Work Text:
“Well that could have gone better.”
The mission was an unmitigated disaster. He had failed to acquire the artifact for Al Mualim and had been blocked from both his Brothers and the Templars. How was he to know that despite the Templar's tiny songbird-like daemon Robert de Sable would actually put up a fight?
“If you can think of how it could have gone worse, please tell,” Altaïr growled at the eagle gliding above him as he searched for an alternate entrance to the Solomon’s Temple.
Isra sniffed disdainfully and soared ahead, around the corner of the ruins. He scowled at her retreat; this situation was as much her fault as his. The next moment he was forced to cling to the crumbling stones as he felt a wave of despair crash through their bond. Altaïr sprinted to where he felt her presence.
He leapt over a fallen column and froze, catching sight of his daemon. She was perched delicately in the sand, one wing spread over the flank of the greyhound that lay before her. Altaïr felt bile clawing at the back of his throat.
All assassins go through a ritual at their coming of age, which allows them to separate from their daemons over long distances. Because of the terrain underneath the temple, it had been decided that Nasim, Kadar’s daemon, would stay outside the entrance and warn them if another took the same path.
Now she lay on her side whining piteously, her fawn flank quivering. She was already starting to dissolve into Dust.
Her voice was weak as she gasped “…Malik? Arwa? Akh? Please… Kadar…Kadar….”
“It’s alright, I’m here. All is well,” Isra crooned, modulating her voice to mimic the throaty rasp of Malik’s fierce eyed owl daemon. Her wing stroked the greyhound, dark feathers brushing gently at the short fur, aiming to soothe and ease. They had seen Malik and Arwa comfort Kadar and Nasim for years, and Isra mimicked the motions now. Nasim’s tongue lolled in imagined recognition, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Safety and peace, Brother,” Altaïr breathed as the greyhound dissolved in a shower of shimmering gold.
Altaïr whispered a prayer as he knelt on the sand Nasim had occupied. With a slow exhale, he rose from the ground and turned to where they had hidden the horses. Isra leapt into the air and circled high above, her call lost in the desert wind.
As he rode away from the temple ruins, he mourned the one man he called friend, even if the sentiment had never been returned. For Altaïr knew the only way the Templars could have killed Kadar was over the dead body of his older brother.