The Fourth Life: Eagle Hunter

Surprise!

I present to all of you my birthday present!

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Inspired by historical events and an over-active imagination, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a single-cultural team of one religious faith and belief, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

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Even though bullets were whizzing through the windows with the intent to kill them all, the gravity of the situation was focused on the four people present. It was not lost on Arno, Elise, Cheyenne or Zoë that they were all here together. Cheyenne had confessed her conflicted love for Arno and Zoë to the both of them, and Arno had confessed his own conflicted feelings to Cheyenne and Elise.

Cheyenne and Arno felt the tensest out of them all, and Cheyenne more than him, while Zoë and Elise seemed to be trying to kill each other with their eyes, both of them sending the other a message about their respective lover.

MINE

Granted, Elise was in no way, shape, form, or fashion going to be able to ever wound Zoë Nightshade, much less kill her, so the whole staring contest was rather comical.

Even more so considering they were all being shot at.

"You two go ahead to Mirabeau!" Cheyenne shouted over the cracks of gunfire. "Zoë and I will handle these guys."

Elise had no problem with that. She grabbed Arno's arm and practically dragged him along with her as she scrambled out of Germain's private office. Even though there were still bullets practically raining through the windows, the redhead still managed to find time to cast a glare at Zoë, who cast one back, making sure that she didn't put so much energy into it that the mortal died of fright, as such a thing had happened before.

When the two were gone, Cheyenne said to Zoë, "I'll draw their fire and you shoot them with your bow."

"Or, alternatively…"

Zoë flexed her ears, listening to where the sounds of the guns was coming from, and then she drew her silver recurve bow, Paris' Bow from centuries ago. The Hunter knocked an arrow and drew it back. Before she released, the string and the arrow both glowed an ethereal silver, and when she did release, the arrow went zooming through the wall as if it were made of air. Cheyenne heard one less piece to the gunfire orchestra.

Smirking and without breaking eye contact with her deadpanning little one, Zoë continued shooting arrows through the wall until there was no more shooting, at which point Cheyenne huffed.

"Cheater. What is that, anyway?"

"A blessing from m'lady called Ghost Arrows."

"Can she bless my guns like that?"

"Of course…but you have to join the Hunt."

"No thanks, I'm good."

Zoë's smirk got just a little wider. At one point, early into their budding relationship, the Huntress had made it a point to do everything she could to convince Cheyenne to join her as a sister in Artemis' Hunt, but now that they had confessed their feelings to each other, their love, Cheyenne couldn't become a Huntress, and Zoë was going to have to quit the Hunt, since all forms of romance were forbidden by the Moon Goddess.

It made Zoë feel strange that she was so willing to honorably discharge herself from the group that she'd been a member of for thousands of years, saying goodbye to her sisters of old forever, and her beloved mistress, when she herself used to abhor any girl that left the Hunt for turning her back on her sisters and goddess.

After Heracles, Zoë had convinced herself that love was a curse that only invited pain and suffering, but here she was, a believer once again.

Like the song would go two hundred years into the future from this point, "that's the power of love."

"Come on," Cheyenne said. "Elise and Arno are going to be talking with Mirabeau about a Templar/Assassin alliance, and I do not want to miss that drama, especially after we missed the initial round."

After Zoë stole a quick peck on the lips, the two were on their way for the Mirabeau's estate, their journey conducted at a full sprint across the roofs that went unimpeded. They arrived at the Assassin Mentor's estate, went inside, and found the old man dead on his bed, Arno and Elise examining the same Templar pin that was used to kill Monsieur de la Serre.

Cheyenne froze at seeing the one Assassin in the whole Brotherhood, sans Arno, of course, who had stood up for her, believed in her, protected her, and even loved her, dead. The emotional damage was mounting while the social damage was already running through her head.

Mirabeau had been her shield, the one who deflected the council and the other Assassins, the one who kept her safe from their attempts at killing her and defacing her. With him dead, it was basically open season on Cheyenne. The council would assume total control of the Brotherhood, Sophie Trenet, the sour old bitch, being the leader of the group, and would no doubt revel in her newfound authority of the girl she hated with a passion, that all Assassins, council or otherwise, hated with a passion. The possibilities were endless in what Trenet could do: expulsion, execution, removal of rank, cleaning out chamber pots, etc.

That was just the social stuff of course. After all of that ran through Cheyenne's head in the blink of an eye, the emotional stuff came crashing down on her and she buried her face into Zoë's chest and sobbed. Mirabeau had become like a grandfather to Cheyenne, not in the same capacity as Shay, but a beloved figure nonetheless.

And like Shay, Mirabeau was now dead.

Elise looked at Arno like, What's her problem?

And Arno looked at her like, He was her only friend in the whole Brotherhood, the same one that scorned and hated her, and tried to kill her multiple times.

Elise looked at Arno again. Oh.

Arno looked back at her. Yes, "oh."

The Assassin went to Cheyenne and gently rested a hand on her shoulder. She turned in Zoë's arms to looked at him through teary eyes.

"We'll mourn later. Right now-"

"I'm going to find whoever murdered Mirabeau, and skin him," Cheyenne promised with so much venom that she could've ended an entire pod of whales.

Arno nodded.

Investigating the bedroom revealed the Templar pin that Arno had presented to the council a few days ago, which all but confirmed to Cheyenne who the murderer was, since her suspect was the last one to have had the pin in his possession. Arno found a glass in the cupboard that was out of place, and Elise confirmed that it had been laced with aconite, a favorite poison of the Templars.

Obviously, whoever murdered Mirabeau had meant to frame Elise.

A little more searching later revealed a handkerchief that smelled of perfume, meaning it belonged to a lady, and that the door to Mirabeau's bedroom was undamaged, indicating that whoever killed the Mentor had not forced their way in, meaning someone that was trusted, or expected. Arno and Elise left to question the butler about the handkerchief, while Cheyenne and Zoë continued to search the room.

Left alone with her consort, Zoë could now watch, and she was left worried.

Usually, Cheyenne was this sassy young woman who was quick with her mouth and quicker with her weapons. She was dangerous, deadly, and skilled—and she knew it. With the Precursor gene in her, she had physical prowess unheard of for any human being. She enjoyed those powers, utilizing them to their full potential during her training under the Assassins, laughing in their faces when all of their attempts to kill her and make it look like an accident failed abysmally.

Of course, all of her bravado, confidence, snarkyness, and Cheyenne-ness was all….Well, it couldn't be called a mask, per se, but Zoë didn't know a better word for it. Right now, she was in the presence of, quote, another Cheyenne. This one wasn't the real one, for Zoë had nursed the real one and so she knew exactly who the real Cheyenne was.

The current Cheyenne was the scary one.

This Cheyenne was the product of the Assassins' abuses and crimes against her. This was all of her hatred made clear, her loathing, her anger. This Cheyenne was silent as the inside of a casket, moving so carefully and precisely that her boots made no noise, and neither did the tails of her coat.

Her expression was as severe as the looming stormfront: her eyes were dark, and her jaw was set, her bangs just slightly falling over her eyes. In those usually vibrant windows was nothing but the promise of death and vengeance.

Zoë had seen these kinds of eyes before, in the odd child of Hades that appeared every few centuries, and whenever those children acquired those eyes, it only ended devastation. Seeing the Eyes of Hades in a mortal girl was frightening to Zoë, and it made her worried for her little one's state of mental health.

Cheyenne slowly cased the room like a prowling predator, and Zoë knew what she was doing: using her sixth sense, her borderline prophetic "Eagle Vision," she was effectively rewinding time, seeing ghostly recreations of what had happened in this room. Zoë didn't have this power, and no magic she knew could do the things Cheyenne's power did, and so the Huntress was always left amazed when she got to see it being used, even if she couldn't actually see it.

Zoë had seen this in action several times before, when she and Cheyenne would solve murders together. Cheyenne used her Eagle Vision to deduce that it was Friar Honoré that had murdered four of his fellow monks, that it was Laurent that killed Barto, and Ficcaron who killed Laurent, that it was the Marquis de Sade's personal valet that tried to frame the perverted man for the murder of a prostitute, and other murders, all without actually gathering any physical evidence.

Just her Eagle Vision, seeing into the past the exact things that had happened.

Cheyenne finished her "seeing," and came to stand next to Zoë, shoulder to shoulder, but facing the opposite direction from the Huntress. With her hood up, Zoë couldn't see her face.

"You know who poisoned Mirabeau."

"Yes."

"Be careful. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."

"You'd cope."

With those two dispassionate words being the last they'd share for a few hours, Cheyenne departed, knowing exactly where to go to find the man that murdered Mirabeau.

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Hearing a dull thump behind him, Bellec turned and felt his blood quicken in his veins at who he saw behind him.

"I expected Arno."

"He's on his way."

"By which time he arrives you will be dead, chatte sale."

Bellec drew his sword and Cheyenne smirked, the only thing visible under the shadow of her hood.

"Be honest with me: how long have you been looking forward to this moment?"

"Depuis que je t'ai violée le cul."

Cheyenne growled like a beast and rushed just like one too. Bellec's eyes widened at her speed, caught completely off-guard with just how fast she could actually move when properly enraged. Cheyenne body slammed him, tackling him through a door on the balcony of the church, then she picked him up and threw him through the other door, taking the fight to a whole separate balcony.

The initial strike cost Bellec his sword, leaving him now with only his Hidden Blades, his single-shot pistol, and an assortment of gadgets. Since he didn't have the same Precursor gene that Arno and Cheyenne did, Bellec had to fight tooth and nail for his rank of Master, relying more on wit and strategy than everything to accomplish the mission. He'd killed dozens of people, many of them physically stronger than he was, and Cheyenne was just a little shit.

A particularly annoying little shit, but one that was finally getting what was coming to her.

In the name of all the brothers and sisters that had died at Shay's blade, Bellec would finally destroy the Cormac bloodline and eradicate that stain from the annals of Assassin history.

Bellec threw a stun grenade right at Cheyenne's face, pistol in hand. The grenade detonated, releasing a blinding flash and a piercing scream, to which Bellec turned his head at the right time to avoid the flash, and there was nothing he could do about the sound so he just braced his ears. In the half-second after the grenade's flash dissipated, Bellec fired at Cheyenne's face.

The Cormac girl just tilted her head to the side, and the bullet went whizzing past.

She hadn't even broken stride.

Substituting his shock for a muttered curse, Bellec threw a smoke bomb at his feet, holding his breath against the eruption of gas, and holstered his pistol. He took off to his side, planted his hand on the stone railing of the church balcony, and vaulted over, intending to escape to set up an ambush. His hand was swiped out from under him midair, causing him to tumble in such a way that he smacked his chin on the railing and landed hard on his back on the other balcony below.

Bellec's wind left him in a single rush, his diaphragm locking into place, effectively making him suffocate. He gasped for air like a fish, blood filling his mouth from his bitten-through tongue, and probably due to some internal damage as well. He heard a heavy thump and looked up to see that Cheyenne had landed effortlessly on her feet from what was probably thirty feet up.

Unable to breathe, his old body in pain, Bellec summoned his will and forced himself to his feet, throwing down another smoke bomb. His foot was grabbed from behind yanked out from under him. He managed to get his arms in front of his face to prevent any serious damage, though, and the impact was enough to unlock his diaphragm, allowing precious oxygen to once again fill his lungs.

It hardly did Bellec any good, however, since Cheyenne, still having hold of him by his leg, picked him clean off the ground and hurled him through the rose window of the church. Getting thrown through stained glass hurt enough as it was, but the fall to ground from getting thrown through window hurt a lot more. Still, Bellec wasn't a Master Assassin for nothing, and he forced several doses of medicine down his throat.

The stuff tasted horrible, but its effect was immediate. The pain lessened tremendously, enough to where his mind was easier to focus, and he was able to pick himself up and get moving. He was obviously going to need to see a doctor after this, after he killed the rest of traitorous Assassin council and escaped Paris. Then it was off to Rome to present himself to the Mentor of the whole Brotherhood, present his case and his findings, explain his actions, and then receive the permission he'd been waiting for decades.

The permission to become Mentor of the Parisian Brotherhood and eradicate every last drop of Templar influence in the city. Then he'd aim for Mentor of the whole French Brotherhood, then Europe, then Mentor of the entire Assassin Brotherhood. Once that happened, he'd make sure every Templar in the whole damn world was executed, and every trace of them destroyed, and without the Templars in the way, every Piece of Eden would be next on the list, and then when there were no more Templars and Pieces of Eden left in the world to threaten the freedom of all mankind, the Assassins would finally step into their role as the sovereign protectors of the people, deposing dictators and despots, stealing from the corrupt to aid the struggling, and doing everything they could to advance medicine, science, and all the people of the world.

But first, Bellec had to kill Cheyenne.

Hiding in the shadows above, the Master Assassin watched as the other Master Assassin (another of Mirabeau's traitorous actions, giving that rank to Cheyenne when she was 19, beating out Faris' record of 21), came in through the broken glass and hopped down from the internal balcony to the floor of the church, once again landing deftly, like a cat.

Bellec hated watching Cheyenne move. She did it with grace and eloquence, her movements practiced and concise without any conscious thought. Her arms were held in a way that they were primed to release the Hidden Blades under her forearms, and were ready to pull her pistols should the need arise, but not in a conspicuous and obvious way. You need to have the eyes to recognize her movements.

Bellec had those eyes; he'd taught her those movements.

He'd taught her how to move like a Master, whipping and beating her for the slightest misstep until she was pissing blood all over the place, and then he'd make her clean it all up. He'd been hoping she'd give up and take her own life, or would snap and attack, giving him the excuse he needed to kill her, but she never did. Instead, she'd perfected every move and technique he taught her, acing every exam, excelling in all forms of the Assassin curriculum, academics included.

She was getting cocky and arrogant, and so he'd been forced to put her in her place one day.

Even that backfired, because it burned whenever he pissed for a month straight, but he pulled through and went back to doing everything he could to get the girl killed. Everything he tried had failed, all legal means, anyway, but here they were now, Bellec no longer held back by Mirabeau or by Assassin law. If anything, he was now completely in the right, since Cheyenne did consider herself a Templar, after all, like her bastard grandfather.

All Bellec needed was a moment, a single moment of distraction to leap from his hiding place and plunge his blade into her throat. If he had the time or thought he could be quite enough, he'd just reload his pistol and take a potshot from above, but Bellec was remiss to think he could perform a reload quite enough. Cheyenne did have sharp ears, and sounds bounced around inside this damnable church.

If they had kept up the Istanbul practice of bomb-making, Bellec could've been done by now. A Splinter Bomb would've been perfect right now; just take that and throw it in the general direction of Cheyenne, and the combination of explosive force and shrapnel dispersal would either kill her outright or injure enough to where Bellec could finish the job.

But no. After a nasty incident with bombs, Templars, and innocent people, Virgil Cavaliere outlawed every kind of medium to large scale explosive munition, and that law had held for almost three hundred years.

Another thing Bellec would do away with as Mentor of the Brotherhood.

But he still needed that one moment of distraction to get the drop on Cheyenne.

As luck would have it, the sound of running boots rapidly became louder throughout the sanctuary of the church. Arno came sprinting in through the broken rose window.

"Cheyenne!"

'Thank you, pisspot,' Bellec thought as he soared through the air with an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second per second.

What a darn shame though that Arno had to see this. The boy showed great promise, had displayed tremendous skill, and was every bit Charles' son. A pity he also showed some fancy for Cheyenne. Witnessing her death at the hands of the same man that had poisoned Mirabeau would probably drive him over the edge, and Bellec would have to kill him too.

Oh, well. In for a penny as they say.

Bellec was in striking distance, his form perfect, his techniwue flawless, his mental calculations on jumping angle, distance, and Cheyenne's location couldn't have been done any better by any computer. Because he thought himself to be righteous in what he was doing, so sure and confident in his actions, you can imagine Bellec's surprise when Cheyenne turned her body and raised her knee.

Bellec's face smacked into the iron-hard bone with all the force due to gravity with negligible friction and air resistance. He was out like a candle flame.

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About two hundred years from the day, John McTiernan would be asked what gave him the idea that the Predator would skin people and leave them hang upside down, and he would reference the horrifying and shocking story of how on April 3, 1791, monks of the Sainte-Chapelle entered the sanctuary to find that exact phenomena.

Arno and Elise were similarly shocked and horrified by what Cheyenne did to Bellec's body, neither of them comprehending the cause for such brutality, but Zoë did. After her little one had finished, Cheyenne had collapsed on the spot, overwhelmed with emotion, and Zoë had carried her out on her hip like she was a small child.

The finger that she hooked into the inside of her lip, reminisce of a child sucking their thumb, certainly didn't help dispelling the image, but Zoë didn't care for appearances. Her Cheyenne needed her, now more than ever.

As she walked back to their home, the Huntress could feel the presence of Orion, but he didn't strike nor do anything besides follow to let her now he was still there, still hunting, and that the time for battle was drawing near. Zoë couldn't have cared less about Orion at the moment.

She got home and went about cleaning Cheyenne up, removing and washing her bloody clothes, and bathing her bloody body. Zoë dried her little one off, slipped a gown onto her, and tucked her into bed. She didn't get to leave, however, as when she stepped away, Cheyenne, in her fatigued sleep, moaned in distress and reached for her, her fingers splayed.

Zoë got in the bed and Cheyenne latched onto her. She wouldn't let go for almost 24 hours, and would get distressed whenever Zoë moved, even if it was simply to readjust. When she woke up, starving and thirsty, she went right for Zoë's breast, latching onto the nipple and sucking until she was satisfied. Zoë let this happen because she was equal parts shocked and enamored, breastfeeding being one of her favorite intimate actions.

The two spent the whole day cuddled on the bed, Cheyenne desiring nothing more than to feel the warmth of Zoë's body and listen to the steady drum of her heartbeat. It was therapy to Cheyenne, a new coping mechanism.

To Zoë, this was the real Cheyenne. The cold, quiet, vengeful killer that stalked Bellec, and the snarky, sassy teenage hellion were fronts. The real Cheyenne was the scarred, traumatized, hurting little girl that desperately wanted and needed love. Platonic love, motherly love, and romantic love. In a single day—for the rest of their days if Zoë got to have her way—she provided all of that.

She loved Cheyenne as a friend loved their friend.

She had come somehow come to love and care about Cheyenne as if she were her own daughter.

She certainly loved Cheyenne as a lover, which was proven later during this day when Cheyenne kissed her, deeply, tongue and everything—to which Zoë destroyed the French girl's self-esteem by easily out-Frenching her during a French kiss—and they shared their first passionate, intimate time together, Zoë taking great care to avoid Cheyenne's asshole for reasons that if you haven't figured out yet, don't worry, you'll get there eventually.

Zoë did most of the work, being the one far more experienced in the world of sapphic sex than Cheyenne was, but she was nothing if not a fast learner, and was able to bring Zoë to climax no less than three times. Granted, it was so amateur that Zoë had to fight down her laughter the whole time so as to not ruin Cheyenne's mounting confidence in her tongue and finger skills.

Their sex lasted all night, Cheyenne's enhanced physical stamina just as present in the bedroom as on the battlefield, but the muscles of Cheyenne's vagina were not as well-used as the muscles of her arms, legs, back, and butt, and so after the twelfth orgasm that Zoë brought her to, it actually hurt more than it pleasured, and so they had to stop for the time being because she was too sore.

Zoë once again bathed the girl and washed the sheets which were too drenched in their fluids to be comfortable to rest upon, and they curled up on the couch to simply sleep together, Cheyenne once again clad in a gown that Zoë put on her.

The afternoon of the next day was when they finally got around to talking about their future.

"What are we going to do now?" Zoë asked the girl who was resting her head on her chest, her tummy full of milk.

"We're going to stay here in Paris," Cheyenne affirmed after a little burp escaped her. "Orion's been getting antsy—I can feel him when he's near enough."

Her Eagle Vision's inherited early-warning system that kept Shay alive in hunting Assassins on the streets of New York.

"He doesn't want to strike in public, or he's not desperate enough, anyway. Probably knows we'll be able to slip away if there's a crowd."

"And the real reason you want to stay in Paris?" Zoë asked with a little smirk.

"I wanna see how the Revolution plays out," Cheyenne said innocently. "I like watching people get guillotined."

The Huntress rolled her eyes and kissed her beau chaton espiѐgle atop her head.

"I need to go talk to the council," Cheyenne stated. "We need to iron out what exactly our new relationship is now that Mirabeau's dead. Can you help me get dressed?"

"Oh, why of course, ma petite fille."

Zoë was disappointed during this endeavor because she had been expecting some sensual, steady application of clothing with some second and third base-type action. Instead, when Cheyenne asked for help in getting dressed, she did so in the same respect a child would ask their mother for help, so where Zoë had been fervently eating this girl out just hours previous, she was now playing mom in helping this girl get dressed for the day.

Did Zoë find it abnormal or strange or weird or unbecoming to go from lover to mother? Not in her upbringing surrounded by extensive incest. If anything, playing mother while being Cheyenne's lover was just some really fun and kinky roleplay.

In decades hence, the nature of their kink would come to be known as "ageplay," derived by Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory, and stemmed directly from the total lack of any motherly or feminine influence in Cheyenne's early childhood, adolescence, puberty, and to the very day until Zoë entered her life.

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Inside the council's private chambers in the Sanctuary hideout beneath the Café Théâtre, Trent, Beylier, and Quemar were in the midst of intense, heavy, and panicked discussion over what to about the situation they found themselves in, Mirabeau and Bellec dead, the former at the latter's own hand, and the latter's skinned corpse left to dangle in a church, done so by the girl they were discussing, who happened to just quietly and casually stroll right into the middle of the chamber, causing all three Master Assassins to go quiet.

They all felt like meerkats with a lion suddenly in their midst.

"Hey, guys," Cheyenne chirped. "How's it going?"

No one answered, all of them tense and not-so-subtly reaching for weapons.

"By all means I should kill every single one of you and leave the Brotherhood to crumble under its own disarray, but I won't. For the time being, I want to make sure we're all on the same page about what our new standing with each other is: with Bellec dead, that makes me the senior-most Master Assassin in experience and ability, meaning I get his seat on the council, meaning none of you get to order me around however you were hoping to because Mirabeau's gone. Speaking of, and in summary of this little chat…"

Cheyenne's smirk and faux friendly demeanor instantly evaporated, transforming into the same serious, brutal aura that she possessed when searching Mirabeau's room and when she was hunting Bellec.

"Mirabeau did not keep me safe from any of you….Mirabeau kept all of you safe from me. If any of you cross me, or try to kill me or harm me in any way, or if you try to use Zoë or Arno against me, I will not hesitate to kill you, even if I have to cut down the whole Brotherhood and send all of Paris crashing down to Hell."

Her oath carved into stone, Cheyenne took a few slow, measured steps backward, letting her energy linger and smother the room, before she spun around, whipping her black leather coattails behind her.

Only when the trio of Masters no longer heard her footsteps did they allow themselves to finally breathe once again.

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"What even is Orion's deal, anyway?" Cheyenne asked one night in the distant future relevant to the day in which she cemented herself as a member of the council of the Parisian Brotherhood.

Zoë answered.

"His origins are actually muddy. He is a Giant, a race of beings created by the union of Gaea and Tartarus for no other reason to destroy the Olympian gods and usurp their domains, however, another story persists that Orion was born from on oxhide ten days after it was buried in the ground, and urinated upon by Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes."

Cheyenne stared at Zoë, before bursting into a fit of giggles. Zoë smiled too, the sheer ridiculousness of the possible birth and Cheyenne's laughter causing her facial muscles to twitch upward. After her little one got all her giggles out, Zoë continued.

"Whatever the case, Orion did not participate during the Giant War, and instead dutifully served as the royal hunter to King Oinopion of Chios, until he became smitten with the king's daughter, and was blinded by the king and exiled from the land. Orion stumbled about for a time, barely surviving without his sight, until he managed to run into Hephaestus, who took pity on him, and crafted him mechanical eyes with better vision than his biological eyes.

"With his new eyes, Orion was able to live again, and he eventually found himself on the island of Delos, where m'lady was born, and his hunting skills were able to impress her enough to where she invited him into the Hunt as the first male. He accepted and was well-mannered and even more controlled, keeping his distance from the girls when it was needed."

Cheyenne snickered. "Onanism."

Zoë smiled again.

"Yes, most frequently. He spent enough time with the Hunt and with Artemis that he became loved by them all, and he began to fall romantically in love with Artemis. Apollo, fearing for his sister's maiden vow in that Artemis would return Orion's feelings, cursed the Giant with a madness. Under Apollo's curse, Orion was driven to kill every animal on Earth—everything from the crawling things in the ground, to everything the flew above the ground. Artemis had no choice to cast him out of the Hunt, but couldn't bring herself to kill him. However, Orion's killing spree managed to wake his mother, Gaea, and in order to stop him, she sent a giant scorpion after him. Orion and the scorpion, Scorpio, battled and killed each other.

"Artemis searched for his body and found it being fed upon by maggots, along with Scorpio's, and she cleared the creatures away with her power and healed the two's bodies. She couldn't bring them back to life, and so she immortalized their forms in the stars, creating the constellations Orion and Scorpio.

"Ironically, there's nothing about whether Apollo's curse of madness was lifted upon Orion's death, and I strongly doubt Tartarus was a kind enough father to his son to alleviate the curse. If anything, Tartarus made Orion worse. When the Giant returned to this plane, taking centuries to reform after his initial death, he came back even more damaged. Instead of desiring to kill animals, instead Orion desires nothing more than to kill women of strength."

"Do you know why?"

Zoë's black eyes reflected the dancing flames in the hearth of their house.

"I have my speculations. I haven't exactly endeavored to ask Orion why he kills strong women, since any time I'm within speaking distance we are trying to kill each other, but whatever his reasons or justifications, the fact still remains that he's completely insane."

"And now he wants to kill me."

"And now he wants to kill you."

"Should I be honored?" Cheyenne asked with a smirk.

Zoë leveled a look of severe warning at her little one. "Do not treat this as a game, petite fille. Orion is a being born to kill not just gods, but hunting gods. He is a natural apex predator with millennia of training and experience, and he is equipped with magical weaponry and divine power. A major defense of all the Giants is that in order to kill them and send them back to Tartarus, you must have the combined efforts of a god and half-god. Anything short of that, and the Giant will heal from whatever wound you inflict upon them, no matter how grievous."

"Then how are you going to kill him if Artemis isn't here?"

Zoë reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a dagger that Cheyenne had never seen before.

"This dagger is called Arachne's Stinger. It was once a weapon wielded by a mercenary during the Peloponnesian War, but I killed him and claimed it for my own. The poison that you see in the blade and here in the guard is from Scorpio himself. I found him, killed him, and drained his stinger so I can kill Orion."

"That's hot."

Despite the seriousness of this conversation and its implications, Zoë still found herself smiling at Cheyenne's appraisal.

"But to answer your question, yes. Orion is nothing if not prideful and arrogant, and never wastes his time. If he decides you're worth his attention, that means he thinks you're strong enough to go after."

Cheyenne looked downright ecstatic.

"I'm awesome enough that a god-killing psychopath made it his personal mission to kill me? Génial!"

Zoë really hoped that Cheyenne was just playing around and really knew how serious it was that Orion had taken a personal interest in her. Zoë had been hunting that savage for five hundred years, right after the Crusaders attacked Camp Half-Blood when it was still hidden on the island of Crete and the Hooded Man saved them all. During this hunt, she'd brought everything she had to the table: her divine strength, her magic, her weapons, her wit, her experience, and all of her prayers, and she still hadn't been able to kill Orion.

As much of a beast as he was, he was a clever, wily, cunning, dangerous, powerful, and intelligent beast.

Zoë prayed like she had never prayed before that Cheyenne would live through this.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In the July of 1792 the Assassins received word from Théroigne de Méricourt about how food deliveries were being stolen on the way into Paris from the farms, creating the illusion that farmers were hoarding food and nobles were buying it all up. This matched up with Assassin intel that said that Templars were behind the thefts, were the ones driving up prices, and were the ones inciting riots across Paris.

Since Méricourt sent word that she was on the case, Cheyenne dispatched herself to help her friend.

"Be careful," Zoë insisted. "I've never loved anyone like I've loved you, and I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."

Cheyenne kissed her on the lips, and where the much younger of the two pushed her tongue forward, it was obviously the elder who won the battle, making Cheyenne moan in a frustrated manner with Zoë's tongue resting square in her mouth. After it was broken, Cheyenne stomped her foot and pouted.

"How do you keep winning!? How are you able to out-French-kiss a French girl!?"

Zoë smirked. "I've been French-kissing before France existed."

The Huntress gave Cheyenne another kiss, this one a tame meeting of the lips, and sent Cheyenne off with an encouraging pat on the butt. "Come back to me in one piece."

Cheyenne rolled her eyes. "Yes, Maman."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cheyenne arrived at the block Méricourt said she was going to be at and found it crawling with red-clad Extremists.

Scaling the building to get to the rooftops, her powerful muscles and pinpoint dexterity propelling her from one handhold to the next, some of them being barely big enough for the tips of her fingers. Up top, Cheyenne dispatched a sniper by slitting his throat, and then wound her way about the rooftops to another sniper to do the same. Looking down to a balcony, there was yet another sniper, and this one Cheyenne killed with a shot from her Phantom Blade.

She activated her Eagle Pulse, revealing all otherwise "important" details within a 30-meter radius, like hiding spots, Extremists—which she tagged and could now see through walls—and Méricourt's notes that she left behind, hidden amongst sacks of grain.

There was a five-man squad of thugs patrolling about, with three thugs each guarding each note which was located within a small courtyard amongst the dwellings of Paris.

Cheyenne tossed a smoke bomb into the middle of the patrol and leapt down into the middle of them. With precise strokes of her arms, she killed all five before the smoke cleared out, and then scaled a low wall to get into a courtyard, vaulting over it to kill a thug that was coming to investigate the eruption of smoke. Rounding the corner of the courtyard's walls, Cheyenne dispatched the other two Extremists.

Rounding the corner of a building to get to the other courtyard, Cheyenne saw one Extremist examining a cart of barrels, another leaning against a wall, and the third was pissing on another wall at the opposite end of the courtyard. Smirking, she pulled a cherry bomb from one of her pouches and threw it at the pissing guy. The diversionary bomb impacted the wall next to the soon-to-be-dead man, causing him to jump in fright and get pee all over himself.

In the instant of distraction, Cheyenne ran and killed the leaning thug, slid under the cart to trip up the examining thug and plunge her Hidden Blade into his throat, and by that time the bomb's sound and diversion had worn off, and the sound of her killing alerted the last thug, a big wet spot running down the front of his trousers. He whirled around just in time to see Cheyenne's arm arcing through the air, and he went down with a hand to his profusely bleeding throat, his carotid artery, throat, and esophagus all slashed open in one clean stroke.

With no more immediate thugs about, Cheyenne retrieved Méricourt's letters which detailed her current whereabouts: one of the buildings in the current cluster. Cheyenne went there, sprinting through the alleys. She rounded a corner and clotheslined a man by plunging her Hidden Blade into his throat. The noise alerted the other thugs in this courtyard, but Cheyenne was already in motion. Her free hand fired its two Phantom Blades into the sniper on the low balcony and the one thug who had been leaning against the window on that same building, and she ripped her occupied hand out to fire two more Phantom Blades at the remaining thugs.

Cheyenne reloaded and made her inside the building and up the stairs to where Méricourt was being held hostage by four more thugs. Utilizing her stealth training, the Master Assassin easily walked up behind the two middle thugs and stabbed through their carotid arteries. Méricourt used the moment to strike, drawing her sword to cut the throat of the thug closest to her and using her pistol to shoot the remaining man.

She had honestly been aiming for his chest, but she ended up shooting him in the balls. The man's eyes nearly fell out of his skull, his body in too much shock and pain to actually scream.

"Damn," Cheyenne said.

"Not actually what I was aiming for," Méricourt admitted. She swung her sword and put the Extremist out of his misery, then she looked at Cheyenne with a smile. "Took you long enough."

"Had to tidy up the place. You left a lot of trash everywhere."

"Yes, well, as good as I am, I am not good enough to kill everyone that was here."

"Darn shame. Shall we?"

"We shall."

Méricourt led the way back downstairs and out the building, telling Cheyenne what she had gathered in her investigating. A false couturiere by the name of Madam Flavigny was stealing food from carts entering Paris from the countryside and framing the farmers for it. Méricourt even had the woman's location, but Cheyenne had to kill seven more Extremists before she and Méricourt were able to clear the cluster of buildings they were in.

"Were it that I had your skills," the woman lamented.

"Trust me," Cheyenne smirked, "you don't want them."

Méricourt led the way across the street to another set of alleys and courtyards nestled amongst another clustered of buildings, though this venue was where the majority of the stolen food was being kept, under armed Templar guard, of course.

Cheyenne climbed to the rooftops, dispatched a sniper across the way with the Phantom Blade, and the other sniper on an adjacent balcony in the same way. Cheyenne went to the back of the alley, leaping from three stories in the air to Air Assassinate two thugs. She whipped around and fired her last Phantom Blade into the throat of another Extremist. She loaded and continued her killing spree.

Climbing back to the roofs, Cheyenne tossed a cherry bomb, timing its detonation with another Air Assassination to cover her deed. She fired her Phantom Blade at a nearby thug, tossed a smoke bomb, catching three directly in it and a fourth at its outskirts. She used her Phantom Blade to kill a fifth, one that was outside the gas area, then killed the remaining four.

"Alright, I'm done!" Cheyenne called to Méricourt.

The woman came around the corner of the alley and whistled at all the death that had been so easily and efficiently dispensed. The hole time Cheyenne had been working, Méricourt had been wondering what, if anything, was going on once the girl was out of her sight. Now she knew.

"If you can keep this up every time we join forces, we'll win this Revolution yet."

"Bet on it," Cheyenne grinned.

"I need to get this food back to the people. Flavigny and her thugs are in the marketplace nearby."

Cheyenne nodded and took off for the market that was just up the street. When she got to the wide-open area that should've been bustling with hundred of people, she immediately identified a humongous problem:

The whole place was deserted.

There weren't even pigeons pecking at the ground.

Whipping around behind her, Cheyenne saw that whatever Parisians had been there were now gone, or were just casually walking out of sight around the corners of buildings.

'Orion,' Cheyenne thought to herself. 'He must be using that Mist Zoë told me about to make everyone go away. Alright, then…show me!'

And Cheyenne got just as serious as she was when stalking Bellec over a year ago. She was not stupid, she was not arrogant, and she was not cocky in any capacity of any of those words. Orion was the most dangerous thing she'd ever encountered, and the only way she was going to be able to kill him was with her wits and her tools.

That didn't mean she was afraid.

"Zoë's little whore!" a loud voice called from everywhere. It was a deep voice, rich, flowing, and undeniably masculine. The voice laughed.

"Mommy's naughty little boy!" Cheyenne called back. The laughing stopped instantly. "What's the matter, Orion? All these months stalking me and now that we're finally alone, you're just going to make catcalls from the shadows?"

A deep chuckle. Cheyenne saw movement from above and a humongous shape came crashing down, buckling the cobblestones and sending up a small cloud of dust. Orion took casual, measured steps until he was standing mere feet from Cheyenne.

"I expected you to be taller," she said.

Orion was clocking in at ten feet even, meaning Cheyenne's almost-six-feet put her at eye-level with his abs. The giant's hair was black and cut short around his head, while everything on top was arranged in thick, angled spikes all pointing behind him. He was wearing all black clothes: leather jerkin, shirt, elbow-length gloves, trousers, and boots. He had a belt adorned with multiple pouches, and at the sides of his jerkin were several small throwing knives, which were daggers to Cheyenne with how big the were. A humongous skinning knife hung at his side, and over his shoulder was a quiver filled with rake-sized arrows. In the Giant's hand was his bow: a humongous thing as tall as he was that was made of black wood with a black string.

His mechanical eyes, glowing red in their sockets, peered down at Cheyenne. The mechanisms worked until those red lights were the size of needles.

"I've hunted and claimed victory over many strong women," Orion said, "and all of them have been the same: cocky, arrogant, and proud…right up until I put them in their place and remind them of this crucial fact: that no matter how much strength they have, no matter how much power they amass, all of them are still weak. That is the truth, and it is my duty to make sure you know this truth."

"Do you hear yourself when you talk?"

"Yes."

Orion swung his bow and Cheyenne ducked. She lashed out with her leg, aiming her heel at the Giant's crotch. She struck something akin to stone, sending her stumbling, making Orion smirk.

"I have learned to protect myself there."

"Good for you."

She whipped her rifle from her back and pumped the grenade launcher, firing the same kind of explosive munition that Arno had once used to blow up a house. Orion swung his bow with his smug, confident smirk, thinking he was going to bat the pathetically slow mortal object clean out of the air.

He was deeply surprised and angered when he struck the grenade and it literally blew up in his face, singeing it and his clothes. He cried out, his ears ringing and his vision pure white, and he stumbled backward. Cheyenne fired another grenade, nailing Orion in the chest this time. The explosive force ripped apart his jerkin and rendered his shirt to tatters, his belt and quiver falling to the ground since they had been attached to the destroyed jerkin. Orion got launched backward, landing on his back with an oof! and a heavy thump!

Before Cheyenne could fire another grenade and hopefully do some real damage, Orion put his finger to his mouth and whistled so shrilly and loudly that glass shattered and Cheyenne fell to a knee, dropping her rifle to clutch at her ears. What saved her from the five-strong pack of wolves was her built-in EWS.

The canines lunged at her while she was disoriented from the high frequency and the volume, but she not only moved out of their way in accordance to her sixth-sense, but she was also able to get shots off with her eight-barreled pistols, killing the wolves.

Obviously, Orion's pack was not magical in any way, just well-trained and obedient. An oversight on the hunter's part that he would rectify in the future. Letting out a furious bellow, Orion charged at Cheyenne, his superhuman muscles propelling him forward faster than a bullet, the shockwave splintering the ground he was standing on.

Cheyenne infuriatingly rolled out of the way and threw a smoke bomb right at her feet. Orion coughed and spluttered, not prepared for the gas. When it cleared, Cheyenne was gone, and Orion was left alone with his dead wolves.

"DON'T THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME!" Orion bellowed in rage. "I CAN SEE IN WAYS YOU CAN'T IMAGINE!"

Of course, not that anyone knew it at this point in time, less than a decade before the turn of the century, Orion was referring to the fact that his eyes allowed him to see in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. How Hephaestus had managed to make eyes that could do that several thousand years before the idea of the EM spectrum existed was anyone's guess.

Orion cycled through his vision modes, well and truly angry. His jerkin and his shirt had been destroyed, items that had been with him for hundreds of years, and his pack, all whom he'd raised from pups as his own children, were now all dead. Precious items of sentimental value and infinitely more precious beings of love—now gone.

Orion didn't get find the right vision to track Cheyenne's movements because his ear twitched at the distance sound of something going poomf, and his own extra sense went off. He dove forward and rolled as something exploded, releasing a cloud of noxious green gas that rapidly dispersed about the area. Orion held his breath this time and was unaffected by the gas.

He snarled at this coward's attack, Cheyenne proving his point that at the end of the day, no woman could ever actually face a man in single, up-front combat. Orion yanked his quiver from the ground, grabbing a handful of arrows since the strap was broken, and picked up his bow and skinning knife. With his muscles rippling in the afternoon sun, Orion found the right vision mode.

Growling, thoughts of Cheyenne's death being the only thing on his brain, Orion followed the glowing bootprints about the ground for about ten seconds before he was forced to dodge a hail of silver arrows.

"Zoë Nightshade," Orion spat. "I'll kill you now, then."

He shoulder his bow and readied his knife.

Zoë just growled. She'd heard the explosions of Cheyenne's grenades and had come sprinting across the rooftops. She couldn't say she was surprised by Orion's sudden appearance, since this occurrence was inevitable, but it was still just so…sudden.

Zoë dove right in for the attack, her vastly superior physical prowess, compared to Cheyenne, enabled her to not only keep up with Orion, but outpace him. Of course, they'd done this dance dozens of times over the centuries, and so they knew each other's moves and patterns all too well. The big difference this time was that Orion was fighting for vengeance in the name of his pack, and Zoë was fighting for the life of her beloved little one.

Their strikes were more vicious, their blows harder and meaner, their cuts deeper, their bruises bigger than they ever had been before. Zoë hadn't brought her poisoned dagger yet, because the last time she had, Orion had instantly fled, knowing that a good enough cut from the blade would be his end. Zoë was aiming to wear him down enough to where he couldn't viably get away, and she could finally end him.

What really sucked about that dagger and Scorpio's venom was the venom had bound itself to the dagger in such a magical way that it was unable to be transferred to other weapons to imbue them with its toxic power.

The dagger was all or nothing…unless a god decided to show up, but Zoë knew that was never going to happen, even if she offered her virtue to whatever god popped in.

Orion blocked Zoë's onslaught of daggers with his knife, sparks falling like rain from the frequency of their connections, until Orion suddenly let out a bestial roar and swung his arm, knocking Zoë's knives from her hands. She ducked under the subsequent swing of the skinning knife, rolled to avoid the kick, sprang up and vaulted over Orion to avoid other kick, and midair the Giant moved his body in such a way that the shaft of his slung body caught Zoë hard in the side, sending her flying right into the huge hand of Orion.

He slung her into the cobblestones, making a crater, and he brought his foot down, deepening the crater with a sound like thunder. Zoë screamed, feeling the bones of her forearms and ribs fracture as Orion pressed her into the ground. Ichor dripped like a leaky faucet from several cuts and stab wounds all over his body, but he only seemed angrier, all the more determined to kill Zoë with brute force and then tear Cheyenne apart.

Orion pressed even harder, pinning Zoë's arms to her chest even tighter. The Huntress couldn't even scream because all the air had been pushed out of her, but she was screaming in her mind for Artemis to take care of Cheyenne once Orion finally applied enough pressure to make her torso explode like a mashed grape.

Any other half-blood would've been crushed by now, but Zoë's body was imbued with the magic that the station of lieutenant brought with it, and the power of Atlas flowed through her. Right now, though, it was just prolonging a very painful, messy death. With her arms pinned like they were, and her unable to get any leverage with her legs, the best Zoë could do was desperately push up with everything that she had.

An ear-splitting cry thundered around the empty marketplace. Orion looked up just in time for an eagle to attack him, clawing and pecking at his face, beating him with its wings. He shouted and flailed, wildly swinging at the eagle, but the bird always seemed just out of reach.

Zoë gasped for breath and moaned in pain at her cracked ribs. She watched the eagle attack Orion, at first thinking it was Zeus himself, then thinking it was emissary of Zeus, then thinking that this had nothing to do with Zeus. Zoë had seen Zeus and knew his pattern; this was not it.

What was happening here?

Orion let out a final roar and released a wave of power, sending the eagle tumbling through the sky. The Giant's face was an awful mess of scratches and golden blood, and one of his eyes was even clawed out. Heaving in pain, frustration, and anger, Orion knocked an arrow in his bow, aiming right for Zoë. She tried to move, but the slightest twitch resulted in a feeling fire erupting through the insides of her chest. Her ribs would not allow for movement.

Right before Orion released, a shadow fell over him, a shadow accompanied by the distance cry of an eagle. The Giant looked up, gasped, and misfired, the arrow sailing harmlessly down the street. He was too slow as Cheyenne came sailing down from above, one of his own arrows in her grasp, stolen from his discarded quiver minutes ago under the cover of the smoke.

However, it wasn't the arrow itself being used as a spear that caught Zoë and Orion's attention, but the noxious green dagger tied in place of the arrowhead. Arachne's Spinner, imbued with Scorpio's venom.

Cheyenne had stolen it from Zoë and jerry-rigged it while the Huntress and Orion were fighting.

Training and experience failed the Giant as terror and instinct took total control of him, and he merely raised his arm to block instead of rolling out of the way. Of course, Cheyenne was coming down hard and fast, and by the time he had realized what was happening, it was too late anyway.

Cheyenne came down, legs tucked and arm raised in perfect form and technique. Her impromptu spear went right through Orion's arm, through his chest, and out of his back. He went tumbling down as Cheyenne slammed into him, the arrow splintering but the venom of Scorpio was already doing its job.

Cheyenne was breathing extremely heavily, her bloodstream coursing with more adrenaline than blood due to the intensity of the situation after Zoë arrived and was almost killed.

"Go to Hell…," Cheyenne hissed ferally.

She put her last explosive grenade in Orion's mouth and got off of him, stepping away. She pulled her pistol to shoot, but the grenade sparked and detonated, blowing Orion to kingdom come. Golden mist fell from the sky, lightly dousing Cheyenne.

"…and on your way to Hell, I want you to beg forgiveness from all the women you've killed."

After a moment of silence, Cheyenne walked to crouch next to Zoë, who stared at her in shock.

"Sorry for stealing your dagger when we kissed earlier."

Zoë just continued to stare disbelievingly.

"Hey, are you okay? He didn't hit you too hard in the head, did he?"

"You…didn't see him…?" Zoë asked quietly.

Cheyenne cocked a brow that was drenched in gold. "See him who? All I saw was my grenade going off prematurely et le faire sauter."

"You didn't see him," Zoë said, awed and mystified.

"See who?"

"The man who set off the grenade…the man in the robe."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Yep, October 24 is my b-day, and here's my present to all of you guys!

The plot advances with Cheyenne getting revenge on Bellec, consummating her and Zoë's love in a glossed-over lemon, some character development, and finally Orion in the confrontation I've been envisioning for a very long time now.

I'm thinking the next chapter will be the last one of the Fourth Life, and unfortunately for all of you, it'll be a while since it's back to the novel now.

I'm on page 277 of 516 of my editorial campaign, so I'm over halfway done.

Now, since this is the best time to talk about it: AC Valhalla.

As a game, I'm not looking forward to it. Odyssey burned me out on the humongous, level-restricted, gear-level infested, RPG mega-world drowning in side-quests and locations. I'm not looking forward to a gigantic, chore-infested map with a story that's gone way off the rails at this point, and is more interested in identity politics than the original story about the Assassins and Templars.

However, I will be buying and playing purely because there are undoubtedly elements of the game that can be incorporated into this story. If nothing else, like Carter Kane is going to be the reincarnation of Bayek, Magnus Chase is going to be the reincarnation of Eivor, and the game will be needed for backstory, memories, and weapons.

Hoping you guys are all well and enjoyed the chapter!

Fav, Follow, and Review Please!