Wind was blowing above Astera’s rooftops and a few clouds hung scattered across the night sky. April’s weather was moody in countries like Fiore–chilly after sunset, but bright and warm throughout the day. It was quiet now; the port city had gone to sleep and fog crept through the streets and alleyways, slowly climbing up the walls and once the lanterns turned off, it became hard to see the road ahead of you. From almost any point of Astera, you could hear the sound of the ocean waves crashing up against the pier, but other than that there was barely a sound to be heard.
The birds no longer sung and an eerie silence had swept over the coastal city. In the dark of the night there was one person however, who was still awake, out and about. Nuala Nazari had travelled to Astera with less than pure intentions, but the job could wait for another day.
The Voidling was feeling all sorts of things today; a little sad, a little angry and most certainly also a little drunk. She had grown so very tired of Astera within the past year, so much that she decided to abandon this place for a few months–just to see how it would make her feel. In the end, she returned with more regrets and mixed feelings in her heart than she had left with and needless to say, the woman was tired of all of it. What happened with the Captain was awkward (to say the least!) and she wanted those thoughts and memories out of her head for good, but of course it wasn’t that simple.
Nuala rarely longed for something or someone; rejection, on the other hand, was a feeling she was rather familiar with and to experience that sort of emotion from someone so close to her hurt. It hurt and it made her turn away from him, in spite of their friendship and how close they’d grown over the past year. All of it reminded her of why she had chosen solitude for an entire human lifetime–because she couldn’t afford to be this fragile.
Not in a world this cruel.
And so she let it go. All of it. For months now, Nuala had thrown herself into work, into guild politics, conquests and god knows what else, because it was the only way to get her mind off things. To remind herself who she really was, and what she was made for.
With new weapons added to her kit, Nuala felt confident in taking on hit jobs again, which was precisely the reason as to why she had returned to Astera at all. Assassins were a rare breed and Nuala’s skill set just so happened to be perfect for that line of work–and she wouldn’t let all of that go to waste just to appease some man and his self-righteous sense of justice. And so Nuala was throwing her daggers around while performing all sorts of acrobatics on housetops, jumping from roof to roof to practice her balance and her aim. Every now and then she would even throw dagger at every seagull crossing the sky, to the point where a collection of dead birds with stab wounds could be found within the streets beneath her feet. Perhaps that's why they weren't singing anymore.
Good, she thought to herself. She was improving.