Author's Nauseatingly Stupid Note: hi there, ladies and oh-so-few gentlemen, and welcome to this second chapter! Take a sit, and enjoy as the words roll down your eyes to form tasty sentences and then the snake rose and struck the little girl—um, it seems something's gone wrong…um…yeah, definitely. Just pretend you never read that.

You probably never did, anyway, so just read on the reasonable bit coming, and REVIEW or else! Get that! Review, review, review…(are you hypnotized yet?)

Chapter Two

Swapping Roles

Arach sighed self-satisfiedly, stretched luxuriously and finally stood up. She knew were to find the hunters, and had only to look for the Hawkke in person, then she would have to kill. Poison being too dangerous in the kind of crowded inns hunters frequented, her weapon would be a dagger; she would hide in the mist, and strike. The hall of Hunters was not far from the Dancing Tree, and when she arrived after a few minutes violent walk, she was in the middle of a full crowd of men, walking, talking, laughing, fighting, working, drinking, searching…As she passed next to him, a young man with pale blue eyes like clear topazes slipped a hand around her slender, impossibly slim waist, but she threw him such a kick of her solidly booted foot that he found himself sitting on his back on the hard burnished wooden floor, with a laughing crowd of peoples surrounding him, and she gone. Arach finally arrived at a dark room like the Dancing Tree's one, and she walked straight to a tall, big muscled man, dressed in grim grey from head to foot, and copiously drinking, who was a friend of hers: 'Elly, got a thing to tell you,' she said, sitting next to him at the thick table on which he was slumbered limply and wearily.

'Araaaaach, what a deliciouuuus surpriiiiise,' simpered Elly, taking a sip from his glass mug.

'You're drunk?' asked Arach sternly, glancing disgustedly at the three empty mugs in front of him on the dirty table.

'Nope,' replied Elly, and pushing his half full glass away from him with a calm, sweeping gesture, then he linked his hands together and said. 'See?'

'Do you know a guy named Hawkke?'

'Hawkke? Oh man, you chose them well, Arach if you've got him,' he said, giggling like a kid.

'Shut your ugly mug,' she snapped, and continued, 'Where can I find him?'

'He goes to the Bird's Tavern to sleep there every night, at about…midnight, one hour of the morning.'

'Right 'en, bye,' she said, standing up briskly, but he grabbed her arm and said sympathetically:

'You'll certainly take a glass with me, na?'

'Got some work to do,' she answered without even stopping, and went out of the Hall.

She looked at the huge clock of the Cathedral, which was mournfully and dismally ticking its long, sharp needles of time towards death. It was just quarter past eleven. She pulled the old brown coat tighter around her frail body and, a slender dagger of sterling silver pressed in her hand, walking quickly, like a shadow, in the mist, she went to lean against the wall next to the Bird tavern's door, from which peoples never ceased coming out and in. Studying the scene with her sharp eyes of jet nuggets, she decided it was probably too dangerous to kill him outside, as hunters had always many friends around them; it was probable he would have someone to help him in no time, and she wanted a quick, discreet assassin, even if she would not be able to poison him with one the powerful, silent drug she had in one of her numerous pockets, stolen in the eternal, extraordinary cupboards of the Alchematoria of Nariee.

Arach had always been very proud of the fact that she worked in a place that gave her everything she needed to do her nocturnal work. Not that she really needed to do this work, the night, but she was using every second of her life to gather money, to achieve her plan, which was to build herself a very high fortune and then take her revenge over all the peoples she hated, which was her main and in fact only goal in life, reach the black iron gates of revenge after the long, steep hard way slithering through thorns, and picking up every single scrap of money she could get her ghastly white hand on.

Arach went right in the Bird Tavern, and spent the little free time she had before her work drinking with some facetious thief, and playing Thief-Chess with him. She had already loosed three games and won five, when she heard a voice saying, in the corridor just behind her table:

'I'm tired, Yrees, and I am not hungry, I wish not to be deranged.'

'Very well, Master Hawkke,' answered Yrees's sensuous voice.

Quickly, Arach slipped in the corridor, and went to rest against the door she knew was to be the hunter's door. The thief, meanwhile, pulled his game back in his pocket, and went to rob in the streets, without even feeling suspicious or curious. The girl was dark and bad looking enough for him to know what kind of thing she had abandoned him to do.

Pulling herself closer to the cold stoned wall and tightening her hand around the narrow, sharp dagger she had taken from one of the many pockets of her cloak, Arach waited that the Hunter had finish his little talk with another hunter, and straightened when she heard his firm, quick steps. When he finally came past her, brisk and rapid, there was no one in the corridor, and a smile of triumph came to her small red lips as she slowly, nearly casually pulled herself upright, and walked as silent as a shadow behind him. When he opened the door with a little golden key, she raised the dagger, and stroke, quickly, the blade flashing quick-silver in her fist.

As quick as thunder light, his hand grabbed her forearm, threw her in the room, where she crushed against the stone wall, and slid down the hard floor like a rag doll, while he locked the door behind the two of them. Hissing with exasperation and fury, and self-hatred, cursing viciously for this spoiled murder that would have added a few golden coin to her heap, she gathered herself on her bruised knees, and started looking for her dagger, taking her faded black hair away from her eyes with a blind, angry gesture, thinking irresistibly of the lost reward. The dagger, unfortunately, it was in his hands she found it. Her mouth twisting without she could stop it in a warped, lugubrious way, a thin hiss escaping her crimson lips, she raised her eyes toward him.

He stood just before her, looking extremely ironical, and the beauty of his predator-like face was striking. His eyes were of the golden color of an eagle's piercing eyes, even the same almond shape, his noose was crooked like a beak, and his lips were tight and white, distorting with an arrogant expression of utter superiority. Dressed with brown leather breeches and a brown leather sleeve-less vest over a brown velvet tunic, he was very tall and slim, but with arms and a torso finely muscled, and the fit, elastic, elegant slenderness of a feline. And his hands were long and slim, like hers, but claw-like, with black gloves of fine leather.

'An assassin?' he said slowly, in his young, harsh, ironical and cruel voice, 'How delightfully interesting…'

'Give me my weapon and let me go,' she said hoarsely, slowly getting on her unsteady feet.

'Do you really think I would do this?' he asked, in a mocked serious tone.

Again, her snake hiss. She staggered to the locked door, but he caught her back, seized her wrist, and unceremoniously threw her on the bed in the corner of the small room, and asked:

'Why do you were trying to kill me?'

She sat, and, throwing him a hateful look:

'That's none of your problem.'

'It is,' he said calmly, sitting on a chair next to the bed.

'I was paid,' she finally said, and tried to go once more, but again, her threw her back on the bed, as if she was but a vulgar rag doll.

'Who?'

'Someone,' she answered, still lying down.

'Who?'

'Someone,' she replied, sitting up.

He lunged to her, like a leaping puma, and sent her a slap, right in the face, so hard she collapsed on his pillow. Her hair was all over her face, and she was burning with humiliation, but she said nothing, clenching her teeth to stop herself screaming; and he seized her by the wrists, between the end of her ragged sleeves and the top of the cracked leather glove, and squeezed them so tightly, so harshly, she bit her own lip, drawing blood she could taste at the tip of her slim pointed tong.

'Who?' he asked again, his thin lips twisting horribly.

'A woman. Blond. Tall. Beautiful. With a fine nose. That's all I know,' she said in a low voice, writhing on the bed, stupefied by the unbearable pain his iron hand around hers was causing.

He suddenly released, her, and she collapsed on his pillows a second time. Around her frail white wrists, there were two red circles, and she was so exhausted she didn't move, lying on this man's bed, smelling his sweet, masculine perfume on the white pillow. Hawkke, meanwhile, was thinking, a hand in his glorious fall of glossy black hair, his lids half drawn on the glittery golden ancient of his eagle eyes. He suddenly seemed to wake up, and his eyes, like fire arrows, fell on the girl. A girl on his bed. A girl with her messy faded black hair spread raggedly on his pillows, her pale translucent lids closed over her knives-like eyes, her crimson lips slightly opened, her chest rising and falling rapidly at the rhythm of her wild breath, a spidery hand forgotten on his leathered thighs.

This girl was an assassin. He had an assassin lying on his bed. A thin, heartless, pale faced, miserable child of an assassin, and she was on his bed. He leaned over her, but she hastily bolted up, and staggeringly tried to stand up. She was so dizzy she swayed on her legs, and, shaking all over, she slowly made her way to the locked wooden door.

'It is no question that you go away,' he hissed in her ear, as he dragged her back on the narrow bed, 'Sleep,' he added, tossing her upon it and leaning back away, 'We're going at dawn.'

Author's Incredibly Sense-less After-note: aha, so, what do you think about Hawkke? Or about any of my characters? Hope you like them and that you do or you don't, just tell me, which means, REVIEW! Remember about this curse I told you about? Well, it's still here, and don't play Buffy, and try to draw the curse off with equally reasonable and horrid means such as onions, garlic, little brothers and uurgh :shivers: Unsharpened Pencils…Don't, just don't. Because there's a counter curse, and Master Yoda's gonna send Count Dooku, I mean, Master Kenobi to get ye if you do. Got the thing? By the, way, I just wanted to ask, don't you think weddings are sad? Anyway. Just review, that's all I ask.