With or Without Reason, Death is Death

Unblinking, Redshift stared out from behind her mask, her breathing much too gentle for how much rage was inside her heart. The voice inside her head of her partner and longest friend, Lightless Smear, replaced most thoughts she might’ve had, keeping her calmer than she had any right being. They were a lethal pair, the two of them, deadlier than some armies, and certainly capable of accomplishing the mission they had set out on today.

    There was death to be had here in Gruttum, the capital of the Kingdom Shadowwish, and they were the ones to deal it.

    Redshift strolled confidently and without emotion behind a seemingly never-ending flow of pedestrians. The city was a rather large one, and the spirits of its people hadn’t been this high in eight ages. The War of Water had ended an age prior, and a truce between the kingdoms saw some cities falling lax on their securities. Redshift, an outsider, had easily sauntered into the dusty city without anything other than a polite nod from the guards outside. Hot, breathy gusts lifted the sand from the ground, and it swirled around her long legs like children dancing around trees.

    Her impressive height would on occasion draw some gazes, but her inconspicuous attire wouldn’t—most people here dressed to avoid the Sun and sand. So, masks and long robes weren’t uncommon to see daily. She wasn’t in a hurry, nor was she in the slightest nervous of what she was about to do, even if the quick thudding of her heart would say differently. The first of her targets was a few people ahead of her in a busy line of patrons, and they knew not they were being followed. A chaotic, pleasant air this market had, and everywhere Redshift looked there were luxurious linens hung up, mouth-watering food being prepared, and exotic Leviathans and other animals for sale in cages ranging from tiny to enormous. The greatest of her own markets back home wasn’t much different, besides being on an island instead of a desert.

    “I can smell his sweat, sweet and near,” Lightless Smear chuffed inside Redshift’s head. “Let us get closer, let us taste it.”

    Redshift shuddered, and replied only with a muted grunt. She moved around a few of the people in front of her with ghost-like grace, and it appeared as if no one noticed. The steady flow of people continued on without a hitch, as sellers beckoned at potential buyers, and potential buyers bickered with them for better deals. The loudness and liveliness of the place might’ve made other assassins anxious, more susceptible to making mistakes, to losing their target, but not Redshift. She thrived in the deepest, most raucous of situations. The louder the better. Her mind was already a torrent, so there was something about seeing a similar storm on the outside that brought her comfort, made her feel at home, justified in the mayhem her life had become.

    The man she was following was a guard, and a high-ranking one by the look of his tidy, jeweled set of beige armor. Redshift’s pace quickened. It was just after noon, and the sky was crowded with huge, white clouds, which loomed overhead in lazy patterns as lax as Gruttum’s perimeter defenses.

    “Take him now,” said Smear, its voice a dark, inhuman noise between Redshift’s buzzing ears.

   Redshift grunted. In an instant she was directly behind the guard. She glanced to her left: stalls and merchants with their groups of patrons. Next, she glanced to the right of her and the guard: there was a side street coming up, after another two stalls. A merciful gap had formed between her target and the rest of the crowd in front of him, leaving the unsuspecting man more open than ever. Then, the guard suddenly turned around. Redshift zipped to a food vendor beside her, leaning over to hide the fact she was seven-feet-tall—she was one of what was known as the Lucky Tall. She loomed over the chef’s open pit of smoked meats, wonderful-smelling smoke wafting under her mask and into her nostrils.

    Her eyes twitched to the left, and she watched as the guard slowly turned back around, then continued his march. She was behind him again in an instant, this time with fists at her sides, and her eyebrows furrowed. There were many ways in which she could kill him. Her sword Cinderblud was a legendary piece of steel, and could easily pierce the man through the back and heart, bleeding him from life before he had a chance to utter the beginning of a shout. Her hands were just as legendary. They were rough, big things that had crushed between them a thousand heads, when weaponry could not reach them, or when she simply wished to feel the last, violent squirms of life within her own strong fingers.

    “Teeth,” whispered Smear. “Tear out his throat.”

    “No,” Redshift whispered back.

    She hastened her stride; the alley was upon them. With a move so swift it couldn’t be registered by any others around them, she shoved the guard in front of her to their right. Half a second went by before Redshift had the man lifted off the ground by his mouth, his back shoved into the building behind him. The guard punched and kicked at her, but she was undaunted. He might as well have been assailing a tree trunk. He stared into the slits of her mask where her dark eyes sat behind it, her even breathing turning to harsh rasps. Redshift squeezed his face like a persistent pimple she’d had enough of, her fingers crushing the bones in his cheeks and jaw. The man let out a muffled groan of detest, slugging his assailant a couple of more times in the side of her big head, before he fell limp.

    Redshift shuffled the dead man to the side, hiding him from the bustling marketplace behind them with her broad back. She spotted the nook of a doorway, and slumped the guard inside it, crouching down to him. Stuffing her hands in his pockets, she pilfered a long, heavy key from them, tucked it away inside her robes, then turned back to the market. The busy flow of pedestrians hadn’t broken, no one had seen what she’d done.

    With a heavy sigh, she stood, her tense shoulders drooping. A few drops of blood fell from her right hand, landing on the stoop beside the dead guard.

    “How superb,” quipped Smear. “Oh, how it invigorates and stirs us so!”

    Redshift’s eyes flicked into the back of her skull, and then to the front again. She licked the salty sweat from her lips, filing back into the market’s needy procession of consumers. There was one piece of the puzzle solved: how she was going to gain access to Xoah Kilswish’s palace. Her heart thumped quicker and quicker. She glanced down at her right fist, realizing it was still a little bloody, so she tucked it under her mask, licking it clean. The action merited not a single glance from the throngs of shoppers and sellers.

    Her march slowed, and she turned to her left, reaching the end of the market. A beautiful, enormous archway sat in front of an even more beautiful palace, with lush, green shrubs and diligent guards placed every few feet alongside it. Redshift stood in the middle of the street before the majestic sight, making passersby have to divert around her, their angry mumbles falling deaf on her ears. More rasps from behind her mask. Peering through the archway, a long bridge led up to the palace gate, which was itself guarded with a host of attentive men and women. She was catching the gazes of the guards before her, but their eyes diverted after a second. Lucky Tall were uncommon, but they were usually no different than anyone else, and usually enjoyed being treated as such. So, most people had learned not to let their eyes linger for too long.

    Redshift couldn’t have been more different; she tread with thin caution the line between human and a new, twisted form of life brought on by her own hands.

    With a great pull of air into her lungs, she zipped through the archway, coming to a stop before the palace gates. Four guards were here, shoulder to shoulder, pikes in their hands. Redshift swept the legs out from the two on her left, then grabbed the furthest on the right by his helmet, and yanked him into his partner, smashing the four of them on top of one another. The clatter of it all was quite tremendous, but so was the noise of the city—greater even. Without a spared second, she stamped the heads of two of the guards, killing them instantly. The final two scrambled to defend themselves, screaming for help. But, they too were delivered quick deaths, as Redshift mashed their bodies together, breaking their torsos, silencing them forever.

    She flicked her head back, a few notes of laughter slipping from her contorted lips. One glance over her shoulder confirmed the other guards had not yet discovered the struggle had taken place. Fitting the key into the gate, she pushed the doors open with care. As soon as she stepped inside, climbing up the ornate, polished stairs, she felt a coolness wash over her, and the fruity, amber aroma of some expensive perfume. How it could be so much cooler in here than outside was a mystery to her, but she was not here to discover the meaning behind such a mystery. She was here to remove a master from their throne. Or was she here only to flex her stale muscles in a place she would not be recognized? She couldn’t remember.

    A few mighty strides saw her finished with the stairs, and she was now looking into the wideness that was the palace’s entrance hall. She was met with opposition straight away, affording her only the briefest moment of serenity, self-reflection. Such quiet felt like poison to her, however, and she clenched her jaw, cursing quietly to herself. She looked at her fists, both were bloody and shaking. A thought graced her to shove the awful things through her own head, to have herself feel the same pain she had given out to so many. Perhaps she’d find her own thoughts in there somewhere untainted, maybe in the back of her head, yeah.

    But Smear was there to steady her, to dissuade her otherwise. “Orient yourself, Ignorant One,” it said, its voice a detached hum in her head. “Our enemy is within our reach.”

    Redshift grunted, and as she did, she noticed guards had picked up on her presence, and were coming her way with their swords drawn.

    “Who let you in ‘ere?” one guard asked, far less than politely, shoving her sword at Redshift’s chest.

    Redshift became a blur of movement. She punched the woman in the nose, denting the guard’s face and helmet into one bloody mess. The second guard managed to stick the giant intruder in her hip, just before Redshift grabbed him by his shoulder, tearing it away from his body, arm, sword, pauldron and all. She flipped the man’s arm back at him, then stuck him with his own sword. A small squirt of blood left Redshift’s side, as her next two victims bled out at her feet.

     Oh, they’d noticed her now. The sounds of armor clanking and shouting voices were coming quick and plentiful. She strolled on toward the great hall, her heart knocking against her ribcage like a prisoner demanding they be set free before their untimely demise arrived. But Redshift had other plans for the energetic organ, she had other plans for the both of them—for the three of them, Smear included. Her heart belonged not only to herself, but to her partner as well, and the three of them had many more things to accomplish before the great thudding and knocking bit of meat could properly take its well-deserved rest. In fact, its terrible knocking was the only thing that assured Redshift she had one of the things at all. Smear had assured her of its existence, sure, but in this one case, Redshift had always been uncertain if her friend was telling her the truth.

    A group of guards arrived this time, seven strong, flanking her from both sides. A huge pair of doors sat ahead of her, but they were a few towering columns away yet, so she’d have to unburden herself of the guards if she was to accomplish her mission without their interference. She pirouetted, Cinderblud drawn from its sheath, the long falchion held downward like a knife. With a swift stab, she punched a hole in the first guard’s chest, then quickly did the same to the second. An arrow plunged into the back of her neck, and she lurched forward. With a wide swing of her fist, she knocked down two more of the guards, buying her time to chuck her sword at their archer crouching a few feet back. The man caught Cinderblud in his chest, rolling over himself and the stone floor until coming to a violent stop against one of the walls. Two more guards stood around her, slicing and stabbing. She caught a nick on her knee, and a slice across her forearm, as she kneed one guard in the chin, and punched the other in their face. Both guards fell to the hard floor, while the other two leapt back to their feet.

    Redshift grabbed both of their swords, crushing them in her hands, before stuffing the shards into their owner’s faces. While they screamed, she bashed their heads together. Not all dead, no, but they weren’t who she came here to kill. So, after she retrieved her weapon, she sauntered on, reaching the colorfully painted doors, and heaving them open with a mighty push. Gruttum’s great hall was one of nigh-unparalleled magnificence—even she could admit that. She knew beauty almost as well as she knew death.

    At last, there in the center of the great room sitting in his great throne was Xoah the Royal. And it looked as if he had been enjoying a spot of crisped meat and apple slices, and perhaps some white cheese as well, though Redshift could not be entirely certain at this distance.

    An even larger host of ready guards came for Redshift now, after not only presumably hearing the fight outside, but seeing the blood-covered, uninvited figure here now spoiling their lunchtime. Redshift tensed her muscles, drawing her arms over her chest, then a terrific force began to pull the air in the hall toward her. Her body became transparent, and everything around her was lifted from the floor and torn from the walls: guards, bookshelves, windows, chairs, tables. It all flew into her, stretching as humans and objects alike came in a swift swish of incredible force, turning everything into long strands before it was all nothing more. The air settled, and Redshift reappeared. Papers torn from books sailed to the floor, a few weapons rattled to stillness, and creaks and groans came from some of the heaviest bits of furniture that were just outside of the sphere of Redshift’s attack. She’d made a crater in the stone under her feet, and landed gracefully in it.

    Xoah was the only one in the hall now—and he rightly looked as if he had shat himself.

    Redshift readjusted her mask, then slowly strolled toward the lone ruler of the kingdom. Her boots crunched over some broken glass, and she had to knock away a heavy, upturned table that was in her way. The table soared through the air, crashing to splinters against one of the far walls. Here her rage was again, it was showing like brightly-colored braies through a hole in her breeches.

    “Why-why are you doing this?” Xoah stammered, curling up in his throne like a dying animal. “Who-who are you?”

    Her stride calmer and slower than her rage and fast heart would imply, Redshift clenched and unclenched her teeth and fists. This man had been instrumental in the slaughter of hundreds of her fellow people, of the sacking of her kingdom’s outer villages, the destabilization of their precious waterfall, and many other egregious acts of war and violence. The war had ended, yes, but only that war. Wars were like seasons, they always came back around right as you had just gotten used to them being gone. And while Xoah himself wasn’t a devastating storm, he certainly knew how to organize them.

    Redshift said nothing, as she reached Xoah’s throne. The cowering man’s arms were over his face, and he was shivering horribly, sputtering plea after plea to spare his life. He offered her treasures, power, anything she desired. But what Redshift desired was his blood. She plucked him up by his fur cape—a lavish piece of some exotic animal—and brought him up to her face. She leered at him through her bloody mask, the arrow still stuck in the back of her neck.

    “Please, please, whoever you are, I can give you—”

    She twisted his head around with a loud pop and crunch of bone, forcing him to look over his shoulders in a horribly unnatural manner. Letting him drop to the cold floor, Redshift spun around, then looked at one of the windows she’d broken. As she heard more angry voices and hasty feet, she again used some of her blinding speed to reach the open windowsill. She leapt up to it, crunching some more glass, and perching like some hideous, blood-covered statue. A few squadrons of guards burst into the great hall, and were aghast to see their ruler had been slain.

    Redshift let a giggle slip through her lips. The guards looked up at the window she had been perched in, but she was gone.