Assassin Meets Messenger

The forest outside the town of Malhr was darker at night, but it was dark even under the sun. Alnrie stood by herself before the edge of the forest, finding herself wandering there to catch her breath---or more precisely, to get her mind off what she'd done minutes before. She used to take a walk in woods like these when she was little, which she would be accompanied with by someone older than her whose name and face she couldn't quite picture in her mind recently. She remembered the sensation of the hand holding her though, the feeling of rough skin as she gripped onto them. The anxiety in her heart mixed with some kind of bubbling joy as they strolled on a trail that cut between trees, holding hands. Alnrie didn't know what triggered those emotions but just remembering that she had once had such vivid emotions...

The voice of the whispering night winds as they ruffled the tree branches ahead of her spilled over her ears like frigid water as she stared into the depths of the forest. Cold seeped through her jet-black attire and her hair was swiping at her face, but she didn't feel the discomfort. She couldn't. The magic they wielded had a strange effect; it had the power to tamper with her body, mind, even her soul. Erasing unneeded bodily functions was easy for them, and they had done that to her. Or that was what she was told, by whom she called comrades. She couldn't remember. Maybe her mind was also altered into an odd state, something that shouldn't have been done had been done to it.

She hadn't cleansed herself from the blood. The weapon she'd used for this job was the same for other jobs. It was the knife that had been with her in her earliest memory. It had no quality, neither a common knife nor uncommon. What it had was sharpness and that was all it took for the job to be quickly done and over with. That and the other thing. This time's target was easier than most, so she hadn't needed anything beside her knife and her skills. Nothing else, especially heart and emotions, were there with her; they were the main hindrance in her line of work and were the very first things she'd had to sort out when she'd just started diving into her first client's request. It had been so long ago that it was a different life to the current her... or had it been that long? It was like just yesterday she had been bathed in her first crimson shower, but it also felt like decades ago when that happened. Now she didn't feel anything about ramming her dagger into soft flesh, or slicing apart heads from shoulders.

Her grip on her beloved dagger tightened and a squelching liquid bubbled out of the gaps in her fist. She knew without looking the drops falling on the darkened grass beside her feet turning into a long spray with the clenching of the dagger above them. The puddle on the ground should have been a little redder, Alnrie thought, but it was true that the people she killed had blood darkened, blackened and polluted with dark magic. Maybe this one had been fouler than them all.

She could take her time here, but Alnrie's work for the day hadn't ended just yet. It wasn't just a matter of finishing off the target and getting away with it stark clean---an assassin always had a superior, because they were paid killers, and they needed to be protected, in which they had to repay accordingly. She would report back to headquarters, get some sleep, and then find more clients. And kill more people. Who weren't perpetually dark magic practitioners. More often than Alnrie would have liked, her clients would be the true evil to be assassinated by her had the world been right. Or at least, had their organization possessed even a sliver of human kindness.

Thankfully, the victim she had murdered in his sleep wasn't someone with a good conscience; Alnrie had read the documents (top secret ones, apparently) that had a detailed description about the late person. Even with just a skim across the report, it was evident he was not what Alnrie would call a good person. He seemed to have been an aristocrat in the lower scale of the hierarchy; the client was his relative, and of course the motive was to eliminate competition for some inheritance rights or other. With the nobles involved, there would likely be a cover-up by the kingdom investigators. Fortunately or unfortunately, the organization would still live to see more days and Alnrie would live another day as an assassin.

Alnrie had been standing there for too long; she needed to get moving. There were two ways an assassin of her organization could report their accomplishment on their job, when they finished their task to kill specific persons. Alnrie prefered the popular choice.

"Hey, I'm done," She called out icily to the empty air.

"Yes, you are," replied someone matter-of-factly.

The voice came from behind Alnrie, even though no one was there a moment ago. Alnrie had made sure of that. And of course she did. Aside from coming to a deserted place to calm her chaotic mind, it was also so that the messenger could comfortably make their appearance. If, for example, she didn't bother even doing this, the messenger would have quite the hard time, which Alnrie would have loved. To see the stupid messenger trying hard to evade the eyes of everyone---it was a luxury sight that Alnrie had only ever seen once. At the time, she had been a newbie assassin on her first real job.

'Now that is something to reminisce,' Alnrie thought, lost in it.

She purposefully went on a tangent, meaning to aggravate the messenger, which wasn't easy. As it turned out, she wasn't successful.

There was something pushing her front, which broke her reverie. Alnrie came to herself and blinked. The messenger's face was pressing up close, filling her vision whole. "Hand it over." A monotone voice said, a breath not from Alnrie's mouth tickling her cheeks.

Alnrie stepped back in reflex, but her face betrayed no surprise. After all, whether messenger or assassin, both were just a bunch of stupid emotionless robots.

One hand raised in front of her, Alnrie chanted something under her breath. At that moment, a change seemed to have come over the surroundings. Mana was activated under Alnrie's magical mutterings, and they gathered around her raised palm. At first, the magic energy was transparent which one could only sense with a high magical sensitivity, but then when they touched the mana coming out of Alnrie's palms, it was like they were triggered.

The magic turned blue like the coalition of the purest water, forming into a complex magic circle, which spun with diagrams floating about.