What makes the perfect assassin? When I asked Bea from Team 52, she said "It's poison, Sieg. Poisonous concoctions, and poisonous words are all you'll ever need to kill someone. Now leave my room." She's deranged however, that evil little minx. She's thoroughly obsessed with her brews that I often wonder if it's really just poison she's making in that lair of hers. I wouldn't trust her judgement.
Steve from team 35 said "It's stealth, Sieg.", then promptly shut the door. Which is a valid answer, don't get me wrong, but he's very unimaginative that one. Everyone and their mother practiced the art of being unseen in this place. I meant that literally. We have been born and bred as assassins for so many generations that we haven't known anything aside from being the killers we were.
If you asked our masters however, well, they wouldn't answer. Instead they'll punish you for even questioning them. Most likely through lashes dipped in venom for maximum pain. No, they wouldn't answer you, but I know what they thought.
Loyalty is what makes the perfect assassin. The ability to kill when commanded to. To not ask questions, and blindly follow the master's bidding. It did not matter how good at killing you were. If you couldn't follow orders, then you're a liability to the secrets of the House.
It's the reason we were born and bred. We were indoctrinated from birth. We were taught that following orders was simply the way of life. Anyone who thought otherwise was quickly weeded out and removed. Multiple generations later, through continuous selective breeding, only the docile ones remained. The best slave after all, is one who thinks he is free.
It's not all bad however. The same selective breeding made us stronger, faster, and more attractive than normal. That last one is more for the ladies than us boys. Honeypot trapping and all that good stuff.
And it worked for hundreds of years. The House became an unknown, but fearsome force for the Empire. Eliminating its enemies. Ending key figures' lives before they even got the chance to be a threat to their conquest.
And it would've continued to work for many more generations, our genes becoming more and more inclined to being subservient to our masters like the dogs we were, if not for me.
You see I experienced this little thing called reincarnation. My life as a boring accountant from earth just.. ended, then boom, I'm being pushed out of my new mother's womb.
It's quite the experience, I gotta tell you. It took a couple of years for me to gather my bearings and understand what the hell was going on. And when I finally did, I was thrown into this brutal training program that made me want to crawl back up my mother's loving placenta.
When I say brutal, I meant really brutal. When the masters said something, you did it, no hesitation. Hesitation meant lashes. Lashes meant wounds, but wounds did not mean rest. They broke you just enough to feel excruciating pain, but not enough to stop you from working and training.
In time however, I still got used to this tortuous lifestyle. The human mind is adaptable like that. No, what really broke me was that I could never seem to make any connections with my fellow trainees. They were like robots, only able to follow instructions. I could not blame them for it, since it was all they've known their whole lives. They were not cursed with the knowledge that out there, is a life of freedom, good food, and not being forced to murder. I was a sane person in an insane world.
So after 19 years of this life, I decided I had enough. There was no escape from the House. Believe me, I've tried. All it rewarded me with was broken bones, and an ear cut off. I got off lightly. I knew that if I showed further rebellious activities, I was going to get disposed of.
I wasn't really intimidated by the threat, and to be honest I was tired of it all. I was already considering the sweet release of death myself anyway these days. It's not as scary anymore since this is my second life, but I didn't want to go out just like that.
If I was going to die anyways, I wanted to go out with a bang, literally. I wanted revenge against the House in the form of a bomb. The bigger, the better. Now there was some gunpowder we had stored in there somewhere, and if I simply wanted to cause a bit of mayhem before I inevitably perished, I would've been satisfied with it. No, I wanted something better. Something that will annihilate every trace of this hope-forsaken place from the surface of the earth. And I think I just got the thing.
Adamantine. An extremely heavy and dense metal only sought out by genetic freaks strong enough to wield it. Other than that, the only other reason one will deign to use Adamantine is its high magical potential, since it's not very tough on its own without enchantments, and even corrodes quite easily.
Oh yes, magical potential. For all the gloom and doom it was, this world at least had real magic. It was what allowed us to go beyond human limitations, hide in the shadows and subtly mind control people. We were taught the practical uses of it from our youth, and is honestly one of the reasons I actually managed to convince myself to stay alive up to this point, since it was just so wonderful to use the mystical arts.
We were taught the essentials for our "work" but were allowed to specialize over time. Bea for example had focused on poison, and she has managed to imbue her concoctions in her body, and can secrete it at will. Most people in the House however weren't so creative, and stuck to the ones taught by the masters.
I myself specialized in vibrations. Very exciting, I know. When I first discovered magic, I tried creating fireballs, summoning creatures, and flying, among other things, to limited success. Vibrations are what simply came the most naturally to me through all that experimentation. It has allowed me to give a bit of oomph in my attacks. Nothing like a normal looking punch destroying internal organs by reverberating vibrations through it. It is also what my plan on this super bomb I'm trying to create hinges on.
This plan of mine is how I ended up in my current situation, locked in the forging room, with 21 dead bodies bleeding out on the floor, and me, hammer in hand, hitting and vibrating this hunk of Adamantine. I could hear the others shouting and trying to break in already.
My theory is this. Adamantine is a heavy metal similar to Uranium and Plutonium. And just like those two heavy metals, if their atoms split, it goes boom. A really big boom at that. Hopefully enough to remove all traces of this place. I planned to vibrate the metal enough to cause the atoms to split and undergo nuclear fission.
Yes, I know, I'm pulling a lot of this out of my ass and most of it is just guesswork really. It's not even necessary at this point. I have already killed seven masters, dozens and dozens of my fellow trainees, and burned a couple of important buildings. I had my fill of revenge. Yes, there's still a huge amount of them outside, trying to get in, but I didn't really care. Right now, I'm focusing on hammering away at this piece of adamantine. I don't think I'm even close to causing a nuclear reaction, and I'm mostly just experimenting, and that's when another essential part of my plan is about to start.
I didn't randomly choose this day to go on a rampage. I would've done this suicidal stunt of mine months ago if it weren't for a phenomena scheduled to happen on this very day. Today, a solar eclipse is about to happen. It is an auspicious sign both religiously and magically for the House, and most likely the rest of the world too. During phenomena like this, when the heavenly bodies get involved, the magical levels of the surroundings dramatically increase, allowing specific spells and rituals to happen only during this short period of time.
The masters have been planning a ritual for this very day, which is why I knew it was coming in the first place. What they didn't know was that I was planning a ritual of my own, which involves a blood filled room of 21 dead magic users I am currently in. With the eclipse, and their bodies as sacrifice for the ritual, I planned to give my vibrations quite a jump in power, and most importantly, control.
Thus far, the only thing I managed to accomplish was deform the metal. The eclipse better come soon because I can feel through my vibrations that the others are about to break in the room's defenses.
As if answering my plea, the rock floating in space called the Moon, began to block out the Sunlight. I have experienced a couple of solar eclipses both during this life and my previous one. In both of them, the phenomena has always been quite freaky. The sun has always been in a constant cycle, and to experience it being removed from that cycle suddenly is uncanny, just like what is happening now.
The eclipse only happens for a short while, and for the first few minutes, the world's colors begin to mimic a sunset. The animals are tricked into thinking that the day is ending. The cattle start their trek home, and the crickets begin to sing. Even the air itself starts to chill. You don't realize how much control the sun has over the environment until it's gone.
*Thump, thump*. My hammer hitting the magical metal creates a dull sound. With each hit, I attempt to control the vibrations generated from the hit even deeper. While the ritual can provide more destructive elements to my vibrations, what I needed now was a bit more finesse. Control over power.
The moon is about to completely cover the sun. In this world, the moon is a bit bigger than the sun when compared with each other in the sky. *Thump, thump, thump*. I continue hammering away. The magic in the surroundings continues to escalate to unnatural levels. My ritual with 21 sacrificial magic users around empower me and my abilities using that same mystical energies in the air.
The feeling was extraordinary. The high I am experiencing right now was only overshadowed by the delight I'm getting from finally exacting revenge. That it's the lifeblood of the Masters, the House itself I'm using to empower my abilities.
*Thump, thump*. With each hit, I improve. The vibrations I generated disrupted the Adamantine almost molecularly. But it's not enough, I need to go deeper. Suddenly, a scratchy voice sounded out.
"Siegmund! I will cast your body into the depths of the chambers when I get to you! You are not the first to attempt your little stunt in the many years of the House, nor will you be the last! I will make sure that your final days are nothing but being nibbled on by rats!"
Ooh, someone's getting angry. I shouted back. "Don't you worry about that Eugene you fat fuck! When I'm done here, there will be nothing left of me, you, and the entire House!" I could hear more angry shouting, but I put my focus on the metal. It's concerning however, that the others have nearly broken in.
In that moment, right as they broke down the door, the moon covered the sun completely in an almost poetic manner. Day turned into night, and the magic around me rose explosively. My body was actually overheating from the energies flowing through me, and was starting to fall apart. I did not care.
Everything slowed down. The ritual provided me the awareness to focus on every little bit of detail. From Eugene's sweat pouring out of his face as he broke through the door, to Bea's sadistic smile right behind him.
I looked at the Adamantine, and saw in detail the dust covering it, and I saw the microorganisms living on its surface. It was not enough. Through my vibrations, I mapped the insides of the metal. I saw its molecules, and went even deeper. I went atomic. My hammer hit, this time with the intent of splitting those atoms, and the world was bathed in fire.
The same hyperfocus I was experiencing allowed me to view the chain reaction of atoms splitting, bursting, and then splitting the other atoms in their vicinity, crescendoing into an awe inspiring nuclear explosion. My hand was the first to go, burning from the heat. As I watched in slow motion the destruction my creation wrought, I thought about a lot of things.
You see I never really thought this plan of mine would actually succeed. In fact I already had plan B in place in case Plan A did not work out. The forge was lined with gunpowder I stole and all it would take was a bit of fire and then everything near me would get blown to pieces. It would be nowhere near an atom bomb in size, but I would still be satisfied. I guess that plan won't be needed anymore.
There were so many things that could've gone wrong with the plan since I was operating under a lot of assumptions. Maybe Adamantine wasn't like Uranium, maybe the Eclipse wasn't going to happen, maybe the ritual wouldn't even provide me the control required to accomplish this. But here we are, nuclear fission happening right before my eyes. If some god claimed they helped in making this moment possible, I wouldn't argue with them.
My eyes were the second to go. The intense light being generated burned off my vision. I couldn't see anymore, but I felt through my vibrations what happened next. My arm, then my torso, and then my whole body. I think I saw Eugene's grotesque face being destroyed, but it might've been just my imagination.
And just like that, the House and even the Empire, with more than six hundred years of history, was wiped out from existence with a bomb from another world.