closed | go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.

[murderbaby]

WHO: Mhavos, Mharcoulf, and Ahnna
WHAT: Mhavos bonds with new friends in healthy and exciting ways.
WHEN: August, nowish.
WHERE: The Gallows, and the outskirts of Kirkwall, respectively.
NOTES: Violence, possibly murder, probably not graphic. If anything else, will add, etc.

ANNA

Mhavos is up late. The candle by his desk is burning low, but he has another ready. It will be a long night, configuring sums and transcribing letters, but it's nothing he minds terribly. It's good, he's finding, to have work that feels... meaningful. Or at least, not meaningless.

Still, it's not absorbing, mentally. Mhavos notices the occasional noise of others wandering through the hallways, the sound of gulls outside. And the sound of... rustling fabric. There's a shadow near his window. He considers it carefully. How to act? Surprised? Prepared?

Normal clerks would normally be surprised. Normal clerks are also normally better at dying.

He snuffs out his candle, and picks up a spare broom, using it to unlatch the panes before ramming it into the metal grate. No glass is broken, only the window opens quickly, the metal hinges screeching.

And then Mhavos waits.

MARCOULF

Mhavos knows that this Marcoulf fellow an asset enough to be assigned this mission. This Marcoulf fellow likely knows the same. What Mhavos does not know is how to ride any sort beast, hoofed or no.

He climbs upon a very tired mule with an expression not unlike that of a cat that knows this bath is beneath its dignity. It's been tied to Marcoulf's horse, so Mhavos doesn't have to worry about the creature (named 'Bets', either for 'Betsy' or a lost game of cards, Mhavos has no idea) careening off, only staying on its back.

How droll.

They're going to the mansion of Georges D'Anjous, disgraced nobleman who decided to retire in a villa outside Kirkwall proper. He sells wine and does rather well for himself, by all accounts. He also may be involved in some unsavory practices that could be used as blackmail... or simply stopped. The details are fuzzy and unresolved. That is, presumably, why Mhavos is being sent with Marcoulf; neither of them is particularly high ranking or important, but it's a fine way to prove themselves.

Mhavos struggles to stay off the ground as Bets navigates a particularly unimpressive rock jutting from the road. He speaks to his companion in Orlesian, because there is precisely no reason not to. "I've- dammit. I've never been required to stay ahorse before. Amule? Shit."

He grips the reins for dear life.

Comments

[notched]

"True enough," and she sounds quite unmoved by that admission, neither embarrassed nor contrite. "I'm a Hunter and there's nothing here to hunt."

So she was idly stalking him instead. She did it to just about everyone she met, although she didn't try tapping on all their windows. It depended on the night, her mood, her curiosity.

[murderbaby]

"So you intend to hunt me again." Forgive him for being an elf, but, well. He's a fucking elf.

There were always rumors of nobles who liked to hunt elves like deer, like rabbits. Mhavos never saw it for himself. He's unsure it happened except, perhaps, in the most depraved, remote villas. But it was a persistent rumor, a threat, an image that will never leave him.

[notched]

"You?" Genuine surprise. In her mind they'd established their little tiff had been a misunderstanding, although that was a kindly way to downplay her hunger to fight something. "No, I hunt beasts. Much larger ones than you."

[murderbaby]

Well, she doesn't consider elves beasts. How quaint.

"And you happened to be by my window? After attacking me, last we met? Your etiquette leaves something to be desired."

He's picturing her hunting wild boar. Just saying.

[notched]

"So the nuns always told me," voice high and airy and filled with disdain. She'd hated those nuns. It was part of what had driven her to join the Hunters, they were the opposite of the austerities of the Church. Rough, rowdy, and loose.

More importantly: "You didn't put up much of a fight."

And that was disappointing.

[murderbaby]

"I'm not a fighter," he says with a sort of placid conviction. "If you're searching for the reason why, you have it. Not everyone in this organization was forged by iron and blood."

[notched]

"Clearly. After another frilly wedding..."

She is against marriage, she is against nobility, she is against frivolous extravagance, and politics and squabbling.

[murderbaby]

He sniffs. "There was a kidnapping. Someone was, to my knowledge, stabbed. Hardly a soiree."

[notched]

Can you hear her rolling her eyes at Someone was stabbed. She can't count how many times she's been stabbed. Also he had knives enough to stab whoever he wanted.

"I'm sure it spoiled the food."

A pity.

[murderbaby]

"Are you here to complain of others' misfortunes? Why were you skulking about my window? I'd like a rather better answer than 'there was air there, and I am accustomed to breath'."

All annoyed sarcasm. This is dragging on, and he hasn't a clue why, or what, the goal is.

[notched]

"Curiosity," which is indeed not a better answer. "And I liked your quickness. You might be a good enough training opponent."

But he didn't want to fight, so she'd picked another topic. And he says she has no etiquette!

[murderbaby]

Mhavos opens his mouth, closes it, and wipes one hand down his face. "You want a sparring partner."

He could, admittedly, use one. It's tempting. He assumes he'll be fighting more, here. This organization is centered around the war effort, after all.

And she liked his quickness. Compliments are... rare. He's foolishly susceptible to them.

[notched]

"Yes," and in her own mind she thought she'd made that clear last time, but apparently he had really thought she wanted to chase him through woods and torture him. Is that how they treat elves here? She exists in the privilege of not really needing to care, but the thought strikes her now.

"I prefer someone quick, it's more challenging."

[murderbaby]

He tilts his head to one side, considering. And then, without a word, he motions for her to back up before snuffing the remains of his candle. He exits his own window in one practiced motion, swift and smooth. He's used to this.

"I'd prefer not to speak of such things in my quarters." If anyone was easedropping, they'll have some ideas, but nothing definitive.

[notched]

She points upward silently with one gloved hand. Sure, they can move away from here, back to the darkened rooftops that had gotten all this nonsense started.

[murderbaby]

He nods, and finds shadow as cover. This is instinct, almost. More like well-practiced skill. He doesn't want to anyone to see him vaunting around the place like he's anything other than a simple clerk. Luckily, most have turned their lamps off, so Mhavos can easily jump through veins of shadow to the rooftops.

He's not in the clothing for it. He's wearing a simple undershirt and trousers. They're going to be a mess.

And yet, there is something exhilarating about this.

Because he doubts his companion will care, Mhavos finds a place with minimal likelihood of eavesdropping. A steeple jutting from the landscape, the belfry abandoned (there aren't even any bells), he sits on the side, hands gently folded in his lap.

"Now," he said, "make your proposal."

[notched]

The company in her evening movements is thrilling, it reminds her of when all the Hunters would patrol the town together. Sharp-eyed coverage from the streets, the alleyways, the rooftops. Watching for beasts, together in their camaraderie.

Maybe that's what she had wanted, going to the windows of Thedas. Someone who would climb out with her.

She crouches across from him, sweeping her hat off her head, pushing the mask down off her mouth. The small niceties one might give a fellow Hunter, a moment of connection before they moved on.

"I'm a Rifter," she says. "I was a Hunter in Yharnam, even after the beasts had taken over the streets. I think you'd have the chance to learn a lot, from training with me."

[murderbaby]

"I am-" Mhavos frowns. "I'm charmed." It's not what he'd meant to say.

"What is holy to the Hunters of Yharnam? What is sacred?"

[notched]

"The Hunt. Yharnam's people were turning into wolves, and killing each other. We go out at night and hunt them. Some transform as big as a church."

She stares at him directly and unflinchingly with dark eyes. He isn't the first she's told this to, but neither does she try to share it around the Watch.

[murderbaby]

"Swear on the Hunt," he says, "that you will recount none of this to anyone, and we may move forward."

[notched]

She is sworn to the Hunt. The Hunter's mark pulses in her mind, an unknowable voice speaking in the language of the Great Ones. Saying her name over and over Hunter. Hunter. Hunter.

"I swear, on the Hunt."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods. "It is very important that others do not know I can fight." He speaks plainly and clearly, as though to a child. A very violent child. "I would like to spar. I could stand to improve. But it must be clandestine. Secret."

[notched]

She doesn't remind him that he had been very insistent he wasn't an assassin. She doesn't even smirk about it, she merely nods.

"I'll meet you wherever you like."

[murderbaby]

"Once a week, for now," he says, surprised at how accommodating she's suddenly being. But she's from another world entirely. Perhaps he's made some sort of faux pas.

Perhaps he can use this to her advantage.

"The whip you use to fight," he says, bringing awe into his voice, "I've never seen anything like it."

[notched]

The whip took a great deal of maintenance to keep its mechanisms in clean, working order. The hinging could become clogged with gore.

"The threaded cane, we call it. One of our workshop's weapons." She tilts her head, thinking, "We could always start hand-to-hand."

Before she threatened him with the whip again.