Everyone was met just beyond the Riverside Market. Vorpal waits just within, but out of sight of, the Rainbowside Hedgegate, and remains while the others gather in ones and twos. Once everyone is arrived, he leads the way into the Hedge.
The path wends through a series of labyrinths. One a marketplace, one a string of alleys, another suburbs, yet another city streets with brownstone townhomes. He stops them when they enter a garden he warns is full of lethality. They progress through the garden, the looming form of a manor house in the distance overseeing it all, and then Vorpal stops them all and turns... towards the house.
There's a quiver in the Hedge, and then it starts to change. Garden paths that simply Were Not a moment ago, begins to Were, and it's down this brand spanking new Trod that Vorpal leads the group- straight towards that dark, looming manor house in the distance.
This new trod leads right up into the courtyard of the manor, dark and foreboding and filled with statues and topiaries. Through the courtyard is the doors to the manor, through which they travel, into one more terribly mazelike place- the interior of the manor itself. The hallways are an absolute terror, dark and twisting and full of dead ends and empty rooms. Vorpal leads the group through, repeating to keep each other in view, until they reach a double door which he throws open to allow admission to the master bedroom.
Master in name only, it's occupied by an air mattress on which the captive seems to have been sleeping, the captive themselves, the current changeling on guard duty, and a door leading off to what seems to be the bathroom. There's signs the captive's been kept well fed, and the room- for all its gloom, is warm and comfortable.
The captive has refused to speak to anyone, has accepted only the bare minimum which will keep her alive, and has spent any time she was awake either studying her prison or praying in a foreign tongue. Foreign even to the best linguists in the world, though it has phonetic similarities to Arabic. She offers no response to the incoming horde of visitors, eyes closed, legs folded beneath her, hands on knees.
Cerise arrived with C.B., and has hung close to the author's side the entire journey through the hedge and as they head into the mansion. When they make it to the master suite, her eyes, like everyone else's, are on the prisoner. Her brow furrows, obviously momentarily concerned for the captive woman, before her eyes turn sharp.
Somewhere or another, as the group traversed through the Hedge -- and let's be honest here, the chances of that being subtle are slim to none -- they picked up a shadow. That shadow? Is Uschi. She's had her (ongoing) ideological differences with the way that Freeholder's do things, and hell that ain't gonna change overnight -- but... Maybe a dream told her to tag along?
Stranger things have happened.
Uschi is bare footed, rucksacked, and lurking at the back. Hell, could be nobody notices her until they reach up past the gardens of the Hedgebound Hellpalace that... Wait. Vorpal /lives/ here? =IN= the Hedge? Uschi looks left, she looks right, she looks downright baffled -- it comes across as... A deadpan stare. They travel on. They end up where they need to be. Uschi... Looms in the background. Ignore her. Nothing important.
When they get to the home, which Teagan has apparently been to before, or maybe they just take everything in stride right now? They can't be trusted to be honest about their feelings, after all.
There's a bag over their shoulder, and when they get to the house? They spend some time testing doorknobs before they find a room that's actually a room. Disappear into it.
When they come back out, they're carrying the bag in one hand, and the belt on which their ring holsters hang in the other. The bag and the ring holsters -- with both the weapons -- are silently held out to Vorpal, but not by Teagan, no.
Where once there was Teagan, there's a perfect facsimilie of the man that Teagan killed, wearing a sport-grey long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants, socks. The sort of cheap-ass clothes you give to someone when their own clothes are destroyed. Sock-clad feet. Silently holding out Baby to Vorpal. NBD. We're all fine here, how are you?
Sigrun doesn't seem particularly happy to be meeting a prisoner with her faerie face on, but so it goes. If you're going to be known, be known. She's wearing head to toe golden mail armor, armed with a rather forbidding axe and a quite solid looking shield. The winged helmet really caps the whole look off, really. Rather than crowd into the bedroom with all the others, she instead occupies the doorway, commanding control of the exit as a byproduct of staying casually out of the way. That's her story, and she's sticking to it.
There's the impression that the offer of the machetes- or, specifically, Baby- that Vorpal is blinking in surprise, but- after a moment of being startled- he reaches out and takes the belt almost reverently. With noplace to hang it respectfully, he straps them to his own damn self, lest they be simply... -left- someplace. Once in the room with the prisoner, Vorpal moves to the side, staying a touch out of arm's reach of the prisoner, leaning against the wall while Business Gets Done, waiting for trouble to start. One way or the other.
For what it's worth, Neirin didn't actually have to be dragged to go talk with the woman, not when he was informed she literally wouldn't talk to anyone else. Nevertheless, he smoked broodingly all the way through Riverside, Rainbowside, and the grimy Hedgecity Reflection streets and the weird echo townhouses and the spooky garden, trailing along behind everyone else. The cigarette butt gets flicked into the Thorns before they enter Vorpal's manor's grounds, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, fiddle case awkwardly under one arm.
It is very dark. You may be eaten by a grue. His eyes are adjusted well enough by the time they get to the master bedroom that he can more or less see where the prisoner is -- after, of course, he passes the imposing-ass Valkyrie guarding the door, and the hapless grunt Harvestman exiting the room as soon as Lieutenant Vorpal gets there. Exiting the room and... stopping a little ways down the hall to sit against the wall and take a nap until people leave.
"Oi," the Thusser with the fiddle case says to the prisoner. "Hear you've kept your gob shut."
When Teagan emerges looking like the other Changeling, Cerise edges closer to CB, and tears her eyes away to stare at PseudoTeagan, while she does so, she gives C.B. a nudge, drawing the man's direction towards the newcomer.
The 'other prisoner' twitches their fingers when the bag and the belt are handed over, as if they want to lunge after Vorpal and take them back, but there's a slow, deep breath in, and a slow, deep breath out, the sandy visage's eyes closing, and then opening. One last item is pulled out of the pockets on the sweatpants: a pair of handcuffs. They put them on their own wrists, out of sight of the door, and then tip their head up to Sigrun -- the only person still really able to see them -- mouthing, 'Drag me in.' Oh Viiiiking lady, please come drag me around by my handcuffs, this is definitely not going to be remembered for later byeee.
The woman is of fairly average height, 5'5" or so, inhumanly symmetrical, seemingly sculpted of dusky, ever-flowing sands. Her eyes are a luminescent gold, sun-coloured, and the brand upon her left hand, a twin to that which Neirin bears, is similarly luminescent, and upon hearing his voice, those eyes finally open.
She stares at him in silent disgust for a long moment before turning her face away, wind-swept hair shifting about her shoulders.
"Faithless worm. Would that you had killed me, as he was killed: in battle. You have no honour. May you die in shadow." Her words are curt, livid, precisely and intensely spoken to Neirin and Neirin alone.
With a cheerful, "You betcha!" Sigrun grabs !Teagan by the collar of their shirt and by the cuffs at their back and more or less hauls them bodily from the floor to drag them like a misbehaving kitten into the room with the others. She moves, at least at present, with all the grace and gentleness of a drunken cow. Teagan might bounce off a door frame, there, see. And when Sigrun prepares to release the prisoner, she does so by shoving her knee behind Teagan's and takes her to the ground hard and heavy. She holds on tight to shirt and cuffs to make sure Teagan doesn't bounce their head off the bed post or anything, then gives a bit of a shove as she backs away. Then Sigrun just nods to Vorpal and retreats once more from the room.
C.B. is wearing an almost permanent expression of disgust. Can he overhear what the prisoner said? If so, he might even just smile a little. What a traitor, right? Can't trust those non-Freeholders. When the Valkyrie drags the "prisoner" in, though...he narrows his eyes. Then he mutters something to Cerise.
Who's that? Uschi? Lurking in the background? Oh - nah. Not an important person. Ignore her - there are much, much more interesting and impressive folk to pay attention to. The Ogress merely stalks by C.B. and Cerise - the Mortal girl getting a long, full-lung'd sniff - before the semi-feral Ogress turns to look a the 'prisoner' and... Nothing. Who cares what Uschi is doing. She's just some dumb wildling.
Dragged, manhandled, and tossed onto the floor, while handcuffed, by a Valkyrie.
Usually this would rank in the 'really good days' column for Teaagan. Buuuut this isn't Teagan, this is ... someone else. Who tumbles to the floor silently, hands behind 'his' back, face close to the floor. One eye opens slowly and focuses on Neirin with disgust, but 'he' stays silent, slowy rolling 'his' golden eye toward the woman. Too exhausted to speak now, perhaps.
"Not everyone." Cerise hisses back to whatever CB said, low and soft enough that probably most people didn't hear it. She gives him a soft, playful nudge with her fist even. When her eyes follow C.B.'s to Teagan, she stops and blinks, looks at the PseudoTeagan and then back at C.B. again. She looks between the two, as if trying to figure out some puzzle, and only giving up when Uschi's stalking causes the mortal girl to start looking wildly around her.
"Twat," opines Neirin, moving to set his fiddle case on the floor by the wall. He glances over at the other 'prisoner', looking as unimpressed at him as he does at the woman's surliness. "That don't look like 'killed in battle' to me. Far as I know, you lot were in the wrong place. When's the last time you were home? That sacrifice couldn't've been recent orders." His eyes narrow, and he takes off the bracer Billy Ray made for him, letting his glowing brand show, and he lifts it to face her, eyes narrowed. "Or don't you bloody check?"
The prisoner's head turns to fix a cold stare on Neirin when he refers to her so coarsely.
"I know not how you acquired His mark, but no true Child of the Sun would treat his sister with such discourtesy." She offers no information about her orders or their location, only requesting a sharp, "Bring me His Light that I may die in His Sight."
Oddly, beyond a single startled look at the Totally-Not-Teagan, she has almost pointedly NOT looked at 'him' -- which is kind of hard, because 'he' is right there.
As before, the others in the room may as well not even exist. Gotta love zealots.
She doesn't need to look at the not-Teagan in order for the Harbinger's Curse to wrap around her destiny and choke it like Darth Vader finding your lack of faith disturbing.
Teagan just gon stay Perfectly Still over here, in visible range, and invoke their kith's blessing. See?
Sigrun, standing out in the hallway still, observes matters from a distance. A cool, perhaps calculated distance. There's a few raspy caws from outside, and Sigrun briefly excuses herself to quite literally let some birds in. When she returns to the doorway, she has a raven on either shoulder, and seems to have gone from indifferent observer to invested party. Her expression has settled securely into 'resting bitch face', in short.
"No," Neirin says, looking at the woman sidelong, then shaking his branded hand out and running his other through his hair, making it wilder than before. His inkstained fingers and sooty coat smell of coal and iron, and he moves to crouch in front of her just outside spitting distance unless she has both exceptional aim and exemplary oral projectile strength. "But I'll tell you how I got it, love, 'cause you've got the right of it: I'm no Child of the Sun. I set your Keeper free by reassembling his token, and it burnt this in me hand, and he showed up and granted me a favor. I ain't from your far Arcadia. I were in keeping of the Tuatha de Danaan. Just a bard, me. But being a bard means I set stories down for other folk to know, and maybe you want yours to sing the sun's praises. Maybe you should tell me why I should respect the Fae what branded me when I were never his to mark."
The woman remains silent, jaw tight, though the disappearance and rearrival of Sigrun and those birds briefly attracts the attention of golden eyes.
His story? SOMEthing strikes a chord there, though for some odd reason she isn't as good at concealing that as usual. Gee. I *cough*harbinger*cough* wonder why...
Those who are paying attention may note a hint of awe and wonder -- and dismay -- and despair. Gazing up at Neirin with troubled eyes, she asks, "What deed did you perform for Him? What quest did you fulfill to earn His favour? I have seen but one other Favour-bound, but never so far from the Eternal Sands..."
From over in the corner where nobody should be bothering looking... Uschi sniffs the air. Once, twice, three times. She has not interrupted - not instigated conversation - not done /anything/ but watch... But as she watches Neirin and the Prisoner...
She clears her throat - it sounds like a rock squishing a frog, but hell. Uschi doesn't really have a whole lot of 'social skills', of the pleasant variety. A horn bobs in Neirin's direction. "...Tell'er yer name." Helpful suggestion continues, "Ask her for hers. S'lotta stuff in a name. Like a map." What? She looks at her singularly working ruddy right hand for a second, then shrugs in the direction of the two. "Maybe she knows the name, of the other Favour-bound..."
The Harbinger stays ever-so-still where Sigrun put them down, slowly blinking 'his' golden eyes. Their head turns toward Neirin, and silently, they sigh, as if weary, as if rudderless. The Mirrorskin focuses on the face they wear, feeling the edges of the inside of it, in a metaphorical way. But it is just as creepy as if it were literal.
Sigrun is a patient sort, which is an odd trait for most summers as a rule. The ravens on her shoulder are less so. Or at least one of them. It fans its wings and caws irritably as things proceed forward as they are. Sigrun shushes the bird with a fingertip to her own lips, followed by a light brush of a fingertip over the bird's breast. She speaks to it quietly in some gutteral and nasal proto-scandinavian tongue or other, which serves to calm it down at least for the moment. But given the way it is staring at that lady's eyeballs, that may be a temporary sort of situation.
"Told you," Neirin says mildly, and lo: there is literally nothing about him except the brand that marks him as anything even remotely related to Eternal Sands. "I put his token together. It were broke into bits and scattered. I put it together and it activated and burnt me, and there he was, standing in front of me and my mates, and he tells me I get a favor for it." He glances up and aside at Uschi, and his eyebrows lift, then he looks back to the woman. "I'm called Neirin, after the bloke who tallied the names of those who died with honor in the field of battle, and minded their deeds weren't forgotten. The thing of it is, I want to know why you're so far from Eternal Sands. This is my stomping grounds. I thought the Children of the Sun stayed over in their own sandlot. What business could you possibly have had sacrificing mortals in the hedge so far from your jurisdiction?"
Yes. Sandlot. He amuses himself.
Vorpal remains standing against the wall, listening silently as the conversation continues. The only point that gets much reaction is a snort at the curse of "May you die in shadow." Otherwise, he's listening, waiting, ensuring that nothing is going to go violently wrong.
The woman stares at Neirin, conflicted.
On the one hand, he's a rude heathen putting his mouth on god.
On the other hand, he's a rude heathen who SPOKE TO GOD.
Life is so confusing.
Still... Jaw firming with resigned resolve, she answers the bard only with a calm, "Release me and I will return to my people."
Cerise is watching from the side, arms folded over her chest a small frown on her face. Then, she pushes from the wall and comes up alongside Neirin to face the captive, "Why should we do that?" Yes, because Cerise totally has decision making power in all this.
The non-Teagan lifts his head to look directly across at her, and then to Neirin, their voice laden with sorrow. "You can never know the joy that is devotion to the Eye of the Eternal Sands, and that is sorrow." (Teagan is not sorry. That is a lie.) "Don't be foolish, they won't let us go," comes their weary voice, turned now toward the other woman. "The brand on his hand is a mark of Favor, not of sympathy. They can't understand the exultation they ... destroyed." (That's actually probably true.) They lean forward, hands still handcuffed behind their back, and their golden eyes half-lid. "What do you need for us to die well?"
Well, it's one way to pass information to the other interrogators.
Another irritated caw from one of Sigrun's ravens. The same one, if people are paying attention. Only this time, Sigrun doesn't attempt to quiet the anxious avian. Instead she steps through the doorway, into the crowded bedroom, and moves to stand over her former 'prisoner' in !Teagan. Leave it to a chooser of the dead to turn up when people start asking for good deaths. She sets her axe into her belt, then lifts a hand to remove her helmet, causing her ravens to flutter their wings in an effort to maintain balance. "If it's a good, clean death you desire, I can provide it for you. And happily. But I would have you answer our questions. Directly. Honestly. Satisfy our curiosity now, or satisfy our curiosity later after hours, perhaps days of laborious interrogation. And who knows. If you experience a change of heart, if you suddenly desire to break with your former master, perhaps I can arrange that for you. Give you true freedom, rather than return you in bondage to your master, or to the grave." She spits on her helmet, polishes imaginary tarnish, and returns the winged helm to her head. "You already know you are defeated, we are simply negotiating the terms of your surrender, are we not?"
Neirin pinches the bridge of his nose, brow furrowing and eyes scrunching shut for a second. "That's what I said," he tells not-Teagan faintly irritably. "I mean--"
And then there's Sigrun, and the man leaves his crouch to sit back on his heels and run both hands through his wild hair. "Or you could die, which you ain't afraid of, I know. It'd be in service. But look, I'm used to religious types evangelising, annat. Ain't you going to even try to make me see it your way? I'm a godless heathen what ain't even heard of your god before I put his gadget together, and he liked me enough for it to mark me forever. That's got to count for something, ain't it?"
As before, even when the 'man' speaks, the woman refuses to look at him, or the area where he exists. She makes a deliberate, conscious effort not to do so. That said... when 'he' is speaking up, Sigrun and Cerise can both sense an inkling of suspicion in her posture which wasn't there before 'he' said what 'he' just said. Something is fishy in the Mirrorskin of Denmark.
She closes golden eyes, seems physically pained, and keeps her eyes closed a moment longer before stating, simply and calmly, toward Neirin, "I did not seek to harm you. You came upon me. Release me, and I will return to my people."
When her eyes open, they fix on the bard, and she shakes her head, once, in silent negation. "I will ask Him. If it is my place to know his thoughts, he will illuminate me." Anyone checking auras or otherwise reading emotions will get nothing but acceptance, honesty and faith. For all that Sigrun was fantastically persuasive, the target evidently wasn't in the right ballpark.
"I'm sorry," says the bard, rolling back up onto his feet beneath him and standing. "Not very sorry, honestly, because of what you were doing to that poor mortal woman, and I been in close to her shoes before. Just like the rest of us will never get this exultation whatever, seems like you ain't ever going to remember what it were like to be human and scared out of your mind and just wanting to live or die on your own time." He walks over to get his fiddle, and he picks it up, then looks back at her consideringly. "All the same, I am sorry life does what it does, sometimes. Do you want a tune to carry your soul home?"
"Give me back Baby. She can't be held by someone who wants to give this bitch the death she wants." comes the prisoner's voice -- except -- it isn't. That voice is far more familiar, and comes with a flare of heat and the crackle of distant static, as the shackles on Teagan's wrists -- yes, Teagan's wrists -- fall away, handcuffs clattering to the floor. Taller, in the blink of an eye, their face a shimmering black mask, their eyes broken mirrors. One hand, now bearing its thick scar across its palm, slides into the pocket on their sweatpants, and comes out with a locket, with a bracelet. "This, I take it, was meant for you," they inform the woman, dangling the bracelet from one hand. "He really was devoted to you. You made his faith stronger, and this... was for you." The chain for the locket gets spun around their forefinger. "This, I think I'll keep. Your face disgusts me, but I've worn worse, for worse reasons." Shadows pool around Teagan's feet, growing thicker by the second, as they turn toward Vorpal, then, holding out their left hand toward him. Anger burns so bright right now in those shattered-mirror eyes, and it's not really clear at whom it's targeted, or if they're just so angry all the time and right now they can't be fucked to hide it.
The woman watches Neirin, open, confused.
"We are the Children of the Sun."
As simple as that. She -does not comprehend- what Neirin is speaking of. There's absolutely nothing in her experience to resonate with the bard's reference to being human and scared etc. Emotionally, it's on a par with what he would expect to see if he were saying she's never going to remember what it was like to be a sea cucumber wearing a tutu.
She closes her eyes again, profoundly troubled, before telling Neirin, and Neirin alone, "Only the Light could carry my soul." While she does flick a glance toward Vorpal when he speaks, it is to Neirin she says, "Any death here will be unclean, but if I die in shadow, I die in His service."
Aaaand then there is Teagan. And the locket. And anger.
So much anger.
She quivers with it, sands agitated -- and restrains herself, hands fisting on her knees, discipline holding. She pointedly looks away, toward Neirin, again.
"So be it," says Neirin, and the apology in his eyes is clear and honest, but what it's for is not anything she'd understand.
He holds her gaze until he thinks he can't, then holds it anyway, and remembers.
Sigrun considers Vorpal's words, then Teagan's words, and more importantly the words of the woman that is their prisoner. Valkyries are tied to death in ways most things are not, and so it is little surprise that Sigurn does her own damn thing when it comes right down to it. Any death in shadow is done in his service? "Freyja, receive my sister," she murmurs as she sweeps her axe up and over her shoulders. And with that, Sigurn's person explodes into blinding light. Quite literally blinding light. Shadows retreat from her, and even closed eyes see the form of the Valkyrie with her axe aloft. In that perfect light borne from another pantheon entirely, the axe falls with all the brutal finality of a storm upon a rocky shore. And when Sigurn's light fades out, the light of the prisoner is snuffed entirely, and the executioner is wearing the arterial spray without one shred of reaction save for a set jaw. With the bill of her axe, she nudges the headloss torso onto its side, to assume its final repose.
Maybe it's the light. Maybe it's the way they've completely tapped themselves out for this mission. Maybe it's ... well, who the fuck knows. But when the arterial spray and the light hit Teagan? They swoon. Literally swoon. Maybe they just think Sigrun is so hot with that axe. The Mirrorskin's face goes ... really flat and weird, like an actual mirror, and they just fold up onto the floor in a puddle of their own Shadows. Too bad there isn't a literal fainting couch here.
Teagan's words freeze Vorpal in place. His head turns towards them, slowly, meeting the boiling gaze and holding it for a good long moment while he undoes the belt. Once it's loose, he hands it over to them, without a word. He turns his gaze onto the captive long enough to watch the axe fall, for all the violent light costs him to try to watch, and then as it fades, he nods- once- to Sigrun. "Did good. I couldn't-"
But that's as far as he gets. Teagan starts to crumple and Vorpal ducks, following them down and snagging them in his arms before they thump the rather solid wood beneath their feet. "Mnnnghh. Did. Not. Expect that." He takes a few awkward steps to the wall and sets Teagan loosely upright against it, Baby and partner in their lap. He plants himself much the same way, a hand lifting to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Sigrun, did you happen to bring anything refreshing with you? We got a warrior could really use some ale or something, I think." He pauses- visibly remembers that he's actually picked up some medical training -for situations like this- and leans over Teagan to start checking vitals, make sure they're not gonna fuckin' die.
Vorpal confirms that, in fact, Teagan is NOT gonna fuckin' die. "Okay. We're fine. They need some rest, though. And maybe a drink waiting when they wake up." His head turns towards the mess of blood and bisected body. "... and if your friends wanna help me clean up, there's dinner in it for them."
Sigrun is slow to switch gears from executioner to caregiver, though she is adept at both. She is still watching the corpse splutter out the last of its blood pressure onto the floor. It makes her slow to give Vorpal her attention. "Hmm?" The moment she's distracted, the ravens dive right in. Pecking at the head's eyes, tearing at its ears and nose. Whatever folds of flesh make themselves most convenient. But eyes. Eyes first. She turns her back to the sounds of rustling feathers, caws, and tearing flesh in order to stride on over to Vorpal and Teagan. "I have my drinking horn, though I am loathe to force my tokens on those who cannot consent to their use. I think it's best we do as you say. I will call Ulf the Mansbane, and he and my ravens can tidy up for you. While we see to Teagan. She can have some drink from my horn when she wakes." Sigurn briefly rests one alabaster lamp of a hand on Vorpal's shoulder, then gives it a pat. When she rises, she begins to sing a rather mournful tune in that lost language of hers. Probably summoning her fae mount.
They slowly open their eyes, and then close them again once they realize that, yeah, they just did that. Perhaps Teagan is just going to go hide in a separate part of their brain for a while, and pretend that the last several minutes didn't happen. Their arms wrap around Baby, pull the machete in close to their chest, and they mumble one word:
"They."
So they're fine. They're still correcting people on pronouns.
"Oh, geeze," Sigrun mutters with a roll of the eyes. "They."
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