faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

"Better to kill you both," she growls, subtly beginning to saw at her bonds with a little serrated blade forged especially for this purpose.
"What was it that bought you? Coin? Promise of power?"

"They have my daughter," he says. It's matter-of-fact in a way that doesn't beg for pity, strained at the edges like it's difficult for him to say, subtly shaded with fear for some dark-haired little girl locked in a bare room on the other side of the continent and with apology for the woman he's willing to trade for her.

It's also a lie. He only lets it sit there for a moment before he crooks a little smile.

"Obviously it was coin. I am a bard, not a politician."

"You're a snake," Teren corrects. Perhaps there's a daughter, perhaps not; even if there is, better to live a life without a father like this than to have his actions come back to haunt her.
Hands freed, in a swift motion she chucks a throwing knife at his chest and holds another at the ready, bending to begin untying her ankles.

He's not quick enough to catch it—not from such a direct angle, at least—but he's spent twenty years fighting in the gardens outside parties he needed to return to without any injuries to explain, and he's plenty quick enough to deflect it, catching the handle with his forearm while he ducks to the side to send it ricocheting around him and into the dark.

The duck transitions easily into standing up, ready for the other one if she's going to insist.

"Come now," he says. "You are too old for this."

Why not. She chucks the other one, if only to buy herself time while she frees her feet, giving a scoff of disgust at his comment.
"Fuck off," she growls, and draws two longer blades from the outside curves of her boot shafts. No time is wasted; she lunges forward, trying to ignore the pounding of her head and the slight blurriness of vision that still lingers from her injury.

But she's dealt with less, under worse circumstances, hasn't she?

The throwing knife skitters off into the dark with its sibling, and Bastien (aided by the head injury, doubtless) slides out of the path of her lunge as neatly as if it had been choreographed.

"Not an option," he says, "unfortunately."

The dodge and the laidback cheer are his specialities in any universe, not inventions of the Fade. But the daggers he extracts from his jacket would be unfamiliar, if he saw them awake, and handled with less thoughtless comfort than they are now, loose at his sides but ready to parry.

They want someone alive. He plans to deliver.

"Who is it, then," Teren says in a low voice, beginning to circle, doing an admirable job of pretending she's got all her wits about her, "what kind of sniveling worm wins your allegiance?"
She gives him a half-second to reply, then feints with her right blade and slashes with her left, trying to get him to lower his guard for even an instant.

Closer, this time, but he still dances out of reach, tagging on a couple of quick one-footed hops to keep his balance, or to be performative, or both. Not that she’ll be charmed. She’s bordering on becoming obnoxious. But he’s more interested in keeping his shirt free of blood than in drawing any of hers, at the moment.

“You have not dealt with many bards, have you?” he says. “And the Nightingale does not count.”

Quitter.

"Only Crows," she replies, relentless in her pursuit, trying to get around to his back, to disorient him with the occasional jab. "They're upfront at least, no need to cower behind pathetic Orlesian subterfuge."

She nicks him on the side, possibly catching only clothing, trying to compel him to turn.

"You mean they have no sty—"

His jacket.

"—yle. Shit."

He likes this jacket. That's why Teren is spared an obnoxious mid-combat lecture on how the Crows are just as bad, really, unless she's only encountered terrible Crows, or only knowingly encountered terrible Crows, et cetera. Never mind all of that now. Bastien gives her a look and settles in to defend his clothing more seriously.

And he's still defending it, after what feels like three thousand hours of waltzing around in the dark to the clang of metal and quiet clacking of footsteps.

Or maybe just one hour.

Maybe fifteen minutes.

He's bored, is the point, and she's not slowing down or letting up, so he supposes he ought to try to hit her after all. It will only take once—his blades, still unbloodied after three thousand hours, glint a little less in the firelight than the would if they weren't coated in dried poisons—but it will also take getting in close.

A paragon of quiet focus when she isn't making the occasional remark back at him, Teren looks for all the world like she can continue forever. It's when she senses his restlessness that her interest piques again, and she taunts him once more, darting in and back out, sweeping one long leg at the back of his knees to try and knock him down.

"You've real endurance," she sneers, carefully masking the shortness of her own breath-- she's an expert at this kind of fighting, but he wasn't wrong when he pointed out her age, her likelihood to fade faster.

"You are the first woman who has ever told me that," Bastien says from the ground, because even the fact that someone who would definitely like to kill him has just managed to knock him off his feet (stupid, stupid, he was too close and too focused on trying to nick her—but he's only stumbled half-down, on one knee, ready and waiting for whatever she plans to do about it) isn't enough to exhaust his capacity for genial self-deprecation.

A swift kick aimed at his chest intends to knock him back further, and she'll pin him there if she can, her foot on his chest, shrewdly watching his hands and the blades therein as she drops to use her knee instead.

"I don't doubt it."

Yes, he just said—but he doesn't say that, or anything else, because being kicked and pinned down isn't really on his wish list for the evening. A hint of his earlier smile lingers for a few seconds, but then he's all business, waiting until she's in the process of dropping to her knee to take a nonlethal swipe at her other leg and throw his weight into rolling out from beneath her.

She doubles down in remaining on top of him, with a little hiss of pain when he gets her on the other leg; if anything, it only increases the vigor with which she tries to restrain Bastien, but she can tell almost immediately, by the feel of the wound, that something is wrong.

"What did you coat it with," she snarls, hopping to her feet long enough to kick him again, this time aiming for his back.

"Nothing you need to—" Ow. "—get worked up about," he says, which is advice as much as cheek.

The real answer is: a cocktail of paralytics and incapacitating agents, slow-working by necessity, because combining enough poisons to sidestep a target's potential overachievement in the field of mithridatism would make them lethal if they all hit at once or hit too strongly. But they'll work a bit faster if someone insists on wriggling. Or kicking.

But it means his job is done, more or less. He doesn't let go of his daggers. He isn't that stupid. But he does hold them up a little, fingers loose, in a suggestion of surrender.

Which means it's something, which means--

She can feel the numbness creeping up her leg, which shows itself quickly in the form of a perfectly avoidable stumble as she tries to step back on the injured foot.

"NO," she roars, raising her eyes to meet his and, seeing how casually he holds up his own daggers, knows it's already over. She'll die slowly, or worse, fall asleep completely alive, to be taken helplessly to another location and no doubt drugged or tortured until the traitor's allies have all they could want from her.

There's a moment of genuine terror in the woman's eyes, her accelerating heart rate no doubt expediting the poison as it renders her clumsy as a newborn foal, unable to stand. There's only one thing to be done.

Meeting Bastien's gaze with as much vitriol as desolation, she flips her own dagger on its hilt and stabs upward into her own ribcage.

“Fait chier,” Bastien says, dropping his arms. He’s in trouble, he’s probably just lost money, and he didn’t want her to die, honestly. “I told you to wait for him, you over-dramatic—“ No, he isn’t going to call her names. He points at her instead, in a warning sort of way. “Do not pull it out.”

It’s a lost cause, almost certainly, at that angle. But he drops one of his daggers to try rifling through his pockets for anything that might help—with the pain, if nothing else.

Teren has been down this road before, and knows that even the strongest will can break. She's lived a good long life, and if this is how she sticks it to the man who thinks he's won, then she's just petty enough to follow through with it.
Meeting Bastien's eyes squarely, she pulls the knife out. A cough follows, blood splattering on the floor, and she sinks to the ground on her side, breathing labored.

“Shit,” he says, with feeling—but quietly, to himself.

He’s found a bundle of elfroot leaves, meant for chewing to stave off headaches and minor pains. Useless. But it’s what he has, so he comes closer and crouches, dagger still in one hand, leaves in the other, ready to put them in her mouth himself if necessary.

“Take these.”

For a moment, it looks like Teren is going to comply. She weakly lifts her hand as if to take the herbs, but, quick as a snake, grips at the collar of Bastien's shirt instead, dragging him toward her. There, she kisses him deeply.

And coughs.

Her tainted blood spatters into his mouth, which she holds against hers with all the strength she has, his dagger going ignored-- what is he going to do, stab her some more?-- and then, just as abruptly, she crumples back to the floor, the light beginning to leave her eyes, her teeth and lips streaked with red. She coughs again, spewing more blood onto the floor.

"May it-- rot you from the inside," she rasps, smiling ghoulishly, "until-- you yearn-- for death."

MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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CW THIS IS GROSS