From The Ashes [#NaNoWriMo16]

Chapter Six - Ryia Ivetta

                  

The first thing Ryia Ivetta did when she left home was kill someone. To be fair on herself, the old man kind of deserved it; he was a drunk and a scoundrel, one who didn't care about the fact that he had a daughter to take care of. If there was one thing Ryia hated, it was bad parents.

When she was five, Ryia was left at the Apple Blossom Home for Children, in the northern part of Rathnos. Her parents said they would be back for her, but thirteen years passed and she was still alone. Thirteen years is a long time to keep anger bottled up inside someone, but because Ryia was picked on for being 'different' at the orphanage, this made her escape much, much worse.

Over time, Ryia became heartless and cruel. Her nightmares were about her parents coming back to take her home, but her daydreams were about killing everyone in the stupid orphanage. So, on her eighteenth birthday, she decided to give herself a 'leaving home' present, because no one else remembered her special day. She ended up stealing a knife from the kitchen and killed every single person in the orphanage, except the cat. She ran out into the cold, snowy night with blood staining her hair and her hands, and she never looked back. She cut her hair so no one would find her, and snuck onto a ship that took her to Long Island; the sausage shaped island just above Rathnos. There, she lived for a few months on her own until a little organisation picked her up and offered to give her a job. Hoping to scare them away, Ryia told them what she was homeless for, but this only made them more eager to help her. It was a band of assassins that were going downhill fast, and since Ryia knew she was good at killing people, she decided on joining them. If it paid for her food and clothes, then why not?

She was dressed all in black, with a pair of tall black boots to finish her 'uniform'. She had a red cloth tied around the bottom half of her face, in case anyone saw her, but no one had. She was the best in the business; literally. They called her the Red Spirit. Many people thought she was a spirit, because no one ever saw her come and no one ever saw her leave. Honestly, they were a bunch of idiots, but she didn't mind. The Red Spirit had a cool ring to it. Made her sound badass.

Immediately after killing her target, Ryia headed back home to collect her payment. She wasn't one to linger around, waiting to see if she'd done the job right. She was trained well; she knew when she killed someone. And she never showed mercy; not once was Ryia given a contract that she didn't end up completing. She always, always did her job right, and she was paid well for it, too.

She skipped down the alleyways of Targanon – the small, cramped city she lived in – with her footsteps quieter than a mouse. One of her lucky black daggers hung in its sheath around her right thigh and the other in its sheath in her right boot. She didn't have to worry about being seen; she had extremely good senses. If she was still or quiet, she had the ability to detect shifts in the air. She didn't know how she did it, but it was something she always knew how to do. It was what made her the person she was; if she couldn't do this, she wouldn't be half the assassin she was now.

As she came to the entrance to her home, she knelt down and tapped three times on the metal sewer manhole in the ground, and then another three times in a synchronised pattern. She waited until she heard a low rumbling sound, and the lid to the manhole popped open. Testing the air once more before she moved, Ryia slipped into the sewer with ease, landing with a thud on solid ground.

"How'd you go?" a familiar voice asked as she turned. Ryia sighed, pulling the cloth on her mouth down around her neck as she faced her best friend.

"Great," she murmured. "Slit his throat. He was ready to screw me when I came in; thought I was his mistress or something. What a funny man."

"That's good and everything, but Mercer wants to see you," Collin continued, raising an eyebrow at Ryia. His black hair was tied in a pony above his head, with the rest of his hair around it shaven off. His skin was a deep tan, and his eyes were a deep brown, always reflecting the love he had for killing. That was why he and Ryia were best friends.