Unsuccessful murder - Short Story ( Part 3 )

We were forced to ride without interruption for days. The only relief we could get with the exhausted horses was that we sometimes stopped stumbling over the Desert, and we proceeded with a slow trot. Although we could not see the riders who were in the pursuit of us, we were sure that they follow us. The trouble was that we needed enough time and distance to escape them, so that they would not have the opportunity to follow us to our school, escorts, the temple.

The secret of this place has always been just that, secret, to our enemies. It was even the secret of most of our statesmen. It was a skillfully hidden place, far from the look of anyone who would even jump to several tens of meters from entrance. The desert, stripped of its appearance, did not suggest that there is something hidden there. The mountains that shared this ancient desert in two, were also stripped of life, only a dried tree could be seen here and there, lonely on the slopes of the mountain. All this was the cruelty of the desert itself. At the approach to the mountain itself, a small cliff was facing the west. In the very heart of that cliff, it was barely recognizable entrance to the cave. The accidental passerby would have thought that it was a shelter for some desert animal, but that little cave entrance actually covered secrets.

Nobody actually knew when the school of deadly killers was established in the service of our Throne. Mentors, teachers at school said that there used to exist annals who spoke about the founding, its true intentions, and the first killers trained there. However, it all burned down in a siege that took place a few hundred years earlier in the Capital. Then many were lost, and only a few teachers and mentors recalled the stories they were talking about. It was turbulent times, then almost all of our civilization was reduced to a handful of people. We were on he edge to lose our identity as a nation. However, some new heroes then were born and preserved the people. What hurt most, but it was a necessary measure, we lost our gods. The whole pantheon of the gods, was forgotten. The leaders of the people than, they decided to forget. And to take the names of the Gods striped away from them. It was said that if you take away a name from things or beings, it loses itself. There is only one free soul who walks without knowing who it is. It was simultaneous reward and curse. All the magic we possessed originated from the Gods. We lost it then, but we got something more. Freedom. We are free to work and plan at our own discretion without interfering with forces that we can not control.

Although the Desert itself was deprived of life, both plants and the animal world, we knew her better than anyone. The stony end of the road told us that we were near our shelter. We did not talk much during our escape. We were all aware of the facts in which we are now, and that we did not succeed. If not all of our agents were aware of events in the city, they were waiting for the answers when the right time comes.

We were deadly warriors, vicious to every weapon known in the world, able to survive for days without food and water in worst distress. And now, after learning that our enemy has again accessed the secrets of magic, which we thought was lost, we got an enemy that could defeat us.

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