"I am only passing. Please, I do not mean you or your peaceful village any harm," came Kronik's soft spoken reply. "I just need to rest and replenish my supplies, then I will continue on my way."
"You'll be continuing on back the way you came without a fight," The growling voice stated flatly as the guard moved a step closer. "or I'll be sending back the way you came anyway. The choice is yours."
Kronik stood silently and contemplated the man. Kronik held no doubt that he could kill the man. But neither did he want to stir up any trouble, nor did he wish to harm the man. "Please, I have traveled many days and nights. I am weary, and I have nothing but crumbs and an empty canteen to sustain me. If I might be allowed to enter for a few mere hours, I would gladly pay…"
"You'll be paying in more than gold if you don't stop your annoying tongue from moving."
"You do not understand!" Kronik stated coolly, his patience with the angry man wearing thin. Maybe he would kill him. "I need to get to the pass beyond this village. If I can not enter here, I will have to travel for several days just to get around the base of this mountain."
"Then you better start walking. These gates close in a matter of moments, and they will not open until dawn. You aren't getting through these gates before then, and if I find you out here after they close, I will gladly send you to your destination in pieces." He jabbed at Kronik's shoulder to prove his point, but before the tip of the pole-arm came anywhere near him, Kronik spun out of the weapons path, bearing his knives. Kronik would have struck a killing blow at that very moment, had he had a target to attack. Kronik dove forward just in time to avoid another jab from the pole-arm, this time from behind him.
"How did he?" Kronik had begun to ask himself as he rose from his dive, only to find the blade of the guards pole only inches from his face, once again in front of him. Without hesitation, Kronik jumped back to distance himself from the man, and releasing a kunai before his feet touched down to the ground. Kronik watched in awe as the guard easily stepped out of the weapons path, at a speed that no human could possibly attain.
Realizing his vulnerability, Kronik dashed to the cover of a nearby outcropping of stone, a natural three walled structure that offered protection on the right, left and rear flank of the occupant. The moment his feet touched the rough stone ground, angled to offer the higher ground to the occupant, Kronik readied himself for the approach of the guard. Before the man even came into the assassin's line of sight, three kunai knives were streaking toward their target, followed by two more knives, thrown in a perfect formation, one which altered the perceived depth, and effectively causing their target to misjudge the distance between the knives. With simple alterations in his path, the guard easily avoided the first, second and third knives as Kronik sunk into a crouch in the narrow alcove.
"So his speed is only relative to his feet," Noted Kronik as he watched the man's reactions to the knives. "Now to see if he can match that speed with his eyes and his with his head." Kronik finished the thought as he drew another kunai, this one equipped with a small whistle, into his well trained hand as the man, who had narrowly avoided the fourth knife, and was still charging up the slop towards the assassin.
Kronik smiled slightly as he set his plan into motion, preparing to jump. The guard wove his way around the last of the knives as Kronik leapt into the air, clearing the charging man and landing behind him.
"You are a fool," snickered the guard as he held his pole-arm in front of him. "You have given up the favorable position, not that it would help against me."
The two had completely changed places, the guard now in the three walled structure, and Kronik now facing uphill towards his speedy foe. Kronik spun, concealing his movement as he drew the last remaining deadly knife, then leapt into the air, giving him a direct line of sight to the guard as he sent the special kunai he had drawn before whistling towards the man's head. Just as Kronik had expected, the guard heard the whistle and turned slightly as he moved to the left, directly in the path of the kunai Kronik had concealed. The quick guard's feet began to move before the knife had even entered into his thoughts. With a speed even greater than any that the guard had previously shown, he quickly dashed out of the way as he turned back to his right.
The knives were never meant to hit him, he then realized, before he could stop his own movement.
"The assassin had been positioning me," he thought, as his eyes grew wide, "and he did so by weaving a web, one that if I strayed of his set course, would have left me with a knife in my chest." He quickly closed his eyes, before the resounding thud of his body colliding with one of the unforgiving walls that surrounded him echoed off the stone he had trapped him. Just as Kronik had planned. Kronik looked back and sighed. Their battle, although it had taken only a few minuets, had brought them almost a half mile from the gate.
"I guess I cant leave him here," Kronik thought, regarding the unconscious guard and the large bruise forming on the side of his head, "or else he might be eaten by the creatures of he night." The honorable assassin hoisted the man over his shoulder, and carried him half of the distance back to the gate. "Its closed by now," he thought to himself, as he set the man down to make camp. "I will have to take him back in the morning." Kronik spent the night staring off into the night sky. Rarely did he sleep. Any slumber he had attempted to find as he traveled on the road was interrupted by recurring nightmares. Visions of darkness, of the demon that inhabited his mind, clouded his dreams. He spent the remainder of the night watching the shadows, and making sure that the guard did not endure any more injuries, and tending to the ones he did have. The man was seriously injured, his head colliding with the stone at such a speed could have killed him.
"Maybe that would be better for you." He whispered to the chill air. "you would never have to suffer again. You would never have the chance to know pain. To know true suffering. To know the torment I now endure."
He shook the thoughts form his head and looked again towards the silvery moon as it began to descend, calling forth another day, another chance to continue his quest, and another chance for him to face the problems that haunted him so.
He watched the moon's descent, while many miles away, another pair of eyes watched the very same moon. The eyes of skaith, as he reached the doorstep of an old and unkempt cottage. The door swung open with a loud, empty squeal. Skaith entered the home and his eyes fell upon a scroll set upon dusty table. Skaith picked up the scroll and read, as tears filled his eyes, as he read the note Kronik had left him. His fingers trembled as he read the final sentences of the scroll. The sentences Kronik wanted him to see the most.
"Im leaving this place. I am going to keep my last promise, to avenge my family, and to avenge Artemis. The mark I found near their bodies is identical, and is forever etched into my soul."
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