The Apprentice
When you return to him, he sees their deaths in your eyes before you say a word. He is pleased, and his satisfaction is like salve to your wounds.
Master, have I done well?
Yes, my child. Rest now.
If he grieves for them, as you do, he gives no sign of it. Instead, he tells you things, dark secrets about the Brotherhood that few are privileged to know. And he has a new position for you. It has a name: Silencer.
A fitting word, since sound won't travel across a Void. To serve him directly, to extinguish life and light in his name - it's more than you ever imagined, it's…
"It is an honor without equal," he tells you, and not for one second does it occur to you to disbelieve him. So you bow before him, so low that the ends of your braids brush the floor. When you straighten, he steps close, and for a brief moment you feel his lips against your forehead, cool and firm.
But it's a double-edged sword, and if you think being his protégé means you'll finally be allowed to stay at his side, you're about to be disillusioned. Your delight is equalled only by the depth of your dismay when he tells you in the next breath that he is sending you out, away from him, to stalk the shadows that border the everyday world. No more homecomings. From now on, you will not even speak unless he deems it necessary.
In a way, though, he'll always be with you. In the weeks to come you'll awaken many times to an immediate sense of his presence, as though he's just left, or is at the door. And each time you'll wonder whether it's because you dreamed of him again - or whether he really came to you, once more as you slept, like a caress from an unseen hand in the dark.
But for now, perhaps it's the bleak disappointment in your eyes that prompts his next, entirely unexpected words.
"There is one last thing. I have for you a very special gift..."
Outside the fort you shield your eyes with your hand, blinking in the sudden strong light, and then you see her.