Anthology of Everything

by SwordTune

Assassin' Creed: Divided--Chapter 3, Dirtied Blades

“Grenda!”

Brighton’s voice came closer as crawled out of the haybale. Arrows came down at us from the soldiers above.

“I guess it worked,” he said, ducking behind the cart of hay. “Though I expected you to be coming out from the sewers. Looks like I tied up the other brother for nothing.”

Though the archers could not see us so far down in the night, that did not mean they could not get lucky. In minutes soldiers would be marching from the fort in search of us.

Brighton handed me the rest of my robes. “Dropped this.”

“Merci. Which way should we take?” I fastened the leather straps that held the robes tight over my body. Like the padded vests infantrymen wore, the layers of the robe brought welcomed warmth and security. I felt like I was invincible again.

“They are searching l’eglise now,” he said, “we won’t make it out through there. We head out of the city, lose them in the countryside, and make our way back to the bureau.”

“Fan out, they can’t have gone far!” We turned our heads to the disarrayed men.

It was inevitable that the death of their lieutenant would be discovered, either now or later. However, I wasn’t thinking about the bureau. The Brotherhood had been operating out of the catacombs under the city for generations, the winding ruins of the Boreas Age nearly impossible to navigate. The only problem that remained was to not be seen going to the bureau.

“We’ll be faster if we take the rooftops,” I pointed across the street to the nearest house.

“So now you feel like climbing, huh?” Brighton laughed. “Alright. How about a race while we’re at it? First one to the walls?”

“What, now?”

He did not answer, he simply took off running, dashing past the lanterns hanging on the street. The flicker of firelight alerted the soldiers, and some of them did come for us. But if it was a race Brighton wanted, then he’d get it. His head start was trivial, for before the soldiers could even see the cart I had landed in, I was up and gone along the rooftops of Bayon.

---

As the Animus hummed silently and dimmed down, Sunset woke up feeling gross. Her hair and clothes were warm with sweat. She woke up to see the back of the We-Haul truck again, though the sound of the engine had gone silent.

“Easy, don’t get up too quickly.” Johnick took Sunset’s hand and pulled her off the Animus gently. “We’re at a gas station, northside of the city. It’s about as far from the warehouse as we can get, so it’s a good place to get a snack and stretch your legs.”

“What time is it?”

“A little past ten o’clock. Bashir’s in the store right now getting some hotdogs. I hope that’s okay?”

Sunset rubbed her eyes, still groggy from experiencing the Animus in its low-power state. It felt like getting a bad night’s sleep, plus her clothes were uncomfortably damp from the heat trapped in the back of the truck.

“Um… I don’t eat meat,” she said, clearing her head. “Could go for a soda right now, though. And clothes that aren’t, well, gross.”

Johnick paused for a moment. But whatever he was debating with himself was resolved pretty quickly. He opened the back of the truck, flooding in a gust of cool air, and let Sunset step out. They had stopped on an open space for cargo trucks, next to the gas station. They weren’t downtown, the tall business buildings of the city’s densest streets could be seen further away in the distance, but they were just outside the city.

Closer to home, then. The neighbourhoods around Equestria City weren’t suburban yet, but here the buildings were a reasonable height and Sunset could see the stores around them. The station was in a corner of a shopping centre. A few parking lots away and there was a Marcy’s clothing store.

Sunset felt her pockets. A wave of relief ripped through her hand when she found that the Assassins hadn’t taken her wallet.

“How long are we going to wait?”

Johnick followed Sunset’s eyes to the Marcy’s. “Long enough. But, uh, you have a credit card, right?”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. She didn’t touch him, but her gemstone was giving her the feeling that he was trying to hide the fact he had already gone through her stuff. She didn’t know why he bothered, she already expected a group of people called the “Brotherhood of Assassins” to check her licence after they kidnapped her.

Anyhow, she played along. “Yeah.”

“The Templars are more powerful than you think,” he said, opening his own wallet and handing her a wad of cash. She couldn’t help but stare at the stack of twenties in her hand. It was definitely a few hundred bucks. “You saw how those guys at the warehouse were equipped. The Templars do enough business with banks to track your credit card spending. Stick to cash.”

“That’s kinda spooky but okay.”

---

Shopping for clothes after fighting armed men felt surreal. It felt like she had been completely disconnected from her real life.

Sunset picked an orange shirt and a pair of cotton-blended athletic pants. Getting into another fight was not on her list of things to do, but she wanted to be ready for it. Plus, something simple and comfortable was just about the cheapest thing she could find. They did kidnap her, but she still felt bad spending someone else’s money.

“I must be crazy,” Sunset sighed in the women’s changing room. Feeling bad for Assassins. She clearly wasn’t cut out for the battle they were fighting if spending money was enough to make her feel guilty. Right now, she bet she could run. Take the cash, get a taxi, and head home for the weekend, start school like normal.

She had a couple hundred in bills, she was sure she could make that last to lose the Templars and the Assassins. But her mind was stuck on what the man called her back at the warehouse. The Alpha. She was their first target, not the Animus. If the Templars were after the same thing the Assassins were, then they probably already knew about what she could do.

Sunset put her own clothes back on and gathered up the outfit that fit her. As she walked out, her mind was clouded. She wondered how it could be possible that an order dating back to the Thirteenth Century could still exist.

And then something caught her eye. A woman, asking the assistant in front of the changing room if they had the jacket she was holding, but in a women’s large.

“Excuse me?” Sunset stepped in, pointing to the red faux-leather jacket. “This one doesn't fit you, right? Would it be okay if I tried it on?”

“Oh, well of course! You look like a medium, plus it would look amazing with your hair.”

The woman handed it to her, and it turned out she was right. The jacket fit like a charm.

“Well, how about that?” Sunset pulled the hood up. “It feels, right.” She thanked the woman and helped her pick out a better jacket before taking everything to the counter to pay. Sunset handed a couple of twenties, tossing the change into a donation jar, and walked out wearing her new jacket.

It would be her memento, she decided, of probably the last normal interaction she was going to have for a while.

Back at the gas station Johnick and the other Assassin, Bashir, were discussing their route to the safe house, standing at the edge of the security camera’s view. Sunset kept her hood up and paced quickly through the shop to get within earshot of their whispers.

“So, look like you’re taking this business pretty seriously,” Johnick said as soon as she came close.

“No, I just stumbled on this,” she gestured to her outfit. “A little reminder that the rest of the world is still a normal place.”

“Alright then, whatever floats your boat.”

Bashir grabbed a twenty-four-ounce cup off the counter beside them and gave it to Sunset. “Take your pick,” he motioned to the soda fountain.

“So you do talk,” Sunset noted, filling the cup with root beer. She slurped the bubbles that always threatened to spill out and finished filling it to the brim.

“When I have to,” he said. “We’re running short on time.”

“Yeah, yeah, just gimme a sec, I gotta get one more thing before we go,” she said, walking over to the hygiene aisle.

“Really? What else do we need?” Johnick followed, stirred on by a casually harmless curiosity. Sunset, however, did not answer. His eyes followed her until she found what she wanted.

“Wow, big mystery.” She grabbed a package of tampons off a shelf. “What else could a teenage girl possibly need?”

“Oh, haha” Johnick coughed, quickly spinning back to Bashir. “Of course. Uh, I’ll think I’m going to go wait back in the truck. Right now. And calibrate the Animus a little bit. Just head back when you’re done.”

Bashir snorted. “Eamal jayid, 'ahmaq.” Johnick simply stuck his tongue out, unable to retort against the Palestinian’s sarcasm.

---

2nd of August, 1248: Trottingham, Anglia

At the very least, the summer had arrived. The Earl Montforte had spent three months in Gustavale weakening the nobility. In that time, those who held anti-Anglian sentiments made their complaints known, further encouraging the conflict between Gustavale and the Earl.

Many of the Assassins blamed the Templars for inciting the nobles to take action, blaming them for prolonging Simon’s severe treatment, but the fact of the matter was that the nobles were simply tired of their mistreatment. Gustavale, though formerly of Francia, held little love for its old kingdom after months of Simon’s oversight. Nobles talked more about independence, though of course, some still clung to their Francian roots.

After three months, the Earl left to report his success personally to the Anglian king. And, according to the other assassinated knights, he was travelling with a monk for religious comfort. A Templar monk.

I questioned how we had managed to miss a fifth Templar lurking around in our borders, and so did the elders in the bureau. But the time for questions would have to come later. The monk was to be taken alive and questioned. If he could hide without us knowing, then there was no way we could be certain that his death would be the last.

“Have you practised your accent?” Brighton asked as we moored our ship to the dock of a small fishing village just a few miles east of Trottingham.

“Hullo, fellow Anglian!” I tried my best. “Forsooth! I can go for some chips, yeah?”

“Alright then,” he sighed, “we’ll just tell people you’re a Francian merchant and that I’m your bodyguard.”

Horses were prepared for us by our brothers in Anglia. So from the small village, we rode west for Trottingham.

---

Bayon and Trottingham were to different cities. The Anglians had built their trading network around their city’s great ports. Dozens of buildings on the shore were simply warehouses, and for each of them, there were a dozen more workshops that relied on their supplies to bake, forge, carve, sew, or sell.

Normally, we would have reported to the bureau as soon as we entered the city, but it seemed Simon’s movements were of the utmost importance. Just past the city gates, an Anglian Assassin waited for us.

“Good, you’re here,” he said, motioning us to follow. “Simon de Montforte arrived not long ago, but he seems a determined man. He has already asked for a carriage to be prepared to ride into the countryside, where the King is spending time in his summer hold.”

“The Templar, is he with him?” I asked.

“You mean the monk? Yes, though he was last spotted leaving the Earl’s side to pray at the Church of Saint Luna.”

I turned to Brighton. “Simon is not our target, the Templar is. If we can remove their influence from the Earl, an easier peace may come to Gustavale.”

He agreed and then spoke to the Anglian. “This Templar managed to hide within Simon’s retinue for months without our detection. We need him alive in order to know if there are any other Templars influencing the King’s interests in Gustavale. Can your bureau help us in capturing him?”

“I will talk to the Grandmaster,” he said. “Whatever help we can offer will be waiting for you at the orphanage across from the church.”

---

The Church of Saint Luna’s bells tolled for the hour. Mass and all the other mandatory Christian rituals were done for the day, it seemed. Those who stayed were the ones who wanted to be there.

Though I suspected that Simon de Montforte would not allow his men to slow him down, no matter how devout the monk was. It was good fortune, then, that the Assassins in Anglia had hooded cloaks that looked almost exactly like the monks’ robes. I exchanged the exterior of my outfit for theirs and walked straight into the church.

Women and their children sat on the pews in prayer. Were their sons and brothers in Gustavale? No, probably not. The Earl of Ledecester may have been funded by the King, but he paid his own men to do the fighting, and the duchy of Ledecester was very far. I wondered what the mothers prayed for, if not for their sons. Protection and a good harvest, perhaps. The fortune of every kingdom depended on the yield of the land, not gold or steel.

I took a seat near the back of the church, keeping my face covered by clasped hands, my intentions masked by fake prayer. But everywhere I looked, I saw people. Men, women, all dressed in the same Anglian fashion. There was no monk.

My instincts told me something was wrong, however.

And then my eyes confirmed it.

There was no monk, indeed. But there was a ragged man dressed in muddy chainmail, his steel helmet resting beside him on the pews. He wore a padded tunic beneath his armour, cleaned but stained with many battles fought. And his ragged hair, grown long, hung down to his shoulders as he was deep in thought.

I moved from my spot to his, sitting close behind. To my silent footsteps, his ears were blind. “Are you Simon de Montforte’s man?” I whispered behind my clasped hands.

“I am in prayer,” he simply replied.

“Do you call yourself a goodly knight? Or a monk? Or just a killer and a thug?”

“Take this elsewhere, the good people of this church should not be involved.”

“Then you’ll tell me what I want to know, Templar.”

He laughed lightly, his breath had an airy whisper to it and then turned around. “Have I not told you enough?” I was shocked by his face. Tired and unshaven, under the stubbly beard was the man I had killed months ago.

“How is it you are alive, Green?”

“Faith,” he said quietly. “You made me bleed, but I fought and prayed to God to not let my work finish. And he answered. Though, I suppose I do have some thanks to give to you as well. My near-death has proven my convictions to the Order, and I have been appointed the rank of master.”

“A favour for a favour, then.” I leaned in closer so he could see how ready my hidden blade was. “Take a walk with me. Tell me how you live, and what other secrets your people are hiding in Gustavale.”

His airy whisper brushed my face, his breath smelling like he had been chewing mint leaves. “I suspect that if I walked with you, it would be my last walk as a free man. But as to your first request, you can have it for free. No doubt your Brotherhood is already aware that we possess certain ancient relics. Their divine power is truly magnificent. A person with your determination could surely earn their right to witness it. If you were a Templar, of course.”

“You were healed by a relic?” I searched his eyes for any deception, but his face was candid.

“Not completely,” he sighed. “Your blade ran deep, and not all of my lungs could be saved. I find breathing now to be a challenge, thanks to you. With my appointment as a master, I requested retreat to a monastery near my home, since I can no longer serve as a knight.”

“A monk, and a Templar instructor, no doubt.”

He nodded. “The young men who are brought to the monasteries need a firm hand to teach them the Lord’s will.”

“If you cannot fight, then what’s stopping me from taking you as my prisoner right now?”

“God’s wrath, as I am his devout champion,” he flashed a smile, “or the city guard. There are a great many of them, with the Earl of Ledecester visiting.”

“Don’t be certain,” I grabbed his wrist and dumped his helmet on his head. “Make a sound and I’ll take the rest of your lungs. I’ll make sure you die before your Templar friends can heal you.”

The people in the church looked our way, but despite wear on his armour, Glen still had the appearance of a knight. Eyes could look, but bodies would not take action. Outside, Brighton and the other Assassins watched the church from the rooftops and the streets. We took the back exit, walking past some gardens the nuns had put in place, and signalled the Assassins that I had our mark.

---

We reconvened at the Anglian bureau, and I told them everything Sir Glen had gloated to me. All of it was bad news, but not necessarily new information. The Templars had used relics in the past, relics stolen from earlier crusades. We knew the threat they posed. Now we only had more details.

“A relic?” Brighton pulled down his hood, his face flushed with frustration. “So the fifth Templar was only Glen.”

“Who has been promoted to the rank of master,” I reminded him. Holding a master Templar was a boon we seldom had, though getting information from him would prove to be difficult. He had already survived death once, and as a knight, there was a considerable amount of pain we’d have to inflict before he spoke, all of which would be lies.

The Anglian bureau was much smaller than the ones on the mainland, though they had still built it from the collapsed Boreas ruins that ran underneath the city. Beneath us, beneath the circular meeting chamber built from marble, once a government building of the Boreans, grunts could be heard as Assassins beat information from Glen.

I only hoped they would not go too far. His condition was weaker than when we first met, and he could give us nothing if he died.

Brighton looked in the same direction, to the stairwell that led to the dungeon, and knew my thoughts. “He’s spoken to you already. Perhaps you could coerce more information from him.”

“That’s likely,” the Grandmaster of the bureau agreed, “though give it more time. He’ll be more favourable to a friendly face if he knows what else is in store for--”

A shout from the bureau entrance came. “Templars! They’re scouring the streets above us.” A young Assassin, a boy probably just barely sixteen, sprinted into the meeting chamber. “It’s an army up there, Grandmaster. The people are spreading rumours, a confessor at the church saw a monk be taken away.”

I grabbed the panicking boy’s shoulder. “Are you certain?” I didn’t understand how. A knight walking with a woman would never appear like a kidnapping to anybody.

“Assassins are gathering information as we speak, trying to fabricate lies that will throw the Templars off our trail. But it’s not just them. The nuns and the priests have called on the people to rally for their faith. People are flocking to the Templars to help search for the ones who kidnapped the monk!”

“This is bad,” the Grandmaster cursed sharply under his breath. “We cannot fight an entire city.” He drew his sword and gave it to the young Assassin. “Willum, take my sword and leave the city. Head south to our brothers in Oxhoof and show it to them. They will know to send help.”

“You two need to go with him,” he turned to me and Brighton. “The Templars have never come out in such force before. They must surely be after their master. You need to take him and flee the city, he’s our best source of information right now.”

Brighton nodded and gave the Grandmaster and assuring handshake. “What about you?”

“I will stay with the bureau and direct the effort to eliminate the Templar captains. Hopefully, that will give you time and keep them from discovering us.”

Quickly, Brighton ran for a tunnel that connected to a stable just inside the city walls to secure horses for our escape, while I hurried down to grab Glen from his cell.

“Haha!” he shouted a laugh, straining his lungs in his reverence. “Did you Assassins think we’d never find you? We’ve saved our resources for bigger wars to come, but I knew you’d find me if I just waited.”

“Shut up!” his interrogator kicked him in the face. “Sister, do you need help carrying him?”

“No, you need to help the Grandmaster slow down the Templars,” I told him. I unsheathed my blade and held it to Sir Glen’s back. “You’re coming with me.”

“Oh yes, do keep running,” he coughed, “we’ll stamp you out from every hole you dig. And when the crusades bring home a new relic, we’ll cure Gustavale and the rest of Anglia of you like the sickness you are.”

Shouting came from above. It wasn’t the sound of Assassins rushing to gather. Steel clashed with steel, slowly overtaking the voices. Willum, the young boy, sprinted down, still carrying the Grandmaster’s sword.

“The Templars are--”

He collapsed before he could finish as a Templar ran a spear through his back. The interrogator yelled out, drawing his knife. But the captain simply raised his spear and launched it, knocking down my Assassin brother.

“I told you we’d do it,” Sir Glen turned around confidently. I moved to slice his neck, but he swung his head back and brought it forward, striking me in the face with his forehead. The Templar captain ran to his aide, cutting the knight out of his bindings before pointing his sword at me. My hidden blades were readied, but a boot found its way to my head before I could rise.

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[SwordTune]

Assassin's Creed Divided: Chapter 4
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/472386/11/anthology-of-everything/assassin-creed-divided-chapter-4-faith