by Logan Jacobs
Then I found my true calling at the assassin’s guild.
“Four hundred,” I counted, clicked my tongue to make a mental mark of my count, and searched for where my target should be.
For the past few weeks, I followed the same scum of the realm dwarf and memorized his routine and pace down to the second. I was nothing but methodical, and I treated every target the same way until I ended them.
I always experienced an odd feeling when my target realized my face was the last they’d ever see in their life. Something seemed to shift in their eyes when they gasped or groaned in their final moments.
Killing wasn’t easy at first, but I learned from my mentor, Adrian. He was a halfling who came from a rich family, but wanted to do anything he could to bring down the elven reign over the realm. A rebel of sorts.
He found me hiding at the orphanage on a rainy day just like this. He was with a redheaded woman who posed as his wife, but she was busy recruiting for her own guild as well.
I learned that later, though.
“Three hundred.” I clicked my tongue again and leaped over a halfling who had slipped in the mud in front of me. I knew my target like the back of my own hand. He had to be close.
My methods never failed.
Adrian told me I was the quickest and most eager pupil he’d ever trained. I learned how to discern the difference between a murder and a planned assassination. Murder was sloppy, driven by an emotion like guilt or greed or anger. Assassination was an art crossed with a craftsman’s technique and worth ethic. It required a study of the target, an appreciation of the target, and almost a love for the target. That was the proper way to end someone’s life, and that was what the Assassin’s Guild represented.
I know for some, to be adopted to the Assassin’s Guild was a death sentence, but to me, it felt like I had stepped into who I was always meant to be. Like a caterpillar turning into a moth of death, I took up my teacher’s technique and was now close to the pinnacle of the game. I never failed in my mission, so the guild now used me for most of the high profile jobs in the Halfling District.
“Two hundred.” I clicked my tongue and scanned the street for my unlucky dwarf.
Nothing yet.
Instead of going home to his wife, my naughty dwarf went to a “Miss Teacakes” at Madame Rindell’s every day. I enjoyed when a target of mine would have Rindell’s as part of their routine. She was always willing to let me do my thing for a small price, and I suspected she really hoped to see me dress up in her outrageous outfits full-time one day.
That would never happen, of course. Why would I spread my legs for money when I could spread open someone’s throat for much more coin?
“One hundred,” I clicked my tongue, “and there you are.”
The fat rosy-cheeked dwarf I hunted was right where I saw him every single day. Before he fulfilled his fantasies with “Teacakes,” he would fuel up at the food wagon parked in front of Rindell’s.
That was his last meal, and he didn’t even know it.
“Ten.” I clicked my tongue as I walked past the dwarf and up the path toward Rindell’s front door.
“Ah, yet another one?” Madame asked as she held her miniature golden binoculars up to her eyes. She often sat beside the front door so she could greet her customers, and her placement suited me just fine today.
“Rosy cheeked dwarf by the wagon,” I muttered. “See him?”
“I sure do, darlin,’” she said as her pale blue eyes peered over the ridiculous gold binoculars.
“Send him to the back for a private showing.” I reached into my satchel for two silver coins and placed them in her hand.
“What a shame.” She took the coins and clinked them between her fingers. “He was quite the regular.”
“The guild appreciates your cooperation,” I said.
“As if I have a choice,” the madame sighed.
“Well, you do,” I replied.
“Sure,” she scoffed. “If I’m fine ending up in the ground.”
“Oh, they would never find the pieces to bury you,” I said with a smirk.
The older woman met my eyes, and for a second, I thought she was going to continue the banter, but then she looked away and gestured for me to continue with my mission.
That was how it always worked. No one wanted to cross the Assassin’s Guild, and therefore, no one wanted to cross me.
I jogged into the darkened dance hall full of women dressed in brightly colored costumes and huge hats with decorations that dangled off their rims. They danced provocatively and carried trays full of chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Most of the time, they’d pour those same treats over themselves to woo the men into spending even more coin, but I didn’t see any of the women coated in sugary syrup at the moment.
I’d never understand the appeal of such a place.
I made my way to the back of the first floor, through the costume door where the whores had their private space, and went to a cubby hidden in one of the corners. I grabbed the first costume I saw hung up on a hook there, and then I shimmied out of my dampened black cloak and tights, flung the pink monstrosity over my head, and pulled it down until it was secured.
“What the--” I grumbled as I turned to examine myself in a mirror. My skirt was made of too many bright pink ruffles that flared out to the side instead of covering my ass, and the dark red bra left the top, sides, and bottom curves of my breasts exposed because it only had a finger’s width of cloth to cover my nipples. I looked like I’d killed a flamingo, lit it on fire, and then tried to cover my crotch with it, but I suppose that’s what the men in this establishment wanted.
I wasn’t even going to bother with the hat.
“Right this way, sir, we have a mighty fine treat for you,” Madame Rindell’s voice screeched over the drum music that blasted throughout the hall.
I waited to hear the door shut, and then I secured the most essential item from my outfit, the black dagger strapped to my leg. It didn’t quite go with the feathery costume, but the idiot probably wouldn’t be able to peel his eyes away from my breasts or bare stomach.
I glanced at the mirror one last time, twisted my hips to the side to get into character, and then plastered a fake smile on my face. A true artist needed to get into character before she killed, even if it were only for a few seconds.
“Don’t make too much of a mess,” Rindell whispered as she walked by me. “You have a few minutes before I knock on the door.”
I nodded toward the Madame and took a deep breath.
“Zero.” I clicked my tongue one final time and slowly pushed open the door.
“Uh, I-I … ” the dwarf stammered when he caught sight of me.
“You ever have a human before?” I purred at the lonesome dwarf sitting in the chair.
“Oh, n-n-no.” The dwarf shook his head slowly, but his eyes were filled with hunger as he stared at my chest.
So predictable and easy.
“We are a lesser species than you powerful dwarves,” I continued as I dragged my hand slowly across my breasts and up to my neck. There was something about the taboo around both human and elven women that made halfling and dwarf men a bit wild.
“Madame, s-s-aid--” the dwarf stuttered, and flaky food crumbs fell from his shaggy beard.
Gross.
“Shh,” I hushed him as I moved closer. “Just sit back and relax. I know you think most humans are dirrrrrrtty, but I just took a bath, so I’m clean in the most important places.”
I wrapped my legs around his, straddled him, and nearly gagged as I got a whiff of a mustardy smell. Then his stubby dwarf cock started to twitch and grow against my inner thigh. When I first started learning to become an assassin, this would have made me puke, but now nothing disgusted me enough to keep me from completing my job.
“Ya have some pretty green eyes.” The dwarf gulped and raised a dirt-stained finger to my cheek.
“There are other things about me that are pretty.” I gripped h
is finger on my face and lowered it to my leg. Then I leaned in nice and close, so close I could taste the stale tobacco that was infused with his skin. “Would you like to see?”
“Uhhhh, yeaaaah,” he gasped as his cock twitched urgently through his pants.
“Norel Kragmace?” I hissed into his ear and brushed it with my tongue. At the same time, my free hand rested on the handle of my dagger.
“How do ya know who I--” He choked as my blade streaked across his throat and carved a red line that released a fine spray of blood over my face.
“You’ve underestimated your wife, Mr. Kragmace.” I sheathed my dagger back onto my leg strap, unwrapped my legs from around him, and watched as his eyes glazed over in death. “And she’s very disappointed in you.”
“Argh …” he groaned one last time, slumped forward, and rolled onto the ground with a loud flop.
“May your death not be in vain,” I said as I took a deep breath. Then I laid the black Assassin’s Guild coin on the front of his lips to mark him as a paid gig and not a murder.
No matter how many times I killed, it always made me shake afterward, so I shook my arms and legs and rolled my neck around in a slow circle. Then I opened the door to see Madame Rindell with her binoculars.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she said as she shook her head slowly while she looked me up and down. “Even covered in blood, a body like yours could make a lot of riches.”
“You mean, make you a lot of riches?” I wagged my finger in her face.
“I better not be cleaning this up, darlin,’” she remarked as she cracked the door open to see the dead dwarf bleeding on her floor. “I’ve got elven company coming soon.”
“We’ll take care of it.” I took off the itchy pink skirt and too-small top, wiped the dwarf blood off my face, and then tossed the blood-stained costume at her feet. “We’ll send our cleaner with some coin for your ruined costume after you report this to the guard.”
“You’d fit right in here,” the madame continued as she eyed my body again.
She looked hungrier than the dwarf I’d just killed.
“That’s what I do best: fit in,” I said as I stepped into the stall to change.
“So, you’ll think about it?” her voice pried from the other side of the stall door.
“No, and stop asking or I’ll put a coin on your lips,” I said.
“Fine,” the woman grunted, and then I heard her feet stomp away.
I stood in front of the mirror and cleaned the red-confetti sprinkles of dwarf blood off my body. I tried to use my fingers to brush my naturally wavy blonde hair out of my face, but it had grown a bit too much for my liking and made the blood harder to hide.
You’re probably an elf-halfie and don’t even know it.
Adrian used to tease me and make me think I was a halfie. It must’ve been my pointed and sharp features that made him say such a thing, but the thought alone of elf blood flowing in my veins made me feel sick.
After one last glance into the mirror to make sure I didn’t look like I’d just killed someone, I slipped into my damp clothes and then jogged out of the madame’s little circus.
The rain on the streets had stopped, but the air smelled like piss and mud now. The halflings and others peeked out from where they sought shelter from the storm and walked back into the spice market where they dealt and haggled until they had their fill for the day.
As for me, I headed back to my small loft in the Halfling District Assassin’s Guild. I didn’t spend a lot of time there, but it was home, it was where Adrian eventually brought me. As much as I liked to stay hidden, to try to do that within a group of halflings was my most difficult task, but I enjoyed the challenge.
My humanness became my strength.
That may be hard to believe, especially in a society ruled by elves, but with humanity barely clinging onto the bottom rung of the elven dung ladder, we were the least expected to do anything. I wasn’t sure, but I believed Adrian started a trend when he recruited me.
It was a shame he died before he saw what I’d become.
“Home sweet home,” I said to myself as I arrived at the Assassin’s Guild on Guilder street, the home of all the orphans, the lost, and the pissed off creatures of the realm that had nothing left to lose.
Our guild was a two-story, thin, run-down building that creaked and moaned with each step anyone took or breathed. Ironic since it was home to a bunch of the sneakiest and richest bastards I’d ever met.
Maybe that was intentional.
I put my key into the black door with a shiny sign hammered to the front. It read, “Need someone dead, don’t worry, we’ll handle it instead!” Below the slogan was a painted picture of a skull with a knife in its head.
I was glad to be back.
Thanks to the dwarf job being local, I was able to spend more time than usual in the guild offices lately. I was used to traveling all over the realm and living in the gutters and rooftops in all of the other districts. Those other opportunities that came my way had their benefits, as far as coin, but they also required me to be away from the sanctuary of my personal room for a lot of the time.
As soon as I shut the door and entered the lobby, the smell of tobacco and burnt coffee filled the air.
“Who’s there?” Fallor’s raspy voice called out as a few scattered papers drifted into the thin hall that led to his office. “Simon?”
“It’s me,” I said as I avoided the sticky syrupy substance no one bothered to clean up from the stone floor.
Assassins were supposed to be clean, tidy, and untraceable, and I was, but the halflings were not. They were experts in the field, but that precision and perfectionism vanished as soon as they got back to the guild.
Thankfully, I had my own space.
“Ava, my favorite human,” Fallor coughed, and his office chair squealed. “We need to talk.”
“Sure,” I said as I made my way down the hall that had paintings of some famous assassins. I hoped to see myself on these walls someday. I wanted to be known as the best assassin to have ever lived.
Some said I already was. I wasn’t convinced, though.
“Sit, sit,” Fallor said when I walked into his small and messy office. Then he motioned for me to sit in the halfling chair, even though it was definitely too small for my ass.
I was slender by human standards, but bigger than average for the everyday halfling, and Fallor always forgot that.
“If you want a broken chair … ” I said as I started to squat.
“No!” he groaned when he realized his precious chair would be crushed.
“Ahh, well,” I snickered as I stood back to my full height.
“Why do you joke like that with me?” he asked before his childlike eyes lightened with a smile. Fallor would be the last creature you’d suspect of being an assassin. He was clean shaven, with curly dark hair that had just started to gray along the sides, and big round hazel eyes. Maybe that’s what made him such a successful killer. He didn’t look the part.
I didn’t look the part either.
“You give me no choice,” I said with a shrug as I leaned against the office wall. “And you always forget I’m human.”
“Didn’t I just call you my favorite human?” he laughed.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Well, then maybe I forget about your size because you’re that good at blending in.” Fallor scratched a white scar that looked like a hook from his temple down to the front of his chin.
His low voice and that scar always reminded me of what Fallor was capable of.
“Don’t bullshit me,” I chuckled as I crossed my arms in front of my chest.
Fallor was nice enough to me, but I suspected it was only because he knew what he had in me. I was his best assassin and money maker. I was sure he would’ve tossed me in the trash when Adrian died if I wasn’t a capable member of the guild.
“Have you closed the hit on Mr--”
“Yeah, he’s dealt with,” I said a
s I thought about the lifeless dwarf corpse I’d just left, “so they’ll need a cleaner down at Madame Rindell’s.”
“Is she paying?” Fallor arched his thick eyebrows and searched through his desk drawer.
“For the cleaner?” I questioned back.
“Yes.” He looked at me as if I should know something I clearly didn’t.
“Wasn’t that part--”
“Not anymore,” Fallor interrupted and shot me a glance I wanted to slice off his face. “You’ll need to take this bill to Madame Rindell, first thing, if not later today.”
“You see that pouch of coin?” I nodded toward the corner of his desk.
“Yes?” The old assassin pursed his lips as his eyes slowly drifted to the corner of his desk where a purple pouch of coins sat. He then looked at me as he tried to follow where I was going.
“I don’t run errands anymore, Fallor.” I pointed to the pouch I had earned him the previous week before I took the easy dwarf job.
“Since when?” Fallor asked and slid his forearms onto his desk with his hands folded together.
“Since I started going against the entire Assassin’s Guild’s rules and began killing elves for you,” I laughed, but not because I was amused.
We weren’t allowed to kill elves, for obvious reasons. The fact that we didn’t was why our operation was legal. But, when a certain politician needed to pass a vote on some stupid day elf bullshit, his opponent, a night elf, refused. So, the day elf thought he should just kill the sharp-chinned dick and pass his vote the next day. Then the day elf approached Fallor after his sources confirmed I’d be his best option.
Anyone was corruptible.
Elven politics resembled an intricate dance full of orcshit, so much so they risked hiring a human to take care of their killing for them. After I killed the night elf, I saw he bled the same way that all my targets bled.
Now the pointy eared fucks didn’t scare me. Not that they really did before, but after they stooped low enough on their societal ladder to ask a lowly human to help them with an issue, I realized this was all just a game. The elves were scared of each other, and if they were scared of each other, they were probably also scared of the dwarves, orcs, halflings, and humans.