Shadowstrider
Francis Ploof
Syndari Shadowstrider was an enigma, a shadow made form. An assassin with few peers in all of the Nine Realms, for she hailed from the Shadowblades, that shadowy order of assassins that reached into the farthest recesses of the realms. The watchful eyes of order purged corruption wherever it dared to show itself. Some decreed them as gifts from Lord Malerion, a show of good faith to the fledgling forces of the God-King Sigmar as the pantheon grew ancient. In hushed whispers, even those from her own Order said these ancient warriors still stalked among the shadows. But alas, Syndari had no such knowledge, she was no such godly gift. Merely an Aelf, like those many who dotted the Realms. But be she Aelf or divine creation from Malerion’s shadowed fortress, she was a Shadowblade nonetheless. Such a title brought with it many things, a lineage that traced only to the Order and a home that was only the Dark Holds of Lord Malerion, for her reason to live was to purge corruption in its most vile forms. She was a tool, most masterfully of crafted tools.
And so their Shadowed Master placed the mark of death on the city of Akenhold within the Realm of the Fire. Ashqy had seen its fair share of bloodshed since the crusade to purge chaotic corruption, so the souls that would be slain today would not be missed. Another of many tallies the Shadowblades had been collecting since their inception centuries ago, so was Syndari and her kin sent to slash the throat of the tumors that the City’s Ruling Council had become: malignant blights on the wider Provence that been impeding reclamation efforts for too long.
At least, that was what she had been told. And a good assassin didn’t question the orders of her superiors.
They say there is no fortress, no camp, no iron bastion that the Shadowblades can not reach. But, as Syndari reached the outer walls of Akenhold, she was inclined to question the validity of that statement once again: two amethyst eyes the color of the Purple Sun in Shyish gazed higher and higher at the clockwork walls of the industrial city. It seemed to reach impossibly far into the sky, and it wasn’t the most ridiculous thing in the Nine Realms. “Break into any fortress,” they said. For the immortals of the Order, maybe. But she was not one of those. Letting out a grumble, she began to climb the baroque designs that were ever so prevalent in the designs of man. Whilst usually she would decry the shoddy craftsmanship, and how it practically hurt her eyes to look upon, for once she could take some solace in the disgusting designs of man. They made for a wonderfully good grip, and so did she start the climb; utterly aware that somewhere one of the many other assassins had already skulked their way inside by some sorceries outside her abilities. It was like a Shadow-Daemon stalked up the walls of Akenhold, for that is what the rather plain uniforms of the Shadowblade were made to try and mirror. A flowing cloak that rolled into a tightly stuck hood was a common trait of assassins within the realms, and the Shadowblades were not free from this trope. Syndari wore a similar garb, a cloak of black and purple that went into a dark hood that hid almost all of her face save for those two piercing eyes. Underneath laid plain light armor of enhanced leathers, hiding away her murderous tools. Few true Assassins held much distinction to their look, they were enigmas. Shadows. Syndari was no different, and she could effortlessly be lost or replaced by the many dozens who shared her rank.
And, as she climbed these shoddy human walls, the universe decided to spite her, rustling within the hood draped over her head, a small creature made of wispy shadows skulked, its half physical form placing itself arrogantly onto her shoulder.
“You know, you complain too much.”
The creature spoke in the voice of a dozen hushed whispers, but to Syndari, it was a childish and annoying voice. Entga, her familiar. All in the Shadowblades were given one, but it just seemed like she had been cursed to a particularly annoying one.
“Quiet.”
That was a common word when they had their exchanges. She hissed it out like she had dozens of times before, deathly annoyed it wasn’t possible to plunge one of her daggers into his shadowy form, though she had tried. Twice. Both had elicited a response of little more than humor from the Familiar.
“You know you say that a lot, I’d almost say I’m not appreciated.”
She gave no response save for an eye-roll that could make even a dead man jealous. But he continued, as he always did.
“I can teach you magic. It’s a lot less climbing, faster too.”
He was given a quick interjection, sharp as any of the blades hidden on her form.
“I don’t need magic”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the ride as much as anyone. But wouldn’t it be more fun to just start killing things already? Chaos only festers the longer it is left alive.” He had his own retorts too; it was practically a scene at this point. The two had bickered and argued for decades at this point. And Syndari had learned that the best response was just to tune him out; he would babble on until he got bored and returned to the shadow of her hood. Until then, she would just have to climb and suffer.
The climb was long, as they always were for these fortress cities. The presence of Entga made it only more insufferable. But perseverance was a trait they taught you when working under the Shadowblades. With a grunt, the Aelf finally lifted herself onto the top of the walls. Thankfully, there were no sentries up this high; infiltrating in the dead of night had its boons, and this was just one of them. She took time to take in the view. The city was vast, and millions could’ve easily lived within it’s crowded streets, living under the shadows of these giant walls. She could feel some distant nostalgia looking over this place, a time before the Order. She wasn’t an immortal, after all. She had been one of the masses once. But that had been a long time ago, only a hazy memory of a past life, life before those shadows covered Temples that dotted the lands under Malerion’s control.
But her home was long gone, an analog of history lost to the chaotic hosts as they pillaged and raped the land. This place was not her home, no, that was the Order, for it was the only home she knew. This place? This place was a hive of corruption, ruled by incompetents and traitors, and she let this cruel malice fill her heart. Feelings couldn’t get in the way of the task given, lest you wish to enact the wrath of those within the Shadowblades, those they dubbed “immortals”.
“We were here to do more than sightsee, were we not?”, the familiar chimed in in his usual snide tone. It was spiteful, and Syndari was as usual left wondering how a creature so unfathomably old could be so much of a petulant child.
“Yes, I do believe we were,” and with that simple response Syndari moved out once again, a spectre within the crushing darkness of the night, leaving behind those distant and hazy memories of a long gone home.
The city was robust with industry, even from her vantage this was painfully obvious, but it meant her fellow agents would have many places to hide, many dark corners for corruption to fester. But that was exactly why they were there, wasn’t it?
There was a level of zealotry needed to enact these missions, and Syndari could feel herself falling into a spiral of self reflection as she stalked the shadows of smog belching silos, silenced factories that churned out weapons and nick knacks. It was an empty life, for they were devoted to their own self interest and little else. This was the zealotry one needed: it is not hard to bring yourself to want to fight Chaos, you merely require the desire to stand against evil. It took another level to purge it. Some would call this city a home, but it was a hive of scum to those amethyst eyes. That was the fundamental of an assassin’s zealotry, to view the enemy purely as tumors on existence that needed swift removal, to commit these viciously gruesome acts and to display the mangled bodies of the quarry high for all to see as a warning for all those who strayed from the path.
Maybe she lacked this zealotry, to an extent, for she still felt distant nostalgia from this place, but she pushed along into the slaughter without a second thought. Oh, and slaughter it would be.
As the woman and her familiar stalked the shadows of Akenhold, there became a peculiar scent of death that lingered in the air, far more robust then the stink of human and industrial waste that more or less entirely filled the air of the city. It was cause for alarm, as the various warriors already within the city would leave no such obvious signs of their passing. Something was wrong, and that was rare. Too rare.
Sliding within the confines of one of the many iron workshops within the City, it became far too obvious that a fight had happened not long ago. Arrows were lodged into walls, and a Shadowblade knife had uselessly fallen onto the ground. Syndari had her assumptions, for she had lived long and known many of the foes that the Order routinely faced. Her suspicions were quickly affirmed once another of the corners were rounded to where the stench of death became so prevalent she had to suck in one last clean breath and hold it.
One of the Shadow Warriors that had been launched in as a vanguard was hung from a lamp-post by his cloak, a blade stabbed cleanly through his body. His helm hid whatever gruesome face his death had wrought. Stepping forward, Syndari reached up, grabbing the crude weapon lodged within her associate, and with a hard tug, she yanked it from his limp body. It took an assassin’s eye to see the intricacies of a weapon, for the untrained eye would only see a maliciously crooked weapon of crude make caked in the gore of a fine warrior (though truthfully she let herself question just how fine he truly was, considering he lay dead like the examples they were here to make). But if you looked at it with the seasoned eye, the make became more obvious, the small slot where poison would be unleashed to cake the blade turned visible. She was familiar with this type of tool, grossly so. It was a Skaven blade.
The Skaven were truly the definition of all things wrong in mortal life, cunning and cruel Ratmen that lived in only the darkest and dankest depths of reality, their teeming mass covered just about any task needing to be done, from whirling war machines on the proper battlefields, pestilent annihilation of entire provinces, sorceries more foul than any she had been exposed to: even surpassing that of the Witch Covens of the Blood Glaciers, whom she had been ever so wonderfully tasked with killing decades prior. But most importantly, the Skaven of the Clans Eshin: a sickly mirror to her own Order, to some extent. Assassins that in many instances had been equals to even the finest of the Shadowblades. This blade hailed from that vile lot, she knew it without a doubt.
Things had gotten interesting.
Standing, examining the blade for a while longer, Syndari tossed it aside, and carried on. Manifesting out from the darkness came the familiar form of Entga, the creatures glee at this whole thing readily apparent to even those without the trained eyes to easily discern him.
“It’s not like rats to work with men. Oh, this whole thing just got so much more exciting. I think I’ll actually have a reason to watch!” The Familiar spoke with a childish glee, as anything grossly out of the ordinary made him ecstatic.
“The machinations of the Skaven are twisting and illogical. I would not be so quick to decree something so ridiculous.-”, the correction was a quick jest, for it was impossible for her to even fathom such a thing, “-but it matters not, the traitors die one way or another.” That was an assassin’s zealotry, the specifics didn’t matter. Those amethyst eyes glazed over the murder one last time, and with a sharp turn she spun on her heels and went the opposite direction: leaving the body was irrelevant, when the quarry died then they could finally go and clean up.
Entga remained on her shoulder, the childish glee the malicious creature felt at this turn in events was far too grossly evident for Syndari’s liking, his amusement was like an obnoxious tick for the poor soul stuck with him for the rest of time.
“Where there is one rat, there are always a couple dozen more. How many of the little vermin are scuttling under us right now? A dozen? Two? Three?”, he asked, doing a poor job of hiding his glee at the mere notion of the vermin surrounding them walking headfirst into the slaughterhouse that was Syndari’s twin blades.
“There could be a thousand of the vermin and I wouldn’t care. Let them try their machinations, for they will fail, and I will kill both rat and traitor.” Her response was expectably dull, and if Entga had eyes to roll he most certainly would be rolling them.
They were being watched, of course. Two beady red eyes watched from the shadows, and like a phantom, the figure darted back into one of the many dark and dank recesses of the city, chittering along the way. Her estimations were indeed correct, the Skaven had dug their way into Akenhold. The ravenous horde had created the chaos they had become so infamous for. The rats scampered along these hidden corners, a handful stalking after Syndari as she continued to follow the route to her quarry within the tall and elaborate palace not far from the murder of her colleague. The vastness of the cityscape obscured Syndari and her familiar as they stalked their quarry, but it also hid those shadowy figures that skulked in the depths, hunting another of Order’s Agents that had come to make a mess of things.
Eventually the party of two reached an old abandoned market district. Where once had been bustling trade was now scarred with the flames of rebellion: the once bustling squares scorched, and its buildings in a state of disrepair. It was entirely devoid of life. An eerie silence was over this place. While the rest of Akenhold held the distant sounds of life and industry, there was no such thing here. It was a graveyard, and it made Syndari shudder.
It was the quickest route to actually make it to the Palace, but still, something about this place felt wrong. It was not hard to eventually find yourself possessing a “danger sense” when you did this sort of work for long enough, and Syndari had gained a rather potent one during her long time serving the Shadowblades. This scarred market square had served itself up to be the perfect place for an ambush, the Aelf found herself stopping within the center square, subtly reaching into the long flowing cloak of her uniform and pulling out her Hand Crossbow, letting herself listen to her surroundings with the unnatural senses of one of her Order.
With a blur of a flowing dark cloak, Syndari was on the move: a bolt fired from the crossbow, skewering a Skaven who had just leapt from his hiding spot in the throat, a splash of gore launching out across the burnt city streets. Snarling, the assassin finally stopped moving for the briefest moment just to see what faced her. A dozen or so of the Eshin rats had begun pouring out from their hiding spots so she didn’t get too much time to actually gauge her foes before she had to go on the move again. Three throwing knives filling the air that she occupied a mere handful of seconds prior. “There-there, kill-kill Aelf thing!”, one of the Skaven shouted, whichever one must’ve been the leader of this little smattering of weaklings. And with that shrieking battle cry, the Skaven surged forward to meet Syndari.
Poor bastards didn’t stand a chance.
Few have seen an Aelf assassin in combat and lived to tell of it, but it was truly an unbelievable spectacle to those who lacked the inhuman grace of the Aelven kind. One of her blades quickly slid into her freehand and so the dance of death began. There was a reason to call it a dance, for watching an assassin fight was like watching one of the most skilled dancers in all the Nine Realms. There was not a move wasted, and each swinging strike oozed with a grace lesser beings could only dream of reaching.
Syndari knew this type of Skaven as the runts of the Clans Eshin, weak and pitiful scouting elements and little else. They wanted the glory of slaying one of the Assassins of Malerion. And they would have no such privilege.
One of the rats, swinging a cruel looking flail, rushed forward to meet the assassin. With a wide leap she launched herself forward, her blade launching out and freeing the ratman’s head from his neck. With another swift strike the Skaven next in line fell in a splash of gore. The blades of Syndari had tasted the blood of warriors far more skilled than these runts.
“On your left.”, Entga calmly added into the fray of battle. The familiar effortlessly rested on Syndari’s shoulder still, enjoying the show that lay out before him. She responded with an expectable quickness, her Hand Crossbow firing out another bolt that pierced through one of the running Skaven, the rat falling to the ground in a pool of his own blood. The carnage that followed was just as predicted, and the rats fell one by one, their limbs removed and guts spilling on the battered cobblestone of the market grounds. With a brisk flick of her blade she let the remaining rat fall back onto the ground, allowing herself that brief moment to survey her handiwork.
It was viciously quick and utterly relentless. The poor little rats didn’t truly understand what they were fighting, and they had suffered swift retribution for their stupidity. More trash purged was the only thought that ran through Syndari’s mind.
She hadn’t considered that not all rats were so daft.
The blades flew from the shadows, and with Entga’s supernatural senses Syndari was given that briefest respite to not have the handful of throwing weapons stab into her back. Instead, one merely slashed her arm. Letting out a snarl, she still flipped around to meet this new foe. It was a wispy shadow, not too unlike her, a dark mirror to her Order: one of the Skaven’s own Assassins. The Rat was wasting no time in following up with his initial barrage, hunched over and rushing on the ground, a vicious Skaven “punch-dagger” attached to one hand, glistening with savage poisons not too unlike Syndari’s own weapons along with two other vicious tools: the same sort of knife she had seen lodged through her associate, one held in his free hand whilst the other was held in his tail.
Damnable rats and their tails.
Not one to gawk for long, Syndari threw herself back, clutching her wounded arm. Needing some sort of response to the rushing rat, she allowed herself a rather stupid manuever; her foot launched out and kicked at one of the fallen Skaven’s blade, thankfully not slashing her foot open in the process the blade went flying at the rat. It hopelessly missed, of course, but it slowed his momentum enough for Syndari to take off her blood soaked hand and grab her weapon. Fighting one handed against an enemy with three was rarely that much of a favorable matchup, but she had survived against worse odds before and would do so again.
There was a flash of steel as the blades clashed together, and Syndari could not engage for long before she had to throw herself back— twisting, turning, and doing anything in her power to try and disengage from her enemy’s weapons. With only one arm to work with, things had become infinitely more challenging. Her arm burned like it was on fire, and the fire was on fire, the poisons that coated the Skaven’s weapons obviously doing its work. But to fight at a disadvantage was one of the most prevalent teachings that had been drilled into her head by her shadowy overlords.
But she hadn’t always been the best student either.
She fought with a graceful wildness, her free arm twisting and turning as she tried to stab and slash at the slippery shadow that rolled and folded to either deflect or dodge the blows. It was a mirrored fight, at the end of the day, as though Syndari was fighting a twisted version of herself. But unlike a proper mirror match, the mirror had two extra weapons and two working arms. Grunting, the Aelf threw out a long downward slash: trying to slice into the Skaven’s face and finally place it at a disadvantage. It was predictably hopeless, and the rat, letting its body twist, merely let the blade harmlessly pass by the merest fraction of an inch.
But she was prepared.
Using the momentum of the blade, she exaggerated her movements: throwing out her back leg into a kick, she smacked the Skaven across the face with her boot. She heard a satisfying squeal after she spun around to land back onto her feet. A small dribble of red running from the mouth of the shadowy creature and part of its oversized front teeth chipped, and the remains were tossed onto the ground.
Letting out a hidden grin at her short victory, the battle was quickly back on, her free hand swinging and stabbing whilst the poison seeped slowly into her veins. Her arm was now hanging limply at her side, responding to no command she attempted to give it. But a good assassin only needed one arm to purge filth like this.
But still the goal remained painfully lofty, even for one as skilled as Syndari. A burning coursed deeper into her body, filling her with that constant pain. She had been on fire, once, when dueling a chaotic pyromancer in the Golden Ashlands of Hysh. And whilst this was less externally destructive, the pain seemed to be amplified tenfold. It was making her sloppy. And to be sloppy in this dance of death was the quickest route to ending up with a dagger wedged through your neck.
And Syndari, finally, had made that crucial misstep. She launched another stab, aiming to try and impale the rat through his foul heart. But with a grace she simply could no longer muster, he let himself fall low, the blade going helplessly past his head, leaving her wide open. She could be thankful his own weapons could not exploit the opening, instead the rat launched himself at her, two paws hitting her with a shocking amount of force for such a primitive being, sending the Aelf flying. Syndari landed onto her side with a crash and a grunt. It was rare to encounter a Skaven quite as skilled as this, but she had little time to note such a fact. Rolling onto her back, she witnessed the rat now rushing forward to deliver the killing blow, leaping into the air with his Punch-Dagger raised high to stab into her helpless form.
It never landed.
Darkness surrounded her, a growing and wispy shadow that seemed to consume all around her. She had little time to consider it, for as quickly as it expanded, it rapidly contracted back into her and she was gone. The Skaven’s vicious attack just clashed down against empty, battered cobblestone.
Syndari awoke in atop some sort of building, shaking as she stood gazing out onto wider Akenhold once again. The dark uniform of her Order was now splattered in the crimson of the Rat-Scouts and her own blood that still leaked from her arm. Dizzy, but still coherent, she could make out one voice in the ringing of her ears:
“Now, what was that about not needing magic?” Entga.
She had wondered where the little runt had scampered off to during the fight. He had been mysteriously quiet once she had been hit by the Assassin’s Throwing Weapons, only letting her amethyst eyes weakly roll as her response.
Stumbling back, she sat down and let her back lean against the stone walls of the rooftop. She needed to tend to her wounds, but she merely wanted the briefest respite from the crazed duel she had just barely survived. But there was little rest to be had, her mind was aflar with much more than just poisons and mental exhaustion, thoughts rolled in. Ones much less befitting of a Shadowblade.
Maybe. Just maybe, there might be more to worry about here than just a mere Quarry.