Once the five of them were alone, all those who had not qualified having wandered off up the hill and out of sight, Albanos sat back down on the stone slab and lit another cigarette.
"Anyone else want one?" he asked, offering around the pouch that contained what seemed to be his nearly endless supply. "It's a filthy habit, I know, but hey, in a profession where death tends to be very sudden, anything that kills you slowly is an improvement, right?"
Lillith took one, while Michael took two, tore them open, and emptied their contents into one of the innumerable bags and pockets on his person. Willam declined. Elayna fake coughed at Lillith, standing on her immediate left. Albanos could see the latter taking an extra long drag to blow straight in the girl's face. He decided to step in and get their attention before any unplanned bloodshed went on. The planned bloodshed would be enough.
"So this is it—the four of you and me. What I will put you through this year will count as the entire run of your assassin and thief survival course credits, all four years worth, which might not sound like a bad deal until you see that you'll have to earn every bit of it. I say jump, you don't even take the time to ask how high, you just do it and pray that it is enough. You've got the instincts, brains, and talents, and now all that just needs to be taught is how to work together. Since this is our first night together, however..."
And now they'd arrived at the part he'd been dreading, the real reason for the collection of spent cigarettes at his feet. But it was only fair. Contrary to popular belief, Assassins have a highly developed sense of fairness. After all, they must know what they need to do the exact opposite of while on the job.
"I don't feel like I can ask you to do this much for me without you being allowed to ask things of me in return. Nor can I teach you and connect with you how I need to if you spend every night in abject terror of me,” he glanced at Willam, who flinched, "or if you do not trust me." He could already see Elayna perking up.
"So tonight, and tonight only, from the moment the sun vanishes to the second it returns tomorrow morning, I will answer any questions you may have for me." Albanos glanced up at the sky, which was fading into deep turquoise. The shadows pooled high in the valley, and even the dimmer stars were becoming visible.
"Since we can't see the sun from here, despite my better judgment, we will start."
Elayna's hand shot up. Albanos ignored her long enough for Michael to jump in.
"What is this place, exactly?" The young man was already fishing a notebook and a charcoal pencil out of the terrifying depths of his clothes.
"These ruins are what's left of one of the original academies from centuries ago, when the schools were still at war. One building housing about 50 people, at most. It was also the site of one of the final battles of said wars, a particularly vicious one at that. A mage guild got involved somehow, which is why the place is so barren. Ironically enough, both sides wounded each other so badly that the survivors were forced to lay low for months, during which time the rest of the academies finished wiping each other out. The two factions that fought here won by default and went on to become none other than our own Kelsai Academy under Wolf, and our...comrades...to the north, under the Spider totem. By the way, they have learned nothing more about honor and fairness than they knew that night, which is to say, nothing. Next question?"
Again Elayna's hand shot up, and again, Albanos pointedly ignored her until Willam timidly came forward with his own question.
"How did you know about this place?"
"Graduations used to be held here back in my day. You know, before we had things like fire and clothes." This got a little chuckle out of everyone except Elayna, who was scowling and looking quite annoyed. "Beyond that, I used to come here to think, along with some…other people."
"So there may still be some cigarette butts of yours from your student days lying around? I mean, since you did a lot of thinking here and all."
Now, it was Albanos's turn to chuckle. It was really the first glimmer he'd caught of what Elayna might see in Willam. Something more at work somewhere inside the skittishness -- a sarcastic, flashy little thief just waiting to be found.
"No, I didn't take up smoking until after I got exiled since I figured I wouldn't be around long enough to regret it anyway. Silly me."
"And how exactly did you get exiled?" Lillith chimed in from off beside Elayna, whose hand dropped and scowl deepened. Lillith smiled and thought how much more satisfying that had been than simply blowing smoke at the girl.
Albanos pulled a small throwing dagger out of his belt and began twirling it mindlessly, as he'd done in Hagglit's office, what already seemed a small eternity ago. Minutes passed, and as the darkness deepened around them, their new teacher seemed to grow older before their eyes. He stared past them at nothing they could see with the kind of glassy-eyed intensity Elayna recognized from old soldiers in her hometown. Suddenly, he stood and, with a swiftness that said belied his age, stalked off to a pillar on the far side of the circle, flicking the dagger into the earth before it.
When he got there, he dropped to one knee and began wiping away the dust that had covered everything in the lifeless basin, unchecked by any grass or scrub brush. The students were reluctant to follow, choosing to watch from afar until the brushing stopped as quickly as it had begun, and Albanos beckoned to them.
"Since you had to ask that question, what do you see on the pillar, right above the pommel of the dagger?" he asked them quietly as they came near. Elayna, not to be upstaged again, knelt beside Albanos and squinted at the stone in the dying light. She could barely make out a relatively new-looking carving, standing out in stark contrast to the long-eroded ornamentation that originally adorned the columns of this place.
"Letters. An A and a K over an M and a V, and a rune of some sort between them, which I can't quite make out."
"It was supposed to be the ancient druidic rune for their highest form of love. They had five different symbols for love, each only slightly different from the other but representing vastly different levels and kinds of affection, and all very difficult to carve into a pillar with a student dagger while someone is lying on your good arm. I screwed up in the middle bit. I think it's closer to the symbol for quicksand now, but there's your answer."
"That's not much of an answer then. I doubt you were exiled for defacing academy property, so would you elaborate?" Lillith asked, curiosity peeking through her emotionless facade despite herself. "Telling us what those letters stand for would probably be a good start."
"Albanos K'hras and Meliana Valnoran. I am where I am today because of decisions I made in the heat of a moment and under the influence of young love, which I can tell you right now is infinitely better at clouding a person's judgment than hate could ever imagine being. Hate lets you be cold and calculating. Hate works with your mind to reach its goals. Love, or at least the best kinds of it, they just take over and demand you immediately stand up and do something about it when they get wronged. Hate simmers. Love explodes.
"She was a teacher here some time ago. She'd been through the academy a few years before I knew it existed, then went off into the world for a while, came back, and took up as assistant head of the assassins seventeen years ago. Portnoy Hagglit was only beginning to worm his way up through the administration to give you some relevant context. I used to visit the school whenever work would bring me through the area, just to see how things were, and it was on one such trip I met her. We immediately clicked, and by that, I mean I accidentally ate her lunch, and she hung me upside down in a snare trap on my way to the Staggering Shadow.”
Lillith gave an approving nod while Michael continued industriously taking notes.
"I found myself taking more and more jobs that would bring me through, and she began stealing things from me while I was here to force me to come back, usually after getting half a league down the road.”
“You didn’t check your gear before you left?” Willam interjected with as close to a disapproving tone as he dared, causing both Albanos and Elayna to sigh.
“Yes, I could have easily checked my gear at any point to make sure I got out with everything, but the point was I wanted to come back. We often came out here for picnics, and one such evening spent watching the stars come out led to the carving you see here.”
His fingers traced the sigil for a long moment, eyes growing distant once more, and even Willam had the good sense not to press him to continue.
"This went on for two years,” he resumed absent-mindedly. “I'd been an assassin for 15 at that point and had made over ten times the retirement quota of a million gold in bounty money. I was, and still am,” he added, with the slightest glance at Lillith, “the highest money-bringer in the history of any academy. But I wanted out.
“I wanted to retire to a nice cushy desk job at the school, marry Meliana, raise a family in the village, and grow old, fat, and happy by the fireplace in the Shadow. Meliana agreed with this plan wholeheartedly, of course, and she was right at the edge of retirement herself. So we got married in a secret ceremony that stayed a secret for about five seconds, as things do around here. I even began building a house for us because it's generally agreed upon that a married couple living in faculty housing is a bit sad. But one does not bring an entire treasury unto himself without making some enemies.
"Some of the more vindictive high-profile assassins felt I was cutting into their business – probably because I was. I was better than them, and I may have taken every opportunity to let them know it, especially the Spiders, ridiculous preening assholes that they are. They hadn't heard of my plans to retire. It's best to keep things close to the vest so nobody tries to bump you off while your game piece is still on the board.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Meliana got a contract one night for enough to push her past the retirement quota. Fully vested, all for intercepting a caravan and killing some arms dealer within. It would have probably looked suspicious to us, far too convenient, had we been thinking clearly. Again though, there was that whole love thing.
"The night after she left, I got a note from her asking me to meet her here, in this place we are standing right now. There were inconsistencies in the handwriting—minor, nearly imperceptible things, which are the worst. If there were glaring mistakes, I could think she was writing on a rock, or in a hurry, or she'd sneezed mid-stroke, but this was the work of someone who desperately wanted me to think everything was normal. So I packed up my gear, crept the long way to the far side of the hills, and came at last to the edge of the forest over there, looking down into this very ring."
Albanos trailed off, and there was no mistaking the fact that his voice had begun cracking a bit. The darkness around them was complete, save for what little moonlight could reach them in the valley. Still acting as a man only half aware of his surroundings, he gathered the test papers into a pile and threw the remnants of his lit cigarette onto it, blowing until the cherry-red embers spread and engulfed the dried parchment.
"Did anyone bring any water? I didn't expect this to turn into story hour."
Michael and Elayna both offered him their flasks. He chose Elayna's. He'd seen Michael absent-mindedly stick too many things into too many pockets to trust that the flask didn’t contain naphtha. After a few grateful swigs, he handed it back off and resumed.
"There was a small fire, which was wrong to begin with. We never lit a fire. We loved the chill of the night air and looking at the stars too much to ever light one. There was also no one visible in the firelight, which set off every paranoid neurosis I have – and there are many. It was a moonless night, so creeping down to the edge of the pillars wasn’t a challenge, but it turned out I didn't even need to go that far.
"They were hiding behind the pillars, people who weren't good enough or smart enough to know that the true shades of night are dark blues, grays, purples, not black. Never black. Given the rest of the setup, I was leaning toward not smart enough. To someone who knows what to look for, a figure in all black is as good as a silhouette. Darkness with darkness. Amateur hour stuff.”
Willam sheepishly glanced down at his leathers, meticulously dyed the darkest black the tanner in the village had available. It had cost him two months’ stipends. Lillith, barely visible at the firelight's edge in her royal blues and deep indigos, gave him a knowing grin.
“Given the conditions,” Albanos continued, unaware of the object lesson occurring around him, “I couldn't get a good count, but this was all shoddy. I was confident I could handle it. Then I saw her, or what I assumed would be her. A figure on the ground near one of the shadowy would-be assassins, bound and gagged from the sound of the muffled sniffles that I could pick up on as I crept nearer. That was enough for me. I didn't care who these people were. I needed to end them.
"I didn't have my crossbow back then, but I did have quite the propensity for throwing knives, and those came out first. The three people nearest her were dead before they hit the ground. After that, it's all a blur. There were at least three dozen of them, some of whom, the best of them, had been hiding in the woods, waiting for the action to start. I'd come right through them without them seeing me. I'd have been proud of that under any other circumstances. I remember standing over Meliana, fighting people off like a rabid animal. If I couldn't throw something at them, I stabbed them. And if I couldn't stab them, I killed them with my bare hands. Or teeth.
“Running, screaming, and firelight is all I remember for the most part, except for when the crossbow bolts started flying out of the darkness from the valley's rim. I got Meliana behind a pillar as best I could. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. I mean, of course, they’d have had to drug her or poison her because she would have destroyed them herself otherwise. I left her bound to keep her from wandering into the line of fire in her dazed state, took care of the last person in our immediate vicinity, and charged up the hill.
“I took three bolts to the shoulder, torso, and knee, but I don't think I broke stride. The problem with a standard crossbow is that it takes forever and a day to reload. I want to impress upon you the importance of killing whatever you’re shooting at or having a backup plan. They did not have a backup plan.
“Now it was quiet. I turned around, and...and…" Albanos’s eyes closed, his jaws and fists clenched and unclenched several times. He would like to say the story got easier to tell every time he did so, except this was the first time he had told anyone about that night, the actual night, the truth, from start to finish.
"Someone was running out of the firelight, away from me. I don't know if they had stayed out of sight the whole time, waiting for me to get distracted, or had been a late arrival, but they were sprinting away from where I had left Melania, and I knew I had lost, regardless of what the body count might suggest. And...sure enough, you know, when I came around the pillar, there she was...throat slit...already gone...thinking that I had abandoned her in the end.”
“I’m sure she didn’t—" Elayna began, but the bloodshot eyes that locked on hers made her second-guess the empty platitudes that would have followed.
"Details get sketchier here because I lost it. I checked the bodies of those I'd killed and found Spider Academy insignias on most of them. One, who'd had a particularly fancy dagger, had orders on him from their principal detailing what they were to do both to her and to me. And that it had to be done in this place to satiate their grudge against the Wolf for the war we fought here and to get vengeance against me for existing. Extra credit was offered to any second, third, or fourth-year students who would volunteer. It was their corpses who littered the ground. They arranged a gods-damned field trip to kill an innocent woman and used their own students for fodder. I immediately set off to the north, without even the presence of mind to do something about Meliana's body.
"I followed he leader’s map to find the Spider Academy. I stopped only to eat what I could kill, drink what water I could find, and gather the herbs needed to stop my wounds from getting infected and make what poisons I could. Other than that, I just kept running. Just kept moving. If I stopped, I'd have to think about the dead, accusatory eyes of the woman I’d left behind staring up at me. About everything I had lost. If I kept moving, I had to prepare for the battle ahead, and once I got there, I'd be dead soon enough anyway. It would all work out in the end.”
"Looking back on it, I must have traveled for about a week without sleep, just a series of meaningless sunrises and sunsets. I found them on the seventh night, deep in a twisted forest on the cold edge of the frozen northlands. There was no strategizing. I walked straight up to the guards at the main gate and shoved a dagger through their hearts before they could even say, 'Halt, who goes there?' or whatever guards are supposed to say when disheveled, heavily armed men start walking towards them."
Something in the history files of Elayna's mind raised a flag.
"Wait, is that how the barbarians got in that night?"
Albanos blinked at her, the trance of the story momentarily broken.
"That's what they told us,” Elayna elaborated. “That you betrayed the order and led a band of mercenary barbarians in a raid to slaughter the Spiders because you found out your wife was cheating on you with one of them, leading to the deaths of over a hundred thieves and assassins in good standing.”
"There was no affair.” He spat the word. “And there were no barbarians."
"But...what else could have happened there that night?" Elayna said with a smidge of indignance, her analytical mind not allowing itself to reach the only conclusion left to her.
"I told you. I happened. I killed them. Every last one of them. The faculty, the administration, the second, third, and fourth-year students invited along to kill the one person I cared about in this world. I systematically and methodically moved from room to room, wing to wing, and I killed everything that moved and had anything but a first-year insignia on it. The first-year students I incapacitated as a teachable moment. I was stabbed, I was shot, I was poisoned. I didn't care. Pain means very little to a dead man. I just kept moving. And I just kept killing.”
They all sat in silence for a while, staring at the dying fire. Michael was furiously scribbling down notes. Lillith sat motionless, her face not revealing any emotions.
"A small cadre of druids found me in the woods the following morning with several bundles of Spider emblems beside me. They were never big fans of the school and their perversions of nature, either, so some of them began tending my wounds and administering antidotes while the others went to see what had happened. They came back pale and shaking, describing horrific scenes I didn't even remember creating. My masterpiece of assassinry, and I didn't remember any of it. They cleaned me up, kept me in their camp for a few weeks, and nursed me back to health.
“It's a wonder, too, because the tales they tell now are of a man who spent most of his days tied to a bed, screaming at them to let him die. They wouldn’t, though. Was against their code. All of us and our gods damned codes. When I was well enough to travel, I went home to the people I figured would gladly grant me my wish. I returned to Kelsai, where Meliana was nothing but a sapling in the Shadowgrove and the subject of that slanderous lie they taught you.
“That was when I learned that our own Portnoy Hagglit had always had a thing for Meliana as well, and his hatred for me had been simmering for a long time. He may not have been much of a killer or a thief, but he could talk his way out of the gallows if he needed to, and that's what he did on my behalf. He knew death was all I wanted, so he delivered quite an impassioned speech to the academy council. He spoke of my unquestionable contribution to the art of assassinry, my legendary status in the field, the temporary insanity that had led to this whole debacle, and how bad it would look to say that one man, given the proper motivation, could wipe out nearly an entire school.
"Out of 'benevolence,' he had the council commute my sentence to hunted exile, gave me a running start, came up with the barbarian story and arranged the unprecedented cover-up so that the truth of why I'd done what I'd done would never come out. After all, the first year Spiders had scattered to the winds and were too afraid to say my name, much less tell their story. Who would know the reality of it all other than the council and myself. Barbarians were a bit far-fetched, but no stranger than what had really gone on. And through his "good deed" I'd just be a fallen assassin who'd left the door open for the heathens. Everything I'd worked for gone in the span of a month, without even a decent rap sheet to show for it. And Hagglit? He got a promotion out of it, for his forethought and concern for his comrades."
Lillith shifted, seeming to come to life again. "So why not just off yourself if that's what you wanted so bad?"
"Because I wanted to make someone else earn it. The wounds I'd accumulated from those I'd killed, the sentencing of the high council to death for what I'd done, these were all somehow worthy in my mind. Cleaning my ear out with a crossbow bolt wouldn't have been right. Besides, by the time all this was over and done with, I had begun to develop some notion of a plan for my life in the wilderness..."