Our future is coming
In a haze of white
A spray of silver
The ephemeral time

Before is gone
We only remember
As the colours fade
As the bones bleach

The blade is falling
It was designed for something
We can only watch
We can only wish

When before
When oncoming
When they become
When they are

When pain is glory
When cold is comfort
Light shining through skin
The earthly drum, alive!

Do you ever get the feeling that you should kick yourself?
I sure do.
Especially now, since... well, let’s get to that later.
How did I get into this situation? Well, that’s an excellent question.
I think most of this started during the middle of a school assembly where we were being lectured on the importance of socks being black.
Oh, and that our school Principal was quitting and getting replaced.

“What?!”
Statements like this were being repeated all over the assembly, though most with more colourful language. Our Principal had been away for a few days, but we hadn’t expected him to not come back at all. The oldest students were whispering harshly to each other, ignoring the reproving stares of their teachers.
Of course, the youngest were too nervous about their lowly status to say much of anything, apart from my friend and me.
“Where could he have gone? Mr. Sanders said he wasn’t going to be away for too long and everything,” I whispered to Jacky. He rolled his eyes and nodded at the closest teacher to the stage. “Don’t expect much of anything from them. They’re just adults, they don’t know nothing.”
“What’s going to happen to our project?” I asked him, and he flinched. He looked at me, looked away and glanced back again. My suggestion seemed to have disturbed him out of his rebellious funk- the project was still being worked on, though we had to ask for permission from the Principal once every week to keep going with it.
“Do you think the new chick will let us keep going?” he asked me with a light note of hysteria. “Wait, it’s a girl who’s taking the spot?” This was news to me. He nodded at the stage and decisively shut his mouth as our science teacher stared straight at us with sharp objects in mind.
I looked back in time to see and hear a woman introduced to us, the vice-principal informing us solemnly that she would be taking the position of Principal and all of the job’s responsibilities. Her name was Serenity Pond, which was unbelievably easy to make fun of, but the steel in her eyes silenced the whole assembly as her gaze swept across the school. Within moments she had taken command of the whole ceremony.
“As your new Principal, you will follow the rules I lay down and you will never disturb me unless you have a very important issue to raise. Thank you for your cooperation.” Ms. Pond smiled with a mouth full of hard, white little teeth that reminded me of a shark’s grin just before it bit you. I shivered and shrank into my seat as her eyes looked us all over once more before she deemed us intimidated enough and sat down.
What surprised me the most, though, was how the other teachers just stood there and didn’t respond to her in the slightest. It was like they didn’t care that she had just taken over the school and made them either her lackeys or underlings instead of colleagues. We were all silent when the assembly ended and we could leave.


She definitely started changing the school the moment she had the chance, which was immediately after the assembly.
First of all, we either wore our uniforms the next day with everything perfect, or we had a week-long detention. And no, I’m not kidding.
Secondly, any troublemakers had to visit the Principal- and something happened to them after that, which made them disappear. At the time, we thought they got suspended and had to go to another school. Everyone was so freaked out by their first impression of Pond that they just flew under the radar and kept quiet.
Unfortunately for Jacky and me, we had to ask the Principal if we could keep doing what we’d been working on over the past couple of months. It wasn’t a big deal, really, just a meeting on an agreed-upon date where we could talk with all the juniors about what we wanted to change in the school. Our Principal from before had been all for the idea- in fact, he’d nearly asked us to do it when we told him about the idea.
I had the feeling that we hadn’t just lost our Principal, but something fundamental. As I glanced around the lunch yard, everyone seemed grey and downcast, just like the weather. Jacky was munching on a salad sandwich (he was a vegetarian) and I nudged him with my chicken drumstick.
“Hey- Jacky!” I whispered to him. He made a face at the greasy chicken leg I’d prodded him with. “What?” He sounded a little agitated to be talking in front of the supervising teachers. It had become a sort of unspoken rule to not speak while eating lunch recently. I’d seen someone get detention for playing with a tennis ball.
“When are we gonna ask the Principal about the thing we’ve been planning?”
“W-well... maybe we shouldn’t do it anymore, Emmy. I d-don’t want to get suspended,” he stammered and tried to look busy with his lunch when one of the sterner supervisors stared him down. I stared at him, too. I couldn’t believe it.
“You’re not gonna let her win! Come on, we’ve been working on this for yonks!”
Unfortunately he had been convinced that it wasn’t worth trying. People had begun to link our Principal with losing their spot in the school. I had to visit her alone.

You’re wondering how this links to what I said earlier, right? Well, it gets a lot weirder. Keep up or get left behind.

I went to see her the next day, during lunch. After eating we got to move around a little, but it was so oppressive there that it nearly felt better to go and see the creepy new Principal.
She had her office up above the entrance building, and in our more rebellious moods, the students often joked that she liked to keep watch over the people coming and going every day. When I was allowed into the room, I noticed that one of the walls was a huge window that looked over the doors. If that was confirmation of the myth- well, it gave me a shiver down my spine.
She was looking all high and mighty, sitting in her comfortable wheely chair and staring at me over clasped hands. Her eyes didn’t have any feeling in them. I shivered again.
“Miss... Emilia Freig, correct?” she asked me sweetly. I fidgeted with the bottom of my blouse and nodded.
“So what idle activity have you decided warrants my attention?”
“U-um, my friend and I... We were wondering if we could keep going with it, please?” I asked her quickly. She raised one perfect eyebrow. “The project, I mean. Our old Principal said we could keep doing it if we asked him every week, but since he’s gone, we have to, um, ask you?”
“Are you informing me or asking me?” she queried sharply.
I couldn’t find my voice again to answer.
She stood and walked around her desk, allowing her painted red nails to drag along its surface. The heavily carpeted floor hid the sound of her footsteps, but I could see her high heels stabbing into it with every step closer she took.
“You... you won’t be anything when you’re older. You’ll be as pathetic as the bum you see in the gutter, asking people for their opinions instead of making your own. You won’t be making that meeting happen- and yes, I know of it. That fool before me made sure to explain every tiny detail before he... well, let’s just say that his retirement was permanent. Go back to class and stop wasting my time.”

It wasn’t so disappointing as humiliating, being hurt by Ms. Pond’s words towards me. What kind of Principal was she? Teachers were meant to help you to be everything you were meant to be one day- or that was what we’d been told over our schooling.
Jacky wasn’t too surprised about the denial, but was relieved that I hadn’t gotten in trouble for asking. “Just keep your head down,” was his motto from that day on, and he repeated it enough that I wanted to shake him out of his cowardly phase. I started to make small trouble in class, like dropping my pen and bumping a lot of desks as I picked it up or making a big thing out of dropping a piece of paper in the bin. The teachers weren’t fanatical enough about the new rules to dob me in immediately, but they were acting so weird about the new Principal. It was like she was controlling them, or they didn’t dare to go against her.

The only good thing to happen in the next month was a new student, who had transferred from somewhere in the countryside. He was more rebellious than I ever dared to be, though somehow he kept out of detention or Principal-visits. I often had to hide laughter behind my books when he played a little prank on the teacher, such as disguising a rude word behind a question or shortening one of the teacher’s desk legs when they were busy somewhere.
I remember when he was introduced to my class- being in my year, our class was the only one with a space open. One of my classmates had been suspended after meeting the Principal, though I wasn’t sure why.
The teacher had been surprised when an older man walked in, but a hurried conversation between the guy and the teacher solved any problems. After everything was okay, he walked in.
He was only average in height, but boy, did he seem taller than that. He strutted in like no-one’s business, pale and dark-haired, everyone’s gazes right on him. He smirked a little, but didn’t say a word until the teacher introduced him as Conor Griffin. He then proceeded to dominate the entire room.
“I’m Conor, and I’m from somewhere boring that you don’t care about. You also won’t say anything when I do something that seems a bit odd, alright?”
Everyone was silent and stared straight at him. It was surreal. Like that woman, he’d taken control of everyone’s attention and used pure charisma to keep them silent. I didn’t understand why my classmates were acting like this, the way the teachers had been acting since Ms. Pond joined the school. His eyes scanned the room and fell on me, the only person that was looking around in confusion. A tiny frown played over his face.
The teacher shook himself from his blank stare and motioned for Conor to sit down.

He met up with me during Recess and acted very friendly, asking my name and eating his morning tea on the seat next to mine. He ignored the supervising teachers and had an animated conversation with me about how the school was being run by a lady with no friendly animosity like most Principals. He was most interested, though, in how I ranted about the uselessness of doing tiny things when I could be outright against the weirdness that had stricken my school into static inactivity.
Bit of a mouthful, that sentence, but this guy had stimulated my brain into overdrive.
“So you think there’s some kind of conspiracy with your Ms. Pond and the teachers?” he asked me near the end of our Recess break. I felt a little awkward to say so, but he smiled at me in a gentle sort of way, which made me spill the rest of my paranoid ideas.
“Yeah, but not just that... the students are all so quiet. It’s as if there’s something controlling them, like aliens are using a brainwashing beam that makes them ignore everything slightly out of the ordinary. And not just her, but you, too!” I blurted and stared at him. He gave me a long look.
“..So you think that aliens are using an invisible ray beam from space to control every living thing in this school into being quiet, that the teachers here are involved and that you are the only person here that isn’t affected... well, you’ve got the weirdness right, but I really wouldn’t suspect aliens.”
I half-turned away, my face burning, as he methodically made me feel like an idiot. He chuckled and patted me on the shoulder. “Come on, Emilia, we have a mystery to solve. You and me, yeah?” I looked at him in surprise, but my expression soon changed to a grin. “You mean we can figure out why this is happening together?” He patted my shoulder again and left just as the bell rang.

I grew more interested in Conor, not less, as time passed. I noticed him leave the Principal’s office and wink at me before melding seamlessly into the milling children outside of the canteen a week after our first meeting. I knew for a fact that she was busy elsewhere in the school, too, so why had he been in there?
He was immune to interrogation, which for me consisted of questions during lunch and recess or offering some tasty bit of food from my small repertoire. Actually, it seemed to make him happier every time I asked him something unexpected or got anything out of him.
“So where are you from?” I’d blurt out once he’d started on something unrecognizable but apparently edible one lunch. He swallowed his mouthful and grinned at me. “Nusquam. A quiet little place, probably not even on the map.”
“Nusquam? It’s a pretty cool name for a town,” I mumbled into my sandwich.
That was the only thing he told me willingly in those days.

I should mention at this point that my parents wouldn’t even listen to my first idea, the one about the meeting at school. They don’t care about my schooling, as long as I don’t get suspended or beaten to a pulp by some bullies. I wouldn’t call them cruel, simply uncaring aside from a few hugs and making sure that I eat three meals a day.
When you’re in year 7 and you aren’t the kid of a political leader or something, you don’t have a lot of influence with any higher authority than your parents. I guess that’s why I couldn’t warn someone in time before I let myself go into a downward spiral with Conor.
I think I should let you in now. I’ve told you nearly everything important that might have influenced me into agreeing with this guy. One day, probably a couple of months after Conor had joined my class...

“Hey- hey, Emilia.”
I jumped, startled. My pencil froze in its doodle of something even I didn’t recognize.
“What?!” I whispered grumpily.
He leant onto my desk (having stolen the one next to it from Jacky a few weeks earlier, clinging to my side like a limpet) and beckoned me closer. I sighed and leaned in, making us both look like a pair of conspirators- not that anyone noticed.
“You remember when I promised we could investigate this together?” he asked me, a twinkle in his eye. I nodded slowly, though I was getting a little excited. “Well, there’s a gig tonight at the factory in town- Abstergo. Ever heard of it?”
“Uh, yeah. What idiot hasn’t?” I asked him waspishly. Abstergo had been the most important medicinal company in the world for years, though it made stuff apart from medicine. My dad had been taking the anti-depressant tablets Abstergo made for years.
“Heh, I forgot. You’re a child-genius or something,” he chuckled at me. “Hey, shut up. You’re only better at history, nothing else,” I scowled.
“Whatever. Meet me at the KFC near it around 8.30. Don’t be late, and don’t let those aliens see you coming,” he told me in a gently-teasing way. I nodded and we both got back to boring Pythagoras’s theorem.
At this point, I’d like to say little did I know... but then I’d have to jump off a cliff. Go figure.

I used my pocket-money to take a bus close to the KFC, making sure my parents didn’t have to know. That’s the only way they’d notice, if it was absolutely necessary for them to find out. I didn’t tell my parents anything in those days- they honestly hadn’t earned my trust.
The scent of freshly slaughtered chicken struck me full in the face as I entered the building- yes, Emilia has entered the building. Where’s that applause? In the recent years chickens are slaughtered in an area very close to KFC, making that chicken as fresh as humanly possible short of it scampering off the table. When they started doing that, I started avoiding the place. You can’t eat a chicken when you’ve smelt it bleeding on the floor, in my opinion.
Conor was leaning on the door frame to the bathrooms, expressionless. I could tell that he was practically prancing with excitement on the inside, but the guy was simply amazing at hiding any obvious emotions behind a stoic face. He grinned at me as I made my way over to him.
“Hey, Emmy. Come on, you need to meet a couple of my friends.”
We met up in the room where you had to wait in line for the toilet, though the smell somehow got out anyway. His friends were this tall, really pretty girl and a scrawny-looking kid with a wicked moustache. “These are my friends, though I’d prefer not to say their real names. We aren’t exactly doing something legal tonight.”
“Wait, so this is illegal? What are we doing?” I asked him, surprised. He gave me a long look and glanced at his friends. They seemed to agree with him about something, so he took my hand and lead me outside.
It was lukewarm, though the strangeness of what we were doing made me shiver.
Conor turned to me and pulled us into the shadows.
“Sorry, this is for your own good... Emilia, what we’re about to do is secret. You can’t tell anyone. I mean it, if you tell someone, I can’t protect you from- well, you’d be in a lot of trouble,” he finished lamely.
“...Are you a criminal?” I asked him after a moment.
He flashed a grin at me, which made me feel better for some reason. “Only the best. And only for a good reason- the weird stuff happening at your school isn’t the only weird thing happening recently, and it’s our mission to find out why. Are you in?”
“U-uh well, I just want to know- will we have to hurt people?” I asked him timidly. He looked at me for a long moment. “...You won’t have to. Not if you’re quiet and do what we say.”
I nodded, relieved. “Okay. Then I’m in- if it stops my school from turning into the Spanish Inquisition, then I’m in all the way.”
He ruffled my hair and smirked in a proud sort of way. “That’s my girl.”


So now you know how I ended up agreeing to breaking and entering. I was so frustrated at the time- I probably would’ve agreed to badly hurting someone if it meant I could have my old school back, and my friend Jacky. He’d been so strange recently, like a completely different person. Recently I’d told him something nasty about the teachers and he very nearly dobbed me in, I’m not kidding.
That witch of a woman, Pond, had to pay- and if Abstergo was involved in her taking over my school, I’d do what I could to put it down, too.

They had everything planned out, and were raring to go. I had to change into dark-coloured clothes, which the girl Conor called Meretricis provided with a quick grin. “I didn’t think Conor would have you prepared, but these should work just fine.” Astonishingly, they fit- either she could tell my size from hearing about my appearance, or Conor knew more about me than was probably healthy.
The guy was Tonsor, and he fastidiously fixed up his clothes before disappearing into the night, Conor right beside him. Meretricis laid a hand on my elbow and guided me to a little pathway through the trees. It ended just beside the main warehouse door of the factory. We waited quietly there, Meretricis without giving any sign of concern about doing something illegal and me trying to remember just how I’d been convinced to help with a Breaking and Entering.
“Hist! I think the others got inside,” my partner whispered to me harshly. I mimed zipping my mouth shut, so she smirked at me. The door we were waiting beside shuddered and we both tensed. It grumbled like an old ute in the rain until two sets of hands lifted it bodily and allowed it to crunch open. Conor showed himself for about two seconds, proving that they were the ones to have opened the door.
“All’s clear for now- let’s find whatever they’re hiding,” he whispered and disappeared into the shadows again. Meretricis followed without another word. I tagged along, a little reluctant to faceplant a wall in the absolute darkness of the overgrown shed.

There wasn’t a whole lot to find in there, apart from some boxes full of fully legal drugs like Abstergocine and Anti-Go, the kid-friendly version of the all-famous anti-depressants. Abstergocine was more like a painkiller, though it actually fixed small injuries instead of just making the pain less noticeable.
Conor wasn’t satisfied. He nosed around the crates along the walls with the only flashlight we’d thought to bring, treading lightly enough to be silent. I had trouble keeping my eye on him, even with the light.
“What are we looking for?” I whispered to Meretricis. She glanced at Tonsor, who shrugged and pulled a pocket knife from somewhere to tend to it in the tiny light.
“Do you know who we are?”
“You’re Conor’s friends.”
“He definitely trusts you, bringing you along... Hey, Conor! Can we tell her?”
“Not yet!” came the answer through the darkness. She nodded and made a non-committal gesture in my direction. “Sorry Emilia, but he’s the boss-man.”
“And your boss-man just found it,” Conor said triumphantly, appearing like a jack-in-the-box. I nearly squealed, but Tonsor was quick enough to block the sound off. Conor didn’t even look sorry; he just smirked and beckoned us to a spot he’d been scanning.
There was a rectangular outline in the wall, dug out by my friend’s swiss army knife. Concrete dust and plaster littered the floor beneath it, but Tonsor cleared it away with a paintbrush and small dustpan. Meretricis and Conor dug their fingers into the gap and heaved on the square; something cracked and hissed. I felt a sudden surge of foreboding.

I’d like to point out here that all of this wasn’t my fault- oh, who am I kidding? Sorry, back to the action.

The square cut-out made whirring noises and a sudden gush of air sent a cloud of dust up from the outline. The whole thing then moved outwards and stuck out of the wall as a rectangle safe, complete with glowy lines and a square of blue light on its top. We all gathered around it, eyes light up by the unworldly glow.
“What is it?” I asked with a hushed voice, timidly stroking one of its edges with my finger. Tonsor unloaded some equipment from a little shoulder-bag he’d quickly grabbed from outside while I wasn’t watching and set about wiring the box up. Meretricis laid her hands on its sides and closed her eyes, humming deeply in tune with the light buzz of the box’s lights.
Conor walked away and took out a mobile phone. “Link me in. We’ve found it,” he spoke into it before he was too far for me to eavesdrop.
“It’s so beautiful- I wonder what this square is for?” I asked no-one. My hand seemed to move by itself- over the square- and the box’s light suddenly brightened. The lines flashed, so very brightly that I had to close my eyes, and I made a small gasp of surprise. The light was bright enough to see behind my eyelids, and it moved into ropes that wrapped around me. The warmth was beautiful, so lovely that I felt nearly drowsy.
A woman’s voice laughed softly behind my eyes and I knew nothing more.




If our eyes were cast
Backwards, behind
The age of bone
The age of men



I am floating.
I was floating.
I don’t understand... I am, yet I was and will be floating.
Why am I so obsessed with floating?
I couldn’t see anything when I opened my eyes. Blackness- whiteness- what’s the difference? If I could really describe it, I would say that it had no colour, neither black nor white. Not even gray. What a cheeky little world, this, not being a recognizable colour.
‘Emmmiiiiliaaaa.’
The voice sighed past, floated on the wind and stroked my face with fingers as soft as brush-strokes.
I couldn’t find my voice, but I had the feeling that the one who was speaking didn’t want me to talk, anyway. It whispered around me, and my clothes fluttered as if a wind had blown through them.
‘It has been so long. So long... yet the traveller in time hasn’t begun her voyage. You have seen the wolf, the flower, the blade- yet you have not. Emilia,’ the voice said lovingly, passionately. I listened.
‘Emilia.’

It felt like time had passed, as if my bones and hair and skin had grown a little or toughened after years of hard work. The voice constantly whispered my name, and it seemed to stroke over the places that felt changed with those strange, invisible hands.
‘Emilia.’
I closed my eyes, enjoying the comforting blackness that covered up the strange, colourless world. Those hands lightly touched my hair, and it felt so warm that I nearly tried to say ‘mum’. The word seized in my throat, and I sobbed noiselessly, suddenly overcome with grief and homesickness.
‘Emilia- do not feel sorrow. She loves you, as does he- and you will see them again.’
I clung to those words like a life-saving rope thrown by a lifesaver. I hadn’t realized it until now, but... I loved my parents. I loved them so fiercely, that I hadn’t noticed until here what I would do to get back to them.
‘Emilia.’
‘Emilia.’


The world was bright red, a pinky-crimson. I screwed up my face and covered my eyes with a hand. Sunlight on the face is not a pleasant thing to wake up to.
The sensation of warmth on my hand wasn’t supposed to be there.
I opened my eyes and wished that I hadn’t. The sunlight was so intense! I whimpered and closed them again, sitting up and wiping the hand over my face.
I had a strange feeling of doubt coiling in my stomach, but I had to know. Slowly, millimetre by millimetre, I opened my eyes. And the world was so... well, I’ll be taking a long time to describe it, so relax and get ready for a doozy.
The sunlight was yellow and golden, like see-through butter that brightened everything it laid its hands on. I was sitting in the corner of a room made of stone, holes in the walls and the roof completely gone. The walls were covered with dirt and bleached white, the remains of some stray cat’s dinner just by my foot.
I was resting on a thin sack that smelt like it was used for carrying horse dung, but I was too dizzy to get off it right away. The smell dug into my nose and laid there like a cat stuck up a tree, but there were so many other scents that I hardly noticed.
The sky was a gorgeous blue with bright white clouds, hidden behind a thin blue mist. My country has skies like that every other day, so I wasn’t so impressed by that, but a bird that flew past definitely got my attention. It was a little like a duck, but it had weird colours and a slightly differently-shaped body.
“A... duck?” I asked no-one. It honked and flew away, joining a flock of v-flying birds.
Well, this sure wasn’t Australia any more.

I had to twiddle my thumbs for about ten minutes before my feet could be stood upon without them whingeing. I was still a bit dizzy, so I leant on the wall and peered through a large gap in the wall. What I saw was simply shocking.
A pathway made of stones like cobbles, but in a sort of countryside setting. Grass grew absolutely everywhere, like those pictures you see of moss-covered forests but with grass. People were walking past too, and they were all dressed in weird cloth-looking outfits. Like peasants, you know? Not that peasants exist in my country anymore.
Things were starting to get weird, so I sat down again- though not on the (pardon my language, but it’s true) shitty piece of cloth.
My brain started to work overtime.
“Okay... last thing I remember, weird spooky voice in a place that I can’t think about or my head hurts. And it was all nice to me... then I blacked out? Again? Maybe I should get myself checked out...” I muttered, staring at the river just beyond the path that I’d been staring at moments before.
“I know someone you could see,” said a voice calmly from above. I jumped and fell through the hole, twisting my upper body in an attempt to grip something that would break my fall. A shriek built itself up in my chest, but a fist gripped the back of my shirt in time to scare me into silence.
“Don’t kill yourself, stupid girl. I had to stay in one area for days to bring you back to consciousness, and though you probably don’t understand what a life or death situation is, being dead is not on the top of my list of daily chores,” grumbled the same voice. The hand clutching the back of my shirt pulled backwards and I flew onto the floor. Staring down at me was a young man, probably in his twenties, average-sized and from what I could see of him, very handsome. He stared at me with eyes hidden by a low-slung hood, his right hand on the pommel of a rather beautiful weapon in his belt and left hand hanging with thinly gleaming steel edges on the leather thing around his forearm.
“This answers my question of you knowing who the Assassins are,” he commented, smirking when I flinched away from him. “I look enough like one to seem friendly to any Assassin ally. What is your name, signorina?”
“I-I’m Emilia Freig,” I muttered and struggled to stand up. To my surprise, the man helped me to my feet with an open right hand. “Freig? Are you German?” he asked me curiously. I looked away and fiddled with a loose brick while I wondered what to say in response.
“It’s alright, I won’t hurt you if you lie to me. Truth is often far too expensive for nobodies like us,” the man joked and patted my shoulder kindly. It felt strangely familiar.
“...Where am I? I don’t know where I am. I saw a bird which looked like a duck, but it wasn’t anything like the birds I have seen back at home,” I asked him. He looked at me and glanced up at the sky; it was empty, aside from the clouds. “...Can you see the bird now?”
“No, I’m not insane,” I snapped at him grumpily. He held his hands up in a surrendering position and laughed. “You’re far too easy to annoy, Madonna. So, Emilia Freig, you are in Italia, Roma. You probably saw a Loon, they’re quite common around here.”
“A Loon? Like, a crazy person?” I asked in confusion.
“No, no. Like a... well, it’s what we call them. I do not know the latin for it.”
“Oh...” I trailed off, tapping an uneven part of the floor with my foot. “Um, can you tell me who you are? You seem strangely familiar...”
His head snapped up and he stared at me, dark eyes fixed on my face. I felt very uncomfortable under his gaze; it was nearly fear that made me shiver. “...I do not think that you would know me. Call me Il Lupo, though do not expect to learn my true name.”

The time passed so quickly, night had fallen before either of us noticed it. Il Lupo was probably a dangerous man to be around, but he reminded me so strongly of something that was good and comfortable. I didn’t even tremble when he laid out his knives beside the campfire; they were all different sizes, this one long and sharp, this one short and heavy. He noticed me staring and proceeded to give me a lesson on which did what job.
“This knife here- it is long and sharp, you can see that easily. However, to the untrained eye it is simply a knife. To my eye, it is a unique and specialized weapon. I use it for skinning animals or causing very dangerous wounds that bleed very much. Do you have any weapons?”
“I don’t know how to use a knife to defend myself, and I don’t have a gun, so I guess not,” I said, watching with interest as his hands deftly picked the long blade from the grass and twirled it so that the light flickered off the steel.
Il Lupo looked at me and looked back to his knives. He seemed to consider, his hands floating just over each weapon, when something made a loud crack in the invisible darkness behind him. He immediately gripped the handle of the short and heavy knife, turning his upper body and throwing the blade in one movement.
Someone cried out, Il Lupo shoved two average-looking daggers into my hands and we both stood with the fire at our backs. “You’re holding them the wrong way- try this,” he growled roughly and held his hands out. One knife was being held handle-down and the other handle-up, making one blade for guarding my head and the other for my lower body. I quickly changed my grip on the knives and he smirked at me.
Then they fell on us, and we were in a brawl where people fought with knives instead of fists.

I still don’t know how I survived.
Lupo was fighting like a whirlwind, and two men already lay dead at his feet. About three men were circling him, trying to find an opening, but I had to duck to avoid a wild swing and so lost sight of his battle.
Two men were smirking at me, filthy and clothed in peasant’s rags. They must be bandits or something, and it was obvious that they wanted to do something fairly nasty to me. One of them slashed the air next to my leg, so I squealed and stabbed at them with my knives. The down-turned knife immediately proved its worth, as my hand automatically moved in the way of a downward-swing and blocked it from cutting my waist.
I felt alive, bouncing lightly on my feet and armed with the most dangerous-looking knives I’d ever seen. Someone cried in pain from Lupo’s battle, though I couldn’t check to see what had happened. Finally something terrible happened- one of the bandits charged at me, knife thrown aside and hands reaching out greedily. I jumped swiftly to the side and stabbed my knives at him.
The downward-facing knife sank into his back.
He stared into my eyes, suddenly fearful. He tried to reach for my knife, but fell on his chest, the knife sliding out slickly in a gush of red blood. Some of the blood spattered my jeans, but I honestly didn’t notice. I... had just killed someone.

The other man facing me must have run away at the sight of such deadly opponents, because I wasn’t attacked as I fell to my knees and dropped my weapons. The dead man was coughing and spluttering as if he was still alive, but it must have been the sound of blood welling out of his mouth. The night grew silent again.
Lupo lightly shoved the last man he had been fighting and it dropped as a corpse to the ground. I heard him walking to my side, but I couldn’t remove my stare from the dead man.
“You killed him, Emilia?” he asked me gently. I nodded and made a sobbing noise. He hesitated and knelt beside me. I flung my arms around him and trembled. Now that I think back, Il Lupo was probably very uncomfortable with the close contact, but he did pat my back sympathetically and direct us both back to the fire. He left me beside the fire to check the bodies for something and came back with my knives.
“You shouldn’t leave these lying on the ground... Hey, are you still crying?” he asked me with a slight note of irritation. I flinched at his annoyance; I have never felt before or since that same empty horror at myself, that I could kill someone with my own hands just to save my own life. What made my life worth more than theirs? Perhaps I should have let them attack me, but then Lupo may have been overwhelmed.
Lupo sighed and sat next to me, placing the daggers beside me firmly. “I’m not sure where you have come from, little signorina, but killing and death is our way of life here. You won’t survive if you constantly collapse at the mere sight of blood.”
“I’m not scared of blood! I killed someone, Lupo! Doesn’t that make... well, when you first killed someone, how did you feel then?” I asked him feebly. He ran a hand over his small beard, staring at the fire thoughtfully. He then jumped and stood with a wince, placing a hand over his left arm.
“What is it? Are you hurt?” I asked him in surprise. He smirked at me (I swear, this guy doesn’t smile, he just smirks) and kicked some dirt over the fire. It spluttered but kept burning. “Emilia, put out the fire, please. We need to get going,” he ordered me and strode off. His step was too fast for me to catch up and ask questions, so I shrugged and looked at the fire.
It was high and cheery, burning around the dirt Lupo had kicked into it, so I scooped some more of the loose, dark earth into my hands and tossed it onto the flames. It flickered like crazy, so I kicked some more onto it and finally jumped on it. The heat was fairly intense, but I welcomed the distraction from my emotions, which were far from ordered.
Lupo took some time returning, and the night was very dark without the fire. I gathered up my daggers and wiped them on the grass to rid them of blood. I’d heard somewhere that blood makes metal rust, so I kept cleaning them until I couldn’t see any more dark spots.
A light breeze froze the skin on my arms, so I crouched and hugged myself, staring at the nearby dark river that moved sluggishly under the stars.
It appears that I’ve been taken somewhere completely far away from my own country, somewhere rural and far away from civilization. Unfortunately I didn’t have a mobile phone, so I couldn’t try to call home. My parents might not be able to pick me up anyway, if I was in a different country, as I suspected. Signorina was Italian, right?
“You don’t belong here, do you?” asked Lupo quietly from behind me. I half-turned, but he placed his thick cloak over my shoulders. It struck me then how odd it was that a stranger had taken care of me for... days? Weeks?
“Lupo, why did you take care of me?” I asked him as he led me to the horses he’d found somewhere. Horses... wait, they used horses for transportation here?
“Well, I suppose you remind me of someone... not sure who, but I know your face. I never forget a face.”

We travelled on the horses to a far more secluded spot in a small forest. We left the bodies in the open because Il Lupo was too impatient to bury them, and to send a message to their possible reinforcements about our fighting skill. It still feels strange to think of myself with a skill other than lying my way out of homework.
It was foolish of him, but he refused to let me help with his hurt arm. It was bleeding now, and I knew a little of medical treatments, so I was well-informed on how infection will set into an open wound.
“I can take a little scratch. That reminds me, were you injured?” he asked me with a cursory glance over my dishevelled clothes. I felt distinctly out of place next to a man with such rich and interesting clothing though the hooded cloak he’d lent me made me feel safer once it hid my face from the world.
“No, I’m fine,” I said off-handedly. He sat up and looked at me with interest.
“Oh really? Perhaps you’re a natural with daggers,” he teased and lay back down with a mysterious smile- the first real smile I’d seen him make. I snorted and stowed the daggers in the sheaths he’d shown me earlier.
“And Lupo? Could you tell me the date?” I asked him softly. There was a niggling doubt in my mind, and I couldn’t sleep unless it was satiated. Never mind that any sleep I might manage would be heavily impacted with nightmares about being a murderer.
“It is the middle of Autumn, in the year of our lord 1502. As for the actual day... well, I haven’t been counting for a while. You may have to wait until we get to town,” he commented and rolled over. He snores had been going for some time when I finally realized what he’d said.
...The 16th freaking century?!
“I-I’ve gone back in time?!” I squeaked quietly into my arms, which were uncomfortable but better than nothing for a pillow. Heh. You hear about it, in stories and in silly tales. But you can never know the shock and loneliness of really having done it.
...I want to go home.


I woke up alone, covered with the cool hood/cloak thing Lupo usually wore and the horses tied up nearby. I took this as a message from Il Lupo that he would come back, though he was busy at the moment. A little like a voicemail.
I was still reeling from the idea that I might be in the past; had this been caused by that glowing box? And why could the people here understand what I was saying? If I was in Italy, then obviously the people would be speaking Italian. However, they didn’t mention that I was speaking English, even in passing. What does this mean?
Plus how no-one had reacted to my face. If I remembered my pitiful amount of knowledge dredged from the history classes forced down my throat, people from these sorts of times were very nation-focused. As in, they were fiercely proud of their country and fairly suspicious of anyone that didn’t seem to fit. I come from a sunny country, so I am a little tanned, but I know for sure that I don’t have any Italian blood in me. I look nothing like the people here.
So why was everyone treating me like I belonged?
I could hear leaves and sticks crunching a little way away, so I stood and lay the cloak over my arm to keep it from getting dirty. Il Lupo appeared from under the trees, and I finally had a close look at his features in the sunlight.
He had an Italian face, and a small black goatee. His nose was long and straight, and his eyebrows were nearly always low over his eyes, making him appear grumpy and focused most of the time. He had dark black hair, short and it tapered into a flick of hair on the crown of his head. His eyes were a serious brown, but I sensed the intelligence and wariness as he greeted me.
“You’re awake. Ahh... I didn’t have time to look for food last night, so we’ll have to reach town if we want to eat before nightfall,” he decided, one hand on the cut he’d received the night before. I stared at him in concern. I could see a dark patch in the white cloth of his sleeve.
“Uh... that doesn’t look like a little scratch,” I observed.
“Get on the horse,” he told me shortly. I let it go; he was more experienced in this sort of thing, being a man with that many knives and the skills to kill men with ease.

I kept my eyes on him as we walked the horses to the closest path, which Lupo found without any trouble. He was favouring his arm.
“I’m no doctor, but I do know that you should get that covered,” I told him nervously. He scowled at me and turned away forcefully. His horse skittered around a little bit, spooked by his anger.
I ploughed on. I was convinced that this was the right thing to do, even if he was annoyed by my prying. “Please, let me-“
“I saved you from being kidnapped or worse while you were unconscious. Return that favour with silence,” he snapped at me. I shrank into my saddle. He was wearing the cloak again, having rescued it from my arm, so I couldn’t see his expression anymore. It made me feel a little lonely.
We had a break near noon, and my body was aching after the rough treatment of riding at a steady trot for hours. I groaned in relief as I hit the ground- horse riding isn’t a common pastime in the city.
“No food, but plenty of water. Keep yourself hydrated,” Lupo told me sternly. “What are you, my mum?” I asked him irritably and drank my fill noisily. He walked off to scout the area (we were still in the woods- apparently the forest was larger than I thought) but I knew he just didn’t want to speak to me. I was getting very worried about his arm.
He sat on a tree root, barely disguising a slight wince when his cut was brushed by his sleeve.

Lupo cheered up and started a conversation with me once we’d been travelling again for an hour or so.
“Where are you from?” he asked me, keeping his eyes on the path before us; the woods here weren’t like the bushland back home, being far more wet and slippery.
“If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me,” I answered.
He glanced at me. “I suppose I could say the same thing. My own past isn’t safely boring enough to be told.”
“But what now? I didn’t mention this before, but I don’t have a home anymore. I have nowhere to go, and I’ve never been out of my home country,” I stressed, playing with my horse’s mane. It tossed its head, but mostly ignored my fidgeting.
He looked at me again, but this time I saw a smile beginning on his face.
“Well, I do have need of an assistant... would you be willing to take the position?” he asked me innocently. I nearly started out of the saddle- this man!
“You just enjoy teasing me, don’t you?!” I growled at him. Lupo laughed and nodded.
“I do mean it, though. If you’re willing, I can take you under my wing,” he said seriously, the laughter gone from his eyes. I stayed silent, and he left me alone to think about the offer. But what an offer! This chance couldn’t be passed up- he might be doing this out of sympathy, but I had no idea how else I could survive for any length of time in this world.

The forest was thinning out, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I could see the open sky. My country- well, I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about it, but our sky is almost always visible, even in the cities. I felt very uncomfortable trapped under the trees, like a bird with clipped wings.
Lupo had stopped speaking a little while ago, and seemed to be drooping. I assumed that he was tired, so I moved my horse closer (the horse and I had an understanding; I leave it alone for most of the time, and it will probably do what I want if I yank its bridle like a maniac) and tried to push him back into a sitting-up position.
“Hey- Lupo, wake up. We’re-“I cut myself off as I saw him droop further and slide. He dropped from the saddle like a sack of potatoes. I froze, watching him lying on the ground, and his horse danced sideways, unused to being tacked up but not directed by a rider.
“Aw, crap! Hey! Lupo, stop fooling around!” I panicked. My horse jittered around, so I clutched its saddle to keep from falling. I needed to get down there. Now.
Somehow I tied the reins of my horse to the nearest tree and scrambled down to the ground, rushing to the other horse and tying it down as well. The last thing we needed was to lose our only transport when something was wrong with the only one here that could walk for more than half an hour without resting. Not that I’m unfit or anything.
Yeah.
The horses were kind of intimidating from the ground, so I ducked through the thick undergrowth to reach my... well, I suppose I could call him a friend. He was face-down, so I rolled him over and lightly tapped his cheek. “Wake up! Come on, we can’t stay here. What if those thieves come back?”
Lupo suddenly groaned at the mention of the thieves, but his eyes were jumping around so much when they opened that I was doubtful he’d really woken up. Sweat beaded all over his skin, and he made a croaky noise, clutching feebly at his left arm. I screwed up my courage and pushed the good arm down so I could unclasp the sleeve on his left wrist.
The knife wound wasn’t just a cut.
It looked deep, it was about three inches long, and he’d tried to stop it from bleeding, but that hadn’t kept the bacteria out. The skin was tight and red, and inside of the wound was a lot of yellow stuff that I guessed was pus. Oh no... My new friend was injured, and the injury was infected. I screwed up my nose at the terrible smell coming from the wound.
“Lupo! Please, wake up!” I pleaded and shook his shoulder. To my surprise and delight, he stirred and opened his eyes again, this time lucidly.
“Emilia? W... what’s going on? Why are we not riding?” he asked me in a fading voice. I covered his left arm with his sleeve so I didn’t have to look at it and levered him into a sitting position. He looked surprised at his inability to move, and I had to slap his right hand to keep him from touching the infected scab.
“You’re hurt. And no, it’s not a scratch! You’re really badly hurt!” I scolded him. He weakly smirked at me. “So dominating, Madonna. So what is the verdict? What am I hurt with? I feel very strange...”
“You’ve got an infected wound. That knife wound you got, it’s gone horrible and you’ve got pus!” I told him with my voice going all squeaky in my intense concern. I hate seeing blood, to be honest, and the events of last night made all of this even creepier and more uncomfortable than it would have been normally.
Lupo closed his eyes. I left him alone for a minute or so, but he didn’t open his eyes again.
I shook his shoulder. “Hey! Don’t go to sleep! Tell me what to do!”
His eyes fluttered a little. “Doctor. Take me... to the city, we have to go.”
I glanced out of the forest and shook my head incredulously at the hazy ruins in the distance. “It’s too far!”
Lupo clenched his teeth and his fists, shaking like mad. After a few seconds he relaxed again. The man then loosened his jaw and rolled it around. “Ow.”
“What?” I asked him.
“Hurt really bad for a few moments. Look, try to find somewhere secluded in the forest. I’ll make a campfire if you get the wood- I can’t move enough to get it myself- then you look for a plant... er, have you ever heard of aglio banco polesano?”
“Um, no.”
“...Well, it’s a green plant with a white bulb. It’s used for cooking and medicine. It can help with my cut. Just find the plant, and I’ll show you how to prepare it.”
I left him by the tree with the horses for company. I felt that a hiding-place in the forest would be safest, so I selected a place under three tangled trees with a fairly old campfire left in its small clearing.
Coming back, Lupo was systematically slicing a very thin line down his knuckles with one of his daggers. I was shocked that he was exposing himself to further infection, but he waved an easy hand at me and winced when his sleeve moved over the infected cut.
“I needed something to do to keep me awake. Now, help me onto my horse, and we can wait this out wherever your hiding place is.”
Unfortunately we couldn’t get him onto the horse. His arm was hurting too much for any weight to go on it, and as we stood there, Lupo leaning on me, I felt him sweating copiously into my clothes.
“I’ll support you, I know the way back to the camp,” I decided and staggered under the trees with a very weak man half-over my shoulder. He was breathing raggedly by the time we got to the place, and he slid to the ground when I relaxed my grip on his sleeve.
Long story short, we struggled to get everything together and then it started to rain. We had to huddle under the trees and I could feel the burning of his skin through the leather and cloth. He leant on me as the rain poured down, falling sleep quickly.
I fell asleep too.

I woke up first the next morning, and the rain had stopped. I decided to go and search for the plant he’d described- how hard could it be?

The most difficult and disappointing thing I’d ever attempted.
Really, this was worse than admitting to someone I genuinely liked that I thought aliens had taken over the school.
I’d been searching for something like a white bulb on a green stalk. What I found were absolute lakes of multicoloured flowers and a few sparkling eyes watching me from the undergrowth, but no white bulbs.
I checked back in with Lupo occasionally, but he didn’t wake up. I resolved to take him to the city if I couldn’t find the correct plant, whether he was injured by the travelling or not.
So strange that I cared about him enough already to worry over him like a mother hen.
I hadn’t eaten since I got here, and I was so starving that I nearly tried gnawing on the tree bark nearby. I did eat from a bush with berries, and I didn’t die, so I collected as many as I could and ate my fill. I then took two handfuls back to Lupo and tried to make him eat.
Well, how are you meant to feed someone who’s asleep?
I left them where he could see them and walked in a different direction to look for the plant again.
Stupid me, not searching this way earlier. I found the white bulb plant straight away and picked it, purposely shredding the stem in vengeance. Yeah, take that, stupid invisible plant.
I came back to find my friend awake and the berries gone. He greeted me lucidly, so I explained to him that I had found the plant- what do I have to do now?
“Grind the plant with a stone and soak the juices into a piece of cloth. And before you do that, we need to wash the wound out- I suspect that the knife that cut me hadn’t been cleaned,” he grunted and pushed himself up against his tree. I eyed the wound warily, though it was covered by Lupo’s sleeve. “Won’t that be painful?”
“Yeah. Do it now, I can’t clean it by myself,” he ordered me and held out the offending arm. I took it gently and peeled off the sleeve, which smelt just as badly as the cut. It had worsened overnight, but not by too much.
“The stream. It’s the closest we have to clean water,” he told me shakily. The open air must be hurting the tender skin. We walked to the stream, my still having to support him, as the fever brought on by the infection had weakened him in a very short amount of time.
“You’re quite the handy assistant,” he grinned at me. I raised an eyebrow and shoved his whole arm into the water. He yelped at the cold, but didn’t have the strength to push away. The fast-flowing water lifted the pus and dead bits of skin out of the gash, but I still had to wipe it with a piece of cloth Lupo procured from somewhere.
“Ewwwww,” I muttered, and he hissed until the cloth came out with a blob of gunk coloured red and yellow. I dropped the cloth hurriedly on the ground, and Lupo looked over the infection. “Ah, you got the stuff out. Okay, now you have to mash the plant you found and put it into my arm. Then wrap it with this,” he said, holding out a thick greyish bandage made from something like canvas.
I did as he said, though his face screwed up in pain when I put the mashed plant in his arm. Once the gash was out of sight under the bandage, we both breathed a sigh of relief. He then cuffed me over the head with his good hand.
“Cheeky little girl. You did a good job, though. I made a good choice of an assistant,” he teased me. I slapped him on the good arm.

Il Lupo deemed himself well enough to travel and ignored me when I protested. “We’ve wasted enough time on this tiny scratch,” he said and nothing more would provoke him into explaining himself.
We rode the horses that I’d tied to the trees back on the path (thank god no-one had tried to steal them) hard that day, and it was hard on both of us. I was very hungry, being used to three square meals a day back home, and Il Lupo was keeping his left arm tucked against his stomach to protect it from the bumps of the horse’s gait. May I mention now that it’s easy to hold on to a horse if you have access to the saddle, but it’s really difficult if they’re bouncing all over the place whilst cantering?
“You need a new name, and new clothes. You’ll stand out far too much in society,” my friend shouted at me over the wind and the thunder of horse hooves. “What?! I have to lose my own name?” I roared back at him.
“Yes! I don’t know what strange country you came from, signorina, but here women don’t wear trousers unless they’re despicable characters with whom no-one will associate.”
“...What if I don’t want to associate with people?”
“Shut up and keep riding.”

Our horses were tired and footsore (they’d probably been stolen from travellers before Lupo had gotten his hands on them) so we sold them to a desperate couple of thugs that looked just like the sort of men that had attacked us earlier.
Or should I say, he sold them.
I don’t blame him. Apparently they deal in ‘florins’ here. I was clueless the minute I saw one of them.
“It’s a robbery. And not one of ours!” grumbled the skinny man now riding the horse I’d been astride that morning. Lupo gave him a look. “You need these horses, and you know it. Now scram- I can hear your pursuer getting closer.”
They sped off on the exhausted horses, and Il Lupo turned to laugh.
“What?” I asked him intelligently.
“Those idiots bought tired horses from me to escape from our most dreaded enemy- Assassins! They won’t get any further than the river.”
“A-Assassins? You mean a guy hired to kill them?” I asked him nervously. He might be a killer, but I never felt in danger near him, though we had been attacked by bandits the minute I decided to stick around for a while. Being near a man born and raised to be a murderer for money gave me the chills, and I quickly looked over my shoulder, in case he was right behind us.
He shifted his weight awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to say that word... but I suppose you’d have found out eventually. I am on a mission that will last my whole life; to locate and kill every Assassin I can find. By myself I couldn’t do this, but I have others working alongside me. This fight between my people and the Assassins has been going for hundreds of years- possibly longer.”
“Your people? What do you mean your people?” I asked him with a little suspicion. I had suspected that there was something he was hiding, by refusing to say anything about his past, but then I hadn’t been entirely open with him either.
“This place isn’t a good one for the sort of conversation we’re about to have. Follow me,” he ordered and swept down the path, as the city was very close by now. Before we reached the gates, a man on a white horse galloped past us with blinding speed- I nearly fell over from the wind made by his steed. Il Lupo watched him go past with no expression, but he did smirk a little once the man was out of sight.
“It looks like I have a new target in this city.”

What can I say about the Renaissance?
It was beautiful. Paintings all over the place, women and men in such bright colours they probably burnt out their retinas daily, new buildings being constructed all over the place. I felt like spreading my arms, twirling around and grinning at the sky, but that would be weird.
Il Lupo grabbed my arm as soon as we were inside and led me to the shop of a funny little man dressed in dark green and brown. The man peered at us, obviously short-sighted, but his eyes widened in surprise at the sight of my companion. “My, my! What do you want with my little shop?”
“This girl here... er... Camelia. She’s my- daughter, and she needs new clothes. I have enough money to pay for it, so I’ll be back in a little while.”
He then shoved me at the guy and left.
Why do I bother hanging around him?
“Well, this certainly doesn’t happen every day! E-heh-heh,” chuckled the guy nervously. He was clasping his hands to stop them from trembling, but it wasn’t working. “Well, just come back here, and we may find something nice for you.”

Now I’m not one to complain about clothes, or the flies, or the smell, or the ridiculous way people had of literally looking down their noses at little old me- oh, wait.
But these outfits were ridiculous. Maybe if you liked to wear prom dresses at home or dance around your backyard pretending to be a princess in a wooden frame, you might like this sort of thing- but me? I was fidgeting like crazy, wishing I could get out of the stupid entrapping piece of beautiful, embroidered velvet.
They used freaking velvet for dresses!
The tailor (I think that’s what they were called in these times?) had his work cut out for him, trying to keep me still. I must have been pricked by needles a few dozen times. Eventually he just gave up and looked for something that I could wear without leaping out of my skin.
“Ah, these will do nicely! And seeing as the kind of company you keep, this shouldn’t bother your sensibilities,” the man said cheerfully and held out a pair of trousers and a tunic. I immediately grabbed them and said “Why on earth didn’t you start with these?!”
His shocked face was priceless.

I felt fine in this outfit, though the tailor had to cut my hair shorter to complete the illusion. I now looked like a boy- a young teenager, just entering puberty. Not that I said that- the shopkeeper mumbled it while fitting me with a few other things.
In the end, I wore a white shirt with puffy sleeves, a black vest with embroidered silver patterns, dark grey trousers and my shortened black hair was tied into a small ponytail with a silver ribbon. I had honestly never worn clothes this fine before (nor felt the need to put ‘fine’ anywhere near ‘clothing’) so I was astonished when the tailor presented me with even more things to wear.
“Surely this is too much clothing?” I protested weakly. He smiled at me, his beady eyes twinkling. “You mustn’t have been to Italia before, signorina- I mean, signore.”
The extra things were leather boots that were so darkly brown that they nearly appeared black, a heavy leather belt with several pouches along its length, a hidden pocket in my vest and a detachable white hood that could be tied into my shirt collar, which I was meant to keep in my hidden pocket.
In the end, I was decked out in awesome.
“Oh thank you so much!” I gushed and enjoyed my reflection in the grubby mirror the tailor had provided me with. He surveyed me and nodded. “You do look suitably male. However, you mustn’t act like this if you wish to stay in hiding. Ask your master- I mean, your father- what I mean by this.”

Il Lupo came back with a fancier and far better-tied bandage for his arm. He also looked refreshed, smelling like something other than sweat and blood. He must have cleaned himself, and I distinctly felt the lack of a shower and hot water.
“I see you decided she wasn’t worth the trouble of tying down and forcing into feminine society,” he observed, though he was happier than he let on. I hardly knew him, yet I sensed he was hiding a grin at this sight.
“Your companion has been clothed and everything else you requested. Now give me my due and leave,” the old man ordered Lupo feebly. I looked at the man in surprise; this was far different to how he’d acted around me.
Lupo compliantly handed him a small pouch full of something and beckoned to me. The tailor closed his shop the minute our feet left the doorstop.
“So how did the old man treat you?” Lupo asked me genially, leading the way through the crowds of people. I shrugged and grabbed hold of his cloak so I wouldn’t get pulled away by the crowd. “He was nice. He acted kind of weird when you showed up, though.”
“Well, my friends haven’t always been kind to his family. He refused us sanctuary before,” Lupo told me unwillingly.
We had only known each other for a total of three days, yet he trusted me enough to tell me something that close to his heart- I felt very warm inside, though I wasn’t sure why. He sped up, so I had to grip harder on his cloak. We eventually made our way to a small inn with a crow on its sign. I could barely read the cursive below it- L'inafferrabile Cornacchia.
“You speak Italian very well, Emilia- yet can you read?” Lupo asked me, pointing to the sign.
“No... uh, what does it say?” I asked. I decided not to reveal that I didn’t know how I could speak Italian in the first place.
“The Elusive Crow. We will stay here tonight.”

It was still morning, so Il Lupo took me to the marketplace. It was amazing there, I must say. It was multicoloured and awesome, with little stuff all over the place like tiny daggers and vials of liquids that smelt really nice.
He made a beeline for the stall belonging to a fat, middle-aged man. His stall showed off bright weaponry and belt buckles, attracting small children to walk past and stare in wonder at the reflective surfaces. As we approached the shopkeeper rapped the knuckles of a little kid trying to steal a short sword- I was amazed that the kid had tried something so stupid.
“The people here have little, but they still survive. That child can live without having such a dangerous weapon nearby,” Lupo explained to me and hailed the shopkeeper. This one was ingratiating with smiles and lecherous looks at me. I looked very male, so I was even more creeped out than I would be otherwise.
“I don’t think my knives will do you justice now, Emi- Emilio,” he corrected, glancing at the man who was staring at me. I made a rude gesture at him with my finger- yeah, that one. He just looked confused.
Lupo thinks very fast on his feet, doesn’t he?
He purchased a sword with a simple leather handle, three short throwing-daggers and an elegant dagger that made me shiver when I eyed the sharp edge. Jeez, he was going a little far in buying things for me, wasn’t he?
“Lupo, how can I repay you for everything? This must cost enough to buy a house,” I asked him. He pretended to think for a moment.
“Well, let’s see- your undying loyalty, your best service to me humanly possible and... uh... well, I can’t think of anything else at the moment,” he joked- or so I thought.
We found several other things to fill the pouches on my belt, and I honestly felt as tough and ready as I’d ever felt with those weapons filling the empty sheaths and slots. Il Lupo looked me up and down when we were finished. He was silent for a moment, but then he grinned.
“You are equipped, now. I shall call you Emilio instead of Emilia, as it suits you better, I think... However, you need a name to present to your betters. What would you prefer?”
“You mean a nickname?”
“...Yes. Though that word is unfamiliar to me, it does seem to fit the situation.”
This felt important. My chest filled with another emotion, this one afraid but curious about everything, like a baby that realizes what a large world it’s arrived in. Maybe I was being born again- maybe the ensuing naïveté could be because of that.
I prefer to think that than to realize I was stupid.
“I’ll make one for you. Hey, I promise it won’t be stupid,” he said, raising his hands casually when I glared at him. “Okay... you remind me of a little bird, like the sparrow that eats crumbs from the hands of strangers. You are La Passero.”
The sparrow- the little bird, common in most countries, and the only bird completely unafraid of people aside from pigeons.
What do you think?
Yeah... the world’s gone batshit crazy.
Shouldn’t have bloody gotten out of bed this morning.


Now I’m not very fit, though I am small and skinny enough to look it. Over the next few weeks, I felt every last calorie in me shrivel and die in the heat of the exercise I was forced to take. Il Lupo never let me stop, day after day, running around the city (of which I don’t remember a name) with him easily keeping pace behind me. He focused on building my agility, and for some reason climbing anything from buildings to statues in the middle of streets.
It surprisingly didn’t take much time for me to conform to this new regime of hard work, and I lost any flabby baby fat that I still had. I had trouble with climbing at first, but soon my arms grew used to pulling me over ledges and swinging across gaps.
That was during the day, and sometimes at night, when Il Lupo had spare time. He often was off doing something during the night, and he only gave me little pieces of information if any. In the last few days of the third week, I noticed he was watching me more often and told me things that were obviously a little more sensitive. His arm still bothered him occasionally, and I visited the doctor with him once to get it checked on.
“So you’re the young man that applied the first bandage to my client’s arm?” the doctor asked me. He was wearing black leather clothes and a black hat, but what caught my attention was the white beak-shaped mask that made him a plague doctor. Or so I’ve been told.
“Yes.”
“Well, you saved his arm. If you hadn’t applied that herb, the infection would be too deep to heal,” he told me serenely. It was the best news I’d heard for a long time.
“Will my arm be strong enough for fighting soon?” Lupo asked him shortly. The doctor finished wrapping his forearm and nodded. “Good. Here is the money for your work. Come along, Passero,” he ordered me and swept out of the room. I followed him quickly after nodding in a friendly way to the doctor.
“You are ready to learn more, now that you have the fitness and strength you should have at your age. I am surprised that you were so unfit, to be honest- a girl with no nobility in her should be used to physical labour,” he muttered to me. I was used to him after the three weeks we’d known each other; I stayed silent.
“It is now time for you to learn how to fight. You must keep up your fitness for the rest of your life- living by my side is a danger in itself,” he told me.
“It’s dangerous? Why?” I asked.
“Because of my enemies. Surely you must know that anyone called an Assassin must be dangerous?”
“...I don’t want to discriminate.”
“But that is human nature. Trust your instincts, whether they betray your morality or not. I am one of the enemies of the Assassins- I am a Templar.”
We stayed silent as we walked the streets. I felt comfortable in my new clothes (now a little worn from the abuse I was putting them to) and my hand didn’t falter from the hilt of the sword in my belt. The people of this part of the city were used to the sight of us, and I returned a wave from the innkeeper of L'inafferrabile Cornacchia.
“You clearly haven’t been educated well if you do not know who the Templars were, though I do not blame your ignorance of our existence today. I will teach you the finer points of history- and the finer point of a sword.”

That night, Il Lupo taught me the basics of the Italian alphabet. He was very curious to learn how much I didn’t know about the language I spoke so well, but didn’t say anything. It was more a look in his eye than words that convinced me how much he wanted to know.
It was an act of kindness, rescuing me from being kidnapped or starving to death by myself. I also knew that it was a strategic thing to do- as all good strategists know, to arm someone weaponless-
“-is to make a warrior that the disarmer must fear. Write that down.”
I did a lot of writing. My hand was aching by the next day, and so did my head when I corrected him on anything with the knowledge we have in the future. He cuffed me around the head a lot.
“How can you know that war will be fought like that? It’s impossible that holes in the dirt could help with fighting- that’s suicide! Now stop trying to outsmart me. Get on with your work!”
I should probably explain; the words I learnt first in Italian were ones about tactics and philosophy about war. Il Lupo was intent on teaching me these things, and even when I’d learnt the word, he would keep reminding me until I also imprinted the tactic in my mind.

We practiced with words for a lot longer than a few weeks, but that was at night. During the day, I was taught to hold my sword and my daggers lightly and to avoid an attack by ducking and weaving instead of wasting my energy jumping around.
I found the sword the hardest thing- it was too heavy for me to hold with one hand, so Il Lupo weighted it down and ordered me to practice with it whenever I had spare time. The meaning for this odd command became obvious very quickly, as my arms grew used to the heavy weapon and I could hold it with one hand after two weeks.
When he took the weights off, my arm seriously flew upwards about a metre. He laughed at my expression and began to show me the movements of a sword battle.

Every single night, when I was finally allowed to sleep, I cried. I felt like my heart was ripped into pieces and the other piece was somewhere visible but unreachable. My parents- mum and dad. I wanted nothing more than to jump into their arms and hold them until my arms rotted away in death and dust replaced the bones.
This place was amazing, I knew that. I was being moulded into a fearsome weapon, enough to probably kill people twice my size, and I found solace in my work. If I worked hard enough, I didn’t have to remember my family at night, and I wouldn’t be so lonely.
It was 5 weeks after I’d met Lupo that I realized he was my mentor. I was his apprentice, and he was training me to do what he could do. Whenever he saw me, he was always unhappy with something or needed me to run an errand for him, but I saw the affection in his eyes as he noticed my growing ability in running quickly or wall-climbing (he called it free-running.) Occasionally he would forget himself and ruffle my hair like a kid, but then he would freeze up and get annoyed with himself.
It’s all so surreal that I can hardly believe it’s happening.

Two months have passed since I saw that glowing box. My entire body had changed in this time, out of necessity and out of a wish to please- wait, what am I saying? I did admire Il Lupo for his ability and his patience with me, but why should that transfer into wanting to make him happy?
Ugh. I miss home.
Great, now I’m thinking of home again.
I wiped a speck of liquid from my eye and focused back on the paper I was writing a letter upon. It’s a weird transition from ballpoint pen to quill- the feather kept tickling my nose whenever I looked at something aside from the paper, though the scratching of the nib was entertaining.
Lupo was watching the street from our little window. I often wondered why the innkeeper didn’t seem to mind our keeping one of his rooms for two months. No, I’m not going to just go up to him and ask. I’m not that stupid.
“Why are you crying?” he asked me suddenly. I started and the quill nearly made a deep scratch in the parchment, but I lifted it just in time to save the letter.
“Crying? Who’s crying?” I asked him. I completely ruined the effect by wiping my nose and sniffling a little.
Lupo walked behind me.
“Do not lie to me, Passero.”
I laid the quill on the table gently. The feather brushed my fingers, a welcome distraction.
“Passero...”
“Alright, alright! I just remembered my family and my friends for a moment. Now just leave it alone.”
He must have bent over my shoulder, because I could feel his hands on my arms and his breath on my ear. “Do you trust me, little sparrow?”
I shivered.
“Of course I do. You’ve been like... like a parent to me for two months.”
He easily heard the crack in my voice when I said ‘parent’.
“Tell me where you came from. Why are you here? Who are you?”
This sounded like it was time. He trusted me and I trusted him enough for us to share our stories.
“I’m... well, I’m a time traveller.”


His breath stopped just behind my ear. I hurried on with my explanation, in case he thought I was kidding.
“Please just hear me out. I come from the 21st century, in 2011, and I was with my friends one night. We were breaking into a place called Abstergo, that sells pharmaceutical products.”
“Farma-what?”
“Pharmaceu- oh, medicine. Sorry.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we were looking through their storage building and we found something. It looked unreal, almost magical. It was a silver box with glowing lines, and it seemed to call out to me... I put my hand above a glowing square on its top and instantly fell unconscious.”
“So then you woke up and found yourself in the ruins.”
I turned and looked straight into his eyes. He was surveying me calmly, looking deeply into my own eyes. Then he nodded.
“Alright.”

Lupo was pretty smart, for a guy from 500 years ago. He believed me and my story without any other questions, accepting it far better than someone from our time would have done.
That didn’t stop me from missing my home with a passion.
Because he knew what was wrong now, Il Lupo actively tried to distract me whenever he thought I was sad. It’s a typically male thing to not want to deal with female emotions- I nearly bit his head off when he suggested I ‘cool off’ by going for a swim.
Don’t ask why that annoyed me.
The best thing to happen during that week was my first real test. I was needed to run into a building, find someone, trick them into following me somewhere and then fight them with my weapons until Lupo came in for the kill.
Killing people was wrong in our time, but here? I nearly felt comfortable imagining how I would get this job done.
“Now Passero, don’t do anything that might get you hurt. This man is dangerous. Don’t really attack him, just defend yourself-“
“Lupo! I’m not three years old!” I snapped at him. He was checking over my equipment, testing the leather and making sure the secret hood was in my vest pocket.
What a mother hen.
He gave me an injured look, so I had to laugh.
“Well then, Passe- Emilio. Go and do your duty.”

I found the building easily enough. My excitement was turning into nervousness, leaving sweaty spots on my sleeves where I hid my hands.
It was a small, pretty sort of place. For an ancient ruin that existed during the Renaissance. I jogged to the door and opened it, gasping at the warm air that struck me like a fist compared to the chilly night outside.
“Shut the bleedin’ door!” roared someone inside. I hurriedly shuffled past the doorstep and closed it with a rattle of the rusty lock. I found myself in a cheery room, full of beer and a blazing fireplace, but I had to find the target before I relaxed for the night.
I spent about ten minutes loitering around a couple of serving-girls, pretending to admire them and having a good conversation which probably surprised the girls with my understanding. Before they got too excited, I asked them if they’d seen a young man with half an ear and an ugly splotch down his neck.
“Oh, yes. He’s quite the mysterious stranger. You’ll find him over there- and you’ll find me right back here, waiting for you,” one of the girls flirted. I smiled at her politely (do I really look masculine enough to fit my role?) and strode over to the boy she’d pointed out.
He was tall and skinny, covered with freckles, a teenager. I glanced him over for weapons and noticed the handle of a heavy weapon under his cloak- probably a mace or an axe.
I strode right up to him and slapped him with the only white cloth I could find- my hood.
His bright green eyes switched from his ale to my face. His lips parted to bare crooked teeth and spittle sprayed my face as he blew his breath out.
“Hah!” I laughed and darted out of the inn.
The door crashing open and pounding footsteps convinced me that my trick had worked.
Okay... now to find a secret place where Lupo can ambush him... I thought as my legs worked furiously. The training I’d received had made me sprint like a flea on steroids, though I couldn’t keep it up forever.
The buildings flashed past, the heavy breathing behind me becoming louder and louder, until-
There!
I zipped into a narrow opening between two houses and bashed through some debris that had been collecting there for a long time. The target took some time to follow, being larger than myself, so I had time to realize that this was a dead end. Houses rose like steel walls around me, like the factory at Abstergo. My reaching hands found no gaps, no ledges to pull myself up on, and the boy had finally yanked himself through into the small yard I’d found.
“Nowhere left to run, you pezzo di merda,” the boy swore at me and drew the weapon from his cloak into sight. It was a massive battleaxe, and I was completely confused as to how he could carry something like that around without chopping his own legs off.
I drew my sword and flipped it around in my hands to ease off some of my tension. Il Lupo would find a way to save me, I know he will.
The teenager charged me, shouting incoherently. I froze and jumped out of the way, completely against what my mentor had been teaching me.
Stop it! Come on, Emilia, you know what to do- save yourself and finish the job!
I flourished my sword and slapped it against his knuckles with lightning speed, breaking his next charge. The boy swore and stabbed at me with the wooden handle, but I flicked the sword point at him and he had to jump backwards to avoid being blinded.
We squared off, striding around each other slowly and waiting for an opening. I felt alive again- like that first fight, two months ago, before I’d-
My sword point shook slightly as I remembered the cascade of emotions I’d had to endure at the time and since then. My foe took advantage of it instantly.
He lunged at me, swinging his axe in a circle, and I stepped back in fear and horror. Then- zip!
I fell back on the dirt with the boy on top of me. For a confused moment, I thought he’d missed me with the axe and would jump up and brain me in seconds- but as I struggled to my feet, he didn’t move. I realized with a jolt that a steel handle was jutting from his skull, a red pool sinking into the dark dirt until I couldn’t see it anymore.
A soft thump and thud behind me announced the arrival of my saviour. Again.
“Congratulations, Passero- you’ve been initiated into the Knights Templar,” Lupo uttered softly as he approached me. I felt something click inside of me, and his hand stole over my shoulder. We stood under the moonlight in an oddly ritualistic way; like father and daughter, like brother and sister, like two cells of a whole.
“I am a Templar,” I told the darkness.


Fate is not the death
Not the endless misery
Seek your destined path
And fight it!


I think I’m going crazy.
It’s been an entire year since we last chatted, you know. I haven’t made any record of myself for an entire year- I was so busy!
Lupo and I are partners now, working like a well-oiled machine to take out the bad guys. We worked really well together; so well, in fact that the grandmaster of the Templar order wanted to meet me.
We had left the small city which I never learned the name to (I think Lupo wanted me to not have too much to remember of back then so I wouldn’t need to remember what led up to us being there in the first place. Yeah. I don’t get it either) fairly soon after my initiation, and had been working from different cities in Italy for the year.
I loved the travel, loved seeing the beautiful cities that would be so different in my real time. I didn’t love the killing so much, but I was getting better at it. The past four months, I’d been killing my own targets, hunting them down and finishing them off with my blades.
I still felt the aching wound made by the deaths I’d seen and the loss of my family- but my partner had become uniquely attuned to my mood and always found some work for me to do when I started reminiscing.
By what I’d heard, Il Lupo had informed the leader of the Templars about how I’d arrived in a time outside of my own, and the Grandmaster was very interested.
The thought of meeting such an accomplished killer made me nervous.
That morning we were in Forli, a very soggy and dark city with a lighthouse that we often used as a hideout. I had guessed by now that the guards and whatnot in place of policemen these days were allied with the Templars, but it wasn’t the guards we were hiding from.
[flashback]
The sixth month after my initiation, I had my first close-up glimpse of a real Assassin. I was assured by Il Lupo that every person we hunted down had something to do with a conspiracy the Assassins were planning, though they weren’t the warriors that fought on the side of the Assassins, merely the small fry.
Anyway, our target that month was a real warrior and spy. It was clear that Il Lupo didn’t want me involved in this, as he’d treated me like a daughter ever since we met. It was a weird bond we had together, but I can only sum it up as he wanting to protect me from real danger.
It’s cute, the way he tries to deny it.
We were meant to capture, not kill, this one. It took a load off of my mind that I wouldn’t have more blood on my hands- but I only had the blood of murderers against me. I killed them because if I didn’t, other people would die.
Ugh, I keep stalling. So this bloke was an Assassin spy in the court of a king of something, and we had to trick him into getting drunk so we could grab him. He’d be interrogated about his gang, and we’d be able to use that information against them.
It had been a hard ride to Napoli, this time on good horses which we’d been keeping since a horse chase in Roma where the guards had given us their best steeds to catch thieves. My horse was a chestnut gelding, and I’d named him Bart. Il Lupo was amused by the name and followed suit, calling his speckled grey Rosa. Because of the Assassins’ incredible knack for smelling out an ambush, we had to be fast and get there before he got away.
The horses were exhausted and couldn’t run any further by the time we arrived. I took them to a stable to be taken care of while Il Lupo did his first, customary search through the city for rumours of hooded men. Unfortunately these men were excellent at hiding behind false identities, the citizens and the terror they inspired through their killings.
I met him outside of the inn that our people usually used between missions.
“I have heard very little about our quarry- you’ll have to do better,” he told me over a drink of ale. I didn’t drink alcoholic drinks and kept all inquiries towards why I didn’t like them at bay by spouting information about how alcohol will kill you. Hehe, knowledge from the future rules.
“Alright. Your masculinity will be no match for my feminine wiles,” I teased him. He winked at me and I tied my replaceable hood onto my shirt collar. “Right. I suggest you try the local baths or the churches, these sorts often try to find information as we do from the very same places.”
“Right-o, capitano,” I saluted and did an abrupt about-face, marching out of the inn.
The crowds outside were mostly fishermen and poor wretches with no homes to call their own. I skirted them and used openings to dodge my way past people fairly easily, a talent I’d had before my life went to hell. I hadn’t been to Napoli before, but the place couldn’t be too difficult to understand. I glanced around for a useful building and swung myself onto a roof for a moment to soak in the sun and the sights.
The churches were easy to find, with their crosses outlines against the bright sky. I jogged over the tiled roof and jumped lightly to the ground so I wouldn’t attract attention as I would have up top.
Being a killer isn’t fun or easy. You start to get tired of it after a while... even the privileges of respect and loot don’t hold much value when you see the citizens of a town scream and run away when you show your face or mention your own name.
In short, I’m lonely.
The churches didn’t hold much information, just like Lupo’s report. I did hear mention of several sightings of men in white clothing, but that didn’t mean anything in a city during the Renaissance. I followed a group of priests discreetly to the baths, having overheard their plans to spy on people there (seriously, the priests back then were even worse than the ones you hear about on television. Damn, I miss television.)
Because I looked like a teenage boy, they let me in. Girls were supposed to go somewhere else, but I didn’t waste my brainpower on getting upset about discrimination. Steam flowed from some rooms and cold emitted from others, but no matter what temperature it was, I couldn’t breathe in the foul air. It smelt like a dead horse in there!
I forced myself to breathe through my mouth and made the pretence of getting ready for a bath, when someone approached me.
Guess what.
Yeah, you guessed it.
“Excuse me, do you have a moment to spare?” the person asked me politely. He didn’t have a hood on (and neither did I, in that horrible place) but his clothing only involved white or little bits of red. My eyes slowly travelled up to his face- as normal a face you would see on the Italian street, but this must be one of the murderers I’d been hunting with my... friend.
“Yes, I do. Can I help you with something?” I replied.
“Have you noticed anything strange in these parts recently? Such as, say, carts of treasure being taken around the city or men and women you know being taken away in chains?”
What an odd question. It was nearly as if he cared about the people being taken away.
“No... I haven’t been here for very long, mind you. I might have something to tell you in a few days,” I stalled with a smile.
A tiny frown creased his forehead, but my offer of help wiped it away. This guy was like a kid, so gullible!
“Then might I meet you at L’Indiano when you find an answer?”
Yes!
“The Indian? Of course, I’ll meet you there- if I can find it.”
He smiled at me and shook my hand. A small pouch of florins found its way into my fist as he did so.
“Excellent. Arrivederci.”
“Arrivederci.”

“You’re kidding me. He just walked up to you?”
“Yeah. What a chump!” I laughed.
I’d gone back to our base in as little time as possible, practically bursting with the laugh I’d hidden deep inside. The guy had fallen straight into my lap, in a stroke of luck that practically never happened in our profession.
Il Lupo was scratching a design into the table with his dagger. I’m sure that was against the rules, but I didn’t care. It looked like a wolf head to me.
“Well, this simplifies things. We’ll move our lodgings to The Indian and wait for him there.”
The hint of pleasure in his voice was enough of a reward for me.

I allowed myself to be seen in several areas during the next day, just in case the target tried to dig up information on me. Il Lupo organised several other things, but we’ll get to that later. It’s harder to keep control of a situation when you can’t afford to kill your target- life is so easily lost in a scuffle between fighters.
My last visit was to the baths where I’d first met him. Surprisingly, he was waiting for me there.
“My plans have been interrupted, so I can’t stay long. Quick, let’s talk at L’Indiano and you will be paid handsomely in return,” he told me earnestly. I nodded and allowed him to lead me to the tavern.
Unfortunately it was still daylight, if only just, so Il Lupo wasn’t back yet. I had to distract him somehow until we could take him down.
I still wasn’t completely sure what he wanted to know, but I supplied him with long tales about weird people I’d seen on the streets mixed with tiny tidbits of data I’d heard from Il Lupo. The Assassin had an uncanny sense of what was true and what was not, so these little bits kept him interested without allowing him to really learn anything.
Because he was so intent on what I was saying, sorting truth from fiction, the Assassin didn’t notice one of our people pouring a powder into his drink before it came to him. He didn’t drink once as I spoke, so I proposed a toast. Wow, I’m getting good at this sort of thing.
“To the freedom of humankind, and the defeat of evil,” I announced, holding my drink (mere water) aloft. He immediately raised his as well, making me pause. Why was he so eager to agree? Surely men of evil weren’t so blasé about their professions. What if...
And then he drank from his tankard.
I set my drink on the table, untouched.
The Assassin focused his eyes on my drink, and then on me.
It must have been quite a shock, to be taken completely by surprise by someone you expected to have the same values as yourself. His eyes widened, and he choked, clutching feebly at my sleeve. I rose and guided him onto my shoulder, smiling in embarrassment at the other drinkers. “He’s had a bit too much- I’ll get him to bed,” I promised them.
The Assassin couldn’t do anything, clasped firmly to my shoulder. The drug relaxed his muscles and numbed his mind, making it very difficult to even shuffle along at my side. I briefly hoped that it hadn’t been too large a dose and knocked once on my door.
Il Lupo opened the door and immediately seized the Assassin from me, yanking him to fall on my partner’s bed. He sneered at the helpless man and tied him securely with ropes, which were inlaid with metal on their insides. It gave him the appearance of a mere convict or runaway slave, but the metal kept him from being rescued by anyone without the knowledge of breaking the chain.
“Well done, Passero. Keep watch for his friends, I spotted a couple of them following you here,” he ordered me and I left gladly. I didn’t want to know what would happen next.
No, not that! Jeez, you people are gross sometimes. He was gonna interrogate him, okay? You know, torture?
There’s no arguing with some people, I guess.
Ugh.

So eventually, the man broke down and admitted he was an Assassin. We couldn’t allow the chance of him not being the target ruin everything we’d done so far, and I’m sure Il Lupo did some terrible things to make him submit anything at all.
We left the following day, posing as bounty hunters of an outlaw. Not that it was any different from our real cause. Lupo drugged him into oblivion and we took the Assassin to the Templar headquarters in Napoli. We were congratulated and given as much food and valuables as we could carry, though I simply gave most of my reward to the people who needed it most.
I wonder what happened to the Assassin.
I know what happened to his men, as we killed them the next day, when they tried to attack us on the road.
There was still that ‘what if’...
[flashback end]
Wow, that little memory came on fast. Made my mind spin a little.
So, we’re in a lighthouse, spying down on the people of Forli. Il Lupo doesn’t seem to care about them much, though I had noticed him give sympathetic looks to the people nearly dying of exhaustion under their workload. That morning he had returned from one of his prowls around the marshy land below with a letter addressed to me.
“Someone’s popular,” he grinned and tossed the letter at me. I let it fall on my stomach, as I was still waking up. Hey, I’d taken two of the night watches. I deserved a sleep-in.
“Oh, really? Is it from someone important?” I asked with a yawn.
“Well, if you consider the Grandmaster important.”
“What?!” I yelped and sat up with the letter clutched in my hands. He sat down and watched me, his hood down and dark eyes on my face.
I broke the wax seal inscribed with some fancy letters and sank into interpreting the Italian within.

La Passero,
You will not have known my name, if my agent’s reports are correct. However, trust in that I know who and what you are.
I am most interested in meeting you personally.
Show this letter to your master and have him take you to Rome, where you will be escorted to my Palace. Do not let yourself be followed.
May the Father of Understanding guide you.
~C

I handed it to Lupo. He kept watching me until I said “It’s okay, he told me to give it to you.” He nodded and glanced over the message.
“Well, well, well. It appears we must travel to Roma. Come on, pack your things and get the horses ready,” he ordered me and climbed up the wall like a spider. I knew he would watch over the ground below for enemies, like an eagle hunting for prey. For some reason the comparison of an eagle and Il Lupo felt wrong. I shuddered at the wrongness of it and stowed away the thin material I used for a mattress.
In case you were wondering, it was very difficult to get used to not having a bed in most places. We kept out of the cities when we could, and didn’t usually stay anywhere civilized unless we had a mission to accomplish.
And something the more hygienic of my readers would find interesting; yes, we did clean ourselves, but only sparingly on the trail and every warm bath I had was treasured. I was simply used to being unclean. The clothes were surprisingly tough, and I only needed to get them replaced once during the year. I was being paid anonymously each month with a fairly large amount of florins, but Il Lupo had assured me that it was from the same people that employed him.
I liked to buy as much exotic food as I could, because I was easily tired of the pasta and other traditional Italian meals we ate every day. My favourite was Chocolatl, which while bitter and badly made, reminded me of the deliciously sweet and beloved chocolate of my time. Once I’d tried putting sugar in the drink and drinking it before a bemused Lupo, who claimed that ‘That’s not how you’re meant to do it.’
It still tasted better.

Our horses arrived at the gates of Roma after a week of near-constant riding. Lupo had sent a message by carrier pigeon confirming our journey and how long it would take to get there. We arrived a few days early, as he liked to give himself some leeway in all matters.
What a stunning city. Really, it was such a beautiful place, even in ruins. The people had tattered clothes and walked with bent backs from all the work they were forced to do to keep alive. I was sympathetic to three old women appealing to me, so I gave them a handful of florins each.
“You can’t bring the entire of Italia out of poverty, Passero,” Lupo commented from his speckled horse. I frowned at his callousness and closed my moneybag. “If it helps them to live, then it’s definitely worth it.”
He shrugged and left me alone.

The place was sort of wrecked, I could see; not nearly as impressive in looks as Venezia, for example. Still, the history! Even in the past by 500 years, I could tell that this place had its own even more ancient history. You could practically see the roman soldiers pounding down the streets and the togas of many different colours worn by the citizens.
However, that was in my minds’ eye. In reality, everything was disgusting and soiled.
My face fell more and more as I saw the terrible things that were happening. People swinging in the breeze on the end of ropes, guards beating the crap out of women and children until they just lay there, bleeding. Thieves ran rampant over the rooftops and my own purse was nearly stolen. Actually, I sort of feel sorry for the guy that tried to steal from me; he no longer had a hand.
“What happened to this place?” I asked Il Lupo fearfully. He glanced at me and looked back at the city with a grimace.
“Hell. Come on, the Vaticano district isn’t too far from here.”

We were stopped at the bridge connecting the city to the Vaticano district. Ten guards were posted along the bridge, and they all levelled their spears at us until I presented the letter I’d been sent a week earlier. The sight of the ornate ‘C’ at the bottom immediately gave us V.I.P. status, and we were rushed into the castle.
It was a lot more interesting in the castello than traipsing through the city, because the walls were clean marble, the floor carpeted in deep red and tapestries in every space unoccupied by a painting. We were led through twisting hallways and a confusing muddle of staircases, finally entering a pretty garden in which two people were waiting for us.
One of them was blonde and absolutely stunning, in a powdered, fixed sort of way. Was there plastic surgery in the middle ages? The other was a very, very handsome young man wearing a suit of armour and a scarlet robe. He had sideburns and looked good in them; I was impressed.
“Il Lupo,” the man acknowledged. “...And your new recruit, La Passero. The Sparrow.”
“A pleasure as always, Cesare Borgia,” Lupo said gravely.
He nudged me with his elbow, so I stammered out something that sounded vaguely like a greeting and compliment. So this was the Grandmaster?
“I trust that her loyalty is not in question?” Cesare asked my partner flatly. Lupo nodded and bowed his head submissively. “Excellent. Report to me everything you have told your master, and do not lie. I will kill you as easily as grant you a place in my order,” he commanded of me. I was nearly shaking in my boots at the mere presence of this fellow. To keep myself from falling apart with fear, I had to remember my methods of self-defence in speechmaking; act as casual as humanly possible, and just don’t give a damn about anything.
I spilled everything.
For some reason I didn’t feel so comfortable telling him about myself. But that’s for later.
“Ahhh... so you claim to be from the future. 500 years in the future,” he stated.
“Y-yes, sir.”
His gaze had intensified as I continued my story. If looks had physical presence in energy or matter, he would have burnt a hole right through me.
“This is most interesting... your story correlates with your master’s report. He may go.”
I sent Lupo a panicked look, but he couldn’t argue with his own leader. He gave me a helpless shrug and left, followed by an armed escort.
“Do you know of our future? What happens to me? To my family?” Cesare asked me fiercely.
Crap. History was my worst subject.
“I am really sorry, sir, but I was never taught anything about this time. Er... I have heard a mention of your last name, though. The Borgias.”
“What happened to us.”
“...I don’t know if you survived. I think your line just died.”
He snarled like a wild animal and the woman laid her hand on his shoulder. He half-turned from me and dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “Go.”
I quite happily left the scene, followed by a couple of men with spears.
To be honest, our meeting could have gone better. I think he believed my story and we did have a conversation, but now that I thought about it, perhaps revealing who I really am was a mistake. My knowledge of the future could be literally invaluable to absolutely everyone now, making me someone to be hunted down and possibly tortured until I gave up every last detail about our technology.
Maybe the Assassins would find me.

Il Lupo met me outside and was very concerned about what had happened once he wasn’t with me. He relaxed when I told him off for being such a worrywart.
“He may be our current Grandmaster, but that doesn’t mean I trust him. He has been known to take whores and bed his own sister. Knowing that you are a woman, he may try to trick you with something more physical than noble.”
I flinched.
“That’s disgusting. Why do you follow him if he does stuff like that and lets his own city fall into ruin?”
He was silent for a moment.
“Because I had no choice.”


Lupo’s hideout in Roma was a little shack on the side of the Tiber river. It smelt terrible, but by that time, I was used to that sort of thing.
That night we ate well with the proximity to so many shops and whatnot. A cool thing about his shack is that it was small-looking on the outside, but a hidden dug-out passage led to a cavern underneath. We stayed in there for most of the rest of the day and all of the night, keeping out of sight. We also had a very long conversation.
“Lupo, I told you where I was from... can you tell me your story?” I asked him quietly. He grimaced, his hood down and drinking from a bottle of wine he’d found somewhere. I knew this was a touchy subject, but I really wanted to know more about my mysterious friend. Anyway, I’d told him about myself. It was his turn now.
He sipped the wine again.
An awkward silence filled the dark underground room.
I was about to say something when he coughed and sat up.
“Alright then. But if you ever tell another living soul about this, I won’t let our friendship get in the way of my revenge,” he warned me. I nodded and drew my legs up to my chest.
“Well... where to begin? First, I should tell you that Il Lupo has always been my name. I have never known another, even before I became a part of this war. I was once part of a family, a brotherhood that lived their secret lives in underground caverns beneath Roma. I was a Follower of Romulus- and as they named all fully-fledged warriors, I became The Wolf.
We were the greatest warriors in Roma before the Templars and Assassins came to our city. Unfortunately for us, most of our people weren’t nearly as powerful in logic or reason. The Templars manipulated our leaders into doing their will and we followed their commands instead of being true acolytes of the god Romulus. I was one of the best in the clan, so I was selected to attack one of the Assassins’ best men to strike fear into their hearts.
I succeeded, but the Assassins were angered into hunting me down.”
I listened with wide eyes, clinging to my boots and ignoring the persistent cold of night time. I had suspected for a while that he wasn’t very happy about following the orders of Templars, but I had never imagined him as anything other than what he was today. It was weird to think of him as not actively hunting Assassins down. I wonder what he looked like before everything happened?
Brief pain entered his dark eyes.
“I was captured and tortured for weeks, but I never gave in. My pride was too great for that. The leader of the Assassins, Ezio, performed the greatest torture to me by chaining me to the woman I had hunted down in the first place. I had not killed her, as it was not within my mission parameters... Even then, I felt something other than hate towards her.”
We were both getting too cold for comfort, so we sat together on a pile of old blankets to keep warm through body heat. We’d used this technique before, but Lupo revealing something so personal to me combined with our closeness made me feel uncomfortable.
“I... I feel ashamed of what happened between us, that night when my whole life changed. She was a beautiful woman; I regretted every moment of pain that I had caused her. Teodora,” Lupo said very slowly, savouring the name with one of his genuine smiles.
“Eventually, she came to feel the same way. We had something neither of us had ever felt in our lives; I hesitate to call it love, but there’s no way I can deny it. Teodora broke the chain binding us together, and we fled Roma, into the countryside.”

Their horses ran as one across the fields and grasses, the riders never looking at each other but so very aware of the other’s movements. They ran, hid, ran and hid until they were sure that no-one was following. Finally, the two allowed themselves a well-earned rest.
Il Lupo felt himself growing more attached to the quirky woman by his side and never let another person find the two of them together, in case she would be implicated alongside him. He knew that his clan would never accept a traitor; and anyone who survives being captured by the enemy could be nothing other than a traitor. Neither would the Assassins take him into their arms, as he was a prisoner and spirited away their best close-combat instructor. There were only one people that could protect him after becoming involved in this war, and he knew Teodora wouldn’t like it.
“Lupo, we should get back to the city soon,” the woman warned him as they reclined against an empty house’s outer wall. The horses were grazing nearby, his old chestnut mare and her grey. Lupo felt something stab and twist in his heart as she said the words.
“There is nothing for me there. Why do we have to go back?” he pleaded, face turned anxiously to his partner in crime. She refused to look at him.
“...I have to go back to my family. And you should go to yours.”
“I have no family.”

Yet, they returned.
The Followers of Romulus did as expected and nearly killed him when he showed his face. They barely escaped with their lives, and Lupo never expected to have his happiness survive the encounter.
Ezio was their last hope, and he was kindly as he told Teodora that it was impossible.
“Teodora, you know as well as I that he can never belong with us. The others would kill him as soon as I turn my back, for being an enemy and under their noses where they couldn’t block a betrayal. All I can offer you is this; a tavern on the other side of town is currently unoccupied by our people. You are welcome to return, Teodora, but your friend hiding on the roof must go.”

So, with nowhere to turn and the Assassins alongside his former brothers in hunting him, Il Lupo became a Templar. And so his tale continues, as he completed his experimental Assassin-imitation training and discovered a lost girl in the woods that became his own experiment.

I hugged him as he fell silent, and he clasped a hand over my crossed arms. I noticed that he was surprisingly thin, even scrawnier than his usual physique.
“Lupo, if this ever bothers you during our visit to Roma, tell me. I can help you as you’ve helped me during my own depressions.”
His grip tightened, but he didn’t say a word.
I hoped that it wasn’t what I thought it was.
I hoped that he wasn’t pining away for Teodora due to our close proximity to her, in the city where he’d grown up and had such a fiasco of a life.
“Thank you, Passero.”

It seems that Cesare knew about Lupo’s little hideaway, or he’d had us followed, because I was ordered out of bed very early that morning. The soldiers were rough but kept their distance when my friend growled a warning at the guard gripping my arm hard enough to leave a bruise.
“Where are we going?” I asked one of them nervously.
“To Ser Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop. He will interrogate you about your much-needed knowledge,” the head of the guard informed me tersely. They didn’t talk to me much after that, so I busied myself with imprinting the twists and turns of the city in my head and watching several people run overhead with interest.
“Lupo, why are so many thieves allowed to run freely on the roofs?” I asked him plainly. He started and glanced up, too. He then snarled and dragged me under the cover of a little covered stall on the side of the path.
“Assassins!” he hissed at me. I drew my daggers and curved myself into the darker parts of the stall, reacting instinctively to the word. The guards were following us slowly, not understanding what we were doing. One of them suddenly cried out and fell, a feathered stick poking from their back. He seemed to fall in slow-motion, like someone had used a universal remote on our little scene, but the other guards were felled so quickly that I didn’t have time to react.
Four thieves leapt from the roofs and landed easily on the paved street, running around to make sure every guard was dead. To my surprise, another group of people landed before us too, these ones in white and red uniforms.
“Merda! Run, passero! Run for your life!” Il Lupo ordered me in a quick rattle of words. I did as I was told, used to obeying commands, but I didn’t start running fast enough.
One of the Assassins leapt at me and I felt a searing, awful pain in my shoulder.
“ENOUGH!” someone roared, but I couldn’t see anymore.
It feels like floating...


We see the blue shimmer
We hear the words
But red is the dominant
And I cannot hear


My mind, trained through sweat and tears until it was a finely razored blade of willpower, forced itself out of the fog of unconsciousness. First my hearing came back to me- I heard grunts and the clashing of steel, signs of a battle. Next was my smell, and the scent of blood drove me into a sudden frenzy of fear that either myself or my partner could be hurt.
Finally my eyes worked again, and I focused them on the person crouching over me.
The person was a young man, and he looked distinctly reassured when I opened my eyes. He turned to shout something at someone I couldn’t see, so I took the chance to punch him squarely in the midriff. My arm barely moved when I commanded it to attack, and the punch easily bounced off the way it would have when I was still fresh to fighting.
The Assassin looked amused at my attempt to hurt him, so I tried my other hand. It socked him across the face, and though my knuckles hurt from accidentally striking his teeth, it felt good.
He fell off of me, and I tried to sit up, but my right shoulder felt like I was wrenching it apart when it moved with my weight. I yelped and hugged my shoulder to my chest protectively. The Assassin I’d struck was moving, which didn’t give me a lot of time. I struggled to my feet, trying to avoid bumping my arm, and was up in time to avoid a little man trying to tackle me.
The street was a fiasco of movement, a whole mass of struggling people. I stood there hand clasped to my bleeding, wrecked shoulder, and my lower jaw probably hit the floor. The four thieves from earlier alongside the five Assassin warriors, fighting my friend Il Lupo and a couple of crossbowmen that had noticed the fight earlier.
My friend was badly outnumbered and outgunned, yet he was fighting magnificently. His face was twisted into a snarl as he wrenched an arm from around his throat and he flashed his daggers in an effortless twirl that nearly disembowelled a nearby thief.
“Lupo! Lu-“ I was cut off by the bruised and very angry Assassin that clapped a hand over my mouth and dragged me away from the fighting. I fought him with everything I had, but he dug a finger into my wound and I lost all of my energy as I cried out in agony.
“You should die for what you did to my brotherhood, but instead you get to be the Master’s pet bird. Be sure to sing for him,” the Assassin whispered furiously into my ear. I couldn’t resist him tying my wrists together or shoving me onto a horse. Two other Assassins rode beside us as I was taken away, a captive of my worst enemies.

I blacked out on the ride, due to the terrible pain of jolting around with an injured shoulder. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. What if it was too injured to use again?
I woke in a warmly lit stone room, spartanly decorated but with an air of comfort. Someone with a white beak was bobbing in and out of my view, but I couldn’t turn to look as my entire body was limp and unresponding.
“He’s coming around. I will need to check on his shoulder in a week- be sure to not cause any more damage to it than you have already,” the beaked man chastised the Assassin that had taken me here. He actually looked contrite and bowed an apology to me.
The doctor left, which made me a little nervous. He seemed to care about my health, while these people probably wanted nothing more than to slit my throat. Come to think of it, why am I still alive?
“I apologise for my man’s rough handling, Passero. You won’t be able to move for a little while, so this is a good time to introduce ourselves.”
The voice was deep and sort of husky, though it was one of the strongest presences I’d ever felt. Someone moved into my view, sporting a pure white outfit and a bright red half-cloak over his left shoulder. His hood was down, showing dark brown hair in a ponytail not unlike my own. He surveyed me calmly with the sort of weathered face you’d expect to find on a war veteran.
“I am Ezio Auditore, Il Mentore of the Assassin Brotherhood.”
I clenched my fists (or tried to) and began to breathe sharply. The leader of the Assassins? In other words, the deadliest man I could ever hope to meet. Armour gleamed all over his upper body and along his arms, a little like Cesare but with far less glamour and a lot more deadly intent. I spotted an odd mechanism on his left arm within the armoured bracer clasped there. What was that meant for?
Heck, this guy probably used it to brain his enemies and crack open walnuts at the same time.
“Ezio, are you sure you can trust him with any true information?” asked someone out of my sight tersely. Ezio rolled his eyes at me in an unexpectedly childish way, but he was sure to hide it from the speaker. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Very well, if you think it best,” stated the other guy dryly. He walked to where I could see him, too. I am not kidding by saying this, but he looks exactly like Leonard Nemoy. The Assassins had Captain Spock on their side?
“I am Niccoló Machiavelli, one of the Assassin Guild.”
“I do not agree with this,” warned someone else with a thicker Italian accent.
“You may go, it is not necessary for him to see you yet,” Auditore dismissed his other men. I heard noises like armour and weapons clinking on each other, and then the sounds were gone.
I found myself suddenly able to speak and gathered in a huge breath.
“Why am I here and not dead, Assassin? Do you not have the balls to kill me?” I taunted them with all of the sarcasm I could muster. Machiavelli (surely not the Machiavelli?) started towards me, but Auditore held him back with a cautionary hand on his arm. “No, you’re on too short of a leash to kill me, that’s the problem! What, does your master not trust you to fetch on command?”
“Passero! That is enough! We did not take you here to kill or torture you,” Ezio snapped at me. I blinked in surprise. His voice lowered again, the anger evidently gone. “We brought you here to find out why you are so important to Cesare and, if possible, to show you the wrongs that you have committed in a new light.”
I stayed silent. I wasn’t used to torture, that’s for sure, but this wasn’t what I understood torture to be.
“Why can’t I move?”
“You have been given the same herb you forced into the Assassin you kidnapped,” Niccoló snarled at me angrily. Ah, that would explain the fuzziness. His friend pulled him away to have a whispered conversation.
“Where is my partner?” I called out, hating the slight crack in my voice. They stopped talking and turned back to me, though by their expressions I felt a little bit nervous about their answer.
“You mean our former prisoner, Il Lupo? I was not aware he came into this situation- is he not away in Napoli?” Ezio answered cautiously. I nearly facepalmed. Did I just give my friend away accidentally? Yeah, well done, stupid girl.
A sudden tingling in my fingers and toes heralded the end of my paralysis. I moved my arms and legs cautiously, nearly expecting them to stay dead and unusable forever. But no, they moved, and the two Assassins noticed. “It’s worn off, then. Niccoló, if you would?” Ezio asked his friend politely. The carbon copy of a Vulcan nodded and helped me sit up. I noticed that the ropes had been cut from my arms before I had awoken, which was a positive thing. They obviously didn’t think I could get out of here and decided not to bother with tying me down.
It would be their downfall, if I had my way.
“My god! This is no teenage boy!” Machiavelli blurted, having accidentally pressed a hand somewhere he shouldn’t have in trying to steady me. I slapped his hand away and hugged myself awkwardly, my right arm not responding. Auditore marched over and peered at my face closely. His eyes widened when he realized that Machiavelli was right.
“A woman?!”
“What? Is it so hard to believe that a woman can kill?” I snapped at them, blushing furiously and trying to hide my top half from view with my crossed arms. To my surprise, Ezio burst out laughing and clapped me on the good shoulder.
“It’s alright, signorina. We don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Niccoló didn’t mean to do that, he’s usually quite a reserved man when it comes to women.”
“Ezio,” the Spock-man said warningly. Ezio ignored him.
“So Cesare has recruited a girl? But why would he find you so important? He has plenty of- pardon me for saying this, signorina- prettier women to spend his time with, so why should he bother with another girl in the ranks of the Templar?”
“Gee, thanks, that makes me feel so much better,” I grumbled at him.
“Care to explain?”
I eyed him warily. Maybe if I bit his arm, I could dodge around the two of them and find a way out...
No such luck. He must have seen the rebellion in my eyes, because his grip firmed and he glanced at someone I hadn’t noticed before; about three Assassins milling around the room, all chatting together but subtly watching the conversation and hands wafting over sword hilts. There was no way I could fight past all of them.
“Bloody hell! Fine! My real name is Emilia, and I’m a Templar. My last name is... Freig,” I forced out. It actually took time to remember my surname, which was a bit of a worry. What would happen if I forgot my real name entirely? I might end up like Il Lupo, lost in the world with no real identity other than a title and a blade.
“Are you German? You don’t look German,” Auditore asked me with his head cocked to the side. Why did everyone keep asking me that question?
“No, I’m not German. I come from somewhere you couldn’t even dream of! Uh... Why am I telling you anything? You’re Assassins, murderers! I’d rather be dead than help you corrupt freaks!” I burst out with a bit of hysteria caught in my throat.
“Why don’t you explain to us... what you think the Assassins are for?” Ezio asked me quietly.
“Um. What else could you be for than hiring yourselves out to murder people? That’s what the word ‘Assassin’ stands for,” I answered. This was turning out kind of weird.
“Hah!” Spock-man burst out in a very uncheery peal of laughter. Ezio grinned at him. I was lost somewhere between utterly confused and nonplussed. It’s really hard to think when two middle-aged men are wedging you between them and asking weird questions with obvious answers.
“Who told you that? Cesare?” Ezio asked with a smirk not unlike Lupo’s sly grin.
“...No, I’ve been raised to believe that,” I said quietly. I hate being reminded of home. I wish Il Lupo was here, just so he could help me forget for a little while longer.
“I think you need a little history lesson on our order,” the master Assassin told me and helped me to stand up properly. Then, Niccoló leading the way and Ezio supporting me, we walked into a room with several bookcases and a lit fireplace.

I don’t want to bore you with the long lecture I received, but in the end I was totally schooled. Apparently the Assassins first began with Al Hashashin in the Crusades, when a man called Al Mualim was the master of a whole community of Assassins in a fortress called Masyaf. They worked together in the fight for peace and unity of the holy lands by killing the people that couldn’t be allowed to live and cause pain to people.
You remember how I often felt weird or uncomfortable about my profession? It felt really right to hear all of this, and I nearly found myself nodding when I heard what they used for rules and their official motto.
“Never strike at the innocent, always hide in plain sight and never betray the brotherhood. By these rules, our creed is established and we have lived in peace with common man for centuries,” Machiavelli told me gravely. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” Ezio added in a respectful, almost reverent tone.
“What does that mean? That phrase?” I asked the two Assassins.
They glanced at each other and smiled. “Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember-“Niccoló intoned.
“Nothing is true,” Ezio responded.
“Where others are limited by morality or law, remember-“
“Everything is permitted.”
“So it’s a way of reminding yourself that... uh... the Assassin is allowed to do what he wants if it’s in the line of duty?”
“No,” Niccoló said sharply.
“That encourages disloyalty and too much freedom, even for the greatest free-thinkers of our order. It’s a reminder to be wise, to judge with knowledge on both sides of an argument and to always question everything handed to us,” Ezio explained.
“What exactly are you trying to tell me in your roundabout way?”
They glanced at each other, speaking without words. I was sitting on a very comfortable chair before the fire, the two men on either side of me and a few books spread over the table before us. While I waited for an answer, I glanced up at the walls and noticed a few emblems that said nothing to me. I didn’t understand them, but I committed them to memory, just in case.
“...Emilia, you are a Templar, but you don’t understand what you’re doing. You have systematically been killing off our operatives alongside a man beyond help, one of our greatest enemies. What do you expect from us? We probably can’t even let you live unless you tell us what we need to know,” Auditore told me.
I clenched my jaw and looked down at my lap. My trust in Lupo was the real thing holding me back, and my own pride. Had I been wrong this whole time? What if... what if I had been fighting for the wrong thing, this entire year?
That would make me a real murderer.
My chest spasmed in a sob, and I bent over my lap, clutching the bottoms of my tunic as I was hit by a wave of something like half rage and half terrible sorrow. Me! I’m a killer! I’ve killed people, people with families and friends and their own lives. It’s such a horrible thing to imagine that I couldn’t speak for several minutes.
The guys let me spill it all out and left the room, probably hanging around the doorway in case I decided to do a runner. It’s kind of embarrassing now, thinking that I suddenly keeled over and cried like a little girl. But, you know, it’s a big issue to put on the shoulders of a 14-year-old girl. Have you ever killed someone?
Actually, don’t answer that.
Eventually my tears dried out and I could sit upright again. The men entered cautiously, making me laugh as they eyed me with concern. Guys are terrified of upset girls. Just watch them run when they find out we’re having our... er... emotional time during the month.
“Are you alright? I’m sorry to have put it to you so bluntly. You can’t even be fifteen years old,” Ezio said sympathetically. I shrugged and wavered as I stood on the marble floor. “I’ve been taking this sort of thing for a year now. Come over here, I think it’s time I told you the truth,” I told them in a tired voice.

So yeah, I told the Assassins everything.
It seemed to happen so fast, my transfer from one frame of thinking to another. It did have some brutal side-effects, such as that sudden mental breakdown and my growing paranoia about whether anything I believed was true. In fact, even my friendship with Lupo was thrown into doubt. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
They were shocked at my explanation and were eager to ask me questions, but it was obvious I didn’t have anything about their order in the future and my explanation of the space-time continuum was enough to leave them scratching their heads in confusion.
“So if you tell us about the future, you may be destroying the future accidentally because telling us will make it not happen,” Niccoló said slowly. I winced.
“...Maybe you should try to forget anything I tell you. It might do damage just with you knowing about it.”
“My head hurts,” Ezio said plaintively.
“Well, it’s easier to understand in my time,” I said with as much cheer as I could muster.

Straight away, these people seemed to accept me. Some came up to me simply to chat and find out who I really was, while others kept their distance and smiled when I caught their eye. The place was full of Assassins, constantly going in and out through the doors and hallways, but when night fell the activity slowed and several of the more stationary men and women had a meal together in one of the upstairs rooms.
Ezio left just before nightfall, muttering something about a bank, and Niccoló wandered off like a ninja into the crowds outside. I was led by some friendly girls nearly my age to the room where everyone was talking loudly over each other and a couple of guys play-wrestled in an open space to the side of the long table.
They mostly ignored me as I sat there, so I spent the time wondering what the hell I was doing.
I was making a life for myself in the middle of a war that had been going on since the freaking crusades. I hadn’t even tried to find a way home in the year and a bit I’d spent hunting down the good guys and killing most of the ones I found. I was ashamed of myself in the way I’d just killed people without a second thought, but wasn’t getting home a priority?
Emotions aren’t important when it comes to survival and finding a way back to my true place.
I had been transported into the Renaissance by a magical box that had given me hallucinations about an invisible person chanting my name.
...Have I gone insane? I mean that truthfully, am I in one of those institutes for the criminally insane after murdering some poor innocent person?
I tortured myself with my feelings until someone told me that I could sleep in one of the empty rooms usually left for guests or Assassins between missions. They led me to a room and left me there, so I promptly fell asleep on the amazingly comfortable bed, exhausted.

So, to sum it up, I had just turned from my... er... well, I hesitate to say ‘order’, but that’s what the Templars were. So I turned away from them and became not an Assassin, but a sort of helper for them. After hearing a few stories about the crusades and seeing a couple of peasants hang.
I’m so messed up right now. I just don’t know what to do.
I wish my friend was with me.
I hope Lupo is okay. Cesare obviously wanted what I knew and he would be very angry to find out that I was in the hands of his enemies.
If I could go home everything would be better.
Even if the blood of innocents stained my soul for the rest of my life.
The best hope I have is to find something like that glowing object that had sent me here in the first place. I resolved to ask that Ezio fellow when he came back from the bank if he’d heard of something like that before.
But for now, a long-awaited and I think well-deserved rest.
Perhaps I’ll dream, of brighter and of darker things. Whatever my mind entertains itself with in the darkest hour of humanity’s life cycle, I’ll always have the hope of the end- the end of dreams, the beginning of reality.
We are creatures of time. Perhaps time is a creature of humanity.


After everything that’s happened to me, you’d think life would settle down a little. But noooo, it just has to get weirder, doesn’t it? So I’ve been taken to the hidden home of the Assassins in Roma, the home of the people I’d been hunting and hating for a year. Yet they didn’t kill me. Instead, they taught me the wrongs I had committed and left me to stew in my own emotions.
If they’d wanted to hurt me, this was a far better way than simply stabbing me dead.
I woke early, my injured shoulder hurting beyond anything I’d felt before. I had been lucky enough to not be too badly injured over my short career, but allowing that Assassin to strike me had been a mistake. I staggered from my room and promptly became lost in the hallways and rooms.
Eventually, thirsty and wishing I could go back to sleep, I entered a large room carpeted with crimson. Three people sat around the room, chatting and laughing about something, but they all fell silent when I walked in.
One of them was a girl, probably ten years older than me, and the others were middle-aged men. One of the men stared straight at me from under a brownish-orange hood, unabashed when I looked back at him. The other guy glanced away uncomfortably, fidgeting with the handle of a massive battleaxe.
“Um... hello,” I said awkwardly. The hooded man nodded respectfully at me but left the room as I edged towards one of the chairs.
“Why are you here?” the girl asked me abruptly. Whoa, down girl.
“I got lost,” I replied sheepishly.
“You wouldn’t be allowed to wander if you were still under guard. I am Claudia, Ezio’s sister,” Claudia said primly. She was quite pretty, though I sensed she had more than looks on her side in a fight. “And this is Bartolomeo d’Alviano.”
The man glanced up and smiled at me. He was heavily built, and I bet he could swing that battleaxe like no-one’s business. These two must be Assassins. The other side (or possibly my side) was better armed than I thought.
“If I may ask, why are you two Assassins?” I asked them cautiously.
Claudia’s grip on the top of Bartolomeo’s chair tightened and she looked away from me. The big man shrugged and didn’t answer either. The silence lengthened.
“I’m sorry if I touched a sore subject. I’ve been through a lot myself the past year and I had pretty much all of your history compacted into a single lesson yesterday. I know about your creed and that you’re trying to do the right thing, but I was curious about your reasons,” I said humbly. I didn’t want to make myself more enemies in this world, especially not from the ranks of Assassins.
“My father was killed by Templars, and my brother Ezio was the only one of my siblings to survive. He protected my mother and I, but I wanted to do more! I want to eventually become an Assassin myself,” Claudia said shortly.
Ah, so she isn’t one of them- yet.
“My story isn’t interesting enough to tell to you war veterans,” the large man joked. I was relieved that he was at least trying to lighten the atmosphere.
The guy with the orange hood came back, this time followed by a stoic Machiavelli. “Here he is,” he said primly and sat back in his previous chair. The black-robed Niccoló beckoned towards me, so I got up painfully and shuffled to him.
“I am La Volpe,” the hooded man told me as I left with Machiavelli. I grinned at him, probably confusing him, as we exited through a door I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’m quite surprised you managed to find your way into our private meeting room, signorina,” my companion informed me. I nodded.
“I didn’t mean to. I got lost.”
I’ve been saying that a lot this morning, haven’t I?
Or I think it’s still morning.

“So who is La Volpe?” I asked the silent man beside me.
“He is a member of our order. A spy, and a good friend. Surely you have heard of the mysterious Fox?” Machiavelli asked me with a slight hint of incredulity.
“Don’t you remember what I explained to you last night?”
His mouth made an ‘o’ shape and he nodded once. “I had assumed you were too tired and distraught to give a straight answer. So what you said is true? You are... not from this time?”
“Sounds stupid, huh?”
“It is the only description that fits you with perfection,” Machiavelli said gravely.
We walked into the main room, the one I’d woken up in the day before. Ezio wasn’t around, which I was pleased about. He was... handsome, I admit, but being good-looking doesn’t make you perfect. I could sense that he wasn’t too happy having me in his workplace, but it appeared that I had made it into an ultimatum; either they keep me locked away in here, or they let me go and I spill the secrets of the future to their worst enemy.
Now that I knew what Cesare really was, I now know what he’s capable of. I’d never stand up to that kind of pain; just look at what happened when I was stabbed in the shoulder with a clean blade.
Of course, the Assassins could kill me, and my offences against their people took the status of ‘innocent’ away from me. They must need me for something. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle fiercely at the thought of being forced to help the Assassins.
“Can you read?” Niccoló suddenly asked me. We were loitering around a desk covered with papers and pigeon droppings.
“Uh, I can read English, and Italian,” I answered.
He handed me a handful of scrolls in response. “Sort these according to subject matter in alphabetical order.”
I took the high-quality paper reluctantly. Surely this was a trick of some sort? “Are these important?”
“Of course,” Machiavelli said crisply. “I must go. When you are finished with this, go up those stairs and tell the young woman you find there that I have sent you. You two are almost alike; you should get along easily.”
This was the most I’d heard Spock-I mean Machiavelli-say, so I smirked at him in a very Lupo-ish way. He pursed his lips and left with a swish of his fancy black robe.
The papers really did have important information in them. As I read through them (to sort them properly, I told myself) I noticed words such as ‘Assassinate’, ‘Imminent’ and ‘Fiora Cavazza’. I had no idea who this Fiora person was, but she was listed as being an assassinator instead of the victim in a planned attack. Something that tweaked my interest was how she was referred to as the ‘Courtesan’, a term that reminded me of something.
“The courtesan... a person who sells themselves for money. Like a prostitute, though I don’t know the different between the two,” I muttered to myself. The little I knew of Italian names still helped in this case; Fiora means Rose, or something like it. Hadn’t that mysterious voice whispered something about a rose?
I hadn’t spared a thought to the weird stuff that invisible lady had said when I was unconscious. You know, when I went back in time. That still sounds weird when I say it.
Unfortunately a year after it all happened, I didn’t remember much of it.
I absent-mindedly shuffled through the papers and wandered over to the closest bookcase, mind full and ignoring my surroundings. I accidentally stubbed my toe really hard on the bookcase. As I hopped around the room, swearing and clutching my foot, a few books spilled out onto the floor. I let my foot drop and stooped to pick the books up.
Three of them had information on architecture and another was full of logs about the Brotherhood’s spending, but the last had handwriting all through it. As I skimmed (okay, I’m a skimmer, I admit it) over the first few pages, the words ‘apple’ and ‘artifact’ leapt out at me. I froze at the fifth page and sped back to the pages with the words on them.
This is the journal of Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
I am writing this, as my ancestor before me has done, to commemorate my search within the Apple of Eden.
To the mere eye, it appears a piece of silver- nothing, perhaps valuable to a very poor peasant, yet not worth the attention it has received. But once the Apple has taken hold of you, you will see as I have seen. A woman’s voice, divine light, information. It is beyond a single man’s imagination.
I have learnt much since I held it- like a bolt of lightning, it has struck me with names, dates. Altaїr Ibn La’ahad, his name appears most often. Several others of my line, and some are mentioned which I am sure do not yet exist.
I have the sense that something is about to happen. I keep a straight face near my family and friends, but I think it still shows.
The Apple revealed something to me today. There are others, other ‘works of art’ in the world, as my friend Leonardo would describe them. I do not know what they can do, but imagine- if an Apple can reveal magic as it has done, what could true weapons do?
That journal entry broke off there, but the other pages were full of dates and names with some of them crossed out viciously in black ink. A few loose pages with scrawled sketches were in the middle section, most of them with amazing detail on the muscular structure of the human body and a few with the same arms bearing strange weapons I’d never seen before.
The journal entry did to me what the ‘Apple’ had done to Ezio- it struck me with its significance, electrifying and illuminating. These artifacts were part of a group, with their own power and valuable to the people that know of them. I had been taken here by something mysterious and practically magical, something beyond knowledge, beyond comprehension.
If I wanted to go home, I would need to find this Apple, or at least interrogate Ezio on what it truly was.
I fixed up the bookcase so it didn’t appear to have been disturbed and finished sorting the reports on the desk. I didn’t want to reveal my purpose just yet.

The stairs were, like the many other corridors in this building, cleverly hidden and easy to not notice. It taxed my arm to walk up them, but I gritted my teeth and did it anyway. At the top, I could see an open doorway that led to a small courtyard, lit with glass windows and candles but covered from the sky. I didn’t like being in here very much; it was too much like being underground.
A girl was waiting for me there. She was probably around 20 years old, fairly young to be an Assassin, but I could sense something behind her pretty face. She turned to watch me with a hand on her hip, dagger hilt in hand.
“You’re that new boy, aren’t you? Passero,” she said calmly. I self-consciously moved my injured shoulder out of sight but smiled at her to hide the little movement. “I was asked by Ser Machiavelli to come up here and tell you that he sent me,” I told her in a level voice.
“Oh, so he wants me to teach you something?” She looked me over, head to the side and a slight smile quirking a side of her mouth. But just as the atmosphere appeared to lighten, a shadow passed over her face and she looked down. “Well, if he asks me to do it, then I suppose I have little choice. Drop whatever weapons you brought and come over here.”
I frowned as the girl moved away with a slight strut; this was really strange. She had seemed so happy and sort of bouncy, but now...
I moved into position, a few feet from her, raising my left fist protectively over my chest. I’d been bruised there enough times to tell that a girl always needed to protect that part of her anatomy. My opponent raised an eyebrow at that, but left any comments unsaid.
“Hah!” the girl grunted and swung a foot at my face like an angry horse. I ducked quickly to avoid it, but this put my face right in the way of her other foot, which smashed into my face with a horrible crunching sound. I fell backwards, choking in my own blood and surprise.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” the girl squealed and ran to my side. My nose was completely smashed, and it hurt like a bitch.
“I wasn’t thinking, and I went way too fast for you, and now you’re hurt!” the girl wailed, nearly in tears. I punched her as hard as I could with my good hand, hopefully getting her out of this stupid funk. Was she blind? I was bleeding from a broken nose, for crying out loud! This was no time for a mental breakdown!
“Helph me!” I sputtered with a fine mist of blood. I’d never hurt my nose like this before, but believe me, it KILLS! Ow!
I think the punch made her realize she was being a tad idiotic, because she levered me into sitting position and dabbed at my face in an effort to help with the injury. I appreciate the spirit in which she did this, but really, getting rid of the blood won’t help my smashed nose.
Eventually I convinced her that it’d be a better idea to clean it properly and put something on the bleeding area so I wouldn’t lose too much blood. We hurried to a room with a little pool of water that was welling up from outside and washed my nose with it. It really, really hurt, but- living in this different century, I was used to new extremes by now.
I bet you’re really sick of me saying how used I am to everything. I guess it’s a part of being human. We’re extremely adaptable, but we still love to brag about what we can become.

I didn’t cry when my companion left to find bandages. Not much.
Okay, so I cried like a baby.
The water was really cold and made the pain numb nicely. However, I think my nose was a lost cause. Even with the blood gone, I could hardly breathe through it, let alone smell. My first ginger investigations revealed a mutilated nose, and you know how actors on television fix broken noses by pushing them back into position?
It hurts more than it hurt to get it broken.
I did it anyway.
So when the person who’d smashed my face in came back with bandages, I was whimpering and clutching the slightly-better organ on the front of my head with my good hand. To make things worse, my shoulder wound was bleeding again.
“Wow, the water helped,” the girl said in surprise, staring at my nose. Her gaze seemed to have physical presence as it ached very badly. I sent her a hostile look.
We weren’t sure what to do with a broken nose, so we just tied the bandage around my head and over my nose. I made sure it wasn’t too tight by loosening it to falling-off point. If it was too tight, my nose would probably heal in the shape of a scythe or something.
Hehe, I could probably catch ledges easier with a nose like that.
The two of us headed back upstairs, into a room with sunlight pouring through glass windows. I closed my eyes and sighed as the heat sank into my skin.
“Uh, my name is Teodora, by the way,” the girl mentioned, watching my happiness with a bemused smile. I jumped a foot in the air, jolting my shoulder. Teodora?!
“Y-you!” I squealed, pointing at her.
“What?”
“You’re-“ I cut myself off, realizing that this wouldn’t help the situation. I can’t tell her that I know about her! No wonder she’s been so weird with me, mood swings and an overreaction to an injury that she probably deals with a lot more often than me. I looked at her in a new light, wondering if she was in some way special to have received Lupo’s attention.
“I’m what?” Teodora asked me flatly.
Her hair was long and black, framed by her white hood, and her eyes sparkled at me in a way that reminded me of my friend’s intimidating stare. She had a fairly average Italian face, but there was something indescribably light about her. Something like the bubbles in champagne, floating from the bottom of a glass and bursting in little pops of flavour.
“Um... uh... You’re thinking I’m a guy, right?” I said quickly. “Well, I’m actually a girl. I just have trouble with dresses and feminine clothing.” Teodora looked closely at my face and laughed in surprise. “Well, that’s interesting. You really had me fooled.”
Thankfully she didn’t wonder about the stuttering, or didn’t mention it at least. We became fast friends and did a little training together, though we took it easy due to my injuries. A few days passed and Ezio hadn’t come back, though I noticed Machiavelli and a few familiar faces around the building. It really was an astonishing place. I counted at least three floors underground, yet they had found ways to get sunlight to some of those rooms- unless, of course, my orientation was completely wrong and there were no floors underground at all.
I’d never once stepped outside and seen the place for what it was. Teodora avoided any mention of the idea, even when I commented on getting cabin fever. She didn’t know what it was, but my explanation sent her scurrying on a fake errand somewhere.
My shoulder got looked at again, and it wasn’t good news. There wasn’t any infection due to it being cleaned and treated immediately, but it looked like I would lose some feeling in my arm. I wouldn’t ever be able to use it the same way I have done. It made me feel angry, helpless and depressed.
The doctor was sympathetic but no-nonsense. “I’m sorry. With our medicine today, we can heal terrible injuries, but even I cannot perform miracles.”
My nose, it turned out, would heal alright but I can’t smell very well through it and it looks sort of bent down. If I’d broken it in my own time, it could have been fixed with more finesse. But then, who am I to complain?
Finally Ezio came back from the bank (jeez, does it take that long to get some money out?!) and had to have a few cuts and a dislocated finger dealt with by the faithful doctor. That guy must be paid in gold bars, or he’s getting some serious protection from these guys. I was very surprised to learn that he’d found a solution to our problem of what to do with me.
“Emilia, you will help us to defeat Cesare, and then you can go free. We will have no need to keep you here once he has been put down,” Auditore told me, ignoring the herbs being spread over a red line in his right bicep.
“What? Ezio,” said Niccoló in a warning voice, placing a book down carefully. Ezio shot him a warning look and waved the doctor away.
“This is the only solution, Machiavelli, which keeps our creed. We are meant to be wise- not only intellectually, but to be the best example of human beings possible. I will not extort information from a little girl, no matter what deeds she has done that we can so easily dismiss as evil.”
I stood a little away from both of them. My heart went out to Ezio. I didn’t know if he had been treated badly as a youngster (and god forbid he ever hear you call him old) but he was being incredibly understanding. Still, my naïveté was nearly gone by now. It would take more than this to make me spill the beans on what I knew.
Teodora, like usual, hung around in the background. She had taken to following me around. I really hoped she wasn’t imprinting on me, like a baby bird locking onto the first thing it sees.
“I suppose you think you’re being noble?” Machiavelli grumbled. Ezio stood and covered the patches of skin that were showing after the cuts were treated. “I’ll need to visit our tailor again. Cloth is far too easy to tear.”
“Ezio. Don’t ignore me.”
The tall man didn’t answer. Instead, he left, leaving a dark and evil atmosphere.
I left too. I did not want to deal with an upset expert on politics. I might have to get a lecture on something that John Howard still hasn’t figured out 500 years after now.
Yeah. I went there.

Before I helped the Assassins with anything, I had a request to make.
“I have a friend, Il Lupo. If it’s possible, I don’t want him to be hurt or killed. Please, he was the only person since I arrived here and now to take care of me and treat me like an equal. I won’t help you if you don’t swear to keep him safe.”
Ezio Auditore glanced up at me with a slight grin. “How demanding. You are interesting, Emilia.”
“Oh no, don’t you try to sidetrack me. I know how dangerous he is and how much you can’t let him live, but I’m saying now, you won’t kill him if you want my help.”
He looked down, but I still saw the creases in his forehead. He wasn’t happy at all. Strangely, I didn’t care.
“Ezio.”
“If you can make him... disappear. If you can make it so he doesn’t exist in this world anymore, it may be possible to convince my people that he isn’t a threat. They hate him, Emilia. Do you understand that? They hate him for what he did to their sister. Now you say that he’s your friend. Did he explain why he was a Templar?”
I glanced at the silent Teodora just beyond the doorway. She was listening intently.
“...Yes.”
She stiffened and the shadow disappeared.
I sighed. Teodora would be upset with me now. Even girls have to step carefully in the midst of other girls’ feelings.
“You want me to find a way home.”
He looked at me over clasped hands. “You have caused an awful lot of trouble during your stay, signorina.”
He didn’t exactly say yes, but it was clear now what I wanted. If they thought I could give them information, then they’d have to consider my offer. I left and found a small piece of paper where I had seen Teodora standing.
It was too dark to read in the hallway, so I took it to one of the rooms I never had trouble finding- the room with the pool of water. It was a good place to be alone, which appealed to me these days.
Signorina Emilia,
I’m sorry for not telling you the story myself, but I wish you had told me that you knew. It’s not easy to live with what happened to me and Il Lupo (and that word was the only perfectly-formed one in the whole message) and you know him, more recently than I do. I apologise if this doesn’t make much sense.
I want you to let Ezio-
The letter cut off there. I turned the note over, but couldn’t see anything else.
Huh.
I left the room in search of Ezio. Like it or not, I would have to talk to him again if I wanted to know what this letter meant. Instead, I found the Assassin who had stabbed me earlier. To his credit, he did look remorseful when he saw the damage he’d done to my arm. I was still angry at him.
“I need to find Ezio Auditore. Do you know where he is?” I asked him tersely.
“The Master doesn’t stay on Tiber Island all of the time,” the guy said with an amused grin. “Only a few moments ago, he left on a mission. Some of my brothers and sisters are with him, but I was disgraced by my actions towards you. Mi dispiace.”
“It’s behind us now. I don’t blame you for acting that way towards your enemy.”
“But that’s the entire point, signor. We Assassins know that killing isn’t always the answer. Ezio himself spared the life of Rodrigo Borgia when the man was no longer a threat.”
“That sounds like a bit of a contradiction.”
He drew his face close to mine. “Only if you listen to the enemy’s propaganda, Passero.”
We parted ways with the mood lightened a little. I still needed to find the man.

Amazing news! I had been trapped inside for so long that I was starting to chafe, and the others were starting to notice. I dislike being around the same people for so long, and though this was fairly surprising to me, I was actually wishing to go on a long horse ride like Lupo and I used to take.
Well, someone must have informed the other Assassin leaders, because when I was lounging around in the sunroof room, La Volpe strode in. This was a bit weird for him. I had seen him around before, but he never stopped to speak to me. I have the feeling that I make him nervous or that he didn’t trust me. Smart man.
“Is it true that you are, in fact, a woman?” he asked me bluntly. I leaned back against the wall and crossed my arms defiantly. “Maybe.”
“Why are you here? Surely one of my brothers could have killed you by now,” he growled, slowly unsheathing a thin-bladed dagger. I tensed and stood back up, though I was weaponless. He approached me in a sort of circling way, not coming in a straight line. My nerves were practically singing at the idea of a real fight, and I started to bounce a little on my toes.
Volpe suddenly slashed at me and almost cut into one of my eyes. I jerked back, but he hadn’t seemed to be really attacking me- the tip of the knife sank into one of the wooden beams just showing in the stone wall. He studied me with eyes that I only just realized were bright violet- was that natural? “You are a fighter, not a spy. Why don’t you show me how you fight?”
“I don’t have any weapons,” I snarled at him, quivering slightly. I didn’t understand this man or his actions, and I was unarmed while his weapon was right next to my face. He let go of the dagger and left it there, handle out and tip stuck in wood. Volpe then backed off and walked away.
“You are armed. Now come at me!” he commanded, drawing a second dagger and holding it in an icepick-grip (in case you don’t understand that, it’s the way Lupo first taught me to hold a knife.)
I yanked the blade from the wooden beam and flipped it in my fingers, getting the feel of the handle and the weight of the steel. It was a splendid little knife, though slightly different to my own specimens. I walked towards Volpe in a direct line, deliberately ignoring his attempts to turn our fight into a circling match.
“You have no strategy!” the orange-clad man yelled and whipped forwards in a blur of annoyed man and steel. I dove at his feet and was entangled in them, tripping him over and sending me rolling across the floor.
Before he could stand, I pounced on him and held the edge of my dagger to the side of his throat. This was where the main arteries ran, not the front, as you would be led to believe.
“I do not show my techniques before I strike!” I hissed at him, breathing quickly. I had spent too long without exercise. His look of shock transformed into a slight grin. “So I wasn’t wrong. You are a fighter, but you are not a berserker. You were apprenticed by a fine man.”
I dropped his dagger and stood.
“You don’t know him. You can’t know him.”
“I do,” he said gravely. I stepped back to let him stand. “And it is not that I did- I still know him.”
“Have you seen him recently?” I asked him, staring at him intensely.
“I have.”
“...Can you tell me if he’s okay? Could you tell him something from me?” I asked him with some desperation. I hadn’t realized how much I missed the hooded man, how used I was to his habits. Not being around him for so long after living together for a year was like the bottom of the world dropping from under me.
La Volpe looked at me with blatant suspicion. “I can tell him that you are alive. But you do not understand; we know each other not through friendship, but because he hires my services. I will not betray my Brotherhood by giving the enemy information he cannot know.”
“What- so you think I’ll give him some secret message that only he will understand? Don’t be stupid, I don’t want to end the existence of free will. I never did.”
“You are a Templar.”
“No I’m not! Not anymore.”
“I am not convinced.”
“Thank you for your opinion, but I don’t want to waste time sparring with you. I could spend my time better explaining to a wall the meaning of life,” I spat at him, thoroughly annoyed. I had the feeling that he didn’t really talk to my friend, instead wanting to bait me into ‘exposing’ myself.
Irritatingly, the man followed me.
“I have heard from Ezio that you claim to be from the future,” he stated flatly. I accidentally allowed my arm to hit a doorframe- the bad arm. “Arrrrrgh!” I yelped, the fire in the wound starting up again. Just when it was starting to get better, too! Knowing my luck, it would probably have to be amputated. Imagine coming home with one less arm- oh yeah, mum, I was just stabbed in the shoulder by a pissed-off gangster in white. Then I was kidnapped by his buddies.
She was going to have a heart attack when I got home.
“You should pay more attention to your surroundings,” Volpe chastised me with a little grin on his face. The bastard.
“And you should go hide behind your Assassin buddies before I make you aware of the ground, you idiot fox,” I snapped at him. This time he let me go off without stalking me.
As you can see, when I’m tired, upset and in pain, I get grumpy.

So, long story short (in case you missed everything that’s just happened, you naughty, naughty skimmers) I had made a deal with the devil in a really weird kind of way. I don’t understand half of it, really, but if I helped the Assassins to defeat the Templars once and for all, then I would be given permission to take Il Lupo away with me to be safe. And considering what was safe and what was not in this scenario that would mean taking him to the future with me.
One snag. What about Teodora? I was sure that it would be hard enough to make Lupo go with me without making him leave her behind. I didn’t even know how to get back to my own time, let alone take a lovesick couple with me.
I got to go outside for once, though I had to wear a blindfold until we were a fair while away from the headquarters. The feeling of fresh air against my skin was amazing, like a tingle and a chill that gave me goosebumps. The city was as overwhelming as usual, though I noticed a few more shops open than before and the people weren’t as anorexic-looking.
We weren’t there just to see the sights. An unlucky citizen was being shoved around and harried by sword points, five heavily-armed men laughing as they tortured him. Ezio had gone off to meet someone, so Machiavelli had found the time to lead me here.
No, I hadn’t found the time to ask Ezio my questions. He seemed to be avoiding me.
I didn’t take it personally that the man had about four Assassins following us, just in case I liked the open air too much.
“You can see what your allegiance has helped to accomplish,” my companion commented dryly as the man was thrown to the ground and kicked in the stomach. I clenched my fists and fought down a flare of red-hot anger; I didn’t think I could take on all five guards and win without my weapons. Niccoló was watching my face.
“These guards are encouraged, no, hand-picked to be cruel and beyond redemption. Your actions have encouraged this, by killing our operatives in other cities. There must be more than a hundred families suffering because of you.”
My hand twitched, the absence of my dagger hilt like a chain and ball holding me to the ground.
He edged a little closer.
“This man used to take care of the horses for the city guards. Now he is being beaten for the loss of two fine mounts from their stables, whether it was his fault or not. Do you know what happened to those two horses?”
I set my jaw and looked away from him.
“I believe one of them was named Rosa, and the other Bart.”
That was the last straw. I rabbit-punched him on the chin, stole one of his hidden daggers and rushed straight at the tussle. Like lightning, I stabbed the dagger through the closest guard’s skull and yanked it out, whirling the blade like a twig through my fingers and thrusting it at a bare arm covered with coarse hair.
The guards were astonished to be attacked so suddenly, giving me time to slash open the throat of the man whose arm I’d injured, but they soon overcame their instinctive freeze and came at me with a roar. I faced them grimly, not bothering to look at the man who had probably (and hopefully) run away at the first chance he was given.
The battle was a whirlwind of noise, pain and the wild satisfaction of sinking the dagger hilt-deep into enemy flesh. I had been trained by the best, after all, and though my right arm wasn’t too fast or strong anymore it was still okay as a defence while my left was on the attack.
My ponytail was mangled by a fast sword-slash that nearly beheaded me, and the half that remained was stuck on the sword’s hand-guard. I yelped as I was yanked side to side, slashing my only weapon around in a wild flail to try and strike the man pulling me forwards. The blade sank into his leg and he dropped his sword with a wail, clutching the damaged muscle. Unfortunately the sword weighed my head down and I couldn’t look around with it tangled in my hair.
“Morte ai rebelli!” someone screamed to the side. I spun around and tried to catch him on the blade, but my movement swung the sword in a circle, pulling my hair agonisingly. “Arghh!” I spat, clutching my head and frantically trying to unweave the black hairs from the intricately-designed metal guard. Then, running footsteps and the shadows of men fell over me.
“Vittoria agli Assassini!” one of them cheered and the others took up the cry, attacking the last remaining guards. Someone grabbed my ponytail just above the entangled sword guard and sliced it off. My shortened hair fell in choppy layers around my ears, shorter than it had ever been before.
One of the Assassins handed the freed sword to me and I took it silently. They grinned at me and went back to the swordplay.
The two other guards fell to the ground quickly, being attacked by so many warriors.
“Well, you haven’t lost your edge,” Machiavelli told me with no expression. I stuck my tongue out at him and was blindfolded again.

It was torturous, being back in the headquarters, but the Assassins seemed to trust me more now. The reaction I’d had to being put down and heckled by that annoying Spock clone was exactly what they’d been hoping for, fighting against the pain I’d caused.
I wondered if Il Lupo had seen our little skirmish.

It was terrible and wonderful the next day, as a full team of six Assassins entered through the only door I was aware of (and, coincidentally, the most heavily guarded door in the building) dragging a man wrapped with ropes and struggling like a tiger with the taste of blood in its mouth. My lower jaw dropped in shock as I recognized the distinctive grey hood, the little black beard and familiar, angry brown eyes.
He was nearly covered with the bindings and yet he was shaking off Assassins like droplets of water in his efforts to escape. Every person there had an injury of some sort, such as a wire-thing scratch in their clothes with little red patches welling up underneath them, a bruised face and the smallest Assassin there seemed to have a broken finger. They still kept at it and refused to let him go.
“Lupo!” I said in surprise. He paused and glanced at me; hope and the hint of a smile appeared on his face, but when he noticed that I hadn’t been chained down or something, the hope disappeared. “Passero... so you are alive,” Lupo stated matter-of-factly.
“What is going on?!” demanded an irate (as usual) Machiavelli, swishing in dramatically. The Assassin with the broken finger stepped away from the prisoner and bowed respectfully to the elder Assassin. “We have found the escaped prisoner, signore. He escaped two years ago, and became a Templar once free.”
“Take him to the cells,” the elder Assassin ordered. They bowed and dragged my friend away. Odd thing was that he didn’t seem to be resisting, eyes fixed on me.
“I’ll visit you when I can,” I promised him just before he was out of sight. Lupo grinned and disappeared around the corner.
Machiavelli watched me carefully, in that annoyingly penetrating way of his.
I hesitated, but decided to ignore him and leave the room. Having an argument with this guy was always a mind-bending experience, and it was weird enough to see my closest friend in this century kept captive by the ‘good guys’ without being lectured on where my loyalties lie.
I followed the group of men and women down to the underground cells (the only part of the building that I was sure lay underground.) They shoved Lupo into one of the cages and transferred chains onto him, replacing the ropes. All the time my friend snarled and fought them, resorting to using his hard skull and teeth. The Assassins forced steel shackles onto his ankles and wrists, and then left hurriedly. I noticed the smaller man clutching his broken finger to his chest.
I approached the cell and closed my hands on the bars, trying to see through the gloom. It wasn’t nearly as clean or friendly down here. Il Lupo froze as I stepped on something that crunched; it was a rat skull. I shuddered and wiped the shards off of my boot.
“Lupo- it’s been so long!” I said to him though a tight throat. He looked at me and glanced at his surroundings, rubbing the chained limbs ruefully. “Not so long, but I was worried. Did they hurt you?”
“No. Look, Lupo, I think I was wrong in becoming a Templar. Their goal is false, I know it!” I told him. He was silent but startled me with a chuckle when I finished.
“Oh, so you took that seriously? I am a Templar through necessity, not through belief. The Assassins aren’t right in this war either, but they are probably the closest to the truth at the moment. Unfortunately, we are not on the best of terms,” he said wryly. I beckoned him closer and he shuffled to the bars, where I pulled him into an uncomfortable hug. It was good to hear that sarcastic, cynical voice again.
“What’s gotten into you? Did the Assassins do something to your head?” he asked roughly, pulling away from the contact.
“I missed you. I don’t know how long I’ve spent down here, but it was very lonely.”
Lupo looked down and didn’t answer. He didn’t need to- I could see the bones poking from his arms, deep shadows below his eyes. He hadn’t been resting on his laurels while I was gone. Not to mention, he had probably been missing his sweetheart again, without me there to distract him.
The steel door to the staircase leading down to us clanged, as if someone had opened or closed it. Lupo’s arm shot out and gripped my wrist, pulling me forward so we were staring eye-to-eye.
“Listen to me, Emilia. Your presence here is dangerous. You are probably doing something to this time, if I understand your description of ‘timelines’ correctly. Go home. Find whatever brought you here and go home.”
He released me and I swung back, into the chest of the burly guard I’d often seen prowling around the ‘prison’. He grunted and shunted me to the side. “Ser Ezio wishes to speak with you, signorina,” he informed me grimly and promptly bitch-slapped my friend in the face. He reeled and fell to the ground, very ungraceful for the man I knew.
Lupo sent me a look which kept me from trying to break the man’s neck. Fuming, I spun on my heel and left him in the darkness.


“What’s wrong now? Did you fall and cave your head in?” I snapped at the complacent Master Assassin with a false note of hope at the second question. He was getting annoying enough to make me want to throw him off a skyscraper. Bet he couldn’t survive that.
“Do you recall your promise to us?” Ezio asked me, ignoring me like a pro.
“I recall telling you that keeping Il Lupo alive might get my help, yeah!”
He smirked. “He is alive now, isn’t he?”
I stuck my finger in his face and shook it. “He’s in your prison cells, idiota! That isn’t life, that’s captivity! Lupo can’t live like that, he’ll waste away and die!”
Ezio nodded slowly. “A pity.”
I hissed softly at the man and curled my hands into fists. He watched me speculatively, and I heard the Assassin guards behind me draw their swords an inch from their sheaths. I could sense something like anger or wariness from Ezio, but his face didn’t give anything away.
“Auditore, I want to know about Pieces of Eden,” I stated. This was probably sensitive information, but I wasn’t expecting an answer. I wanted to shock the man into revealing something, anything.
He blinked.
“Assassins, I am fully capable of protecting myself. Please go and find something to do,” he ordered the people behind me. To their credit, they said nothing and left the room instantly.
Ezio stood and stared at my face from beneath his white hood. I couldn’t see his eyes.
“How do you know of the Pieces of Eden?”
I met his gaze squarely. “I read a book on the subject. Crappy author, but cool material. I’ve seen something like what it described, and it was the thing to send me here.”
He couldn’t help a smile at that, but his professional nature battled it into submission. “If you have been taken through time by use of a Piece of Eden, then perhaps asking the Apple will be a solution to all of our problems.”
“The Apple?”
“Another Piece of Eden, an archive of information and a mind-controlling device. We held it, once, but the Templars took it back far too quickly. I plan to seize it from Cesare when I attack him directly. Of course, this will take a few weeks to organise, but... with the Apple, I can see a brighter future for Italia.”
I gave him a funny look and crossed my arms. “A brighter future? I thought you said this was a mind-control machine. You said Assassins are all about free will.”
“Oh,” Ezio laughed, “I didn’t mean to use it. It would be much better for the whole world if I sealed it away, never to be held by a Templar again. After we use it to get you out of here, and the Borgia family has finally been laid to rest, then the Apple will never be abused again. In this century, at least,” he added, giving me a look.
I chuckled and nodded with a warm smile. “That’s better. I’d lose all respect for you if you went back on your beliefs.”
He flicked his eyes at me. “You mean how you turned tail, Passero?”
Instantly, my smile disappeared. “You shut up now, you inbred hick. I stand by what I choose, but I don’t follow anything blindly. That includes you, by the way.”
When I turned to leave, he grabbed my wrist, having somehow gotten around the desk between us with the speed of light. “Wait. This isn’t how I meant to put this.”
“Then try again! Maybe I’ll kill you this time!”
“Bold words from a little sparrow.”
“Are you going to shut up about that?”
His eyes gleamed as he glared at me from the close distance. I had the distinct feeling that this had happened before, but his breath seriously swept any real thought out of my head.
“What the hell have you been eating?”
“Stop thinking about yourself for one second and pay attention to me,” the taller man said angrily. I think I’d finally annoyed him to the point of being rude. “I need you to help my people to hunt someone down. His name is Malfatto.”
I recognized that name. It was a man with ties to the Templars, a terrific murderer whom I had been nervous of even before I turned away from my previous job. “I know him. He’s a murderer, particularly of prostitutes. He’s very dangerous.”
Ezio released my wrist. “Find and take him down. You will have access to my finest Assassins.”
“I want Lupo to help.”
“No. There will be no argument about that, it is simply impossible.”
“But-“
“Unacceptable. Teodora shall also stay behind; I need to speak with her.” He moved to the door and opened it, standing to the side. “You will have a guard with you at all times. My chosen men and women are waiting for you at the main entrance.”
I clenched my jaw muscles and left. The only satisfaction I could wring from the encounter was my petty refusal to look at him. He didn’t say a word as the door closed again.

It was great to get back outside. I wasn’t even blindfolded this time.
My weapons were all returned to me, and I was even given a brand-new killing device. It was a sort of protective bracer on my arm that was attached to my ring finger by a string. When I pulled the string, a thin and powerful blade shot out, long enough to go through a man. My Assassin buddies explained to me that it was a stealthy weapon, the mark of an Assassin.
I was sort of pleased that they’d given me one. It reminded me of one of Lupo’s weapons, though his was a little less efficient. They told me that my wearing it was a way of making me an Assassin, not in oath but in action. Whatever. I’m not throwing myself into another cult group.
It was disappointing to see the Assassin stronghold from the outside, though. Just a building on an island covered with smaller buildings (though I suspected they only seemed to be separate from the main structure) and surrounded by a river. The only ways off the island were over two bridges, or in a gondola (a little rowing-boat pushed along a body of water with a long stick.)
We left on horseback, as Malfatto had apparently gotten word of our intentions before we could perform a surprise attack. I led the way to his usual haunts (to be truthful, I’d only heard stories from peasants about a serial killer in those parts. Il Lupo never told me where to find the other Templars, though he did describe some to me, in case I accidentally tried to kill them or mistook them for Assassins due to their secrecy.)
The people in those parts were too frightened to tell us about him- aside from his name being ‘Malfatto’ and that he was very dangerous. I thanked the little man and watched as he disappeared into a shop just as small as he was. “There is a brothel nearby; Maestro Ezio told us that this Templar preys on courtesans and the poor,” supplied one of the Assassins with me. “Alright, lead the way.”
I followed my escorts and we arrived at a smelly, gross little courtyard full of sick and dying people. Across from us was a tall man in dark leather, his white, beaked mask pointed directly at us. I immediately pulled us out of sight, hoping he hadn’t noticed the movement.
“He’s just across from us. Okay, Ezio said you lot should come along to help me out, is this true?” I asked the Assassins. The one who’d told me about the brothel nodded.
“You three go and kill any guards in the area, and you flush Malfatto out- send him towards us,” I ordered my little squad. They seemed to just disappear from under my nose, which was kind of cool but also a little disturbing. One Assassin remained with me, to help with the killing, but also to honour my agreement with Ezio. We crouched behind a ruined half-wall, weapons at the ready.
The three I’d sent to kill the guards did their job efficiently, and they piled the bodies in a nearby, convenient haystack. It wasn’t safe to approach us now, so they sent us a hand-signal saying to meet them at a nearby Pigeon Coop later.
Unfortunately, life isn’t simple.
The Assassin ordered to ‘flush out’ our Templar target fudged his attempt and sent the man running for the hills. I cursed and shot after him, using my smaller body and agility to dodge between people instead of bashing my way through them. As an afterthought, I slipped on a ring I’d stolen from Ezio’s desk and slowed down to an easy pace. I knew where he was going.
During the first day of being in a new city, I had toured the major Templar hideouts with Il Lupo so I would know where to go if I got lost. He treated me like a kid without a leash those days. I wondered how he was doing, and someone bumped into me hard enough to make me grunt.
Pay attention, Emilia. Follow this Templar, and you might win the redemption you want so much.
Eyes on the prize.
I followed him, far back and twisting through little alleyways when he glanced backwards. It was a great way to get lost, and I felt chills when I realized that I’d lost the Assassin meant to stick with me during the job. Ezio was going to be pissed.
I shook that fact off and pressed myself against the stone wall, withdrawing my head as Malfatto glanced around suspiciously again. He had stopped running a while ago, but he probably sensed that I was following him. I subconsciously fiddled with the mechanism that operated the ‘hidden blade’ and entered the crowd, purposely entering his field of view so that he wouldn’t think I was stalking him. It’s a psychological thing; if I had tried to stay sneaky and he had glimpsed me doing so, Malfatto would instantly know I was his hunter. If I was obvious and ignored his searching look, then he’d deem me ‘uninteresting’ and move on.
His eyes drifted away from me.
I subtly shifted closer, weaving my way through the thick crowds. I had to be careful with my new weapon, as I’d never used it before, and it looked fairly complicated. Every weapon has its own way of use, and the balance of this one was strange. I took a small jar of poison from one of my pockets, made from concentrated versions of some of our food at the hideout, and brushed it gently along the part of the blade that I could see with my finger.
His masked face turned towards me, and I felt his gaze settle on my face.
I bowed slightly and entered the tiny building behind him with no hesitation. He must have hesitated, because there were a few seconds in which I prepared my arm for a hard punch. Malfatto came inside, bowing slightly because of the low door.
“I have not seen you before, but you must be one of the order,” he said in a thick, rasping voice. It sounded like he was being choked with sandpaper, and I wondered just what was under his mask.
“May the father of understanding guide you,” I said to him calmly. He nodded after a moment.
“You remind me of someone I once knew. I killed them.”
I shifted back a step, half-turning so my shoulder would block an attempted attack. The Templar tilted his head to the side. Suddenly he swung his arm at me, making me duck in reflex. It was a distraction, as I found out; I ducked right into a waiting syringe, a slight sting and pulling sensation, then a cold wave through my abdomen. My muscles tightened me into the foetal position for five excruciating seconds and then relaxed, leaving me with no sensation at all.
“You are not very well-trained in the art of being undetected. I noticed you with your white-robed friends before our little chase through the streets. Judging from your appearance, I would say that Cesare shall be most pleased to find you alive... and unspoiled,” Malfatto chuckled at me. I could do nothing but breathe.
He levered me onto a table still covered with scraps of old meals and the odd cockroach. In my mind I winced, but my eyes simply blinked in the real world.
“I think there is still time for a little fun before I deliver you to Cesare,” Malfatto whispered in his horrible voice, leaning over my prone body. I watched him move closer, lift his hand and hold it over my face-
The door slammed open and a rush of people poured into the room, all robed in white, except for one man who immediately pounced on the leather-clad doctor. They fell out of my sight, though by the noises those two were making, I guessed that they were wrestling. The Assassins I’d left behind in my chase crowded around the table I was on, trying to make me ‘wake up’. The most annoying thing was that I couldn’t slap their prodding hands away in this state.
“Enough, she can’t move. Get her out of here,” ordered a highly-ranked Assassin from just beyond the doorway. Two Assassins were waiting to help whoever was fighting Malfatto on the ground, as if they were afraid to get involved in the flying fists and dirty tactics going on down there. My friends picked me up easily and shuffled outside.
I still couldn’t move (and I was getting sick of being drugged left, right and centre) so they propped me against a wall and stood in a protective semicircle. My face felt like rubber, unable to move aside from opening my mouth to breathe and blinking, but I could have sworn that my lips twitched into a tiny smile as I saw how much they cared. Awww, how sweet.
Something smashed in the little house. A passing patrol of guards slowed and stared at us, drawing their weapons from leather sheaths. The sight of five highly-trained warriors in front of a house being ransacked probably looked interesting, but a dangerous sort of interesting.
The guards moved on.
A final yelp and the struggle ended. We waited with bated breath for the survivors- would the Assassins have to fight an enemy that had taken down their powerful brethren?
The leader Assassin walked out unscathed, followed by the two lower-ranked men and someone very familiar. He was limping, a bleeding wound in his calf, but he still grinned at me. “I leave you alone for a few hours, and you get kidnapped by the Doctor. Have you forgotten everything I taught you about being discreet?”
“Lllllupooo,” I drawled, having discovered I could speak with slight coherency.
“Indeed.” He gave me a look-over. “You’re lucky I know how to escape from that place, or you’d be in trouble. Malfatto is not known for his kindness to women, let alone Cesare. Which reminds me- thank you for your help,” Il Lupo said to the leader Assassin politely.
“Consider yourself lucky, Passero. This man here forced us to follow him by escaping in this direction. We could have missed your patrol, if he hadn’t headed straight for this snake’s nest,” the Assassin said with disgust. “I’m sure I saw a pickled lamb in there- who would do that to a little sheep?”
“A monster,” Lupo said grimly.

I could walk a little while before we arrived back at Tiber Island, which was great, because I refused to be carried over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The drug probably wasn’t meant to last for too long, though most painful or horrible things don’t take long at all to do to someone. My friend walked beside me on the way back, an easy arm slung over my shoulders. Actually, that wasn’t helpful at all, but he ignored my attempts to shake it off.
I knew that he would get in trouble for trying to get away. But then, maybe that’s what he wanted. All I know is that I’m grateful for what he did. I could be in the Vaticano District by now if he hadn’t sensed that I was in danger.
Unfortunately he was taken back into a holding-room the minute we got back, though it wasn’t in the dungeons any more. The Assassins kept him in a room still underground, but with the basic luxuries such as a bed and fresh water. I was also allowed to visit him whenever I wanted, but we’ll get to that later.
The Templar was dead. Hurrah! Though he’d left a nasty mark on my belly. The bastard hadn’t cleaned that syringe for a while, I bet. I cleaned it myself with clean water, though it was too small to worry about stitches. Ezio spared me a cool glance when I came staggering over the doorstop, but I ignored him, used to his pretended indifference. I was important to him, though more because I could tell him something valuable than because he liked me. No-one here really wanted me around; even Il Lupo knew it was dangerous to keep me here.
I finally shook the vestiges of the tingling from my hands and went to the room I’d been told Lupo was being kept in. I passed some of the kids I’d snuck around with earlier, and they half-saluted me with a look of genuine respect in their eyes. “Are you alright, Passero?” one of them called to me with a grin. My wobbling had been laughed at several times on the way home.
I mean, back. To here.
“Maybe I’d have fared better if you novices could keep up with me,” I teased them. The one who’d spoken stuck their tongue out. I left the room, followed by a ragged cheer at the young Assassin’s cheekiness.
A big, burly guy was blocking the doorway.
“Excuse me, can I go in, please?” I tried with a polite smile. He shook his head firmly. “No. Maestro Ezio is speaking with the prisoner now.”
This wasn’t good.
“...What’re they talking about?” I asked with nonchalance, leaning on the wall beside him.
The door opened before my new friend could say anything (though I could tell by the thunderous shadow on his brow that he was not impressed) and Ezio himself glanced out at us. He grinned in a surprisingly charming way at the gigantic guard (where do they find these people?)
“I was about to look for you, little girl. Come inside.”
He backed out of the way, me following with a bit of a nervous skirt around the big guard. I found Lupo sitting on a bed, reclining against the wall. He smiled when he saw me, and I sat next to him. The Assassins didn’t trust him; I trusted him with my life. He had rescued it several times now, after all. Ezio didn’t sit down.
“You two are more trouble than a horde of rabid wolves romping around the island- I’m beginning to think you are both better dead than alive,” he said flatly. Lupo made a pretend-hurt look. “Oh, am I getting in your way? So sorry.”
“I am going to attack the Castel Sant’Angelo. It is time that we cut the head of the snake and crush it beneath our heel.”
Our shocked faces didn’t provoke a smile from him. Wow, he was being serious for once?
“But first we have a celebration to prepare. My sister is to become an Assassin,” Ezio said with a hint of pride, glancing at the ground.
“Oh, a ceremony? Can I watch?” I asked him, shoving aside the elephant in the room so I could get information without having to deal with a sullen and thoroughly chastised Ezio. He smiled at me, this time genuinely. “Of course. Though you must promise to be silent; this is extremely important.”
“Don’t go leaving me out. This is your sister, Claudia, being initiated- am I right?” interrupted Il Lupo.
“...Yes.”
“I believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before. I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” my friend declared with a defiant stare at the Master Assassin. Ezio’s hand made a fist, and he clenched his jaw. “To allow a Templar-“
“I used to be a Templar, too! Remember? Please, Auditore, don’t be a maledetto douchebag just this once and pull that stick out of your ass,” I snapped and stood angrily. “I never wanted to be here, you know! If I could just teleport home or something, I’d totally do it. However, you and everyone else in this maledetto century just want to extort information out of me that might end up destroying everything I care about. You know what? Screw you!”
I ran. I just ran. I slammed the door open and flew like a crazed pigeon until there was nothing between me and the sky. My home... my country... my family. I’d been doing everything wrong. Instead of making myself comfortable and learning how to fit in here, I should have been finding a way home, a way back to my place in this universe.
I should have been hunting for these ‘Pieces of Eden’ myself.
I heard a commotion behind me, so I sprinted down the street and towards the river. My muscles thrilled with the feeling of exercise, so I urged them on, like a team of horses at the head of a carriage. Finally, events felt right. It felt good to be running away.
Soft shoes padded rapidly behind me, getting closer and closer. I snuck a glance over my shoulder and yelped as Lupo tackled me to the ground. He grunted at the impact and shot back to his feet.
“No! Leave me alone!” I snarled at him, crouching like a wildcat with my hair wild and my eyes staring.
“I don’t have time for this,” Lupo grumbled and shoved me backwards. I teetered and fell into something sharp and scratchy, a curtain covering my view as I fell into darkness. He levered my legs in too before he jumped inside with me. Hard-heeled shoes came dashing along the street we’d hidden from, and Lupo clasped a hand over my mouth.
Good thing he did, too. An angry yell was just about to burst out, but his leather glove stifled me.
“Come along, Passero. Once they’ve gone, I know where to find some horses that will take us far away from here,” Lupo whispered to me, peeking out from under the heavy curtain hiding our cart of scratchy stuff from view. I struggled out from under his hand.
“But what about-“
“Hush. I’ve been thinking about this for some time, you know. The Assassin was right, you can’t be here anymore. I know where we must go, and I won’t let you go there without me,” he said in a voice so firm I knew he wouldn’t change his mind.
“But then you’ll be hunted by the Assassins until you’re actually killed,” I said in a hysterical whisper. “I don’t let my friends get murdered!”
He stared at me and shook his head, a slow grin appearing on his face. “You are one-of-a-kind, Emilia. I think we can find a solution that will keep both your and my skins intact. But first, I’d like to have some private time with you- Teodora,” Lupo said to the darkness. A surprised gasp, and my... well, we might not be friends now, if she was still mad at me. It was Teodora, by the way.
Anyway, she sat up and threw her arms around my murdering friend.
“Uh... I’ll leave you two alone, shall I?” I asked weakly. Lupo resurfaced and shook his head at me. “We’ll have time to talk later. Right now, we need to run. The Assassins won’t let me live a third time. I’m actually shocked they let me live when they captured me last.”
“Well, that was my fault. I kind of agreed to take down Cesare with them if they spared your life.”
“...Really? Well, as I said, let’s chat later.”
He peeked under the curtain and waited. I’m not sure why. Teodora was staring at him with an adoring expression, and I grinned at her. “So why are you here? You should be trying to hunt us down, like the rest of the Assassins.”
“W-well, I helped Il Lupo to escape the first time he was here. When I heard his plan, I knew that I had to help him again.”
“What? A plan?” I asked with a nasty look at Lupo. He hadn’t mentioned anything to me.
“You see, Lupo knew that you needed to get home, and he suspected that you had survived the Assassin attack. Or so he told me... anyway, he tried to find a way back into here without raising an alarm, but my people are too thorough,” she said proudly.
Il Lupo snorted. “Are you trying to explain, or compliment yourself?”
Teodora reached over and bopped him smartly on the head. “Behave. Anyway, he managed to pay one of the Assassins to find out information for him. At first, he pretended to want useless things, enough to have them put down their guard; but then, he asked if you were alive. When he found that out, Lupo immediately hunted down an Assassin patrol and surrendered himself.”
“It wasn’t easy, either. Assassins are dreadfully jumpy creatures. They nearly cut me down where I stood,” Lupo grumbled. “I’ll take over from here, Teo,” he said gruffly to the young woman. He ruined the image by smiling at her warmly.
“I was taken here the moment I told them who I was. Naturally they were suspicious, but I made some excuse about pining away for Teodora, and the Assassins decided to throw me in a dungeon and forget about me. This was the perfect opportunity to commune with her, and we worked together to get out so I could find you and take you back to wherever you came from.”
“But we don’t know how to do that,” I objected.
“I thought I’d just put you where I found you. I have a feeling about that place,” he said with a suddenly dark tone. A shadow passed over his face.
“Have... either of you ever heard of... Pieces of Eden?” I asked them very slowly.
They both shook their heads. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.
“Well, I think I need one of them to get home. And the only one I can think of is the Apple,” I said awkwardly. It felt weird to tell people something I’d been thinking about for a long time. “Unfortunately, the Apple is being guarded by the man terrorizing Roma.”
“Cesare?!” Teodora squeaked, and clapped her hands to her mouth as someone ran down the paved street outside. We waited for the sounds to fade, but both of my companions were looking at me with peeved expressions. “Please tell me you’re joking. We can’t-“
“Can’t what?! Come on, you guys got into the hideout of the most dangerous people in Italia, and you escaped. With me! We can take anyone on now. We could... well, we could...” I trailed off. I actually didn’t know what we could do. How are you supposed to infiltrate the Vatican?
“You think we should work together to steal something from Cesare,” Il Lupo said slowly. I gave a quick nod. His gaze made me flush with embarrassment, but his expression didn’t seem dismissive. “May we know what it is we are looking for?”
“Er... well, I don’t actually know what it looks like. But I will know it when I see it!” I said fiercely. I didn’t want to be laughed at; I wanted them to listen, to do what I had suggested. I couldn’t do this alone. Actually, never mind being alone- I didn’t want to lose my friend again. I had the feeling that the next time I saw him go away, I’d never see him again. Yeah, I’m insecure. Try being forced into a century belonging to several million other people, where killing is a fact of life and where my friends are constantly being frightened away from me.
Il Lupo glanced at Teodora, who looked down with a grimace. He kept watching her until she looked back up, and smiled as her eyes widened slightly in surprise that he hadn’t given up. I had to make a small smile despite myself as I saw this. They really were sweet together. Wait, what am I thinking? Love might be sweet if you’re a little kid, but I didn’t have time for thinking about useless things like that.
“I will try to get the Apple myself, if I have to. I’d just really be happy if I had my friends with me,” I said in my softest voice. They looked at me, eyes heavy with reluctance. I set my jaw and leapt from the cart, setting off for a side-street that would take me to the main road.

The Assassins had been foolish to trust me. I knew where every patrol would search, and I knew when they would be on the hunt. Of course, this didn’t make me instantly safe. They had taken over Roma, and every shopkeeper in the city was on the lookout for me.
I disguised myself by trading my high-quality clothing with a drunk guy near the Rosa in Fiore. I knew that the courtesans there were allied with the Assassins, but the message would take too long for them to find me here. Nevertheless, I rushed away and met up with some thieves that weren’t part of La Volpe Addormentata. They were pleased to help me get to the Vaticano District, once I’d showered a few handfuls of coins into their laps.
The non-presence of my friends was a constant ache in my chest, and I had to pinch my arm when I felt real sorrow coming on. I wish they’d chosen to go with me. It would have been a perfect moment, really, but I didn’t blame them. It was insanity, what I was doing.
Templars and Assassins. They’ve been fighting and killing each other madly for possibly hundreds of years. They weren’t fighting because of race, because of gender or some physical difference which would have made the murder greatly appalling to me. It was an idea that killed people, the thought of the ‘creed’ and the wish for ‘peace’. Ideas win wars, not the people that die or the people that live. An idea of freedom, of tyranny, of humanity. This is what makes us who we are; the way in which we die. This was a fine day to die.
I didn’t mention that to my small gang of thugs, of course.
Eventually we arrived at the Tiber River, at the foot of the Ponte Sant’Angelo. The thieves had a secret system of pulleys and rafts underneath the bridge, which was used nearly every day to escape to or from the district.
The water had rotted the wood and covered everything with a disgusting green slime. I gingerly made my way into the small craft and helped to pull the rope that ran though pulleys across the gap between shores. As we pulled, the boat was taken across the water, oily black water bubbling through holes in the hull and lapping against our ankles.
I stayed silent, though only through the combined efforts of gritted teeth and bitten tongue. I hadn’t expected luxury for such a secretive journey over the Tiber, but this was ridiculous. The little boat groaned ominously when I shifted my weight and my hands kept slipping on the slimy rope.
“We are almost at shore, signore,” one of the thieves whispered to me with a grin at his fellows. “What do you want us to do?”
My short hair, grubby skin and ratty clothes must have convinced them of my masculinity. I beckoned them closer and we leaned into a huddle at the centre of the boat.
I don’t think I’ll reveal my plan to you just yet. It’ll sound more interesting if I give you a sort of play-by-play, as it happened. I feel a little guilty for not telling the thieves what we were getting into, but hey, they chose their path a long time ago.

We found the door to the outer courtyard of Castel Sant’Angelo locked, so one of my lackeys used his lock-picking skills to break in. We left the doors wide open, as it was very unlikely we would get away without being noticed, and a clear path for escape would be necessary to stay alive.
I could sense that the thieves were getting nervous, so I had us pause next to a wooden ladder in the small courtyard and fixed everyone with my stare.
“Listen to me. I am a powerful warrior, and I have killed many people before. I’ll keep you all safe- IF you do what I paid you to do.”
They looked at each other fearfully, and a couple of them allowed their hands to drift to dagger pommels. I still wore my new Hidden Blade, and I activated it. The ‘shing’ sound and the sudden appearance of the lethal blade made them pause. “I will kill the next man- or woman,” I added, acknowledging the only female in the group, “That tries to move.”
I think I went temporarily insane.
I value living things, just like everyone should. My values, however, have been mutating the minute I saw life spurting out of someone because of something I did to them. I had a mission; find Cesare, find the apple, find a way home. Keep myself from destroying my own future, or even the whole of reality, by removing myself from the equation.
Being a murderer for a living isn’t fun at all. I have kept myself as close to my old self as possible by treating everything as a list of things to do. Point one- convince these thieves to follow my orders whilst under great duress. Dash one- do this by any means possible.
Acting like a machine turns you into one. I saw the fear in their eyes and catalogued it into my mental file of ‘things to manipulate’.
They didn’t move, so I nodded and gestured at the ladder. “Climb on up. If there’s a guard up there, hold him down until I’m with you.” They scampered up to the next landing and waited for me to catch up before climbing the next one. Threats usually worked when the people being threatened were scared and under pressure. I’d have to make sure they didn’t try to stab me in the back when we left.
Point two- take care of the guards along the battlements. Dash one- quiet is better.
The thieves went over the small railing just above the ladder. Something made a gasping sound, but it was cut off with a woody thud and the rattle of steel. I threw myself up the ladder before the last thief could go up to help. My breath was coming short and fast when I arrived at the top; not due to the exercise, but because of the excitement and adrenalin.
I found the four of my people on top of a single guard, a hand over his mouth and nose and a bloody wound on his head. I unsheathed my dagger and slashed at the hand over his mouth; they backed off with startled hisses.
“He’s already unconscious. Killing him now is a waste of energy,” I said coldly.

This place was absolutely enormous! We walked along the battlements, ducking behind little wooden things that looked a bit like small houses which dotted the walkway every now and then. We only came across a couple of guards, and we were forced to kill them in order to keep under the radar.
The thieves were respectful when they had to speak to me, but I could see hatred born from fear in their eyes. Contrary to popular belief, respect is never gained through fear. Rather it causes the fearful to act as if their bully was a legend in order to survive. They only had a grudging respect for me, due to the fact that I’d kept us all alive so far.
We had a brief chat at the bottom of a wall that would lead us into a higher part of the inner battlements.
“Tell me your names or nicknames if you’re too cowardly to trust me with those,” I said with a slightly friendly smile. They glanced at each other, aside from the girl. She was glaring at me. I sensed that I would have to do something about her before she tried to put something cold and sharp between my ribs.
“I am Ben,” said one of them timidly. I marked him as being smaller and scrawnier than the others. “I’m Nichols,” the tallest thief said coolly. He seemed a lot less intimidated than his friends, but I saw no rebellion in his eyes. “They’re Wren and Pidg. Twins,” Nichols added with a gesture at two boys who sat there grinning at me. They were identical, so I immediately forgot both of their names and called them whatever I felt like at the time.
“I am Di,” the girl informed me icily.
“Okay then. Ben and Di, I want you to stay out here and keep the escape path open. Remember that the life of your companions depend on my own; leaving me to die here means leaving your friends.” I directed that last sentence at Di and gained some small joy at the irritated look on her face. She wouldn’t leave her friends behind.
I had the feeling that Ben was too in awe of me to help Di with any plan she may come up with, and I didn’t want to make him go into danger with me, anyway. I’d been inside before.
Damn it, this would have been so much easier with two more trained killers on my side!
We moved on and raided a small building full of clothes and armour. The outfits of Papal Guards were perfect for us; the minute we stepped outside, ordinary guards looked away and pretended that we didn’t exist.
“Nichols, you’re with me. Wren and Pidg...” I trailed off with a glance at the tall thief beside me. “...I want you both to go and release every horse in the stables, on my mark. I’ll signal you both with something you can’t miss.” The twins nodded and ran off without a sound. They were still wearing Papal Guard helmets, but the armour was too heavy for them to run quietly. I heard clashes and clangs as they hastily rid themselves of the cumbersome metal and disappeared into the shadows.
“Thank you,” Nichols said. “They do not belong in this place. I tried to find somewhere for them to live, but anyone associated with thieves cannot truly live an honest life.”
“It’d be a waste for them to die. However, you will be in a great danger of death when you go inside with me. That’s unavoidable. Come on,” I ordered him and marched around the base of the huge tower until I came across a large staircase. It led to the wooden door which would take us inside. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a key.
“Work your magic, Nick,” I said under my breath and moved so I would appear to be standing guard in front of the door. In truth, I was hiding my partner in crime from anyone who might try to pry.
He knelt and fiddled with the locks, taking various odd items from his pockets and inserting them in the keyhole. I couldn’t help watching as he worked, but it was too dangerous to simply turn around and stare. All I could do was take occasional glances over my shoulder, when the rooftop guards looked away from us. With amazing dexterity, the thief manipulated his tools in a digging, twisting motion, and the lock suddenly fell into his waiting hands.
“The lock was rusted and old. They must have a different usual way into the castle,” Nichols commented as he stood. I had new respect for the man.
“Well, you’re certainly a useful guy to have around. Thank you. Now that I am inside, I don’t have a real use for you or your friends, so you can go, if you want to. It was... an honour to have met you, I suppose,” I said ruefully. I didn’t know Nichols very well, but he clearly cared about his little ‘family’ and had skills beyond the thieves I knew. The Assassins were poorer without him. In fact, so were the Templars. I decided not to make him aware of either group; the world needed some good, if not honest, people that were not involved in this ridiculous war.
He looked a little shocked, but the thief had great control over his expression and wrestled every iota of surprise from his face. I grinned at him and gently pushed him out of the way. It was time for me to find this Piece of Eden and get out of this crazy place.

I was alone again.
Still, at least I was inside. This castle was a pretty dark and gloomy place, down here in the... cellar? Storage room? I was inside of a pretty big stone room with huge barrels and piles of straw all over the place. Someone had relieved themselves in the corner, so I covered my nose with a bit of cloth and scanned the walls for a ladder.
I found none, but something found me. Arms suddenly clamped around me, a gloved and armoured hand holding something smelling faintly sweet to my mouth. Unfortunately for my mystery attacker, I knew exactly how to escape from a position like this.
My foot slammed down onto his toes, I kicked back and struck him in the balls and once his arms freed me to protect the delicate organs below I elbowed him in the face. To finish the job, I kicked the man’s temple, forcing him to go under.
Oh yeah, now I’m a badass. The badass with an elbow in pain because of the flipping steel covering the guy’s face. Actually, it nearly broke the skin, but rubbing it a little made it feel better. I knelt and lifted the helmet from the mysterious man, which I noticed with great satisfaction had a dent in it about the same shape as my elbow.
I didn’t recognize the guy, but I did notice that his helmet had the personal crest of Cesare Borgia. “Hmmm....”

I strode through the marble hallways confidently, a brilliantly red cape swishing behind me and nearly every servant in the place bowing once they noticed me. Unfortunately my helmet had a pretty big ding in it, but I’d managed to wrestle it into a sort-of ordinary shape with my knee and copious amounts of swearing. The metal was fairly weak, but it had sharp edges and cut into my leg every time I pushed down.
The crest was a lost cause.
I paused just outside the door leading to the gardens that I’d seen the last time I was here. This was where Cesare stood before. I felt chills creeping along my arms, settling into the small hairs and freezing them in an upright position. There was something... wrong, with that man.
Someone’s footsteps became apparent, and I hastily rearranged my costume to obscure my features. To my surprise, the person walking around was Lucrezia, the blonde chick who acted way too friendly with her brother. I made a sneer of disgust and quickly had to hide it with an ingratiating smile. She ignored my change of expression like a boss.
“You are finally here. Take this, and place it in the Basilica di San Pietro. There is a hidden compartment in the statue in the middle of the courtyard; hide this inside,” she ordered me, shoving a leather pouch into my chest. I disguised a wince with a curt nod. “Of course, signorina.”
“I do not need to tell you to keep this to yourself. My brother would not take kindly to my commandeering of the Apple,” she hissed at me like a spoiled, pedigree cat. Her hand was gripping my arm like a boa constrictor, but I couldn’t just take the liberty of unclamping it. Eventually she let go and sniffed the air (or so I thought- she was probably just being an über-bitch about her ‘royalty’.)
Two guards flanked me, holding spears and grimacing at the world. I closed my hands over the leather bag and suddenly felt like breaking into peals of laughter.
How long had the Templars and Assassins been fighting over this piece of jewellery? Yet I had marched right in here, taken it without an iota of suspicion from anyone, and now I was being protected by the people I’d stolen the Apple from. I would need to kill the two guards eventually, which was sad, but...
Actually, why would I need to kill them?
I wasn’t planning on keeping the Apple. I needed to use it briefly, to find how I could go home. After that I could leave it where I was told to leave it and escape without any reason for the Templars to follow me. The guards may even be helpful, if bandits or Assassins tried to steal the Apple before I could use it. I would need to distract them somehow, giving me enough time to do what I needed to do.
We began to walk, at first tentatively as I checked to see if they would follow and then briskly as they immediately moved with me. I needed to find a way to distract them, for just a few minutes. An idea struck me, and I slowed to glance out a window.
“Such a lovely night sky... say, where are the guards? What is that?” I asked in my gruffest, most masculine voice. I’d had practice at pretending to be male for a year, and I had my vocabulary down pat. The guards glanced at each other and moved to the window. With perfect timing, a hand dropped from somewhere above and slapped one of the dudes in the face.
“Argh!” squealed the guard, leaping backwards. His friend aimed the business end of his spear at the hand and gave it a fierce jab. The spear cut into the arm, but it didn’t move.
That was when I realized it was a dead hand.
My amusement sort of disappeared after I realized that.
“We have an intruder!” squawked the guard who’d been hiding behind his colleague, his knees banging together. I didn’t recall leaving a dead body there, so I allowed my hand to drift to the pommel protruding from my new belt. It wasn’t my sword, but it could kill just as well. Just as I was about to draw the sword and help the guards investigate, I noticed a little face peeking at me from the top of the window. The others were too busy scanning the ground to notice. The face grinned, waved at me, and disappeared. I smiled quietly and relaxed.
Two bodies suddenly fell and crashed on the ground, far below. My two companions roared angrily and stormed down a staircase, shouting for help and clashing their spears very, very loudly. Two dirty faces appeared this time, grinning through the grime and startling me with the brightness of their teeth.
“Wren! Pidg!” I exclaimed. They manhandled themselves down onto the window sill and crouched like little birds, eying me curiously. “Wann’ help. Nicho’ say you le’ us go,” one of them told me. I couldn’t tell them apart. “We he’p ‘n ge’ you ou’a here.”
Something was wrong with their mouths, and I felt a twinge of sympathy. Nichols was right about them not being good candidates for a new family. Any ‘good’ family would run in the opposite direction at the sight of either of them. I felt moved, though I was still in machine-mode, so I searched my new pockets and pulled a small purse from its smelly depths. As I handed it to the kids, their faces lit up. “Tha’kee, si’ore!” one of them practically purred, clutching the tiny bag to his chest. That’s when I noticed that their hands pushed in farther than they should have done.
“Wait... are you a girl?” I asked the little kid in astonishment. They both got a good laugh at me, hiding their mouths with clasped hands. “Pidg i’ a gal! Wren i’ laddi’!” Wren cackled at me. I had to laugh with them, the situation getting so silly. I hadn’t laughed like this for a while; it nearly hurt to smile with real happiness.
“Anyway, I need to do something extremely important. Think you two are up to the job of distracting our friends until I make this signal?” I asked, and performed a simple three-note whistle that went high note-very low note-very high note. They nodded and made startlingly good copies of my whistle. “Great. Off you go, then.”
They disappeared out the window in a split second, and I glimpsed rocks falling from the roof above onto disgruntled men that cursed and spat at the two little vandals over their heads. I nearly smiled in happiness again, but managed to hold it back. I was starting to get sentimental! This wouldn’t do!

The corridors stretched on before me, but they didn’t feel right. It was as if the Apple was guiding me, even through the leather bag, because I could feel a slight tug in different directions as I walked along the hallway. If I tried to go another direction, I almost always ran into a guard and was asked awkward questions. After the second time, I gave up and did what the Apple told me to.
I didn’t see any guards after that. However, I did hear some conversation and light thumps when I was next to a rather beautiful marble room full of dark wooden bookcases. I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to just walk straight at whatever was making the noises, but the Apple nearly pulled my arm off with a massive tug that yanked me right into the middle of the hallway, smack dab in the centre of their fields of vision.
The sounds stopped, and I felt huge tension in the atmosphere, like a bubble full of crossbow bolts that would rain death down on the unwary bubble-burster. I tentatively cleared my throat and stepped forwards.
To my (yet again) shock and very real joy, my two friends were standing there, armed and dangerous but with widening expressions of surprise and wonder at the sight of me. Lupo immediately crossed the room and gave me a huge hug, crushing the air from my lungs, even with the armour.
“Emilia! You’re safe!” I heard him mutter into my shoulder. Teodora was moving forwards to say hello too, so I tapped his back and the man let go. Damn, he had a strong grip.
“What trouble did you get into?” the girl asked me, giving me a warm embrace. I returned it gladly. “Oh, I just... stole the Apple from the Templars without getting caught,” I said cheekily and held up the pouch bearing the artefact.
“You WHAT?” she yelped, letting go of me impulsively.
“What the hell did you do?” Lupo asked me, though he didn’t sound angry- more exasperated.
“I stole some special armour and walked right up to Lucrezia. She gave it to me so I would hide it for her,” I explained. “I have to hide it one I’m done with it, but we all know how essential it is that I try speaking to the artefact.”
“How are you going to speak to it? Does it obey words?” Lupo asked, having apparently forgotten that he was annoyed. Teodora jabbed him in the shoulder. “Why do you sound like you approve of this, Lupo?!”
“Because we’ve already discussed it, and this is the best solution to the problem!” he snapped back at her. They glared at each other. I could see why they liked each other; I could see nearly no difference in their temperaments, and was that a Cardinal hat on Teodora’s belt?
Err, anyway.
“I have it already, so there’s no point in leaving it or something. Let’s just use it and get out of here,” I said with some impatience. We were losing night-time. They reluctantly stopped glaring at each other and nodded their agreement. “Go ahead and use it, Passero. Tell us if you need our help,” Lupo said gravely. He was looking at the Apple with suspicion.
I pulled the Apple from its pouch. It looked... exactly like the box that had sent me here. Silvery-grey, strange patterns imbedded in its surface that flashed and glowed like something alive. It warmed in my grip, as if saying hello.
I ignored my repulsion at something so similar to the thing that ruined my life and attempted to focus my mind. It wasn’t easy, and I felt my arm lifting it to eye-level, though I hadn’t made it do so. Cold fingers scrabbled at my mind, only to be repulsed by my attempts at mental barriers, much like the ones I used to ignore my own crimes.
Someone whispered in my mind, and I tried to scratch the voice from my ears. It scared me. So soft, so sweet and pure- so deadly.
‘EMILIA...’
“W-what?”
‘SO YOU HAVE FOUND ME...’
“...”
‘YOU KNOW OF MY SISTER.’
“If you mean that piss-stupid box, yeah, I kind of met her.”
‘I SUPPOSE SHE WAS NEVER DESIGNED FOR INTELLIGENCE.’
I swallowed, the effort of speaking to the Apple so heavy that I could feel my shoulders bowing forward, as if some giant hand was slowly crushing me. I became aware of beautiful lines fanning from the Apple, like laser beams made of brilliant gold and pale yellow.
“Apple, I want to go home,” I said firmly, pushing against the pressure. I heard a faintly echoing laugh from the silver ball, and the squashing sensation disappeared.
I straightened with relief, and waved the ball from side to side in the air, just to prove that I could.
‘You have too much to accomplish, little bird...’ the voice whispered to me, as if the volume had just been cut to barely-audible level. I drew the Apple close to my ear and tried to listen, as if that would help with the volume. ‘You have something to do before you can go home.’
“What now? Haven’t I done enough already?” I asked with desperation. The tiny grip I’d had on my hopes of going home turned into a freefall of despair. Descriptive, huh?
‘First you need to find and save someone,’ the voice said, and an image of something appeared in my mind. It was a brief flash of a glass jar, full of some sort of liquid and a tiny pink blob in its centre. A little white line connected the blob to the side of the jar. The image faded, leaving me more confused than ever before. “What? I don’t get it.”
‘Go.’
A sudden rush of images, sounds, smells, tastes flooded my head. As if that little glimpse was the first drop of a rainstorm, I could barely think under the onslaught of information. Blurred colours, emotion, falling tears and the flashing fangs of rage...

A little while later, I found myself on the floor.
My mind felt numb. I stared straight up at the ceiling, unaware of myself and of what that heavy round thing on my hand was.
A few pictures appeared almost lazily in my head. A picture of a worn-down, old town next to the ocean, and a marble relief of a dolphin next to a shark. I seemed to remember the scent of a sea breeze, the feeling of sand under and around my feet...
Then I slam back into my surroundings, sitting up with a violent start.
The Apple made a tiny glimmer, reminding me of a wink. It then went dead.
I felt like being violently sick, so I clenched my stomach muscles and struggled to my feet. I wobbled around for a little bit until I found the discarded leather pouch and shoved the Apple unceremoniously inside it. The nausea was fading, so I hid the pouch in my pocket again.
“Hey, are you two alri-“ I cut myself off as I noticed that they were lying on the ground, unconscious or dead; I couldn’t actually tell the difference. I jogged to their sides and crouched down, peering into their faces with great concern. “Lupo? Teodora?” I asked them softly and lay a hand on both of their faces. They were still warm, which might not mean anything, but it made me feel better.
‘Leave them. They cannot help, only hinder,’ ordered the ‘inert’ grey ball. I slapped the pouch and ignored it. Leave my friends? Alone in the Castel Sant’Angelo? I’m no Templar!
Then, to my great relief, Lupo’s eyes twitched.
“Lupo! You’re okay!” I said joyfully, leaning over him as his eyes unfocused and refocused on me. His pupils were a little wider than usual, but he was alive. I was so happy that he wasn’t dead that I almost forgot Teodora.
 I helped them both up slowly, making sure that neither would fall over if I let go of them. They did wobble a bit. Something must have hit them pretty hard.
“What happened?” Lupo asked in a husky voice. He was rubbing the back of his head, so I pulled the hand away to have a look. I didn’t see anything there, but he grimaced when I touched it. “I don’t think you were hit over the head. Maybe the Apple did something to you?” I suggested. “Can we leave now?” asked Teodora grumpily. She was not happy about something, I could tell. Probably still pissed about the earlier argument.
Lupo didn’t waste time.
“What did it tell you?” he asked me, dark eyes watching me carefully. “What are you going to do?”
I looked up into the net of his gaze.
“First, I want breakfast. Then, we’re going to the ocean.”