The assassin continued his trot through the Everfree forest with the same indifferent attitude, the experienced fighter well in the knowledge that he had faced larger threats over his time. He found his thoughts drifting towards what he was planning to do when this contract was completed, it was a well-established fact that 'the Hunter' (a name he'd been given by a friend without a particularly creative sense of humor) had been plying his trade, for a very long while now and had been considering retirement for some time now. He was still in conflict about it.

"It's been a lucrative few years" the stallion muttered to himself "but I can't escape the feeling of being slightly jaded now" he continued, his thoughts causing him to frown to himself below his hood. It was another well-established fact that most assassins did not live to see the age of thirty, while the assassin under the moon had either been training to do or doing his job for most of his life. It was not that he was losing faith in his skills (they would be the last thing he lost faith in) but that he was noticing a decline in challenging contracts. Challenge being his sole motivation, as he knew he had enough bits stashed away to live a life of luxury in Canterlot for as long as he cared, he felt that if he were not enjoying his work, why continue it? There were of course those who argued against this way of thinking, claiming that 'once in this business, you're in it to the end' but the assassin couldn't make sense of that.

"I'm an infamous and feared assassin" he had told an old associate of similar occupation "why would anypony want to disturb me?" A fair argument in his mind, but it seemed he was the only one to think that way. That was more or less what fuelled him now, his irrational need to prove his peers wrong, show them he could settle down and have a peaceful life.

Snapped from his thoughts by the sudden light up ahead, he remembered why he was here. The break in the darkness was down to a clearing up ahead, the beams of light cutting through the darkness like a blade through the damned.

'This is my destination; this is the beginning of the end.' The last contract he was preform lay before him, the assassin knew, but he felt no regret towards his decision. To sever all ties to former contacts, to burn down the small hut in the wilderness that had served as his base of operations for so long. He felt no twinge of remorse for those he had killed, and did not second guess himself for killing them, feeling no hint of regret. He did not look back at the contracts he had spent months finishing, because of a roaring pride that told him to finish a job, nor at those he had let live because he'd decided they needn't die.

He'd had a prosperous and long career and did not seek redemption for one of his actions, nor would he exchange one minuet for another. He had enjoyed his life but it was time for that chapter to come to a close.

'After one last kill' he thought with a small grin forming across he features.

Never one to jump into a situation, however, he took a second to regard what exactly he was about to trot into, now that he had a closer vantage point. He got what he was expecting. A Lone pony, a Pegasus mare, stood in the clearing, shivering from cold or fear, perhaps both. She wore a saddle-bag and looked anxious to leave, so the assassin approached. He kept to the shadows for a second to get a better look at the mare; pretty, demure, young. Expendable, and the last link in an almost impossible to follow chain.

He stepped from the shadows in front of the mare as to not scare her, little good it did as she squealed like a filly. They stood there for a few moments, the assassin with an air of calm and passiveness, his head cocked at her, while the mare took deep breaths to try and calm herself. As few moments passed by, the assassin got a decent look at the mare; she had a golden coat, a silver fashionably kept mane and tail and a cutie mark depicting a clip-board with a quill making scratches over it.

'Secretary' the assassin thought with hint of nostalgia as he remembered a contract involving the hit, his bodyguard and a secretary, the latter of which turning out to be the bodyguard hidden beneath a nice smile and air-head persona. She'd been a worth foe. The assassin was brought from his memories when the mare gave an uncomfortable shuffle of her hooves, breaking the silence.

"I trust you know who I am" the assassin said. Like many of his ilk, the assassin had a very deep, dark and intimidating voice, although it was more or less an expected trait among assassins, given that intimidation was always their first weapon to be drawn. Blood Moon, however, was a different story. His voice carried with it a strange sense of foreboding, and a certain malice that was matched by few others, coupled by a deep stare that always made the target feel uneasy. He often made an impression that, unlike other assassins, did not just make them scared, but made them fear the assassin's lingering presence in their mind.

"I-I-I do," the now terrified mare responded "I-I've been instructed to give you this" she continued as she trotted carefully over, as though the stallion before her would strike her down at the slightest move out of place, and placed down a brown envelope and pouch half way between them, likely because she was afraid to come closer. "The file contains all the information you need, and the pouch has five-hundred bits in it for expenses" the mare explained after backing up and regaining her composure. As she spoke, the assassin had lifted the file and purse towards him with his magic, testing the weight of the bits in his hoof.

'Four-hundred' he mentally corrected from the weight, but otherwise made no reaction to the things he'd been given, besides slipping the file between his belt and body and tying the pouch to the same piece of leather. Without another word he turned and left, hearing the mare giving a small insulted 'humph' before giving flight away from the clearing. 'Damned Pegasi' the disgruntled unicorn thought as he began the trot away.

He had, however, been glad that the meeting had not gone on too long; he had the ability to be patient of course, but there was something about standing around waiting for somepony who wanted somepony dead, but wasn't willing to do it himself. Call it paranoid, or simple boredom. He knew the journey back to civilization would be long, maybe too long at a trot, the problem being that he didn't know this forest too well at all, given its constant shifting and changes, so a gallop, annoyingly, was out of the question, which would have cut the four hour journey in half. In the end, he settled for the longer yet more cautious pace of a trot, deciding to increase pace to a canter once the path cleared. An uneventful trip through the Everfree forest, however, was not regularity and not forty-five minutes into the forest he found something to hold up his progress.

'Manticors, Celestia damned manticors.' Said creature was on the path he had taken into the forest, most likely trying to follow the scent of the assassin, an easy lunch of a pony in the monster's mind. The assassin dropped down, lowering his body to a smaller target and difficult to spot blob of darkness amidst a generally dark area, effectively making him invisible to the lion bodied, scorpion tailed and dragon winged beast.

The assassin moved slowly, taking his time, like he had been taught so long ago, keeping to the deep shadows, letting them add to the layers that shielded him from the hunting predator. Luck, it seems, is a vicious and unfriendly mistress however, as the manticor found sudden intensive to look up, look straight up at Blood moon. One angry, hate filled and extremely hungry roar later, the assassin had a one and a half tonne mountain of a creature charging him at speeds that would impress a Pegasus and was snapping those jaws like it hadn't eaten in weeks.

'Probably hasn't' the assassin concluded, judging by the fact that it seemed thin for its size, was acting clumsily in its advance and its maw was dripping droll like a waterfall. The manticor did not meet its target, however, as it found itself chomping on nothing but air and the prey it had been hoping to devour had disappeared. All the while it was processing this, the assassin looked down at it from the tree he had leaded up to, standing on the branch he had chosen to observe his attacker from. The manticor had large muscles over its body, dirt on its yellow fur, a blood stained muzzle and claws that looked like they had a lot of experience rending ponies, critters and other manticors alike, limb from limb. The thing that stood out however was its sheer size, a good twelve feet tall, and five foot wide, the manticor was most defiantly something that was used to killing.' Another killer then, well that's something we have in common then' the assassin thought as he drew his sword with a near silent scraping of metal on leather. The manticor, it seems, heard this.

The manticor looked up, gave a deafening roar and leapt up to the killer. Blood Moon dropped, going against the normal 'evade' instinct that the manticor was likely used to. As he dropped, and got close to his opponent, he performed a mid-air buck. slamming his rear hooves into the manticor's face and adding to the force as he landed on said face. The manticor wailed as it dropped to the ground with an audible thud, but soon raised itself as it growled through its bloody mouth.

"Come on, let's see what you've got" the killer taunted at the still growling manticor. The Lion/dragon/scorpion lunged at the darkly clad pony. Darting forwards, the killer followed suit and jumped, throwing himself up and over the manticor before landing on the manticor's back as it flailed and roared, trying to dislodge the assassin with his sword, held in a magical grip, aimed at its neck attempted to end this fight with blood. The assassin heard the deep swoosh as its tail slashed at Blood moon, twisting his sword in defence he got a push on his guard in return that quickly gave way as the creature he was riding screamed. The killer looked to his left as the end of a scorpion tail landed on the ground and the manticor continued to scream its displeasure, accompanied with another powerful flail and the assassin jumped from the manticor landing in front of the great beast raising his sword in an offensive manner. The manticor snarled, spat and roared, trying to intimidate the assassin to no avail, Blood Moon, on the other hoof, simply stood there reading the manticor's instinctive reactions towards him and knew it was scared of him.

Fed up with this fight, he flashed his horn in an illumination spell that was bright and fast, blinding the manticor, leaving Blood Moon an opening. Charging forwards he slammed his blade into the manticor's eye; the jelly of the orb gave way, with a sickly squelch, pushing through he felt the resistance of the bone of the eye socket but continued through as the bone was crushed and splintered before giving way to the weapon. Blood spat out of the anticor's eye and it reared in pain, the short sword still lodged in its skull, but the magical connection between the blade and the unicorn's horn was severed. A massive and panicked paw swiped at the un-expecting Blood Moon, who was thrown at a tree and slammed savagely off the bark that cracked and fell down around him. With new valour and anger he leapt up against the same tree, jumping off and ramming his hooves into the hilt of the weapon. There was no scream, no roar and no type of reaction to the blow. The blade slips into the creature's brain with the same sickening and blood curdling resistance as the eye. Just a wet squelch. The manticor flopped to the ground, as dead as it was getting and the assassin trotted up to it, using his right fore-hoof to yank the weapon out of the new orifice and whipping it to the side, removing the blood that stained it, not for the first time.

"Yet another meets his end" the assassin grinned unfazed by the battle he had just won. To him it was just another on the list, no challenge and yet another reason he wished to retire. If one can defeat a manticor and take no pride in the kill because he felt it was an unchallenged match up, what else can you do to give yourself some kind of actual demanding confrontation? In other words, boredom was his greatest enemy, and his current profession was boring him. He didn't allow his thoughts to linger on that though, he had a job to do and to start that, he had to get out of this forest.

The rest of his journey went unhindered, much to the killer's surprise, and a few hours of trotting later he found himself in a field in the middle of nowhere. Having no idea where in Equestria he was, he looked for some kind of land mark but instead came across something much more promising. A pony lying in the grass; a stallion by gender and unicorn by race, the pony had a peacock green coat, and an autumn orange and red mane and tail. As the assassin approached he noticed the cutie mark on his flank; a juvenile looking pig face with speech marks and red exclamation marks around it. The whole image was surrounded by autumn leaves. The assassin looked over to the, what appeared to be a pet, next to the pony and recognized it as a pig. The pig was somewhat small, cute in its own little way and had a- the assassin did a double take, looking closer and hoping he was wrong but it seemed he was right. The small pig had a leg of ham in its mouth. Not one to lose face, the assassin simply said one word, deliberately turning his voice dark and sinister voice.

"Civilization."

The peacock pony seemed to shudder slightly at the sound of his voice and the sleeping pig stirred uncomfortably, but the pony on the grass raised his left hoof and pointed to the horizon behind his head. The assassin followed his gesture and noticed the dim glow, before heading to the source of light he recognized as a settlement of some kind. He knew what he had to do, get there, rest and then start this contract in earnest.

Ponyville was a quiet place, the kind of place that makes you see what's good in the world. Honesty, loyalty, generosity, laughter, kindness, the kind of things that make you feel at peace in the world. The assassin could not help but slightly feel out of place though; the bright colours and happy atmosphere were a direct contrast to the dark and somewhat socially uncaring pony that trotted in at nine in the morning. Blood Moon had taken his time getting here, having found the peacock pony at midnight after his almost day long trek through the Everfree forest. The large abundance of friendly ponies here gave the killer a strange opinion about this place. His first thought was that this place was the future location of his home when he retired, hot on its hooves, however, was doubt and paranoia.

'This place is too good to be true, either I've been thrown a bone here or I'm under some kind of hypnotist's spell.' The assassin threw these doubts aside for the time being, and decided to explore the town, more make a mental map while he could.

Getting lost in the town and making note of the land marks in town didn't take too long, as Ponyville was a small town. The town consisted of very few notable buildings; the town hall was the first thing he found, situated at the south of the town; a library inside in a tree, situated towards the middle of the town; a café/cake shop at the east; an apple farm at the southeast; a small cottage at the southeast that was right next to the Everfree forest, that Blood moon swore would be resident of the bravest pony in Ponyville being not fifty yards from the damned place; and a small school house to the west a little way out of the main part of town. It was one in the afternoon by the time the assassin was satisfied with his mental representation of the small town and found himself meandering around a market place, where numerous stalls were set up; a florist, pots and pans, books, vegetables, pies and apples, amongst other things, were sold here. The marketplace was outlined by more permanent stores; a hardware store, a fan store, a jewellers, a café and what appeared to be a shop selling quills and sofas where dotted around the edges of the bazar of sorts. The assassin was drawn towards a shady spot against the hardware store, passing his eyes over the crowds he tried to take in the pony's faces, but instead heard an ear piercing scream that stooped his heart and halted his thinking.