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

[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.