closed | Venatori Gone Wild

[keenly]

WHO: Bastien, Colin, Leander, and Nikos
WHAT: Tracking down Venatori who got deep into Orlais at the invitation of some idiot noble
WHEN: Early Solace
WHERE: Southern Orlais
NOTES: reference.

Comments

[exsecutus]

Nikos snorts, loudly. He has one knife out--the worst one--and he's idly boring its tip into the side of a soft log, some ways away from their scrawny hopeless captive. He doesn't even bother looking around at the threat. Too unimpressed, too much a man who has never felt sorry in his life.

"Good," he drawls. "They'll save me the trouble. I was getting tired of," and he flips the knife around so he can wiggle it Leander-ways, back toward Colin, up at Bastien.

He's being mean. Not necessarily untruthful. He is tired of everyone. But purposefully overstating, and purposefully mean, certainly.

"What makes you think anyone is coming back for you."

[cozen]

"Maybe no one would come back for you," Linus says, lifting his chin in defiance. Maybe too far.

[exsecutus]

"Maybe I'll pop your eyeballs out, peel them like grapes, and leave you for whatever spirits haunt this forest to claim. So you'll never be able to say what happens to me."

Nikos flips his knife back and resumes boring into the side of the log. His knife winks in whatever light there is, catching it along the edge of the blade. Some people might use hyperbole here, describe their knife as wicked to get at its sharpness. Nikos would just say sharp.

[sarcophage]

In contrast to Nikos, who's been sitting on and disfiguring the fallen corpse of that tree like a scowling fungus, Leander wafts through the camp as though nothing's amiss. Having excused himself, he's just reemerged from the brush in time to offer,

"Romantic, isn't he?"

The captive isn't meant to answer and will be spoken over if he tries.

"I admire your optimism, Linus. Your friends may very well come back for you, and I would very much like to return you to them in a state of good health. I might even be able to persuade my friend here to let me send you back the way you came," closer now, Leander sinks into an easy crouch, elbows on his knees and his hands linked between them, just out of arm's reach. "But to do that, you'll need to cooperate with us."

Not that Linus's arms are free to reach with.

After a glance back, lower, just between the two of them, "The ropes aren't hurting you, are they?"

As an indication that he's trying to look less soft than he feels, to retain credibility with his friends, the angle of Leander's eyebrows is very convincing.

sorry hi

[cozen]

Linus does try talking, at first, interjecting several syllables that he abandons when no space is made to accommodate their followers, because talking would be a great way to distract him from the image of his eyeballs being peeled like grapes. But as the curly one continues talking, that becomes its own distraction.

There’s a pause. It’s a pause for scheming.

“Yes,” he says, with a hopeful note, “actually, they are.”

To the extent that making it impossible for him to cast anything useful counts as hurting him. He thinks it counts.

hi.

[exsecutus]

Nikos manages not to transfer his glare to Leander. He wants to, badly. But he doesn't. It would be bad for this scene that they're setting. He's played in this space before himself, been played with. The character of Nikos wants only to threaten the character of the captive, not his fellow member of Riftwatch. To indulge in petty infighting would be a chink in their defense, a critical flaw that might be manipulated.

He rewards himself for his restraint with the thought of peeling Leander's eyeballs like grapes, and the romance of the act. Though he wouldn't, actually. He's not a torturer. But he would like Leander to shut the fuck up.

"Untie him and see how far he gets," he suggests, sourly. "Then we can be done with all of this."

hello

[sarcophage]

Shutting the fuck up would unravel this entire exercise, and so Leander declines to do so, despite the intense radiation of hatred Nikos is probably exuding right now.

"Must we?" A question hints at submission. His gaze drops, too, to the bonds in question. How perfectly obvious. Were he closer, he might even reach a hand out and touch the ropes, like fondling them would help him decide—a false thrill for their captive, a glimpse of illusory pity skimming the surface. Alas, he's too far away, so the thoughtful caress of his eyes will have to do.

"Don't forget what happened with the last one," spoken over his shoulder, the latest chapter of an old argument. "He took far too long to die." Eyes back to Linus, but still speaking to Nikos, "It was inhumane. Can we not try it my way this time?"