Fable - Ask A Bargain for Death

[Solitude]

Maybe she just didn’t being around other churches, or rather religious sites. Solitude always got antsy around places with a holy significance, as if the shadowkin within her shadow knew that they didn’t— or rather, couldn’t— belong there. Whereas Tal could dismissively say religious superstition, Solitude understood she had to be careful about such things. For herself, it wasn’t anything as paltry as superstition.

But if this was just mostly a place to show respect ancestors, why should she worry? So with a shrug, Solitude turned back to walk after Tal. She opened her mouth, about to ask Tal if he had any ogres under his employment and if she could meet them (what could she say? She had a thing for ogres and orcs!) but once again she stopped.

There was a shiver running up and down her spine, hairs raising up.

“You sure about the empty part because I just really feel like….” The assassin trailed off, and before she could even pinpoint why she felt so uncomfortable or why she felt like there were eyes on her, she heard it.

It was no louder than a whisper, but it was powerful. Solitude was seized for a moment, a bright flash of light appearing behind her and seeming to burn away all the shadows around the monasteries.

Tal

 

[Tal]

The light flooded around them in an instant, bright and blinding.

Tal's hands almost immediately snapped to his eyes, blocking the light from completely burning out his eyes. His fingers folding instantly as magic already raced along his forearms. Ahead somewhere could make out the twins cursing in their native tongue, enough to range them.

His foot kicked out, slamming into the ground with a hard thud. The magic that had gathered around his arms raced down his body in an instant, a spark of lighting rushed from his foot Into the ground, and suddenly a second later two great walls sprang from the earth around Talmanes and Solitude. They wrapped around the two humanoids, forming a protective oval just as the loud tawng of crossbows rang out.

A dozen bolts, thudded against the rocky dome, strange black bolts piercing through the stone.

One stopped just an inch short of Tal's face. " Don't damage the monasteries."

Talmanes warned Solitude, but didn't offer any further explanation. His fingers already drawing over one side of the wall. The stone there seemed to collapse, letting in a flood of light before suddenly a strange dark orb fell from Tal's finger. It seemed to drop, rolling on the ground before suddenly it expanded and exploded in a cast of darkness. Shrouding the light in a sphere of umbral magics.

 

[Solitude]

“I think I should tell you something!” Solitude said, nervously laughing as her red eyes shifted about. She hated the light, any sort of it. Even sunlight burned. But this was different, arcane and not blessed, it annoyed her more than hurt her. Regardless, she was thankful for Tal’s wall that brought her back into the shadows.

While she was fine in fake light, the shadowkin curling around her feet despised it regardless. Too bright and Celosia wouldn’t come out to play.

“I’m actually a really shitty assasin.” She admitted, walking back away from the wall. “Like, a big pile of horse shit, shitty.” Honesty was a virtue, right? “So shitty that I don’t even know what the fuck you’re doing.” Maybe too much honesty wasn’t a good thing, but whatever Tal was doing was good.

At least for them. Not the people shooting the crossbows at them. Darkness took over once again, casting back the blinding white light.

“Oh. Cool. This is really sweet, dude.” Way better than that Kyril dude, this was on a whole other level. There was a second or two of Solitude just standing there. “Oh, right. My turn.” With the light gone, Solitude shrouded herself in shadow.

Heeding Tal’s words, she climbed up one monastery wall with ease, getting to the roof in record time. She saw two cloaked figures crouching down, reloading and aiming their crossbows at the wall that Tal had conjured up. Solitude’s steps didn’t make a sound as she round as fast as she could to the two marksmen, and when her blade whistled through the air and sliced along the thin, delicate skin of their throats, the men didn’t even have time to scream.

Tal

 

[Tal]

Tal laughed, he couldn't help it.

He'd only ever heard one person in his entire life admitting to such a thing. Most people didn't go about declaring themselves incapable, even less so outright shit. Solitude being so utterly blunt tickled him, and he couldn't help but shake his head in mirth even as she preferred her complement and slipped out of the magic-made cavern.

"Razmir." The Prince said as he reached up and rubbed at his face with an open palm. "If I thought you still lurked over my people, I might think you're targeting me specifically."

He chuckled, remembering the ancient legend of the Fire-Giant god who had plagued the Tyrians upon their great pilgrimage.

Taking a deep breath, Tal prepared himself. A soft glow running along his forearms as he stepped out and prepared to kill his would be assassins. Moving into the darkness he had cast, his eyes flickering back and forth as he searched...and found the assailants already dead.

Both figures having already had their throat cuts by his companion. "I thought you were shit!"

Tal said, lofting a brow, a wide grin on his face.

 

[Solitude]

“I am when its bright outside!” She wouldn’t tell him that it also applied when it was dark outside.

Solitude knelt over the two men that were heavily cloaked and wore bundles of clothing. She began whispering the prayers, even someone as her being able to remember every single word due to the years of it being ingrained into even the deepest crevice of her mind. Two fingers were held out, going to the clean cut across their necks and then make the mark of Mother Meness onto their foreheads. Solitude had just gotten to the part of giving praise to Mother Meness, clapping her hands together, when the bodies beside her began to deflate.

“What the fuck,” she said, picking up the cloak and with such little force, ashes began to fly out and off into the air. She frowned, checking the second body to see that it was the same thing, all the while, more and more ash was flying out. She turned to look at Tal and held up both empty cloaks, shaking them and having even more ash fly about.

“Did you do this? They’re all ash now!” She shouted before thinking better of it. An assassin didn’t shout, did they? Solitude was a blur of darkness, appearing before Tal as if she had teleported instead of scaled the roof and walls. The only sign that it wasn’t teleportation was that if one watched closely, they could see a fluttering of a sleeve that seemed to poke out from the shadows. She shook the cloaks again for emphasis, more ash fall about.

Tal

 

[Tal]

Tal's eyes narrowed almost immediately, lips pressing into a thin line as Solitude shouted down at him. "No!"

He called back up to her.

Assassinations were common in Tyr, always had been. There was a reason that his new companion's Order had a church here. That unfortunately meant that the city saw all sorts of different cut-throats and murderers for hire.

"I thin-" As he began to shout, Solitude suddenly seemed to disappear.

He blinked, bewildered as she appeared almost within a breath directly before him. Did she just?

No. Talmanes answered himself almost immediately, eyes flickering to the base of her form where he watched the shadows shift. "This is another group of assassins."

The Prince stated the obvious, then continued. "They have a name...but it escapes me. Each one bares a mark which burns their bodies on death. Prevents questions."

Which was frustrating, considering that he had many of them.

 

[Solitude]

The cloaks fell from Solitude’s hands and she sighed like she was a weary man who had finally earned his time at retirement. She kicked at one cloak with her black boot, imagining it belonging to the burnt head of the Cardinal. She always got the worst missions!

“How can you forget the name of the Ash Devils?” Solitude asked, beginning to pace around. “They’re sneaky motherfuckers, shit.” Which meant she wouldn’t be able to mess up. Sol would need to pay attention, keep her wits about her, and use every tool she had to succeed. But the thing that she needed the most was a brain that didn’t stop working the moment something big and bad happened.

She kept pacing, the cloaks beginning to get tangled into one another. “Not to mention they’re total lunatics, I mean look at these hooligans, they just turned into ash!” As if she were any different. At least Mother Meness didn’t turn them into ash, just brought them back into the comfort of the shadows with her loving and accepting embrace.

Solitude almost tripped, her ankles now swimming in the cloaks. The assassin caught herself just in time, playing the trip off as if she had meant to take that jerky forward lunge before standing up straight and placing her hands on the curve of her hips.

“You get assassination attempts that often you talk about it like it’s the weather?”

Tal

 

[Tal]

Tal watched Solitude as she paced back and forth, his eyes trailing after her as he nodded in acceptance of everything she said.

The Ash Devils were lunatics.

Not religious, at least not in the way the Church or any other organization was. Instead the Devils believed themselves to be hallowed within the moment of death. Killing and dying to them were intertwined at the hilt, and if you could not manage one, then you only deserved the other.

Fanatics and fools, Tal thought.

Though he was also keenly aware that if the Ash Devils had been contracted to kill him; they would not stop. Not until he was dead, or the person who offered the contract was. "I was an Underboss in Alliria for five years."

He explained to Solitude.

"It was pretty common for people to try and kill me." Now that he had his magic back, it seemed less of an issue. "How quickly will your...brother assassin work?"

Tal didn't know if Eren had been the one to hire the devils, but it was a good bet.

 

[Solitude]

Solitude had stopped her weltering steps, looking over at Tal and shook her head. There may have been two current contracts tied to Tal, one of protection and one of assassination, but they were separate in the eyes of the Church. It was policy, and a damn annoying one at that.

“He would probably work faster than me.” Which wasn’t saying much, almost everyone worked faster than her. “I can’t really contact him when he’s on a job. I don’t think he’d want me to even if it wasn’t against the rules.” She could hear Celosia mock her in her mind but she ignored the shadow fox’s words. Solitude went back to pacing.

“We’re gonna have to play things smart. How you feel about me being in your shadow? I promise I’ll leave it when you gotta take a shit ‘cuz trust me, I like it less than you do. The not having privacy thing, not the taking a shit thing.”

Tal

 

[Tal]

Tal chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.

Ordinarily a request like that would have sent every single one of his hackles up. Paranoia was part and parcel to his life, it always had been. She was an assassin, a deadly one despite what she claimed. Having her in his shadow was like asking for a slit throat.

The only reason he didn't offer an immediate rebuke was because he knew the rules, and rules as written? She could not touch him.

Besides that, he really was starting to like the fool. "If it helps keep me alive you can watch for all I care."

He'd been a slave, modesty wasn't exactly in his wheel house anymore.

"There is a Gala in two days." Tal said, glancing over towards Solitude. "I need to be there."