#and maybe someday lxy helps him solve the di fortress problem

[exitvelocities]

prince li xiangyi and assassin di feisheng fic meme fill from discord. requests are still open, please feel free to send some in!

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assassination may be his trade, but killing itself isn't a skill di feisheng takes much pride in. death sorcerers are raised on it after all; no one is praised for breathing. given the choice, he prefers to be efficient — quick, clean, discreet. it's the circumstances around an assassination that often require greater skill, but this particular assignment seems straightforward. there's no extra lessons or briefings, just a time and date, a location. it seems this princeling has a habit of riding off into the woods alone. it's not di feisheng's place to speculate, but this hardly seems to necessitate someone of his quality. perhaps they simply wanted to get him out of the fortress; the less busy he is the more time he has to plot his next escape attempt. failure doesn't faze him, but he's too valuable to keep benched; it's his token appearance of obedience and ability to lie through his teeth that keep him from being chained up in the dungeon or outright killed.

the sound of hoofbeats pulls him out of his thoughts, the lines of his body shifting from stoic boredom to barely restrained flight in an instant. the horse is white, because of course it is, and the boy on its back is dressed all in red, hair streaming behind him in a tail. if he's younger than di feisheng it's not by much, but people die the same regardless. the moment he's in range, di feisheng launches himself out of the treetop, palm extended with enough force behind it to kill. the fist that meets it is enough to surprise di feisheng into leaping back if the impact wasn't, the horse wheeling off into the forest with a squeal and its rider whirling off its back almost too fast to follow. interesting.

no less arrogant on foot than on horseback, the prince laughs, peering at di feisheng with bright eyes. "who are you?" he asks, dancing nimbly out of the way of di feisheng's hands. "so bold, to be attacking an imperial prince in broad daylight."

di feisheng doesn't reply, eyes narrowing behind his half mask. perhaps this is why. they trade blows, crisscrossing the road, throwing up leaf litter and dust, sunlit in patches. di feisheng's heartbeat picks up speed to match, rushing blood through his veins to the air in his lungs. something dim and nearly dead roars back to life inside of him, singing in harmony with the nameless blade he unsheathes from his back. he hasn't needed it in so long, but this... this is different.

"li xiangyi," he says, because he did read the dossier, "i will kill you."

"oh?" says the prince, catching di feisheng's blade against his own with an ease that belies the strength behind it, "shouldn't you at least tell me your name first?"

he should not. but, "di feisheng," he says, because here, here is a worthy opponent. here is someone he could spend his life chasing, were things different.

"ah," says li xiangyi, leaping lightly up onto a tree branch. "and may i ask why you want to kill me?"

di feisheng stays on the ground, staring up at li xiangyi backlit by the sun through the leaves. so cavalier with his life, this boy, smiling and breathing fast like this is a sparring exercise. "i don't know," di feisheng says honestly, because it's never been his business to know, "but it's your life or mine."