memory of it.
The last word I would ever use to describe the Master of the Assassin’s Guild that took me in off the streets when I posed as a mortal in Emilia’s place was fatherly. Ironically I had once thought of him as sort of being akin to a surrogate one. He rescued me from a group of attackers, welcomed me into his home and provided me a warm bed and an abundance of food. He even offered what he assumed to be an orphaned common girl starving and living on the streets of Arythmia’s low society a way to fend for and protect herself. Despite my training to become one of his assassins, he actually did treat me much like a father would a daughter for the first two years that I lived with him. He doted on me and saw to my every whim.
The seams of our constructed reality ripped when I supposedly became of age two years later and he gave me my first assignment. It was then that the harsh reality that Samael only saw me as a means to further line his pockets slapped me in the face. I had never killed before in Faerie or in the mortal realm. I witnessed so much death up close and personal at the hands of Belial that the mere thought of having to do so made me physically ill.
I accepted Samael’s offer for room and board in exchange to train as one of his assassins, but I never expected to remain with him long enough to be made to uphold my end of the bargain.
When I first encountered Samael the inner voice I allowed to guide my decisions ever since entering the mortal realm told me that through Samael I would get close to the last living male in the Roth line. It did not however tell me how long it would take. So I remained with him biding my time and waiting on the guiding voice to speak to me again. It stayed silent and I stayed with Samael waiting for further direction. I thought it would come before I had to actually make good on the bargain I struck with him. It did not.
The prospect of becoming a killer terrified me. Belial was the monster of all monsters and I did not want to be like him. If I killed once I would kill twice and the more I did the easier it would become until life held as little meaning for me as it did for Belial.
I foolishly believed that Samael thought of me as a daughter as I had come to think of him as a surrogate father. He could never take the place of my real one, the man I loved with all of my being that Belial stole away from me, but he made a good runner-up.
When I went to him with my reservations about fulfilling my first assignment I knew he would do what he normally did when I was upset or anxious about something. Smooth the hair atop my head and tell me everything would be okay. Not to worry about it and he would take care of things. He proved me wrong. He looked at me in cold detachment and told me he had invested enough time and money into me. My time had come to start repaying him. I could either complete my assignment or find myself on the street like he initially found me.
I needed Samael. The success of my mission in the mortal realm depended on my continued association with him. So I sucked up my reservations along with my feelings of trepidation and apprehension and completed the assignment. It ended up being everything that I feared it would.
The first kill proved brutal, the second was hard, the third not too bad, and the fourth too easy. By the time I got to the fifth I reveled in the heady rush of my blade slicing through flesh and muscle and tendon.
Samael didn’t care about me. He confirmed me a fool to ever liken him to a father figure. A father wouldn’t turn his child into a monster. The only thing that Samael cared for was money and how much of it his assassins brought him.
I almost cried in relief the day I read Zander’s name scrawled across the thick white paper within the envelope Krishna handed me. It was the first time in four mortal years that the guiding voice spoke inside of my head. It is time , it told me.
---
Zander and I made it to the
The last word I would ever use to describe the Master of the Assassin’s Guild that took me in off the streets when I posed as a mortal in Emilia’s place was fatherly. Ironically I had once thought of him as sort of being akin to a surrogate one. He rescued me from a group of attackers, welcomed me into his home and provided me a warm bed and an abundance of food. He even offered what he assumed to be an orphaned common girl starving and living on the streets of Arythmia’s low society a way to fend for and protect herself. Despite my training to become one of his assassins, he actually did treat me much like a father would a daughter for the first two years that I lived with him. He doted on me and saw to my every whim.
The seams of our constructed reality ripped when I supposedly became of age two years later and he gave me my first assignment. It was then that the harsh reality that Samael only saw me as a means to further line his pockets slapped me in the face. I had never killed before in Faerie or in the mortal realm. I witnessed so much death up close and personal at the hands of Belial that the mere thought of having to do so made me physically ill.
I accepted Samael’s offer for room and board in exchange to train as one of his assassins, but I never expected to remain with him long enough to be made to uphold my end of the bargain.
When I first encountered Samael the inner voice I allowed to guide my decisions ever since entering the mortal realm told me that through Samael I would get close to the last living male in the Roth line. It did not however tell me how long it would take. So I remained with him biding my time and waiting on the guiding voice to speak to me again. It stayed silent and I stayed with Samael waiting for further direction. I thought it would come before I had to actually make good on the bargain I struck with him. It did not.
The prospect of becoming a killer terrified me. Belial was the monster of all monsters and I did not want to be like him. If I killed once I would kill twice and the more I did the easier it would become until life held as little meaning for me as it did for Belial.
I foolishly believed that Samael thought of me as a daughter as I had come to think of him as a surrogate father. He could never take the place of my real one, the man I loved with all of my being that Belial stole away from me, but he made a good runner-up.
When I went to him with my reservations about fulfilling my first assignment I knew he would do what he normally did when I was upset or anxious about something. Smooth the hair atop my head and tell me everything would be okay. Not to worry about it and he would take care of things. He proved me wrong. He looked at me in cold detachment and told me he had invested enough time and money into me. My time had come to start repaying him. I could either complete my assignment or find myself on the street like he initially found me.
I needed Samael. The success of my mission in the mortal realm depended on my continued association with him. So I sucked up my reservations along with my feelings of trepidation and apprehension and completed the assignment. It ended up being everything that I feared it would.
The first kill proved brutal, the second was hard, the third not too bad, and the fourth too easy. By the time I got to the fifth I reveled in the heady rush of my blade slicing through flesh and muscle and tendon.
Samael didn’t care about me. He confirmed me a fool to ever liken him to a father figure. A father wouldn’t turn his child into a monster. The only thing that Samael cared for was money and how much of it his assassins brought him.
I almost cried in relief the day I read Zander’s name scrawled across the thick white paper within the envelope Krishna handed me. It was the first time in four mortal years that the guiding voice spoke inside of my head. It is time , it told me.
---
Zander and I made it to the
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