Murderbasket

Deathbringer had a mission.

He was also very bad at doing missions the right way. Usually, Secretkeeper was able to keep that part away from the queen because usually, Deathbringer's way worked just as well. Somehow Soulseer had trusted him anyway, granting him two animus-touched items to help with his increasingly elaborate improvising.

He was an assassin. Yeah, what a surprise. Nobody would have guessed with a name like that. In all honesty, Deathbringer wished he was named something like Skullcrusher, or Silentstride. Because in the night kingdom, names meant things, so even if Deathbringer hadn't wanted to be an assassin, he probably would have ended up as one anyway.

Thankfully though, Deathbringer couldn't imagine being anything besides an assassin, so it all worked out well for everyone involved. It still undermined his element of surprise because every NightWing out there knew his name was Deathbringer, and nightwings had an annoying habit of living up to their names.

This particular mission was long distance, Soulseer had even gotten Morrowseer to summon the prophecy again for Deathbringer to hear, just in case he thought it was ignorable and changed the dragon's mind instead.

The very existence of a particular dragon was a threat to Soulseer, imagine that. It was almost like anyone with a spear could be a potential problem for Soulseer. Deathbringer didn't get the point of prophecies. Life happened, things might happen for a reason, sure, but Deathbringer didn't care one way or another about the snowball effect of stepping on a butterfly.

Morrowseer had explained it to him once, to stop Deathbringer from badmouthing the seers, and it had exactly zero effect. In fact, Deathbringer had purposefully upped his badmouthing just to see if it would throw the queen's top seer for a loop. Morrowseer didn't seem to have noticed, but that was perfectly fine on Deathbringer's count, it proved that prophecies were pointless.

Either way, Deathbringer had finally met a mission where he had to actually do his job. It was exhausting really, the assassination itself would be easy, but he'd found it fun to think of increasingly elaborate ways to fix the situation without actually killing the target himself. Usually, he would kill some dragon completely unrelated, spread some nasty rumors, and then set up the target as the accused murderer.

The prophecy broke that plan before it even formed, it was a line long but far more specific than anything Deathbringer had ever heard, which made him wonder if Morrowseer had made it up. Death from above, northward from which he comes, a dragon full-grown but never grown, unlike anything you've ever seen.

So like a good little queen, Soulseer immediately sent Deathbringer to deal with this. Bah. Deathbringer was getting annoyed at how effective Soulseer could be.

So for the last several weeks, he'd been scouring the north for a runt that was unlike anything he'd ever seen, he was used to taking a while to find the target, but it took him a long time. There were some weird dragons out there, but all the unusually small ones were just regular dragons. He took notes on those because perhaps the 'nothing you've ever seen' was more internal.

When he first saw the target, he assumed it was a dragonet, but the large ears and strange scale color immediately drew Deathbringers eye. After a bit of observation, he concluded that this was indeed a fully-grown dragon. And it was indeed a weird-looking dragon.

His scales were grey-blue, almost white in some lighting, which would be horrible for stealth, and his ears were almost three times the size of a regular adult dragon. He was practically half Deathbringers size, and Deathbringer wasn't even all that large.

Deathbringer had found his target.

Sadly the setting had been all wrong, cornered in a dark alley with the strange dragon and a rainwing, that he vaguely felt he'd heard of. So like a good little assassin, Deathbringer had fled, dawning the Slate ring and hiding until the target was no longer wary.

So now all he had to do was observe for a few days, figure out the most auspicious time to take him out, and then figure out if he should frame one of the more annoying city lords or just let the case go cold on its own.

Deathbringer was sad to actually kill the target, but he would do it, it wasn't hard. Especially thanks to that diminutive size.

After Deathbringer found the target, his first move was to follow. He checked the Slate ring to be sure the strange type of invisibility was still working, it didn't truly make Deathbringer unseeable, it just muddled the senses of those around him, making it very very difficult to spot or focus on him, any who did see him would soon forget, and any who heard him wouldn't understand what they were hearing. It helped a lot because invisibility tended to not destroy touch and hearing.

It further complicated his mission when Deathbringer realized that the target was traveling. Which meant that Deathbringer had to wait for him to get wherever he was going before doing anything. The target kept looking up and around as if he'd heard something, but then he would frown, shake his head and continue as if he'd forgotten what he was doing. Every time, Deathbringer would hold his breath, check the ring, and hope that somehow this strange dragon wouldn't hear through it. He knew how good those ears were, and it freaked him out.

The target was traveling with a SandWing, the RainWing that Deathbringer felt seemed very familiar, a strange NightWing that he'd never seen, and an IceWing. It wasn't Deathbringer's place to care about things like extinct tribes that apparently were alive, but he still felt a very distinct worry that somehow the queen would blame him when she didn't find out about them in a timely manner.

Which of course, made him want to tell her less.

They left that city behind, moving south at a steady pace before finally stopping at their base near the front lines.

The fourth base.

It was a sprawling camp filled with dragons as diverse as could be. There was a huge variety in color and shape, so much so that the dullness of the war camps back home was impossible not to see. Back home, the RainWings didn't change color with every passing thought. Back home the MudWings didn't laugh with friends and family. Back home there were no dragons like these.

The group slowly split off from itself as they arrived at their destination, bidding each other farewell. The target immediately retreated to a secluded spot and napped for the rest of the evening.

Boring.

The next day he headed to a library where he gave a SeaWing a scroll and talked for a few minutes as a RainWing searched for his request.

The day after that he went back to the library and returned the new scroll, getting another one.

After that, it was exactly the same.

And the same.

And again, still the same.

Deathbringer was quite sure he would die before he got a good chance to kill the target. He probably would have been able to do it by now if the strange dragon didn't take a new route every time he went somewhere.

He saw new dragons, new hallways, and new tents. Deathbringer was sort of surprised that the target had yet to get lost.

The only thing that was the same every day was going to the library.

And of course, the day that the assassin decided to finally cut his losses and do it, the entire schedule changed drastically.

All the target had needed was one variable, the SandWing who'd been with his group in Possibility. She was fairly ordinary looking, but Secretkeeper insisted that every dragon was hiding something. Every dragon was unique on the inside and occasionally one could see how unique depending on how that dragon presented itself.

This SandWing for instance carried herself as if she expected at any moment to suddenly die. She was light on her feet and quick with her words, but everything she did had a deep underlying sense of dread. This dragon had fears hidden deep inside her that had recently surfaced, and she was as far from fixing that as a lizard was to the sky.

The troubled dragon practically kidnapped the target, taking him around the markets and chatting wildly all the way. She talked about what she'd done that day, how strange it was to be back at the base and even mentioned a few of the generals by name, explaining how much she hated one in particular and how much better princess Tsunami was. She said how she'd been helping General Glory with strategy and how strange it was to see this part of the war.

The target only nodded with short replies, asking questions now and then which only led the sandwing deeper into her rant about life.

Deathbringer was more curious about when the SandWing had mentioned Glory. The rainwing was Glory. Bah, stupid selective memory, forgetting dragons' names... General Glory was the infamous rainwing that had taken over their armies after the capture and subsequent death of their queen. She was the right hand to Tsunami, the leader of the southern resistance who worked directly under Scarlet.

It was impressive, to say the least, that this SandWing was talking about such an important dragon with such familiarity. And since Deathbringer wasn't sure exactly how stupid he was, he had to make absolutely sure it was the Glory.

Which meant that it was time to observe General Glory.

Deathbringer still followed the target- Echo -for the rest of the day, trying to make sure that he would still be here tomorrow. But the second that Echo fell asleep, Deathbringer left the room quietly and searched for Glory.

-------------------

Maybe Deathbringer will figure out his destiny if he has enough votes to help him ^-^