Part I

Jahlen's eyes were alive, watching everything. Dranec had told him this was the place. A dark mist shrouded alley with a cobbled path squeezed between two rows of towering, brooding buildings. A row of braziers flickered and danced with orange light on the walls and cast an indistinct shadow of his person upon the uneasy cobbles. One of the rows of houses stopped short of its parallel neighbours,  a river ran beyond them gloomy-green, silent and murky. He was in a dark place, he knew.

Jahlen was a tall, graceful man with busy eyes. Clad in dark attire that did nothing to define his slim sinewy figure, upon his belt hung two blades, on the right he lay his fingers, caressing the hilt. A dirk with a curved blade its handle inlaid with leather and bone, with a single dark red ruby on the pommel, his other was a short sword of un-noteworthy plainness.  'Relieve him of his life and you will have it'.

Waiting in the cold, his breath formed a torrent of silver steam as it left his lips. Nothing moved, and it was cold, Unnaturally so, it was infant autumn.

The darkness before him shifted, as if it parted to reveal a slightly less shrouded shape. The figures face was covered enough to omit its features from plain sight. A thick woollen hood of notable blackness covered his profile joined with a cloak of the same colour which seemed to cover his whole body.  The man was taller than Jahlen, with thick shoulders and an imposing physique, or at least what he could see despite the cloak.  He shifted his feet.

The figure stepped an inch closer, raised his bare hands to the brazier and warmed them.

"Cold, isn't it?".

Jahlen gave no answer, but his eyes did, they met the movement almost as if they and the figure were one. The wind sprung through the alley, fluttered the figures cloak, It purged the air of some mist, clarity, for an instant, and then the grey-gloom returned.  The man raised his hands, and brushed back his hood. Revealing a gaunt, white face, a small nose and small black eyes. His complexion suggested he had just climbed from his grave, white as snow. 

Jahlen moved a hand onto each blade.

"Careful, brother."  The man offered, with a deep tone.

Jahlen stood, unmoving.

"How far are you wanting to go ,brother? I can show you death, and not just yours."

The alley shifted in the flickering orange glow of the braziers, the light was playing tricks.