Patience
Silence
Death

These three concepts filled the air around the Deacon as he walked through the empty streets of Venice. His clawed right arm was glowing gold in the moonlight, while his blood-red hooded robes flowed in the slight breeze and his black boots splashed in the fresh rain puddles. The man stopped in a deserted street, staring at the Greek Thespian on the other side with cold, calculating eyes and a scowl on his face, before drawing his longsword. The woman was wearing a white Grecian toga that covered both shoulders with a long scarf flowing down her left shoulder, and slits on the long skirt she wore with a golden sash on her waist. In response, the Thespian glared and drew her dagger, her three golden bracelets clinking together, and both of them stood there before dashing forth at incredible speeds.
*CLANG* The sound of steel hitting steel rang throughout the street as the Deacon’s horizontal slash was block by the Thespian’s vertical swing, and the two struggled for dominance in the stalemate.
“Submit.” said the Deacon as he pushed harder in an attempt to overwhelm his opponent.
“Never.” The Thespian tried to regain the “footing” she had lost already, but it was all for naught, and she recognized this. Jumping back, she charged forward and attempted to slash the Deacon’s throat, but was blocked by that strange golden right arm of his. The Deacon smirked and pushed away her dagger holding left arm and swung his cruciform longsword with his left hand, nicking the Thespian’s stomach with a somewhat shallow cut. The woman tried to gain space to assess the damage, but the Deacon charged and stabbed forward, only to be redirected to the side where he nicked the Thespian’s side, before he jumped back and landed with his cruciform sword pointed to the ground on his left side.
The Deacon sighed. “Gabriella, we both know you won’t leave here alive if you continue to fight me.” He held out his golden hand. “Come with me. Together, we can stop the fight between the murderers and the corrupted! We can start a new faction! One where the items we collect will be destroyed so the whole world will be free of the seductive power they possess! Join me in my quest of liberation, and we shall save all the people so that God’s plan may actually be realized!”
The Thespian, Gabriella, didn’t move forward or backward as she contemplated the pros and cons of her two choices. “What of that arm of yours? Will you destroy that too?” she asked. “You claim that we will be destroying the artifacts of the FIrst Civilization. Will you do such a thing to yourself?”
“If there is a way, I do not know of it,” said the Deacon while glaring at the clawed arm of gold as he held it in front of his face. “This thing is nothing but a curse that has robbed me of all that I have known and loved. The day the Good Lord dropped it into my house was the day that everything went wrong.” he said angrily “I thought it was a blessing, because I had lost my original arm to an assassin, Ezio Auditore de Firenze. But as soon as I held it up to my shoulder to see if it would fit, it latched onto me with tendrils of fire, searing into my skin and causing great pain.” A lone tear fell from his eye. “I tried to hide it from the other Templars, but they found out and tried to kill me, even though none of us knew what it did.” He held out his arm, palm up, and a large blue flame sprouted to life inches from the golden item. “It whispers to me. It calls me ‘beloved’ in my mind.” He closed his hand into a fist, extinguishing the blue fire. “It tells me that I am the only one worthy of the artifacts, but I don’t believe it. It must be a lie. It must!”
Gabriella’s eyes narrowed. This wasn’t what they had told her. “And how do I know this is not a lie? How do I know that you have not been corrupted like the others? How can I be expected to follow you when that arm of yours is an artifact?”
“Is that your final decision?” Seeing her nod, the Deacon sighed again before raising his cruciform sword.
“I am sorry Nikolai,” said Gabriella as she flipped her dagger into a reverse grip and bent her arm in front of her.
“As am I.” Nikolai charged forward once more and swung his silver sword, only to miss as Gabriella jumped back a little. Gabriella thrusted her dagger forward, but it was grabbed by the golden arm, and she used her right arm to launch five throwing-knives from her left shoulder-holster to make him release it. Nikolai rolled to the side and, when he stopped rolling, brought his sword up to block the downward slash that she attempted. He then closed the golden arm into a fist, which caused it to become ablaze with flame, and thrust it toward her stomach, forcing Gabriella to jump back again.
Both of them stood there, panting from the adrenaline coursing through their veins, before Nikolai relaxed and stood straight up. “I am tired,” he said while lowering his sword to his side so it pointed to the ground. “I am tired of running after two years, and this is getting neither of us anywhere. Please, my friend! Come with me, and we can start a new order!One of peace, where no one must die just because of corruption or jealousy, or because someone else deems it right!” Nikolai stabbed his sword into the ground and held out his normal hand. “Please.” he said with a pleading expression.
The Thespian was conflicted. She had always been taught that to go against the Templars was to go against God. But if she chose the Templars, she would have to kill her only friend. It took her thirty seconds, but she decided on what to do.

Nikolai smiled as he and Gabriella ran across the rooftops. He now had his first Liberator, and he knew things would only get better from there.