From the crown of a giant king, she gazes at the sky, at that silvery full moon she wishes to resemble with fervor, and just as her aunt said: Always keep a clean and bright soul despite the prevailing darkness.

May the dirt of the world slip off you without a stain, Titania.

But her aunt is no more, and the Hundredhearts clan eventually turned to ashes. Since then she had to get used to swimming in shadows with the talent inherited from her lineage, getting her hands bloody and dirty. But despite the atrocities she committed, she wanted to think that there were still untouched spaces inside her. That she still had a chance to be the way her aunt wanted to be.

(Maybe one day in the future. But not tonight... It's unacceptable for me to stop when I still have two left.)

Titania takes a step to the edge of the stone crown. With a small hop she stands on one end. She leans forward with her arms outstretched and lets herself fall. She crosses the face of ''King Fernard the Enlightened,'' descends in front of the copper-faced meters without brushing nose or beard, her black cloak and hood fluttering. The girl is a drop of ink on a starry canvas cut by the tall wingspan of a leaning statue.

Half of Fernard lies submerged in the swamp, but it was still a colossal monument. In the moonlight the statue casts its shadow over the decaying houses until it almost touches the stone bridge that connects to the entrance of the castle. In that frame of that decadent kingdom, hundreds of corners and alleys are interwoven where shadows grow, and even if the swamp had just swallowed the remains of the town, Fernard's perpetually frown would remain vigilant and reproachful.

Titania opens her eyes a few feet from the muddy surface, and after a heartbeat, her trajectory changes. She goes from falling like lead to performing a curvature like a bird gliding in the direction of the houses. She flies without once touching the ground, because the shadows pull and push her with their invisible strings, and she switches between one and the other, letting herself go most of the time, observing the darkness that suits her best and letting her natural reflexes and her center of gravity keep the body in balance. Occasionally she must stomp on a wall to avoid crashing, or run across whatever surface comes her way as the darkness where she dives keeps her glued to the ceiling or walls. The judge's mark burns on the small of her back, and demands the blood of the guilty.

She pulls the shadow cast by a house near the outer limits of Fernard's realm, changes the angle of her body from vertical to horizontal, and steps through the open window. Titania does not have time to recognize the men gathered around the table with the lit candle, and they do not have time to recognize her. The peasants rise from their chairs as they feel the fierce wind coming in and blowing out the candle.

Titania slithers down to the ceiling, and positions herself like a snake next to the table, close to a man who doesn't even realize she is there. When another man lights the candle on the plate, the whole group is startled to notice the new presence and reveal the weapons. Swords, sickles, clubs, the occasional flintlock pistol, and a lot of willingness... The ingredients for a revolution. A bald and strong man with a white scar passing under his eyes, recognizes Titania, or rather recognizes the assassin he hired.

"Night Slash"

The others calm down and lower their weapons. Titania resists the urge to snort, and discreetly brings a hand to her face to make sure the bandages keep her hair and mouth hidden under the hood. She doesn't know who started calling her by that ridiculous nickname, and assumes it comes from her mania for solving all her jobs at night, like almost any other assassin who doesn't like to take unnecessary risks. Of course, her preference comes from the nature of her abilities, although no one knows that and she herself makes sure it is unknown. Her gifts are her weapons, and the less others know, the better her chances of survival in that job built on corpses and enemies. Titania benefits from maintaining the aura of mystery about her powers and identity, that's why she doesn't speak, and why under her cloak she hides wooden platforms that she places under her soles.

"I thought he would be taller” mutters one and Titania stares at him. It's true, even with platforms she's still not very tall. But the bald man understands that this is neither the place nor the time to be highlighting those details.

"Shut up” the bald man looks around the group of men with a withering glance to make sure no one makes any more inane comments. Then he turns his gaze to the hooded girl and repeats the plans to make everything clear. "One group will burn the barracks. Another will attack the patrols. The rest of us will enter through the back of the castle, using a secret escape tunnel intended to safeguard the king... But tonight that passage will be the closest route to the wretch's death. You will go with us, Night Slash, you will clear our path to the royal bedchambers where we will trap the despot and his family, who are just as guilty for our suffering. Early tomorrow morning we will execute them all in front of the people. Remember, this has to be a victory for the Peasant revolution. You will get your money and get out, don't look for any merit"

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Peasant revolution. Titania restrains the urge to laugh. What these men are up to is to kill a lot of people to empty the posts and keep the power, Titania does not understand why they insist on making up the matter by giving grandiloquent names to the killings.

"I didn't come for merit, I came for my pay” the assassin deepens her voice to answer and it sounds unnatural, forced. If they were in a normal situation that handful of men would instantly suspect that there is a young girl under the bandages, but in that tense atmosphere, just a few steps away from a bloody revolution and dealing with a hooded person of mysterious abilities, they were more pushed to believe that it was an attempt of a dangerous entity wanting to sound less inhuman. Some markings are so twisted that those who wear them deserve the label of monsters.

The bald man tosses a closed bag with a bow, and Titania catches it. She doesn't examine the contents like a wary thief, she knows by weight and feel that it's filled with at least 20 or so silver coins.

"You'll get the other half when you finish the job” the bald man clarifies.

They leave the shack and advance all together to the center of town, without a light to give them away, guided only by the illumination coming from the oil lamps hanging from the inside of the windows of the houses. The peasants have been coordinating for months and assigned a few dozen families to light their lamps that night. If the king's patrols had a watchtower on top of a hill, they would see four rows of light that join a few streets away from the castle. But both watchtowers and effort were elements of the past in that kingdom, and only the first Fernard with his metallic eyes could witness those traces of light that draw betrayal, while the men who were supposed to defend his legacy remain lethargic and blind in the stables, drowning in liquor or in dreams.

The peasant forces slip away following the illumination of the houses until they meet the other conspirators at the designated place to continue with the plan. Titania merely slips around corners like a ghost and keeps her eye on the man who hired her. As the number of villagers grows, Titania sticks her back against the wall of a house and the shadows lift her up to the roof, from where she catches the hundred people gathered with crude weapons.

Something meows near the girl's feet. Looking down Titania discovers a brown cat about three feet away from her. The animal, very still, gives her a long look with its dark, almost black eyes. Reflexively the assassin reaches out a hand to stroke its head, but immediately retracts her hand as she remembers where she is. It would be counterproductive for Night Slash to act that way. The assassin stands up and returns her attention to the melee. The bald man gives instructions and the group of 100, men and women, young and old, splits into three parts: 30 to storm the patrols, 30 to burn the barracks, and 40 more Titania to take the castle.

(I wonder how many children will end up orphans tonight...)

She turns her eyes to the brown cat, but it is gone.

They surround the castle on the right side, using the ruins of the crumbling walls and half-sunken towers to cross the swampy areas, every day more extensive and treacherous, a curse disguised as nature, cast several generations ago by one of the last druids. Perhaps the peasants had hoped that the swamp would stop swallowing them if they eliminated the royal family, but Titania doubts that they themselves understand the muddy specter that hovers over their lives. And the girl unknowingly was right, because not even the royal family knew why the swamp was devouring them, and they tried to fight it for decades, time when the ferns grew more numerous, larger and twisted, and their thick roots collapsed the stone bricks laid by the founders and their forces as well. With kings subdued by the soil of their kingdom, they surrendered and merely subdued their population.

Titania did not know what triggered the flame of rebellion in those peasants who were so used to living with hunched backs and sad faces. She did not know the reason, but if she had one thing clear, she would not take four kings to violently attack whoever wanted to dominate her, nor would she need to experience the wrath of a mud specter to make up her mind.

Three overlapping boulders, one three meters high and the others two, hid among the moss a stone trapdoor that the bald man opened, revealing a tunnel from where a light comes and footsteps can be heard. Titania keeps her hands on two of her four curved swords, ready to jump in case of any eventuality. The person with the lamp is shown, followed by two boys only a couple of years older than the assassin. The castle cook and the revolutionary leader nod to each other in an unspoken greeting, the former telling the latter that the tunnel is clear, but as soon as they go from the kitchen into the corridors they would have to deal with the guards lodged inside the fortress. The bald man, knowing this, faces the crowd.

"Comrade peasants, it is time to sound the signal and change this injustice that our so-called leaders call a way of life. That which the man who calls himself king, perpetuates and lets grow, indolent, without leaving his opulent lair while we pay the price in hunger, blood and loss, burning our talents in his name"

A murmur of boiling anger ripples through the listeners, all in agreement with their leader. The bald man casts a glance at Titania.

"The cook will lead us through the tunnel with the lamp. Night Slash, as soon as we are in the castle we trust you to clear our path. This will be a historic night, we will become an independent and sovereign village like any other. If you're careful, the only man who could give you trouble is-"

The assassin does not wait for him to finish speaking or for the cook to return to the tunnel, she rushes through the opening without paying attention to the astonished expressions left behind. Sucked by the darkness, Titania keeps her arms glued to her torso and crosses that stone throat like a mute arrow. She needs no guidance, always seeing better in the dark than in full sunlight.

40 silver coins. That's what she would charge for a regular organized murder in a lonely alley. But she would have participated for free. One of the men who killed her aunt and destroyed the Hundredhearts clan rests in the castle.

The captain of the royal guard, Raudo Strongchest.