A “Practical Guide to Evil” fanfiction – by Man Square Red

***ORIGINAL STORY AND CHARACTERS BY ERRATICERRATA***


Assassin sat at the inn’s table, stirring the stew on his plate with the wooden spoon. He motioned for the waitress to come over and she filled his cup. His voice and the swaying of his hand showed that this was not his first refill of the night.

She left and he continued eating while listening to the guards talking behind him. He remained at the table for another half hour after they left, apparently finishing his drink. He got up and left some coin on the table. The killer then stumbled out the door and made his way down the dark street, struggling to walk in a straight line.

It was a few blocks from the inn that he decided it was safe to drop the act, and so his back straightened and his walk become sure. Anyone trying to tail him would have lost him by now: he walked in circles, he backtracked, he changed directions apparently at random. Despite these maneuvers he arrived where he wanted without delay: the edge of the moat surrounding the baron’s castle.

Silently (which was, more or less, how he did everything) he removed his cloak and the jacket he wore underneath, stashing them in a corner close by. Then, he slowly breathed in and out before finally exhaling completely and slipping into the water.

His second aspect, Cross, allowed him to overcome most obstacles in the path towards his targets: it helped him climb some of the smoothest walls, squeeze into gaps and pipes, jump over large drops and, of course, dive across moats. Sinking all the way down, Assassin walked across the bottom of the moat without so much as stirring the mud around him. Then, he looked up and watched as the men on top of the wall made their rounds.

To his left, a frog swam by. He suppressed the urge to smile. Right after Alaya had taken the throne he had once slipped into her room and placed a bucketful of frogs under her covers, which she discovered only when she was going to sleep. He could never do that again, of course, since the wards and security measures of the Tower had been greatly improved. Still, the look on the woman’s face the next morning had been priceless.

Assassin observed from the bottom that the guard on the top of the walls was lingering for longer than predicted, but he did not become impatient. He had seen his predecessors through his dreams, and he had learned the value of patience. One of them had spent four days perched on a tree to ambush his target, another had stayed inside a collapsing burning building as a general sacked a city. It was all a matter of waiting for an opportunity and exploiting it.

Finally the guard moved, and Assassin slipped out of the water knowing that he wouldn’t notice the ripples on the surface. Then, he began climbing the wall, his fingers and toes taking hold of the smallest of crevices where stone met stone. He climbed nearly to the top and waited. There, he remained perfectly immobile, waiting for his clothes and skin to become dry enough that he did not leave a trail of drops of water on his path. After enough time, he went over the wall.

The path to the Baron’s chamber was not especially tricky, as most of the servants were asleep and most of the guards were on the outside. He entered through a window which he closed after him, and looked around the room. It was quite a standard bedroom for a baron of this particular area, and his target slept blissfully unaware on the large bed. Assassin approached the man and stood next to the bed, studying his breathing patterns. He then gently placed an open hand on the man’s chest and felt his heartbeat. The killer waited until he had found the pattern, and at the exact moment struck the man’s sternum, breaking the rhythm and stopping the heart instantly. For all concerned, it would be no different than a heart attack, and there would not be the faintest trace of magic or poison left to be found.

Scribe had requested that it seem like a natural death, and he did not ask why. He liked Scribe; she was clear-minded and as resourceful as could be, his only issue with her was that she sometimes talked too much when they met.

He could have used poison and achieved the same result, though he decided not to risk it. He had studied carefully and knew how to prepare a dazzling variety of poisons from the most mundane of substances. He also studied pyrotechnics, medical sciences, architecture, some areas of magic and so many other topics that the others assumed that his ability to find ways to do his job was an Aspect in and of itself. In truth, it was merely the product of hard work and long hours of study.

Having completed his primary objective, he moved on to the next: information gathering. He memorized the state of the room before going through every drawer and pile of papers laying around, committing to memory every scrap of information. Naturally, when he returned the things to their places not the most astute of observers could have noticed that one had gone through the materials.

His next stop was the war office, the place where the Baron kept the most important documents and met with his advisors and knights. The nobleman had left a guard inside, which was remarkably prudent of him, but instead of standing in a corner the man paced around the large table. Perched on the rafters above, Assassin read as much as he could from afar before dropping noiselessly to the ground.

His first aspect, Hide, was manifested in a variety of ways. He could walk without making noise or leaving footprints, he did not have a scent for people to notice or dogs to follow, he could conceal himself behind even small objects and inside tiny spaces. He could even turn invisible for limited amounts of time, though that was usually not necessary. Only Warlock’s husband seemed capable of detecting him whenever he snuck into a meeting of the Calamities, though the incubus usually said nothing and merely put on an amused expression as Assassin ate from someone’s plate or read someone’s notes over their shoulder.

True invisibility came from being where your target either could not see or was not looking, which in this case meant following the guard around the room two paces behind him, noiselessly going through the maps and papers and placing them back in position. It took the better part of an hour, and then he snuck back out.

As the sun rose from the horizon, Assassin was already miles away from the city, riding a stolen horse into the woods. There, he tied the animal to a tree and walked to a large rock hidden next to the roots of some ancient willow. He moved the rock slightly and pulled out parchment and a quill, which had been left there by some agent of Scribe a long time ago. He placed the parchment on the flat surface of the rock and began to write down everything he had seen inside the castle, no matter how minute the detail. He wrote in the shorthand method that Scribe had taught him, but it still took the whole morning. Whenever he finished a page, he turned the parchment around and found the other side of it blank, with no trace of what he had written before. When he was done, he turned it around twice and there was no visible text there, only a blank sheet which would reveal its secrets exclusively to its owner.

He took the parchment and walked further into the woods, where he placed the information at another designated dead drop site, to be picked up by a different agent of Scribe’s web. Once finished, he took his horse and went on his way.

Politics and scheming in general were not topics he considered himself very suited to discuss. He could understand plainly enough the consequences of his assigned actions, though he had a hard time deriving their motives. Amadeus was the one with the plan, and not for the first time he wondered what that plan could be. It was clear even to him that the Knight had the resources and the ability to put down this rebellion when it began if he had so desired, so why hadn’t he? Assassin guessed that it had something to do with the man’s protégé, the new Squire. He had met her before and could see why Black had chosen her, though his intentions for her were still not clear.

Yes, let Amadeus and Alaya plan and manipulate all they wanted, he trusted that they knew what they were doing. He had known from the moment they met that he would be a background character, someone who was mentioned in passing while the protagonists stood at the head of armies and nations. He felt no resentment over that. Everyone had their role to play, and he had accepted his. Empress was the mind, Black was the hand, Scribe was the eyes and ears, Warlock was the voice, Captain was the axe, and him? He was the scalpel. He was the finger that pushed the first domino piece that led to the crumbling of a fortress. His was the hand that removed the broken gears threatening the workings of the great machine.

He rode for most of the day, and as the color of the sky turned from orange to red to purple, he came to a forest not close to any city. Assassin left his horse among the trees and made his way inside, stepping around the dead leafs and the dry branches on the ground, until he got to where he wanted. Then, he waited. It was not long before the woman appeared, sneaking among the shadows and watching her surroundings carefully. He recognized the movements; she had been trained by Ranger, who had, in turn, been trained by him. He could not help but smile underneath the black cloth that covered his face. When she stopped, he revealed himself and walked towards her, his hands visible and empty. His clothes did not reveal any of his skin, nor the shape of his figure. He walked towards he in a way that could not be said to be masculine or feminine, and when he spoke, it was with an androgynous voice.

“Hello.” He said.

“Well, what’s this about, then? You knew how to get in touch with us, but you didn’t say what you wanted.”

“A message,” he said, reaching into his robes and pulling out a small scroll, sealed with wax, “to your master.”

The woman eyed him with suspicion. “And why should the marquis be interested in your message?”

“I am referring to your true master, of course. The Lady of The Lake.”

She was startled by his words, though she hid it well. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course not.” He agreed with an innocent tone, and handed her the scroll.

“Is that it?” she asked, putting the message away.

“There is something else” he said, reaching into the other side of his robes and pulling out something inside his hand, “something for her to know who the message is from.” He extended the hand to the woman, who reached out.

He opened his hand, and dropped a tiny live frog on the woman’s palm. She frowned her brows in surprise, and looked up.

“What?”

But he was already gone.