I had only been an assassin for three hours when I learned that I was awful at it.
I had learned the basics from Rael, who clearly had spent the last fifteen years of their life perfecting the art of being lethal, stealthy, and, most likely, part-time wizard. They had a disappearing act that was straight out of a magic show—step around a pillar, and poof, gone. It was like they were half smoke.
I, on the other hand, was very much not smoke.
Attempting to replicate them, I figured I should start with something simple.
Step one: Dramatic Shadow Jump.
Result: I tripped over my own feet and face-planted directly into a conveniently placed potted plant.
"Not quite what I had in mind," Rael said, looming over me with a knife in one hand and an eyebrow raised, probably in disbelief.
"I was working on the stealth fall," I mumbled from beneath the leaves, my voice muffled. "It's an advanced technique."
They blinked, clearly confused.
"Is it?"
"I'm pretty sure."
Then came knife throwing.
Rael handed me a tiny silver knife with the same calm assurance you'd give a toddler a live grenade.
"Just like this," they explained, demonstrating by throwing the blade straight into the wooden target from twenty feet away. Bullseye.
I took the knife, squinted one eye, and tried to mimic the precision.
And promptly missed the entire target and embedded the knife into a barrel of pickled fish.
The fish exploded into a cloud of brine and vinegar. The stench was instantly overwhelming, like cheap perfume made of rotten ocean.
I gasped, coughing. "Uh, good work?" Rael said, observing the fish carnage, clearly unsure of whether to praise or reprimand me.
"I did that on purpose," I said weakly, wiping vinegar from my eyes. "Research. Aerodynamics of fish explosions. Very cutting-edge stuff."
Rael didn't even bother to respond. They simply stared at me, then back at the barrel of ruined fish.
"I'm going to need you to not blow up any more barrels of suspicious food," they muttered.
And then came climbing rooftops. Because naturally, "if you're going to be an assassin, you have to know how to escape rooftops."
"Sure," I said, hanging off the edge of a particularly tall roof, my legs dangling like I was best friends with gravity. "Escaping rooftops. Totally not terrifying."
Rael was across the alley, making it look easy. They leapt from one building to the next with the grace of someone who had studied physics—or maybe had a supernatural understanding of how to defy nature's laws.
I, meanwhile, was still clinging to the roof, trying to figure out how to not plummet to my death.
On the fourth attempt to scale the wall (most of them involving me kicking the bricks like a petulant child), I decided that jumping was my only option. Because really, what else was I going to do? Keep pretending I could climb?
I launched myself off the roof, limbs flailing in what could only be called a dramatic imitation of a flying squirrel.
Rael's eyes widened. "Oh no."
I missed the building.
But I didn't fall.
Instead, I landed on a vendor's cart—one that happened to be packed with tomatoes.
And then, for reasons I cannot explain, the cart started rolling down the street.
Tomatoes—gorgeous, red, squishy tomatoes—went flying everywhere in a colorful mess.
When the cart finally stopped, I was laying on the cobblestones, absolutely drenched in mashed tomatoes, clutching my dagger like an absurd trophy.
Rael stood above me, arms crossed, sighing.
"Did you at least hit your target?"
I glanced at the now-empty cart, tomato mush everywhere. "The target was a tomato vendor?"
"No."
"Oh. Well, in that case…" I raised the dagger high in triumph, "I'm pretty sure this is a success."
Rael glared at me for a long, exasperated moment, then simply shook their head.
As the day wound down, I had learned exactly three things:
I am not stealthy.
I blow things up when I'm nervous.
I am surprisingly good at making everything worse.
"Perhaps we should call it a day," I suggested, sitting on the ground and brushing tomato guts off my cloak, revealing my now tomato-stained face.
Rael glanced at me, glanced away, then nodded reluctantly.
"Okay. We'll pack it in. But next time, I expect you to jump without causing a citywide panic."
I placed my hands on my hips and glared at the rooftops like they were the ones personally insulting me. "I'll work on my landing style. I'm sure I can make it look cooler."
Rael raised an eyebrow, clearly not convinced.
That night, I lay in a heap of discarded training daggers, battered, scented with the unmistakable aroma of defeat—but oddly, I felt a strange sense of pride.
Being an assassin was tough. It wasn't all sneaking around and brooding in the shadows. Sometimes it was falling off roofs, blowing up barrels of suspicious food, and making things more chaotic with flair.
And maybe—just maybe—I was starting to like it.