A night breeze billows across the street, picking up loose bits of rubbish; newspapers, bits of plastic wrapping and scraps of cardboard. The dust and dirt and rubbish is carried across the way, before settling in an alleyway where a homeless man, his beard scraggy and unkempt stirs in his sleep beneath his patchy and ragged blanket. The cawing of seagulls can be heard coming from the docks just down the way, and the sound of late night working can be heard alongside the other usual nighttime sounds; hawkers crying their wares, music coming from open and smashed pub windows, whistles from policemen chasing down felons, the clatter of feet on cobbles as people attempt to escape muggers and the silent screams they turn into. The sound of New Orleans.
This isn't the high end of town, obviously; it's the seedy underbelly, the working areas where the labourers and the poor work and live, away from the people they might infect with their crude ways, at least that's how the upper classes would consider it. The United States of America is filled with hypocrisy like that; land of the free? A fallacy, a fevered dream of a collection of deluded fools with power. America, where you can be enslaved for having the wrong tone of skin. America, where your wealth dictates your standing in life. America, where the Labourers work and sacrifice daily to make a living and the rich cruise life on their inheritance. America, the Land of the Free. No place like it.
A figure walks down the street, cloak eerily still in the cool breeze, a figure that appears cloaked in the darkness itself. The casual observer would not be able to tell where the shadows gave way to the man...a philosopher would say that they never did.
The man is tall, and has his hood over his head, completely obscuring it from view, save for a single scarf-like trail of material leading from his hood down the front of his cloak. Two figures, similarly cloaked but a little shorter, trail him, hoods obscuring their features as well. Footpads and cutthroats alike steer clear of the trio; the group exudes an aura of darkness and danger, and even the most desperate urchin finds himself paralyzed with the growing sense of dread as they walk past.
A group of four urchins, however, manage to overcome the warning of danger. They haven't eaten in two weeks, and they are hungry. All they know is that someone so richly dressed must have coin on them...any risk is worth a meal after two weeks of eating rats, boots, piss and shit. The leader takes a step forwards, followed by the rest of the group, almost revealing themselves into the lantern light of the street, when the leader stops short, staggers and falls to his knees. The others give a start, save one, who jerks and collapses to the floor at the same time as the leader.
The other two look at each other nervously when something sprouts from the chest of one of them; a dagger. The youths eyes glaze over, and something pushes him from the daggers blade. The second youth takes a step backwards, but it is already too late. He feels something slide across his neck, dampness, then the ground is coming to meet him and everything goes black.
A single shadow shifts in the alleys, and the lead figure glances over at it.
Another band of Urchins seeking to make me their newest victim, Nergal thinks to himself. That makes three bands in the last hour...still. No one is going to miss a few gangs of parentless, homeless ruffians from the docks, and the taste of the defiance in their Essence is sweet.
Durge materializes beside him seemingly from nowhere, but Nergal doesn't so much as flinch. The man has a tendency to do that. Durge says nothing, and neither does Nergal; they both know what Durge has done, and neither feel sorry or repentant. It was done, simple as. "The Angel of Death" they call him, the best assassin in New Orleans and probably the entire western hemisphere. Nergal raised him from a baby for that specific purpose. Durge never says anything, and only he and Nergal know his real name. Everyone else calls him by his nickname, his title, and it is fitting. No thoughts, no feelings...just the desire to kill. The perfect killer. Stealthy, skilled and ruthless, without regrets or doubts. Nergals masterpiece.
They turn a corner, the group of four, Nergal and his two companions in their cloaks and Durge in his normal assassin gear. No one else troubles them, and they come to their destination soon after; a run-down pub, a scumhole where no self-respecting man would be caught dead or alive, an establishment full of cheap booze, troublemaking men and cheap and ugly whores. The last place anyone would look for a secret meeting of some of the most powerful people in the world...and that makes it the perfect place for such a meeting. Opening the door, he steps inside.