Author's Note: Though not necessary, it's recommended that you have finished both Assassin's Creed 1 and 2 before reading, as this will reference events from both games. On a side note, alis aquilae is Latin for "on the wings of an eagle."

Edit as of 2012: This story assumes that Altair and Ezio are related, and that the Apples of Eden they each handled were the same (two misconceptions that have been corrected by Revelations).

Assassin's Creed: Alis Aquilae

Before

A multitude of strange words and images passed before his closed eyes in a tangled, barely discernable stream, burning and etching into his memory with neither his comprehension nor his consent. Altair could not understand, could barely resist the flow of information as his eagle spirit was tumbled in a whirling storm of speech and figures from unknown lands and times yet to pass.

Just behind this stream like too much sunlight, the Assassin could still dully sense stabs of physical sensations, feeble attachments to the corporeal world. Beyond the confusion, he felt the marble of the fortress garden floor pressed to his chest, the water of the fountain steadily soaking into his robes, and the scalding red blood of his comrades and master upon his hands.

He had killed them. The sudden ache at this realization dammed the onslaught somewhat, the weight of the lives he had just taken dragging on him more heavily than that of a thousand enemies. It had been by his will, his blade that had torn their souls from their bodies, wiping the world of people he had come to accept as his brothers and a man he had come to see as his father.

The loss had left a furrow in his heart, one that he had at first refused to acknowledge and one that now, Altair realized blankly, the Piece of Eden was attempting to fill. He forced open unfocused eyes and managed to look past mirages of maps and cities and unfamiliar hooded faces, training his attention instead on the globe of silver flashing ominously just out of reach of his prone, outstretched hand.

"Destroy it, then! Destroy it as you said you would."

He shook his head, lifting himself onto his elbows and gritting his teeth against the pain. The knowledge forcing itself into his mind was too much, escalating into a persistent throb; yet somehow, he realized, each further piece of information pressed into his consciousness made him feel oddly stronger, each one leaving whispered promises of even more power. However, there was a foreboding darkness to this strength, the poisonous feeling of unearned wealth. The Assassin recoiled from it, disgusted.

This Templar treasure was dangerous, he told himself sternly as he strained towards the piece of metal. So many lives, Crusader, Saracen and Assassin alike, had been consumed and driven insane by its tempting warmth. He reminded himself that not even al Mualim himself had won against it. It needed to be stopped.

He finally closed a slightly trembling hand around the Piece of Eden, the lines of gold light across its surface burning indignantly against his skin, but he clung to it nonetheless. For a split second, the images swirling across his mind intensified into an angry howl, echoing through all his senses, before it was abruptly silenced. The golden light vanished as well, leaving Altair quite alone in the hush of the dusk shadowed garden.

All he could hear now was his own uneven breath and the distant, ever-present calls of brother eagles in flight overhead. The Master Assassin pulled the accursed treasure towards him, moving unsteadily into a sit as he did so and trying not to focus on the rapidly stiffening corpses littering the grass and stones about him.

Though the alien images and sounds had ceased, distant echoes continued to reverberate in his mind, quiet but audible all the same. Altair distractedly raised a hand to his forehead; not noticing the limb was still wet with water and rivulets of blood. He slid his eyes shut again, frowning deeply against the resonation. More irritated than pained, he muttered a low curse towards the Apple and its creators.

He lifted his head, slightly surprised at his own thought. The 'Apple?' When had it ever been referred to as that? Neither al Mualim nor any other Templar had spoken of it as such, calling it only the Piece of Eden, the Word of God even, but never—

"The Spaniard… he called it the Apple."

"That must have been why he sent that ship to Cyprus, to recover the Piece of Eden…"

Altair turned sharply, hackles rising as he looked around the courtyard for the source of the words, having heard them as clearly as if he himself had spoken them. Upon seeing no one, he settled reluctantly to the fact that they were simply hallucinations from the globe in his hand. Though the disembodied speech had been in a foreign, lilting language, he had understood it all the same, almost as if they had come from his own tongue. Despite telling himself that the Piece was simply playing tricks on him, something in the accented voice that had spoken struck a chord of familiarity.

Distractedly, he pushed the illusions from his mind and slowly stood. Concentrating on keeping his balance, he pressed his free hand to a shallow but gaping diagonal cut across his thigh, the injury that had felled him in the first place. His master had not become the highest ranked Assassin by sheer luck, he conceded dully, rather awkwardly staunching the blood flow with a fold of cloth. As he did so, he looked towards the tall entrance into the fortress just in time to see Malik running towards him, flanked by two brothers from Jerusalem. Consciously, almost protectively, Altair tightened his grip on the silver globe now glinting innocently past his glove.

The rafiq slowed as he neared the injured Assassin, grey eyes passing briefly over the bodies about him with a measure of detachment. He too had killed their brainwashed fellows in order to break their supposed master's mental grip—this was nothing new to him.

"Is it finished then, brother? Have you recovered the Piece of Eden?"

Altair hesitated briefly before lifting the treasure up to eye level. "I have. But it is long from finished. It must still be destroyed." Without waiting for a reply, he turned awkwardly on his heel, sloshing through the crimson tinted water towards the lower levels of the garden. Noticing his brother's limp, Malik left his men to start clearing the bodies and tailed after him, frowning at the other's usual stubbornness.

"You're bleeding, Altair," he stated bluntly, reaching out to catch the younger Assassin by the shoulder before he could finish descending the marble steps. "Can it not wait until tomorrow at the least?" A dark glare shot in his direction had little effect, accustomed as Malik was to Altair's attitude. The rafiq met his gaze calmly, his expression an unyielding mask.

"…This artifact is a threat," Altair finally said, tightening his hold on the Piece of Eden until he heard the murmurs starting up again, wherein he quickly gentled his grip. "The fortress will not be safe until it is gone." He shrugged his brother's hand off his robes, turning again and pushing on doggedly towards the edge of the mountainside. Malik merely shook his head in exasperation and followed.

The Master Assassin stood by the low banister built into the lush grass of the cliff edge, feeling an updraft of wind swirl the tails of his still-damp robes and flick a chill across his face. He momentarily had a rather brazen urge to throw the orb as far from the fortress as he could and allow the wild forests and rivers below to swallow it.

"How would you propose to get rid of it?" Malik asked dubiously from behind him, eying the Piece from a safe distance. "This is a thing of unworldly power, I do not think it can be so quickly disposed of."

"I will still need to try," Altair said stiffly, stepping away from the railing but not meeting Malik's eyes. Impatiently minding his injured leg, he crouched and set the metal globe on the grass at his feet, feeling the other approach to watch his movements in the quickly failing sunlight. Though the silver glowed dully in the distant torch fires from the fortress windows, the Assassin realized that the metal was still obviously quite old, with blackened marks of weathering and age tainting its surface.

His hand tightened on the hilt of his curved short blade before he even willed it to, dark eyes narrowing instinctively at the Piece of Eden. As he drew the weapon, he realized that he blamed the deaths of his master and comrades on this seemingly innocent piece of silver, realized that it had been this artifact that had shaken the very foundation of their Brotherhood.

A snarl of anger curled his lip.

As for any assassination, Altair lifted his blade over his head smoothly and coldly, aiming for a weak point in his target with a practiced eye. An unfamiliar rage mounted in his chest as he aligned the point over one of the wire thin depressions across its surface, now seeing this artifact only as the murderer of al Mualim—though not the corrupted, twisted one he had faced in battle mere minutes ago, but the steadfast man who had been both teacher and leader for generations of Assassins, the man to whom Altair had pledged his life.

The eagle in him gave a screech wrought with anger and guilt and sorrow, but the Assassin himself made not a sound. With all his remaining strength behind it, Altair stabbed his dagger towards the Templar treasure, willing with all his being to see it shatter and vanish from the world, to share the fate his comrades had faced tonight.

However, the Piece would not stand for this lesser being rising against it. Accustomed as the master over all minds, it refused to comprehend that there existed men who did not succumb to it. With a flash like a sunburst, the metal orb reached out unseen tendrils of power, stopping the knife before it could connect and grappling up across its surface towards the mortal who wielded it.

Altair gave a sharp gasp of surprise, turning away from the invasive light and recoiling behind his hood. His still descending dagger deflected across a solid surface, (though whether against the artifact itself or something else, he was uncertain) and slipped instead into the earth. The rush of incorporeal wind again filled his ears, intensifying along with the golden light before him and blinding his senses.

Looking anywhere but at the heatless flash of fire between his splayed hands, the Assassin realized with a sickening lurch that hallucinations of places he had never been were whirling around him in a frenzy of images; more powerful and aggressive than those he had seen earlier. He could no longer recognize any signs of the Masyaf fortress, nor the dusk shaded sky, nor even Malik who had been mere feet away from him.

Dizzied by the rush of chaos, Altair was rather startled to feel the ground connect with the side of his head. Through a rapidly narrowing vision, he realized that the only clear thing he could see was the accursed artifact, still glowing brilliantly inches from his face. By his final threads of consciousness, the Assassin realized rather dully that the Piece of Eden was both ultimate embodiment and complete contradiction to their Order.

Open now to any retaliation the Templar treasure had in store for him, Altair closed his eyes, growing still in the grip of his ethereal captor. Even as the malevolent energy crept steadily over him, his will bravely resisted until the end, steeling itself resolutely with the Creed.

Nothing… is true… Everything…