Pieces of Destiny

Piece One: Bloodshed

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Piece One

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Bloodshed

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Light me up, I’ll fall in, and then be g o n e…

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The horribly mangled bodies of four elite Avari Soldiers lay before the assassin, having fallen victim to the biting blade of her deadly-sharp katana. The dull light that illuminated the abandoned warehouse cast a sick hue across their tattooed emblems on their shoulders, causing the assassin's stomach to churn with disappointment. She had thought all were dead, yet the assassin’s adept ears pricked as she suddenly detected a faint, erratic heartbeat among the bloody mess she had created. She approached the telltale noise and came to a stop before the only female among the group of Soldiers.

The assassin shoved her flat shoe into the female’s side and rolled her bloodied form onto her back. The girl suddenly pitched forward and clutched at her bleeding hole in her chest, struggling to draw in a breath through the blood that surely pooled within her lungs. The assassin stood immobile before the dying girl, caring not that her suffering had gone on longer than it should.

“Kill me!” rasped the young Soldier girl, a thin red line of blood trickling over her cheek. “Please.”

The assassin silently knelt down next to the girl and boldly met her eyes, cold green on terrified brown. “Traitors don’t deserve mercy.”

The assassin’s words were followed by silence as the Soldier’s gasping breaths faded out and her struggling heart finally stuttered to a stop. Her wide, unblinking eyes were hazy and blank as they stared up at the ceiling, showing no further sparkle of life within them. Her gruesome wound still poured blood, although the flow was agonizingly slow since her pulse had ceased within her. The assassin grimaced from underneath her thin mask and turned away from all of the lifeless forms, satisfied that none of them would ever draw breath again.

They had this coming to them, she thought as she shook her faithful sword free of the blood that coated its gleaming edge and returned it to its sheath. My job here is done.

She carefully stepped toward the only door in the dark warehouse, which she had barred with a heavy, rusted pole upon her entrance, and became intensely aware of a sharp pain coursing through her left thigh. Blood seeped through a long gash in her leg, the only injury her body had sustained that night, and was quickly absorbing into the black fabric of her clothing. The assassin scowled at the sight of the wound but ignored it, resolving to take care of it later. She easily pulled the thick obstruction away from the door, letting it fly open with a sharp clang.

The assassin pushed the pain that permeated through her leg to the back of her mind and fled through the doorway, dashing out into the quiet and deserted streets of Avari village toward her headquarters. The inky black night enveloped her dark form as she ran, swallowing every trace of her presence. The silver chain around her ankle jangled with each step she took, although the noise was not loud enough for her to worry about being detected. She slowed her pace as she neared the darkest area of the village, just a few feet away from a seemingly abandoned bath house that resided on the corner. The pain was no longer something she could simply ignore and she looked down to discover that she had been leaving bloody footprints behind for some time. Thankfully, the ominous black clouds that loomed above her promised rain, which would surely erase any trace of the blood that her body had annoyingly spilled.