By Mistress of Magic
Disclaimer: I don't own the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Phillip Pullman but I'm a big fan. This is my fanfic. Enjoy!!
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Prologue: The Subtle Killer/ Lyra's Oxford
Jordan College stood stark and still against the early dawn sky, decisively by far the grandest and largest of all colleges in Oxford, as it had always been. In these last few years, nothing to speak of had changed. The College still spread out over the land it was stationed on, old and new pieces of it dating back from as far back as the Middle Ages to the present, and as splendid as it ever was.
The Master of Jordan had died a little more than two years ago, an old man of almost ninety. The Jordan Scholars missed his occasional visits—and, possibly more, the happy sounds of their children and the ragamuffin children of the servants enjoying long battles in the claybeds with the young gyptians and clayburners' rascals.
But most of all, they missed the laughter and constant pranks of the little girl they had loved and raised as their own, although that same little girl, now a blossoming young woman with a child, still lived in the same small, shabby bedroom.
Inside that little room, Lyra Belacqua-Silvertongue slept peacefully on her narrow bed safely underneath a thin springtime blanket that was printed with paisley designs, something that had come into her possession a short time after her daughter was born. Nydia Belacqua, who was just under two years old, slept as peacefully as her young mother, in the old crib-bed that used to belong to Lyra when she was a baby, her daemon currently assuming the carefree form of a very small pale brown rabbit who was nestled somewhere in the bedclothes near the baby's feet.
Lyra herself had not changed much within these last few years, either. Nearly a woman of twenty-three, her hair had not yet lost its tawny fairness, nor her eyes their crystalline blueness, like stolen bits of sky. The young mother lay on her back, her hair slightly tangled in sleep, and spread clumsily over her pillow.
For one looking inside the room, it would be a vision of pure innocence and beauty.
But the one who was peering inside the room from a door Lyra had left slightly ajar, none of these feelings were his. He wanted to get his assigned mission over and done with. It had been unusually tricky getting inside of Jordan; to him, it felt like anyone at any minute could find him and arrest him.
No, he mustn't be caught. Not yet, anyway…He still had so much to do left undone.
He clenched his teeth together and clenched the knife's long handle in his hand, able to remember his exact orders that had been given to him such a short time ago, thankful for his excellent memory. Silently as a cat might, he crept forward, trying to ignore anything that might possibly distract him.
Kill them both! Eve's daughter must die!
His master's sharp, urgent voice rang through his mind as he prepared to make the move that would end it all. If he succeeded, then this future chaos would all come to an end.
It was time to do what he was meant to do.
Without a word, the subtle killer plunged the keen-edged dagger into the young woman's breast, and he was not afraid. There would be no consequences. He would never be found after this, could not be blamed.
It had happened as quickly as that.
For only a moment, Lyra's sky blue eyes fluttered open one last time out of instinct before death, and then painfully closed again as her own death claimed her. Lyra's hand fell limply by her side, off of the bed. She had barely felt anything.
The red-gold pine marten's round black eyes never opened---Pantalaimon's entire being simply disappeared, as all daemons do when they finally do die.
The little girl who had once roamed the darkening halls of Jordan College and saved the man she called Uncle from the poisoned decanter of Tokay, Lyra Belacqua, also called Lyra of the Silvertongue and Eve by her many allies and friends, was dead, killed by a knife so similar in craftsmanship to the one she had watch be snapped like a twig and broken in another world unlike her own.
And now, the wingless angelic creature came for her daughter. Eve's daughter, only a baby, was still asleep, completely unaware of what had just happened to the woman she looked up to and utterly adored even at such a young age.
Unaware of what was about to happen to her, unless she was saved by some unthinkable miracle near the end.
Kill them both…!
The assassin did not think; he could not afford to. Just as he was about to take the life of another within the span of that early predawn time, he…stopped. Stopped as if some unseen force had taken him firmly by the wrist, and was holding the acute dagger there in midair tightly.
"Argghh!" the killer growled, trying to free his wrist from whatever force or benevolent spirit was holding him back. "No!" whatever it was, it was not letting him kill the baby.
He scratched and clawed at his wrist, urgently trying in vain to free himself to carry out the mission he had been born for. He could barely feel what was stopping him. It was like some strange specteral form had its icy hand around his arm, and whenever he tried to rip it off, it only got tighter. The wingless angel could feel nails digging quite deeply into his tender skin.
In almost no time, there was blood running in thin rivulets down his pale arm, some of it falling in fat drops to the hard wooden floor he stood on, staining it with three crimson spots.
The angel only stood there for a millisecond before valiantly attempting to switch the knife to his left hand. But it was not working. Eve's daughter would live well beyond the time when she had at first been destined to die.
"What—is—this?" the assassin stammered aloud. Whatever force was keeping him from his duty must have been very great. Indeed, the angel himself felt as if he was about to also die.
The air that surrounded the humanlike angel suddenly seemed to hold much more fearsome pressure that it ever had before, overly strong even for an elite being such as he. Blood continued to course freely in tiny scarlet streams that bent, intertwined, and connected over the entire surface of his arm. It ran down his side as a single pale blue vein underneath his hand that seemed to be as delicate as fine filigree was severed by what felt like a knife.
The angelic assassin was losing the battle with the spirit, and finally beginning to die as well, just as the morning sun was beginning to rise. What little amount of strength he had left was leaving his body fast.
The battle was a silent one; none of the boarding Scholars ever suspected anything. The wingless angel-assassin slowly died there in the College of Jordan without anyone ever knowing, and the child Nydia Belacqua-Silvertongue, the only child of Lyra and Will Parry, remained alive and completely unharmed, while her young mother lay dead. The knife, with its blade covered in blood, lay motionless on the floor, near the foot of the bed.
The golden sunlight softly illuminated the whole room, which in the wee hours before dawn, had been transformed into a murder scene. In such a short time, two had undoubtedly lost their lives, and it was those two whose deaths would be mourned and someday avenged by others.
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Mistress: Sad beginning, huh folks? Don't worry. I'm not about to give away the rest of the plot, but it does get better.
For all those who were wondering who/what the spirit/force was, you'll find out later. ^_~