Once upon a time there was an Assassin.

Wait, I am getting ahead of myself. When he was but a child, he had no idea that he was an Assassin.

Once upon a time there was a child.

He was not like other children. He led a life of privilege, prestige and opulence. He wanted for nothing and he was the pride of his mother and father.

As he grew, his parents realized he was not like other children.

He was very handsome, intelligent and talented.

He was the perfect child with a perfect life.

Or at least he thought so in his youth.

As the years passed and he began to understand more, he realized certain things.

He realized that his father was a specter in his life. He realized that he spent more time with his personal instructors than he did with his family.

The faces were always changing, seemingly to keep the young man occupied with new people on almost a monthly basis.

He yearned to ask his parents why they were never there for him, in a literal sense.

“Father, Mother, why do I never see you?”

The question was clear in his mind and he had asked it over and over again in imaginary situations. He had received hundreds of different answers, but he never fully believed that any one of them was the one he would actually get.

He felt like a trophy, used by his parents to show how good their genes were. He felt like an organ grinder’s monkey, hopping from one foot to the other for people’s amusement.

And so the young man grew complacent with his emotions. He began to build resentment for his father, piece by piece. He vowed that he would never become like his father. When he had a son he would raise him the proper way. He would take his namesake and throw it in the mud when he was old enough.

But for now, the young man was going to train his body and mind to do what they needed to do to make his future possible.

And then his mother died.

It was a very sudden death, and it hit the young man very hard.

Tears welled up in his eyes, he felt as though the world were collapsing around him. And yet, he could not figure out why.

Perhaps it was less because of his mother’s death and more because he was now alone in the world with his father.

This would prove to be a pivotal moment in the young man’s life.

His father came into the room, his face appearing to be made of stone. He told the young man not to cry. He told him that tears were for the weak. He told him that men such as them did not waste tears, that it would be unbecoming of them.

His father told him that if his mother saw him crying she would be sick to her stomach that she raised a weakling.

And so the young man bottled up his rage and his hatred grew more. It grew so big that it filled him completely. It took up so much of him that the rest disappeared.

Love, joy, happiness, contentment, it all vanished.

His heart began to grow cold and he became selfish.

If he could not have his feelings he was going to use the life of grandeur he had to its fullest.

The young man fulfilled all of his vices and filled the ever growing chasm inside of him with flesh, drink, smoke and anything else that caught his fancy.

He also studied very hard and became very worldly and knowledgeable.

And when his schooling was finished, his father put him to work.

The young man knew he could have said no, but in the end, he knew he was going to have the last word if what he had planned went off the way he wanted it to.

So he took his position at his father’s right hand. He learned everything that his father knew about their work.

They made many people very miserable, they broke many spirits and their fortune grew. Kingdom after Kingdom that opposed the young man and his father all fell to the wayside and were trod upon by their empire.

They accrued a vast amount of wealth, more than most people could use in many lifetimes.

They rarely gave to charity; they had no will to invest in curing diseases or clothing and sheltering the less fortunate. What was theirs was theirs, and through cut throat ruthlessness and cloak and dagger tactics, they were Gods among men.

This went on for many years, and then the young man, having amassed a vast stock of wealth, began to hatch his plan.

For a long time now, the young man had wanted to become a great gladiator.

In his youth he had gotten all of the necessary training, but had never been able to fully follow through. He had only gotten small tastes of combat, and what he had participated in he had been very, very good at.

Having a king’s ransom at his disposal and possessing the expertise he had rarely been able to use, the young man decided to pursue something that had not been predetermined for him by his father.

He went and found a formidable arena. He announced himself there, and all of the other gladiators immediately took notice. He expressed his desire to prove himself to the men who decided who would fight in the arena.

He went out in his first battle and won handily, outsmarting and out-competing several more seasoned and established gladiators. The people who ran the arena were very impressed and the young man became a fully fledged gladiator within their ranks.

The most difficult part of this was that the young man at first hid his gladiatorial success from his father. While he hated his work, his position in his father’s empire was undeniably lucrative. He used the money made from one life to support the other.

However, he was not able to hide this forever.

He became a very well known gladiator very quickly. He became world renowned within a very short period of time. He found comparable wealth in his new profession, and his father did indeed finally learn of what his son was doing.

The young man was reprimanded, but he no longer cared.

In his studies, the young man had grown very good at twisting words and creating contracts.

He in fact had created one for himself in his father’s empire.

He now fully exploited this binding document, taking his father’s money and keeping his position of power while making others do his work.

His father was disappointed and heartbroken.

The young gladiator had forgotten about hearts long ago. He was more concerned with besting more opponents in the arena.

And he did just that. Gladiator after gladiator went to their dooms against him.

In his pursuits he found love, though.

This changed everything.

A beautiful maiden took a liking to the hardened young gladiator. She took him in her arms and spoke to him with the voice of an angel.

“Young gladiator, why do you possess so much hate? Why is your heart so cold?”

The gladiator responded to her.

“Because a cold heart will always win in battle, maiden. That is the way of the world.”

The maiden laughed, and suddenly the gladiators’ heart felt strange. He could feel its cold exterior melting off like a thick coating of ice.

Slowly his hatred wafted away into the breeze. His desire to destroy his father’s namesake disappeared with it.

He could feel again.

He had this beautiful maiden to thank for it.

His life grew vibrant, and he found a love for music he had never known before.

His reputation as both a gladiator and a musician began to spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted to know him.

He beat everyone in battle who opposed him. He laid waste to monsters and villains, keeping the people safe.

His heart was strong, his intentions always as pure as his love for the maiden. He gained his first crown as a gladiator as well.

And then, he was given the opportunity to take the throne as the gladiator king. He had to fight five other gladiators in a brutal contest.

While he fought valiantly and bravely, he was beaten in the end and denied his ascension to the gladiators’ throne.

The young gladiator took a step back and looked at his life after this moment.

He then had even longer to think, as the arena fell into disrepair and disappeared.

He was left with his music and his maiden. And this dissatisfied a small part of him.

As time passed, that small piece grew. Every day it became a little larger. It began to eat at his insides…He began to ask himself many times a day…

“Why did I fail?”

Much like the question he wanted to ask his parents, he came up with hundreds of answers.

Unlike the question to his parents, one answer became clear.

Somehow, the maiden and her warmth and love had made him weak. He had been a hardnosed and merciless combatant before that contest. He understood now what he had to do. He understood what needed to happen to finally become the King of the gladiators.

But as he had done in the past, he bid his time and waited.

As fate would have it, the now seasoned gladiator had found that his old arena had been revitalized. Many gladiators, old and new both, had banded together and were attempting to return it to its old glory days.

The gladiator threw his hat in the ring, and with the maiden at his side he made a return.

He was out of practice at first, but he was soon back to his winning ways.

And his plan was now set in motion.

He brought the maiden to the arena with him. And in front of all of the eyes watching him, he destroyed her. He sent her away to the dark abyss, where he hoped she would toil in misery forever. Her pleas and whimpers for mercy filled his head after this, bringing him what he could only imagine to be pure ecstasy.

His heart was a cold heart once more, and he needed no one.

With his burdens shed, his hatred began to grow once more.

He went at his opponents with pure malice and venom. And he quickly ascended to the throne of the Gladiator King.

He looked down on everyone around him with disgust. No one was worthy of what had always been his rightful place in his mind. He repelled all challengers, and if someone managed to somehow best him, he came back in their next contest and silenced all of his critics.

He became feared and respected. Opponents once more fell to him like blades of grass. He defeated every man that attempted to sully his reputation. He went to great lengths to keep himself in a position of power, and succeeded every time that success was necessary.

And eventually, as though it were ordained by a higher power, he was called upon to defend his throne in the very same kind of contest that he failed to obtain the throne in his first attempt.

The Gladiator King relished at the thought of defending his throne in a situation that was nearly impossible for him to keep it in.

He remembered coming within inches of claiming the throne in the first contest.

He would not allow his throne to be taken; he would not come within inches again. He had grown leaps and bounds since the last time he battled in such a contest. And while he had a monster, two heroes, a rogue and a mystery set before him, all challenging for his throne, he would not allow any of them to take it from him. While he understood the challenge that lay before him, he also knew that no one challenging for his throne could match his desire to remain the best. No one challenging for his throne could match his ruthlessness or go to the same lengths he would go to to keep it. He would end them, one by one, and do what others before him had failed to do. He would remain King after defending his throne in a situation that in all logic always produced a new ruler.

He felt that this situation had been a long time coming; and because of this, he had a near moment of serendipity. He finally had realized, after all that he had been through, after all that he had experienced that he was no longer a gladiator.

Gladiators relished the fight. He relished the kill.

He was no longer the Gladiator King. He was no longer in the same realm as all of the lesser men who were coming for his throne.

He was no longer a mere pawn thrown into an arena for entertainment.

He had evolved, he had become what he was always destined to become.

He had become The Assassin.