Silverfang

Her will was her blade.
Long ago, her name was feared as far as the whispers could travel. Once set, no target was safe from death’s cold kiss at the touch of her steel. Silverfang, that was what they called her, for the last thing one would see before their life ended would be the gleam of her blade, or perhaps the silver fang necklace she kept as a keepsake. She cared naught for the treasures and for the fame she attained from her kills, functioning simply as a brutal, but effective assassin. What she lived for was to see the chaos her work generated, the fear and unrest that rippled through the lands when the news spread that so-and-so had met an unfortunate end.

However, even the best eventually meet their end.
Pain. Blood. Steel.
Her doom came at the hands of another assassin, another nightstalker like herself. No one should have been able to trace her movements, no one should have seen her leaving the target’s home, and yet someone had. That someone had ripped right through her defenses and attacked from behind, all she had caught a glimpse of were gleaming eyes before strong claws seized her by the throat and ripped a bloody gash through both flesh and scales. Dark crimson burst forth and stained the ground, ragged wheezing filled the air while her limbs flailed in panic, she was drowning in her own blood and they knew it. Claw, grasp, scratch as she might to cling to life, death was inevitable.

For a few moments before her death, she could’ve sworn she had heard mocking laughter, before it went dark.

Her reawakening left much to be desired.
The higher deities treated her with contempt, but she could smell the fear oozing from them, the distrust they held for her status and her acts in the mortal realm. They did not openly mock her, but neither did they welcome her with warmth. You serve us now, they told her, you kill on our command and at no one else’s.

So be it. If it was some ploy at crushing her pride, it was a pitiful one. All she cared for was for the death cries of her victims, for the blood that stained her silver blade.
This mission had been much like the others. Another hapless victim, a clean slice of her blade and a step back before the blood spatter could hit her. Nothing less was expected from a killer of her caliber.

At first Silverfang hadn’t seen him at all. It was only the briefest flicker of movement that had caught her keen gaze at first.

An intruder, her mind hissed, a forceful leap took her to him in an instant. A jarring thump as their bodies hit the floor, the bloodstained dagger she wielded was now firmly pressed into his throat - if he so much as twitched she would slaughter him. How he'd remained undetected before was what unsettled her, when was the last time her heat had pounded this furiously with something akin to fear? A threat, yet he looked so disarmingly calm that it almost infuriated her.

"Last words, have any?"

“O-Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to witness you...or interrupt.” His gaze flickered to the bloodied corpse several feet away, before returning to her. “I just couldn’t quite help myself. The way you slid in, wielded your blade and stole his life so quickly, before he even saw you...it was hypnotizing. I didn’t mean to watch, really, but I guess if I was a witness, you’d kill me, right? That’s what Silverfang does, so I’ve heard.” His arms raised in surrender, yet she could not bring herself to simply strike him down where he stood. Not everyone saw what she did as something to be admired, and certainly not everyone simply offered to let her kill them. Neither did he seem to be the slightest bit in shock or fearful of his life being ended. In her years of killing, she had seen many of her victims play coy with false bravado, but the eyes never lied: she could see it, even smell it wafting off their bodies.

Yet this one...displayed no such signs.

Perplexed, Silverfang studied him for several long moments, weighing the decision placed in her claws. This one was not like the others, she concluded, and for that reason she would let him live. Besides, he was not her acquired target. Though, leaving him here and alive would be problematic if he betrayed her…

“...you’re coming with me alive. Your death was not part of my contract, and I see no use in creating another corpse for them to find. Come.”

Like a puppy he sprang to her side, though Silverfang warned him off to a more respectable distance with a hiss. Bring him back alive and see what he could be useful for, she mused, and wouldn’t it be fun to see the looks on their faces when they realised she’d defied their orders and brought back a witness? Killing witnesses had not been explicitly stated as a must, and so if they questioned it, why, that was their own fault for leaving a loophole.

He stayed with her for longer than most would expect. Silverfang had never usually been one for company, but it was intriguing to listen to him ramble about the grace with which she carried herself, the way her blade shone just before it was plunged into the next victim. A strange spirit, he was, but so long as he meant her no harm, she would not question it. It felt immensely gratifying to have someone commend her life’s work, after all, not to mention that he was the only one who didn’t seem the slightest bit terrified at what she did.

It was...a refreshing change.

What astonished her more was how easily he seemed to blend into the darkness. When he had insisted on accompanying her on assassinations, that had caused quite the stir. He would only get in the way, or be killed, it was utter foolishness, and yet still he pleaded to go with her. All he wished was to witness her death dance, a song of silence and blood. Seeing as it was more trouble than it was worth to disagree, and assuming he would give up halfway, Silverfang reluctantly allowed it. Aside from getting to watch her at work, it seemed he didn’t want much else. He was good enough at staying out of sight to keep himself safe, and if he died, so be it. Life was like that.

Yet he was not like the others. In the face of cold-blooded murder, where most would be horror-stricken, perhaps revolted, he was jubilant and reverent, as if the act of delivering death was a sacred ritual. Once, she had glanced over at him as she withdrew her blade, only to find him stunned into silence, with the most awestruck expression she had ever seen - on someone who was a live witness to a kill, anyway. Later, she found him scribbling frantically into a leatherbound journal, where each of her kills had been detailed in ink on the parchment, all written in various forms of poem and prose. His writing had an elegant flair to it that she appreciated, and so she let him continue.

Perhaps it was loneliness, or perhaps an urge to share conversation with someone else who viewed death not for the agony it brought, but each for what they saw it as: a way to shake the world’s foundation with chaos, as well as something morbidly entrancing to be honored. The world may have once feared and hated her for the lives she had stolen, but here at last was someone who understood her motives, her passions, and accepted them for what they were.

Oddly enough, Silverfang had never once caught his name. Not once had she thought to ask it of him, she had always addressed him as “you”, seeing as how he was almost always nearby. Her partner - since when had she come to think of him as one?- glanced up from his little journal with his feather quill in his claws, gracing her with a serene smile when he found her standing beside him at his little desk in his own room.

“I never knew your name, yet you knew mine when we met. Not everyone would have just offered their life to me, either. Who are you?”

A pause. Not once had he ever shown hesitance in any of her questions, not that she had asked him many throughout the course of their time together. She cared not for history.

“I knew who you were before our ‘first meeting’. You’d never known me, but I knew you long ago.”

“...long ago, as in before our reincarnation here?”

“Yes. You see, you never knew who I was, because you barely saw me at all that night. I don’t blame you, you’ve seen how good I am at keeping hidden.”

“What night…?”

“The night you died, of course. Someone killed you, did they not?”

In her mind’s eye, those fatal events had begun replaying. The darkness of the night, the sudden flash of agonizing pain, her lifeblood spilling from her body, and the sudden haunting image of a pair of eyes that seemed to bore into her very skull. A certain pair of familiar eyes that just so happened to match the ones she was staring at this very moment.

“You.”

“Yes, me. I thought it was only fair to let you have my life in exchange the second time we met in this world.”

It was all clearer now. Her horror at being caught unawares, her regret at dying alone in a most inglorious manner...over the years they had faded away, replaced with simple acceptance. It was just a matter of the better killer winning: if he had managed to kill her, it had been her mistake for letting him do so. Not once had Silverfang thought to question him on his past nor his name, and yet even after discovering he had been her downfall, she bore no grudge towards him. His company was something she had grown used to over time, and she would be hard-pressed to admit she hadn’t developed a soft spot for him.

“You never told me your name.”

“I...am Silence.”

Silverfang stifled an amused snort at that, though she was quick to turn serious once more. How fitting, that wherever she went, Silence would follow in her wake, both literally and metaphorically. Their relationship was admittedly not the most openly affectionate one, but they simply seemed to click with one another in a way that proved beneficial in providing some relief from the boring tedium of an otherwise uneventful life of killing.

After all, when the silver fang brings death, only silence is left to tell the tale.