The Dead Man’s Wife [Mature]

Niccolette is sent to ‘help’ Leander

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Anaxas' main trade port; it is also the nation's criminal headquarters, home to the Bad Brothers and Silas Hawke, King of the Underworld. The small town of Plugit is nearby.

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Leander
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Location: Old Rose Harbour
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 6:52 pm

15th Day of Loshis, 2719
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Leander shitting despised gollies. There was nothing left in him for that Circle-thrice-damned race but utter hatred. Except that they weren’t damned by the Gods. That only made everything else so much worse. The fecking red-haired galdor who said a simple word and took control of Leander’s ability to stay on the ground.

Then there was the dirty brunette bitch who had just watched him scream in terror, who had let him walk into this, and who was doing a pretty shitting half-arsed effort at her job, if the closeness of the fired bullet to Leander’s shoulder was anything to go by. The galdor dropped to the ground like a sack of freshly dug potatoes in a loud thud, with a groaning echo of pain to cushion the sound.

A second thud followed only a moment afterwards, signalling the passive’s connection with the ground. He wasn’t so lucky as to be hit by a bullet and crumple in a natural way, though — Leander had been hovering in whatever position Lemandier had left him in, with one leg raised above the other. He landed like that, awkwardly on his ankle, and the noise of pain that escaped Leo was not nearly as heroic and masculine as the galdor’s. The embarrassment was just yet another nail in the coffin, another weakness of the scrap in front of members of the superior race.

He hated the lot of them.

What?” He hissed, pushing himself off the ground and sitting before gingerly pressing on his ankle. He didn’t think it was broken. He slowly wiggled it and experienced an ache of pain, but he decided it was probably fine and he needed to stop being such an impotent little pansy. Right, what did the woman want?

He crawled over to Lemandier’s unmoving form and stared down at it, finding none of the satisfaction he might have, had he been the one to shoot him. “You want me to what? Let the ersehole die, Niccolette!” His own command was a touch more shrill, a little more frenzied, but it was no where near the confidence Niccolette had spoken with. She had spoken with all of her authority, and it was heavy on Leander’s mind. She was carrying on as all galdor’s did, doing her own thing with complete assurance that her command would be followed.

Fine,” he ground out, grimacing as his hand hovered over the bullet wound, before finally working up the constitution to press his hand on top of it. The flesh - and blood - was warm. Disgusting. He waited, staring down at the man, eyes darting between the bleeding wound and his contorted face. “Apparently she can do a lot,” the passive muttered in delayed response to Lemandier’s earlier question.

He shuffled out of the way when Niccolette came to take over. “Just leave-” he started to his again, but stopped when the woman ignored him in favour of speaking directly to the other galdor. “Fine.” He turned away, standing up on shaky legs and hobbling over to where his forged document now lay, blood-soaked, on the floor. He stared at it for a little while, sighing at the wasted time, before turning back to the two galdori. He scoffed, “The whole clocking Harbour of dick-toting morons has something to say about your clocking husband’s death, and you’re just as bad as them all if you’re going to take his taunting at face value.

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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:42 pm

Evening, 15 Loshis 2719
By the Docks of Old Rose Harbor
"Just shut up, Leander,” Niccolette snapped, looking up at the passive. There was fury on her face, boiling, red-hot; it put the earlier impatience he had felt from her to shame. She was shaking, although her hands were still holding firmly on Frederick’s chest, and he could see the faint glisten of tears in her eyes. A sharp crack of red snapped through the field, a brief hint of fury, before Niccolette shuddered and swept it away, her field organized and indectal once more.

Frederick was fading beneath her hands; she could feel his heart pumping, could see the blood spurting from his wound, but it was less and less with each passing second. “Fuck,” Niccolette whispered. “By Her fearful symmetry, just – fuck!”

“Put pressure on it again,” Niccolette snapped at Leo. She pulled back, grimacing, her hands wet with Frederick’s blood. She was crouching, her legs shaking already, and she wiped her forehead on her arm. Once the passive was in place, she pulled further back, crouching still on the ground, her dress pulled up slightly to keep it out of the blood.

Niccolette took a deep breath, wiped her fingers through the pool of blood beneath Frederick, and began to trace symbols of monite on the ground around Frederick, her breath evening. She ignored any complaints from Leander, any protestations, or even any requests for information; she worked quickly, and as she traced, her hands had stopped shaking. She dabbed her fingers into Frederick’s blood periodically, and within a minute had traced careful symbols all the way around him.

“Get back,” Niccolette snapped at Leander next. She was shaking again, and she took his place, crouching next to Frederick. She did not have time for a quantitative cast; she did not have time for anything so sophisticated as healing. Frederick’s heart was barely pumping now; even with the pressure, he had lost far too much blood, and Niccolette did not know – could not see – what other damage the bullet had done. She held the fingers of one hand under his nose, and grimaced; he was barely breathing.

Niccolette began to chant, harsh syllables of monite filling the air. Her enunciation was word perfect; she cast the spell slow and steady. Her field was sharp and bright in the air, flooding the room, the whole of it rising slowly in heat, sigiled and etheric with the cast.

Howie had finished tying up the Bastian galdor, who was now thoroughly gagged and bound, and he came to stand by Leander, frowning at Niccolette and her efforts. “Fair creepy, that voo,” The human muttered, shaking his head, staring at Niccolette and her blood-stained hands, pressed to a dying man's chest.

If Niccolette heard them, if she was aware of anything beyond the steady syllables of monite that echoed from her lips into the air, she gave no sign of it. She gave no sign of anything but the spell, and energy hovered in the air around her, almost smoky in the dim yellow light, and seeped slowly into Frederick, streaming into him.

State manipulation spells were not simple; this one was a little bit beyond Niccolette, although she knew it well. It was a fairly simple spell – not as complex as a typical stasis spell, not intending to make the target hard and impenetrable; instead, the idea was just to preserve them in their current state, to keep them however they were just a little while. She had done this before, Niccolette reminded herself, chanting the monite steadily, bringing her will to bear on the cast. She could do this; she could keep Frederick alive, at least long enough for Hawke’s torturers to beat something from him.

She had to do this.

Niccolette curled the spell, slowly, shuddering. She was breathing hard; her noseblood had started up again, and she bent forward, droplets of blood tumbling from her face to splatter against Frederick’s clothing, invisible against the red wash on his things. Niccolette whispered again, shaking her head. The mona were heavy in the air around her; she shook her head, She closed her eyes for a moment, and tried a quantitative cast, chanting steadily.

“Dead,” Niccolette said a moment later. The Bastian was shaking, visibly; there was a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, and she looked deathly pale in the yellow light. “Fuck,” The Bastian cursed, rubbing her eyes on the arm of her black dress. She stifled something that felt very much like a sob, swallowing it down, and wiped her hands on the cleanest part of Frederick that she could find, leaving them still smeared with streaks of drying red.

Niccolette rose, shaking still, wobbling from side to side. She took another deep breath, lilting slightly, clearly exhausted by the effort of the unsuccessful spell. After a moment, she wobbled to the chair Frederick had sat in, and half-collapsed into it, bloody hands tightening on the arms of it. “The other galdor?” She looked up at Howie.

“Tied up, madam,” Howie said, politely. “Clocking mad about it too,” he glanced back over his shoulder at the galdor squirming against the wall, making wet, grunting noises into his gag.

Niccolette nodded, slowly. “We’ll bring him to the Court,” she whispered, sagging against the chair still. More blood trickled from her nose, and she made no particular effort to stop it.

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Rolls
State manipulation spell on Frederick (4 or higher to succeed): SidekickBOTToday at 4:07 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (2) = 2
Quantitative cast to check if Frederick is alive: SidekickBOTToday at 4:35 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (4) = 4
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Leander
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:31 pm

15th Day of Loshis, 2719
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The words were barely out before Niccolette was once again shouting at him, commanding into silence. “But he’s—” the passive fell quiet, the vague gesture of his arm pausing half-way through to gal back down to his side. The woman hadn’t even bothered to look up, so wrapped up in the red-headed galdor that he was nothing more than an irritating distraction. The young forger watched in silence - though growing irritation - as she worked, apparently to keep the back-stabbing man alive.

You’ve got to be clocking—” Leo has already started walking back over to the wounded enemy before Niccolette had finished speaking, though all the while he was muttering expletives and general curses to the air as he did so. His surroundings still felt heavier, uncomfortably so. Leo avoided situations like this and people like them for many reasons, but the air was nigh stifling.

His blood-soaked hand went back on top of the wound, pressing down with a strength he had long since thought failed him. It was an earnest attempt to do as asked, to keep the man alive, though the passive whole-heartedly disagreed with the need for such an effort. “He’s going to die,” the boy said bluntly, staring down at the greying face and wide, glistening eyes as Lemandier stared right back. Any other time, Leo might have felt horror mingled with morbid fascination at the prospect of being witness to the moment a soul passed from this world.

Right now, though, when push came to shove, he was too spent, too caught up in his own rabbiting heartbeat, which refused so slow down despite the diminished danger.

Saliva had pooled in his mouth, it was drier now, thicker, and tasted metallic. Verbally shoved aside again, Leander tried to swallow but found it to be painful more than relief. He watched without any discernible emotion as Niccolette prepared to cast... for what emotion could you hope to feel as you watched someone use their victim’s own blood to draw on the floor around them? “Too fecking right...” was all he could whisper in response to his other “escort’s” statement.

I’ll never get used to this...” the passive murmured as the golly began to chant. It was utterly meaningless to Leo, but for the swell of pressure that build up around him again in that moment. “...and I don’t think I want to.” Despite his love of learning, Leander had not once read a book on galdori, it wick, magic since he had been discovered as a passive. The concept of learning about something he craved but would never have was too much for him. But it was equally as had to watch something and have no understanding for what was happening. It felt like a breach of privacy, to be watching Niccolette so openly in this moment. He shivered, turning his head as if to offer the caster her space.

Surprisingly, Leander found himself... disappointed when Niccolette announced the man had died, in spite of her efforts. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Leo had imagined a conversation with mona to be this infallible thing - untouchable and omnipotent in its use when called upon. The boy turned back, silent for a few moments.

When Niccolette used the time to find out about the other man, the one Howie had been fighting, it was as if the charm was broken. “Ah clocking—” he threw his arms up in exasperation, “Just chuck the yellow ersehole into the harbour and be done with it, hopefully he wakes up long enough to feel the water in his lungs and will repent his actions before whatever Gods he holds true before he dies... but clocking let him die.
I can’t...
” he turned towards the door, fingers loosening so that the forged document fell to the ground, “I’m leaving, my bit was to put the writ into Hawke’s acquaintance’s hand. You killed him so now I have no purpose here. I’m going and you can explain to Hawke how you galdori are such erse-bandits and that’s why his mission as ordered went tits-up.

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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:04 pm

Evening, 15 Loshis 2719
By the Docks of Old Rose Harbor
Failed, Niccolette thought, numbly. Dead. Had she made a mistake in the plot? In the words? She glanced back at the drawings around Frederick; she felt tired, stretched thin, as if all her earlier fidgeting had worn a thousand holes into her. She had nothing left; even her field felt thin and hazy around her. She could feel tears approaching, like a storm; Frederick might have known something, but her mistakes had robbed her of that knowledge, had stolen it – snatched it away – left her with nothing more than she’d had.

Which, Niccolette thought bitterly, was nothing. Nothing! Two months since Uzoji’s death, and she knew no more than she had known in the days following it. Nothing. All she had done was weep; she had wept herself sick; she had wept as if that was all she knew how to do. She had wept as if it might, somehow, help, and she still could not stop. She would cry, Niccolette thought, feeling the heat throbbing behind her eyes. She would cry, here and now, and she could not stop it. Niccolette’s head drooped a little, and she licked the blood from her lips, grimacing at the taste. She swallowed, hard, blinking rapidly, feeling the tears rise up like a wave inside her -

Leander’s voice, harsh and angry, cut through the haze of blue misery surrounding her. Niccolette stared at him. Her hands tightened on the chair’s arms.

“You cannot be half so stupid as you pretend,” The Bastian snapped. Color flooded into her cheeks, and fury thrummed through her field once more, wiping away the despair. The Bastian sat bolt upright; she fumbled in her pocket, found a handkerchief, and wiped the blood from her face – wiped her hands off as well, and dropped the crumpled, stained fabric onto the table next to her. Red crackled through the air around her, and Niccolette felt her field again, sharp and strong still, bright despite her failure. She inhaled, deeply, and exhaled out the despair, forcing it aside.

So she had failed, the Bastian thought, bitterly. She had had worse.

Niccolette shoved herself to her feet. “Do you think I want them alive for my own enjoyment?” She asked, arms crossing over the black ribbons of her dress, staring coldly at Leander. “Of course he shall die, you clockstopping ersehole,” Niccolette spat. “He shall die at the hands of Hawke’s torturers, after he has explained why he double-crossed us, after he has told us whatever he knows about whomever convinced Frederick he should go against Hawke. And if there is no one, if there is nothing to learn, then we shall be godsbedamned sure of it by the time he is dead.”

Niccolette wiped her hands on the chair one last time, and stalked forward, scooping up her discarded cloak and gun as she went. If she was still tired – if she was still trembling, ever so slightly – her field pulsed in the air around her nonetheless, bright red snapping through it once more before fading away to nothing, clear in the warm yellow light of the one-time bar’s lamps.

“Carry him,” Niccolette told Howie, gesturing to the galdor curled up against the wall. She fixed her gaze on Leander, furious, one bloody boot on top of the already destroyed forgery, grinding it further against the floor of the bar. “I do not give a fucking stripe what you do,” she told him; there was no anger in her voice, not anymore, only cold resignation. “Walk home, if you like. Go hide in your pathetic attempts to amuse yourself.”

Leander would make whatever responses he wanted; Niccolette shook her head throughout, too tired to be angry any longer. She could not feel it burning inside her; she could not summon up the will to argue with a stupid child. "They tried to kill us first," Niccolette said, tiredly. "Are you really so blind? It was never - " Niccolette sighed, waved a hand at Leander, and left the room without another word, putting her back to him. She grabbed hold of the heavy door, yanked it open, and made her way out onto the street beyond, not bothering to hold the thing open. Howie was already over at the wall, hoisting the bound galdor over his shoulder, his arms holding the man’s legs against his front as he writhed and squirmed.

A boot stuck out of a nearby alley, another dead man laying on the ground. The air smelled faintly of gunpowder, whipped about by the wind.

“Fucker tried t' surprise me,” Glen said, his gun still in his hand; he was nearly at the door already, holding the pistol trained at it.

Niccolette glanced at the dead body off to the side, and grimaced. “We shall go to the Court,” she said, her voice harsh and strained in her throat. She did not climb into the carriage; instead she headed towards the front, to climb the side of the carriage and sit on one of the narrow benches up top. At least there, Niccolette thought, if she wept, she could blame the stinging wind. She settled herself onto the bench, wrapped her right hand across her body and clutched her side, clinging to the scar that felt like all she had left of her husband. Still alive, Niccolette thought, grimly. She, at least, was still alive.

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Rolls
Ambush vs. Glen: SidekickBOTToday at 5:52 PM
@moralhazard: 2d6 = (2+5) = 7
Last edited by Niccolette Ibutatu on Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Leander
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Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 1:21 pm
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Race: Passive
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Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:02 pm

15th Day of Loshis, 2719
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The passive blinked, “pretend? You think I’m being stupid? If you would just stop pouting like its the national pastime and opened your eyes to what just happened tonight, maybe you’d see sense.” Leander didn’t quite know why he was bothering, but, as his heart rate started to slow to a more sedate pace, he took stock of the evening. “We failed. The directive was simple: write and deliver the note. Things got dicey and you killed the fecking bastard. You fucked up... and apparently the only reason you’re upset is because you think he knows something about your dead husband.

Women and their emotions.

I didn’t just spend a day fighting cramp in my hand, hunched over that desk for this. I didn’t come here and risk my reputation and my life for the sake of this farce.” It was a bit of a stretch to say that Lemandier had ‘double-crossed’ them, unless Niccolette had been to,d something Leo didn’t know. Right now, Leo doubted it: she seemed so wrapped up in her own problems that the mission was lost. The galdor was projecting her personal crap onto the actions of Lemandier. “I didn’t obey the King so that you could sulk in this hovel and pretend you’re the person who invented grief.

Get up.” he hadn’t the patience for this on the best of days, and today had certainly earned a place among the worst. Lashing out at the woman was the easiest way for Leo to displace blame, and he could tell Niccolette was struggling to control herself given her suffocating field.

Her vitriol washed over him, both were breathing harshly. “Not everything is ‘us against them’. I know you don’t want to believe it, but you need to get your head on straight.” Leander didn’t know if she was looking at him with… what? Sadness, hate, scorn? Maybe it was just indifference. Either way, she was seemingly desperate to find an enemy where there probably wasn’t one. He refused to be dragged into this absurd fictional battle, where she made it all about her, forgetting that he had been him who had been the victim.

And, however much I dislike Hawke,” The boy heaved a deep breath, “I prioritise his command over whatever internal bullshit you have going on.” The passive watched as Niccolette ordered the body be removed to the carriage. He did not move, silently signalling that he had made his choice out of the options she had given him. If Hawke wanted a debrief from, he could fucking come and get it himself. Otherwise, as far as he was concerned, he had followed his directive and had no more part to play.

And he needed a drink.

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