Falling Downwards

The assassination of the King

Jody was sitting on the roof of the tower, spinning her silver dagger in hand. The wind howled through the night, drops of sweat glimmered on her forehead, She was nervous. Wait for the signal echoed through her head.

She could see the king laying in his four poster bed, sleeping soundly with colours of beige swallowing him whole. Candle light gleamed through each window of the castle except for the three windows in the far tower they were never lit during the night. She could see the guards standing at their posts, holding spears in their hands although some did have bows and arrows. That's odd, she thought.

Why tonight of all nights would they decide to up their defences? Is there a renegade in The Deserted? How else would they know that we were going to attack tonight? The thought of being caught made her sick, she had seen executions in the square before, most of which were of fellow Deserted who had been caught trying to assassinate the King.

Jody gagged as she recalled the most recent, Charles Windlow, he was hanged, it took him two hours to die. They weren't able to save him, there weren't enough Deserted at the time to come up with a good enough plan to do so, there were too many guards surrounding the gallows, if they attacked they would have all wound up dead. She could still see his limp body hanging from the gallows, turning purple from the lack of oxygen.

Jody had studied this side of the castle for months, looking for patterns in the shifts the guards take and where they stand. She looked for advantage points and blind spots, for places they could inhabit without being touched, people they could push ever so slightly who could spill every secret they know about the ins and outs of the castle. She was looking for someone who had the most weaknesses and she had found him.

She would feel the signal pull inside her, it wasn't a signal that could get her caught. It was magic. All of the Deserted had special abilities most of which were different but there was one in which they all possessed, the ability to pull on eachother. They weren't able to track anyone but they could make others aware that they were there, only if they were within five hundred yards of each other.

Jody was relieved that she couldn't be tracked down by fellow Fallers, she always worried that all the people she had wronged would find her, all the people that wanted her dead would have an advantage in catching her.

Being perched for hours on the roof of the tower was making her legs wobble beneath her. She was listening to a soldier below whistling the national anthem of Aspen, she loved the sound of whistling, it always brought back memories of her mother when she was young. Jody used to hum while doing chores around the house but when her mother died she had stopped, the house wasn't happy without her mother in it, it wasn't anything without her mother.

Suddenly she felt it, the pull in her chest of someone reaching out the talk to her, "Jody!" A nervous jitter went down the entirety of her body, it was time to go, it was time to kill the king. "It's time to go!"  She knew it was Jame, he always gave the signal, he had a talent for it.

Jame had the ability to create noise, as much as he wanted, whatever noise he wanted, he was the perfect distraction for jobs like these. Jody knew she would have to act quickly when the crashing started, all she needed was thirty seconds to slide down the roof and slide silently through the window below her.

The noise would probably wake the king which would cause some problems when trying to kill him but she could deal with that as well, she had a great power for this area of work. She could inflict any pain onto anyone, not enough to kill them but enough to immobilise them, then her trusty dagger would finish the job.

Jody waited for ten minutes, still no crashing in the distance. They were hoping to lure the guards away from their posts or distract them for a few minutes when she did the dirty work, they knew that if they were to just attack them that their first priority would be to protect the king, so they would rush there but if it sounded as though people were trying to break in through the tall, grey walls surrounding the castle, they hoped they would go that way to stop them from getting through at all.

She never heard the second signal for her to attack, the sun was rising in the distance and she needed to get out of the castle grounds before the guards caught her. where is everyone? what happened? the questions flooded jody's mind, clouding the thought of getting out of the castle grounds.

An arrow zoomed past her head and the shouts of guards echoed around her. "Up there, Get her!!" Jody jumped from one roof to the other until she was at the edge of the castle wall, from there she climbed down the vines that reached the bottom and ran towards the forest. We had a meeting point at the far side of the lake, she would have to swim if the rowing boat wasn't there. She ran as fast as she could not caring that thorn bushes were snagging the skin on her legs and her feet were blistering painfully.

In the distance she could see the light reflecting from the surface of the lake, it was blinding. By the lake sat the small wooden rowing boat, once she crossed to the other side of the lake there was a hour walk until she reached the safe house. Her feet were already blistered and bleeding but she needed to keep going, she pushed through the pain and kept sprinting, while dodging arrows aimed at her head.

Finally reaching the lake Jody shoved the boat off of the land and jumped into the water, she struggled to pull herself up into the boat after using a lot of energy while running, finally she was in the boat and swiftly rowing herself to the other side of the lake.

"I should have done more exercise." Jody scolded herself. She was coming up to the other side of the lake. Jumping out of the boat when she could see the bottom, the water was up to her waist and she could feel the sand sink below her feet, which she found weirdly comforting.

Walking out of the water she felt a massive weight pull down on her body, her clothes were soaking wet. She looked at the mass of trees surrounding her, Jody knew that if the guards got across the lake they wouldn't catch her if she ran but she was in so much pain that she wanted to rest, she needed to rest.

She hadn't slept at all last night and now Jody felt like she just ran a marathon, but she started walking, slowly but surely she was getting somewhere. An hour or so later she arrived at the hut, abandoned in the forest by the last group sent to kill the king, when they returned they hadn't went to the safe house because they were never caught, they never even made it through the castle walls, there was a traitor in the group, someone had told the guards when and where they were going to enter from and they were all arrested on the spot, none of them were executed though, but i think they wish they had been, now they work for the king. Not doing the nice jobs, they have to carry out all the executions and watch people rot away in their jail cells. Most of whom they kill are people like them as well. Jody couldn't imagine how they fell.

The door creaked as Jody pushed it open, inside was relatively small with a kitchen, living room and bedroom all in one room, thankfully there was a bathroom of to the side of the hut. It didn't look as though anyone had been there for a while, everything was still. Jody was shivering, she needed to get out of her wet clothes. She kicked her boots off and walked over to a tall, wooden cupboard, it was stocked with the clothes they had brought with them. She pulled out a White top, a pair of grey track suit bottoms and a maroon jumper. There were maps on the coffee table, with a  piece of paper sitting next to them with numbers spilled across it, she couldn't recognise any patterns and that was a strong point of hers. She was always good at noticing things like that, patterns and sequences, she was good at noticing changes in the environment and could see the tiniest details in everything, but she couldn't figure this out. The map pointed her in the direction of Elf shore, she had never been there before but she was more intrigued as to why she would have to go there.