Okay, it's ten o'clock and I'm gonna finish this chapter before I go to bed. Here we go.

Chapter Two: A Master Assassin's Daily Training

I was asleep one moment and awake the next. My hand instinctively closed around one of the many weapons I had weaved throughout my bed. For most people it would've been asking to get stabbed as they slept, but I kept all the weapons that were in my nest in their sheaths and buried deep beneath blankets and pillows.

My small candle showed that no one was in my room and that my lock was still in place. I left my weapon buried and sighed tiredly as I propped myself up on one hand so that I was in a semi-sitting position. My head fell to one side and I watched as my black hair fell in a straight curtain of ink to pool around the hand holding me up.

I really need to stop keeping such late hours, I thought to myself. But I couldn't help myself. I loved the night. When I wasn't out on one of my very rare flights I was at one of my haunts in the castle reading books or taking care of my wings, hair, weapons, or anything else of such high maintenance. But I loved my sleep just as much as I loved the night. And I didn't get a lot of my beloved sleep when I had to wake up a couple of hours before the sun rose so I could train and bathe. Staying up late at night out of love and waking up ridiculously early out of necessity. And my lover sleep gets pushed to the side and forgotten.

I sighed again and the next thing I know my head is hitting one of my many pillows. I jumped to my feet and tripped out of my bed. Well, it was my nest really if you looked at it. It was an arrangement of pillows and blankets that I'd gathered over the years. It was about ten feet in diameter, so I had a lot of room to toss and turn how I liked, and had walls about one-and-a-half feet tall surrounding the whole thing. The massive thing took up half my available room space, but I loved it and wouldn't change it except to add more pillows and blankets. I loved having room to move and hated cramped place with a passion. I like having space like I did when I flew. Up in the sky I had limitless room to move.

Ever since I was little I've had the urge to make a nest. On the streets you can't really have a nest because it's very hard to come by the items needed to make a nest. And then I started training as an Assassin. I hadn't been able to create a nest as a Novice because Novices shared rooms with their partner. I hadn't had a partner, but there was no lock on the door to keep people out and the same applied when I reached the rank of Assassin. And it was against the rules to put a lock on rooms that weren't supposed to have any. It was only when I became a Master Assassin that we got locks on our doors. It was also a stroke of luck I hadn't gotten a partner when I was Novice or hiding my gender would've been harder than the desert is hot in the summer. I had to dress quickly with my back pressed against the door in case someone decided to barge in during all those years. And now that I didn't have to worry about people coming in I could go to sleep naked if I wanted to, not that I did, and have a nest and I was having it damn it.

Even as I stumbled out of my nest without thinking of where to place my feet I knew I didn't upset or move any of the many objects I had weaved throughout my nest. Let's just say I can never have too many weapons and I can never resist a shiny object.

I stepped on to cold stone and winced. Even if I were a normal human I would still be sensitive to any change in temperature, and I didn't like the change from warm cozy nest to cold harsh stone. Nonetheless I scooped up my comb from one of the two pieces of furniture in my room. My small dresser held my five extra sets of robes, tunics, shirts, and leggings. The other piece of furniture I had was my armor and weapons rack, which held said items right now. I'd taken apart the bed that was in my room when I got it and made it disappear so I could have my nest.

I pulled all of my hair over one shoulder and moved to look out my window as I began brushing it. The sky was still dark as if it was night. The horizon wasn't even beginning to lighten, that's how early it was.

My morning was off to a good start since my hair decided it was going to behave today. It took me only ten minutes to actually brush it free of tangles acquired over night. I then braided it and tied it off with a strip of leather. The next thing on my agenda was getting dressed. I moved over to my dresser and pulled on my leggings, my chest bindings, two shirts, a tunic, and socks before moving over to my armor and weapons rack.

The only reason my outer robes were on the rack instead of my dresser was because I'd modified it. I lifted the deceptively heavy piece of material and dropped it over my head. It was another reason my Brothers thought I was strange. To them it didn't look like I wore armor. My Brothers thought that I was being arrogant and stupid and would be run through with a Templar's sword. But my armor was inside my outer robes. It had taken me a while, but I had managed to slip plates of armor inside the material, making it heavier than it seemed to be. I'd also modified the hood so that it cast my face into deeper shadows.

Next I pulled on my weapons. My sword sat snugly in its sheathe on my left hip tied securely tied to a belt and was partnered with my dagger on my right hip.. I had another belt tied around my hips that held my pouches full of coin, whet stones, tinder boxes, spare bandages for wounds, and whatever else I might need in a hurry. I kept my more incriminating supplies, such as poison, in hidden pockets in my robes in case guards decided to search me. I belted on my throwing knife sheathes so they rested on my right shoulder and on my back slightly above my hips. They were positioned so I could casually reach to my left or right side, pluck out a throwing knife, and send an enemy to their death. My small crossbow's handle was set to peek just above my right shoulder and it's quiver of arrows was set at the small of my back. I placed small knives all throughout my person. I even had incredibly small knives in my braid.

The last of my equipment to come on was my hidden blade. I slipped it over my left forearm and tightened the straps to my satisfaction. I then flexed my four-fingered hand and pressed the hidden button to hear an almost silent shnick of the 6 inch blade sliding out. I pressed the button again and the blade disappeared.

After one last inspection, I unlatched the lock and silently glided down the hall and out of the castle. There was hardly anyone awake at this hour with the exception of the guards and they were half asleep, waiting for the next shift to come relieve them.

I walked out through the gate and walked briefly down the slope that lead from the village to the castle before turning right and walking into the forest. The thick forest was almost impossible to navigate through without knowing your way. The village lost at least a dozen children a year when they wandered into the forest. Only a few were actually found by the Assassins. The others were never seen again.

That's why the Brotherhood wasn't concerned about the forest. To get a single person through to deliver information was nearly impossible. To get an army through the forest was impossible.

But I entered it without fear. I'd been coming here ever since I was brought to Masyaf to become an Assassin. I explored it in whatever spare time I could get and the exploring paid off. It was after my second year as a Novice that I'd stumbled upon it. It was a mile following a winding game trail, over a collapsed tree, a quick hop over the 20 foot wide mountain river. Masyaf got some of its water from this river upstream. And then after walking 17 paces through brush you came upon a clearing.

It was wide and flat ground with only grass growing in it. And around the clearing I'd set up my training grounds. It had taken most of a year, but I'd fashioned a dozen targets for throwing knife practice at various distances and places around the clearing. I'd figured out how to make the spinning dummies and had made a few for hand-to-hand combat and sword combat. I had three set around a single spot to simulate being surrounded by guards. But it was mostly a flat area for me to warm up and go through the motions.

I moved to that area first. I took a deep breath and relaxed my muscles one by one. I didn't move for several minutes only to explode into action with blinding speed. I went through every single combination of strikes with no weapons randomly. I would jab right, punch left, kick up, before doing a backflip and doing another combination. Thanks to my bird genes I had light bones and that allowed me to do more aerial acrobatics without actually having wings.

After I ran out of no weapons combinations I dropped to the ground and did pushups until my arms shook before doing a few more. After that I switched to sit ups and worked my abs into near exhaustion. Then I rolled forward and into a perfect hand stand and did pushups that way while keeping my balance. After a few more exercises I got up and sprinted around the clearing, pushing myself beyond the point where my body yelled at me stop.

Then it was climbing trees. I would climb up and down one particular tree several times before beginning to leap from tree to tree. It was much harder than running along roof tops because the branches moved where stone did not and you often lost sight of where you were landing or jumping to. Plus, I worked all of your muscles while you tried to keep yourself from falling and going as fast as you could. After an undeterminable amount of circling the clearing via trees I dropped down to the ground on shaky legs.

I was gasping for breath as I sprinted over to the three spinning dummies, pulling my sword out of its sheathe as I went. I wanted so badly to take off my outer robes and weapons to lessen the weight on my body but I just attacked the dummies with all my might. These dummies were different from the ones back on the castle. I'd changed them and oiled them so that they spun faster and whipped around more from less weight so as to work on my speed. Each dummy had 9 pegs, 3 at head height, 3 at chest height, and three at thigh height. It was out of instinct and speed that I was able to spin and whirl at my speed and know where a peg was going to be and block or dodge and hit the dummy. And then after I felt I'd spent more than enough time on my sword I would switch to my dagger and my hidden blade after that. But despite all of my agility I still got whacked four times in different places on my body.

I gritted my teeth in frustration. The day I get away from those dummies unscathed is the day I take a holiday, I promised myself. Despite the years of using those dummies I still got hit. Granted I got hit a lot less than when I had started using them as a Novice, but I still got hit and that wasn't acceptable.

I danced through the arms of the dummies, sheathing my hidden blade as I did, and reached for my throwing knives. I spun and twirled and flipped and crouched in every position imaginable so I had the practice of throwing my knives from every arrangement possible. I would look at a target somewhere in the clearing, judge its distance and the angle I should throw, and in less than a blink of an eye a knife would solidly hit it with enough force to rock it. I even had target half hidden in the trees to simulate archers.

And once I was out of throwing knives I would whip out my crossbow and slid a bolt in and repeat the process. It was a little slower since I had to take the second to reload, but I did my best by reaching for another bolt as I aimed and fired my crossbow.

It was only when my quiver was empty that I stopped for the first time in an hour. That was the amount of time it usually took me to complete my training for the morning. I gasped for breath and blinked the sweat out of my eyes as I lowered my crossbow slowly and observed each one of my targets. I smiled a bit and forgave myself for the hits form the dummies when I saw I had a cluster of arrows and knives in a tight circle on the center of each target. I reached over my shoulder and holstered my crossbow before going to retrieve my weapons.

Looking up at the sky, I judged the time once all my weapons were in their proper sheathes. The sky was still not lighting up, but I knew it would start soon. I then grimaced at the feel of sweat covering my entire body. Bath time, I thought cheerfully and began to hum a song as I headed over to a fallen tree resting on a large rock at the side of my clearing. No one would look twice at it, I hadn't, but a missed knife a few years ago had led me underneath the tree and down a man sized hole to retrieve it.

And down that hole was one of my havens. I closed my eyes and sighed in pleasure as a wave of hot air hit me as I bent at the waist and stepped down the stones I'd place there long ago. The low ceiling suddenly rose to ten feet and the light coming down the hole illuminated a stone pool of steaming water. A natural hot spring.

I took off all of weapons, armor, clothing, and chest bandages, before stepping into the pool with a sigh of pleasure. My heavily worked, tense muscles relaxed like jelly against the water temperature. The pool was 10 feet by 15 feet. The deepest part of the pool was the farthest from the hole at 9 feet deep while the area of the pool closest to the door only came to your waist. I didn't feel like swimming and just sat down. The water came to my chin and I closed my eyes.

My training would seem impossible and insane to my Brothers. An hour of almost overworking your body with absolutely no breaks and working on every skill an Assassin needs to have. But it was possible. I'd been doing it since I was 11 years olds every single day without fail whenever when I'm in between missions.

Some days I just dread the training I force upon myself. I just want to crawl back into my nest and never come out. I have those days without fail when I'm injured. Since I'm hiding my gender and all I can't go to the medical wing of the castle and have to tend to my own wounds. It especially sucked because I didn't have the knowledge or the access to the herbs that would lessen my pain and/or fever. But no matter how I wanted to forget all about the clearing and training I would force myself to go through with it, going easy in some places if it was needed.

And other days I looked forward to testing my body. I looked forward to stretching my muscles and pushing my body hard to see that I hardly had a limit compared to my Brothers.

But I always looked forward to the bath I would take after training so I could start my day off clean and confident that my training would do more than carry out the contracts given to me and defend my body.

It was this training that made me the Master Assassin I was now.

After a while I grabbed the soap and scrubbed my body thoroughly before rinsing off. I grabbed the towel I had set on the ground I squeezed all the water from my hair and dried off my body. Then I got dressed again and left my hot spring. The sky was just beginning to turn grey as I left my clearing and made my way back to the castle.

There were a dozen or so Assassins up and milling about the courtyard. I made sure to duck my head as I made my way up into the castle and to the dining room. I helped myself to fruit and meat and bread and found an isolated table away from everybody. I dug in to my breakfast and watched as Novices, Journeymen, Assassins, and the few Master Assassins trickled in to have their meal of the morning. Altair came in a bit later than everyone, but, then again, he had looked tired last night.

Though I was surprised enough to halt bringing an orange slice to my mouth when I saw his hood turn and his amber eyes lock on me. I nodded at him and put the orange slice in my mouth as he nodded back. Out of habit I blinked my eyes to Eagle Vision to see that strange green and was about to let the vision go when something caught my eye.

Across the room and the sea of blue figures sat Al Mualim, the aging Grand Master of the Assassin's Brotherhood. He was about 60-70 years old and was blind in one eye thanks to an old battle wound. His robes were dark for his status and contrasted greatly to his chest length white beard. I don't know what it was about the old man, but I'd never liked him. Something just made me want to keep my distance from him.

And now he was blue with a tendril of red.

I narrowed my eyes. Red? Why is he red? I asked myself. I blinked my vision off and back on again. It was still there. I felt unease enter my heart. There should be absolutely no reason that Al Mualim should be even the tiniest bit red. The Grand Master was supposed to live for the Brotherhood. He was supposed to have every intention of making sure all the Assassins were safe and further the Brotherhood's cause. For him to be red meant that he meant to do harm to me. But we weren't very close besides him giving me missions and contracts. Maybe he means the Brotherhood harm and me by effect. Or maybe my vision is beginning to falter. Al Mualim has been a great Grand Master in al his years and has done as a Grand Master should.

Maybe my vision is failing, I thought but the unease did not go away.

So I settled on watching him closely when I could and felt the unease lessen just a bit.

That taken care of I blinked my vision away and saw Altair sit with Malik Al-Sayf and his little brother Kadar Al-Sayf only two tables over from mine. I observed him for a second and could see he wasn't in any particular mood as he conversed with his closest friends.

Malik had been with Altair since he became a Novice. They'd been paired together and had been pretty much inseparable since, though it was a common sight to see them argue and fighting. Kadar was introduced to Altair not long after Malik and Altair met because Malik had to take care of his little brother since they were all each other had as family. Kadar was 6 years younger than the duo and at 16 was almost ready to reach the rank of Assassin. That was a bit younger than normal, but he has two of the best Assassins with him almost every day. Malik himself was on the verge of becoming a Master Assassin like Altair.

I thought for a moment on what it would be like to have someone to confide in and couldn't come up with the faintest feeling. You can't imagine what you've never experienced.

I finished off the last of my food and moved to leave my plate to be cleaned. I left the dining room and was turning down the hall to a secret entrance to one of my haunts.

After two turns I sensed someone following me. As I made my third turn I caught a glimpse of Altair peeking around a corner.

I smiled. So you want to play follow the leader? Let's see if you can keep up. I subtly picked up my pace and headed for an alcove with a bench. I looked around to make sure I was alone, although I didn't look too hard in Altair's direction, and lifted the bench. The stone came away with its legs and I set it away from the hole just enough to drop down on to the platform. After I moved the bench back into place I ran down the narrow walk space and followed it until suddenly disappeared to empty blackness.

I tried to still my racing heart at the darkness as I pulled my tinder box out of my pouch. I lit a cascade of sparks over a torch I knew was there. The torch flared to light and I sighed in relief at the light and went to quickly light the other torches. Soon the room was well lit to reveal a 15 foot wide 10 foot tall 20 feet deep stone room. In the middle of the room was a raised wooden platform with a wooden table stacked with books and papers and ink pots.

I wasted no time scrambling up a wall and on to the rafter crisscrossing the ceiling. Then I froze to absolute stillness and waited.

—Altair's POV—

"What do you know of Shahin Al-Hira, Malik?"

Malik frowned and finished chewing before asking, "Shahin? You mean the Master Assassin?" Altair nodded and Malik thought for a moment, peeling an orange absently. "Not much really. Only a few things. I don't think I even know what he looks like. Why do you ask?"

"I realized last night that I don't know much about the man and I was curious. He's the one sitting alone at that table over there." Altair answered. He saw Malik and Kadar discreetly look at the lone Assassin.

He hadn't forgotten about the mysterious Assassin and had tried to. He was set on doing so when he saw the man eating at a table in the corner of the room alone. Then, his curiosity had to be sated. Hopefully Malik would know enough to help.

"Looking to study another rival, Altair? Never mind." Malik leaned back and scratched his head, "Well, he mostly keeps to himself. You can't really go to anyone for information. From what I've heard Shahin didn't even have a partner as a Novice. And no one really sees him. You'll see him a few times going from place to place, but that's it. He doesn't train with the other men and doesn't linger in the library or the gardens. He just seems to disappear." Malik smacked Kadar's hand as he tried to sneak food off of his plate.

Kadar pouted before looking thoughtful, "I've heard the night guards say how weird it is that someone with a cape like Shahin wears goes out of the castle and into the forest really early every morning. Like hours-before-the-sun-rises early."

Malik looked frowned and Altair could see him add that mental note to the mental reports he has on everyone. "Really? How odd. I wonder what he's doing out there so early." He was silent for a moment before continuing. "You might be interested to know that he became a Master Assassin at a younger age than even you Altair."

Altair kept his shock under his mask. Altair had become a Master Assassin 2 years ago when he was 20. How could've someone become a Master Assassin come to that rank even younger than that and not have a buzz go on among the other Assassins about the incredible feat. Most did not reach the rank of Master Assassin until they were in their thirties or forties.

"It was a quiet thing," Malik continued. "He did something. Stopped a Templars from invading an important village or something single handedly. Al Mualim kept it quiet on Shahin's request. He was 19 when that happened." Malik went back to eating.

"Do you know anything else?" Altair asked.

Malik shook his head, "I can look through records on his lineage and such if you want."

Altair nodded and watched as Shahin left his plate on the counter before leaving. "Do so," he told Malik as he got up to follow Shahin, ignoring the confused looks the brothers gave him.

He was a little annoyed by the fact that he had asked Malik to try and satisfy his curiosity only to have it enflamed worse than before. Where did Shahin disappear to? Where and how did he train? Why did he leave so early to go to the forest every day? How did he become a Master Assassin at a younger age than even him?

It was in his nature to be curious, but he knew that this was different than what it had ever been before.

Shahin walked down a couple of hallways and at one point Altair thought he had been spotted, but when Shahin didn't stop to ask his business he figured he hadn't.

Altair was a little confused when Shahin suddenly stopped in front of an alcove with a bench and looked around causing him to hide behind a corner. When he chanced a glance he saw that Shahin had moved the bench and was dropping into a passageway below.

Where are you going? Altair silently asked. He counted to 50 after the bench had been moved back into place before approaching it, putting space between Shahin and himself so Shahin didn't notice that the bench was moved again. Altair repeated Shahin's every motion and soon was walking down a narrow walkway. It was narrow enough that he had to turn his shoulders in order to fit through. He saw light ahead and slowed his approach.

He came upon a stone room with a wooden platform and a table piled high with books and scattered papers. He looked around and saw no sign of the Master Assassin. He did see a door on the far side of the room and figured he'd gone through there. He walked towards the platform and table, curious to see what kind of books Shahin was researching.

But he stopped cold when he felt the cold sharp kiss of a blade press against his neck.

"Why are you following me?" asked Shahin's soft voice right next to his ear.

Chapter 2 is done and it is 1:30am and I. AM. NOT. TIRED. But I have to go to bed. I've got things to do in the morning and I'll probably be forced to wake up at the ungodly hour of 8 o'clock. *GROAN*. Anyway, second day second chapter. I kind of have an idea of what I'm going to do with the story but I still need your input. PLEASE REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!