Memoirs, Part II

A reviewed and edited except from the Memoirs of the Scarlett Assassin, Retrieved by myself, Carl Markos, from the Hands of my fellow scholar Malali Arachi, a woman of Candor, of Irridace.

 

I don’t know how they found me. I had been as secretive as it was possible for a woman to be �" wearing cloth over my face to mask myself from the outside world, only stopping at farms when my body absolutely required food.

 

I had only killed three people since I had shared my husband’s precious last moments. Of them, two were killed for the sake of convenience, and one because He had ordered it. He had remained mostly silent for two days now, only muttering occasionally that I needed to travel east, his dark voice echoing through my mind: “Go to the sunrise. East. East, Gretel. To the sea.”

 

So, I went. I loved Him, my precious Dark God.

 

“East,” I would murmur as I stumbled along roads that became increasingly more unkempt as I moved away from Candor proper, towards the Desert Ardor. “East. The sea. East.”

 

I was nearing the last vestiges of fertile land now, and farmhouses were becoming more and more rare. This one stood alone in the heated air, and grew only maize, a grain that could survive despite the dryness. I paid for food and a peaceful room for the night �" not in money, for I had none, but in other ways. I could have killed him, of course, but while dead men could not talk, their absence could be noted, which had the potential to be just as bad.

 

I collapsed backwards on the straw bed in the spare room of the farmhouse, exhausted. I’d been surprised to learn that such an isolated building, with only one inhabitant �" an old and male one at that �" had such an unused room. A child’s room, perhaps, an offspring dead or elsewhere. Regardless, I had asked for the room. Despite the acts I had committed with the old farmer, I hardly wanted to sleep in the same bed as him.

 

I rolled onto my side, groaning.

 

The voice that spoke in my head, my Dark God, was brooding silently. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him to take out his frustration upon that which composed me, but I did not know how.

 

I do not know how they found me, but the four of them crashed into the room like a whirlwind �" three men and a woman. Two of the men wore breastplates, and it was one of them who kicked the door down, ripping it from its hinges. The two of them held short, brass swords, each with a matching dagger at their hip. The remaining man and woman came into the room behind them, runes glinting at their fingertips. They appeared unarmored, but I smelt magic on them. All four of them had the same dark, Candorian skin as me.

 

Tired though I was, I was moving far before they could pinpoint my location through all the dust they had kicked up. My Dark God guided my footsteps, and I slid beneath one of the swordsmen like an eel, snatching his knife as I went. I came up behind him, my back towards his. I quickly reversed my grip on the knife and drove it into his spine. He stiffened, but I was already moving, leaving the knife embedded in him �" with no blood channel, I knew it could cost me precious moments to remove.

 

The second swordsman began to spin around, but I was faster, wrapping an arm around his neck. He was taller than me, but I simply pulled him down to my level, keeping him off-balance while I twisted him around, so he was between the rune-wielders and me. I tightened the grip, catching his breath before it could leave his chest. I placed my other hand on his hip, an almost seductive gesture, before wrapping my fingers around his knife and drawing it. He tried to cut into me with his short sword, but I was too close, and just pushed his arm away.

 

I slashed the knife across his belly, below the breastplate, and watched the viscera tumble out, glistening in the light of the unshuttered window. For a moment, I was entranced. I wondered if it would taste salty, like a man’s blood, or savory and delicate, like the flesh of a beast. The voice in my head growled and brought me back to the present.

 

By this point, the dust had settled. The woman raised her hands in a hurried gesture and sent a stream of runes toward me, an opalescent, quicksilver mist. I pulled the swordsman into the path of the magic, so that it struck in the chest. His breastplate exploded like merchant’s glass struck with a hammer, glowing-hot shards of metal embedding themselves in the walls and floor.

 

She has a strong mind, to be able to form runes around us, the voice muttered, slithering around the back of my head.

 

I dropped the man and he slumped to the floor, gasping. Death had slid her hands into him, but he clung to some semblance of life still. I left him where he lay, in a slowly spreading pool of red.

 

The other rune-wielder, the man, attempted to follow suit, forming a second spell, but the haze of runes crumbled as he attempted to send it toward me.

 

Ignore that one, commanded the voice in my head. Suddenly, I felt His dark, fluid presence moving from the back of my skull down through my torso. Without willing it, I saw my arm move in a perfect, practiced motion I could not have replicated, and hurl the brass dagger into the chest of the woman. She fell to the floor, spluttering.

 

Control returned to me with a rush, and I stumbled falteringly. The male spellslinger was staring at the fallen woman, disbelief in his eyes. He raised his eyes to mine, and screamed. It was a shearing sound of pain and broken humanity.

 

My Dark God exulted in it.

 

I stalked towards him, ignoring the cries and murmurs of the still-living swordsman and woman. I walked slowly, giving him plenty of time to blast me with spell after spell. Almost all turned to dust as he formed them, and those that did not frayed as they neared my skin, falling apart into empty air. After the fifth or sixth spell, he stopped and merely stood panting, staring at his hands in disbelief. I smiled coolly. The voice in my head spoke, slithering out of my throat and dancing on my tongue.

 

“Grovel.”

 

The terrified man fell to his knees, white-faced. “What -” the man appeared to choke on the words. “What are you?”

 

I felt my face twist into a smile. “Your deliverance.”