Prelude - Seirios
Desmond Miles is sixteen years, two months, seven and a half days, four and a half hours old when the Farm's Mentor calls him into the dirt-floored ring of the training grounds for the first, last and only time.
[five minutes, twenty-eight seconds, three point five hundred forty-three picoseconds pending to regression]
The dance with sharpened knives that any other Novice would be deemed too young to handle is familiar and rote from practice with his instructors, worthy, by their estimation, of praise; but still somehow never good enough.
Not for the Mentor, at least.
Not for William Miles.
[three minutes, forty-three seconds, one point thirty-two picoseconds pending to regression]
Nothing is ever good enough for the proud and ambitious Auditore heir, up to and including the gangly limbed teenage form of his youngest son, failing in the moment to live up to the exaggerated mythos of their shared illustrious ancestor with a misstep and a poorly timed parry; an intolerable lapse in concentration as the youth drops his guard and slaps one hand to the side of his neck in sudden alarm, distracted by a sudden burning sensation there beneath his palm.
[one minute, thirty-two seconds, zero point four hundred fifty-seven picoseconds pending to regression]
The knife's edge catches both of them off guard as Desmond stumbles to the packed-dirt floor, the blade slicing straight through the flesh of his lips, colliding with and catching on his eyeteeth in a jarring, grinding motion before mercifully sliding free without inflicting further damage.
[zero minutes, two seconds, thirty-four picoseconds and two hundred forty-seven zeptoseconds pending to regression]
Desmond does not notice, too busy grappling with the sudden, momentary hyperawareness of individual synapses firing into overdrive and then, not even that, as the burning sensation in his neck winds a thorny, fiery path up his spinal cord and then blossoms inside his skull into a celestial flower of all-consuming heat that scours away any hint of awareness.
[countdown completed, commencing regression sequence]
When his body curls in on itself and his mouth opens to keen in a tongue not spoken on this planetary body in seventy-five thousand full solar revolutions, Desmond does not notice; it is an act born of mindless animal instinct, an ancient [hardwired, encoded directive. function: preservation-of-the-self] response to pain.
When William Miles half-drops, half-flings the bloody knife away from himself like it is a live explosive and then turns, face pale with horror, to call for the compound's doctor, Desmond does not notice; for the white-hot heat of the reborn star unfurling within his mind leaves no room for thought, pushing his consciousness [mind-memory-sense-of-self] past the limits of his awareness and down into the murky, inky-black sea-like state of non-being.
[Concealed beneath his slightly-too-long curls and splayed fingers shaking against his neck, no one notices as the blotchy, spiderweb-like mark he's had on his neck since birth flares momentarily with a pale, unearthly light before winking out like a distant star.]
[regression sequence completed, terminating transmission]
so. anybody remember that old fandom theory that Altair/Ezio/Desmond were reincarnations because of their models' Same Face Syndrome?
yeah.