CLOSED | There's No Ethical Assassination in Late-Stage Vyrantium

[hassaran]

WHO: Yseult, Kostos, Loxley, Vanya
WHAT: Yseult takes a team to Tevinter to assassinate a magister targeted by the People of the Silent Plains
WHEN: What is time, really
WHERE: Thyrale, a Tevinter beach resort
NOTES: Violence, blood magic mind control, mentions of slavery

The spell hits Vanya a moment earlier, just long enough for Yseult to see the way he goes rigid and turns away from Cyrene and back toward Kostos with a strange, jerking, straining gait, as if his limbs are being manipulated by unseen hands—not turning, then, but turned. She recognizes it for what it is in the same moment she realizes she is not so far away, nearer than either of the others, and also that her forward progress has halted. She might think a curse, but doesn't get time to speak it.

The narrow passageway between the baths and the luxurious changing cavern had seemed an ideal place for an ambush, especially after they discovered Kyrus's penchant for lingering in the warm water late into the evening, until most other guests had departed to some banquet table or another. Easy enough to offer to take the late shifts from their fellow resort-slaves and to loiter around the robing station as if eager to see off a final client and be out of their uniforms (flimsy linen togas for the women, kilts of similar material for the men and strange leather gloves that encase arms, shoulders, and throat while leaving the torso bare). Easy enough to strike while Kyrus and his paramour were separated into the gendered changing areas (so she might be spared, if possible), while the bodyguard was isolated waiting for his master. The last, at least, really was easy—Yseult handing the big man a pile of towels and sliding a blade up into his heart from beneath them. He slid down the stone partition to land with a muted thump, blood spilling down his front.

That was the end of their good fortune. Kyrus and Cyrene emerged at once, too quickly to feign horrified discovery of the body, and Cyrene, rather than run screaming, set one delicately-sandaled foot into the pooling blood and raised her hands to take hold of their minds.

It isn't easy to conceal weapons of any size in a summer-weight toga, but Yseult draws a second knife from within the pleating just below her belt, and turns toward Kostos and Loxley. At first her movements are stiff and labored too, but not for long--she regains grace and speed as she covers the yards between them, feinting a high swipe at Loxley's chest only to drop low instead.

Comments

[charmoffensive]

It takes a second, switching his focus from playing lookout down the other side of the passageway. He hadn't felt moved to monitor Yseult's progress with murdering the burly bodyguard, but then, the sounds of footfalls, wrenching his focus back forwards.

And by then, Yseult is clearing the distance towards him. He thinks, stupidly: are we retreating? But nerve-endings and instinct do the work his consciousness fails to, noticing the flash of metal, caring more about its clear trajectory than the confusion inherent in who is wielding it. He twists aside, and still catches the blade across his unguarded belly. It's too quick and clean and thankfully shallow to immediately start bleeding, just a hot stripe of pain that makes him hiss as his shoulder connects against marble walls.

The next thing he does is purely evasion. Wherever her knife next goes, he ducks out of the way with more grace than before, and when he pivots them so that his back isn't to the wall, he's secured his own dagger in hand.

And then vanishes, with a few loose speckles of blood smeared on the floor to betray his location.

[wearyallalone]

The visible moment in which Vanya is fighting the effects of the control buys his allies a brief reprieve. So does the turn to pull his sword from where he'd carefully concealed it earlier beneath stacks of towels. (He isn't careful now, pulling it free, and it makes a cascade of fabric as he turns.)

But the two moments are the best they'll do, for now. He's not as quick as Yseult — if quicker than he usually is, with no armor — but decades of martial training and a naturally large frame means he's not as easy to evade as one might hope. His stride is long and confident, and he wasn't far from his fellows to begin with. As Loxley vanishes, Vanya swings at Kostos, a deft slice at his exposed torso as he steps to close the distance.

[exequy]

The first thing Kostos sees is Cyrene's foot in the blood—and he's seen before, and he knows—but he's still a second behind Loxley in processing what's happening. He says, "Fuck," right about the time Loxley vanishes, which earns a slightly more emphatic, "Fuck," as in fuck you, as in jumping immediately to the worst conclusion that he is being left behind.

In addition to shirtless, he's swordless, shieldless, and staffless. Of the several wisps he'd intended to summon and station around the room, he only managed one before Kyrus and Cyrene emerged, and the only quiet instruction he managed to impart was to help Yseult, so that's great.

But his instinct when Ser Vanya moves toward him is a barrier. (The immediacy of that instinct owes something to who Vanya is or used to be.) He's most of the way through conjuring it when the sword makes contact, and he finishes without flinching out of casting. The shielding magic floods over his skin at the same time blood starts seeping out of the wound he wasn't quite fast enough to prevent.

The barrier gives him a few seconds to be fearless. He uses all of them on wisps, pulling three more through the Veil in quick succession to hurl toward Cyrene and Kyrus with a terse order—perhaps too vague in the long run, time will tell—to attack.

The little bursts of fire and ice that the wisps spit out are trivial, but at least enough of an annoyance that Kyrus has to spend the immediate aftermath trying to stop them from breaking Cyrene's focus rather than following up with an offensive move of his own.

[hassaran]

For the first second, Yseult's reaction is much like Kostos's—as if Loxley has vanished in the sense of 'fled' rather than simply 'become fully transparent', and begins to shift toward the mage and his barrier. Then the wisp that has been helpfully assigned to assist her, not dependent on sight, spits a few little needles of ice toward the invisible qunari and Yseult spots the blood trail, and she pivots to circle around where she suspects he must be.

Only one of them is coated in magebane, the other (the one still dripping the bodyguard's blood) having been pilfered from the kitchens earlier without a chance to prepare it. A thin skim of his blood joins the guard's along its blade, but it's the poisoned one she aims now, at waist height on the assumption that he's too tall not to have some part of his body around here-ish.

Kyrus, meanwhile, cornered in the changing area but well-protected behind Cyrene and her charges, swats at one wisp and then another, a small spark jumping to one from his fingers. He claps his hands together afterwards and draws his staff from his locker.

[charmoffensive]

This next bite of the dagger is not as shallow as the first.

But maybe still more superficial than anticipated, where Loxley's momentum has carried him away from Yseult rather than making any attempt to square off. The blade darts forwards and pierces flesh, catching on the invisible shape of him and evoking a bitten-off expletive stumbled past gritted fangs. One, two heart beats, and quick-acting mage poison sheds invisibility like a cast off cloak.

Which reveals a qunari moving at deadly pace for Cyrene—or, at least, in the direction of the enemy, of which Cyrene happens to be the first.

So. Change of plan. Rather than keep his back exposed to her, Loxley twists aside to grip onto a delicate wheeled cart carrying various essential oils in little vials, enchanted heated stones, warm towels, and a pitcher of something that looks like hot mud and smells worse. The whole arrangement is wrenched around to slam between himself and Yseult, partially into Yseult, along with the cacophony of various pots, glass, and substances flung in all directions.

That he shouts, "Sorry! Fuck," as he does so is pure instinct.

[wearyallalone]

Whether the barrier successfully deterred him or Cyrene abruptly had a higher priority, it's impossible to tell from Vanya's expressionless look (subtly but unnervingly distinct from his regular reserve). Either way, Vanya turns away from Kostos.

He moves faster than one might expect, fluid now that Cyrene's hold on him is steadier. As Loxley turns to deal with Yseult, Vanya uses the short window of time to try to impose himself between Loxley and Cyrene, sword now raised in a readied defensive stance. It seems he's primed to respond to Loxley's next assault, leaving Cyrene free to consider her options.

[exequy]

That first wisp — the one with orders to help Yseult, the first of four he'd intended to assign to spring into barriers should things get dire for anyone — doesn't consider the cart and pots and stones sufficiently threatening to try to block them. But it does consider Loxley a threat now, setting aside its humming confusion to begin harassing him with stinging bits of ice.

Kostos might be sorry later. A little.

For now: five, maybe six seconds of safety left. The magical energy in the room is uneven and swirling, the blood magic a dead zone he can't touch, Vanya and Yseult's blades things he can't do more than hope to avoid. Keeping Kyrus from casting is still the most he can help. So Kostos pulls energy away from him in a wave — a small wave — and sends it and more through the Veil to draw out another spirit. Not a wisp this time, but fear. The worst in reach. The wraith crowds in on Kyrus, who unlike an 18 year old soldier is too practiced to cower or drop his staff —

But another distraction. Six more seconds. The barrier around Kostos dissipates, and he takes several steps backwards down the corridor in the direction of the baths, with each step half-rationally weighing the possibility of tackling Yseult. More specifically the likelihood he would bleed out in the aftermath before any of them could pause to stop it.

[hassaran]

The cart crashes into the advancing Yseult, the corner catching her on the hip and sending her tumbling out from it along with all the spa detritus. She doesn't crash to the ground with it, at least not at first, getting a hand beneath her and executing a neat, springing roll that sends her instead into a crouched guard position. Or would, if it weren't for her foot landing in one of the small pools of scented oils now dotting the flagstones (lavender). Her sandal skids straight through it, dropping her into the remains of the mud pitcher, her foot connecting purely by chance with a few more vials of oil and sending them skittering to break at the Tevenes' feet.

Maybe it's the impact--it feels that way, as if striking the ground has suddenly jarred loose Cyrene's grip--but she finds herself in control of her own limbs once again. (And liberally spattered with foul-smelling therapeutic mud.) She gets her feet back under her, wipes hands on thighs, and resumes chasing after Loxley, though this time in an attempt to pass him as he occupies Vanya's attention and get in a position to throw her magebane-soaked dagger at Cyrene.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley's expression has pulled into a grimace throughout the Scoutmaster's tumble and hasn't immediately abated by the time she is back to business, up and moving. Maybe another apology is in order, all the while ducking out of the way of little ice bursts—

But no. His expression empties out. The corridor suddenly becomes a remote, strange place, and so does his own body.

Hopefully, that's a good enough tell as any, because he is as fast as he normally is. Yseult goes to race by him, and he turns, and with the selfless abandon of a committed bodyguard, moves to drive himself into a tackle, slinging an arm around Yseult to attempt to tumble them both to the hard ground. His dagger, in his other hand, ready to bite in no matter the outcome.

[wearyallalone]

Vanya has not, himself, been struck yet; whether or not that's the secret to making the blood magic waver, he is still evidently under its effect. He watches the scuffle between Yseult and Loxley play out with impassivity, his blade still raised in a defense stance. He does not, at least, move in to press Loxley's advantage against her.

Instead, once it's clear that Yseult is going to have to deal with Loxley before she can do anything more immediately threatening to Cyrene, Vanya's blank gaze turns to Kostos. The wraith is something that presumably Cyrene knows Vanya's sword can't affect, as she doesn't have him target it even though it's closer to him than the mage. Instead, Vanya advances toward Kostos himself, unhurried but evidently with an eye toward using the entrance to the corridor as a choke point. If she can, it's clear that Cyrene would prefer to keep each free Riftwatch agent occupied with one of their fellows: still, Vanya's unhurried pace is something of a taunt (not his own).

[exequy]

Kostos takes two further steps back, with a wild look toward Yseult and Loxley. He has to stay close enough to interrupt anything Kyrus might cast, since Vanya is doubly useless.

He has to not get skewered by a fucking Templar in the meantime.

If Vanya were not Vanya, he might not be willing to do it. And later he might insist he was thinking that Vanya would retain more residual magic resistance, or something, rather than some not-small part of him being pleased to have the excuse to throw his hands forward and let electricity spill out of them, crackling and branching.

It isn't a strong enough spell to stop anyone. But maybe to buy him a few seconds to duck around Vanya and back toward Yseult and Loxley, one of whom—which one, good question—he might be able to count on for assistance in the sharp pointy objects department.

[hassaran]

Yseult can't avoid getting taken to the ground by the charging Loxley, his turn—both mental and physical—too quick for her to dodge. She does manage to get an arm and a leg between them, the elbow protecting her side so his dagger bites into muscle instead of organ, the knee bent up into his shoulder and pushing into the oblique momentum of his dive to send them tumbling side over side onto the ground, the confused wisp following, shooting icicles that miss more than they hit.

She loses one of her knives as they clatter back onto the flagstones, and no longer seems inclined to use the other on him, focused instead on driving her knee into his gut this time, aiming to knock his wind out long enough to wriggle free and make another sprint for Cyrene. Sorry, Kostos.