Why did you decide to become an assassin?

This is the single most asked question of my entire life. Who am I? I will get to that. Eventually. I wish to start this journal off by saying no one ever makes the decision to become an assassin. Sometimes the choices are made for you. Other times you are born into it. Then there are the rare cases; You are just born.

I do not know what I did in a past life, nor do I wish to know. However I, as a rare few, can remember everything as far back as the womb. Some of the memories are jumbled, as at the time I had very little understanding of the world outside, but I did not come into the world as most. Warriors of old wished for their sons to be brought into the world kicking and screaming, the way their glories dictate they will leave this world. Any brute can pick up and swing a sword or axe. It is the children who come calmly into this world who people need to fear most. The ability to let go of the familiar, the lack of fear in the face of the unknown and the calm temperament are simply a pathway to bloodshed. Remember this as you birth your children, peaceful is deadly.

I remember the day I was pulled from my mother. From the piercing brightness of the torches in the room to the woman using a towel to wipe me off. At first their reactions are grim, I suppose they thought me stillborn. Then the woman lowers herself to my mouth and then presses an ear to my chest. She hears either breathing or a heartbeat, to which everyone rejoices. My father stands behind her, almost completely ensconced in the shadows from the pillars in the room. As the woman rushes to tend to my mother, my father leans over to get a better look at me. He is clearly disappointed. I am no warrior.

Was that why I became an assassin? Absolutely not. I am saying I was innocent at birth. I certainly had some traits that would be helpful, however it is the events that follow which shape who I would become.

You see my father had been a protector of the Emperor for several years. I learned this before I hit the age of five. I also began sword fighting and horse riding and things were mostly going well. My father was away a lot and I assumed it was due to his service to the Emperor. I figured out this was not the case as he and my mother frequently fought about his latest payment.

He was now a common thief, banished from the kingdom by the Emperor himself. He had hit the Emperor in a drunken rage and he was spared his life for all of his years of service. My father decided the kingdom still owed him payments and it would be his job to take them.

My father became a folk hero. The man who hit the Godly Emperor and lived. The man who steals from the gods and gives to the peasants. The man who was hardly a father or a husband. Sorry, that last one is not a folk tale. Just the truth.

As his thefts became wide spread knowledge, eventually the Emperor decided to stop the man he allowed to live. This would be a decision that would affect any who would cross him in the future. My father was unsuspecting and pulled off his latest theft and returned home to his loving wife and me, his ever hopeful son. The tracks lead a group of armed warriors to our doorstep.

Some people say moments like these change people. The door bursts into splinters as warriors rush in, disarming my father and knocking him to the ground. Moments like these might change ordinary people. Other warriors drag my mother kicking and screaming into her bedroom. But for me, I’m not ordinary. My father’s blade rests at my feet. Ordinary may have run away. I look down to the sword. Ordinary may have lost control of their bodily functions. I grab the hilt and enter the bedroom. Ordinary doesn’t blend into the shadows so easily. One warrior falls victim to a stab wound at the base of his spine. The shadows don’t shield just anyone. The next warrior doesn’t get a chance to react as his body falls lifeless across my mother. I’m sure if someone were to read this. I leave her scrambling with the lifeless body and make my way to the front door. They would say “How couldn’t this have changed you?” I watch as two warriors force my father to his knees, while one executes him. I say, how could it have changed me? I calmly despatch the warriors in a flurry of swipes and jabs. Especially when it felt completely natural.

I stand, slightly confused over the bodies of three well trained warriors. Three protectors of the Emperor, and my father. He had it coming, however I always had imagined it being away from us. I turn back to our home and can still vividly remember the look on my mother’s face. She was slightly battered and bruised, some of the blood hers and some of it not. Her eyes were not staring at the husband she lost, but they were filled with fear at the child she had brought into this world. Her lips quivered as if trying to utter some words, but only silence filled the air.

I was five years old.