didn't expect this and pushed Arno's sword away, jerking forward almost off the edge of the roof. Arno used the momentum for a roundhouse to the back of the head.
Defalco fell into a hay pile, unfortunately, but the kick still knocked him out. Arno motioned for Harper to follow him and they ran across the city to the stagecoach.
"We need to get to St. Denis*6. I have to muster our defenses…"
Harper had her phantom blade ready to shoot anyone who attacked them.
"That Lynx guy sure was tough."
"His technique is to keep people at a distance so he can get them while they're weak. I should know. I trained him."
"Will you please tell me things before they're right up in my face?!"
"What do you want to know?"
"I want to know about these robes I'm wearing. You looked horrible when you saw them."
"… Alright, but you have to tell me why you got banned from the Boston Brotherhood."
"…Deal."
Spoiler alert. Obviously.
"This is a story from when I was in my mid-twenties, back when I was still an assassin. I was in love with a certain… Templar. Named Elise."
Harper was intrigued.
"Elise and I had been friends since childhood. I was wrongly accused for her father's murder. Elise knew it. And I was locked up in the Bastille for it. Then I found out I could've prevented it."
"Elise and I stopped talking to each other for quite a while. But we reunited after we saw a common goal. And to celebrate our Unity, I had those robes made."
"Elise was killed just two days after the robes were crafted."
"…Oh." Was Harper's response.
"Now tell me your story, Harper."
Harper looked around to make sure no one was following her as she remembered that day and put it into words.
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"Clarence! Wait up!"
Harper and her African friend Clarence ran along the street, pursuing a thief. He'd just stolen from Harper's pockets, and the two initiates had abandoned their reconnaissance mission to get him.
Clarence finally got him sneaking under a scaffold, and put him in a full nelson.
"Get the money while he's pinned!"
Harper ran forward to the scaffold, but before she could reach it, she noticed the man carrying a heavy sack that looked to be of bricks on the roof.
He was struggling to lift it, and put it down for a moment to rest.
It was too close to the edge. It fell onto the scaffolding, collapsing it, and burying Clarence and the thief under a ton of wood and bricks.
Harper dug into the wood until she found Clarence's hand.
It had no pulse.
Harper fell to her knees and sobbed. The man who dropped the sack ran to her side and tried to comfort her.
Her sadness slowly turned to unbridled hate and fury.
She stood up, pocketknife in hand.
"YOU BASTARD!"
"I'm sorry ma'am! It was an accident! I swear! No… No please! I have a family! No"-
Harper stabbed him with her pocketknife right in the forehead.
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"Harper Claire Gideon, the court has a unanimous vote. You are exiled from the Boston Brotherhood in accordance with breaking our tenants and killing an innocent."
"That innocent killed my friend"-
"He killed Clarence accidentally. Leave our sight."
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I hoped you enjoyed this 2000+ word chapter. Spent all morning writing it just for you :).
We have a crapton of apostrophes to deal with.
*The black jacket machete guy is the guy from black flags multiplayer. He was my favorite, I think he had a yellow du rag. And for some reason I keep imagining shades on him but this is like 1800's type deal.
*2 this is the iron mask skin. I called him Terminus. His 'rugged axe' is the tanner's axe from unity dead kings dlc.
*3 I didn't want Hikaru to be cliché, so I scrapped the katana idea.
*4 I was going to make his name Lynx in French, but it was the same with French and English.
*5 Anyone remember DeFalco from black ops 2? I swear, I almost got him that mission… I know there's a bio for the machete guy, but I lent Black Flags to a friend and I thought that name was cool anyways.
*6 St. Denis is the city in which Dead Kings takes place, according to the wiki. I know this is unreliable, and I was gonna but Franicade but I didn't know how to spell it right.
Thank you guys for your support. I'll try to keep a chapter a day schedule going.
Cheers,
TorrentOfIrony