Important Note: this story has one experimental element for readers to play with: customizable characters. Three of the characters can be imagined with any age, sex, and appearance. These three are: the perspective character, the 'other assassin,' and the lightsmith. I mention this in advance because otherwise, you might feel disoriented when the story omits basic details about these characters. I recommend imagining each of them shortly after they show up, giving them a definite appearance appropriate to their role in the story.
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GLIMPSED BY LIGHTNING LIGHT
By my calculations, it will be less than six seconds before the baroness completes her spell. At this moment, I still believe I can get my sword through her neck first.
I am only a hundred meters away, moving so fast that the gold and black of the ballroom are blurred except at the center of my vision. Droplets of spilled wine hang in the air around me, nearly motionless.
The eight guards of the baroness, only a handful of meters to my front, are still in the act of drawing their sabers. Amid the dull roar of fleeing masquerade guests, I cannot hear the scrape of their blades unsheathing, but I can see the glow of sparks fountaining from their scabbards. Flames catch on the sword-edges, igniting incendiary oils. Menacing fire creeps to life.
At this speed, I can tear past them before their swords are fully drawn, but only if I avoid a collision. That will be tough. I'm not on my balance: it's impossible to accelerate at maximum speed like this without leaning aggressively forward, as low to the ground as a charging cheetah.
In mid step, I reach down and briefly touch the black-marble floor. I push sideways with my fingertips, and my upper body twists. The maneuver allows me to whoosh cleanly between two of the guards. I impact nothing but their flying hair, which leaves stinging lines across my face.
Five seconds to go. And sixty meters. The marble floor races so quickly by my face it's like I'm plummeting headfirst down a sheer black cliff. Through the blurred chaos of slowly fleeing aristocrats, I catch sight of the masked baroness beginning to sprint, fleeing leftward. Her first stride lands on the hem of her black ballgown, and for a moment I hope she'll trip and go sprawling. But the force of her step shreds the fabric like mist. As she starts to run in earnest, I estimate she's more than a quarter my speed. Which is impressive, but not alarming.
What's alarming is her spell-catalyst, a sapphire ring on her black-gloved finger. It has begun to shine purple-white, looking like a permanent spark of lightning. With every passing microsecond, its light intensifies, growing brighter than fire, brighter than lightning-light. Apparently this mage can spellcast on the run.
The lightning-light, the candlelight, and the moonlight—all three flare and blossom in the presence of her mounting spell, competing to dye the masquerade hall with their opposing colors. The lightning-light proves strongest. In its radiance, gold statues look as white as sparkling snow, and even the polished blackness underfoot becomes a mirror of blazing suns. I glimpse myself in its surface, and the sight makes me smile. I am a blaze of capes and crystallized light, streaking across the chamber like a meteor in the sky. My own radiance struggles against the light of the baroness.
The only darkness left is hiding behind the masquerade guests, in their shadows. The ballroom has become a purple-white theater of shadow-puppets, and in the deepest patch of darkness, beside a gaggle of noblewomen undergoing the gradual process of crashing to the ground, I detect the flicker of something moving in my direction. Fast.
Even before my eyes focus on the new threat, I'm already ducking in mid-step.
The distinctive hiss of a throwing knife whispers slowly over my head. Adrenaline creeps down my body in a cooling flood.
My eyes finish tracking, and I see the surging figure of my attacker. I recognize that shape. Even hidden beneath the eyemask, the jewels, and black finery of a masquerade, there can be no mistake.
Earlier in the night, we danced.
Before the baroness began her incantation of death and started all this chaos, the masquerade ball had been a dreamlike affair, luxurious and delicately musical. The candlelight was dim, and the warm air smelled of exquisite wines, winter flowers, and fresh-cut strawberries, which were set in silver dishes of snow, like drops of blood.
Assassins and counterassassins, like any species of prowling beast, must blend seamlessly with their environment. Why else would I have learned to dance? The best counterattacks are those that come as a complete surprise. Therefore I should have been dancing, smiling, chattering.
But I was tense: I had never infiltrated an aristocratic ball before. And I was preoccupied with my desperate purpose. The result was that I was fit for nothing but restless brooding and pacing. I had no patience for twirling around to the mysterious music of violins while telling pleasant lies to some overfed and powerless softhand.
I had to force myself to mingle at the edge of the dancing, to blend in silently with those breathless peacocks who had just finished a turn.
We saw each other, then, from across the hall, we two strangers. There was a certain amount of fencing eye-to-eye. A half-smile, a glance aside. My reluctance was forgotten. One of us was going to have to cross the floor, so I did.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
At the first touch, we both knew what the other was. Subtle muscle and animal grace. There's something suspenseful about flesh like that, just like there's something suspenseful about crates of gunpowder. The potential for lethal swiftness and sudden fire.
We moved and spun together, enjoyed the silence, said nothing. No need to weave lies for a fellow assassin, because we already knew the truth. We already knew that we were, almost without a doubt, mortal enemies.
Either of us could have exposed the other, but we agreed by knowing glances that we would be conspirators instead, and for a few sweet songs, we were not enemies, only mute partners obeying the violins, moving like one body in the dim candlelight, breathing each other's strawberry breath. After the last wild twirl and dip, we parted with a wink.
And now, in the lightning-light, in the chaos of battle, in the thunderous cacophony of pounding feet, the assassin charges out of the shadows. Even when twisted by the throes of bloodlust, the face behind the eyemask still seems exquisitely attractive—a chin like a statue, a body that moves like river-rapids, a grin that widens like a knife coming out of its sheath.
The sheer ferocity of the assassin's grin reveals a terrifying eagerness to clash with me in a more violent form of dance.
It's understandable. Our earlier dances were as tense as they were delicious, and they had undercurrents of restrained violence.
Even I found myself wondering what the two of us would be like in a fight. I'd be willing. Except that, for an assassin, I'm not much of a swordfighter. Most other assassins are obsessed with high-speed martial arts. I have my own obsessions, which occupy all of my training time. In a duel, I am doomed.
But this is not a duel, this is an assassination.
And in an assassination, my weakness in swordplay is less significant than my strength in the only skill I really love. My obsession, the thing I do well, the one skill that I've honed obsessively every day since I first came to this world. As far as I know, I am the fastest living object in the universe.
I slam my right boot down, pressing the marble ferociously to change direction. I smell burning rubber, see boot-smoke, hear the shriek of my sole as it protests against the sharp change in direction. The assassin's eyes widen in delight, because my new course aligns us for a head-to-head clash.
I would rather run a wide circle around, but there are only four seconds to go, and the lightning-light is getting so bright that I want to call it holy. I don't have time to avoid combat-range. My best hope is to gamble on a head-on clash so that, if I manage to avoid a collision and we fly past each other, our time within striking distance will be as short as possible. After that, it's a footrace; I'll be unstoppable.
The two of us hurtle toward each other through the light and shadows. The assassin slams down both boots, breaking rapidly to avoid rocketing past me when we meet, but I keep accelerating faster and faster, deliberately falling forward until I'm running so low that the floor almost skins my chin, so low that I have to move my legs frog-like to avoid smashing my knees into the marble.
At the last moment, the assassin swings a pair of daggers down at me, aiming to nail me to the floor. But I am faster: I launch myself upward with all four limbs, becoming a horizontal blur at head-height.
Close-range, high-speed dueling is a deep, chess-like art. It is taught in many different styles, but all styles have one principle in common: do not jump. An airborne fighter is helpless to maneuver. My leap would be imbecilic if I were intending to fight, but it is perfect for taking an assassin by surprise, since assassins tend to obsess about the techniques and principles of high-speed martial arts to the point that it's almost adorable. My maneuver achieves complete surprise.
We begin to pass like arrows in flight. The assassin's daggers rake into the floor, throwing twin streams of blue-white sparks. For a moment, my stomach thrills with victory. But the assassin reacts faster than I would have thought possible, twitching upward to cause a collision. There's one brief moment of contact, shoulder against shoulder. It's just a glancing touch, but at this speed, it's enough to send a bone-jarring shockwave down my ribs. I go spinning. My vision becomes a whizzing blur. Ballgowns stretch into streaks of red and green, candleflames become javelins, gold chandeliers whirl like orbiting suns.
Lifelong obsession has its advantages: I've trained for this exact problem. In midair, I twist the way cats do to land on their feet. By twisting again and again, I can repeatedly whip my head around in the opposite direction of my spin, which earns me intermittent glimpses of clarity.
The assassin is flushed, and laughing in a way that seems more rueful and exasperated than murderous.
Which is not to say it doesn't sound murderous.
I spot the flash of throwing knives already flying after me, but I am faster than throwing knives.
Beyond the assassin, where the lightning-light does not reach, darkness is spreading down the ballroom as the wind of my onslaught gradually reaches candle after candle, replacing candleflames with streams of smoke.
I twist again, looking for a glimpse of my target. The baroness is all but invisible in the blinding light, but I can see her blazing white outline skidding to change direction. I'm going to fly past her just out of sword-range.
I unsheathe my saber, wait for the perfect microsecond, and simply let it go.
I manage to twist one more time before I hit the ground. I see my streamlined saber slip through my target's neck, smooth as a needle through cotton.
Then my boots slam into the marble and I have to control my skid in order to catch my saber.
The blade is strangely bloodless. It's slick with a reflective liquid, like mercury, but thin as water. If mirrors could bleed, they'd bleed this.
In mid-skid, I throw a startled glance at the baroness. She blinks slowly at me, once, then explodes. She bursts like a mirror dropped from a thousand-meter cliff. Shards of glass blast upward and ricochet off the ceiling, then shower down like a sharpened hailstorm. Her ring of lightning-light pops with teeth-zapping force, sending out a visible shockwave of white fire. It's the only thing in the room faster than me, and I envy it even as it dissipates.
I may not be a mage, but I know enough to realize three things: one, what I just destroyed was a mirrorling, a reflection given form. Two, creating a mirrorling strong enough to cast spells is Very Serious Magic. Three, this Very Serious Mage is not dead, but is still out there somewhere, and is probably furious at me for what I just achieved.
Instead of skidding to a halt, I let my velocity smash me out through a window. I have no desire to occupy the same room with my frustrated and vengeful dance partner.
I find myself falling fifteen meters above the moonlit thoroughfare, but I have no anxiety about landing wrong. I'll receive a few scrapes at most, and then I can evade the assassin's pursuit and meet up with the client I was hired to defend, who the baroness was trying to kill. I have no doubt that he's escaped in the chaos by now.
It's regrettable that I seem to have made some enemies out of this, but on the other hand, I take great satisfaction in the fact that, from the beginning of the baroness's attack spell to the end of the fight, only three seconds elapsed.