Eye For An Eye

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

"He's late." The man had an unnerving knack for stating the obvious.

Jacob Morrigan paced back and forth inside the abandoned store house. It was late at night; the moon shone brightly through the high windows, allowing a little light into the building. Two of Jacob's associates silently stood against the wall, the taller of the two had a gloved hand resting on the hilt of his short sword. They were emotionless, their cold eyes moving between their boss as he paced back and forth across the dusty wooden floor and the heavy wooden door.

They had been waiting for over half an hour. Jacob crossed his arms and groaned out of annoyance. As if on cue, the sound of the heavy door opening echoed throughout the old building. A man carrying a big satchel stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the moonlight. He paused for a brief second, eying the two men leaned up against the wall.

"I thought we agreed to meet alone."

Jacob chuckled. "Consider them insurance against you doing anything stupid. I know how you assassin types can be."

The man's eyes narrowed into angry slits as he tossed the satchel at Jacob's feet. The dull, heavy thud filled the building. Jacob smiled as he bent over to untie the strings that kept the bag shut. After sifting around inside for a brief second, his eyes lit up in joy as he pulled out his prize: The decapitated head of one of his rivals. He brought it up to the moonlight, getting a better look at it. Blood stained various parts of the head's chubby cheeks.

Jacob regarded the assassin as he continued to stare at the face forever frozen in fear. "Well done, Trent. I didn't think you'd be able to pull it off."

Trent crossed his arms and lightly scoffed. "It was all too easy." A silence filled the room. "Now, about my pay..."

The gang leader dismissively waved at one of his lackeys. "Yes, yes, fine. Give him his money." The shorter of the two subordinates picked up a small bag off the floor and began to approach the assassin, when suddenly Jacob signaled him to stop. "Hold it." The boss brought the severed head closer and smelled it. His face contorted in confusion as he slowly turned his head towards Trent. "That smell..."

Trent merely smiled as one the runic tattoo on his right index finger glowed red, casting an eerie light through a small portion of the store house. A relatively small ball of fire swirled into existence in the palm of his hand as the glowing subsided. Faster than the gang leader could react, Jacob fired off the magical projectile at the severed head of his target, which immediately exploded in a bright crimson mess of flesh, bone, and fire. Jacob screamed and thrashed around as his own body was engulfed by the flames.

The two men standing by the wall rushed over to the traitor with their weapons drawn. The shorter of the two swung his sword at his head. Trent easily ducked the blow, and in turn delivered an uppercut to the underling's jaw that sent him crashing to the floor. The second man swung a fist at him, catching him on the side of his face. The assassin stumbled backwards, spitting out a small amount of blood onto the dusty wooden floor. The man charged him again. The tattoo on his right middle finger lit up as he blocked the man's swing. He crammed a couple fingers into the attacker's mouth.

"Bang."

He fired off a bright jet of flame down the underling's throat, burning up both of his lungs and stomach. The rage was extinguished in the man's eyes as he fell to floor dead. The shorter man groaned in pain next to him. The sound of scraping metal filled the room as a small blade jutted out from underneath Trent's sleeve. The assassin swiftly moved, impaling the small steel blade into the man's throat. His eyes went wide and blood oozed out of his mouth as his last breath gurgled deep in his throat.

Trent calmly wiped the blood off the blade and returned it to its spot deep in his sleeve. He looked up, hoping to see Jacob's flaming corpse, but instead saw an opened back door. His footsteps clunked as he made his way to the doorway.

The moonlight illuminated the Coronian countryside. A small breeze blew against his face, brushing a few strands of dirty blond hair against his sweaty forehead. He scanned the area for any signs of the gang leader, finding nothing except a smoldering cloak at the rocky shore of a small creek that ran through the store house's back yard.

Dammit, the assassin thought to himself as he kicked at the cloak. He knew that as long as Jacob was still alive, he would be looking for revenge.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I was sound asleep at the front desk of one of the many libraries that peppered the north side of Radasanth, the heavily chewed remains of a pencil sticking out of my mouth. Several open books from the library's restricted section were scattered on the desk around me, and a couple notebooks containing formulas for a wide variety of poisons and potions served as my pillow. I was drooling on a page that contained the instructions for creating a potion that could induce hallucinations that would make the victim live through their worst fears when a loud slam on the oak desk woke me from my slumber. I came to with a startled gasp.

"Good to see you doing your job, Madison." It was Mr. Wilkensen, the library curator. He was an odd-looking man, standing about five foot two and was just as wide. He usually wore a gray suit with a blue tie, which in combination with his snide attitude gave him an air of false superiority. His thin, graying hair was combed over his sweaty forehead. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat on his fat bead of a nose, which was usually crinkled in disgust whenever he looked at me. There hasn't been a day that passed that I wanted nothing more than to dip him in gray paint and use him to replace one of the crumbling gargoyles that sat perched on the Citadel.

I grumbled as I wiped the sleep from my eyes. "There's nothing to do, sir." As I spoke, the pencil fell from my mouth. For some reason, the library is the only place I can get a decent amount of sleep.

Mr. Wilkensen squinted harder, nearly enveloping his hazel eyes with the fat on his face. "Nothing to do? We have this exchange every day, missy. There's always something to do!" He motioned towards a cart that was overflowing with books. "Why don't you put your homework away, get off your lazy ass, and put some of these back on the shelves where they belong?"

Homework? Oh, yeah... I looked down at at the stack of notebooks and tomes in front of me. I had gotten a day job at the library under the pretense that I was a college student studying chemistry. To him, I was nothing more than a scrawny, homely little twenty-something that was racking up an impressive debt. So far, I've been doing a good job hiding the fact that I was an assassin.

Without a word, I slammed all of the books shut and crammed everything underneath the desk. I shot Mr. Wilkensen a nasty look that would've destroyed the souls of most mortal men, but he crossed his arms and stood adamant. A few of the library's patrons, alerted by the exchange, stared at us as a silence hung over the expansive room as I towered over the fat man.

The scarecrow with boobs versus the human blob, round twelve! Place your bets, people!

He spoke quietly, yet condescendingly. "Put the returns away, please." I balled up a fist, but relaxed after a few seconds. There was no sense losing my cool all over him, especially since he is giving me unrestricted access to all the "bad" books locked away in the back room.

I broke my gaze away from his face and moved over to the cart. The myriad of books were piled on there in a way that if I were to move the cart, it would probably tip. Didn't anybody have the good grace in them to put stuff away in an orderly fashion? I spent a couple minutes restacking the cart while the curator watched. "And while you're at it, the tables could use a good wipe down. The cleaning supplies are in the bottom right drawer of the desk." He retreated into his office, shutting the door behind him.