do you bare your fangs at us, sir? MOONLIT RIVALS LOG 2, SCENE 2

[libraryassistants]

Who: Readers and Actors
What: The werewolves who are not sneaking into the party cause a bit of mischief... and did anybody actually agree to keep the peace tonight?
When: The night of the ball itself. [ooc timeline: Feb 6th - 19th]
Where: The city of Montica.
Content warnings: Please include any warnings in headers.


Waxing Gibbous Moon

In Town

Above the city, the Umbra Mansion stands tall. Its grand doors and windows have been opened, spilling light like a beacon. Music lilts in the air, drifting so far as to be faintly heard even in the neutral centre of the city.

The streets have emptied, particularly in the vampiric half of town. Most of the vampire loyalists have joined the masquerade, leaving their homes and shops unattended. Tonight is a special night - a once in a century event, and they wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Even some werewolves and neutral citizens have been enticed to attend. Jadis the Mystic has created a lotion that will disguise the scent of a werewolf; an effect that is broken by shifting, breaking the skin, or the gradual passage of time. It is not widely distributed, but rumours travel fast. The lotion is only given to any Guildulf-aligned werewolves, but… well, there’s nothing wrong with a little trade here or there. Right?

For all of the wolves in town - with the moon so close to being full, it’s natural for them to feel a bit more excitable. Energetic. Ready to take on the world. And seeing as Montica is so empty, it’s like a playground has just been opened up. The young wolves in particular are eager to take advantage of the empty streets, the sound of not-quite-mature howls breaking through the air in their excitement. There are hardly any people around to be scared if they play too rough or run too fast, and they are taking advantage of this with great enthusiasm.

In the highly-debated 'neutral' zone, some small packs of adolescent werewolves are gathering. There's banter and roughhousing, the not-quite-adults playfully shoving each-other over the invisible line where the vampire territory begins.

Some of the bravest amongst them take the challenge to dart over and brush their fingers over silver doorhandles - their yelps spurring courage and adrenaline in the others. What starts harmlessly enough quickly escalates as they urge each-other on, teenage excitement and the thrill of the moon encouraging all sorts of bad choices. The longer they go without reprimand, the more bold they become; and somewhere along the way, bulbs of garlic start winding up in places they wouldn't normally be found. (There is at least one group who is excitedly challenging each-other to leave the garlic in more and more absurd places. If they happen to sting themselves on some silver ornamentation on the way, all the better.)

Not all homes are unoccupied, though - sooner or later someone’s going to disturb someone else’s peace, and tensions are already so high. Hopefully there are some Responsible Adults around to curtail the worst of the mischief before someone’s temper is sparked.

Comments

[steelfeathered]

A man is dead. Has Jadis killed before? Never like this. Several things fly through her mind: Was this an enemy, this man whose face she hasn't seen? Surely. Surely! Anyone else would have been calling out; and a fierce, hot exultation is welling, more intense than the pleasure she feels making poisons, it's amazing to get to use magic with such immediate power to it; and a distant part of her recognizes that joy and is afraid and says every time I've fought it makes things worse; and this effort takes something out of her, she's sweating, she can feel her pulse hammering in her temples; and someone's taking this chance to steal something upstairs, why can't she just see something useful; and what's going on just at the other end of the room, is Roberte hurt?

The cold bracing of the magic she associates with Polaris, the guiding star, helps her put aside what isn't relevant, so she's only frozen for a couple of seconds. It's long enough for a second person to emerge and this one's light-footed enough to be masked by the other struggle, Jadis has barely an inkling that she's there until Wezen makes her stumble and shout "'Ware sorcery! The witch is here!"

Too close! Flinching, Jadis flattens her right hand into a blade shape and calls on Saiph, the giant's sword. This concussive energy is planar with an edge that concentrates its force, even if it's not actually blade-sharp. She hits some part of this woman's anatomy with a bone-breaking crunch, and hot droplets of blood? saliva? spray from her mouth. Jadis didn't hit squarely - this assailant doesn't die instantly like the first but scrabbles on the floor, gasping and moaning.

"Sorcery!" comes the call from past the other door. "She's hexed the floor!" "Crossbow!"

She doesn't need to be a seer to know what happens if she stands here. Where is the desk? Overlaid on a bright fire casting light and changing shadows into the hallway she can see the lines delineating the walls, the ceiling, the door, but nothing about furniture. Jadis ducks and drops to her knees, hoping she's got it right and will be harder to shoot, trying to quiet her gasping for air enough to listen for feet on the stairs.

[guilliman]

They fire the crossbow, and the bolt flies over Roberte's head, but he is barely aware. He can see nothing but white and red. He can hear nothing but the rush of his blood, but howls and screams and falling bodies. His world is narrowing, heartbeat by heartbeat, down to the men below him, the men who must die before he does.

He is snapping, biting at whatever cursed, traitorous flesh comes near his face, digging his teeth in and jerking, shaking his head, to do as much damage as possible. Appiene, his teeth still embedded in his arm, is trying to do much the same, and it's likely that Roberte would already be down that arm, if he weren't putting his body weight on that arm to keep it pressed as far into the bastard's mouth as possible.

"Choke - hh! On it!"

Two more, no, three more hands are trying to wrestle the silvered knife from him, but he will not relinquish it. He jerks and twists and stabs with it, the cursed edge making up for his lack of finesse. He feels it drag against bone and tendon. Someone's hand. Burning at the silver's kiss.

They scream. He howls. With the full force of his life, all the stinking, blood-and-bowel rage-and-terror live-die-live. With the window open, someone will surely hear it. Throne -- Moon -- Father -- Mother -- please let them hear it.

[curzed]

The howl is answered, not by an echoing howl of Guildulf's pack-family and retainers, but a window-cracking shriek as the psyker barrier is struck from the outside hard enough to shake the walls and shower plaster from the ceiling.

There is an idea, in splintered foresight, of exactly what it'll take to break that barrier beyond the initial impact of several hundred pounds of angry vampire. In some fragments it's not necessary at all and the sorcery gives way easily, in others by the time he gets through it red ruin has stained the floors and the city burns in its wake. None of these had the feel of fact, just possibility, so he follows the one that has the feel of certainty.

The one that tells him the next time he strikes there will be nothing between him and his targets but sudden blossoming fire. And fire has never stopped him before.

Unfortunately for one of the attacking werewolves a little too close to the window, Curze's reach is considerable, and ragged claws dig into yielding flesh and snag on bone to drag his snared victim backwards and into a more secure grip. This isn't about torture and terror, this isn't about drawing things out as a lingering warning to others, and so he kills with straightforward brutality, one hand easily large enough to wrap around a baseline sized skull and crush bone in a wet grinding crunch.

The creature that's answered Roberte's howl of rage doesn't fit comfortably into a room designed for baselines, too stretched, too big, like watching a nightmare spider squeeze itself through a narrow gap one limb at a time. Darkness follows in dwindling candles, guttering lamps and the breathless weight of unnatural horror until all that remains is the fire from Jadis' own work.

[steelfeathered]

Of course Jadis hears the howl and lurches towards Roberte, half upright. The long jaws of someone fully in wolf form close over her right wrist and forearm, a long tooth sinking directly between her radius and ulna. She's taken entirely by surprise and makes a high stuttering yelp, almost canine herself. (Some part of her, coolly sectioned off by the Polaris spell, notices her wards on the house coming under assault, determines that this is a good thing actually, and lets them go, reclaims that little bit of strength.)

She'll wonder later why this person bit with restraint when they could have used full force, or gone for her throat. Surely no one would think she could be trusted if captured and made to serve! Details will trickle in, unwanted. This is someone she'd helped with something intimate and complicated and badly needed, and they were too torn between remembered gratitude and ambition to either survive the night or take Jadis off the board.

That will be later. Now, now at last she knows exactly where an enemy is. She unlatches her left hand, gouging the back of it open on a tooth as she pulls it free, and plants it on the side of the enemy's furry, snarling face. "Antares," she croaks, desperate, pouring more of herself into this spell than she's ever used before.

The jaws release, jarringly, and then the wolf... they don't catch fire. Something inside of them is transmuted to incandescent yellow-bright material that then haloes their body in flame as it consumes them. It is, at least, very fast. The wolf only manages the very start of an agonized shriek, like nothing any living thing should utter, before their brain and spine are cooked, but the heat contracts dead muscle and when they collapse still their body moves, pawing, wallowing in spasms, jaws spreading wide and snapping. Fur evaporates, ears scorch back down into the head, flesh sluffs and chars.

The magic origin means the fire doesn't spread but its heat rolls outwards like a blow, striking everything around it. Jadis scrambles back, the smell of burnt hair rolling off her, crying tears of pain and fear and frustration. She's still seeing only the outlines of the room overlaying a view from the hallway - lashing yellow light and darkest shadow - and her present-senses are overwhelmed by flame, she has no idea how the night heron got here but she can feel his presence making the space very much smaller.

[guilliman]

It is chaos. A window has broken. There is screaming. Jadis says something, he is vaguely aware -- she's still alive, she's still fighting! -- and then there is a hideous sound, and a roiling wave of heat. He feels Appiene gurgle with terror at whatever has just happened, and struggle harder as he realizes the tide is turning in Guildulf's favor. His back legs rabbit-kick at Roberte's gut, shredding his clothing layer by layer, digging into his belly.

The other man, pinned beneath Appiene for the duration of this fight so far, and now bleeding from several silvered wounds, is writhing and sobbing, trying to drag himself out from underneath the pile. Roberte leaves him for -- for Jadis, or... there's someone else. His call was answered??

But he's in the depths of his rage now, and killing the man beneath him is the only thought he can hang on to for longer than a few seconds. What he's going to have to do to accomplish that...

He drags up his moon-form, sinking further into the skin of the beast. A great, hulking beast of a dog, its yellow fur already blood-soaked, its long teeth snapping. The shredded, splintered bones of his right forearm give way beneath the strain of the transformation, Appiene's wolven jaws as snapping shut around bloody meat and bone. And Roberte, transformed -- the guardian beast, the Kangal, the dog bred to protect his flock from the predations of the wolf -- surges forward, his teeth sinking to the root into the meat and bone and soft holes of Appiene's face.

[curzed]

The light of one burning wolf isn't one he can stifle easily, painfully bright where he'd prefer comforting darkness, making it hard to pick out exactly what's going on by sight alone. Sound will have to do, quick heartbeats, the sounds of the wounded, the smell of several distinct sweaty, adrenaline-riddled bodies and bloody ruin.

Burnt dog fur, burnt hair.

None of the heavy, spicy scent of primarch blood. Roberte is a mortal man.

Or the mixed-bird of stormwing.

The werewolf struggling, bleeding from wounds that smell metallic, beneath the fighting pack leaders is dragged free, a second crossbow bolt meant for the witch on the floor intercepted with the captured unfortunate, the bolt burying itself up to the fletching in the man's gut. The dancing firelight is obscenely cheerful, and Curze turns from it with a surly growl, dropping the silver-slashed man to die in a spreading pool of his own blood and gut-fluids, pouncing on the crossbow wielder and driving them backwards into the dark with him.

The door swings shut in his wake. He'll be back. Probably.

Ignore the screaming that follows, muffled behind sturdy wood, it's likely nothing.

[steelfeathered]

Within the study the loudest sound Jadis can hear is the voice of the flame as it consumes the wolf's body and reaches out with oily fingers; it, and the screaming outside, are all she can hear. She struggles to her feet and takes a few steps further from the oppressive heat of the pyre. Nothing comes at her. Polaris steadies her, lets her take stock, keeps a variety of very mixed feelings at bay.

Is her nose bleeding? Can't tell but at some point her lower lip was bitten pretty badly and that had to have been her doing it, anyone else would have taken it off. Jadis makes a low sound that's half laugh, half sob. Her throat feels like she's been screaming. Definitely she's burned, the skin on her face and arms has that tight feeling. The bite wounds are giving off that familiar sick throb of a werewolf encounter, pounding in time with her head. Left hand her palm is scorched but she can still move her fingers, right hand works but is twinging like the bite did something non-supernatural as well, she's losing blood. Those inner parts of herself that she calls on, hooks, to use star-spells are pretty rough too, not much space for more. And of course, she's still worked up enough that her eyes are untrustworthy, though she's settling enough to get flashes of what's probably either the now or, at least, the in-this-room-and-the-immediate-future.

She's a wet dishrag that's been mostly wrung out. There's still a measure of liquid to be had but she feels twisted and crumpled.

The room by wolflight is almost unrecognizeable as the study, when she can see it, what she can see of it. Bodies. The hulking shape of her patron's other self, indistinct, as it usually is; good, he's alive, she's not sure if the night heron would have started with her, otherwise. Jadis blinks repeatedly and fumbles at her waist pocket for that small, poisoned dagger, in case there's someone else.

She has to clear her throat several times before she can say anything. "Roberte? Are you...?"

[guilliman]

Roberte's fury fades as the fight bleeds from Appiene's body. The man is still breathing, hitching wet gurgles, but he's otherwise still.

Guildulf staggers back, panting heavily. Blinking slowly, sluggishly as he turns his head toward Jadis. His muzzle starts to sink back into his human face, still covered in blood and strings of flesh. A slurred half-canine warble escapes him, and he starts to step toward her... then collapses onto his face, as his macerated forearm folds underneath him.

Moaning with pain, he rolls over on his side, melting back into human form, his arm held against his chest. "Jh... nnnh. Jad. Jadis." He blinks up at her. "You're 'right?" he slurs.

[steelfeathered]

When she tries thinking of this as a problem to solve, the insight shifts, and she can somewhat see what's actually in front of her, like looking through eyeholes in a mask, with spare information above and below. Why people bent on murder doesn't count as a problem is a mystery. Maybe it would have if she'd framed it that way.

When she sees Roberte more clearly she almost regrets it. That's not what an arm should look like! She almost trips over a body she hadn't seen in coming to his side, then drops to her knees and gathers up her skirt.

"I'm fine," she says, because she's not going to say anything else when he looks like that, and "You were magnificent," because he went so quickly from absolute rage to asking after her, and then, "Stop changing for a while and keep pressure on that, I have to stop the bleeding."

Tearing cloth with her bare hands isn't on the table usually and even less so now. Jadis hacks at it with the poisoned dagger, then remembers and switches to her belt knife. First: tourniquet, though her left hand isn't up to the kind of force she needs to do it properly and she has to lean in close and use her teeth. Second: stop her own heaviest bleeding by binding wads of fabric over the deeper of the tooth marks in her right arm and the gashed-open back of her left hand. She chafes at it but it's better than nobly passing out. Third: more fabric and she puts her hands on him, tries to decide which bite wounds need direct pressure right now and which are sluggish and can be left for a bit. She tries to get Roberte to turn over and lay on his back, hissing through her teeth here and there. He's in the kind of condition she's always feared the twins will return in, on nights when there's some territorial scuffle.

A number of blood vessels in her eyes have burst and colored her sclera irregular red, she has no eyebrows and less hair than usual, and flakes of ash have started moving through the room. Her fire creates its own air currents as it continues to render the dead wolf down. I love my mama, if she was the one who taught me Polaris, she thinks. She can feel the upset, but it's sectioned off, she can work.

Where can she even start with his arm. Bone injuries are best treated as soon as possible, isn't that right, but this is... how much magic can she still spend... She starts to chew on her lower lip and has to stop immediately.

[guilliman]

Roberte huffs and clutches tighter at his upper forearm. Actually nodding seems like... a lot of effort right now. A lot. Hell, helping her roll him over on his back is a challenge he very nearly fails at, and is dimly aware he would have failed at without her help. Keeping pressure on his arm seems like all the physical effort he can currently expend, now that the rush of adrenaline is leaving him.

Once he's over on his back, at least, a little clarity comes back to him, the blood still in his body sloshing weakly up to his brain. Slow, struggling, he drags his legs up close to his body, and that helps too.

"Was someone," he manages to mutter. "Was'n there. For us. Heard us."

He closes his eyes. It hurts. It hurts, more than just physically. His heart in a vise, his head a roar of noise. After everything he's done, everything he's sacrificed, this is how they reward him? "We'll need to identify. Know the families. How bad are you?"

[steelfeathered]

"That's the night heron," she says tightly, as a particularly shrill scream penetrates the wall of the study and makes her shudder. "I called for him, and he came. He's... there were some looters, too. He'll be back when he's - finished."

He'll leave the maids alone. Right? Little Siskin under the bed? Jadis's face crumples as that new dart of fear is briefly too much, she makes a gasping, strangled sob, and steadies as she leans back into dissociation. The night isn't over, she's not done. She cuts enough skirt and petticoat off of her dress that she'll be bare-legged below the knee and tells herself she doesn't have even a distant part of her caring about indecency at a time like this as she makes her preparation.

Jadis is not in the habit of carrying her most potent painkillers with her while in her own home, and she already took what she'd had on her before the rival families arrived. She regrets that now, though something strong enough to competently handle this would send him to sleep immediately. Maybe he'll accept that when the dust settles more and he's said what he needs to say - she hopes he will.

Stalling for just a moment, she wipes some of the gore and flaking ash off Roberte's face, lets her thumb trail through the short, soaked hair at his temple. Blood has soaked through the pad on the back of her hand. "I'm nothing like as chewed up as you, don't worry. We can do that soon. Now, I can keep us from having to amputate the arm." Even if repairing function of the hand to any degree... even if she was fresh, that would be a lot to ask. "I have to wrap it and do a working on it. It will hurt. Should I give you something to bite down on?"

[guilliman]

"Ah. He kept his word." The vampire proves himself to be a more reliable ally than his own kind, who he's known for decades. That's... he has no clue how he feels about that. But the Night Heron did come, and it has made all the difference. He'll have to thank him. Somehow. What does a vampire want? What does this one want? To find -- someone, wasn't it? He can do that. He can pay his debts.

Roberte lets out a long sigh, turning toward Jadis's touch. His eyes flutter open, crescents of glassy blue among the drying red, and then he closes them again.

Don't bother, he thinks, let me bear my scars proudly, but the words stick in his mouth. If the hand can be saved, it can be saved; if it cannot, he will make them see what they have done, they will not be able to deny their treachery.

"Mmhm," he hums instead, "please. My girl. Thank you."

[steelfeathered]

"Yes," she breathes, and doesn't give a word of why. Roberte thinks it's because she did the outsider some favor, doesn't he? Seeking him out, telling him, had been a good idea after all. She's wondered, after she spoiled that moment of fellow feeling.

Her heart turns over in her chest, not for the first time, and she tries to smile for him in the moment when his eyes are open. It's not that Jadis has never thought about it. She'd expected, when she came here, that he'd want some early compensation for his trouble. He never had. Eventually the idea became wistful, almost. Roberte doesn't see her like that. Being trusted is enough, better than she deserves.

"Don't thank me, it's my-" No, he should save his strength and not think he has to defend her just now. "I'm sorry."

A tightly rolled cylinder of fabric should do. He can probably bite through it, he'd have stronger jaws than a non-were anyway, but it will pad his teeth. She touches the corner of his mouth to tell him to open it and supplies the roll like a bit in the mouth of a horse, then gets him to lay his wounded arm down across the remainder of her severed skirt.

Jadis takes another moment just to glance at the burning wolf, brilliant enough to read by, the only light in the room. The fire is smaller now as it's consumed most of the body. Teeth are exposed in a muzzle that's flaking char over bone. It's in a crater of blackened wood, it's caused a reverse crater in the ceiling. She did that. She killed two of them earlier, and then this.

Amazing. Horrible, but amazing.

If she can do that, she can do something about this. That settles her. Taking a deep breath, she begins to sing in a rough, hoarse voice, using the names of stars to praise and call upon the secret inner parts of herself which have such power, and puts her hands on Roberte's mangled arm to begin aligning the bones, to make them at least start to knit in the right order. He could hurt her; she doesn't think of it.

[guilliman]

There had always been rumours. Of course there had been. It should have been a sign of trouble, perhaps, that they could never be completely stamped out.

Hindsight, he thinks, as he opens his mouth, lets her place the gag between his teeth. Little to be done for it now.

He'd never considered it, despite those rumours. Too busy and too tired to ever think of seeking out companionship after Paulette left, not to mention their relative standing. Maybe he should have. She is the one who is still here, after everything. After everything is stable again, after... After. He'll at least review the terms of her employment, he starts to promise himself, as she begins to sing.

And then the power she commands begins to flow into him, and his bones and flesh begin to move on their own, and complex thought escapes him again, as -- now drained of numbing adrenaline -- his world explodes into pain again. He clenches his hand around his mangled wrist, and he bites down on the cloth held between clenched teeth, and he screams. Loud enough to carry through the violence-heavy night.

[steelfeathered]

Jadis thinks of calling on herself as something like threading hooks up through the bottom of her ribcage, catching them on bone, and pulling. Not painful, exactly, and the 'damage' doesn't have anything to do with her actual bones and mends with rest, but it's a singular sensation. Some magic, like Polaris, needs a fishhook that can catch and hold for a long time and release leaving barely a mark. Others hook around a rib and shatter it when cast, tremendous energy expelled all at once. Antares pulled a whole rib away with it. Only a few good surfaces are left now.

Roberte's back arches as she starts. He screams full force, and she instantly sees that she can't be slow and careful about this. All right! All at once! The last metaphorical bones in her chest, her sternum, clavicles, shoulderblades. It's not going to be enough! Fine. Shouting verses that go from a plea to a demand, Jadis releases Polaris and drags the last lead-heavy hook into its place. There is a terrible, sucking weight that she strains against, like trying to fly with blackberry brambles around her neck-

It feels out of her control. Bones are yanked into alignment. Torn flesh is pressed together by a vice-tight grip, veins and nerve fibers are pulled as by a brisk seamstress. Healing comes, not as a gentle warmth but as pain and itch and maddening dull ache and weakness and tingling numbness all compressed into a few heartbeats. A great invisible pressure builds and eases. The tourniquet comes free and blood starts to make its way back along almost-correct passages.

Jadis slumps back and tries to make her eyes focus. She has not brought Roberte's arm back to the state it had been in before, nor is it entirely healed. It's rough and irregular, which isn't just the considerable swelling or the splits in the skin that show raw red tissue. The shattered bones, the nerves, all of those delicate pieces are almost in the right places. With patient repetition and training, it might bend at the wrist, he might have some use of his fingers. But she's worked past her capacity and base of knowledge. Unless there's a better healer about to revise her work - and no other mystic in Montica could have gotten this far - Roberte will never use a pen in this hand again, never have full sensation.

"You've got- you - I'm sorry," she whimpers, unable now to keep from trembling. Without Polaris it's hard to breathe, hard to think. Everything hurts and she can't put it aside. Is she about to laugh, or break down sobbing? Both? The best she can do isn't good enough, she thinks, which hits her with a slow impact. All she's sacrificed and studied and she's still not enough. She doesn't know enough, isn't strong enough.

She finds herself staring past him at a torn-open werewolf, mostly human. Deflated. Pitiful, the vital tissues deconstructed. Viscera gleams wetly in the waning wolflight. Then, from a strange distance, from closer than lips against her ear, the thought comes - do they count, by the rules? can I eat them? and she's... hungry... Oh, no. Not now. Not other-Jadis, library-Jadis, being some new kind of monster. She doesn't need this now. Her body rebels at this scrap of knowledge she shouldn't have, and she is in no condition to fight back. She draws her knees up to her chest and buries her face in her crossed arms. Don't ask anything of her for a bit.

[curzed]

It's gone silent elsewhere in the manor, no more muted sound of begging, no more shrill sounds of agony muffled by walls and distance, so when the lord of the house howls his pain, there's nothing to drown it out. When, exactly, Curze reappears is a bit uncertain, but when Jadis withdraws, shaking, perhaps overextending her power or perhaps overwhelmed by events, the hunched pale figure's once more in the room, silent and assessing.

The stench of fresh blood, torn bowels and vampiric ichor may be missed under the scent of burning fur and meat, vile things dripping from the metal crucifix clenched in one hand as a makeshift weapon snatched off a wall on some other floor.

He'd expected to find more attackers, based on the sound. But the only things still alive in the room is a wolf that wouldn't be for long, Jadis herself and Roberte.

Something else then.

He's not the sort of psyker that can recognize when such power has been used just by the feel of a room. Maybe such would always be beyond him. But with no immediate hostile in sight, the bloody blunt instrument is set aside on whatever convenient surface is found so he can rub his hands a bit on bloodsoaked pants in a vain effort to clean them a little. All of Magnus' work to keep him clean has been thoroughly undone. The only place blood doesn't stain is his mouth. "Now what was the yelling about?"

It's quiet, like he doesn't really expect an answer. He's going to have to investigate for himself, but nothing told him either was about to suddenly expire on him.

[guilliman]

The sensation of bone and flesh moving underneath his skin is not, in and of itself, unfamiliar to Roberte. However, he's accustomed to that bone and flesh being intact, not jagged shards moving carelessly, not shredded fibres and tendons writhing as they reach to reconnect, driven by outside forces. His body screams with the unnatural pain, his whole nervous system on fire for -- he doesn't know how long. His awareness of time abandons him. The only thing that exists is the power forcing his body to repair itself.

Until it ends. He falls back to the floor, panting, chest heaving. His body is still a scoured, burning, aching thing, his arm intact? -- he thinks? There is no more fresh blood soaking his chest -- but twitching, cramped tight, curled tight against his chest.

The exsanguinated daze has receded, leaving him reeling, wrung out, but -- but able to think. Able to... "Fuck," he mutters. He's going to have to get up, get moving, start work to counter this. He's...

...there's someone in here with them. He startles, bloody face twisting into a grimace as another wave of pain goes through him. He looks up, over, and bless him, this mortal shell, he's fighting to push himself upright with his good hand, eyes locked, properly focused, on the vampire.

"Heron." He still sounds out of breath. Voice strained from overuse. "We owe your our lives." His eyes move over the man, taking in the state of him, the bloodied crucifix. It takes him another moment to remember that he was asked a question. Maybe he isn't thinking entirely clearly. Close enough. "...healing."

Demonstratively, he holds out his previously-ravaged arm, the limb shaking with the strain of the motion.

[curzed]

"I regret allowing that name," is the wistful response, drawing close enough to drop down, sitting on his heels, to examine the ravaged arm. Tabs are being kept on Jadis, but so long as her heart rate and breathing remain the same, he's not concerned she might suddenly run into further issues. "I am owed nothing. There was a debt. And you were doing well on your own." Was there anyone left alive except them?

Time would tell.

Some of the blood on him is his own; he's not as fast or as strong as he'd prefer to be, but he had experience, durability and a vicious streak little in this city can hope to match. Roberte's meanwhile, is entirely his own, and that of the savaged creature not far away. "...Her work, I take it." That didn't look like a fresh wound, the bite and break looks like it could have been days ago. A week perhaps. "Does it kill infection?"

The Night Haunter pauses, brow furrowing. "Do you know what infection even is, like this?"

[guilliman]

"Is there another you'd prefer?" Roberte asks. Part of him still screams to flee this man, but the rest is reeling, dizzy with gratitude. He cannot quite explain the depth of that feeling, but it is there nonetheless. "I should not call you a name that is not yours."

How polite.

"There were others out there," he points out with a frown. Does he not care about taking credit? Receiving thanks? Repayment for this great service? "Unless all of that is yours. A limb for every two down is -- poor math. Respectfully. We would not have made it."

He shakes his head, clearly annoyed by what he sees as an unimportant question. "There may be fever. Later. As it heals fully. I'll see to it when it comes. As long as I have the next day to work. If I burn, so shall they."

His eyes catch on Appienne. The slow rise and fall of his chest. The wet gurgle of his labored breathing. The occasional tremor of his limbs, so weak it's hard to tell whether it's reflex or an attempt to move. His face is a defleshed horror, pieces of hair and skin still stuck to Roberte's own face.

"...would you mind helping me stand?" he asks Curze, his attention fixed on the dying man.

[curzed]

Nothing he does is for adulation or even gratitude. That was for others. Explaining that.. would be a headache he doesn't feel like dealing with. "My name is Night Haunter. She is close, but not.. quite." What kind of name is that??

Curze's, apparently. The only one he would answer to if he had his way, but an obnoxious number of people insisted on using the one in the Imperial archives. "Oh, I think you are more resourceful than you give yourselves credit for." Those sad creatures can't truly be a threat, can they? "None of them were worth much except some interesting teeth to work with."

Except Roboute is a mortal. Barely stronger than a baseline. To their own kind, mortals are regularly lethal. Such a bite would never have been enough to break a primarch's bones. But now? A fever was as likely to be lethal as a stab to the gut.

How strange to think about. Jadis herself, soft and yielding, no longer had a shield of metallic feathers to protect her. Would her sorcery?

The still-living attacker is studied with an equally measured gaze when Roberte's attention turns to Appienne. "They shall burn if you fall," he says eventually. "All of them. The entire city. So have a care. You can barely lift an arm without shaking, what will you do standing?" Faint, perhaps.

He does have other weapons than the bloody heavy crucifix he'd used to beat a few to death with, but they are finer implements. More delicate, for fine work, not harsh butchery. The skinning knife he withdraws is for his size, but someone Roberte's size can still use it; it's offered hilt-first, uncaring if the edge cuts him in the doing.

"Where I am from, we wear what we kill."

[guilliman]

"Night Haunter," he repeats, perfectly accepting of the name. "Very well."

Mortal he may be, but Roberte Guildulf is still an enormously proud man, clearly displeased at his request for assistance being denied, at his weakness being pointed out. He's gearing up for an argument (or maybe just a tantrum), until the Night Haunter offers him a skinning knife. His mouth snaps shut, and a very unpleasant, teeth-clenched smile pulls across his bloody face.

"It is not usually our custom," he says lowly, and takes the knife. He drags himself over to Appiene, eyes bright and murderous. "But this is a situation requiring a clear message."

It is kinder, really, than what he had been planning on doing. A neat cut across the throat, instead of a boot coming down on it repeatedly. And then he begins the rest of the necessary cuts. Slow, sore, occasionally clumsy -- lacking the strength that's really necessary, and the leverage of his other arm -- but focused, unhesitating.

It's not a strategically sound action. Not remotely. But in this moment of bloody rage, it feels right.

"The children are still well?" he asks, eyes still on his bloody work. "Do you know?"

[curzed]

It's better to offer an alternative when outright denial is unwise. "Little sends a better message, I've found." Except perhaps doing it while they still live and broadcasting the results. He's reluctant to irritate this mortal version of his brother too much and make keeping an eye on him more difficult. Relieved of the knife, Curze stays where he is, hands folded across his knees to do little else beyond observe, and continue to drip blood on the otherwise goresoaked floor. "It's such a lovely pelt, too. It'll make a fine wall hanging or rug, if a cloak doesn't suit you."

Not just watching Roberte's efforts with the knife, but the still-quiet Jadis, and any hint of movement from anywhere else. He'd not harmed anyone who smelled like they belonged here, but that didn't mean reinforcements wouldn't suddenly appear.

If the witch didn't recover her wits soon enough she'd have to be seen to as well. "They are, as of when I last left off observing them. Foolish youthful discretions are taking place, but they are not lethal." One's running around getting involved in the vandalizing and the other .. may have made a new vampirish friend. 'Friend'. "They will be shocked at this, I think. Perhaps angry they were not here to aid you."

[steelfeathered]

Jadis emerges from some whirling internal pit with an inarticulate mutter to the effect of "I won't-" She raises her head, blinking furiously, and touches her left hand to her right forearm, which is about equivalent to reaching for a holster. Clearly she's had various degrees of facial bleeding - bitten lip, drying blood at both nostrils, some tint in her tears - which just blends right in, really. It's stopped for now.

The brothers - brothers!? - are here and Roberte is doing something very stupid and she should try and catch up but there's something she has to do first. Jadis heaves herself to her feet, stumbles towards the servants' stairs, and catches herself on the desk which, somehow, is still standing, if far worse for wear. She glowers at the mess she'd made. The pile of ash and crumbling bones with a low flame still clinging to them, barely identifiable as canid. "Bare-ass idiot," she hisses. "If you were so glad for my help you should have said no and gone anywhere else tonight! Better yet you could have warned me! I would have protected you! But no, you couldn't decide if you were actually grateful and am I supposed to be happy it let me kill you? What would your sister say? Now you can ask her yourself because you're both dead."

Anger is rare for her - she feels it, she just only expresses the fear or hurt that usually comes with it - so this low-voiced outburst is clumsy and leaves her panting. 'Bare-ass', meaning venereal disease so bad there's no pubic hair, is also, in this time and place, extremely strong language by the standards of anyone who is not a soldier. Supporting herself on the desk she turns.

Without Polaris she feels the influence of the night heron (if he insists on his actual name she'll try but she will get it wrong sometimes) unshielded. On the other hand, she's had a rough night and her adrenal system can only provide so much more terror without more prompting than him squatting there, dripping fresh gore into the mess that's spread everywhere now, beautiful in his awful way.

"I'm sorry," she manages, trying to use the unaccustomed anger to keep back the exhaustion without letting it in her voice. "I - Roberte. What are you doing."

[guilliman]

"A cloak," he says, thoughtfully. Something prods at him, a ghost of a memory of a dream. A wolf's pelt across a man's shoulders. Beloved. Betrayer. As he grasps for it, it turns to mist. "...perhaps."

He sighs with relief, and nods at the Night Haunter's update. "I had expected that much. Sigwulf told me outright that he was going to the Masquerade." He smiles faintly. "Impressed me lately, that boy. I won't be surprised if Sigrid's done the same, or if she's just running with the other pups." He hrmphs, and sits back, giving himself a minute to stretch his back and to try, once more, to test his damaged hand.

"They shall. And the rest of the household. We'll have to gather the dead in the courtyard once this is done. Identify those we can. Announce the attempt in the morning, and those who wish to claim their traitors may do so to my face." He clicks his teeth together, thinking, thinking. "How to proceed will depend on the identities of the perpetrators. If this fool was the only head of house, that's one thing. If there were others..."

At Jadis's voice, Roberte perks up, abandoning his contemplations and his work on the idiot's stupid hide to sit back, twisting his head to look over at her.

"Jadis." Beneath the blood, and even with the vicious light in his eyes, he is pleased, relieved. "I'm making a statement. How are you feeling?"

[curzed]

Jadis is watched as she suddenly lurches to her feet, but Curze doesn't interrupt. She's moving .. .alright, for someone injured, nothing telling him she's likely to bleed out or lapse into a coma that isn't psyker-related. He was no medic. He knew how to take care of his own injuries, for what minimal care those tended to require, but someone else's? A mortal's? The principle was there, an innate knowledge, but no real experience. "From what I could tell, without disguising himself either. Forcing your foes to acknowledge him when they cannot move against him is a clever move." Sigrid he didn't know the scent of, couldn't tell where she was. But she should have been there.

The bridge that would end this Story was in theory to begin tonight. Would it still, with this mayhem?

"Information easily gained from these. Perhaps not that one." A gesture to the charred corpse; that one might not be good for much.

The grin that crosses his face at Jadis' questioning what Roberte is up to is utterly friendless and full of way too many teeth. What the Lord Wolf is doing seems terribly obvious to him, and Curze surely had nothing to do with this decision.