The man, armed with only a small dagger, ran through the thin alley that separated the Wall from the beginning of the slums. He darted in and out of the shadows before finally jumping onto the patched roof of one of the dilapidated hovels. Picking up speed, he launched himself straight up at the Wall and scaled it in less than a minute.
This was no small feat. The Wall had been built to separate the poor from the proper citizens of the kingdom and was almost seventy feet tall, yet he had scaled it in a single try.
The guards barely had time to react to the shadow of the man crossing over the threshold that they had put their faith into as a protector of their relaxed peace from the trash of the slums. He was on them before any of them could even draw their swords, slashing left and right and killing as many of the guards as he could while they struggled to defend themselves. The dagger itself seemed to hum with each strike, as if enjoying the violence.
Soon, there was only one guard left. His name was Laurence Walker and he had been one of first guards to encounter the man but had somehow managed to avoid any and all blows of the dagger by immediately tripping and face-planting into the earth. It was also his second day as a guard after five years at the academy. Scared and unable to convince himself to get back up and fight like the man he was supposed to be, he had stayed face-down and struggled to breath around the dirt, trying not to listen to the sounds of his fellow guards as they died. All he could do was hope and pray for a miracle.
The reason that there was almost no hope of the massacre being heard or anybody coming to save them was that theirs was the only guardhouse that was separated from the rest of the population inside the wall. It was a small place that focused more on stopping criminals who tried to escape to the slums rather than keeping the people from the slums from coming in. After all, there was a seventy foot wall stopping the commoners. Therefore, it was smaller, had less people, and was further from the town.
And then it was over. It was silent. There was no moaning or cries of pain. The man had silenced them all. It was a cruel and absolute silence.
Laurence focused in on the silence, trying to see if he could identify what the man was doing or if he had gone. He waited for what seemed like hours and, satisfied with the silence, began to slowly pick himself up and look right up at the figure of the man that had just murdered more than ten guards in minutes. Shocked, all Laurence could do was stare.
The man was draped in a shimmering cloak, his face hidden by a dark cowl. Strange markings ran down the exposed arm whose hand curled around the dagger. It was a short dagger with a small inlaid jewel at the top of the hilt. The steel of the blade glistened with the blood of the guards whose throats it had just slit only a few moments ago, the bright red of a quick death. Somehow, the man himself didn't seem to have a single drop of blood on him.
Laurence sat there, stock still, waiting for the man to quickly dispatch him like he had done the others. Instead, the man didn't move, looking down at Laurence through the cover of the cowl. He then knelt in front of Laurence and stabbed the dagger into the dirt in front of him. Laurence flinched.
Laurence couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't move. He could only stare in pure shock and horror as the man threw back his cowl to reveal a hideously twisted face covered in markings.
Then the man uttered two simple words.
"Help me."