The Eternal Assassin

"You!" Draken hissed, seemingly more angry about Owl's general presence before him than the fact he held a knife to his throat. "How dare you come into my manor!"

"Me," Owl said, looking entirely unconcerned by Draken's anger. "My apologies, Draken, I know I personally took out a number of your former subordinates back in the day under Eight's orders, but I am hopeful that we can let bygones be bygones now that Whikoga's Assassin's Guild is under new leadership." Turning his focus on Asher, Owl nodded. "Excellent job following the Head's orders and removing Eight from the equation. He had grown a bit sloppy in his many years running Whikoga's Guild and was in desperate need of a replacement."

"I didn't do it because of the Head," Asher frowned, trying to come up with a way to get Draken out of this in one piece. Despite his current nudity, his daggers were merely a single flex of his Personal Rift away. And while killing one of the Head's own men might not be the wisest idea, Asher would take him out in a heartbeat if he got the chance. "How about you let Draken go and we have a more civilized conversation?"

"Sadly, while I have an artifact that will allow me to survive a few seconds under Draken's Death Aura, it won't hold up for long," Owl admitted. "However, it will keep me alive long enough to dispose of him if he tries anything, so the knife stays."

"I'd be tempted to try and trade my life for yours if I thought I could get away with it," Draken spat, glaring at the man with sheer vitriol. "Asher, if you see an opening, kill him. The things he's done make Eight look like a saint. He might very well have more blood on his hands than the Head themself."

"Enough about me. I want to talk about you. The both of you," Owl admitted. "One way or another, you've completed the task the Head put before you, which means regardless of your own desires, as of now, you are in fact the new Eight, Reaper."

"Seriously? That's a pretty stupid way of handling things," Asher said, wondering if he could get Owl to make a mistake if he tried belittling his master. "What if I just abandon Whikoga altogether and never set foot in the city again? What happens to your precious Guild?"

"If that were to happen, the Head would select another potential, and give them the same task they gave you. Kill Eight and become the next Finger."

"Ahhh," Asher said slowly, seeing where he was going with this. "So it's just extortion, is it? Work for the Head or lose my own?"

"That's a rather comedic way of putting it, but essentially, that is correct," Owl nodded. "That's not to say the Head is unreasonable, however. You will have a brief grace period to lick your wounds from your recent battle and get your house in order before I'm ordered to start reporting on your progress. Though from the looks of things, you are licking your wounds remarkably quickly."

"You can thank Draken and all the potions of Lesser Restoration for that," Asher said, not willing to give any hint toward his skills in front of Owl, and especially not one of the ones tied to his Eternity element. Looking to change the subject, he latched onto the last thing Owl had said. "Exactly what progress are you going to be reporting? How many people I stab each week?"

"There are expectations that each of the ten Fingers are required to fulfil, lest the Head decides they need to be replaced. Precisely how you go about fulfilling those is entirely up to you. The reason I decided to include Draken in this conversation is because I understand the two of you have a rather close working relationship, and there is the possibility of the two of you working together."

"If you think I'd ever work with the Guild after what they've done…" Draken spat, narrowing his eyes and looking like he was mentally preparing to launch himself and physically strangle Owl to death, without even bothering to use his Death Aura.

"Come, Draken, I'm well aware you're more intelligent than this," Owl sighed, the shadows covering his face rippling anew. "This branch of the Guild, the one as you knew it, is dead. While I myself am too valuable to offer up, as a token of apology, before coming here I personally went around to each of the senior assassins that had a role in killing your former comrades and took their lives myself."

That was enough to give Draken pause, and the gang leader blinked at the news that the majority of the people he'd vowed vengeance upon for killing his friends no longer lived.

"I'd hoped that would be your reaction," Owl nodded. "As I said, how you go about fulfilling your obligations is entirely up to you. More than one Finger has chosen to hide their Guild activities behind the guise of being nothing more than a simple gang. With Loratta's passing, Draken already leads the largest gang in the entire city. If the two of you joined forces, I daresay you might be able to not only fulfil your obligations to the Head, but accomplish Draken's goals of cleaning up the first and second ring at the same time."

Asher glanced at the gang leader, surprised to find him actually contemplating Owl's proposal. He knew Draken ran a tight ship with his gang, instructing them to keep their portion of the city safe from crime and focusing their illicit activities on the third and fourth ring, but he hadn't known his end goal was to expand that net of safety to the entirety of the first and second rings. With the sheer number of gangs still within the city and more popping up every day, it seemed like an impossible goal.

Unless one had a guild of assassins at their disposal.

"You're beating around the bush," Asher frowned, easily noting how Owl was dancing around the topic. "I'm still not agreeing to anything, but out of sheer curiosity, exactly what obligations would the Head expect us to fulfil? If you've been watching me, which you pretty clearly have, you should know by now I only kill a rather specific type of people. People with blood on their hands and a history of horrific deeds. If the Head were to order me to kill someone I didn't think deserved it, I'd most likely just go after the Head instead."

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"Once you've had your time to recover, I will return and give you a more thorough explanation," Owl said, seemingly unconcerned by Asher's threat toward his boss. "For now, all I ask of you is to think things through carefully. The Head has high hopes for you, and I know they would be disappointed if they were required to replace you right off the bat."

Without waiting for a response, Owl removed his knife from Draken's neck and fell straight through the man's shadow once more, vanishing before either of them could so much as blink. While Draken rubbed at the fine line against his throat, Asher peered curiously at his shadow.

Spatial Lock should be able to lock that down without issue, which means if Owl ever decides to show his face in more favorable conditions, I don't have to worry about him escaping. That just raises the question of if I'm actually able to kill him or not.

Asher hadn't witnessed the man fight in melee just yet, but he knew he was capable of immensely powerful and entirely silent ranged attacks with his shadow arrows. His only hope was that Owl wasn't nearly as strong in close range as he was from a distance, but he'd be taking a risk attempting to fight him either way until he knew for sure.

Of course, that just made him want to try fighting Owl even more.

"Are you okay?" he asked, finally pushing his thoughts of how he'd tackle Owl to the side as he took in Draken. "I'm surprised you don't have any sort of enchantments against that sort of thing."

"I'm fine," he said, shaking his head." And I think you've grossly underestimated how costly enchantments are after your trip to the fourth ring. Artifacts are already outrageously expensive, enchantments for an entire building are exorbitantly more so."

"I guess that explains why I've barely seen any," Asher said. "Regardless, what do we do about Owl and the Head? I'm not about to start murdering random people just because some shadowy figure tells me to."

"I agree," Draken nodded. "However, let's not make any hasty decisions. As much as I've hated the Guild all these years, the thought of being the one to potentially pull the strings and use its resources for our own purposes does have a rather nice ring to it. For all we know the Head will be almost entirely hands off, provided we assassinate the occasional noble or two, which I would certainly have no qualms against."

Yeah… About that… Asher had no way of explaining to Draken that he had a skill that would prevent those he killed from being resurrected. He trusted the man with a lot after everything they'd been through, enough to admit to having an ability that allowed him to come back from the dead, but Sever the Thread was one secret he wasn't comfortable sharing just yet. Draken seemed to misconstrue his uncertainty, as he continued.

"Imagine it, Asher. Removing all the gangs that are actual gangs from the first and second ring. I may control the largest area, but my territory isn't even half of Whikoga's underground, not even close. If we worked together, we could make the entirety of the first two rings safe places for people to live!"

"I get that, but I can't say I'm a fan of working under the Head, even if it's what I'd do on my own. And what about your whole connection with the truthseekers? Won't that throw a wrench in the whole 'working for the Assassin's Guild' thing?"

"Unlike the shaky truce I had with the Guild, the truthseekers don't care what I do, provided I remain under house arrest," Draken argued.

"I get the feeling they'll start caring if you go from a simple gang leader to co-heading the Assassin's Guild," Asher drawled, shaking his head. "I'm not saying 'no,' I just think we need to-"

Asher's voice cut off as he froze, his eyes shooting wide open as he experienced something he'd been waiting for all this time, but hoped he'd never feel.

A sharp, stabbing pain shooting through the Eternal Mark he'd placed on Samantha.

"I'll be back!" he shouted, startling Draken as he leapt out of the tub. Not even bothering with clothes, he triggered Recall and yanked his mithral dagger out of his Personal Rift as the world shifted around him. Down one hand and still a bit rough around the edges from his recent return from death, he wasn't exactly in prime fighting condition.

A fact that was made all the more unfortunate as he appeared in the center of a raging inferno encompassing the entirety of Horntho village. The heat of the flames quickly dried his dripping wet body, and the combination of billowing smoke and screaming villagers made it hard to tell what had caused such devastation.

"Asher!" Samantha called out, snapping him out of his disorientation and grabbing his arm. "Thank God you came!"

"What the hell is going on?!" he asked, screaming to be heard over the roaring flames and sounds of buildings collapsing. A quick look over the hunter showed a relatively harmless stab wound in the muscle of her upper arm, the agreed upon wound the two of them had figured out that would cause her the least amount of damage while still alerting him through his Eternal Mark.

"He found us!" she shouted, her eyes widening as she looked past his shoulder. Whipping her own bloody arrow from her arm and nocking it on her bow, she let it fly straight past his head. Based on how the arrow glowed a dull violet and screamed past his ears, she must have spent the shards to enchant the shot.

"Who found us?!" Asher cried, already having a sinking feeling in his gut he knew the answer as he turned to see what Samantha had just fired upon. There was only one loose end that he'd pushed to the background all this time while he focused on dealing with first the truthseekers and then the Guild, and it looked as though it had finally caught up to them.

As the giant, hulking demon that looked nearly identical to the one he'd fought in the wizard tower all those weeks ago dropped to the ground, Samantha's empowered shot having torn straight through its eye and removing a chunk of its head upon exiting, a half-dozen more walked out of the flames to take its place. Fully surrounding them, the largest of the demons stepped forward. Unlike the others, this one was a nine-foot-tall monstrosity with claws the size of his own daggers and a far darker hue to its skin, making it look almost purple instead of red. Whereas the other five were all labeled as [Lesser Demon] - Bound, this one was clearly something new, and his evolved Identify confirmed it.

[Greater Demon] - Bound

"There you are," the greater demon grinned, its jet-black teeth reflecting the flickering flames from the burning village as it stared at Asher. Despite the fact that it didn't shout, its very voice seemed to force the screams of the villagers to grow quiet, as if not even sound itself dared to oppose it.

"You have something that doesn't belong to you."