Chapter Text
Taylor had felt happy for a little while. The tunnel had collapsed thunderously, the matter was meant to be over, she might even be able to snatch another hour of sleep - wishful thinking, but if they were going to be delayed for weeks, she might as well give it a go. A long siege, constant stress, unending worry? Sounded like a great time to sneak a few naps. Roderika had barely recovered from the shock, the cheers had settled down, everything was approaching a state which could be described as ‘peaceful’. Nice to have a plan that actually paid off. And then the purple light had flared from between the boulders filling the tunnel, and Taylor remembered that she wasn’t allowed nice things. A small collection, perhaps, just to remind her of how unlucky she was in general. She recognised that purple light - the skeleton-armoured Tarnished had emanated it when he moved stones to form projectiles, and the Evergaol had flared with that light when it activated. Gravity, space, whatever, it was doing some serious bullshit, and she did not remotely appreciate it.
The boulders lifted up. Repeat. The boulders were fuckin’ moving, and she was getting very angry about it. They weren’t allowed to move, not that quickly, not upwards, no, no, no! They’d predicted this, they’d predicted and developed a countermeasure, she was an idiot for putting so much hope into this, it was always just a distraction… gah! She shrieked at the soldiers to exert a little stress, wincing when Roderika jumped a solid few inches into the air in sheer surprise.
“Come on, get your bows up, get those crossbows ready - there’s a damn war on, if you hadn’t noticed!”
They noticed. Or, they started to notice. Arrows were nocked, crossbows were checked and rechecked, ballistae were aligned towards the gate and their crews stood rigid as posts, practically thrumming with tension. Taylor tapped Roderika on the shoulder, and the spirit caller focused. Flickering images appeared on the bridge below, a thousand images playing over one another, eventually resolving into smooth motion, and then, a definite figure. Two knights, wearing armour she didn’t quite recognise. More rugged than anything else she’d seen, all the features of the armour she saw around the castle were oddly distorted and half-formed. A prototype, then, from a distant point in the past. She wondered, momentarily, if the knights were some of the soldiers who’d worked for the Storm King or even Godfrey during his first invasion. Whatever the case, they drew their swords like they should, and braced for attackers. Margit flared into life on one of the towers, and Taylor grabbed a… well, she grabbed a loudhailer. A brass one, sure, but a loudhailer nonetheless. Needed something to yell at people with.
“Don’t engage, let the knights soak up anything actually damaging!”
Margit shot her a glance, then nodded curtly. Good. Still cooperative, even if he was a bit of an asshat when it came to curses, giving profoundly useless advice that - no, no, siege, get back to the siege. The Tarnished were starting to walk up the cleared passage, but her eyes were elsewhere. Where else where they coming from, hm? Where were the infiltrators, the sneaky bastards trying to slide around her defences while their comrades soaked up the heat? Come on, come on, they were definitely going to try some kind of bullshit here. The sound of marching commenced again - faster, this time. Fair enough, the faint purple glow was remaining, something was consciously working to keep the tunnel working. Ah, now there was an idea - dammit, if she could talk to Tisiphone, she could get the assassin to strike at that weak point, probably some nice, squishy wizard that could be put down easily enough. For now, though, they had to endure the first assault. The Tarnished spilled out of the tunnel, shields raised high above their heads. Wasn’t willing to use the napalm quite yet - there weren’t enough, they only got one chance to make use of that stuff with the element of surprise. Her eyes flicked to the vulnerabilities… well, they’d learned one lesson, at least. Their wizards weren’t wearing easily-recognisable helmets anymore, they were wearing similar clothes to everyone else. But they should still be carrying… ah, there. Staffs. Buried in the crowd, but still undeniably present.
The loudhailer was, once again, a blessing.
“Wizards in the middle, ballistae!”
Machinery operated like clockwork, and a heavy, vicious bolt pelted into the centre of the group as the spectral knights made contact. A hail of arrows followed shortly after. This was… weird. A full-frontal assault? They were pushing through a little, but the wizards had been forced to break concentration by the giant chunk of metal about to turn them into piles of red mush. No bullshit black holes, hooray. The knights were… odd, in combat. They fought in repetitive motions, rarely innovating, and every so often a part of them faded into nothingness, returning only after a second or so. A glance at Roderika showed that only some of this was due to them being made from… not entirely perfect ashes. The spirit caller was sweating, shivering, and generally straining herself more than was probably healthy. Damn. She’d hoped her willpower would be a bit stronger… well, that’s what she got for not testing this sort of thing beforehand. Bit of an oversight, that. Oh well.
The arrows slowed them down, the ballistae crashed into their shields with ease, the knights were a constant pressure… and Margit decided to participate in his own way, flinging daggers of hard light into the crowd, bypassing any feeble defences they tried to muster. The group was losing, and rapidly. Fifteen had come through the tunnel, no more, no less, and… ah. That was their defence. One of the wizards had finally managed to let off a volley, and it was a little on the distracting side. First, it was just a shower of faint dust billowing from the tip of the staff, glinting faintly in the dim morning light… and then those motes of dust bloomed, becoming blindingly bright for a second. Taylor screwed her eyes shut, and even so her vision was obscured with blurred afterimages. The soldiers weren’t so lucky. Their reaction times were a little on the slow side, and many looked straight into the tiny stars. Based on the yelps of pain and the slowing of the arrows, a good number had been affected. Not all, but enough. Another wizard took the opportunity to add a little spice to the entire arrangement, a dark blue glow hovering around the tip of their staff, and… nothing happened. For a second. Then Roderika keeled forward with a cry of pain, something erupting from the air behind her to slice through her shoulder, the blood that trickled out from the wound of a similar shade to her red cloak.
Shit.
They were good. Identified a threat, attacked it in seconds. Didn’t bode well. The knights flickered, turning into a vague haze, their movements slowing… enough for the front few Tarnished to break through, cutting through their spectral bodies and disrupting the memory constructs. Shit. Shit. And now a pair of men with hollow expressions were uncorking some very, very familiar vials. She could see the future as clear as day - they’d rush forward, using the detonation to weaken or destroy the barricade. With the siege ongoing, there wouldn’t be a chance to repair them, and like that the bridge would be harder to defend. Well, that was the future if a certain horned son-of-a-bitch didn’t jump downwards, using his stick to impale one of the men before spinning around and kicking the other over the edge of the cliff. The Tarnished whirled automatically, readying themselves for a more… up-close form of combat. She could see tools being withdrawn, more vials, the wizards were winding up for their own variety of bullshit. Loudhailer.
“Move!”
Margit responded automatically, leaping upwards and out of the crowd, his job done. The Tarnished were a little stunned - Margit didn’t retreat, not to their knowledge (as far as she knew). It was a small pause in their movements, but it was enough for more arrows to rain down, killing another few. The wizards were starting to back up - just two. One was speared through the skull by a hard light dagger. The other managed to make it into the actual tunnel… where they were carried right back out by another wave. Shit. Well, they still had no chance of… ah. There it was. She could faintly hear over the wind the sound of birds yelling abuse at unseen people. The Tarnished had managed to get around the chasm, just like Nepheli had all that time ago. They were being a little more stealthy this time - hm, cross the chasm, scramble over the rock face while concealed using Calvert’s methods, enter the castle. Good move. But her birds were mean, and presumably had ways of seeing through invisible bullshit. Or they were just yelling at random people, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.
Roderika, though, was an issue. She was whimpering slightly, and Taylor pressed a flask against her lips after a moment of hesitation. She needed it more than Taylor did at this precise moment - but it was worrying to know that she could be so easily targeted. The spirit caller sipped a little, then a little more, and finally she snatched the flask away and gulped until there was nothing left in the small container. Her wound sealed quickly, her eyes brightened, and she was abruptly an actual presence in the world. Taylor gave her a stern look.
“They’re trying to infiltrate the castle. I’ll go and handle what I can. You, stay here and stay under shelter. Keep those knights active, understand? And if you get hurt…”
Another flask. Taylor didn’t need to stay uninjured, she could be trapped in a wheelchair and she could still basically do her job competently. Roderika needed to remain focused, and wounds would obviously interfere with that. Roderika glanced around frantically, trying to get a proper grounding in the increasingly chaotic situation. Taylor squeezed her shoulders, drawing her closer, fixing her with her best comforting expression. No idea how it went - she wasn’t very comforting, especially not these days.
“You’ll be fine. Keep the blindfold on. And work. If you get injured and the flask is empty, just leave, find a spot to hide.”
“I… I will try.”
“Best I can ask.”
One more thing before she left. One last trick up her sleeve. Another volley of flaming arrows shot downwards, igniting some of Angharad’s Special Sauce, also known as actual damn napalm. Taylor didn’t stay to watch the carnage - they had enough of the stuff to burn anyone coming in, should delay the assault just a little, keep them confined to the tunnel. It was crude, but the attack on the front gate was startlingly… effective, in its own way. The tunnel had been opened, they’d almost caught Margit in another explosion, their wizards had blinded their archers - and one might still be alive - and their entire mode of operation suggested a complete, coherent strategy. Little room for unpredictable events. Appropriate for something presumably cooked up by the ‘All-Knowing’. And indeed, the next wave didn’t seem to be dying in the numbers she’d quite hoped.
Hoped, she was hoping for maximum casualties. She was rapidly understanding why some people carried hipflasks around with them. She could very much go for a quick nip of something or other, just to get the shivers down, maybe even suppress some of the doubt and self-loathing. The churning of her stomach made her briefly reconsider. Briefly.
No time to stay. Had to move. Soon, she was running into the recesses of the castle accompanied by her jar and her knight. A few soldiers were snapped to attention by angry bellows, and brought along in her little entourage. Her spear was a solid, reassuring weight - one that she’d become increasingly used to, even reliant on. Only after a full minute of jogging did she actually take in her squad of soldiers. Six. Lordsworn, not the usual exiled soldiers, wearing proper chain hauberks and colourful tabards. Two of them stared at her, slowing down ever-so-slightly. Taylor was about to shriek at them when a flash of recognition washed over her. She knew these people… somewhat. One with a thin beard beneath his mask, covering up a weak chin. And when he spoke, she couldn’t help but remember that nasal voice. The other was taller than anyone save for Telavis, and his greatsword hung heavy on his back.
“...you?”
Taylor sighed. Well, this was happening. How long had it been?
“Yeah. Me. Thanks for the meal.”
Torch - she’d never come up with a name for him better than that - sneered slightly, then froze as he saw her fine cloak, her guard, her general air of command. Greatsword, his commander, chuckled loudly and coarsely.
“Blow me down, you’ve risen high, eh?”
“‘Owd’you do it? Not bloody fair, ‘owd’you get so bloody important?”
Taylor snapped. She really wasn’t in the mood for a conversation right now.
“Later. Got Tarnished to kill.”
Greatsword kept laughing as he moved, while Torch subsided into sullen silence. Yay. Reunion with the men who’d pointed her to Stormveil, given her food, shelter, and then had promptly died to Nepheli. The soldiers kept pace, at least. They followed the shrieking of vulgar hawks, who were evidently harassing the Tarnished rather… extensively. Damn extensively. They turned a corner, and there they were, four of them, wearing armour painted a concealing shade of dark blue, mottled with something like camouflage. Huh. This looked like someone trying to make modern designs using antiquated materials. To drive that impression home, they were using long knives and sturdy crossbows, similar to… Cavlert’s own loadout. Shit. She should’ve known he was working with the attackers, seemed like something he’d do. Prick. Outfitting people like soldiers from back home, maybe even giving them similar training. He’d done it quickly, too - his first party seemed downright primitive by comparison to this. The four had entered through a window, and their dust-stained hooks indicated that they had, indeed, clambered up here. Good. Tired. The hawks were shrieking loudly at them, mostly variations on ‘go fuck yourself’ and ‘fuck off’. Charming. Long cuts marked exposed segments of flesh where talons and knives had made contact - those hawks were vicious when they wanted to be.
Which was always.
Taylor didn’t even need to yell at the soldiers. They charged gladly, and Telavis was at the front. Potiphar stuck close to her, though. Probably felt that she still needed a bodyguard. There were other soldiers in this part of the castle, but she didn’t want to let these Tarnished do any kind of bullshit without her at least vaguely close by. The idea of them penetrating inwards, actually gaining a foothold… the very fact that they’d scaled this place so quickly was alarming, but she could adapt to that, counter it. A full-scale infiltration would be beyond nightmarish. The four whirled to face the new attackers, shifting… and running. Fuck, that was cheating. The sound of the battle at the front gate faded into the distance as they ran after the four, who almost immediately split up the second they reached a four-way junction in the corridor. One turned to distract them, the other three made their escape. His stance was good, as far as she knew. He reduced his profile, spread himself wide to avoid being tripped or unbalanced, did everything he could to optimise his chances of survival. Looked modern. He stared at the group before him, the swords emerging from sheaths, and he tried something.
“Single combat! I challenge you to single comb-”
Telavis sliced him in half. That wasn’t hyperbole. He simply chopped across, bluntly ignoring any movements from the man. The feeble attempt at bullshit faded into panicked gurgles as the man’s lungs deflated rapidly, and his armour slowly split apart. Beneath it was pale flesh, where a red line was swiftly developing. First, thin as a cobweb. Then wider, thicker, deeper, until the entire top half of the man’s torso had crumpled to the ground, accompanied by a good portion of innards transforming swiftly into outtards. Taylor couldn’t even find the time to feel disgusted, she simply blinked in surprise at Telavis’s swift and arguably dishonourable action. Telavis noticed her look, and shrugged.
“Snuck in. Dishonourable.”
Ah. Good to know. Well, maybe hanging around her for an extended period was making him more aware of the infinite potential of bullshit, and with that awareness came annoyance, and with that annoyance came a willingness to chop people in half before they could bullshit their way out of a good old-fashioned bisection. Hm. If she wasn’t already committed to not bullshitting him any more than necessary, she’d be downright intimidated. More than usual. A problem remained, though - three infiltrators, spreading through the castle. More hawks were screeching. Bad. Very bad. She turned to her six soldiers, and barked orders at them, ignoring their looks of incredulity at the sight of her ordering them around. That incredulity was good, actually - showed some level of awareness.
“Split up. Find any soldiers, get them to accompany you, do not let a single Tarnished embed themselves. I want proof for each one you kill. Understood?”
Greatsword grunted.
“Understood. You?”
“We’ll go this way, you handle the other directions.”
And like that, they were off. Taylor, Telavis, and Potiphar raced off down one corridor to hunt down the Tarnished who’d since vanished from sight… wait. One issue. These Tarnished could presumably conceal themselves, she needed something else, she needed…
“Fuck!”
Hm.
“Bird. Follow. Find the Tarnished.”
“Fuck!”
The bird wasn’t listening to her. Telavis leaned in, and grumbled loudly to the bird.
“You will follow. I have eaten many of your kind.”
He looked into the bird’s eyes, awakening some kind of ancestral memory, some distant recollection of a group of knights who’d eaten their way through most of the Storm King’s aviary. Hell, if everything kept resurrecting in this place, maybe this bird was eaten by Telavis in a past life. Maybe it remembered huge fingers plucking feathers, preparing a huge stew pot, maybe it remembered Godfrey spearing it and eating it while people cheered. Whatever the case, the bird somehow paled - well, it looked a hell of a lot more nervous, that was for sure - and it bobbed its head.
“Tarnished! Tarnished!”
Well. That worked. The bird swept through the wide corridors, knives on its feet flying behind it like a steel-grey tail, a tail that could easily chop her nose off if she wasn’t careful. It pursued the man, and they gladly followed, desperate to keep up with the thing. As they ran, though, Taylor had more ideas, more suspicions. So, was this Calvert’s intention? Get a bunch of people inside, infiltrate, then… what? Open the gate for the rest? Seemed like a good move, but the hawks were going nuts, surely they’d have anticipated some of that, at least. How many would succumb to wounds, or slow down just enough for the guards to take care of them? They knew about the collapsing tunnel far enough ahead to bring a countermeasure, and now they were just going to rely on a bunch of lightly-armoured Tarnished attacking all at once, when a whole mass of highly-trained and fucking magical Tarnished had failed time after time? And furthermore, how had they scaled so quickly, and if they could scale the castle, why not go for a more stealthy entrance? Just going through a window was silly, why not go for routes which could allow them to…
Oh shit.
Taylor figured it out. The Tarnished weren’t just coming from the sides, through the windows, in the most obvious places. Hell, they weren’t even very well-concealed, whatever effect Calvert had been able to produce in the field certainly wasn’t happening here. But why? She’d examined all that she could, drilled Angharad, Onager, anyone for any hint of gaps in Stormveil’s defences. There were ledges in the cliff, and she’d had hawks there to harass anyone stupid enough to rest on them. There were some towers which went low, and could be used to scale the castle. She’d had guards stationed in large enough numbers to rip apart any Tarnished that dared to take that route. Windows were easy, the castle was already full of soldiers and servants who would confront the Tarnished with great violence and terrible retribution. Or flailing desperation, which also worked. Assuming Calvert and the All-Knowing knew about this, or made educated assumptions, surely they’d go for the unexpected angle, so outlandish and difficult that she’d quietly assumed no-one would even try going for it, written it off as an impossibility.
The narrow channels beneath Stormveil, brickwork passages boring through the rock, emptying out into the boundless abyss.
Taylor scowled as she redirected herself. That newly-bisected Tarnished had been weak, and his friends hadn’t stood to fight. Maybe they weren’t able to… or hadn’t been ordered to. They’d clearly been more interested in slowing them, distracting them at all costs. Distracting them from this. A few shrieked orders sent a squad of soldiers moving to follow the hawk, and she was alone with her close companions once more. Silence. Taylor listened, walking carefully towards a certain latrine, the nearest one she knew about. She heard something. Something regular. Something metal, cracking into the side of a stone passage. A hook, hauling something large upwards. The passages went through the entire castle, going between floors, up to the very top of the structure - they could be in any of them. But now she was listening, she thought she could detect movements, one of them… close. Too close. Quieter than the four from earlier - they were deafening by comparison to this one.
“They’re in the walls.”
She whispered, eyes narrowed behind her glasses. Telavis hummed. Potiphar looked up at her incredulously. Her words came again, louder, more indignant. How dare they sneak around like this, why couldn’t they just walk into the meatgrinder like good Tarnished?
“They’re in the goddamn walls!”
* * *
Tisiphone watched carefully as the Tarnished moved. Calvert’s soldiers, in their strangely marked armour, were using hooks to try and scale the cliffs, certain sorcerous items from the All-Knowing allowing for them to cross the gap. She recognised the technique they were using to hide themselves, though. The Assassin’s Gambit, a barbarous bit of concealment sorcery that the order had never indulged in - why bother making oneself harder to see when you could become impossible to see? It was an easy route to stealth, and it encouraged bad habits. She may have had a veil, but for many of the years of her noviciate, no veils were permitted. She had to sneak like an ordinary person, and the habits had stuck. A Black Knife without a veil was, arguably, more dangerous than a Tarnished with the Assassin’s Gambit - such an unsanitary technique, too! A slice across the hand, the number of infections… no, had to set aside professional spite, had to keep watching.
The Tarnished crossed the bridge to distract the castle, and to perhaps open a way. The Tarnished under Calvert crossed the abyss and scaled the cliff to enter the castle by stealth. Something was wrong, though. A few Tarnished remained behind to put together catapults - why wouldn’t they go at this the normal way, why wouldn’t they set up and fire rotten corpses over the walls until everyone inside was dead? Did they have a sudden outbreak of sanity or… hm. The small mutiny earlier, averted by the Onyx Lord. If the Tarnished got angry, they might just leave, find a new way to get Runes. They wanted to end this quickly if at all possible… but they had the capacity to fight a war of attrition, even if it was undesirable. Good to know they weren’t complete lunatics. Just halfway there, even having the Scarlet Rot nearby was enough to make one qualify for a long stay in a sanatorium.
But something was still off. The hissing in the undergrowth had been too far away to investigate, it would require going out into the open more than she liked. But it was still there, hissing from a creature too large to be an ordinary serpent. She began to retreat from the camp, heading back for Irina. The attack would either end soon in victory, or the camp would be here for a good long time. Leaving her fate up in the air like this was oddly liberating - she couldn’t get into the castle, not now. Maybe the Tarnished would win and she’d lose her chance of getting her knife back… but Taylor would likely be dead, or imprisoned. Out of her hands. How awful. Anyhow, she made her way back to the campsite, her ears peeled, her profile as reduced as it possibly could be. Just get clear of the blast zone, and wait for her moment. She’d been trained to wait, almost immobile, in spaces barely large enough to fit her. She could hold on for a little longer.
And again, something was wrong. The camp was filled with sound, but the wrong sort. Quiet rustling, grass crushing underneath a large weight, leaves and twigs ripped to shreds by this thing… no, a serpent. Had to be. The rustling of scale against scale was unmistakable. She’d never heard of a serpent as large as this one in Limgrave, though… for a second, she remembered the temple, the engravings of a huge snake poised to swallow the world. Eyes that glittered with hunger, practically alive to her youthful eyes. Then she remembered Irina left on her own, and the guilt she’d feel if anything happened to her because of her negligence. Her training wasn’t remotely complete, she’d have wasted hours for nothing, her professional competence would be challenged… yes, that was why. Her stealthy steps turned into strident strides, and she winced with every unsubtle movement she made. Had to go faster - closer, closer, closer - and… here. Her eyes widened. She’d never seen something like this.
An orange serpent, far too large with grotesquely distorted proportions, was wrapped around a small struggling shape. Tisiphone was utterly frozen. She was… not exactly terrified of snakes, but she had no great fondness for the things. Especially when they were this large, and had… arms and legs? What? What manner of abomination had the world produced since she went into hiding? She recognised the shape in the centre of those coils, though, and she moved. Any paralysis was forgotten. Irina was trapped, and the serpent was sadistically constricting her to death. She saw scratches along its hide, scales torn away, as if hacked at by a… knife. The kind used for basic meal preparation, that anyone would possess, even blind nobles. Her stern face softened very slightly, even as her sword slid out of its sheath. The girl had fought back, just a little. Done well. Her sword flickered, and the serpent began to hiss wildly as one of its eyes promptly burst. She probed it painfully, but not fatally. If she killed it now, it might just tighten up and kill Irina in its death throes. Unacceptable.
The manserpent uncoiled itself as quickly as it could, mouth open in a hiss of irritation. The one remaining eye burned with anger, and a sword was held loosely in one of its comically thin hands. Tisiphone moved slowly, leading it away, trying to get a bead on how it moved. Fast as lightning, its head whipped outwards, the neck extended grotesquely far to reach across the clearing. Tisiphone didn’t make a habit of fighting giant snakes, so she wasn’t as experienced as she would like. Nonetheless, she tried her best. Retreating backwards would just put her back at square one, so she did something a little… well, bold. The snake lunged, and she leant backwards, smoothly dodging the fangs that split the air. Her leg screamed in pain as she leapt upwards, grabbing its head and riding it as it thrashed wildly, desperate to dislodge this particular irritant. Tisiphone took exception to being regarded as an irritant, and decided to stab it in the brain. Repeatedly. As went the Mantra of Final Death, ‘to disrupt the throne is to send a kingdom into chaos, from the lord all bounty flows and without his intercessio-’ ah, who was she trying to impress. When in doubt, kill the thinky bits.
And the thinky bits, being killed, did perish. The body didn’t seem to receive the message, not as quickly as she would like. Tisiphone remained on the snake, guiding its movements away from Irina, who was currently lying on the floor, barely breathing. Curses. The serpent was permitted to finish its death throes in the bushes, where it couldn’t bother anyone. Tisiphone should be paying attention to it, making sure that it was hidden, erasing any trace of her presence… but Irina was lying there, half-strangled. Tisiphone checked her over with shaking hands, the memory of a pale hand clutching her own coming to mind involuntarily. Eugenia’s hand had been so very cold. So very, very cold. Even days later, she could still feel the imprint. Wasn’t used to skin-on-skin contact, didn’t enjoy it as a rule, especially when her strongest sensory memory was clutching a dying woman’s hand. Irina was moving, thank the gods, she was moving. Tisiphone checked her over - bruises from the constriction, but no fang marks, no weeping wounds, no veins infested with venom. She was alive. She was fine. Tisiphone had arrived in time. For once, she’d actually saved someone she… she… what was Irina to he-
“What did you do to Sir Pent?”
Tisiphone whirled. A bloodstained woman was standing on the other end of the clearing, wearing most of a finger maiden’s garb. Most. Not all. How… indecent. The woman was surrounded by serpents, and in her bloodsoaked hand was an enormous cleaver. Ah. So, this was their leader, their mother, their creator. Whatever she was, it was clear that she had not an ounce of peace in her mind. The woman spat out a pale finger - ah, and a cannibal, just to make it worse. Her mottled, deformed face twisted in hatred.
“You killed him! You killed Sir Pent!”
She probably thought that was clever. That was the worst part of this whole mess.
“Nothing to say for yourself, blackguard? Nothing to say… you… you… bitch!”
Charming. But a Black Knife did not speak during, before, or after combat - ideally, they were silent at all times in all situ- oh, who was she impressing by doing this? Hm. If anyone asked, she was just preserving a cover, nothing more.
“Who art thou?”
“Oooh, ‘who art thou’, well I do beggeth thy pardoneth my lady, for yon I shall sticketh mine foot uppeth thy dusty clunge untilst thou is pissing toenails.”
Vivid.
“...if thou will not be amenable to reason…”
Her sword flicked lightly, sending a few stray drops of cold blood off into the grass.
“Then other methods must suffice.”
“I’m so intimidated. Sir Pentyne! Nameless ones! Avenge your brother!”
Tisiphone was going to enjoy this. A great deal. Even the sound of a distant, terrifyingly familiar roar barely managed to distract her from that fact.
Barely.