A Simple Shepherd's Cottage, Glacia, Late Saturday Afternoon (Fandom Time)

[glacial_witch]

The further south their great procession had traveled, the more things had changed. Some of that was purely geographical, of course. They'd left the mountains and the great pine forests long behind them, trading them in for fields and rivers made mighty by the runoff from the mountains that only stopped when the weather turned water to ice. They

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[glacial_witch]

Marva grinned up at Warren for a second before howling, "WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED! THEY ARE TRYING TO HURT OUR QUEEN! HELP HER! SAVE HER!"

Hello turned tables. Marva was so pleased to see you!

[glacial_warlord]

Morton facepalmed and sighed. "Odds that anyone is going to listen to me when I say this is not what it looks like?"

[not_a_parakeet]

"Can I point out that I'm the only one actually doing much bleeding, here, and she's holding the knife? Is that a thing I can point out, right now?"

Look, wishful thinking was a wonderful thing.

What probably helped more was the fact that, when half of the men turned to face Karla, to protect their Queen as they'd been instructed, it didn't seem to be Karla that she was shying away from. In fact, judging by the way she was curled up and clinging to the young Queen, they could almost spot a case for things not being as they had been presented to them at all.

It was unfortunate that there were still rats in the army, though. Not all of the men in the room were more loyal to Fetya than to her wicked sister and her promises of power.

For every man that stood confused, there was another moving to turn their swords against Morton, against Warren, and against Karla.

[glacial_witch]

"Don't listen to him!" Marva wailed. "Help me! He's hurting me!"

[glacial_witch]

"Be silent," Karla said, standing up. Fetya clung to her for a moment and Karla gently hushed her as she rose. For her part, Marva was also silenced, whether it was from the sheer force of Karla's personality...

...Or, more likely, from an aural shield. But it seemed better if it was Karla's presence.

"She lies. Look at her right hand. The ring finger is an illusion. She's Hobart's creature and she's been driving your Queen slowly mad."

This was an excellent pronouncement and all. To bad the people aligned with Marva decided that would be an excellent time to attack.

[not_a_parakeet]

Well, that seemed like as good a time as any to just take Marva out of commission and be done with it, didn't it? Warren let go of the arm that he'd been clawing at, grabbing Marva's forehead in his hand, pulling her face toward him with a handful of hair, and then slamming her skull good and hard against the wall.

There wasn't much of a chance that she'd remain conscious through that. He let go, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Nice of her to leave her knife embedded in his hand. Less great was the effort that it was going to take to rip it out of knitting flesh in order for him to pick up his sticks and fight these men properly. How fortunate for him that he had a pretty okay sort of wingspan, and just flaring them out as he spun to face his attackers was enough of a blow to knock two men off their feet at once.

[glacial_warlord]

Morton lunged, shouldering the closest male away from Warren and taking up a defensive position behind his back.

*You'd better have your shields up,* he thought furiously to Karla, *or by the Darkness, I will throttle you when this is all over.*

Technically, his place was in front of his Queen, keeping her safe from all comers, and Lady Fetya as well. Over here, however, he would be more use to them all around--so long as Karla remembered to shield and didn't end up with a sword to the throat, anyway.

"In the name of your Queen, stand down!"

[glacial_witch]

*Of course I'm bloody shielding!* Karla snapped, making sure Warren could hear her, too, and didn't do something precipitous and unnecessary. Like dive to her rescue. *One surrounding Fetya and I both.*

Fetya, who was currently clawing at Karla's skirts, crying and babbling. "See, I told you," she wept. "The rats are here, they're all here, we're going to be devoured..."

"That Black Widow bitch has ensnared her mind!" One of Marva's pets screamed. A few others blinked at him in surprise, considering this wasn't actually all that different from the way the Queen usually behaved, but most of the squad simply accepted it, blood up and adrenaline charging. "For Fetya!" they cried as they swept forward to renew their attack.

[not_a_parakeet]

Well. That man was going to be the first to go, then. In one swift motion, Warren had ripped the knife from his hand and thrown it across the room, watching it embed itself neatly between his eyes.

That was how you used a knife, Marva.

"That Black Widow is the Territory's rightful Queen and currently the only one with a chance of keeping your Queen from wandering lost in the Twisted Kingdom," he snarled, making a dive for his sticks, "and you'll treat her with the respect she's due!"

One of the men saw Warren moving for his weapons and threw them out of the way with his Craft. He got a punch to the jaw, with all of Warren's upper-body strength backing it up, for his troubles, and then Warren simply grabbed his sword as he fell like a sack of bricks instead.

[glacial_warlord]

Another male swung his sword towards Warren's unprotected back--only to be blocked by Morton's own sword. "Don't make us kill any more than we have to!" he gritted out through clenched teeth. "We want to help your Queen, but I have no problems slaughtering all of you to keep my Queen safe!"

The male he'd blocked countered that with a blast of Purple Dusk to Morton's face. Morton's shield absorbed the power, leaving Morton to shake his head and slam his opponent to the floor with the Blood Opal. "Yield honorably and I won't have to kill you."

The male's response was succinct, but most definitely not of the yielding persuasion.

"Had your chance," Morton sighed, and finished him off in short order.

[not_a_parakeet]

Those of Fetya's men who were still refusing to raise a sword, Warren ignored completely. They weren't his enemy. Hell, anyone who took a moment to look at a situation and draw their own conclusions rather than rushing in blindly on another man's say-so was the sort of person that Warren could respect.

What he respected even more was the young Summersky Warlord who stood back a moment longer, long enough to draw his own conclusion, and then moved to stand between the Queens and the fighting, blade drawn, but not pointed at Warren or Morton. He stood with back to the pair of females, stood in full trust that this young woman who was cradling his Queen wouldn't do him harm.

Warren smiled, something almost soft that turned into something far more fierce as he dove out of the way of a blast of Tiger's Eye, and then doubled back to neatly sever the hand of the male that had used it.

[glacial_witch]

Not all of Karla's reactions to watching Warren kick ass and take hands were appropriate. Certainly not for the situation at--

Heh.

...The situation in which they found themselves in. Her macabre sense of humor was only one such example.

"ENOUGH!" she shouted, both aloud and on a psychic thread, both enhanced by the power of the Ebon-gray. Winces around the room showed her strategy was effective, especially considering it gave pause to everyone, even the most die-hard of Marva's attackers.

Karla didn't pause for smugness, though. "You are disturbing your Queen," she continued in a voice closer to normal volume. "The next person to raise a weapon will have to deal with me."

Any takers on that?

[not_a_parakeet]

None from Warren's side of the room, at least. In fact, he was lowering his own, at least a little, while he looked around to see if anyone else was going to do the same.

One by one, the swords vanished.

Warren made a note of those that were slower doing so than the rest.

[glacial_witch]

Even before taking further care of Fetya, Karla's first priority was the injured. Tapping the male who had taken up position between them and the fighting, she left the Queen in his care and immediately hurried to the one-handed male curled up on the floor.

"Who is going to see to the Lady Marva!" one of the males shouted. Karla looked up at him long enough to memorize his face with a flinty blue stare, then went back to Healing.

[glacial_warlord]

"My Queen will get to her when she gets to her," Morton said easily. "But...I can see why you'd be worried."

*Watch my back,* he sent to Warren, before turning around to lift Marva's limp form in his arms and place her on the table. Not an idiot he made sure to put Opal shield around her. He didn't trust her OR most of the males in this room not to do something stupid and violent.

Holding up her right hand, he created a witchlight to hover behind it. "Look," he said, and pointed to the shadow on the floor. "How many fingers do you see?"

[not_a_parakeet]

Warren nodded, stepping between Morton and the rest of the men as a few of them looked dubiously between Marva's hand and the shadow. It was like passing around a candle, watching each man's face shift in recognition, one after the other.

And, from recognition, to anger. Some directed their hateful looks toward Marva, recognizing her as a traitor, as a Black Widow allied with Hobart.

As the reason their Queen's mind had been growing more and more polluted.

And some of them directed that anger toward Morton, for revealing her, toward Warren, for daring to be a landen standing up against men that were so much more worthy than himself, and for Karla, for being the catalyst for their ambitions crumbling around them.

"Black Widow," one man cried. "Kill the traitorous bitch now for what she's done to our Queen!"

A few of the guardsmen nodded their agreement, though they didn't dare raise their weapon. Not with the Ebon-Grey Queen still in the room, her threat looming over them.