The Bloodline of Assassin's Destiny

[Silver]

A dawn horizon and a dazzlingly orange tinted sunrise painted the sky, overlooking the field of a farmer's pride and joy: wheat. The golden fields glimmered with luminous, unearthly beauty as they can do only in mornings, or even rarely during an auspicious sunset, and swayed with the smoothly blowing wind... it was a wonderful sight. The orange-splashed clouds drifted with natural solemnity, as if paying homage to the already-dazzling beginning to what could become a wondrous day, yet another natural phenomena that would grace unwitting humans and their animal counterparts as the world began it's daytime struggle for notice, while the sun's entrance and the wheat's greeting dance lay forgotten, in the past and staying in the past. Through it all, the trees stood starkly against the glistening white mountains, some of them dusted with the covering of a midnight flurry.

This peaceful moment, before the daytime activity would squelch the morning harmony, lay with a light hand on Oreit's shoulder, turning him slowly to examine the encompassing beauty mother nature had created for him to observe, the masterpiece that the heavens' great artists had worked so hard to produce simply for himself and his counterparts, the few souls that could feel the entrancing hand of this morning's lovely body. And as he turned, as he sank completely into the enjoyment of the oceanic waves of wheat, the sun's dazzling display of light, the mountain and trees with their honor-guard position at the north, the cloud's and their solemn display of grace, Oreit stood amidst it all, soaking it all in as few had ever done or ever would. His mind reeled with the glory and splendor of this natural paradise.

As this magnificent occurrence played out it's tune of joy, as the masterful display of pride encompassed the visual area about him, Oreit pondered his life, however cliche and irritably commonplace such a musing might seem, dwelling on what he had done, what he planned to do... what he was doing. The prospects seemed infinite in this moment, the moment between a cataclysmic change between glorious peace and brash, haughty activity. In this moment of peace, Oreit abandoned his self-doubt, his unhappiness, and all that would anger or upset his mind in his moment of loving comfort with the sky above and the earth below. Nature's way had soaked into him, shielding him from unkind thoughts and dismissing his self-doubt as if it was a mere product of whim that could be ignored on spontaneous desire.

As the sun became a glow-globe for the entire landscape, bringing full dawn onto the widespread fields and mountains and waking the dozing farmers' families from fitful slumbers, wrapping the warmth of sunlight around them and shaking them gently with a spiritual gesture of feeling. As the events enveloped the inhabitants of the land, the peaceful stirring of activity began to contaminate the scene, first with the smallest animals-- sparrows, robins, squirrels, and the like– as they began to glean their morning meals and feed their young, then with the larger, more ponderous and disruptive animals such as deer, moose, dogs and sheep with their friends the llamas... finally the first of Oreit's fellow humans, the quieter elves, and several of the brutally disruptive orcs decided to pretend that their presence graced the surroundings.

Oreit's nose wrinkled slightly in a display of his utmost disgust, the lost moment still reverberating through his being... his heart clenched in silent disappointment to see it slip away slowly, and his eyes retained their jaded perspective, the perspective that might have been erased by mere seconds more of the natural trance. Telling him that it was of little consequence, his mind convinced his body to move, and his legs forced him to creep silently down the slope into the field, his gray clothing a stark contrast to the golden ocean of grain that swept out before him, flowing in waves and brushing against him as he waded into its tide... he could feel the tow as he felt himself drift out into the golden sea, entranced still with the phenomenal sight he had witnessed.

When the trance broke, so did his precarious balance over a chasm of depression. He fell to his knees in sudden anguish, crushing the brittle tendrils of vegetation under his own weight as he sank down and leaned his body back, his eyes searching the heavens for the lost moment that had slipped from his grasp like a precious jewel of care slips from appreciative fingers into a swift river of depression and anguish. Staring heavenward... had it's advantages, even in his anguish, as Oreit was now about to learn... a large being, cloaked in darkness and appealing to the anguish in Oreit's soul, flitted across the sky, more expedient in its course than an avenging angel in its search for justice, more beautiful that the trance-inducing portrait of nature that began the work in a certain young Fadeykin.

Bejeweled from head to wispy, fluttering foot, the being contrasted immensely with the bright morning sky, it's seemingly glowing black body radiating the darkness of Hell as it pierced across the distance, climbing into the sky– which seemed to shy away from the being's very presence– above the mountains and resting its massive vestiges on the tip, sinking down until its entirety engulfed the mountaintop's crisp whiteness and blazed down the slope to blacken the trees with the darkness that it spurted forth. Without a coherent being, the creature seemed sinewy and powerful, exuding a presence of evil even from the distance between itself and Oreit and striking fear into his heart. It's eyes rolled about, disappearing at random within the darkness of it's foremost tip and reappearing again as if it were an ancient, evil watchtower or lighthouse, searching for a hapless wanderer to devour in its ferocity.

On the pinnacle of the mountaintop, the darkness seemed to lure all to their doom, the presence of the aching, powerful spirit enough to send everything cowering. Everything, perhaps, except Oreit. Standing halfway up on his knees, his silent cry of lost love seemed to reach the demon's ears, and the swiveling gaze rested itself on the minute gray figure offering itself to him in the field below. At that moment, in that single second that seemed to take thousands of years to pass, the demon changed. Its self reformed, its eyes changed, its manner expressed a different kind of hatred: the simmering rage of a being viewing its own doom. In that second, Oreit saw the face not of a being more powerful than he, but of a demon that could neither harm him, nor even touch his physical body... and that infuriated the massive spirit.

With an ear-splitting roar, the demon shouted, not in the boisterous, echoing voice of a tyrant or the smooth, coercive voice of an owl, but in the hissing, spitting voice of a corned tiger, or the desperate pleading of a captured snake. In his mind's eye, Oreit saw the form of a demon conquered under the fist of a greater power... but not his power. The vision scampered away as swiftly as it had come, and he awoke as if he had fallen into a deep slumber and suddenly been jolted awake by an unseen predator, his sensed telling him to flee. And flee he did, running as only a terrorized being can run but retaining the graceful, precise speed of his training and the careful pathways of a an assassin.

He had seen himself as the doom of a demon, but that demon could become his doom as swiftly and unmercifully as if he was a mouse chased by a tabby. The demon cursed an otherworldly obscenity, roaring it out as a hiss, spitting it with the anger and obsessive rage of a prideful man stripped of his pridefulness. The sound merely drove Oreit on, made him flee all the faster in his simpering fear. The Fadeykin was not alone, however, and he was not weakened or weak. His power remained strong in his veins, as it had been strong in the veins of his brother and strong in the veins of his father. The ancestral power that God Himself had instilled in his line, unbeknown even to Lucifer and his minions since not long after the beginning.

The bloodline of the Fadeykin Assassin was coming to the time of its need.