Assassin Creed - One.

Brian O'Brien is the new apprentice of the most feared Assassin in the whole of the Mainland. How will he cope, and how will he learn to be the ruthless killer he is expected to be?

‘Who are you?’ asked the wide eyed woman with straw coloured hair.

‘I’m Brian, ma’am.’ Replied Brian, leaning away slightly as the woman craned her long neck and squinted up at him from her chair behind a desk.

Brian thought she looked a bit like a startled chicken…

 

Brian O’Brien was actually talking to one of the most feared women in the Mainland. He wasn’t entirely sure why she was so feared. Her name was Creed, she was an assassin. Her reputation made her out to be THE assassin, and when Brian expressed a slight interest in the career, his parents immediately sent out their contacts to search for the legendary Creed.

‘Assassin Creed is the most notorious assassins in the entire Continent.’ His father had told him.

‘Why’s that? What has she done?’ Brian had asked.

‘Oh, you’ll soon find out why she has that effect on people.’ His father was quite mysterious like that. Brian assumed it was from working in The Great Library for so long �" the books could have an adverse affect on those who spent too long in there.

When he had been dropped off at a towering round building in Southern Mainland that very morning, Brian wasn’t sure what to expect. But it certainly wasn’t what he found.

 

Assassin usually inspires the image of a tall, frightening, cunning, catlike, ruthless killer, dressed from head to toe in sleek black fabrics. Creed was quite the opposite, he soon found.  She was medium-height, not in the least bit intimidating, as much grace as an elephant, a bit dithery, dressed from head to toe as if she had just been mobbed by a chain of furious charity shops.

 

‘Well that’s all in order,’ Creed announced after a further moment of constant blinking. She stood up at her desk and walked around to Brian. At least she would have if she hadn’t tripped over her woollen skirt as she went. ‘Welcome to The Fold.’ She patted him awkwardly on the arm and gestured to the window.

‘You like paddy fields?’ she asked.

Brian wasn’t sure how to respond, so he settled with: ‘Uhhhh.’

‘Great, me too! I love them. Could talk about them all day long!’

Not for the first time since he had met her, Brian considered that Creed might be just a bit mad. Maybe that’s what his father had meant. If the woman standing in front of him now, rambling about paddy fields, had been sent to kill him, he would have been running as fast as he possibly could.

‘You know they grow LepreCorn in the paddy fields?’

No, Brian didn’t know that. There were a few things he didn’t know given that he had never left the Mid-Mainland in his life, until now.

‘Oh yes, once the UniCorn was all destroyed in the Great Flood of ‘Aitch-Two-Oh, the farmers had to find a new way of sustaining the Mythical Population of the Mainland.’

Thankfully, Creed was interrupted in her historical monologue by the appearance of a small pink bird that flew in through the window and would have rammed into Creed, had she not fallen over her own feet a second before.

 

As Brian rushed to help Creed to her feet, the small pink bird that he now recognised as a Pygmy Flamingo opened its beak and a message flew out.

‘URGENT! URGENT!’ it cawed loudly. ‘GRAND WARLOCK DAYLE REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE AT A BANQUET. PLOT TO STEAL HIS MAGIC DISCOVERED. SEVERAL GUESTS SUSPECTED, UNSURE WHICH ONE. TWO DAYS TIME OR YOU WILL BE MELTED DOWN AND TURNED INTO SOAP.’

The message finished suddenly and fluttered back into the Pygmy Flamingo’s open beak.

‘Well, we’d better get moving then, eh, Brian?’ Creed reached for a quill on her desk, consequently knocking over the oil lamp which Brian quickly stopped from setting the room on fire, and set about writing a letter to Grand Warlock Dayle.

Author's Note

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