Rise (an Assassin's Creed 3 Fanfiction)

Several Deaths, Time Travel, and an Apple

Rise

Several Deaths, Time Travel, and an Apple

This was not happening. I was not holding my father's dying body in my arms his head resting in my lap. I was not surrounded by at least sixty dead Templars covered in their blood. I was not looking at my mother's dead body lying in a crumpled heap on the floor just a few yards away from me. I was not staring at the green pendant clutched in my curled fingers while trying to stay strong for my father's last few moments here with me. But of course... I was...

My mind traveled back to the last few hours before all of those events took place.

The day was December 21, 2012. The day the Assassins and Templars and well, everybody had been dreading for thousands of years. Of course, in our hidden bunker, we felt safe. If only we had known how truly wrong we were.

"Riley, get your things!" My mother pushed me into my room to hide.

I quickly shoved everything in sight into my bag. I chose to ignore the part of me that wanted to fight the threat that was coming. The Templars had found us. I began strapping my weapons to my body completely forgetting my sword and bow. But there was no time.

Just as I left my room, they came. Bursting through our front door, they came in waves. I panicked and unsheathed my hidden blades to fight. It was a hard one. I had to watch my mother be shot in the head and my father stabbed in the stomach and shoulder. So in the end, it was me that had to finish them off.

I had never killed a person until that night...

"I'm proud of you," my father whispered out of the silence brings me back into reality. He gave a hard cough and the blood slid down the corner of his mouth. "Stay strong for me, Princess... and your mother..."

I slowly watched my father die before my eyes. I felt his body grow limp in my arms and the light leave his eyes though they were still open. In an instant, the last bit of family I had left was gone.

"No... please don't leave me! Come back to me!" I was screaming at my dead father lifting his limp body close to my face. "I'm only fifteen; please don't leave me, Daddy! I love you!" It was useless. He was gone. I was alone.

With trembling fingers, I slowly ran my hand over my father's face closing his eyes. He looked as if he were in a peaceful sleep. But it was one he would never wake from.

I told myself after what seemed like hours that I needed to get up. I pulled the red cord over my head tucking the green pendant into my shirt, slowly got to my feet, and gently rested my father's head on the ground. I stood there surrounded by dead men whose names I would never know and my parents. My father with his stern voice and soft eyes, and my mother with her soothing words and caring smile. I couldn't take it anymore. My legs could no longer support me and I fell on all fours feeling the urge to vomit.

When I'd relieved my stomach of everything I had eaten that day on to the floor my arms shaking to support my own body weight, I looked up at the ceiling as I felt the tears begin to pool in my eyes and slip down the sides of my face. 

I'd like to tell you I was strong and kept it together as I told myself I would, but that would be a total lie.

I curled into a ball on the hardwood floor and cried. I cried harder than I ever had before but it was too late to stop. I let out all my emotions and all the energy I had left. Sobs racked my body till it hurt. What little water I had left inside me fell through my face in staining streaks down my cheeks. After a while, the sobs and crying were dry and the only sounds I made for the next hour were pitiful moans and whimpers of a pain I knew would never fully heal.

Why did this have to happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?

When I finally stopped crying, my throat was raw and it hurt to swallow. My eyes were bloodshot and hurt with every blink. My chest hurt every time I took a breath. There was a soreness deep in my abdomen from crying and laying in a fetal position for too long. Also, it was the fact that my parents were dead and I was completely alone that made this pain all the worse. I trembled on the floor for a moment trying to keep the memories of me killing people from my head.

"Fuck you, Templars," I finally muttered under my breath in a scratchy voice.

I knew what they were after. It was only a matter of time before they came to find me again. There would probably be many more coming soon if I did not act quickly. Forcing myself to get up, I dragged my tired, sore body over to a pile of wooden crates. Pushing boxes and corpses aside, I pulled up a small section in the loose floorboards and pulled a small lever on the side to reveal a wooden box within the floors of our hidden cellar.

Wrapped in brown cloth, I pulled out the shimmering golden Piece of Eden. The strange markings and designs were the exact same as the ones on the amulet around my neck. Just with the few taps of my fingers, the room was illuminated in a bright golden light while symbols and pictographs bobbed while floating in the air around me.

Then, without warning, I felt a pounding throbbing pain in my head that only grew stronger as the Apple grew brighter. I used my arm to shield my eyes from the light.

There were suddenly echoing words in my head that grew louder and easier to understand. "Go... find the one you seek..." It was a woman's voice. "You have sixty days. Now...GO!"

The lights were blinding me and I heard an extremely loud ringing in my ears. The pain in my head only grew louder stronger as I fell to the ground, still tightly clutching the Apple. There was a heat on my stomach that felt as if it were burning my skin, the world whizzed around me all at once, it stopped. I felt as if I were floating as the world seemed to be in slow motion. But I was really falling. Then I had a face full of dirt.

"Ow..." I moaned feeling pain all over my body. I slowly stood up, shaking all over as I examined my person. My clothes and weapons were all intact, the amulet was still around my neck, no blood or leaking fluids, and the Apple was still in my clutched fingers. I tucked it into the small leather pouch at my waist.

Stumbling like an idiot, I made my way out of the field I had fallen in as I took a good look at my surroundings. And man was it weird.

Men and women, even children were dresses like they were reenacting some sort of scene from the Revolutionary War era. There were women in long thick heavy dresses with lacy bonnets in their hair, men carried muskets and wore black shoes with buckles and hats on their heads, children played in the streets or were begging for food or money, and there were soldiers in red coats carrying muskets while marching like tin toys in straight lines. Animals ran around everywhere rolling around in their own filth and the whole place smelled like nobody had ever heard of soap.

"Where the hell am I?" I asked the air walking towards the tall dirty buildings. My mind still trying to put aside the last few hours of my life.

People gave me weird looks as mothers pulled their children away from me. Do I look that bad? I thought to myself as I checked my body over again. My black hoodie had a few blood stains but didn't look all that bad, the long red sash at my waist had a few small burns or knife holes and a few droplets of blood, my jeans were another story, my father had been shot in the shoulder and in the stomach and bled a lot before he died; so I was not surprised to find large stains down my legs, my tall black boots looked exceptionally ordinary for the time era. But thankfully, I loved the Revolutionary War. The idea of men and women joining forces together and rising up against their enemy for the sake of freedom, going against the rules, and fighting for liberty, was something I fought for and loved,

I wandered along the filthy streets for a bit, realizing that if the spirit who sent me here words were true, I would probably be stuck there for two months.

I turned to the nearest person which was an older African American man. I asked him in the most polite voice I had, "Excuse me, sir? Can you tell me where I am and what year it is?"

"Well, of course, this is Boston in 1770," He replies in a raspy voice with a smile before he hobbled off.

"Well... crap."