[Off Shadowpath Adventures] #23 - Romance (part 4)
Sayel eyes the knife with his good eye. "Looks like a knife," he says blandly. "If you're planning on capturing me alive, I'm gonna have to tell you, not happening."
Moxon swirls the wine in his cup. "I just wanted to know if you had context? If this might be familiar to you. It is, to say the least, an unusual situation."
Quinlan stays quiet, listening to the artillery fire outside the bunker.
Nikandros looks to Moxon, and shakes his head slowly. "It is extremely doubtful he would have context, Ranger," he says. "You knew that before you asked. This man is a soldier. Was a soldier. Likely not a scholar of the esoteric mystic arts." He looks to Sayel. "He has no intention to capture you alive, Sayel."
Moxon starts cooking the steaks.
Moxon says, "Do not tell a Lord of Amber what he does and does not know, Pathian."
Sayel looks Moxon over. "If you're wanting to knife me, can't say I'd be able to fight you off," he admits, in the calm tone of someone for whom this is not a surprising question to consider. "Though you've got me wondering about the fancy last meal. Ch'thonis sending merciful assassins? New."
Nikandros raises an eyebrow at Moxon. "Then allow me to restate that. It was incredibly unlikely he knew." He steps toward Sayel, turning his palms over as though to show there are no weapons in hand. "We still do not know this Ch'thonis, and though I do not know all the ways this man thinks, I suspect the good meal is because, with or without us, you are not long for this life." He leans over to look at Sayel, thoughtful. "You have to realize, this is likely the case, yes? One man on his own out here, in your condition?"
Quinlan gives Nikandros a brief 'good grief' look, and coughs. "We're not with a hospice, or anything, just so you know."
Moxon says, "... but the insufferable gent has a point. Even if we'd never appeared, you haven't got six weeks left in you. Rare, medium-rare, well-done?"
Sayel scowls at the lot of them. "And what I really needed to improve my day was pity from random civilians and an offer of assisted suicide?"
Nikandros smiles, humorlessly. "Not random," he says. "We were looking for you, specifically, though we did not know who you were. Presuming the witch was not lying to us, which is a rather massive presumption, the Philosophos and the Ranger are hear to play matchmaker between you and the soul of a statue."
Moxon eats Nikandros' steak-portion. He might even remember to chew.
Quinlan raises a hand. "If you're *willing*," he says quickly. "And not the same witch as the one doing all the shelling outside your door."
Sayel, who had drawn a pistol with his good hand at the word 'witch', aiming it squarely at Moxon, lowers it with another scowl as Quinlan explains the different witch. But he doesn't let go of it. "You have a lot of explaining to do. I think I'll hold off sharing the steak until you have."
Moxon sets the steaks aside, finishes his wine. "Guess so. We're from another dimension; the soul contained in this knife? Yet another. A witch, not yours, also from a seperate ... well. There's a lot of them. Dimensions. Witches too, I s'pose. It is supposed, only /supposed,/ that your soul and the dagger-soul are meant to be together. That's what we were told, s'what we're here for. You. are. dying. Y'are. I thought if I could give a man something that wasn't dog-food in his short remaining time, that was something."
Nikandros nods to Moxon, then to Sayel. "He was a statue. The soul in the dagger. And apparently a man at some point. Attractive, I suppose, as far as that goes. Not that it matters much with a soul." He frowns. "But then, doing this would be helping this witch, who would use the two of you."
Sayel sets the pistol down, thoughtfully. "Give me the soul," he says. "If this other witch plans to use us, then you've got it, him, with you. Let me see."
Moxon checks with Quinlan, using only his eyeballs.
"It's you two's call," says Quinlan quietly. "This is all as new to me as it is to either of you."
"Give it to him," Nikandros says simply. "I disapprove, but he may as well go in as informed as possible."
Moxon hands over the knife.
Sayel accepts it, turning it over in his hands - the fused fingers don't seem to hinder the simple movements much. Then hands it back. "I'd think I'd be able to tell, but...no."
Moxon says, "Yeah, I thought you'd at least know each other. Unrequited love or somesuch."
Moxon cuts Sayel's steak into manageable pieces. With a seperate knife, mind.
"Why not give him the amulet, Ranger?" Nikandros asks, taking a seat nearby. "That may be more productive."
Moxon switches the blade out for the necklace, then, setting Sayel's plate nearby the man. "One more try."
Sayel sets the knife down - handle toward himself, of course - and picks up the amulet. The silver clouds in the gem swirl at his touch. The wounded soldier seems lost in thought for a while, caressing the stone with his thumb.
Nikandros watches the amulet more than Sayel. "Not the reaction I would have expected," he says. "I wonder if there is a glamour on it to make it seem less threatening to its victim."
Quinlan sniffs the air - quietly, but carefully, measuring. "It's not casting any spell on him," he says. "It's just being itself."
Moxon just shakes his head at Nikandros. Naught else to contribute.
After a while, Sayel - without letting go of the amulet - says, "Use us how?"
"Witch wanted to die easy," Nikandros says, "without the suffering you had to go through. Apparently she needed true love for it."
Moxon rises, beckoning Nikandros. "C'mon. You're gonna go outside."
Quinlan blinks. "...Why?"
Nikandros looks over to Moxon. "I am giving him honest answers," he says to Moxon. "Without sugar coating. Respect the man enough to give those."
Moxon indicates the dimensions of the bunker, to Quinlan. "See? It's not properly-zoned to contain /two/ crippled and deformed men. He's gonna need to be outside in a second." Moxon cracks his knuckles.
Quinlan tilts his head at Moxon. "If you were in this man's shoes, wouldn't you want the truth?" he asks. "Also, I mean...you two are kind of competing for the most tactless way to say things."
Moxon says, "Hnh. I s'pose."
Nikandros just shakes his head, and turns to look at Sayel, ignoring the Ranger for now. "It's your choice, Sayel. I have a distaste for the witch, but I admit, her intentions may not be malicious. What do you see in the amulet?"
"Tactless, or honest, you lot have more problems to worry about than I do," says Sayel. "I'll take this way out. You can use your knife. Just make it quick." Holding the amulet in his hand, he pushes the knife toward Moxon with his injured hand. "You're killer enough for that." To Nikandros, he says, "If I've got to explain it, you're not going to get it. And if you get it, I don't have to explain it."
Moxon exhales, building resolve. "You want something to put you to sleep, first?"
Sayel shakes his head, a lopsided gesture. "Just be quick. I'm sure you know how."
Nikandros gives Sayel a frown, then nods. "Then you see what you want in there. Now, privacy for you." He turns away from the man.
Quinlan gets up, to walk with Nikandros toward the door. "Okay. That? Was *un*helpful tactlessness."
Moxon lines up his shot. Like a golfer. Sever spinal cord at fifth vertebrae, up and with a twist to stir the brain. A moment's pause, narrowed eyes as if he's contemplating the putt until the others are faced away. Then almost before it's begun, it's over.
Sayel's body drops, bleeding out quickly. In the corpse's hand, the silver swirling cloud shifts and changes. A yin-yang of mist, now silver and gold, spinning together.
Nikandros gives Quinlan a look, then, that is not stoic, or angry. Almost sad, actually, though held back. "You wish for an audience of strangers at your passing, Quinlan?" he asks. "I don't."
"I think strangers was his only alternative to dying completely alone," says Quinlan honestly. "This whole place is perfectly neat. Military sparkling. Think about how long it'd take after everybody else was dead, in his physical condition, to make this *whole bunker* that neat. All he cared about was we weren't enemies. That's it."
Moxon says, "He didn't finish his meal."
"He saw what was in the amulet, and wanted it," Nikandros says, closing his eyes. "If it was what the witch promised, the meal was unsatisfactory next to it. Now, let's go to her."
Moxon cleans and replaces the blade, arranging Sayel to look less hollow and lifeless.
Quinlan tilts his head, looking between them. "Are you two both okay with giving her this?" he asks, in an uncertain, just-making-sure-I-understand tone.
Moxon waits for Nikandros' reply, possibly formulating his own.
"I don't know," Nikandros says. "And I will decide on the way."
Moxon shrugs? "It's not fair, or just ... but I didn't violate any of the precepts that keep me able to see my reflection in the mirror? We ended some suffering. What we couldn't improve, we mercifully closed. To me."