Professional Hit

Valerie quietly walked down the corridor to the cabinet of her royal assassin. She held in her hand a parchment wrapped around a stack of cards. She found Morgan strumming a lyre. His mind seemed more preoccupied than his fingers. After a few minutes, he stopped and canted an ear in her direction. She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He controlled the urge to flinch away from it. He wasn't used to being touched. She pressed the packet into his hand and gave him an innocent peck on the cheek. Shock, then a smile, crept onto his face as he heard her footsteps softly retreating.

The cards were done in braille. The braille wasn't as straight as when a frame was used and harder to read as a result, but she'd made the effort to learn. It was a level of discretion he'd not seen in the Hysper courts before. Of course, most of the time, others forgot he was blind anyway, so they couldn't be expected to take advantage of it.. His fingers danced over the lines.

The card stack was a dossier. One of the warmongering wizards was becoming a real threat to her position. She had finally decided to exercise her power and he was about to be her instrument. He slid the cards into his pocket and slid his enchanted spectacles on his face. He carefully unfurled his cloak and laid it on his shoulders. He picked up an average silver coin and started a long, slow cantation while going through the mental kata of an assassin. His precise words and mental sharpness fed each other. Finally, he placed the coin in his mouth and went for a walk.

He walked softly. He understood a 6-foot-8 frame in black clothing is hard to hide. When he got to the general corridors, he quietly circulated amid the regular people. What the spectacles actually allowed him to see was a cacophony of intentions, feelings, and general thoughts. He could not really see the crowd about him, just their minds at work. “Good friend!” he heard yelled across the crowd. Khael must have noticed him. Morgan gated away and several floors down.

The city nation of Hysper was entirely contained in a building roughly three by five miles and of uncertain height. The tower was partially submerged and magic alone kept it from subsiding. The flood that buried a good portion of the tower also devoured most of the planet's land masses. The base was supposedly shaped akin to a ziggurat, but leaks in lower areas meant swimming a mile down if one wanted to see it.

The coin in Morgan's mouth emitted a low hum. Morgan turned his head left and right to see if any direction strengthened it. As he wended through another packed common hall, he moved closer until the coin could be heard rattling against his teeth. The coin was also shaking fast enough to emit a hum. He could see the attention it was attracting, but one mind seemed out of tune with mere curiousity. He forcefully spit the coin out at the mental hue of panic. This was immediately followed by his standard line of “By the order of Queen Valerie....”

The crowd dissapated as the marque's name was pronounced. Assassins are normally supposed to be shadows on the wall that strike in the black of night, but this targeting was more of a public relations move to quash further uprising. It was almost unnecessary to kill him once the pronouncement was made. Almost.

The target hid panic well. To everyone else, he was brave. To Morgan, he was just going to be an annoyance. Morgan put up a shield reflexively. The spell aimed at him bounced off harmlessly. The next spell he didn't see coming. At least part of it forked around the shield and hit him. His target was an experienced duelist and a fire mage. Dying wasn't the answer here, though.

He gated several feet closer, almost occupying the same area as the target's body. A fine razor sharp slice ran up the body projected from Morgan's fingertips. The next spell died on the mage's lips as he shrieked in horror. Morgan's hand stopped as it hit bone. He sunk his hand further in until he put it around an internal organ and squeezed. As the mage continued struggling, Morgan wondered at the almost guiltless pleasure he felt in offing the greater races' unsavory members. It contrasted sharply to the stultifying remorse he felt when tasked with killing humans, even ones whose actions merited reprisal. He wiped the gore off his hands on the dead mage's robes and walked off, the crowd rapidly parting before him.