- Messages
- 84
- Character Biography
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They worked like clockwork; they had to.
Individual pieces, fast and constantly moving, all it would take was one mistake, and every well-worked plan could fall apart. Guerilla warfare was often typified as seeming chaotic on the face of it, with minor individual skirmishes creating an illusion of disorganised chaos, sowing discord and needling at numbers and morale. It was still the early days, and the Dreadlords of Vel Anir didn't even know they were in a war.
The longer they didn't know, the better, or so Agata Markow thought. However, they had to be vigilant to keep their enemies from knowing.
Like clockwork.
When the team assigned to strike Dreadlord Trewen did not check in at The Noose and Bull on the road towards Vel Cirak, they were on the move, disguised as a small trading caravan of a wagon, two horses, and four bodies. Areas had been scouted before operations, with locations marked for potential retreats in case of injury or pursuit. In the case of the former, swift movement was a necessity.
Casal, Lumsden, Nostra, and Wilhart.
Those were the names of the four absent pieces who had set out to dispatch their mark, and their success was evident as their caravan passed by the notable carnage of blood out on the open road, yet to be washed away by the next rain of the season. Good, she had thought to herself in stilted silence, feeling an inch of satisfaction in the infinite chasm of her heart, hollowed out for vengeance alone.
The next location for them to check was off the beaten track, a barn long since abandoned next to the derelict rubble of an old stone croft that had previously been torched with its inhabitants still inside. The trail of blood indeed indicated that, although much to the woman's chagrin, it was a trail that anybody with eyes could have followed, and for that reason, Markow volunteered to go ahead on foot and scout the area first.
From afar, she could see a body, giving cause for her dagger to be drawn and form to remain crouched beneath the overgrown grasses that bent under the weight of the morning dew.
She observed, waiting for a few minutes. An unease spread within her, and the former Vestigare was forced to remain still while batting away her imagination's attempts at drawing a grim conclusion. The world was completely still, punctuated only by the grass's sway, and once she was satisfied that no trap had been laid for her, Agata continued onward.
It wasn't one body; it was two, and the woman cringed when that realisation hit her. She had attributed the sight of gore to the lone form that had caught her eye, only realising up close that the crimson slaughter strewn about the entrance to the barn were the remains of another, pulled apart in such a macabre fashion that it could have only been the work of truly hateful magic. In stark contrast, that first body, who she was now close enough to identify as Nostra, did not have a single visible wound...
...and was still breathing!
Drawing a small whistle to her lips, she blew and released the shrill call of the obsidian lark, a bird out-of-season in the Anirian territories, to call the others to come and help.
