AN: Why hello again. I’m starting a new story since I never really liked my other story due to my horrendous writing. I’m still using a few of the same characters since I love them too much to get rid of them. Please read and review and see how this story turns out. Thanks a bunch. (And I changed my PenName, yes. B.E.Razell a.k.a. MissRachel) Editted once.

Prologue

For years countries threatened each other with war, barriers of trade, thievery, but had always failed to do either. This happened mostly due to the dislike of it from the citizens within their boundaries. War would mean sending men ranging from 15-25 years old to neighboring countries, never to come back. The work force will become less and less until a whole generation would be lost. Barriers of trade would prevent merchants from trading altogether. Merchants, the strongest citizen, would resort to smuggling goods to their trade routes and would continue to become richer. Thievery was always rough work and only the skilled would come out alive and successful.

So instead of going through with their original plots, the ruling families hired trained assassins hidden in the country to kill off their enemies one at a time. Never more than one person per trip as to not get caught and find out which family had sent for their death. Only select few who had been at the job for years had killed more than one person and never found.

A country’s power was not determined by the amount of gold they had in their treasury or the amount of people in the workforce. Not by the size of army, number of allies, amount of trade, amount of land, for these all seemed worthless. Power was defined by the amount of skilled assassins, how many these killers had killed, how important were the victims, and had the assassins been caught.

Sinnal was the most powerful country located at the very center of the group of countries called The Vaayen. Because at its location, it guarded itself heavily with strong armies, tall castle walls, and had their fair share of assassins. They had at least five, all that was known. But the majority of them had acquired a skill of importance, may it be to control an element such as fire, invisibility, foresight, night-seeing eyes, and others. Although select few were born with such gifts, all assassins had a gory killing mind and the skill of balance and control.

These rankings were made by their previous school and sent the scores to where they would go and live for the rest of their careers. Ranked number three was a follower of the royal family in Sinnal, but also held ranked number one and two due to their escape years before the school could realize it, no other country knew of this. The school that had trained assassins each distributed their students to certain countries, to even out power. But an event happened to give Sinnal a great advantage. Thievery guilds often housed these assassins as one of their own and assassins thought the same. Of course regular citizens were always wary of their daily lives. Would they be the ones to die next? Today? How about the day after that?

Assassins kept their identity hidden and it was rare to know one’s name. Maybe once or twice they were given a job, unless it was really a time of war, but when they did, they were paid very highly. A royal member or servant would send out a certain type of hunting bird in the skies, trained to circle the city for days until it was called back to the palace. This was a sign that an important person was to die by the next week, but The Vaayen was full of birds. With keen eyes, assassins are able to pick out their symbolic bird and go to the royal castle. Although when the weather was disturbed with rain, high winds, etc, the royals would have to wait another time. Each thievery guild has their assigned hunting bird, which is also part of their name. Assassins would take turns acquiring jobs and usually split the loot.

The royal family never saw who they hired, but knew of their work for assassins not only had royal jobs, but vengeance as well as practice for their own leisure. At first, members of the royal court would try and meet these people and the next day were found dead. Instead of meeting them face to face, the soon to be hired killers would lurk at a specified place and find a scroll stating who they will kill and other information needed to get the job done. As payment, there would be at least three bags of gold or more, depending on urgency and importance. Once and awhile, they would find new weapons to use, to vary the way of killing to avoid suspicion from others. But few assassins would use their developed gifts as way of killing and would leave the weapon there, untouched.

Every assassin knew of other assassins and for whom they worked for. All because they each had trained together across the ocean in the group of islands called The Yanii. They each grew up with each other, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. But as they grew apart, individuals begin to forget who was their friend or foe. So instead, they were only good friends with the people living within their boundaries always looking out for one another. Tensions were getting high between the Vaayen countries and it felt as if assassins were going to have many obstacles to overcome.