The sky was clear that night, with stars twinkling above, dazzling off the reflective roof of the Emeral Palace.
That night was supposed to be a night of celebration; The King had convinced the Ame family from the northern part of the country to trade with the Emeral kingdom!
This was truly a miracle as the Ame family had always had a grudge against the Emerals for usurping more land.
Such a miracle, in fact, that none of the drunk revelers noticed a lithe figure dressed in shadow and crimson slip into the roof of the palace.
Nor did they notice a certain rich young man being led back to a room with a fair young woman, locking the door behind them and turning the lights low.
And that as the man laid next to the woman, a lithe figure moved beside the bed, his soot colored hair extra hidden within the shadows of the dimly lit.
The man thought he had heard something, but 'mentioning it at a time like this would absolutely kill the mood...' he thought.
The man felt a sharp pain in his chest, and before he could say a thing he felt his throat split open. His last words were meaningless death gurgles.
The young woman, afterward, moved out of the sheets shivering from adrenaline, as is natural after witnessing such a gruesome death, wrapping herself in a blanket for modesty.
"My part is done, I expect to be paid before the next full moon." She told the lithe figure, who held a knife tipped with blood in one hand.
"You must stay for the party, otherwise they'll start asking questions." The figure moved closer to the woman, making her flinch a little,
"And once they learn you're a low-ranking Ame royal, they'll be especially suspicious..."
He brandished the knife, and the woman backed up, and he stepped forward until the woman was against the wall. He wiped the knife bloody on a crimson stripe of the ragged coat he wore and put it away,
"And, I don't think that I trust that you won't mention me in a torturous interrogation session."
"So stay at the party till you're dismissed, and have fun."
He backed away from the woman, and back to the bed, taking out a note of paper and laying it on a nightstand.
"You should probably change too." He added, now balling up the soiled sheets and tucking them in a rucksack he had left under the bed.
The woman nodded and gathered up her clothes from a corner of the room, and slipped out of the bedroom to change in a dressing room elsewhere.
The lithe figure grabbed a different airtight bag from inside the rucksack, and after grabbing a cleaver from the rucksack, began to quickly butcher the dead young man, and stuffed the pieces unceremoniously into the bag.
He resealed it, and then slung it over his shoulder, and then grabbed his rucksack. Other then the missing sheets, the room was mostly how it had been beforehand.
The lithe figure slipped out a side window, and after some struggled climbing he reached the roof once more.
The guards had been told to have most their numbers inside the palace, so the drunk revelers couldn't get too rowdy, and to guard the main gate to show any prospective criminals that they were still prepared to apprehend them.
Luckily this meant that the royal gardens, a small forest with a fresh orchard and stocked with game walled in from the rest of the city, were wholly unprotected.
So the lithe figure carefully maneuvered to the top of the roof; a tall metal spike atop the green crystalline domed roof, and slid down and off the northern side.
As he plummeted to the gardens off the roof, he didn't feel a shred of fear. He caught the edge of a branch of a tree, making it bend and snap under his force.
It also slowed his descent, so he landed gracefully on the fertile soil of the royal gardens.
He had to get the bag of remains back to the client, and pick up the remaining half of the pay, which meant he had to go to Thrushhome, often called the Aristocrats District. He headed west through the gardens ears alert for footsteps or otherwise living noises. He readied his blade.
A rustling in the bushes alerted him and he bolted up a tree, leaving his rucksack at the base. He held his knife and narrowed his eyes at the bush. As a small white shape emerged he leaped down and stabbed through flesh; it was a bunny. Luckily it wasn't a lethal kill as otherwise he'd have to waste time hiding it, and it ran off back into the bushes.
He slipped out of the gate on the west side of the palace and soon he was winding between buildings in the city. On a perfect day, he'll stay out of sight, not have to kill unnecessarily, and get to the client in a timely manner and collect his payment.
Unfortunately, that day was not a perfect day.
He turned a corner of a brick-lined alleyway, thinking it would turn off into a small side road, but instead he stepped out into the main road of the Thrushhome District. People danced and raced down the road, bustling around to different parties and bars. He felt bodies brush past him, and then somebody tripped over his shoe.
A self-righteous "Hmm?!!" sounded from the tripped body, who stood up unsteadily and rounded back on the boy, although looking in the wrong direction.
"You should-hic-watch where you're going!" The man fixed his gaze on the boy, and made eye contact for only a moment; A wave of fear flooded his senses. The man had no idea where it had come from, but he was no flighter, he was a fighter.
The man looked down at the boy with fury burning in his eyes, and raised a hand up, "Watch where you're going, street trash!"
The man flung down his raised hand at the boy, but was stopped by a knife sprouting from the middle of his hand.
The man inhaled sharply before pulling his hand away from the knife. He held the wound to his chest, crimson staining his clothes.
The boy ran away down the street, but the man was having none of it. The man chased after the boy screaming obscenities,
"I'll kill you! I'll find everyone you know and have them thrown in jail! I'll kill you!-I'll-!"
The boy whipped around, standing his ground, and suddenly he looked more like a wild animal to the man;
Something that needed to be put down. The man raised his fists and charged the boy, his injury forgotten.
The boy watched the man's advance, waiting...
13 feet,
7 feet,
2 feet,
He burst out with his knife, slashing the man's jugular vein in his neck as he danced around to his back, and reached around and stabbed the knife into the man's heart.
He tackled him to the ground, pulling the knife out. The man spasmed on the ground for a few seconds before going still.
The boy looked around him, a small crowd forming while most the people still danced and celebrated down the street.
"Haha, such a good play, right?" He bowed to the crowd, although he could tell they didn't buy it.
They were only silent in fear of being his next victim, other wise they'd have already flagged down a city guard.
He stood back straight, he was about to leave, but he thought he saw a certain face in the crowd; one he'd avoided for years now... He could practically hear the horrid thing's masked ips form that familiar sentence;
'No, no, no, Gustaaf; you're much too sloppy with your technique, try again...'
He noticed some of the crowd start shifting
away, and before he was arrested slipped
away into the correct alleyway to lead to the Client's home.
He didn't knock at their door, he slipped into a side window facing into the alley.
The room he entered into was a small study, a lonely wooden desk with papers and an unlit gas lamp sat opposite from a door, with a bookshelf built into the wall full of various books that the Boy couldn't care less about.
He looked through the keyhole of the door, seeing a common room where two children played with blocks, and a young woman signed off stacks of paper on a bare wood sofa. A man walked into the common room, wearing a kindly smile and bright colors that, the Boy thought, would be so easy to target in the shadows. This was his client.
The Client sat down beside the woman, and looked around. The Boy walked over to the bookshelf and grabbed an armful of books, before dropping them all onto the floor.
The noise wasn't too loud, but hopefully it'd be enough to alert the Client.
He hid beneath the desk, pulling the chair forward. Soon the door opened, and the Client walked in, gently shutting the door behind him. His smile faded.
"Are you there?" The Client asked the empty air.
The Boy rolled out from under the desk, brandishing his blood-covered knife.
"Do you have the money?" The Boy asked the Client, staring coldly into his eyes.
The Client wrung his hands and nodded, moving beside the Boy and to the desk, opening a drawer. He pulled out a stack of green-quartz emblazoned coins, the kingdom's coin smara, wrapped up in twine.
The Boy kept his distance with one hand out, and made sure the knife was quite obvious to the Client as they carefully sat the coins into the Boy's outstretched hand. The boy backed up and leaned on the door to count the bundle;
'1...2...4...12...'
'hmm...' he counted them again, to find that there were definitely 12. A good chunk of change, sure, but...
"I believe I was promised 18 smaras, sir... You do know what I do to people who come up short, right?" The Boy said, approaching the Client and shoving the coins into his pocket.
Now his knife was poking just barely onto the Client's wrist,
"Where, is the rest?" He poked it in just enough to draw blood, but nothing serious.
The Client gave a nervous chuckle, "So, you see... My wife had to have some serious medical treatment and...
I had to shell out the other 6 for a specialty doc- You understand, right?" The Client said, now looking utterly defeated.
The Boy searched the Client's face, his body language... He didn't seem to be lying, and not did he detect any maliciousness to the short of money, still; He had to make an example of him somehow, otherwise it'd risk others thinking he could he bargained with...
"I run a tight business, maybe you should have thought about that before paying that doc." The Boy gripped his knife hard and, taking hold of the Client's hand, chopped off his pinky finger in a clean slice.
The man winced in pain, but wisely stayed quiet as not to risk further punishment.
"I-I can get you the rest... Just please leave me alive, my family- they need me, please." He collapsed onto his knees and bowed in forgiveness, without realizing the Boy had already slipped back into the night, taking his pinky as payment and leaving the butchered body bag with the Client for him to clean up as a favor to the Boy; The assassin known by most through his lithe figure, ragged crimson-black clothes, ash-colored hair, and eyes like red halos.
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Gustaaf(Assassin/Boy) Concept Art
Made by me with DALL•E by OpenAI