The news that they had apparently been beaten to this location by... some people or other from Tevinter was not the best, but Leon wasn't inclined to assume anything until matters became clearer. This far out, it was hard to tell much about the figures other than that they were dressed in an Imperial style and there were an unfortunate number of armor-spikes involved. Frowning, he squinted a little harder. There looked to be a crest or something on the back of one of the uniforms, but he couldn't discern anything specific about it from this distance.
He glanced at Zahra. "It might be worth trying to gain some information here," he advised. Knowledge was one thing they were sorely lacking in this case, and if there was a chance that the people here might provide something of use, it seemed better to aim for that than a fight they might be able to avoid. That said... he also knew better than to count on anything here. "Maybe keep your weapons loose in the scabbards, though."
Zahra up leaned against a tree, drawing a hand up to shield her eyes in a weak attempt to see better. Her mouth was pursed. She was mumbling about them being here of all places. She certainly didn’t look as if she’d even considered this as a possibility. Understandably doubtful that anyone would willingly come out here, in the middle of nowhere. In front of her father’s house. Their voices were indiscernible from where they stood, but they appeared to be knocking on the front door and attempting to peer through the shuttered windows.
“I… suppose you're right.” She straightened her posture, and tried to smooth a smile on her face. A friendly one. It lifted halfway and wobbled into a thin line. There weren’t many moments where she appeared at a loss, but now, she looked like she wasn’t sure what she should be doing at all. Her hand had lifted closer to her bow before dropping back down to her side. She took a tentative step out into the open and halted for the others to join her, in order to descend the stairs together. The stone pathway branched out towards the cabins, including her own. She halted in front of the rusty gate, hand poised on the latch.
It would be noisy.
The furthest man was still rapping his knuckles against the door. Hard. He jerked his hood down with harsher sigh and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, “He isn’t here. Why waste anymore time in this blasted place?”
“Then we wait until he is.” The finality of the statement bore a clue as to who was in charge. The woman was leaning against a heap of fishing traps, facing the house. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her hood already pulled down to reveal a meticulous set of braids.
Another man had his hands cupped to the sides of his face, peering through the shutters of a nearby window. He took a moment to try and jimmy his fingers through them before straightening back up, defeated, “Why don’t we just burn the place down? He’ll have nothing to come home to.”
“That’s not why we’re here.”
It was the fourth person who finally noticed their arrival. He’d been hunched over inspecting something on the ground. He raised his head and froze in place, staring at them. His surprise was only momentary before his expression soured considerably. An indignant lift of the lip followed, “What’s this? An audience? Shoo. Go on, now.”
Only then did the others turn to regard them, bearing the same leveled stares. Looking beneath them. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition there, only contempt.
Cyrus drew up next to Zahra, leveling a rather unimpressed look at the lot of them. He crossed his arms over his chest. “That's funny: I could have sworn trespassing and arson were both illegal in Rivain. They're certainly against the law where you're from, my sartorially-challenged interlopers." He lifted an eyebrow, perhaps allowing his accent and obvious bearing to speak for itself as to the rest. His eyes narrowed, though, when he inspected their robes a little more closely. “Ah. So you are House Contee, then. Little unsubtle, isn't it? The insignia."
That seemed to strike a chord with them. Their faces displayed an array of disgust and startled disbelief. They certainly recognized his accent. There was a spitting noise in the foreground. Perhaps, from the man closest to the door. The woman pushed herself away from the fishing crates and rounded up in front of the fence, closest to the gate they stood at, her arms dropping to her side. She appeared to scrutinize Cyrus for a moment before flicking her gaze at the others and then back at him again.
Her smile was anything but kind. One they might have seen in the Winter Palace. A double-edged blade, searching for a spine. She tilted her head to the side, and prodded a finger into Cyrus’s chest: clearly unimpressed. “A matter of perspective in some parts of Rivain, I hear.”
It was clear that she did not care about any of the implications he had made. She sucked a breath through her teeth and pulled her hand away, as if it had been tainted by something deplorable, ignoring his bait with a flick of her wrist, “So, you're familiar with our house? Far from home as well, aren’t you? Why are you here?” Each inflection grew more and more impatient.
There was a rattling cough behind them. A cleared throat. The other man who’d initial spoken to them was pulling a sheet of parchment paper from his robes, eyes widening once more. He squinted hard at them before swinging his gaze back to the piece of paper, jaw bunching together. Though the woman paid him no mind.
Leon didn't have to think too hard to figure out what was likely going on here. But just to be sure—and because it seemed that any chance at politeness was rather ruined between Cyrus's characteristic sarcasm and the outright rude responses of the Tevinter citizens—he reached forward quite quickly, deftly snatching the paper from the man's hand and turning it over in his.
Rivaini woman. Short. Dark hair, curly.
Tevinter noble. Black hair. Indigo eyes. Tall.
The other items on the list followed suit, describing a few key members of the Inquisition. Leon sighed. This wasn't going to end well, he could already tell. When he spoke, his voice was more weary than anything. "It seems the people with explaining to do are, in fact, yourselves. What are you doing with this, and who gave it to you?" He turned the paper back around so they could see it. No doubt they'd make the connection soon enough anyway.
Zahra shifted at his side, fingers fumbling at the latch to allow them in the yard. She still hadn’t spoken, though she seemed to catch on fairly quickly as to what was happening.
The woman sneered, instead of answering his questions. She looked rather pleased for someone caught in a ruse. The men behind her were fanning out to the sides, hands stretching out. They watched like wolves eager to see the faintest flicker of prey under their noses. She stepped back a few paces and clicked her tongue, not once taking her eyes away from them. She did not hesitate to answer, “What does that matter? We’re here to eliminate you.”
A sweltering hiss of flames shot from one of the man’s outstretched fingers.
Leon, being the biggest target, was not surprised to find that the initial spell was aimed for him. He ducked to the side in enough time that the flames only skimmed the leathers on his shoulder, leaving them uncomfortably hot but not on fire and otherwise uninjured. They should have backed up, but they hadn't yet, and he punished them forward, reaching forward to grab the flame-thrower by the shoulder. Yanking, he brought his knee up at the same time, the mage's nose giving way under the blow with a wet crunch. He staggered, but Leon gave him no quarter, slamming an elbow into the back of his head as he recoiled upwards from the first blow.
He dropped, definitely still alive, but also assuredly unconscious. That was enough that the others quickly tried to scramble backwards.
One of them didn't make it more than a step before Cyrus drove one of his swords into the ground, catching the hem of his robe and staking it in place. The interruption of his backwards momentum tripped him, and Cyrus didn't seem nearly as interested in remaining nonlethal as Leon; the second sword found the man's heart.
A frost spell caught him in the side as he was drawing them out; Cyrus hissed and shifted sideways before the second could do the same, but the first crawled down his leg, locking it at the knee and severely hindering his motion. At least until he could get rid of it.
A fire spell came in next, but Romulus stepped in front of it, shield blocking its path. The fireball burst and surrounded him. He must have acted on instinct, as this sort of spell normally would've just washed over him without many ill effects at all given what his potions could do. He was without those particular effects this time, and as a result when the cloud cleared most of Romulus's left arm was on fire, his pants and shirt threatening to catch the blaze as well.
Rather than let it stop him, he performed a roll forward, towards the offending mage. The roll doused him on the damp and in many places downright wet ground, and he came up with his small crossbow in hand. The bolt loosed from it found the mage's chest, the force pitching him back a step. Romulus took off at a sprint to close the rest of the distance. It wasn't hard to imagine what would happen when he got there.
One of the mages who’d come from the behind the house had tripped and stumbled over his feet in an attempt to escape. Eyes bulging. As soon as his hands touched the fence, legs poised to swing over, an arrow struck through the back of his head and continued straight through until it came to a halt in a tree. The fence swayed but did not hold his weight, crumbling beneath him. He tumbled in a tangled heap and fell on his face, blood pooling out into the grass.
Only the woman stayed her ground. Though she was slowly backing away towards the fence, eyes flicking from each face. The smile she’d worn only moments ago was gone. A blade had found its way into her hand, dropped from one of her long sleeves. She licked her lips and quickly raked it down her forearm, dragging the length of her sleeve up to her elbow. Blood pooled down her wrist as she held it aloft, towards them. Dripping onto the toes of her boots. She held her free hand towards the corpse lying at Cyrus’s feet and for a moment, he seemed to stir. His body shivered. Slivers of blood rose from the wound on his chest and gravitated towards her, swimming in the air in thin streams.
The streams rose around them, like sanguine whips undulating in the air. There was a sense that she was preparing to strike, until she heaved forward and groaned. The sound was monstrous. Something caught between a gurgling shriek and layered moan. Inhuman. Her arm snapped forward at an unnatural angle, driving her towards the ground. The blood slashed down into the dirt. Erratic, but directionless. Her skin bubbled and stretched; crackled an ugly purple, but her eyes remained the same: blue, gawping at them, spittle dragging down her chin. Even through the swelling of her face, it was clear that she’d lost control of herself. Spine and shoulders crackling under the rearrangement; making room for further deformations. Her hissing breaths became more labored as she began trying to sway back to her feet.
Leon knew exactly what this was. He was too far to prevent it, but there was something else he could do instead. Stilling, he focused his attention on the woman, reaching for the lyrium he could feel in her blood. It wasn't hard, with so much of it spilled for her magic; she was practically saturated in it compared to a southern mage. Not at all like Cyrus, whose only hint of it had been the corrupted kind. He found it easily, his breath hissing out through his teeth like steam. His skin felt hot, not unlike more sunburn, but from below rather than above, a deep, thrumming heat that rose to the surface of him, barely contained by his physical boundaries.
She burned, as well, but in a markedly-different way. The woman's transformation halted partway through, the demon repulsed by the pain its new body was in as the lyrium in her system ignited. Her joints locked, motion ceasing; a scream tore from her throat, raw and shrill. It was only half-human, the undertones of the demon's rasp bleeding into the sound. Leon kept his eyes locked on hers and covered the rest of the distance, taking hold of her head in both hands. The flesh underneath his gauntlets was starting to soften, become almost oversaturated, spongy in texture.
Her anatomy was still human enough that her neck broke in just the same way when he twisted. The scream abruptly cut off, and the woman fell.
Romulus was returning from where he'd violently finished off the mage he'd struck with the crossbow bolt. He wiped the blood from his blade, watching what had happened with the possessed mage and Leon, clearly some degree of uncomfortable. None of it had been a pleasant thing to observe, at any rate.
He stopped before the unconscious member of the party that had attacked them, and glanced at Zahra. "If you want some time to yourself in the house, we can watch your back."
Zahra seemed somewhat preoccupied by what had just taken place, staring at the remains of the twisted abomination Leon had just taken care of. It didn’t appear as if she’d seen that sort of thing before, from either party. She startled when Rom spoke to her, and managed a weak smile, before looking at the others. Perhaps to check if they were fine, and whole. “Ah—yes, right… you’re right.”
She cleared her throat and stepped over one of the corpses, careful not to tread in the blood now pooled across the yard. Flecking the grass like a canvas. It was a mess to behold. Colorful. A stark contrast to the backwoods environment; fishing rods leaning up against each house. There was the sound of shutters snapping closed in the distance. As of yet they hadn’t seen anyone who lived there, but it felt intentional. She hunched down in front of one of the flowerbeds, fingers scrapping across dirt until she upended a semi-buried rock. Flat as a pancake, and as wide as wide as a plate.
Her laugh bellied disbelief, “He never even moved it, the fool.” Spoken more to herself than anyone in the vicinity. She’d grabbed something from underneath. It became clear what it was when she jiggled a key inside the lock and pushed the door open. She disappeared inside, with only the sound of stomping boots indicating her search. A moment later and she reappeared at the door, mouth drawn into a frown.
“He’s not here. He’s gone to Llomerryn to sell his fish.”
“Might be for the best, considering who dropped by to visit." Cyrus prodded one of the corpses with the toe of his boot. “Maybe we tie up the one still alive and see what we can get out of him later. They've left your father alone this long—it might be worth knowing what has changed. Then off to Llomerryn as discreetly as we can, I suppose?" He looked at Romulus when he said it, clearly figuring he was the one most likely to manage discreet in this context.
"We can probably do better than the last time we visited," Romulus agreed, his tone somewhat dark no doubt from the memory of what they'd been visiting for.
Leon felt his lips thin; his fingers curled into his palms before he forced them to relax. He'd never been especially fond of that technique, nor inclined to use it. But... better that than allowing the abomination to enter this world unobstructed. He took a deep breath through his nose and nodded. "That seems like the best course of action, yes. Perhaps we should return to the boat."
He glanced at Zahra. "It might be worth trying to gain some information here," he advised. Knowledge was one thing they were sorely lacking in this case, and if there was a chance that the people here might provide something of use, it seemed better to aim for that than a fight they might be able to avoid. That said... he also knew better than to count on anything here. "Maybe keep your weapons loose in the scabbards, though."
Zahra up leaned against a tree, drawing a hand up to shield her eyes in a weak attempt to see better. Her mouth was pursed. She was mumbling about them being here of all places. She certainly didn’t look as if she’d even considered this as a possibility. Understandably doubtful that anyone would willingly come out here, in the middle of nowhere. In front of her father’s house. Their voices were indiscernible from where they stood, but they appeared to be knocking on the front door and attempting to peer through the shuttered windows.
“I… suppose you're right.” She straightened her posture, and tried to smooth a smile on her face. A friendly one. It lifted halfway and wobbled into a thin line. There weren’t many moments where she appeared at a loss, but now, she looked like she wasn’t sure what she should be doing at all. Her hand had lifted closer to her bow before dropping back down to her side. She took a tentative step out into the open and halted for the others to join her, in order to descend the stairs together. The stone pathway branched out towards the cabins, including her own. She halted in front of the rusty gate, hand poised on the latch.
It would be noisy.
The furthest man was still rapping his knuckles against the door. Hard. He jerked his hood down with harsher sigh and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, “He isn’t here. Why waste anymore time in this blasted place?”
“Then we wait until he is.” The finality of the statement bore a clue as to who was in charge. The woman was leaning against a heap of fishing traps, facing the house. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her hood already pulled down to reveal a meticulous set of braids.
Another man had his hands cupped to the sides of his face, peering through the shutters of a nearby window. He took a moment to try and jimmy his fingers through them before straightening back up, defeated, “Why don’t we just burn the place down? He’ll have nothing to come home to.”
“That’s not why we’re here.”
It was the fourth person who finally noticed their arrival. He’d been hunched over inspecting something on the ground. He raised his head and froze in place, staring at them. His surprise was only momentary before his expression soured considerably. An indignant lift of the lip followed, “What’s this? An audience? Shoo. Go on, now.”
Only then did the others turn to regard them, bearing the same leveled stares. Looking beneath them. There wasn’t a flicker of recognition there, only contempt.
Cyrus drew up next to Zahra, leveling a rather unimpressed look at the lot of them. He crossed his arms over his chest. “That's funny: I could have sworn trespassing and arson were both illegal in Rivain. They're certainly against the law where you're from, my sartorially-challenged interlopers." He lifted an eyebrow, perhaps allowing his accent and obvious bearing to speak for itself as to the rest. His eyes narrowed, though, when he inspected their robes a little more closely. “Ah. So you are House Contee, then. Little unsubtle, isn't it? The insignia."
That seemed to strike a chord with them. Their faces displayed an array of disgust and startled disbelief. They certainly recognized his accent. There was a spitting noise in the foreground. Perhaps, from the man closest to the door. The woman pushed herself away from the fishing crates and rounded up in front of the fence, closest to the gate they stood at, her arms dropping to her side. She appeared to scrutinize Cyrus for a moment before flicking her gaze at the others and then back at him again.
Her smile was anything but kind. One they might have seen in the Winter Palace. A double-edged blade, searching for a spine. She tilted her head to the side, and prodded a finger into Cyrus’s chest: clearly unimpressed. “A matter of perspective in some parts of Rivain, I hear.”
It was clear that she did not care about any of the implications he had made. She sucked a breath through her teeth and pulled her hand away, as if it had been tainted by something deplorable, ignoring his bait with a flick of her wrist, “So, you're familiar with our house? Far from home as well, aren’t you? Why are you here?” Each inflection grew more and more impatient.
There was a rattling cough behind them. A cleared throat. The other man who’d initial spoken to them was pulling a sheet of parchment paper from his robes, eyes widening once more. He squinted hard at them before swinging his gaze back to the piece of paper, jaw bunching together. Though the woman paid him no mind.
Leon didn't have to think too hard to figure out what was likely going on here. But just to be sure—and because it seemed that any chance at politeness was rather ruined between Cyrus's characteristic sarcasm and the outright rude responses of the Tevinter citizens—he reached forward quite quickly, deftly snatching the paper from the man's hand and turning it over in his.
Rivaini woman. Short. Dark hair, curly.
Tevinter noble. Black hair. Indigo eyes. Tall.
The other items on the list followed suit, describing a few key members of the Inquisition. Leon sighed. This wasn't going to end well, he could already tell. When he spoke, his voice was more weary than anything. "It seems the people with explaining to do are, in fact, yourselves. What are you doing with this, and who gave it to you?" He turned the paper back around so they could see it. No doubt they'd make the connection soon enough anyway.
Zahra shifted at his side, fingers fumbling at the latch to allow them in the yard. She still hadn’t spoken, though she seemed to catch on fairly quickly as to what was happening.
The woman sneered, instead of answering his questions. She looked rather pleased for someone caught in a ruse. The men behind her were fanning out to the sides, hands stretching out. They watched like wolves eager to see the faintest flicker of prey under their noses. She stepped back a few paces and clicked her tongue, not once taking her eyes away from them. She did not hesitate to answer, “What does that matter? We’re here to eliminate you.”
A sweltering hiss of flames shot from one of the man’s outstretched fingers.
Leon, being the biggest target, was not surprised to find that the initial spell was aimed for him. He ducked to the side in enough time that the flames only skimmed the leathers on his shoulder, leaving them uncomfortably hot but not on fire and otherwise uninjured. They should have backed up, but they hadn't yet, and he punished them forward, reaching forward to grab the flame-thrower by the shoulder. Yanking, he brought his knee up at the same time, the mage's nose giving way under the blow with a wet crunch. He staggered, but Leon gave him no quarter, slamming an elbow into the back of his head as he recoiled upwards from the first blow.
He dropped, definitely still alive, but also assuredly unconscious. That was enough that the others quickly tried to scramble backwards.
One of them didn't make it more than a step before Cyrus drove one of his swords into the ground, catching the hem of his robe and staking it in place. The interruption of his backwards momentum tripped him, and Cyrus didn't seem nearly as interested in remaining nonlethal as Leon; the second sword found the man's heart.
A frost spell caught him in the side as he was drawing them out; Cyrus hissed and shifted sideways before the second could do the same, but the first crawled down his leg, locking it at the knee and severely hindering his motion. At least until he could get rid of it.
A fire spell came in next, but Romulus stepped in front of it, shield blocking its path. The fireball burst and surrounded him. He must have acted on instinct, as this sort of spell normally would've just washed over him without many ill effects at all given what his potions could do. He was without those particular effects this time, and as a result when the cloud cleared most of Romulus's left arm was on fire, his pants and shirt threatening to catch the blaze as well.
Rather than let it stop him, he performed a roll forward, towards the offending mage. The roll doused him on the damp and in many places downright wet ground, and he came up with his small crossbow in hand. The bolt loosed from it found the mage's chest, the force pitching him back a step. Romulus took off at a sprint to close the rest of the distance. It wasn't hard to imagine what would happen when he got there.
One of the mages who’d come from the behind the house had tripped and stumbled over his feet in an attempt to escape. Eyes bulging. As soon as his hands touched the fence, legs poised to swing over, an arrow struck through the back of his head and continued straight through until it came to a halt in a tree. The fence swayed but did not hold his weight, crumbling beneath him. He tumbled in a tangled heap and fell on his face, blood pooling out into the grass.
Only the woman stayed her ground. Though she was slowly backing away towards the fence, eyes flicking from each face. The smile she’d worn only moments ago was gone. A blade had found its way into her hand, dropped from one of her long sleeves. She licked her lips and quickly raked it down her forearm, dragging the length of her sleeve up to her elbow. Blood pooled down her wrist as she held it aloft, towards them. Dripping onto the toes of her boots. She held her free hand towards the corpse lying at Cyrus’s feet and for a moment, he seemed to stir. His body shivered. Slivers of blood rose from the wound on his chest and gravitated towards her, swimming in the air in thin streams.
The streams rose around them, like sanguine whips undulating in the air. There was a sense that she was preparing to strike, until she heaved forward and groaned. The sound was monstrous. Something caught between a gurgling shriek and layered moan. Inhuman. Her arm snapped forward at an unnatural angle, driving her towards the ground. The blood slashed down into the dirt. Erratic, but directionless. Her skin bubbled and stretched; crackled an ugly purple, but her eyes remained the same: blue, gawping at them, spittle dragging down her chin. Even through the swelling of her face, it was clear that she’d lost control of herself. Spine and shoulders crackling under the rearrangement; making room for further deformations. Her hissing breaths became more labored as she began trying to sway back to her feet.
Leon knew exactly what this was. He was too far to prevent it, but there was something else he could do instead. Stilling, he focused his attention on the woman, reaching for the lyrium he could feel in her blood. It wasn't hard, with so much of it spilled for her magic; she was practically saturated in it compared to a southern mage. Not at all like Cyrus, whose only hint of it had been the corrupted kind. He found it easily, his breath hissing out through his teeth like steam. His skin felt hot, not unlike more sunburn, but from below rather than above, a deep, thrumming heat that rose to the surface of him, barely contained by his physical boundaries.
She burned, as well, but in a markedly-different way. The woman's transformation halted partway through, the demon repulsed by the pain its new body was in as the lyrium in her system ignited. Her joints locked, motion ceasing; a scream tore from her throat, raw and shrill. It was only half-human, the undertones of the demon's rasp bleeding into the sound. Leon kept his eyes locked on hers and covered the rest of the distance, taking hold of her head in both hands. The flesh underneath his gauntlets was starting to soften, become almost oversaturated, spongy in texture.
Her anatomy was still human enough that her neck broke in just the same way when he twisted. The scream abruptly cut off, and the woman fell.
Romulus was returning from where he'd violently finished off the mage he'd struck with the crossbow bolt. He wiped the blood from his blade, watching what had happened with the possessed mage and Leon, clearly some degree of uncomfortable. None of it had been a pleasant thing to observe, at any rate.
He stopped before the unconscious member of the party that had attacked them, and glanced at Zahra. "If you want some time to yourself in the house, we can watch your back."
Zahra seemed somewhat preoccupied by what had just taken place, staring at the remains of the twisted abomination Leon had just taken care of. It didn’t appear as if she’d seen that sort of thing before, from either party. She startled when Rom spoke to her, and managed a weak smile, before looking at the others. Perhaps to check if they were fine, and whole. “Ah—yes, right… you’re right.”
She cleared her throat and stepped over one of the corpses, careful not to tread in the blood now pooled across the yard. Flecking the grass like a canvas. It was a mess to behold. Colorful. A stark contrast to the backwoods environment; fishing rods leaning up against each house. There was the sound of shutters snapping closed in the distance. As of yet they hadn’t seen anyone who lived there, but it felt intentional. She hunched down in front of one of the flowerbeds, fingers scrapping across dirt until she upended a semi-buried rock. Flat as a pancake, and as wide as wide as a plate.
Her laugh bellied disbelief, “He never even moved it, the fool.” Spoken more to herself than anyone in the vicinity. She’d grabbed something from underneath. It became clear what it was when she jiggled a key inside the lock and pushed the door open. She disappeared inside, with only the sound of stomping boots indicating her search. A moment later and she reappeared at the door, mouth drawn into a frown.
“He’s not here. He’s gone to Llomerryn to sell his fish.”
“Might be for the best, considering who dropped by to visit." Cyrus prodded one of the corpses with the toe of his boot. “Maybe we tie up the one still alive and see what we can get out of him later. They've left your father alone this long—it might be worth knowing what has changed. Then off to Llomerryn as discreetly as we can, I suppose?" He looked at Romulus when he said it, clearly figuring he was the one most likely to manage discreet in this context.
"We can probably do better than the last time we visited," Romulus agreed, his tone somewhat dark no doubt from the memory of what they'd been visiting for.
Leon felt his lips thin; his fingers curled into his palms before he forced them to relax. He'd never been especially fond of that technique, nor inclined to use it. But... better that than allowing the abomination to enter this world unobstructed. He took a deep breath through his nose and nodded. "That seems like the best course of action, yes. Perhaps we should return to the boat."