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]

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.

[murderbaby]

"Of course," he says quietly, considering.

"But I would like to learn more of your world, if I could. I don't have the wherewithal to spar with you tonight."

[notched]

She gazes at him, deeply silent for a moment.

"It's cursed," she answers bluntly. "Our leaders wanted to become gods, and they sacrificed all of Yharnam to slake that thirst."

She had told Lakshmi more, about hunting the beasts and how to kill them. Then again, she had requested Lakshmi kill her, if she turned into one.

[murderbaby]

He considers that. "I can't imagine wanting such power. Do you understand the appeal?"

Do you wish to become a god?

[notched]

"No, I've seen too much of what it costs."

She was a killer and more than just likely insane from staring too deeply into Yharnam's secrets, but she somehow still had guilt and empathy and grief inside of her.

[murderbaby]

"There is always a cost," he says, solemn. He's beginning to suspect he's lost not nearly as much as this woman, and yet... Killing is killing. Death is terrible.

"I've never seen anything like your whip. How is it constructed?"

[notched]

It is currently at her hip, still formed as a cane. She removes it from there, giving a very short-controlled flick to unlatch the mechanism and letting the serrated notches extend.

"It must be as stable when collapsed," she starts by saying. "There is a mechanism to pull the notches tight, which you release."

She takes one of the sharp notches between gloved fingers and pulls it further, making the connecting segments visible.

"And then there are many small hinges that let it move freely."

It's almost a pleasant thing to talk about, all their workshop engineers were long dead. Nice to ruminate on their cleverness, and pass the ideas on.

[murderbaby]

He senses something like calm coming over her, and wishes to cultivate it. "Is it made with magic, or just clever engineering? It seems very versatile."

[notched]

"The cleverest." She had been so proud to be Hunter, once. "But there are gems that can be imbued and placed in the weapons, to enchant them. They don't function on this side of the Rift."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods. "Would you object if I wrote what you told me? We are trying to better understand rifters."

[notched]

"If you like," she sounds neither interested nor concerned with it. She has her own secrets to keep, but no hidden identity to protect.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods. "Thank you."

But honesty deserves honesty. He feels like he's trying to teach a starved dog to trust.

"I was an indentured servant. My masters had me work as a clerk as a cover, to make it easier to assassinate and kill. It is... paramount this information is kept secret."

In a moment of daring, he reaches forward, a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I am trusting you."

[notched]

She almost wants to say he shouldn't place any faith in her. Her sense of her own worthiness was damaged. She had tied up everything in the righteousness of the Hunt and it had, every word, been manipulation and lies. She had allowed that, and there was no washing the stain off of herself. It was easier to mire in the blood, which has now become waking daydreams of blood in the night.

Before coming through the Rift, it had been a long time since anyone had made a friendly gesture towards her. Now she has Marcoulf and the horses. The casual camraderie of working in the stables during the day has prepared her to accept the hand on her shoulder now without balking.

"You don't have to tell me anything."

She didn't feel entitled to it, or that somehow secrets could be weighed and balanced out.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos lets out a huff. "I've already told you everything."

He thinks a moment, as pale moonlight peeks through the night clouds.

"I think I... misjudged you. I thought you wanted to kill me for sport. An elven life wouldn't be missed. Something like that."

[notched]

She hadn't helped with that judgment, and explaining what she had really thought at first, in the dark, is likely unimportant now. She'd like to say that she doesn't kill for sport, but that would its own kind of lie. There remained, even in her guilt, the thrill of blood.

"I'm sorry," is the most succinct thing to say, and she is willing to say it. She's often willing to apologize for the strange ways she interacts with this world that isn't hers. To apologize for living out a nightmare that no one else can see or understand.

She'd also like to say she doesn't think that way about elves, but that would be hypocritical. She had been sent by the Inquisition to kill a camp of them off some nobleman's land to keep politics quiet. They clearly felt those lives would not be missed, and she had helped them without resistance. She and Marcoulf were not to speak of it, and they didn't, not even between each other.

[murderbaby]

It's clear Mhavos wasn't expecting that from his expression, a half-second of surprise quickly hidden. He doesn't frequently recieve apologies, and was not ever expecting one from this strange woman.

And yet, he suspects a part of her is explicable. She is from another world, where hunting and fighting is sacred. That is her mother tongue. No wonder they did not understand each other at first. No wonder it took little time to bridge that gap.

Violence is not Mhavos' native language, but he has become quite adept with it, sickening creature he is.

"It was a misunderstanding," he says. Rarely gifted apologies, he is slow to let them go with forgiveness. "I believe I understand, now. And... like I said, someone who can fight out of sight, on the rooftops like these, that is a valuable sparring partner."

The moon passes over them, light peeking through a passing gap in the clouds. It gives Mhavos an idea. His mouth reshapes itself into the memory of a smile.

"When we spar, an additional rule. One must remain in places no onlooker could spot from the street or a window. That is another condition of losing, yes?"

[notched]

A small, wry smile curls on her mouth. She likes the extra rules, she needed to be challenged.

"Yes, I can do that."

[murderbaby]

A smile. That's good. It doesn't comfort Mhavos, not really-- it's not a comforting smile, and the woman who wears it seems the sort who wouldn't like it to be. The important thing is that it sets the pace. Both of them know better where they stand.

"What should the other conditions of winning be?" He says, "remember, I cannot appear for work the next day battered and broken."

[notched]

She hadn't forgotten, but something about that makes her smile pull a little further. Much like her other social graces, her sense of humor was not well-developed. She often did not laugh at jokes, but then she could be found smiling at times like this, she had even found their initial meeting a bit humorous while he had genuinely been afraid of her intents.

"Your armor will take much of it," much of her whip's ripping and tearing. Still, that doesn't quite answer the inquiry and she knows, "Flag on the body, forces coming in close. Flag on a hill, forces more stealth."

That makes it so much more like a game, but she's not going to complain about that. It was a compromise, play-acting the thing she wanted most in a world that didn't support her notions.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods. "No strikes to the face, then. Doing so accidentally is an automatic loss for both parties. And for now... winning conditions are first blood? Or knocking the other unconscious, one would assume. When I'm more skilled, we can move onto higher difficulties, but you must pity me, for I am but a poor novice, rogue and peasant slave."

The last few words are quotes from poetry, said with the sliding sarcasm one deploys when making fun of themselves.

[notched]

Anna is more than dense to poetry, or at least the mortal kind. When things began to be written into the ugly and lyrical runes of the Great Ones, she had an unfortunate ability to understand despite her dearest wishes not to.

"Every Hunter was once new," all in all, a mild opinion. Although the implication that she was training herself another Hunter so she could be less lonely was also tucked there into the mildness.