A low chuckle resounded in the otherwise nearly silent antechamber that made up the first floor of the ancient monastery tower.  Only moments before another sound had risen above the light whistle of the surprisingly warm spring breeze, that of a man hitting the sand outside in the courtyard and rolling to his feet.

At the back of the room a figure straightened, stretching his arms over his head languidly as though he had been sitting upon the altar from which he rose for some time.  [i]Finally.[/i]  The thought was accompanied by a slight smile as stooped to pick something up from the carpeted floor at his feet and strode toward the door.

Jahar had been waiting for some time now; perhaps he had been overeager in arriving so early in the morning when assassins tended to operate at night.  In the end, excitement had simply gotten the better of him.  Still, he had thought that his preparation of the arena for the confrontation would have taken much longer than it had.  Weren't monastic types supposed to be trained warriors?  Certainly more so than these, at least, who had refused to even put up a fight.

As he neared the threshold of the antechamber, Jahar had his first look at the man who was here to take his life, standing in the sand garden only fifty paces from the bottom of the stair leading to the opening to the tower.  Knowing that no eye but his could likely pierce the gloom of the room in which he stood, he simply studied his opponent for a few moments as the man looked about himself, likely appraising the new changes in decor, then put some sort of monocle to his eye and focused on the tower.

As D'Angelo studied the tower with his infrared vision, he would clearly see the body heat coming from the man standing a few paces inside the open black maw of the large opening, both double doors thrown wide.  After a few moments, he would see the figure swing back his arm and throw something held in his right hand through the open orifice, merely standing and watching as it bounced down the stairs toward the sand garden.

It would quickly become clear that the spherical object was not a weapon by the awkward way it bounced and jolted; more telling were wet blotches of liquid it left behind.  The severed head would hit the sand facing D'Angelo, the pale red moonlight clearly illuminating its gruesome visage.  By the apparent age of the deceased, Nicoli could likely guess that this was the Abbot.  His death had not been peaceful, and it appeared his left eye had been cut out and replaced by a flower blossom, still glistening wet from the ink into which it had been dipped.