text: [Themes: fantasy, fantasy]
  
  Despite having cracked lips, you want to kiss her. You feel an inkling of the crush you used to have start to her come back, and then you nearly kiss her regardless, but you manage to stop yourself.
  
  "Raven. Whatever you feel for me, see if you still feel it for me later. When we aren't on the cusp of life or death situations. Maybe then I can see how I feel about you." Disappointment flashes across her features. "Until then, I don't want to be distracted by you."
  
  You feel that you didn't really choose the best set of words to say, for now disappointment and hurt color her features. You mentally wince at the awkward tension you feel building up, but thankfully Vitre saves you from braving it alone.
  
  "We'll have two rooms here for a week. If we haven't found her by then, then we can pay for longer. Agreed?" Raven nods slowly. Certainly not in her usual jovial manner. You nod as well, and Vitre looks back and forth between the two of you with a knowing look on his face.
  
  "Alright then. Follow me." You both follow him as he leads you up the stairs. "Erron and I will share a room. Raven, you'll take this room." He gestures to a door on his left. "We're in the next room over. If you need us, just pound on the wall. Okay?"
  
  You watch as Raven nods numbly, and you feel a brief stab of regret. Maybe you should've kissed her if it meant that you were to keep your previous relationship. Raven walks into her room and the door slams shut.
  
  Vitre gives you a brief judgemental glance. "What did you do to her?"
  
  You stay quiet until you are safe from being heard in your room. "She confessed to me." You try to leave it at that, but he motions for you to continue.
  
  You look away from him, "I told her that, uh, I didn't want to be distracted by her." Your usual articulate self is long gone, and replaced by a less convenient embarrassed version of yourself.
  
  Vitre shakes his head back and forth. "You should've let her down more easily. I expected more from the Chosen Hero." He says that last part because he knows it'll get to you the most. "I can't have something like this ruining the mission. You're going to have to make up with her before long, or the rest of this trip is going to be very unpleasant."
  
  You nod your assent, and he gives you one last disappointing look before he goes off to take a bath.
  
  Somehow being left alone with your thoughts is even worse than having someone chastise you. You run the situation over and over again in your head trying to find a way that you could've rejected her without having left her so dejected.
  
  Vitre comes back before you can fathom a way to do so, and you go ahead to take a bath as well. The water feels heavenly, but you don't feel as if you're really enjoying it quite as much as you could. Even before the incident today, you had quite a lot on your mind. With the addition of a sad friend on your mind, you find yourself starting to get mentally taxed. Sleep would do you good.
  
  You come back to the room minutes later to find Vitre already asleep. Asleep on the only bed in the room at that. You sigh and tell yourself that you deserve it when you sink into a very uncomfortable wooden chair. You manage to get a few winks of sleep, but you often wake up due to aches on your body from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position.
  
  You wake up again, and you automatically start to rub your back, when you see a figure begin to creep through the window. You immediately close your eyes most of the way, and hope he didn't see you moving. Luckily for you, it appears he didn't.
  
  He wears a black cloak, so you can't see who he is, but that isn't what catches your attention the most. Instead of a typical rope coming across his chest to connect the two sides of the cloak together, there is an insignia. In the dark it's hard to see, but you think it's a symbol of the sun. You think it has a reddish hue, but you don't know for sure.
  
  He walks silently and leans over the bed to stare at Vitre. You ready yourself to spring at the intruder at the first signs of aggression, but there's no need. Apparently Vitre wasn't who he was looking for. Instead the man turns his attention to you. You make sure your breathing is even as he makes his way over to you, and that your eyes are so close to being closed that it's nearly impossible to tell.
  
  He examines your face, and gives slight nod to himself. You assume that you are his target, and ready yourself for the opportunity to strike. The man pulls a dagger out of his cloak, and starts the motions to stab you.
  
  It's what you were waiting for. You twist out of the way at the last second, and his dagger lodges into the back of the chair instead. You take the opportunity to punch him in the stomach and shove him to the floor. He lets go of the knife, and you quickly pull that from the chair's back. The man recovers fairly quickly and attempts to tackle you to the ground, but the attempt only goes so far. You knee him in the face and throw him across the room. Coincidentally, that place you throw him happens to be the bed Vitre lays on.
  
  You see Vitre start to stir out of the corner of your eye. You decide that you needed this guy immobilized as soon as possible, so you follow up your throwing him with another throw. This time, however, you're throwing the guy's dagger. Your aim is true, and the dagger hits the guys upper thigh. He yells out in pain causing Vitre to wake up fully.
  
  You think of why someone would be targeting you, but then realize you have your priorities skewed. You needed to make sure that the danger was gone. You rush to the window and gaze out across the city that you can see. At first you see nothing, but a glint of silver shines in the distance and you duck down. An arrow embeds itself in the wall directly behind you.
  
  Your heart pound in your chest as you realize that you could've been dead if you hadn't been so fast. You glance to Vitre who has the first attacker subdued on the floor of the room. Whoever these people were, they obviously wanted you dead, and you doubt they'd stop after one attempt. You figure you should take them out now before they have a chance to regroup and attempt another assassination attempt.
  
  "Make sure Raven is okay!" You call out to Vitre as you vault the window sill out onto the street below. You hear what may have been Vitre telling you to wait, but you ignore that. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
  
  Another arrow whizzes pased you on the way down to the street. The fall is two stories high, but you use the momentum from gravity and roll to reduce any damage you might take from it. As fast as possible, you spring up from your roll to get behind cover.
  
  You glance from behind the wall you took cover at. Almost immediately you hear the twang of a bow, and, consequently, you move your head back behind cover. Thoughts roil in your head as you try to figure out how to get to the enemy without getting hit by an arrow. A few different ideas come into your head, but when you examine and reexamine them you are only left with two plausible ideas.
  
  You could use your blessing to speed up your reflexes in hopes that it'll allow you to dodge any arrows come at you.
  
  The other idea you have much less confidence in working. You could dash from cover to cover, and hope he doesn't hit you. You don't really like this idea, because it puts your fate into the air. Instead of relying on your reflexes, you'd simply be hoping that he'd miss.
  
  > use your blessing
  In the past years you've become fairly efficient at tricking your body into thinking it needed to be protected. That way you'd be able to use your power whenever you wanted. Now, however, you realize you do not need to trick yourself at all.
  
  You breathe in deeply, and then let that deep breath out. If anyone wa paying attention, then they might've thought an angel had appeared in the street. The mark on your back glows through your clothes and that familiar heat radiates across your shoulders. You prepare to rush the man, and at the last second pull your sword from you belt.
  
  You rush out into the alley, and head in the direction of the archer. Almost immediately an arrow flies toward your head. You twist your head out of the way, and manage to get out of the way before it can touch you. It was close, but you were still fast enough to dodge it. You feel a surge of success, but you make sure you don't allow it to go to your head as you barrel down the alleyway.
  
  Just before the next arrow flies at you, you manage to make out the outline of your second attacker. The next arrow flies toward your chest, but the feeling of protecting yourself grows even stronger. Thus you feel like the arrow is moving slower. You bring up your left hand (the hand that isn't holding the sword) up and your timing is perfect. You grab the arrow just before it hits you. Somewhere in the back of your mind you feel pain from splinters entering your hand, but that doesn't;t bother you anymore. You've given yourself into the adrenaline that comes from such a life threatening situation.
  
  You gauge the distance between you and the shadowed figure, and realize, with relief, that he wouldn't have enough time to draw another arrow before you reached him.
  
  Unfortunately, he notices this as well, and instead of bothering to fight, he runs. You continue running after him determined to find out who exactly wanted you dead this bad.
  
  The would be assassin is much faster than you expected, so even with your blessing, you're barely gaining on him. He leads you down a maze of alleys and streets until he finally makes a wrong turn an hits a dead end. You cease your running, and the man turns around with a panicked expression on his face. Time seems to slow down as you wait for him to try and dodge past you. He stays eerily still as you walk towards him, and if you didn't have your blessing activated you might not have caught the signs. The signs that you were led into a trap. The man your facing made the mistake of glancing behind you. That mistake alone might not have given it away, but you hear the light fall of a single footstep behind you.
  
  The hair on your neck stands, and you roll out of the way to dodge whatever was behind you. While your roll saved you from that initial attack, you're left on the defensive when you look behind you.
  
  Several cloaked figures stand between you and the exit of the dead end. You quickly count them up. Five. Including the archer from before, there were five more cloaked figures cornering you. All with that symbol of the red sun on their cloak. As you stand up from the roll, you see that the guy who tried to decapitate you looking suitably surprised at your reflexes.
  
  You use half a moment to examine the surroundings. The blessing helps marvelously with this. You take note of each important thing in the form of fragmented thoughts.
  
  Only one archer. Everyone else has swords. They arrived at different times. Must be why only one person attacked you a moment ago. One of the five stands alone in the back. The archer from before looks ready to draw another arrow. Take him out first...situation has changed. Don't try to disable. Go for the kill.
  
  All of these thoughts run through your mind just as that guy (whom attacked you seconds ago) steps forward for a second try. It would be his last mistake.
  
  You've always been great at fighting, even without your blessing, but with it you're pretty much unstoppable. You were even able to surpass Miss Sarrin before you graduated.
  
  So when assassin number three (Assassin number one being the one back at the tavern) decides he wants another try, you parry his thrust and slash his throat before he could understand what just happened.
  
  Assassin number two managed to string an arrow while you dealt with his friend, and is now in the process of aiming it at you. Assassin's number four and five decide that advancing at the same time might be better alternative to going at you separately. Assassin number six, oddly enough, doesn't do anything else but watch things go down. He seems to be the leader of numbers one through five.
  
  You're left with two viable options. (short of giving up that is)
  
  > Attack numbers four and five
  Your original line of thought made you want to take out the archer first, but then a brilliant idea comes to mind. You glance at the archer, and sure enough he's starting to aim at you. You're tempted to smile, but you think better of it. You don't want to tip your hand.
  
  You charge Assassins four and five, and take a brief, seemingly unnoticeable action, moment to position yourself between the archer and his friends.
  
  While surprised the Assassins react quickly enough. You slash and stab in a whirl of different tricks, and despite the fact that there are two people against you, you manage to put them on the defensive. during this, however, you use your blessing to the fullest. Your urge to protect yourself is so strong that time seems to slow down. It's certainly potent enough for your plan to work.
  
  The first step being to place yourself, and therefore assassins four and five, in the archer's line of fire. Second step is to exploit your power so much that you're reflexes will be fast enough to dodge the arrow as soon as you here the twang of the bow. After that dispatching someone one on one would be easy, then the archer would go down leaving one final person to take care of.
  
  He's the only person you're truly wary of, for when placed against a blessed one, all he does is watch. A cool confidence that you find a little disheartening. Of course, that's still only a little. There's no doubt in your mind that you'll be able take care of him.
  
  So you wait. You wait for the twang of the bow whilst attempting to break through the defense of two people at once. Not just two people at that. Two people that happened to be quite skilled with a blade. you might have been more well aware of this if you hadn't taken the other two out via surprise. Still it isn't long before you do manage to find a whole in their defenses.
  
  Your assault of attacks must have become very taxing for them, and especially for assassin number five, for the next feint you throw at him proves to be his downfall. Your fake thrust to his left side opens his right side up, and you take that opportunity to deal a lightning speed thrust straight into his heart.
  
  If you hadn't used your power to such an extent, then your sense of time may not have been so skewed. For that reason, you don't seem to realize that the archer didn't take his first opportunity to fire at you. No, he'd already seen the insane reflexes you'd exhibited prior to being cornered. He would wait for the perfect opportunity to shoot at you.
  
  Stabbing your enemy through the heart was one such opportunity. Your blessing not only gave you increased speed, but also increased strength. When slashing it didn't particularly matter, but with a stab, it's easier to use to much strength. Therefore, when you finally do hear the twang, it takes you much too long to yank the sword out of your opponents body.
  
  Even so, you manage to let go of the sword to try and dodge away. The arrow still hits you however, albeit barely missing your heart. It is a tiny success in the grand scheme of things, for assassin number four takes the opportunity to avenge his comrade. If only you had been more self aware.