Miscellaneous Buildings

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

The space behind her eyes is hot, almost to the point of searing. No. No, no, no. So quickly. Andy was right - it was dark magic. Dark magic she helped do. Dark magic with a light in the dark, a single mace lit up like a glowing torch. She quickly puts a hand on their arm, grip tight. "No - no it's... no. It's. Andy... it's okay." Her voice shakes, but she speaks with quiet conviction. She bites her lip, looking at him. Her friend. Her first, true friend here.

He was dying. Again.

There wouldn't be any coming back from this. Not from what she could see, not from the smell, not from the pain of it all. She... understood what had to be done. She could only pray Andy would help her.

[Kidney]

Roard stopped shaking. 

In a single movement, Roard stood, turned, and hefted a branch in his right hand. He was facing the two, looking to Andy once more. "I did this to myself." He said, unemotional, hollow. "Forever lost in my own misery." His voice was deep, raspy, like the one that came from behind the mask the day of Lekalis' wedding. "You will not come to understand the true extent of my failings." The final sentence left him as a whole breath, and his stone-like stance melted, and he slumped, and he fell to one knee. 

"You've come to kill me, haven't you?" 

He looked up, and dropped the branch. "Burn me. Spread my ashes where the sun shines, and the wheat grows tall."

[EloHim]

[ ? ? ? ]
He looks briefly to Talea before closing his eye.
"Sad. Sad, but fixable. Anyways, you’ve met me before, priestess. Twas a brief interaction, but I would be saddened to learn I did not leave an impression. Was practically tearing myself in two for that role!”- he chuckled at his own joke(if that was a joke),but compared to the eternal laughter in his head it was but a single droplet.
“You did adequately in the Ruins, if I do say so myself. Especially for one who dealt with it alone. Many an innocent man and woman were saved thanks to your toil. I believe that it is within my set of freedoms for this particular interaction to convey their thanks, but that's that. Gold, i hope, did the rest."-he nods to the maiden, eye still closed, amber glimmering from within the polished gem.

"I'm going to go easy on you, your Lordship. For now “Elohim”, as you’ve called him, is a silent observer, whilst I attempt to assume his guise in order to fix up some of his mess-ups. Feel free to address Me as you will, it makes no difference.”- he turns his head to Lekalis, as hee slowly switches the tone from a usual “man unwillingly lecturing others in occult”. He now sounded more like a man discussing his favorite subject. Lawyer or attorney, something “court-of-law”-like. 

“Now as to “the why” of this change in management...Powers that Be did not appreciate Sanguines's attempts at branching out his soul-gathering enterprise. Not all has been forgiven, not all has been forgotten. They were content with two representatives of said enterprise - willing or otherwise, but three became just too much for this particular Play. Tis as much as I'm allowed to convey for the "reasons" part. Why not just pop this bloody leech out of this poor head and be done with it, one may ask? Alas, getting rid of it would equate to permanently killing our good Alchemist... Other ways may be employed, granted they are beyond the tools that i've been given at this particular moment. For now i'm here in the capacity of silencer for our sanguine friend in this particular instance of his existence, until he can be evicted back into his initial place of residence or a new one."

[speakeroftruths]

"mercy"

"a death all the same"

"an act of mercy"

How the Whispers knew to come upon them at their lowest moments was a testimony to all the things the Inquisitor did not know. All the same, it was clear what was being requested, and what they would need to do. Duty has a way of catching up on one. Andy turns from the woods, lowering their weapon as they do, and regard the kneeling figure. The man that they do not know, save for them being a friend to Toustain.

"duty"

They consider the sharp-edged bolt loaded into their weapon, barbed for hunting prey clad only in their own thick hides, and think on exactly how it could be done. How it must be done. There was a clear protocol in play, the path of their duty apparent as it had not been for some time. Andy finds that surety tastes quite sour on their suddenly dry tongue.

"...Ser Roard," Did he have a last name? "Make yourself ready. Remove your breastplate, and speak of any kin you wish to inherit whatever worldly goods you possess. Sister, bear witness as an agent of the Light. We require last rites."

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

She nods, swallowing. "Andy he's... Andy he's my friend. I..." she's given him last rites. She's given them before. She doesn't know how to do last rites twice. "Andy..." her voice falls to a whisper. She looks at the executioner's sword that lays on the ground. Roard's weapon. She doesn't want for them to have to get close to him. She doesn't want to see Roard struck with an arrow, she's terrified that it won't do the job in one shot. Him, on the cold ground, gurgling out of his throat.

"...Andy... ask him about his home. Ask him about home. He's... he's been absolved. I've absolved him, I know he's. He's taken care of. He's... we can do this. Please. Ask him to... to talk about. Home. We can. Please." They were here to do a job. And she knows Roard. She's sure he'd rather think about that than his sins. All of the things he had done wrong. All of the acts that he had had to do to survive. The terrible ritual.

She... steels herself. And she steps towards the sword.

[Kidney]

Roard shook again, consumed by one singular aching sob, and he rises to his feet, screaming out a roar that shakes the trees, and seemingly makes the sky crack. "I have no kin!" His face is twisted into a teary-eyed grimace, and he yanks the mask from his face to show them. 

Where a left eye used to be is a flowing cesspool of fungal infection, the red hyphema the only thing differentiating the eye from the same kind of spot one may find on week-old bread, or an old cake. He screams again, and raises a fist to the sky. "My home is gone! My family is gone!" His voice is thunder, and his eye begins to bleed. He yells, registering the pain but useless to stop it, reaching for the hole in  his breastplate that had helped take his life one time before. He rams fingers within it. 

The time had come to show what he was capable of. 

The bronze begins to rip. Roard's fingertips bleed as the bronze creaks open like a necrotic flower, tore like paper in slow-motion, ripping free of his chest, exposing a sweat-slicked tunic that bore stains from what used to be the Old Roard's blood on the back of his breastplate. Roard rips the mighty thing open, and his chest heaves, and his first two fingers on each hand are locked in some strange over-exertion cramp that forces another screech from his tired lips. 

"Toustain absolved me! Vesta absolved me! I did everything I was asked! Everything I could! All I wanted was to die alone! For every single fucking person to leave me be! To not bother me, to not harm me, to not leave me! I am Roard of Badger's Cross! Does not one deity understand what I have done? What I have seen?! I have seen death..." He trails off, voice growing so dark and spiteful he feared he may rip his own throat out before he could finish his own speech. "And it is nothing but a dark, black pit. We shall all return to the nothing we came from." 

He shoots a finger to Toustain, bleeding and crooked. "She is the only person who showed me kindness, who showed me I was still human." He's crying, and his tears are wetting fresh fungi on his face. "Her god gives me no such mercy." He stops, and he breathes in, and he coughs up blood that oozes down his chin. "Home was my sanctuary. Home...was mine. Home meant that no one could hurt me, no one could destroy what my Father built. And then harlots and thieves burned their way into my great blue frozen heart. The women sated the burning in my loins, but the man...he set my soul ablaze and left me with an affliction that cursed my fetid form until I was nothing more than a rotting, walking creature destined to spread nothing but hopelessness and death to each and every man, woman and child across this green earth." 

He turned to Andy, and spat on the ground. "Hate fueled my long trip here. Hate and Fear. I no longer feel them. Send me to Hell where I belong. Send me there in Spite. Shoot me you Sun-fearing COWARD!" 

[speakeroftruths]

Gritting their teeth, the Inquisitor obliges.

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

His words have her reeling. When he looks at her, gestures to her, she jerks backwards as if he'd made physical contact with her, her chest caving inwards as she is forced to listen. His voice was coated with an agony that she didn't understand, didn't know could be felt; now she knew a more terrible pain existed in this world than any she'd ever seen before. She'd never heard him speak like this - not with this sadness, this anger. This terrible, gripping pain. And she felt his torment as he ripped off the bronze - the tearing of flesh and the hot flow of blood - and it all comes apart, he comes apart.

He screams. And Andy acts.


And she is so still. 

[Kidney]

Roard roared as the bolt flew. Its impact wrenched his breath from his lungs, and his eyes softened as the head buried into his red, normal-sized heart. One that was once so warm. The cold steel does not bend as his muscles contract around it, and Roard's eyes drain of life too quickly for even he to realize. A tunnel constricts around him, but he stands. He remains solid, solid as stone, facing it. Light borders the end, and the final moments are solidified in Spite. Roard Of Badger's Cross does not abate from his course, he does not beg for forgiveness. He does not think, he does not listen, and he does not apologize. 

He accepts.

Understanding washes over his paling face, and he's dead. Still...standing. 

It takes one...two...three seconds after his arms go slack before the body falls backward, clattering into the firepit. 

[speakeroftruths]

The silence is so thick as they lower their crossbow that it almost seems to pull at them, the weight of the deed having a gravity all its own. It was not the first time they had killed. Nor, indeed, was it the second. They were not one to keep track of the lives, the stains that their soul bore, but there was something extraordinarily different about killing in self defense, or in combat. Violence, washing the combat in shades of red, at once made the deed easier to carry out and lighter to bear. 

Atlas would have struggled to bear the load now resting on their shoulders.

Their breathing slows, mind mercifully numb and clear of the green voices. The weapon slides slack on its strap as they turn, unable to look their companion in the eye, and make to begin the march back to the Hamlet.

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

She feels she couldn't move. Shouldn't move. All of it stops, all of it is quiet. Not a bird sings. Not a branch cracks. Even the stream is silent and the water wheel remains a motionless, vague thing, an object in space uncommanded by the whisper of time that washes over it. Over her.

Do her lungs move? Does her heart beat?

She feels, finally, the organs burn within her, and a breath is forced through her lips. And she finds it broken and horrible and she stands there. Hot air in her throat, dry and useless. Dumb, a child again, feet weighed down by stones someone snuck into her shoes. She feels all at once a hollowing of herself.

But truly the world did not wait and she feels the lack of life and knows, knows that she is alone. Alone with a smouldering corpse that had a name, a name that she hopes is written somewhere. Ser Roard of Badger's Cross. A man who tried to cheat death. Who had come out of the other side of somewhere, who had done something no one had done before, truly. Mad, perhaps. But then he'd hugged her and she'd known he was real and human and his heart beat. He'd watched out for her. They had laughed together.

She tries to recall the night, the cold dark all around and pain thrumming in her ears. She tries to remember his face - he was there, wasn't he? He was watching, wasn't he? He asked if she was alright, didn't he? He had come to see if she was okay? He had seen the blood? He had stood, protective, over her?

He had, she decides. And the reality of that night no longer matters, just her remembrance of it, real or imagined.

She finds the strength to walk, and forces herself to do so.

[speakeroftruths]

The road back to the Hamlet is neither overlong, nor very short, but Andy's eyes do not lift from it. They walk slowly, not in measured steps, but with a tired, heavy gait that stamps the heel of the boots into the loose dust. To look up would be to acknowledge what they had done, even if it was a sort of mercy. Their thoughts drift back to the other Inquisitor that they had met but a scant few weeks earlier, the one full of righteous fire and proud of his bloodletting. This felt like the sort of deed that he might have committed. He, the dark mirror to what Andy represented. The sword, where the Sinistra was the shield. Exactly the sort of thing that the townsfolk expected on hearing the title of Inquisitor. The sort of person who would execute someone in front of their friends.

He might have been able to shrug it off as an act of duty. Andy could not. They could only live with what they had done as a stone tied around their neck, dragging their head down to the earth. It was the feeling like drowning, or what they imagined drowning might feel like.

There was so much that still needed to be done. The body would need to be tended to by someone equipped for plague. The ashes would need to be seen to as per his last wishes. To say nothing of their original mission.

None of which they can bring themself to speak of. They would loathe to be the ones to break the silence. After what they just did, disrespectful doesn't begin to cover the act. The mere returning of their thought to the deed rose bile in their throat. They were disgusted with themselves. With their acts. And despite their best efforts, they do indeed break the silence, though not by raising practical concerns.

They stop walking, lean on a tree by the path, and heave, coughing up the better part of their breakfast onto the roots.

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

She walks in a haze, following the somewhat-trod path through this part of the woods and towards the stone streets and the houses upon them. She feels like she doesn't direct her footsteps. There was something else there, moving her, making her muscles respond to the necessities of life. She knew what had to be done. She knew that someone had to do it. There were no particulars in her mind, no ordered list, just a swirl of responsibility, a vague shape of what had to be done. Something that someone else would have to do, as the words in her mind just refused to focus and take shape into individual, meaningful thoughts.

Toustain is shaken out of her automatic motions by Andy stopping, and throwing up. She takes a knee, slowly (achingly) and rests a hand on their shoulder.

"It's okay," she says. She feels like her voice is as quiet as the last of the winter winds that wind through these trees. Her throat felt raw.

[speakeroftruths]

"We need," Andy gets out, coughing and wiping their sleeve over their soiled mouth. "A doctor. Someone trained for plague. To burn the remains."

They are suddenly very weak, not even reacting to the hand on them. They stand, shakily, one arm still resting on the roadside tree they have so thoroughly decorated for support.

"I'm so..."

The words don't come, so they just close their mouth and look back to the path, still unable or unwilling to look at Toustain.

[rosallora]

[Toustain]

She knows what they want to say. She thinks. Maybe she doesn't. They're a shape. They're a shape that makes sound, a collection of brushstrokes that differentiate from the gloom of this place, they're made up of patterns of movement like the shifting of shoulders and the wiping of mouths to get the taste of puke off their lips.

"And ye the preparation for her burial was an affair to behold, such that many attended to see. Silks were wrapped around her body, not once, but twice, and in accordance so we do now. A holy tradition, awarded to the pious and the worthy, the two arms of the mother, of a loving goddess given freely." She steps forward, not waiting for them. "And they were so thin and so fine that you could see the pure form of her body within the layers. Such a light showed from within the wrappings, a holy glow that cannot be denied by any man nor beast. Their candles grew flames of many colors, for they responded to the air of her holy breath, now belonging to the air itself. Her lungs no longer could claim them, and so they filled the antechambers and the vestry, the cathedral and the gardens, and many people did witness the strange behavior of the flames and knew it was a miracle."

She sees the form of the abbey. She can make out the colored blots of the stained glass. She does not look at the ground, even as she limps, her leg oversore and undoubtedly swollen from the effort. She cannot see the injury through layers of metal and linen. The feeling numbs. It is unmade. "And so her breath spread outward from that point, and the candles of the nearby village did flicker in their color, and some days afterwards the pious keepers of the holy body did receive word that a town nearly a league away reported that their fires had doubled in size and echoed many colors unusual to its spectrum. The vestal's breath carried and circled, and wherever it settled it was consumed in holy flame."