Living Despite It All
A Word: Normally I want the chapters no less than 2k, but the next chapter sorta demands this.
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Altair twists to avoid blows with their enthralled Brothers. His own blows weak and uncertain as he's faced with familiar faces. The act of actually harming them holding him back enough that it is going to get him killed.
The fool. He can't see what she can from up high, can't see that there is no other option. Malik throws the first three knives. Asif and the rest of those who followed her follow suit more slowly until only Altair stands. "Altair! Up here!"
"You picked a fine time to arrive," Altair says as he straightens up, his shoulders slumped as he walks up to her. He's much more damaged than he was leaving Jerusalem, and it's obvious killing de Sable took a lot of effort.
"So it seems," Malik agrees. Altair's robes are torn, and his bracer of throwing knives nearly empty. She's fairly sure she can see the sun through a few arrow holes in his red sash.
Altair sways a bit and Malik reaches out to steady him. Bracing him up as he looks over at her men. Counting them. "Guard yourself well, friend. Al Mualim has betrayed us."
"Yes. Betrayed his Templar allies as well," Malik says with a bitter smile, though it seems none of them live any longer to rue that betrayal.
Altair's look of surprise is quite comical despite the circumstances. "How do you know?"
"After we spoke I went to the buildings seized by the Templars. Robert had kept a journal, filled its pages with revelations," more than Malik has had the time to read fully. Her time taken up with the revelation of the Apple and Al Mualim's role. "What I read there broke my heart, but it also opened my eyes. You were right, Altair. All along our Master has used us! We were not meant to save the Holy Land but deliver it to him," there is movement below them in the city and Malik watches as more thralls appear. Their movement smooth but not under their own control. "He must be stopped!"
"Be careful, Malik. What he's done to the others, he'll do to us given the chance," with the Apple, and Malik wonders how much of that he knows too. Altair didn't speak of it, but she'd had a hard enough time believing the motives of man from him. "You must stay far from him."
"What would you propose?" Malik snorts because Altair is talking nonsense right now. Her mind remains her own for the moment and staying far away from this matter will only make it worse. "My blade is still strong and my men remain my own. It would be a mistake not to use us!"
Altair hisses in frustration but he closes his eyes tight and when he opens them he is not as tired looking. There's some sense in there now as he nods. "Distract these thralls then. Assault the fortress from behind. If you can draw their attention away from me, I might reach Al Mualim."
"I will do what you ask," Malik agrees because it goes along with what she had thought. Altair is wounded and tired, but he is Al Mualim's pupil. If anyone knows the old man best it is him.
"The men we face, their minds are not their own. If you can avoid killing them..." Altair trails off and there's sorrow in his voice and regret in his eyes when he casts them down to where their Brothers lie dead.
"Yes," Malik says softly because she never thought she would ever see that in Altair. That kind of empathy for the dead that is still foreign to her. "Though he has betrayed the tenets of the Creed, it does not mean we must as well. I'll do what I can."
Malik promises and knows that she won't be able to keep it completely.
"It's all I ask," Altair says and a smile quirks his lips up. Honest and relieved as he turns back to the citadel. To Al Mualim and his precious treasure. "Safety and peace, friend."
Were they? Malik muses briefly on the word they've both now thrown around far too casually before deciding it is right. Has probably been right long before either of them had even heard of Solomon's Temple for all that they would have denied the link then.
"Your presence here will deliver us both," Malik states because this is something that she can feel in her very bones as being true. She smiles a bit before turning her back on him and looking at the men she has command of. Her smile fading as she thinks on the difficult task before them.
"Just be quick about it!" Malik calls out to Altair's retreating back, and one of his hands flicks out in a brief acknowledgment.
"Run," Malik tells her men and they obey her. Running back the way they came to the area that is only a short climb to the back entrance of the citadel. They'll gather whoever can still fight and give Altair all the distraction he needs.
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It's hard to remember to use the flat of her blade and the hilt on the men attacking her. Their eerily blank gazes throwing her as much as their complete willingness to give their lives. It sickens her, this parody of loyalty, because Al Mualim had no need for it. Any of them would have willingly done the same if he only asked them to.
It drives home the things she read in de Sable's writings. This lack of respect for the people he apparently only sees as pawns.
Malik charges the seemingly endless wave of Brothers, Rafiqs, and civilians. All focused on taking her life as she fights to reach what they're determined to protect, he citadel where Altair works hard to save them. She spins through them easily as they have no finesse. Laying them out as quickly as she can with only two feet and one arm.
She sees her men fighting the same in flashes between the vast numbers. Asif throwing people around bodily, Latif laying in with precise flicks of a staff he'd picked up somewhere, a few Novices working together to bring the black smith down. Hamid moving faster than she thought he could still.
Malik ducks and weaves under a clumsy punch from a civilian and sees Aban below her. Head bleeding from a blow she delivered without noticing it was him she hit. The civilian goes down hard with a split scalp, and Malik doesn't have room to worry about anything else as hands grip her hood from behind.
She ducks and weaves, strikes and kicks, and counts the seconds as the thralls continue to press in.
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Malik knows it's over when the people being controlled drop suddenly. Like rag dolls left discarded by bored children. Malik is left panting just outside the gates of the garden, and casting about wildly for anything else. For anymore enemies, but everyone lays still except for the reassuring movement of their chests. She can see Asif and Latif down the hall from her. Not as far in as she had gotten. Movement outside means the others are well too.
She turns and runs into the garden, following a light and the distant trace of voices she had caught only fragments of before.
Altair stands still, face raised up to look at- Malik blinks as she comes to a stop. It's a map of some sort, and it takes her a bit to recognize the breadth of it before it flickers and dies. The light collapsing back into the sphere Altair holds. The Apple.
"Altair," Malik says, and Altair blinks hard before turning to look at her.
"Malik," the hand holding the Apple falls and he looks further into the garden. Malik follows his gaze and sees the still body of Al Mualim. "He's dead."
"Good," Malik feels nothing but anger for the man that used to be their Master. The one she had tried so hard to please in return for the chance he gave her. Maybe later she will, when the betrayal isn't so new.
"Good," Malik repeats, reaching out to grip Altair who looks lost in a bad place. "He left no other choice."
"He did not regret," Altair says, voice low as people begin to trickle in. Asif and Latif helping a limping Hamid. "In the end he thought he too was aiming for peace."
"Was what you saw in the eyes of out enslaved Brothers peace?" Malik asks as he lets him go and points at the Apple. "This thing is dangerous, Altair. The thoughts it inspires with what it can do are dangerous."
Altair stares down at the Apple and nods slowly before putting it away. One of the Novices makes a stifled noise at seeing Al Mualim's body. The sound seems to snap some of the daze out of the man, and Altair looks at the people gathering around the old man's body. "I have to take care of this."
"There are many graves that need to be dug," Malik agrees but Altair is shaking his head violently.
"No, I have to make sure," he steps forward and his left leg buckles slightly before firming. His next steps are more careful as he moves forward. The small crowd parting for him as he kneels and picks the old man up. Easily as if he weighed nothing, and Altair was not bleeding from skin more cut than whole. "I have to make sure that artifact didn't do anything to him, that he does not have the chance to come back."
"Do what you must," Malik waves away the few confused looks and accepts a grateful nod from Altair. "I will begin to see about recovery here."
Altair leaves the garden and Malik can see the stirring bodies of the people as he moves past them. Malik watches in relief as the people pick themselves up off the ground. Seemingly none the worse. With only a few notable exceptions.
"It hardly seems real," Hamid says eyes fixed on a series of blood stains that arc too wide to have been only from Al Mualim.
"Truthfully," Malik says with a wry smile, "I expected much worse."
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