She will follow. She will also stay the impulse to let out a shriek of delight and aggression at the prospect of chasing one of her friends down, giving up their position against the dusky sky, well trained enough not to completely confuse the task with play. All the same, Monster needs little coaxing to tuck her wings back and slip into Buggie's wake.
Marcus sets his heels into stirrups to counterweight the dive, near standing in that tense crouch over saddle, feeling that natural pulse of adrenaline at a remove as they drop. Getting down out of the saddle after his first ride in griffon saddle had been a challenge not to buckle closer to the earth as if to swear to it he'll never leave again, despite that, a few minutes later, he'd been clambouring back in.
It has yet to become pedestrian. But neither has riding a horse, so.
His staff is lashed to his back, and he slips a hand backwards to grasp at it, an eye kept cocked to the building. The angle of the remaining light and the distance makes it difficult to discern if there's a lit lantern inside or something of that kind, but even if there was no such indicator, it would still want checking.
There is a brief glimmering of dying light over wingtips, sparking down to reveal the secret iridescence of grey feather vane and rachis. Then they've plummeted past the gasping touch of the sun to become imperfectly black marks against the landscape.
The powerful backwing required to land in the wash above the lake's rim scatters small stones and sand. Buggie's eye is better than his is at this hour; she plants them securely down amidst the gravel and soft sand rather than in the prickly scrub surrounding the pale, dry zigzag wandering down from the hills to the body of water. But she isn't so well behaved as to neglect from stretching her wings all the way upright once all four feet have found their way to the ground, possibly in part because Flint makes no effort to discourage the habit.
Instead, feet kicked free from stirrups and harness buckles undone from the saddle's d-rings, Flint slides from the saddle and down the griffon's sturdy shoulder. Boots crunching in the gravel, already moving low to scramble up out of the wash to the sandy ledge and kneel low in the scraggly yellow grass, he at least trusts Buggie not to wander while he finds himself an observation point there among the scrub. Draws the spyglass from his heavy belt and snaps it open, raising the glass to his eye.
Behind Flint, he will hear the sound of wings flaring, catching the air, and the scattering of dry desert dirt, and will maybe feel the chill gust of braking flaps. The dull thumping of four feet landing in almost unison, a low creaking purr of noise that quiets under a more human hush, no louder than the brush of dry grass. Buckles clicking, leather sliding.
Then, the crunch of boots on gravel and sand, rustling desert plantlife as Marcus follows, crouching down to remain low at the rise of sandy earth.
Up ahead, the desert-worn shacks give little away under the spyglass for a long moment. Discerning sources of light that aren't merely errant reflection from the sinking sun is a chore, and the dusty terrain and restless winds of the Anderfels means there's no clear and obvious fresh tracks to sweep over at that angle. If they had more day at their disposal, they could simply settle in and observe a while. If the prospect of this being a false lead while the Venatori continue their retreat elsewhere weren't a possibility, they could wait for nightfall for better contrast.
But as it happens, something moves from within. A figure passing by the boarded window, perhaps, as it changes the gleam of light coming in low through the slats, giving away its source.
Marcus doesn't see, but waits patiently for word, senses tuned more radial for the sake of their backs.
There is no soft huff of breath or grunt of acknowledgement for that passing shadow with which to signal Marcus. Instead, a stoic beat of silence followed by the equally reserved clack-clack of the spyglass collapsing. Flint patiently tucks the instrument back into his wife belt. Casts a brief flickering of a glance back to the pair of griffons—
"I'll close on foot. Tuck in on the south side of the structure. Draw them out. I'll flank once they come for you."
The point of his attention pivots, locks briefly on Marcus—arguments?—and then pivots farther back in the direction of their target. From the scrape of his boots and shift of his shoulder, the suggestion is that he means to make his move imminently.
No arguments from him, acknowledgment in a silent tip of his head before directing his focus forwards.
Hopefully, today won't be the day that Monster forgets her training and takes off when he crests the ledge. As it is, she has settled into a kind of waiting repose, belly touching the ground but the suggestion of coiled tension in her haunches and shoulders, one golden eye regarding both men.
Flint makes to move; Marcus waits a few beats before following. He pursues Flint's path for a short stretch, and then, where it's most logical that they should split, the sounds of his bootfalls leaves, and Flint may see out the corner of his eye the sudden gust of smoke splitting off for the western facing side. Fast, silent, rolling and flowing close to the desert floor, the occasional ember sparking bright but dying quickly in its wake.
It reforms into a man nearer the shack. Marcus stays low, not quite hidden by the thatch of stiff desert grasses he'd aimed for, but it'll suit him for as long as it takes for Flint to get into position. The shadows around him have thickened subtly under barely conscious magical encouragement, lending some cover.
Pure muscle and sinew carries Flint over the sandy ridge and through the scrub, cutting down across the hard packed and over the dark slate no man's land laid out between the wash's lip and the wooden structure erected lakeside. He draws the sword at his hip long before he arrives there, the soft hisk of steel from leather a bright threat to the ear.
Untouched by the Fade, he isn't as fast as Marcus is. It takes him some seconds to smuggle himself in along the out building's mud and straw wall, to crouch there in the slanting shadow with only the glint of the steel cutlass to betray him and even that obscured from anyone who might come creeping out from the shack's interior—a murderous, opportunist shadow, waiting for vulnerable ribs between which to slip a vicious blade.
Up close and given a moment to measure the air about him, the muted murmur of conversation eking through the imperfect plaster is—not self evident; it requires a pricked, ready ear to catch. But in the moment, it seems clearer than it ought to, and like he can see the future: there are four Venatori in the shed. When Marcus alerts them, two will come streaming clear of the cover to face against him, and maybe one will be a mage. Flint will slip his sword up through the mage's back, and then it will turn into a bloody brawl between the doorstep and the flat sprawl of sand that constitutes as the shed's front garden.
For a moment, nothing happens. Nothing appears to.
And then, shouting, muffled. The smell of smoke faint in the air from Flint's perspective. Retching coughs, scuffling around.
Across from the front of the shack, Marcus moves out of his crouch. Wisps of smoke leave the edge of his blade which slowly warms to that faint orange tinge at its edges. Moves, boots sinking into sand, a slow approach as he readies his staff in hands and slices it through the air.
Rock, reflecting green light and streaming smoke and flame and ash, goes careening for the building. It shatters one of the boarded windows clean through and without mercy. The second barrage turns the second to splinters, and confused shouting inside becomes angrier. The door opens, revealing the maelstrom of black smoke and ember roiling inside, contained enough that it doesn't spill outwards even as the Venatori scouts do, trying to shield their faces with the crook of the elbows, but wielding weapons.
Another quick turn of the staff from Marcus stamps defensive magic over himself, being already a clear target in the open and hastening his movement closer. Another readies a second, but held back. No sense in giving Flint's position away.
He doesn't require it. The Venatori are so fixed on the threat of the mage somewhere in the dark that slipping forward with his bared blade is just a matter of course.
So the scouts spill free of the outbuilding, and he does that: slipping forward, plunging his cutlass into the lower back of the woman with a staff in tow. She doesn't scream. Instead, a choked sound—an aborted catch of sound which fails to carry for any significant distance and peaks as Flint yanks his sword free of her. In the measure it takes her to collapse, he is already hacking after the scout just crossing the shack's threshold.
Regardless of its need, magic scrolls across Flint's turned shoulder, a flare of silvery light that will explode into cold embers when it absorbs whatever strike.
The first figure that had staggered outside with his mage companion twists in place to acknowledge the ferocious stab of steel occurring behind him. All at once less confident about charging forwards without her at his heels, doing for him as Marcus has for Flint. The hesitation is deadly, his next step scuffed over the top of where burning bright glyphs scroll over the sand.
A column of flame that erupts from his feet, engulfing, a scream following. A flaming, flailing form staggering blindly out of its centre. Marcus is close enough, now, to bring his staff around to cleave iron through roughly where his neck would be, and the figure crumples, silent.
Inside, without his focus, the smoke has dispersed to a haze. A shadow pushes through, inside, choosing not to engage with the bloody scuffle transpiring at the stoop. Finding another way out, or rallying, perhaps.
Again, Marcus takes a step and then rushes through as formless smoke where Flint is locked into combat, through that space, disappearing inside.
It's brutal and mean, this assault across the outbuilding's doorstep. Bursts bright in a shower of cold embers as the Venatori in the threshold slashes out with his belt knife and the blade carves up across Marcus' barrier. The slash of Flint's sword follows, driving up under the darting arm. Burying itself—a hot bite of steel punching a hole.
Then, a second burst of glinting embers. The dracolisks, having been stuffed into the relative security of the scraggly little building, have grown abruptly fretful and anxious under the sudden explosion of violence. One of them lashes out, snapping and skidding off of the barrier laid about Flint's shoulders. An effective guard.
Less so: the dracolisk bullying free through the doorway, all too happy to ignore any wound or discouragement laid on it.
The shack is full of dispersing smoke (which roils, twitches, pushes aside like veils as needed), of chittering lizard mounts, and of the last remaining human scrabbling at the shutters at the far window, coughing and panicked. At the thump of Marcus' footsteps, the remaining scout pulls her shortblade from her belt in time to barely parry the swooping in of staff blade.
It still slices deep into her arm, and there is no getting to the other side of a staff as tall as its wielder, who does not seem to take the same issue with the smoke in the air. Another blow to the leg, a burst of silver embers denying her desperate attack, and a final cut finishes it.
Maybe dracolisks has a sense of loyalty for their riders, because a piercing shriek erupts from the shadowed corner of the shack. A sudden spattering of hissed black venom follows, Marcus only barely manages to have strike the armored back his shoulder with a flinched twist away.
The arcane barrier does very little to absorb the blow of the dracolisk muscling his way through the doorway—sparks on impact as the animal clips him, but the momentum nearly sends him sprawling. Instead, Flint catches himself by knocking his sword hand against the exterior of the outbuilding. Bashes his knuckles and produces a clatter of the blade in it while the dracolisk snaps in his general direction. A blessing it doesn't spit; luck that the animal bears less loyalty than it's fellow might, for the lizard books it the moment it's free of the smoke choked shed.
Where it goes matters very little as Flint throws himself through the door into the eye stinging smoke, lunging free hand leading for the first dracolisk sized patch of darkness that presents itself. By chance, it could be the animal eager to take revenge on Marcus for the corpse along the far wall. His fist closes hard on the creature's studded headstall, forcing its face around. Some well ingrained training sees the dracolisk bend her neck under the hand, though the flesh of her venom pouch flares like a fan under her heavy spiked jaw.
She seems to realize a moment later that the man in control of her isn't her master, but by then Flint has a hand on her heavy spiked bit and the bite of the thing on her plated palate must be sufficient to check her even as instinct fails.
Here though, rustling nervously across the sand strewn floor, the other two animals jerk against where they're apparently tethered to a bolt in the wall. A sudden piercing shriek from one of the animals is ear splitting in the close quarters.
"Finished?" is barked blindly after as he forces the furious dracolisk over, pushing her to face the wall while her long tail thrashes in an angry arc.
"Yes," snapped back, although less for some personal irritation and more the product of tensely coiled adrenaline.
A dismissive, negligent turn of his hand sees all the smoke in the room coil in on itself and funnel clean out of the windows he'd broken through. The scent of it lingers, but not as strongly as if a fire had set it off.
Marcus turns to the other two remaining dracolisks in the way of that shriek, chittering discontent but disinclined to try anything while tethered, and while there's no obvious need to defend themselves. A step in their direction gets a chorus of hissing and reptilian squeaks, so he takes it back.
"Should we loose them?" he asks anyway, voice rough from irritation of the smoke in the air.
"No," is decisive despite the bowed angle of Flint's head. Eyes watering still from the lingering burn of the smoke, he makes to blindly shove the cutlass back into its sheath. Free up a hand. Wrap that around a strap of the dracolisk's headstall too.
"We'll shut them up here."
Someone might be sent to fetch them. They might be worth something, he doesn't say. Instead—
"Get out," has the irritated, clipped tenor of an order. Annoyed with the animal who has begun to twist her head and shift her shoulder, and to lose patient with him. Flint gives her another checking jerk on the rein. "Be ready to close the door after me."
The hackle-raising quality of Flint's tone directed his way is—basically usual, and dealt with as a matter of course: felt and ignored, expressed only with the absence of verbal acknowledgment while Marcus moves at a brisk clip for the door.
Outside, the air is abruptly colder than he remembers it being a moment ago, or maybe that's more to do with the aftershock of battle than the slight progress the sun has made at the horizon.
He posts up at the door, glancing then towards the crumpled corpses outside. The burned mess further out, the collapsed figure whose arm he has to stand over. The mage woman splayed out on her front, fallen staff a few inches from lax hand and the shine in Tevene silken robe beneath her light armoring. There his focus catches for a moment, while his hand rests on the wooden door's weathered surface.
With Marcus clear of the shed, Flint wrenches the dracolisk's head back by the shank of her bit—forcing her in a tight circle that pirouettes across the sandy floor of the outbuilding. She snaps and snarls, unhappy to be led; the fan at her neck expanding and contracting threateningly as she coils round and round the pivot point of the bridle in Flint's hand. She's going to try to take his arm off when he lets her go, he's certain.
Hence the distinct lack of dignity with which Flint eventually comes leaping across the threshold and out into night air. Having circled the dracolisk around enough times that a jerk and a slap had sent her spinning into one last rotation, she just can't turn quite tightly enough to sink her teeth into him. Instead—head whipping round, the hot scorch of acid spraying after him and splattering the door that must slam shut in his wake.
Marcus swoops in, clasping at the door, hauling it closed. If any venom escapes out after Flint, it's the barest hint of splatter past the quickly closing door. He keeps a grasp of the handle as he feels the whole structure shudder, the dracolisk angrily launching herself at it. A doubtful wince at whether the frame or the rusted hinges will actually hold.
They do. He steps back away from it, watching it shudder again as foreclaws rake against the door, but no third attempt comes as he backs up even more.
In answer: an aggrieved sidelong look and a certain tugging round of his coat to assess whether there's any notable damage to it. Checks too the leather gaiters over his boots, his trailing sleeve where he finds a dark speckled stain that might warrant careful handling if not for the more likely culprit of split knuckles.
Satisfied no part of him is liable to suffer from the dracolisk's spray—
"You?" is punctuated by a heavy thunk! against the door from the shed's interior, the whole wall shivering.
No injuries he can feel, but he can feel the needlepoint burn of errant venom droplets up his neck. Hand hovering up with the instinct to wipe at before he thinks better, before turning his shoulder for Flint's appraisal. Sticky black poison clings to metal and leather in arc up the back of his shoulder, heaving eaten into some of the fur trim already. Give it some time, maybe it will work on the rest.
A soft, barely heard griffon squawk drifts up from the ledge they'd emerged from, but Marcus ignores it and doesn't whistle for Monster to join him, second for the poison but first not to aggravate one vicious predatory species with the presence and scent of another.
In the failing light, it might for an unremarkable dark scar across Marcus' back. If he didn't know better and they were in the Marches or Ferelden instead of the dusty Anderfels, he might guess at a splatter of mud.
Flint sketches a quick look over the damage, mindful not to actually touch any part of it despite the natural instinct to smooth back the matted fur. Ignoring the bite of renewed irritation for the animal inside the shed, he instead lays his attention over the short distance to the lake's edge. They'll need to search the bodies here in case the Venatori pockets reveal some facet of their purpose here. But it's not as if the bodies are going anywhere. And if they've nothing on them, they may need to reassess the question of the dracolisks being shut up.
"I'd have it off," is suggestion, not instruction. Punctuated with a nod to the dark gleam of the water below them. "Better to see it washed clear now."
Marcus has one last look towards the bodies, towards the sound of angry bird-like dragon chirps from the shack, and then starts off towards the lake. Moving efficiently, not afraid of the substance eating down enough to injure him, but wouldn't it be nice to save an armor piece from needing replacement? His fingers wander to the most available buckle at his shoulder.
This brawl was not particularly clean, but less of a mess than the last. Less honourable, depending on your standards of honour, but efficient in a sense that satisfies something in him. Of a job done well enough. As if the means in which men and women are killed in service of a greater good has a significant amount of weight as to how well one sleeps later.
Here, at the water, Marcus crouches down, takes a knee. Works at the buckle, frees it. Gets at the one at his arm. Stops at a midpoint to slip his hand into the water, and then palming at his neck, as that niggling itch grows in its sting.
Flint watches him go for a beat longer than is necessary, eyeline scribbling across the dark stain. Then we wipes the blood from his knuckles into trouser leg before ranging in the direction of the nearest corpse. For good measure, he hauls the Venatori by the hood a foot or so from shed to give himself some breathing room should the door come splintering down after all. Though the last rattling thump seems to have been the dracolisk's final concentrated attempt to come through it.
It takes him ten minutes to come clambering down the bank to join Marcus at the water's edge. But dracolisk venom is a clinging thing and likely there will still be some scrapping or scrubbing with a fistful of cloth and sand occuring by the time he reaches him. There's an addition of a satchel slung over Flint's shoulder, hanging lightly at the hip, and thick packet of letters in hand.
The satchel is dumped. Flint takes a seat on the sandy shelf of the bank, produces the Riftwatch issue lighter from some interior pocket, and pops the string holding the packet of envelopes together with a twist of his belt knife.
Marcus is indeed still working at his armor when Flint comes by. His other pauldron and cuirass has been taken off as well, as the backpiece wanted some inspection, and these now sit stacked beside him as he plunges rag back into the very edge of the lake, wrings it out loosely, goes back to scrubbing over leather and metal.
Loosened out of his kneeling, now sitting with a leg folded and the other bent out of the way, a sign of resigning himself to the way this task went from something he imagined completed in short order to a more involved experience.
He glances to Flint coming to sit nearby, and it seems to remind him of the chill in the air. He pauses, leaning back to where he'd placed his staff, grasping around its middle with a hand. Runes flare bright orange, giving off faint light, fainter than a campfire would produce, but in a spare few minutes, their immediate surroundings start to warm in a more focused way than flames would.
The effect stays even once he lifts his hand, returning to his task.
"Is that all of it, between them?" he asks of the loot being dug into.
He's cracked the seal of the first envelope by the time the low glare of the rune light flares to life. A judicious pause, assessing, and then Flint snaps on the lighter anyway. The arcane glow isn't really strong enough to parse a stranger's handwriting by.
"That I can reach." To say nothing of what equipment or personal effects might still be stripped from the dead men and women. "I've a salve in my kit with the griffons," he continues without looking up while unfolding the first letter across his thigh and angling the lighter flame along to read it by. "It should do for your neck."
A fleeting glance fishes up, skates across Marcus, and then reverts back to the page.
"Mm," concession. The dracolisks have quieted down, and it's not impossible they may be able to reenter without an aggressive response, but—
He nods at the offer of salve in time when Flint looks to him, gratitude in the angle of it. A look that converts into a lingering study once Flint turns back to the page, the sharper upwards spill of light making his profile bright against the thickening shadows all around, the subtler cast of a glow at curved back. And then, back to his task, thinking of what remains out of reach, still.
The idea of getting any of this muck in ones eyes, mouth, a fanged bite, does not warm Marcus to the idea of doing anything but herding the dracolisks on their way. Maybe they merely have some scant supplies in their saddlebags. He can't recall exactly if they were still equipped or not.
And other scattered thoughts towards what the next hour of their lives may look like, expressed through a sigh funneled through his nose. He will have that salve once a decision's made.
"Good thing it was Venatori that came out the door," he says, rather than further that item, "and not Anders folk or Wardens or what have you. You'd owe Rutyer a favour or two."
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Marcus sets his heels into stirrups to counterweight the dive, near standing in that tense crouch over saddle, feeling that natural pulse of adrenaline at a remove as they drop. Getting down out of the saddle after his first ride in griffon saddle had been a challenge not to buckle closer to the earth as if to swear to it he'll never leave again, despite that, a few minutes later, he'd been clambouring back in.
It has yet to become pedestrian. But neither has riding a horse, so.
His staff is lashed to his back, and he slips a hand backwards to grasp at it, an eye kept cocked to the building. The angle of the remaining light and the distance makes it difficult to discern if there's a lit lantern inside or something of that kind, but even if there was no such indicator, it would still want checking.
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The powerful backwing required to land in the wash above the lake's rim scatters small stones and sand. Buggie's eye is better than his is at this hour; she plants them securely down amidst the gravel and soft sand rather than in the prickly scrub surrounding the pale, dry zigzag wandering down from the hills to the body of water. But she isn't so well behaved as to neglect from stretching her wings all the way upright once all four feet have found their way to the ground, possibly in part because Flint makes no effort to discourage the habit.
Instead, feet kicked free from stirrups and harness buckles undone from the saddle's d-rings, Flint slides from the saddle and down the griffon's sturdy shoulder. Boots crunching in the gravel, already moving low to scramble up out of the wash to the sandy ledge and kneel low in the scraggly yellow grass, he at least trusts Buggie not to wander while he finds himself an observation point there among the scrub. Draws the spyglass from his heavy belt and snaps it open, raising the glass to his eye.
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Then, the crunch of boots on gravel and sand, rustling desert plantlife as Marcus follows, crouching down to remain low at the rise of sandy earth.
Up ahead, the desert-worn shacks give little away under the spyglass for a long moment. Discerning sources of light that aren't merely errant reflection from the sinking sun is a chore, and the dusty terrain and restless winds of the Anderfels means there's no clear and obvious fresh tracks to sweep over at that angle. If they had more day at their disposal, they could simply settle in and observe a while. If the prospect of this being a false lead while the Venatori continue their retreat elsewhere weren't a possibility, they could wait for nightfall for better contrast.
But as it happens, something moves from within. A figure passing by the boarded window, perhaps, as it changes the gleam of light coming in low through the slats, giving away its source.
Marcus doesn't see, but waits patiently for word, senses tuned more radial for the sake of their backs.
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"I'll close on foot. Tuck in on the south side of the structure. Draw them out. I'll flank once they come for you."
The point of his attention pivots, locks briefly on Marcus—arguments?—and then pivots farther back in the direction of their target. From the scrape of his boots and shift of his shoulder, the suggestion is that he means to make his move imminently.
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Hopefully, today won't be the day that Monster forgets her training and takes off when he crests the ledge. As it is, she has settled into a kind of waiting repose, belly touching the ground but the suggestion of coiled tension in her haunches and shoulders, one golden eye regarding both men.
Flint makes to move; Marcus waits a few beats before following. He pursues Flint's path for a short stretch, and then, where it's most logical that they should split, the sounds of his bootfalls leaves, and Flint may see out the corner of his eye the sudden gust of smoke splitting off for the western facing side. Fast, silent, rolling and flowing close to the desert floor, the occasional ember sparking bright but dying quickly in its wake.
It reforms into a man nearer the shack. Marcus stays low, not quite hidden by the thatch of stiff desert grasses he'd aimed for, but it'll suit him for as long as it takes for Flint to get into position. The shadows around him have thickened subtly under barely conscious magical encouragement, lending some cover.
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Untouched by the Fade, he isn't as fast as Marcus is. It takes him some seconds to smuggle himself in along the out building's mud and straw wall, to crouch there in the slanting shadow with only the glint of the steel cutlass to betray him and even that obscured from anyone who might come creeping out from the shack's interior—a murderous, opportunist shadow, waiting for vulnerable ribs between which to slip a vicious blade.
Up close and given a moment to measure the air about him, the muted murmur of conversation eking through the imperfect plaster is—not self evident; it requires a pricked, ready ear to catch. But in the moment, it seems clearer than it ought to, and like he can see the future: there are four Venatori in the shed. When Marcus alerts them, two will come streaming clear of the cover to face against him, and maybe one will be a mage. Flint will slip his sword up through the mage's back, and then it will turn into a bloody brawl between the doorstep and the flat sprawl of sand that constitutes as the shed's front garden.
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And then, shouting, muffled. The smell of smoke faint in the air from Flint's perspective. Retching coughs, scuffling around.
Across from the front of the shack, Marcus moves out of his crouch. Wisps of smoke leave the edge of his blade which slowly warms to that faint orange tinge at its edges. Moves, boots sinking into sand, a slow approach as he readies his staff in hands and slices it through the air.
Rock, reflecting green light and streaming smoke and flame and ash, goes careening for the building. It shatters one of the boarded windows clean through and without mercy. The second barrage turns the second to splinters, and confused shouting inside becomes angrier. The door opens, revealing the maelstrom of black smoke and ember roiling inside, contained enough that it doesn't spill outwards even as the Venatori scouts do, trying to shield their faces with the crook of the elbows, but wielding weapons.
Another quick turn of the staff from Marcus stamps defensive magic over himself, being already a clear target in the open and hastening his movement closer. Another readies a second, but held back. No sense in giving Flint's position away.
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So the scouts spill free of the outbuilding, and he does that: slipping forward, plunging his cutlass into the lower back of the woman with a staff in tow. She doesn't scream. Instead, a choked sound—an aborted catch of sound which fails to carry for any significant distance and peaks as Flint yanks his sword free of her. In the measure it takes her to collapse, he is already hacking after the scout just crossing the shack's threshold.
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The first figure that had staggered outside with his mage companion twists in place to acknowledge the ferocious stab of steel occurring behind him. All at once less confident about charging forwards without her at his heels, doing for him as Marcus has for Flint. The hesitation is deadly, his next step scuffed over the top of where burning bright glyphs scroll over the sand.
A column of flame that erupts from his feet, engulfing, a scream following. A flaming, flailing form staggering blindly out of its centre. Marcus is close enough, now, to bring his staff around to cleave iron through roughly where his neck would be, and the figure crumples, silent.
Inside, without his focus, the smoke has dispersed to a haze. A shadow pushes through, inside, choosing not to engage with the bloody scuffle transpiring at the stoop. Finding another way out, or rallying, perhaps.
Again, Marcus takes a step and then rushes through as formless smoke where Flint is locked into combat, through that space, disappearing inside.
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Then, a second burst of glinting embers. The dracolisks, having been stuffed into the relative security of the scraggly little building, have grown abruptly fretful and anxious under the sudden explosion of violence. One of them lashes out, snapping and skidding off of the barrier laid about Flint's shoulders. An effective guard.
Less so: the dracolisk bullying free through the doorway, all too happy to ignore any wound or discouragement laid on it.
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It still slices deep into her arm, and there is no getting to the other side of a staff as tall as its wielder, who does not seem to take the same issue with the smoke in the air. Another blow to the leg, a burst of silver embers denying her desperate attack, and a final cut finishes it.
Maybe dracolisks has a sense of loyalty for their riders, because a piercing shriek erupts from the shadowed corner of the shack. A sudden spattering of hissed black venom follows, Marcus only barely manages to have strike the armored back his shoulder with a flinched twist away.
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Where it goes matters very little as Flint throws himself through the door into the eye stinging smoke, lunging free hand leading for the first dracolisk sized patch of darkness that presents itself. By chance, it could be the animal eager to take revenge on Marcus for the corpse along the far wall. His fist closes hard on the creature's studded headstall, forcing its face around. Some well ingrained training sees the dracolisk bend her neck under the hand, though the flesh of her venom pouch flares like a fan under her heavy spiked jaw.
She seems to realize a moment later that the man in control of her isn't her master, but by then Flint has a hand on her heavy spiked bit and the bite of the thing on her plated palate must be sufficient to check her even as instinct fails.
Here though, rustling nervously across the sand strewn floor, the other two animals jerk against where they're apparently tethered to a bolt in the wall. A sudden piercing shriek from one of the animals is ear splitting in the close quarters.
"Finished?" is barked blindly after as he forces the furious dracolisk over, pushing her to face the wall while her long tail thrashes in an angry arc.
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A dismissive, negligent turn of his hand sees all the smoke in the room coil in on itself and funnel clean out of the windows he'd broken through. The scent of it lingers, but not as strongly as if a fire had set it off.
Marcus turns to the other two remaining dracolisks in the way of that shriek, chittering discontent but disinclined to try anything while tethered, and while there's no obvious need to defend themselves. A step in their direction gets a chorus of hissing and reptilian squeaks, so he takes it back.
"Should we loose them?" he asks anyway, voice rough from irritation of the smoke in the air.
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"We'll shut them up here."
Someone might be sent to fetch them. They might be worth something, he doesn't say. Instead—
"Get out," has the irritated, clipped tenor of an order. Annoyed with the animal who has begun to twist her head and shift her shoulder, and to lose patient with him. Flint gives her another checking jerk on the rein. "Be ready to close the door after me."
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Outside, the air is abruptly colder than he remembers it being a moment ago, or maybe that's more to do with the aftershock of battle than the slight progress the sun has made at the horizon.
He posts up at the door, glancing then towards the crumpled corpses outside. The burned mess further out, the collapsed figure whose arm he has to stand over. The mage woman splayed out on her front, fallen staff a few inches from lax hand and the shine in Tevene silken robe beneath her light armoring. There his focus catches for a moment, while his hand rests on the wooden door's weathered surface.
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Hence the distinct lack of dignity with which Flint eventually comes leaping across the threshold and out into night air. Having circled the dracolisk around enough times that a jerk and a slap had sent her spinning into one last rotation, she just can't turn quite tightly enough to sink her teeth into him. Instead—head whipping round, the hot scorch of acid spraying after him and splattering the door that must slam shut in his wake.
Fuck's sake.
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They do. He steps back away from it, watching it shudder again as foreclaws rake against the door, but no third attempt comes as he backs up even more.
"Alright?" he asks.
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Satisfied no part of him is liable to suffer from the dracolisk's spray—
"You?" is punctuated by a heavy thunk! against the door from the shed's interior, the whole wall shivering.
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No injuries he can feel, but he can feel the needlepoint burn of errant venom droplets up his neck. Hand hovering up with the instinct to wipe at before he thinks better, before turning his shoulder for Flint's appraisal. Sticky black poison clings to metal and leather in arc up the back of his shoulder, heaving eaten into some of the fur trim already. Give it some time, maybe it will work on the rest.
A soft, barely heard griffon squawk drifts up from the ledge they'd emerged from, but Marcus ignores it and doesn't whistle for Monster to join him, second for the poison but first not to aggravate one vicious predatory species with the presence and scent of another.
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Flint sketches a quick look over the damage, mindful not to actually touch any part of it despite the natural instinct to smooth back the matted fur. Ignoring the bite of renewed irritation for the animal inside the shed, he instead lays his attention over the short distance to the lake's edge. They'll need to search the bodies here in case the Venatori pockets reveal some facet of their purpose here. But it's not as if the bodies are going anywhere. And if they've nothing on them, they may need to reassess the question of the dracolisks being shut up.
"I'd have it off," is suggestion, not instruction. Punctuated with a nod to the dark gleam of the water below them. "Better to see it washed clear now."
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Marcus has one last look towards the bodies, towards the sound of angry bird-like dragon chirps from the shack, and then starts off towards the lake. Moving efficiently, not afraid of the substance eating down enough to injure him, but wouldn't it be nice to save an armor piece from needing replacement? His fingers wander to the most available buckle at his shoulder.
This brawl was not particularly clean, but less of a mess than the last. Less honourable, depending on your standards of honour, but efficient in a sense that satisfies something in him. Of a job done well enough. As if the means in which men and women are killed in service of a greater good has a significant amount of weight as to how well one sleeps later.
Here, at the water, Marcus crouches down, takes a knee. Works at the buckle, frees it. Gets at the one at his arm. Stops at a midpoint to slip his hand into the water, and then palming at his neck, as that niggling itch grows in its sting.
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It takes him ten minutes to come clambering down the bank to join Marcus at the water's edge. But dracolisk venom is a clinging thing and likely there will still be some scrapping or scrubbing with a fistful of cloth and sand occuring by the time he reaches him. There's an addition of a satchel slung over Flint's shoulder, hanging lightly at the hip, and thick packet of letters in hand.
The satchel is dumped. Flint takes a seat on the sandy shelf of the bank, produces the Riftwatch issue lighter from some interior pocket, and pops the string holding the packet of envelopes together with a twist of his belt knife.
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Loosened out of his kneeling, now sitting with a leg folded and the other bent out of the way, a sign of resigning himself to the way this task went from something he imagined completed in short order to a more involved experience.
He glances to Flint coming to sit nearby, and it seems to remind him of the chill in the air. He pauses, leaning back to where he'd placed his staff, grasping around its middle with a hand. Runes flare bright orange, giving off faint light, fainter than a campfire would produce, but in a spare few minutes, their immediate surroundings start to warm in a more focused way than flames would.
The effect stays even once he lifts his hand, returning to his task.
"Is that all of it, between them?" he asks of the loot being dug into.
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"That I can reach." To say nothing of what equipment or personal effects might still be stripped from the dead men and women. "I've a salve in my kit with the griffons," he continues without looking up while unfolding the first letter across his thigh and angling the lighter flame along to read it by. "It should do for your neck."
A fleeting glance fishes up, skates across Marcus, and then reverts back to the page.
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He nods at the offer of salve in time when Flint looks to him, gratitude in the angle of it. A look that converts into a lingering study once Flint turns back to the page, the sharper upwards spill of light making his profile bright against the thickening shadows all around, the subtler cast of a glow at curved back. And then, back to his task, thinking of what remains out of reach, still.
The idea of getting any of this muck in ones eyes, mouth, a fanged bite, does not warm Marcus to the idea of doing anything but herding the dracolisks on their way. Maybe they merely have some scant supplies in their saddlebags. He can't recall exactly if they were still equipped or not.
And other scattered thoughts towards what the next hour of their lives may look like, expressed through a sigh funneled through his nose. He will have that salve once a decision's made.
"Good thing it was Venatori that came out the door," he says, rather than further that item, "and not Anders folk or Wardens or what have you. You'd owe Rutyer a favour or two."
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