Assassin's Creed: Phoenix

II. sage

All those fancy engravings are unnecessary, he thought, as he was gazing at his new ring. He stared closely at the geometrical lines that formed a complex Assassin insignia, ornamented with a small ruby. They used to cut the whole finger off for this, you know, Izar would say when William became an Assassin initiate for the first time, the hidden blade would require a small sacrifice back then. We get to keep our fingers now, thanks to Leonardo da Vinci's engineering skills, but we still pay a tribute to our roots.

He could hear that word in his mind, wondering where he heard it for the first time. Was it a book? Or a conversation he couldn't clearly remember? A sage is a...

"A reincarnating person with precursor memories." William listened as Izar explained. "Memories what we think are from the ones who came before, though we have little evidence to show for it."

William was baffled about everything that happened this evening - being back in here after so long, suddenly becoming a Master Assassin, and now, sages - as he listened to Izar's words, wondering where he fit in all these. "Do these people really exist at all?" He asked, as Mentor Gabriel and Izar exchanged looks. "I've always thought it was all a myth, or something."

Now he could see both of the men struggling to explain, trying to avoid the unavoidable. Gabriel would touch his forehead and remove his glasses whenever he was troubled, as he did now, and Izar would somehow become more polite than he already was. "Well...." He continued, his voice softer. "Turns out, it's more than just a myth."

"And that is a matter of concern?"

"It is, when they start appearing out of nowhere." Mentor Gabriel replied, with a heavy voice. He pointed at some of the messy looking papers at his desk, the ones that seemed like he was fed up with. "I've been getting so many sage activity alerts from the Assassin brotherhoods all over the world."

"Which is unexpected." Izar continued, "Seems like the people they report are the people from our history, who should have been dead hundreds of years ago."

William shook his head, he couldn't process anything that these two old men were talking about. He took a deep breath before speaking. "Let's assume that this is all true, the dead are back and history is playing its trick on us." He could see Izar and Mentor Gabriel were both curious about his question. "What do they want?"

"It seems to be too early to tell." Izar answered. "Our knowledge about them is very limited, for now the only thing we can confirm is they have many memories to show us, much more than what fits in a lifetime."

"You're the smartest man I know." William stared at Izar with a blank expression. "If you could hear yourself right now, you'd probably say this is all bullshit."

"See, I knew he would be skeptical." The Mentor spoke, in a passive aggresive manner. He would always act grumpy whenever something troubled him too much, which was opposite of the kind of person he truly was.

"Gabriel, it's a good thing he's asking the right questions." Izar replied, suddenly getting defensive. "That's the way we raised him."

"Okay, I don't like it when you two start acting like my parents." William responded. "Why is all of this a danger for us? Are the Templars behind this?"

"That's the thing. They're not." Mentor Gabriel explained, "It seems like they have no idea about how this is possible, as well." William almost started talking just when Izar interrupted. "Before you say it, we too thought it was one of their tricks at first. Then we found this." He grabbed a piece of paper standing on Mentor Gabriel's desk, and carefully handed it to William. "Read it."