Once, the voice from another cell asked Aster a very important question.
It was the first of the long, cold decades that would follow. Aster hadn’t seen his face – he hadn’t seen a living soul in years – and at some point during his confinement, he’d become convinced that everything was just a hallucination. These episodes come and go, depending on how well Aster had his grip on reality.
That day, he’d heard the opening of the cell doors across his. Footsteps from the guards, and then, an unfamiliar one. Soft, graceful steps compared to the soldier’s imposing heels. There was a soft laugh, followed by a brief exchange of words.
Then, the loud, cruel slam of the cell doors.
“Hello,” a voice said. “It’s a little bit…barren here, don’t you think?”
Aster had stared at the ceiling. Another day, another hallucination. Yesterday, he’d conversed with the ghost of the thief he’d killed on his first steps outside of the village. The day before that, it was a wolf. (Now THAT one was weird). Then, a few days back, it was some nobleman who owed the guild a huge chunk of money.
Although it was strange that the voice had no face this time, Aster wouldn’t put it past his own mind to get more creative as time went on. He wondered if there was some significance to the ghost not showing his face to Aster.
“Which one are you?” He asked.
“Come again?”
Aster sighed. “Did I kill you before?”
Silence.
And then, a laugh.
“Not really,” there was a lilt in his voice, like he knew something that Aster didn’t. It stirred up some long lost feelings of rage and spite within his chest. “But I bet you wish you did.”
“Fuck you,” he snapped back. “Like I’d waste time on a lowlife like you.”
Another ring of laughter. It echoed within the Fortress like chiming bells, and the more he spoke, the more Aster became convinced that this person was, in fact, not a hallucination. A fellow prisoner, it seemed. Who would’ve thought he’d see the day?
“Unfortunately, you’ll have to spend the rest of your life with a lowlife like me.” The person chuckled. “I think we got the same sentence, too!”
“You mean the death sentence?”
“‘Till death do us part.”
Aster shivered a little at that. On top of his doomed fate, they actually gave him a total creep and a weirdo for a prison mate. Emperor Sibylla must’ve been laughing up a storm in the Hall of Fortunata.
“Stop saying it like that! And shut the fuck up, no one likes you!”
“Ouch. No mercy, huh?”
“Fuck mercy,” Aster hissed.
“Mercy is a virtue,” the man hummed.
Stop talking.
“And yet you’re stuck here with me,” Aster snapped back. “What did you even go to jail for, huh?”
“Well, for starters…regicide.”
It was Aster’s turn to laugh. “Okay, I have to admit. That was a good one.”
“What’s so funny?” The man sounded genuinely confused. “You didn’t think it was actually doable? I actually have a few more–”
Aster leaned against the wall, finally gaining interest. “His Highness is a tough hit, and that’s the best assassin in the game attesting for you. He must’ve made some kind of deal with the devil to survive so many attempts. If I can’t do it, why can you?”
He hadn’t seen this person yet, but he doubted that anyone could have put Emperor Sybilla to the ground. After all, the man had enough audacity to entwine his death with Aster’s – if he died, then Aster would too. Knowing him, he’d live long enough simply because he wanted Aster to suffer.
“Ah, so that was you.”
Against all odds, Aster felt a twinge of pride flutter on his chest. Whatever that entailed was of no consequence – it was him! He was still famous! The empire still trembles at his name!
Heh, better squeeze this for its worth.
“You know me?” He feigned disinterest, as real legends do.
“Of course I do! Everyone’s heard of the empire’s biggest flop!”
The…what?
“Twenty-two assassination attempts, not one confirmed hit. The best assassin in the game, the only one who could've ended that bastard’s tyranny, and he seemingly loses all his skills.”
The voice sounded incredulous – mocking even – to the point that Aster could imagine the same masked man and his blood red eyes sneering at Aster from above.
Twenty-two attempts and not once have you nicked a single vein or artery. And you call yourself an assassin?
“Hey. What the fuck are you implying?”
Back then, his prison mate chalked it up to curiosity and tendency to piss off the wrong people at the wrong times. He didn’t mean anything, he said, just as Aster didn’t mean anything about missing his hit consecutive times. It happens sometimes. There was nothing to gain trying to make conjectures of an incident long past, just as Aster had nothing to gain in dragging out someone’s assassination.
But in that moment, those numerous attempts flashed in his mind:
The arrows that missed the man’s heart.
The poisoned cups that were spilled at the last minute.
Stalking, ambushes, and attacks that ended in discovery. Always getting caught. Always missing the mark.
Blood-red eyes would always spot the assassin lurking in the dark. A small smile for every failed attempt. An endless waltz of life and death.
“What exactly were you hoping for,” the voice taunted, “sparing a bastard like that?”
***
Aster opened to the same blood-red eyes looking down on him, this time with concern.
“And he lives,” the scribe announced, deadpan. He threw more wood into the fire – fire that Aster didn’t remember making – leaving Aster enough time to get his bearings. They were inside a cave that Aster didn’t remember going into, with materials and camp site that he definitely didn’t set up. He tried to sit, only to be pushed back into his quilt.
“Don’t,” was all Florence said. It was only then that his gaze landed on the bloodied clothes and a bowl of water, then to his own newly bandaged wounds.
Did he just—
“Shut up,” the scribe cut him off before he could even say the words out loud. How he knew what was coming before Aster could even ask, must be the work of powers beyond. He still wouldn’t look at Aster, and instead continued to stir a pot of water that had nothing on it. It seemed that despite his bandage abilities, the man still lacked the basic survival skills of setting up camp and eating food.
He remembered giving Helen with most of their supplies, leaving just enough to last them for the night. The travel onwards had been lighter and considerably silent, with both men too tired to even bicker with each other. Aster recalled feeling hungry and lightheaded, and then complaining to Florence how he’d done most of the leg work.
And then, darkness. Aster was no stranger to flesh wounds, but it appeared that dying had considerably made him disconnected to his own body, in many ways more than one. For starters:
“You didn’t even tell me you already reached your limit,” Florence grumbled, like the mere withholding of this particular knowledge was that much of a grave offence. “Passing out just like that…what were you thinking?”
Aster wanted to refute that he was nowhere near his limit, when a mere shift of his torso reminded him that this was 19-year-old Aster in flesh, and only a seasoned assassin in spirit. He didn’t get to decide his limit if he hadn’t trained his body for it.
Still, there was something amusing about pissing off the man in front of him.
“Well, I’m so sorry that I didn’t get to choose where I passed out.”
Florence scoffed. “I had to carry your ass all the way here.”
“Must’ve been quite the strain for those dainty arms.”
This made Florence stop his nonsensical stirring, as he blatantly checked out his own muscles in the firelight. The sight was so ridiculous and uncalled for that Aster could barely stifle the laughter bubbling from his throat. “They’re not dainty!” the scribe protested. “I’ll have you know, you received nothing but treatment befitting of a princess! I’m not some wilting flower—”
Aster was briefly aware of the water boiling over, but he let the scribe continue on his tirade of made-up gentlemanly attributes for the time being. In a span of days, he’d already witnessed different sides to the man he’d worked so hard to kill and went to jail for. Even faced the gallows for his failure to put him on the ground. Both then and now, Aster held no answer to his prison mate’s question – he wasn’t even aware that he was sparing His Highness.
After all, what else is there? At the time, Emperor Dominique Sybilla was nothing but a walking mark. Before their debts, the only thing that bound the two of them was the promise of gold in exchange for the man’s head. Aster didn’t know about the scribe, the man who would spare a child, and the man who hated his own noble bloodline.
Mercy is a virtue.
“Why’d you still save me then?” Aster asked, for old time’s sake. “I took your dagger, I left you on your own. The excuses basically write themselves.”
At this point, Aster didn’t even know why he bothered asking. It’s an old joke – one that only he knew about – and even then he couldn’t even answer what exactly had been worth saving.
Florence whispered something under his breath, a string of words that vanished along with the smoke. Really, the two of them had to quit it with this muttering.
He didn’t even know he said that part out loud, until Florence threw a rag at him.
“YOU quit your muttering!”
“I’m serious! I didn’t hear–”
“Then all those injuries must have affected your hearing.”
“Exactly. I’m injured, so what gives you the right to harass me?”
When Florence did answer his question, the man did so with a look of silent fury, making his blood-red come alive along with the fire. It was almost reminiscent of that dead-eyed man that old Aster often catches in the open balcony, his body a target for all the world to do as it pleases, and yet for some reason, he always found Aster’s gaze before the assassin could shoot.
“You told – no, ORDERED– me to leave you,” Florence said, “And I thought, ‘who died and made you emperor?’”
***
Ah, that’s it.
A look of defeat, a small gesture of surrender.
Against all odds, Emperor Sibylla always seemed to catch him at the corners of his eyes, always turning to face him at the last minute. Like a sunflower waiting to catch sunlight.
It wouldn’t have been a proper kill, old Aster thought, if the target was basically letting him do it.
And so the blades missed–
The cups were switched–
The arrows refused to fly.
Emperor Dominique Sybilla lives.
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