faderift | closed | the elusive fanged nivék.

In the daylight, the castle on the crest of the hill was picturesque. Charming towers, elegant spires, surrounded by a blanket of red and gold turned leaves. The kind of image that's good to hold at the forefront of one's mind, when the light is gone except for blinding flashes that only illuminate the sharp parts of the outline, and the canopy is shielding against some of the rain but certainly not all of it, and water is leaking into one's mustache in a way that's kind of itchy, and one's coat sleeve has snagged on a thorny vine—cumulatively, enough to pause Bastien's quiet humming of "The Hunterhorn Nivék that Ate Ser Bisset."

"Athessa," he whispers, while he's fumbling with his sleeve. She's the one with the helpful elf eyes. Help. But he just as quickly thinks better of it—even though he likes this coat—and tears free with a quiet rip.

There. That is his sacrifice to this foolish cause.

For the others': "One of us should fall down. Perhaps two of us."

"I can rub mud on to your cheeks if you like," Fitcher suggests as she sorts her way through a nearby tangle of slightly less thorny brush.

Despite the utter misery of the weather (and it is quite grim; there's simply no pretending otherwise), the older woman seems quite keen. Maybe it's the sturdy mottled cloak with the heavy hood keeping her spirits high, or maybe she is still flush with her not so distant victory at cards-slash-subterfuge in the village pub. Either way, she's positively high spirited as they slug their way through the undergrowth toward the morbid outline of the castle against the blacker night.

There are worse things than this that they could be doing. Imagine - they could be stuck inventoring some stuffy chateaux and gossiping with a decrepit maid. There is an alternate version of her who is even now trapped doing paperwork and relying on pleasant small talk to get anywhere.

She gets quite enough of that at the Gallows, thank you.

Athessa, meanwhile, takes Bastien's suggestion at face value and pitches herself forward, rolling not as she would were she trying to save herself the indignity of getting muddy, but more like a log.

She's already scratched up from forging through a bramble, there's no excuse to not commit at this point.

"If it keeps raining like this, faking tracks will be pointless." She may have shared that plan, or maybe she just thought it very loudly. Oh well.

Cheerfully (perhaps she's hit her head):

"For the better," Coupe tucks a sodden curl back into the hood it's intent on escaping. She's soaked, freezing, and having an overall grand time. De Fontaine can fuck right off, this is precisely where they ought to be. "We may point to any runny set tomorrow."

It really is a lovely night. Good company, a straightforward plan. The old knee's not even a bother — though that may have something to do with not wrapping it in steel. Plate in this weather would be a misery.

"A twisted ankle, perhaps." She hacks through a tangle of undergrowth, the stroke deliberately awkward. "Not so difficult to manage."

Bastien would have preferred the gossip, himself, but he's doing his best to be game, to be pleasant, and to ignore what the rain is doing to his hair. For now the curls are plastered to his head, but when they dry he might have to kill anyone who sees, present company included. But until then—

"I would volunteer," he says, "to be chivalrous, but my ankles are impossibly sturdy."

And Fitcher is not rubbing mud on his cheeks. He might blush.

He offers a hand down to Athessa instead—not because she needs a hand, probably, she seems like the sort of person who could flip back onto her feet without any hands at all, but because he intends to steal some of her mud from her.

"A twisted ankle? Come now, Ser. Surely between the four of us we can come up with something a little more convincing than that. I could put a stone in my boot right now and achieve the same effect." She bends back a few gnarlier branches, checking them with her hip so her companions might pass comfortably ahead of her. Speaking of chivalrous.

"Athessa, my dear, how far would you estimate we have to go before we are at the doorstep of our new friends? Poor Bastien looks like he might collapse if he takes on much more water."

"Uhh," she cranes her head from her prone position to look ahead of them, breaking line of sight only while accepting Bastien's offered hand. The hearty slap of palm meeting palm sends a splatter of mud through the rain, and she wipes the mud from her other hand on his shirt front. There.

"It makes him more convincing that way. Shouldn't be too far, though. Keeping this pace, less than a half hour."

"Head wound?" She considers. "Shallow, but bloody. A cut over the right spot."

Or —

"Nothing too serious in the calf."

"Well, this is homey."

It's a little musty, is what it is. But that's normal as far as dank and dreary dungeons go and it could be much worse. It doesn't quite have that distinct reek of recent human suffering hanging about it, but Fitcher assumes that's what they're here for.

She pauses momentarily to survey their surroundings which consist of all the usual suspects - dusty floor, a shame bucket, the unrelenting monotony of rough stone walls - and then finally turns her attention back to her companions. "I suppose it's too to hope for that one of you has has managed to keep a lock pick set hidden on your person?"

"They took mine," Bastien says from the wall he's claimed for leaning. More than anything, he sounds offended.

He built a career on seeming like the sort of man whose person never needed searching, and that was before. Before he'd gone a bit soft in the places muscles for grappling and hasty escapes usually went, and developed some lines around his eyes, and grown this terribly respectable mustache. And for what? To be fingered by Aline—of all the cocky second-rate little bards who should not have survived their early twenties, Maker—in a poorly-decorated castle in the craggy armpit of the Empire—

He's fine. He lifts his chin, smiles. Things are not so bad yet.

"Someone may have nails in their boots, if we pry them apart."

"Mine too," she pitches in, from the midst of her checking how sturdy everything is in case they can bust out. She's already checked the width of the bars and they're unfortunately too narrow for even her petite self to wriggle through.

"I thought old castles like this were supposed to be in disrepair," she grunts, pulling at a bar she could've sworn was loose a second ago, but won't budge now.

"Should have left the head in."

The arrow. A joke, a mumbled one; mealy-mouthed Orlesian. She's pacing. Limping, really — and that helps. Something tangible: Resignation that settles in the bones as spurs to hide. A weight that urges motion.

Voice lifted,

"Bucket handle?"

Or its pegs (shit luck if they used rope). She prods it with a toe, ignores the revolting loll of odour. If hers had one, it must have snapped off years ago, indicated only by cracked, splintering holes.

Edited 2019-10-28 06:09 (UTC)

('Two holes are usually preferable to one,' might be the response were she at all familiar with the ou, on and uns in question.)

Fitcher sets her hand on her own patch of wall, lifting first one boot and then the other to regard the soles. No joy - and more's the pity.

"Suppose this means that we are some of the very first guests in this place. Do you take that for good luck, or bad?" Given their current (literal) downward trend, she might reasonably place her but on the second. And yet, some sliver of optimism springs eternal. "Could we feign some commotion? They haven't killed us outright and have already seen to Ser Coupe's wound. It's possible they might return and open the door themselves given reason to."

Suffice to say, things do not go as planned.

If there is one thing Fitcher regrets, it is the specific placement of the arrow in Luwenna Coupe. Putting holes in legs makes speedy escapes through secret back passages rather more difficult than they might be without them, and it puts a real damper on the potential of climbing free from the first window they come across. If they're lucky, they'll stay a few steps ahead of the search parties as they make their way through a series of servants corridors and find their way to an exit rather than straight into the hands of the dearly departed Duke's son. And if they're not lucky--

Well, Fitcher has paused momentarily at some early turning point in their escape route. There's old mortar here and it takes just two firm strikes to drive a light pin produced from an inside coat pocket between two of the stones.

"Everyone all right? All limbs accounted for?" This asked as she drives a corresponding pin into the farther wall. At once, a spool of wire appears to hand. Fitcher forms a hook at one end with a turn of the wrist and passes it off. "Athessa, my darling - pay attention. Do me the favor of securing this end to that nail there."

Her hands are not shaking. Everything is quite all right.

Athessa's hands are shaking, but she does as she's told without more than a nod to show that Fitcher has her attention. After what feels like a frustrating amount of focus spent on completing such a simple task, the elf scrubs her face with her hands, up down up down, and takes a deep breath.

Breathe in, count to four, breathe out...

It's hard to keep it together when a single muscle twitch floods your entire body with dread, stomach reeling at the fear of being controlled again. Athessa doesn't believe in any particular deities, but she'll be sending good words along to all of them about Fitcher saving her mind by giving it surmountable objectives during this escape.

When this is fully over—when they are all elsewhere, all alive, all relatively unharmed when compared to the worst that could have happened, all in separate places with their separate selves—he will kick a bedpost hard enough to bruise his foot, and have to blink back a misty mix of frustration and pain, and lie awake to dissect precisely what went wrong at each step and precisely how he might have averted it.

Until then, he's fine. Appropriately drawn for the circumstances, but steady on his feet, clear-headed, feigning no fear or uselessness for the sake of looking like a musician in over his head. The rear is not the best place for him to be, so it isn't where he is, but he turns to walk backwards a few paces. Coupe's leg. Athessa's hands. The passage beyond them is silent, for now.

"If we do lose one or two limbs on the way," he says quietly, making an attempt, "it could save Lady de la Fontaine the trouble of flaying us."

There's an old joke.

Not the oldest in the room — certainly not the best. There's an old joke, sort of shit, and it goes: When you shoot love's arrow, aim for the knee. See your intended doesn't stray.

In grim taste then. No better now, limping past wire with dull intention, and altogether too much practice. It had been a long walk from the sunless lands. It's been a long walk from that room.

She tips her head to Bastien,

"You were led astray," Less dry than distracted; she doesn't bother to indicate herself. It takes four to agree to a plan, only one need propose it. No purpose to burning the lot of them, and bullishness will be believed. "Better we were not surprised of this later."

Mme. Fitcher made quick work of that maleficar. There are only so many who can; precious few among their ranks. Fitcher has too made work of Athessa, and that's —

That's good. The twist of her mouth may only be the wound, can only be the wound. She's discreet, when she watches the girl shiver. The tilt of her eyes may only be the wound, can only be the wound,

"Should have burned it."

The corpse. Quiet, because it isn't a true suggestion. Wouldn't do much in the first place. She pushes a breath over her shoulder, to the hall, and to clear-headed, light-footed Bastien. A year ago it wouldn't have been a question: Destroy the evidence, however flimsy its use. There's little to be done beside a noble son's testimony, but even so,

But Kirkwall is waiting. But no one strays.

Edited 2019-10-28 06:37 (UTC)

closed | the elusive fanged nivék.

it was a dark and stormy night.

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10,000 minute dungeon

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a limping escape

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