Author's Note: I'm on break as of now, thus my updates should be coming much more quickly than usual. As always, thank you very much to all of you, any reviews are greatly appreciated.

Assassin's Creed: Alis Aquilae

Sixth

Altair woke slowly, taking his time to emerge from one of the longest sleeps he had had in almost a year. He turned his head, eyes still shut, and listened for the echoing cries of circling eagles overhead, the rousing calls that he so often woke to. However, instead of the usual, comforting sounds of the busy fortress steadily beginning its day, all he could hear was silence and the faraway voices of a market crowd reverberating quietly through thick walls.

He jerked into wakefulness as soon as he took in this unsettling noise of unfamiliar surroundings, his spirit flaring like a raptor disturbed by a thunderstorm. However, even as his right hand groped instinctively for the dagger under his bed, the Assassin remembered, and managed to calm himself.

Slowly, he pulled in a breath, glancing around the muted shade of the windowless room and realizing that he was quite alone. Assured, he gathered up his short blade and stood, stretching rather cramped muscles and gratefully feeling the renewed energy in his system. He was hungry, true, but gone was the persistent fatigue born of constant battle and travel and flight, the pains that had plagued him for days since his final encounter with Robert de Sable, and on until his duel with his Master.

As he sat on the edge of the bed and ran through a routine check of his weapons, he heard light footsteps echoing down the hallway through the half open door, followed by a slight creak as the man leaned on the doorway. The Masyaf Assassin paid him no mind, but could already imagine the ever-present smirk as Ezio watched him, as if waiting for him to acknowledge his presence.

"Do you always sleep so long?" the caped Assassin chided, not seeming to notice Altair's pointed attempts to ignore him. "You've been out for a day and a night. Is that normal?"

"I was resting," he replied with surprising tolerance, not looking up but admittedly in a good mood after the restful sleep.

"That much was obvious," Ezio chuckled, inviting himself into the room and casually reclining against a bench amongst the painting supplies that filled most of its interior. "I was starting to think you were dead."

"Not yet, unfortunately for you," Altair returned dully, distractedly, concentrating more on his wrist blade than on the other Assassin as he ran two fingers across the central ridge of the drawn knife, checking its balance. "More importantly, what were you planning on doing to locate the Apple? This is your district, so I assume you have appropriate contacts to help find Rodrigo Borgia again."

"I was thinking of going to the Thieves Guild to see if they were able to monitor any caravans leaving Venezia yesterday," the Florentine eagle answered, rather absently flipping through the half completed paintings stacked against the wall next to him. "But before that, you should have breakfast—Leonardo left something for us both. Also, it would be best if you changed into something less conspicuous. I can lend you some of my spare clothes."

Even Altair had to agree with him on this last point, remembering how easily he had been targeted the day before. He nodded mutely and followed the other into the main workshop, taking only a few moments to eat and dress, and only half listening to Ezio as he explained that the resident artist had left early to complete a commission somewhere in the upper district.

"We look a lot alike, don't we?" the Florentine Assassin said thoughtfully as he watched the other emerge from the back room in identical Assassin's white. Altair glanced at Ezio as he said this, still tugging at the wide hood framing his face a little irritably, unused to its cut. However, overall, even though he found the silver-filigreed red sash too flashy for his taste and the cape almost too hampering to even bother putting on, he conceded that the foreign uniform fit him almost perfectly.

"True," he responded with a short nod, casting a distracted eye over the other's face and only now noticing their distinct similarities. Fully cowled, they could easily have been mistaken for twins, if not for the eyes. "I am not quite sure I'm comfortable with that though. What if one of your acquaintances approaches me, thinking I am you?"

"Not possible," Ezio said cheerily, adjusting the rapier and dagger strapped to his side. "You don't have my charm."

"…Yes. Thank Allah for that," Altair sighed quite sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"Ah, I almost forgot," the Florentine Assassin said suddenly, moving over to Leonardo's desk and picking up a long sheathed blade, wrapped carefully and deceptively in brown paper. "You don't have a long sword with you, do you? I keep a small armory here, so you can borrow this one if you'd like."

"Thank you," the Masyaf eagle said, a little surprised as he took the light bundle. He gently started to remove the packaging, but stopped midway and stared at the blade's hilt in confusion. Two flared wings acted as the cross guard, the wrought silver of the entire handle old, but well maintained, and not to mention very familiar.

"This..."

"I thought you'd recognize it," Ezio said with a small grin, tilting his head as he took in the other's startled expression. "That's the sword of the legendary Master Assassin. Based on your reaction, I suppose your story of time travel and magic just became a little bit more believable."

Altair drew the silvered metal and studied it, feeling the comforting balance. Though he had started using his gold-hilted sword after it had been presented to him by al Mualim upon promotion to Master Assassin, it had been a sword identical to this one—if not the same one—that he had trained with and fought by for most of his life before that. Though it could possibly be a replica or a coincidence, this feeling of recovering a missing extension of himself could not be denied nor ignored, his eagle spirit recognizing it like a lost mate. Simply, undeniably, he knew this was his.

"Thank you," he repeated quietly, sincerely now, as he sheathed the sword in the empty scabbard at his side.

"Di nulla," the other Assassin said casually, waving a hand. "Think nothing of it. Now, come on, we should begin the search for the Spaniard as soon as possible. I can't be expected to babysit you for the rest of your time here, so we might as well separate. We'll be able to cover more ground that way too."

"How much use can I be if I cannot understand your language?" Altair asked rather dubiously, finally tearing his gaze away from the blade. "I could simply walk by a potential source of information and not know it."

"Your Vision. You've been gifted with that as well I take it?"

"Yes," he responded slowly, knowing he was referring to his eagle's senses. "With that, I suppose I could track those associated with this Spaniard—but I will still not be able to know if they are of any use unless they lead me straight to him."

"Which is fully possible. He may not have left the city yet," Ezio reminded him, leading the way to the door of the workshop. "Also you won't be completely clueless, some of Borgia's foreign soldiers speak English as well as italiano."

Altair thought on this before finally nodding, deciding he would rather attempt to make himself useful than remain cooped up in the workshop. After a rather unnecessary jibe from Ezio to not get lost, the two Assassins separated, with the Florentine brother heading southwards and the Masyaf one turning a nearby corner into an alleyway to climb for the rooftops.

This was his first opportunity to be able to observe the landscape of the city in broad daylight, thus the eagle decided to take the time to commit it to memory. Perched on a cathedral tower, he surveyed the brickwork buildings arranged neatly below him, intersected by flowing streams of people and water in equal measure. The divisions of districts seemed easy enough to remember, divided and marked clearly by wider than usual canals, crossable only by bridges and narrow, oddly lopsided boats found sweeping through all but the thinnest waterways.

Carefully affixing the location of Leonardo's workshop in his mind, Altair leapt easily from the tower, catching the edge of an adjacent building and taking off across it at a gentle lope. He scanned the streets below with a casual glance, never pausing, aiming more to cover as much ground as possible than to fully focus on any individuals, an eagle circling a field for potential prey.

As he ran, concentration lost to the menial, routine task, his mind began to wander back, focusing on the events of yesterday, to the many words he had heard but not understood.

Return to L'Arsenale alone and I will be waiting for you.

He summons you. Not him, but another.

The Masyaf Assassin stopped abruptly, looking carefully towards the solid brick of the boat port visible in the distance, blocking out much of the gray band of sea. There was no doubt it was a trap and to walk into one in the same location twice would be foolhardy, not to mention would merit a stain on his pride as an Assassin. However, Altair could not contain his curiosity, wondering how a foreign Templar had known exactly the words to speak to him.

He began to consider telling Ezio about his plan, to warn him of the possibility of his capture were he to fail, but at this too, he hesitated. His eagle ruffled impatiently at the idea of waiting simply to ask the other Assassin's permission before attempting his own investigation. Altair shook his head and, mind set, set off across the slanting lines of houses back towards the Arsenal.

As he drew closer to the stonework walls, the Masyaf eagle realized that he was unsure how to approach. He completely doubted the fact that the Spaniard would hold true to his word to be waiting for him there, but there was also the case of the "other" the Templar guard captain had referred to, another man who also wished him to return. One who knew of his Creed, or was at least educated in the words of the branch of his Brotherhood.

Both held this shipping port in common, and though it was not likely that either of the people he was searching for were here, there was a high chance he would be able to gather some clues from those going through the docks. Altair looked over the Templar base, crouched on the wide windowsill of a building in line with its walls and decided to simply observe for now, cautious.

He remembered Ezio's suggestion to use his eagle's senses and easily shifted his vision, sitting comfortably in the narrow shade cast by a decorative pillar as he swept his eagle's eyes over the passing crowd below. A friendly updraft of wind climbed the building he was perched on with a speed he could only envy, fluttering the red-striped doublet and hood against his shoulders and momentarily distracting him from his observations.

As he patiently pushed the cloth of the hood away from his face, he was thoroughly startled to suddenly recognize a splash of red aura, leaking up over the walls of the boat port like flames, materializing as if from nowhere. His eyes narrowed abruptly, suspiciously, wondering why he had not seen it before, until the spread of scarlet receded just as quickly as it had appeared. He stared, confused as the color pulsed again, scattering and gathering in measured intervals as regularly as a breath.

The Apple. Only the artifact could produce such a strange imprint on his eagle's senses, Altair realized, feeling his spirit recoil and shriek agitatedly at the alien presence. He stood slowly, clinging to the marble whorls of the pillar protruding from the wall beside him and weighing his options, eyes still fixed on the pulsating aura at the corner of the base, the color seeming to reach out towards him with each throb. It was calling him, he thought, unsettled. As if it knew he was there.

He leapt from the tower without thinking, only knowing that he needed to take from the Templars this treasure that pinpointed its enemies as easily as a predator its prey. His gaze did not leave the Piece of Eden's distinctive aura until it fell out of sight behind the stones, and a few moments later, he heard a distracting thrush as a cart of leaves broke his fall. The Assassin pushed free of the clinging foliage and out onto the streets, heading swiftly towards the gate of the Arsenal.

He glanced back at the wagon as he threaded through the crowd, realizing that it was close enough to the walls to provide him with an escape route—a risky one due to the distance, but the possibility was enough to assure him. If all went well, he would not need it.

Altair passed through the entrance without a second thought, ignoring the fact that its solid gate had so easily locked them in the day before. He was careful this time, not hurrying even as he drew within a few feet of the area he had seen the Apple's aura and constantly keeping his eagle's senses alert, ready to act at the slightest warning. However, he was not prepared to hear a sudden answer to his spirit's wary keening as it surveyed the area, he for the second time sensing the presence of another raptor where he expected none.

"It has been a long time, Altair."

The Assassin had released his hidden blade before the statement was finished, he whirling towards the source of the threat with a snarl upon his lips. However, he stumbled quite uncharacteristically to a halt as the black-cloaked figure came into view, unmoving despite his attack. A gasp hitched, half-formed in his throat as he retreated back several steps, his eagle screeching and flapping disoriented wings.

"M…Master."