closed || nothing sacred, all things wild

[exsecutus]

WHO: Nikos, Caspar, Nell, Carla, Max, Kitty, Marisol, and the letters of Ilias Fabria
WHAT: the assassination of Grand Cleric Agathe of Cumberland
WHEN: mid Cloudreach
WHERE: Kirkwall, Antiva, and the long and lonely road to Val Royeaux
NOTES: part of the mod plot

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[exsecutus]

The road is there before them, clear, and the need to get out of the area is urgent. But Nikos' mutinous look lingers. His jaw clenches again, tight with the effort of not continuing.

He's not stupid. He shuts up. For now.

When they come out from the trees, into the open, the river shimmers ahead like a ribbon, marking their clear goal. Better than the uncertainty of tromping through endless woods and fields.

But the way isn't entirely clear. The path out of the trees joins the well-trod road to the dock that juts into the river. And a little ways ahead of that is the toll booth.

Two men are outside, tending a little cookfire. The bluish smoke that hangs about it is reminiscent of the smoke over the camp the party has left behind. They've caught sight of the party coming out of the woods. One of them is shading his eyes against the sunlight, which has broken strong and clear now that the morning is settling in. The other is reaching for a pike that is laying in the grass, but then he stands without it, and raises a hand in greeting.

"Greetings, in Andraste's name!" It's bright, enthusiastic. He seems genuinely pleased to see four members of the Chantry coming out of the woods, and hasn't yet thought twice about why. "So it's true? We heard it--that the Grand Cleric and her train were passing by. You're with her, aren't you?"

The other fellow is squinting at them, still uncertain. Nikos cuts a look over his shoulder, first, looking for pursuit. There's a shout, behind them. Maybe coincidence, but probably not. He looks sidelong at Caspar, waiting for direction.

Now what.

[excipio]

They have options up until Caspar hears that shout. After that, they really only have one. He gives Nikos a quick look and a very small nod, then he turns back to the men, stepping forward and raising a hand in answer.

"You've heard correctly, yes. We are here in service of the Grand Cleric. You may be with her as well, if you're willing— we've come seeking help."

He speaks loudly enough to be distracting, gesturing liberally as he does; it's a very good impression of friendly modesty. His accent sheds a full decade of exile, thicker than it was a few seconds ago, and each step forward puts him farther ahead of the group. It will be difficult for their suspicious friend to watch all four at once.

"Perhaps you've also heard that our trip through these woods was not planned. A worthwhile diversion, paying tribute to the dead. But we've run into some trouble with the wheels in all this mud. We were hoping your smoke might lead us to more bodies, admittedly, but one man more might be enough."

With her and more bodies are, of course, the direction.

[galvanising]

Behind all this, Nell sighs. Doing magic without a staff is harder--harder to generate power, harder to control it once you do--but something she's been practicing since the rebellion began. Even so, it's no neat Knight-Enchanter spell but a blast of pure force that whips out of her raised hands, lifting the two unsuspecting toll-collectors up into the air and slamming them back into the ground with a heavy thump and muddy squelch that don't quite cover the sounds of bones cracking.

"Make sure to stab them or something so it doesn't look like magic," she says as she strides ahead toward the dock.

[exsecutus]

Nikos doesn't startle easily. Then again, Nikos doesn't often witness two men picked up and slammed to the ground by invisible force. Startled isn't the word for the look on his face as Nell pushes past them, but it's his version of it. He lets that look slide over to Caspar then, for half a second. Years of cooperation and learning each other's tells puts plain what he's thinking: okay, then.

The warier of the two toll-booth keepers lays, perfectly still, with his limbs splayed at weird angles. The one who had greeted them is making a noise like a wounded animal--ragged, desperate--and his eyes are very white in his muddy face. This, at least, doesn't disturb Nikos.

He yanks the tabard off over his head and draws his knife as he moves toward the closer and clearly dead one. Three quick strikes, in the back. The push of his knife into meat is easy. It's a good sharp blade. He wipes the flat of it on the man's roughspun shirt, and grabs hold of one of his dead weighted arms, to arrange him into something more natural. As natural as a surprise stabbing could ever be.

There's four boats tied up at the dock, looking like children's toys if one has in mind the larger frigates and merchant galleons that typically put in at Kirkwall. One of them has a little stick of a main mast, without sail. The other three are flat-bottomed, poled along before a crude sail would be erected once the river widens. Only one of these shows signs of life. Too shallow for any kind of a cavernous below-decks beyond its smuggler's bolt holes, the boat boasts instead a central structure almost like a cottage--two floors, one sloughed on top of the other, and a flat roof of wood and tarpaulin. There's even a chimney, which has a thin line of blacker smoke streaming out of it.

Just before the docks, there's a few small daub-and-wattle outerbuildings, no more than sheds, which could serve as a space to duck behind and change out of blood-spattered Chantry robes. Or anywhere, really, so long as it's done quickly. From back in the woods, the shouting has doubled, and is joined by other sounds that carry on the wind through the mossy trees--a bell of some kind, more voices, alarm. The toll-booth keeper drags one of his arms out to his side. His fingers squeeze at the mud of the road, and he makes that noise again, high and horrible, adding to the chaos that is swelling in the moment.