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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Syarra, Roper, and Ralaea lay a trap for one of Kaela Mondragon's death knights, the Toymaker, and start working at unraveling the Scourge Commander's plans. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Northrend in May hasn't gotten the news that it's spring. Or maybe it has and spring is just as cold and unforgiving as the winter, because the early morning air is so cold that it's a potential dangerous give away from the living's breathing. Outside of Glajerbron (pronounced "Joshua" by the locals), in a clearing where the giant spiders catch their unlucky vrykul prey it is especially quiet, but for the futile struggling of a single webbed sack. The mechanic bats in the trees have cried no warning; and they're not going to. These ones look the same as ever, but another engineer has meddled with them, and there will be no screech.
Roper is not much warmer than the air around him, frozen in place with a good line of sight to the expected area where the Toymaker will go. He's almost impossible to spot, having chosen his location carefully as he's placed his two companions. There will be no escape for their prey. They just have to wait. Patiently.
Roper might be going slowly insane. It's hard to tell.
Syarra stands perfectly still, hidden in position. There's no sign of any kind of impatience from her side. She might as well be a tree, or a block of ice.
Ralaea tries to hold as still as the other two, a task impossible for a living being to accomplish. She has a scarf tucked over half her face, and she tries to keep her breathing slow, shallow, and even. Annoyance is clear in her eyes, however, as she glances towards where she thinks Roper is positioned, probably wondering if this isn't just a plot by the death knights to slowly freeze her to death.
It feels like hours dragging on, especially to the impatient, but eventually they hear the crackle of frozen pine needles underfoot, and a light, shuffling gait drawing steadily closer.
Roper doesn't move, watching and waiting. Impatient as he is, he knows the mission. He waits for their target to get into position, into the center of the triangle of them, to spring his part of the trap.
The shuffling stops as the target reaches the wriggling victim. The cloaked man is indeed on the small side, and the hood covers most of his face. He wears no smile as he sticks a thin blade into the webs, causing an explosion of pain from the unfortunate creature trapped within.
Ralaea tenses, but waits for the signal.
Syarra does not react at all to the presence of the target.
The hooded death knight glances around with the wariness of a squirrel, his eyes darting amongst the trees and confirming the location of his bats. He removes the blade and strikes the victim again in a different spot. More pain, leaking forth like a bloody mist. His hand comes to rest on top of the web sack and he leans forward, sucking in air with a deep, rasping breath.
The moment the Toymaker is in place, his attention distracted by his prey, Roper springs the first part of the trap — the temperature of the clearing drops suddenly into a rushing spiral, ice forming over the Toymaker and vrykul in hard blocks of crushing power, as Roper steps out of the trees as the most visible target, frost covering the saronite-and-cobalt armor.
"Hey." It's a cold, harsh whisper on the wind, something like a dark command in the single syllable.
The Toymaker's expression literally freezes in panic, but he does not remain still for long. With a level of strength born from desperation, he wriggles hard against the ice, pressing until it shatters and he stumbles free. With only a glance in Roper's direction, he snags a bomb from a pouch on his belt, lights the fuse, and throws it in his general direction.
Syarra reacts immediately, and icy chains rise up from the ground and around the Toymaker.
The bomb sails through the air towards the frost death knight.
"Oh, fuck," Roper says, as he reflexively gets an arm up as the bomb hits him, ice snapping over his armor, as the air temperature drops around him even further. The explosion is direct, and there's a dull, but distinctly obvious to some, pain. The smoke around him hasn't even cleared before Roper's left hand goes out for even more chains of black ice and frost, the links digging into the Toymaker like spikes, the Frost Fever on them like icicles in his veins, slowing him down.
The wind blows the smoke off Roper. There's a small piece of his forearm missing, and metal embedded in the flesh where the armor and shrapnel mixed. His blood seems frozen, however, as nothing drips to the ground.
In a slight deviation from the plan, Syarra steps out from cover, raising her runeblade.
"This way!" She calls.
The Toymaker's movements are slow, as if his body refuses to obey him. Slowly, very slowly, he continues to retreat, struggling against the frosty chains as he reaches for yet another bomb. Fortunately, even that movement is slow. His wide glowing eyes snag on Syarra, and, failing to recognize her, he fights his bonds to avoid her as well. "S-stay…back!" he says, finding it difficult to even form the words.
"Bombs," Ralaea says, breaking from her own cover. "I told you he uses bombs!" She hurls a Frostweave net at the Toymaker, the ends secured with stones so that the net wraps tightly around him, securing his arms to his sides.
There is a vague rasp, and a jolt of recognition from the Toymaker upon hearing her voice.
"Yeah, I fucking picked up on that," Roper drawls, but the echo is in his voice and there's rage in his eyes as he moves forward to the Toymaker in a short sprint. "Syarra, the runeblade." He refreshes the ice chains, his own left hand blade glowing bright.
Syarra's gaze seems to snag on Roper for a beat too long, and then she snaps back into action, moving forward to relieve the death knight of his runeblade.
The Toymaker wrestles with Syarra to keep hold of his runesword, but eventually his grip fails and the sword leaves his hand. There does not appear to be a second one. Ralaea steps closer the moment the runesword leaves his hand and kicks his feet out from under him, leaving him squirming on his back. The hood falls off, revealing dusty brown hair and soot stained cheeks.
Ralaea takes several paces back, her expression in turmoil. "Mevlin," she says, struggling to keep her voice even.
The death knight's voice is a feeble rasp as he replies, "Hi Rae."
Syarra looks up at Rae, with interest a little too sharp, but she steps back out of reach with the runeblade. "Let's get him out of here. Talk later."
Roper’s pain is getting worse, as blood drips slowly from the wound to the ground. The bone of his forearm is visible, the wound not yet starting to heal. He moves forward once the runeblade is out of the other knight's possession, bending down as he withdraws ropes from a bag, to gag and bind their prey. He very clearly knows what he's doing.
Mevlin, seeming to have accepted his fate, stops struggling while Roper ties him up. His only movement is a slight squirm in order to get Ralaea in his line of sight. Ralaea, however, does what she can to stay out of his vision, looking entirely too uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Syarra keeps her distance, holding the stolen runeblade. As Roper's pain worsens, she watches him tie up Mevlin with an increasingly predatory gleam in her eye.
She drags her gaze back to Rae, but that doesn't seem to make it better. "Westwind, help him?"
Roper turns his head slightly. "I got him." And he does seem to, as he lifts the bundle up into a fireman's carry. The wound of his arm starts to heal… around the metal pieces. The pain is dull, but constant. He draws his left runeblade, and with no fanfare, stabs the vrykul in the webbed sac. The wound heals fully. The pain goes away. The metal is still there for later, as a treat. He flings the blood off, and sheathes the blade again. "Let's go."
Mevlin glances towards the now still sac of webs, with what could almost be described as an apologetic expression. Ralaea takes the lead, headed towards a recently abandoned vrykul settlement they'd paid a visit to earlier. She keeps her eyes forward in an effort to avoid looking at her former squad mate and engineering instructor, but she is clearly struggling with some Feelings.
Syarra, for once, is far too distracted to feign concern at Ralaea's distress. She follows quietly and mechanically.
Roper keeps his right arm as still as he can, right up to the point of dumping the body of the death knight roughly down onto the wooden floor of the (now) abandoned house. With his left hand, he loosens the rope gagging the Toymaker, just enough to make speech possible, if not comfortable or very clear. He stays crouched down, his left hand holding onto a point of the ropes, his right arm carefully positioned to not move enough for the shrapnel to reopen the wounds.
"Hey, again."
Syarra sets the runeblade on the ground on the other side of the room and walks over to the Toymaker, carefully not looking at Roper or Ralaea. "Now, you're going to answer some questions."
The Toymaker takes in a rasping breath around the rope, and says, muffled, "…you want…?" His voice is quiet enough as it is, and the rope adds a new layer of unintelligibility to his words. He peers at the two other death knights, before his eyes search out the familiar face again. Ralaea hovers in a corner in sullen silence, trying not to look at him.
"Oh, you know. Just a bit of a chat. And we just really couldn't figure out your mailing address," Roper drawls. "Turns out if you leave invitations around the spiders just fucking eat them. You know who one of is. We know who you were. 'Mevlin.'"
Mevlin smiles, hearing his name. "…bats…wray fixed…?" His bright eyes are focused on Ralaea.
"You remember her?" Syarra asks, gesturing for Ralaea to come closer.
Ralaea reluctantly moves closer, and Mevlin nods in response. "How is henzel?" he asks.
"She's fine…" Ralaea mumbles, without needing a translation. "Alive, so. Better than you."
Mevlin's smile turns sympathetic. "…horry."
Roper watches with predatory interest, his expression still obscured by the helm. "You remember who you were." Didn't feel like a question. "What you cared about, before? You remember how you woke back up? You weren't one of ours, the Ebon Blade."
Syarra looks between Ralaea and Mevlin, otherwise perfectly still but with the sense that she's prepared for fast movement.
Mevlin nods again. "Haela haid…ahout the ehon hlade. Hatch out. Hat's you?" He finally breaks his gaze from Ralaea to examine Roper.
"She said to watch out for the Ebon Blade?" Roper moves a hand to loosen to the rope further. His voice sounds sharp, and unforgiving. "Why. What's the Ebon Blade, according to Kaela?"
Mevlin looks a bit sheepish as he replies, "Well…you're the enemy of the Scourge, right? So naturally you'd…separate us again. But man, I never expected Rae to tamper with the bats! I thought she was only interested in explosives. Oopsie." The smile returns again.
"Yeah, well…some things've happened," Ralaea says. "I learned new tricks."
"Separate you again?" Syarra asks.
"Alver, Taya, Jenzelle, Rae, and Commander Mondragon. We were together until the Commander died. We're going to be together again. She promised." Mevlin focuses on Ralaea again. "You just have to die. Just for a bit. I can make it so it won't hurt."
Ralaea takes a step back, raising a hand to her mouth like she might be sick.
"You can see… Rae… is friendly with the Ebon Blade," Syarra says, glancing at her. "Why not just join her? Then no one else needs to die."
Roper tilts his head. "Why is Kaela so sure she'd serve? Join you. Or is that one of the promises someone else has made. Like the Lich King?"
Mevlin tries to laugh, but it comes out more as a weak puff. "The living don't accept us," he says, matter-of-factly. "Once Rae's like us, she'll come to her senses. We were a team once, and we can be again. Besides…having Rae and Jenzelle back is the only way to make Commander Mondragon raise Jothran."
Ralaea's hand drops to her side, and she frowns. "She hasn't, yet? But…by now, the body has to be…"
Roper twitches, a small tell, as his hands turn over, like he's hiding the backs of them, and the movement causes the shrapnel to tear into the flesh a little, a small hint of pain in the air as the blood wells up. "The living can accept us. It's just the longer way. You can be undead for eternity and some will still never bend their fucking knee."
"You've been Scourge," Mevlin says. "So you have to know. Winning against us won't be easy. And then, on top of that, the living still die. Of age, and disease, and frailty. Well," he amends, glancing at Syarra. "I don't know about elves, but humans do. If we leave Rae and Jenzelle alive, we'll watch them die anyway. And then…maybe they'll be too weak to raise. I'm only offering a way to be together like this, forever."
Syarra looks sharply at Roper when he turns his hands, but then just takes a breath and turns back to Mevlin. "My people lost immortality. But… I would have watched the people I loved die, regardless. Our kind, too, can die. Many did, in the early days in Acherus. Undeath isn't safety from loss." She turns again to Ralaea. "And in any case, her presence refutes your claim. She is our ally by choice."
"And you're not as immortal as you think. Ask 'Harmony.' Or, well, you could try. She's nothing but dust and ash now," Roper drawls, the air around them growing colder. "What would your Kaela do, hmm? If her perfect plan of getting the squad together is always going to missing at least one."
"Maybe she is," Mevlin says to Syarra. "But for how long?" Then, still smiling, he addresses Roper. "Are you going to kill me? Not even I know Commander Mondragon's plans. What I told you was just something she promised me. The others…have their own reasons for what they're doing, I'm sure."
"That wasn't the goal," Syarra answers, before Roper can. "But I suppose if you're just going to be useless and stubborn and upset our ally… goals can change."
Mevlin lets out another quiet puff of laughter. "I really should've been more careful, huh? Well, then…at least tell me, Rae. Did you get your arms fixed? Commander Mondragon sent you the cure, didn't she?"
Ralaea looks surprised, then conflicted. "I…don't have to answer that."
"No, huh?" Mevlin shifts his gaze away. "I know this won't mean much, coming from an enemy, but…it's not a trap. It's…a sign of goodwill, maybe?"
Roper watches Mevlin carefully. "What if we could move it the other way. You want the gang back together. If you're willing to be without a certain member too fucking crazy to keep existing, why not consider the other option? Why stay with with the Scourge?"
"It is possible," Syarra says again. "Like I said, goals can change. Even I still have… people who stand by me. Living people. You say 'for how long', but I don't see an ending ahead."
Mevlin's smile fades a little. "You're set on killing Commander Mondragon, aren't you? Without her…we'll fall apart, I think. You probably saw, but I don't enjoy feeding. It's…different for the other two. Alver…Taya…those two hunt for fun. For sport. The living would never accept them."
"Depends on who they're hunting. The living are willing to overlook all sorts of things, if it gets rid of the things they want gone," Roper says.
Syarra glances at Ralaea to see her reaction.
Ralaea seems to be imagining some horrible scene, as she has gone an entire shade paler. "She…killed all of you. Doesn't that bother you?"
"Sometimes," Mevlin says. "My left lung doesn't work like it used to." He smiles again, like it was a joke, but the smile fades as he addresses Roper again. "They might put up with it for a while. But the torture part…that's a hard sell, and you're not gonna hide that forever. That's the thing about the living. Maybe they'll come to accept it for a time, but…it won't last. Oh, but I'm not trying to tell you what to do. If you can make it work, I'll cheer you on."
"The living torture people. We don't own that corner market and never have," Roper drawls.
"It's different, though, isn't it? Whether it's a living person doing it, or a moving corpse." Mevlin's smile reappears. "To us, their pain is nearly enjoyable. Empathy feels like a foreign idea. I know that hurting them is wrong. I think, when I was alive, I must have had a lot of compassion. But the feelings guiding that are gone now. Only memories are left. It's wrong because I know it's wrong, not because I feel any particular way about it. To the living, I think seeing someone who doesn't understand suffering the same way anymore is…scary."
Roper clenches his hands, the pain in his arm growing with a sharp tug. "Spoken like someone who has no fucking clue how much someone will hurt another person just to feel the power of it. And there's a fucking difference, because we do have the power to choose what we do, and how we do it."
Mevlin glances at Roper's arm, momentarily distracted. "I'm sorry that happened to you, then. It did, didn't it? Or someone you knew? People like that…if they're alive, they can hide. But we can't hide. The moment they see us, people know what we do. That's what I mean. They know to be afraid of us on sight."
Syarra's hand twitches toward Roper's arm, but she stills it. It does not look like a sympathetic movement.
"They can hide, and we can hunt them," Syarra says evenly. "But I think I remember more than you do, even if I likely don't feel much more. To care for someone means to protect them, regardless of the cost to yourself. Not to inflict this on them, just to make certain they can't run away from you. Perhaps you should ask yourself, why do you want Rae and Jenzelle so badly? Badly enough to destroy them, to make their choices for them?"
Roper moves his head slightly in Syarra's direction. "And you know, right? Everyone has to by now — that loyalty you feel when the Lich King raises you, it is isn't real. He's just there in your head. And it can be broken. And once it is? Fuck, the retention ratio afterwards isn't the kind of thing you fucking bet on. Once his control is gone, your little fantasy troop won't hold together, commander or no."
"Once we're together…once they're like us, they'll understand. It'll be like normal again." Mevlin begins squirming, trying to reach Ralaea. "Rae, she's back. Commander Mondragon is back! We know. We all know how you tried to be like her. She has so much more to teach you. Come, join us!"
Ralaea backs herself up into a wall, staring at the crazed smile that has spread across Mevlin's face, her own expression frozen in fear. "No… No! Stop…" She reaches into her misshapen satchel. The pocket containing her bombs.
"Hey!" Roper's word is sharp, and he turns his attention to Ralaea, shifting a little between the death knight and the engineer, hand tugging up on the ropes in a way that tightens them painfully, the gag digging in deep across Mevlin's mouth. "I've gotten blown up enough for a day," he drawls at Ralaea, but there's a warning in that too bright gaze.
Syarra steps in between Mevlin and Ralaea. "If you feel like you need to hurt him, we can do that. But you need to be in control of yourself, Ralaea Westwind."
Ralaea's hand freezes inside her satchel at Roper's sharp tone, but further control seems to be beyond her. She begins slowly edging towards the door, her eyes fixated on Mevlin. Though he is no longer able to speak, he still smiles despite the gag, watching her with an almost boyish eagerness, as if to say she could never refuse him in the end. It's likely her that fear, which has been growing steadily stronger since they entered the vrykul house, has stirred him into a near frenzy. He continues to squirm and struggle, despite the tightness of the ropes binding him.
"Wrhrhha! Hgn hs!" Mevlin tries to insist.
"Don't run," Syarra says, a note of warning in her voice. "How do you think you can defeat Kaela Mondragon if you can't even face this one, while he's tied up?"
"It's because he's tied up!" Ralaea blurts. "Because he's talking. Because there's something left of them, even the Scourge." She sinks to her knees, covering her ears with her hands and squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm…not her. I can't…"
Syarra takes another step towards Ralaea. She might be trying to remember how to comfort people. She pauses, out of sword-reach, and sinks to her heels to look at the living girl.
"No, you're not her. You're alive, and she's an undead slave. It's good that you're you and not her." Syarra pauses, breathing shallowly even though she doesn't need the air. "And yes, there's something left of him. There was something left of me, even when I was destroying Havenshire for the Lich King. It didn't matter then, because whatever was left of me was not what I was following, and it doesn't matter with him now. Unless he can break free."
"It's fucking terrible, isn't it?" Roper says, watching the Toymaker, his eyes unblinking. "I'm always a monster. But the thing that makes it fucked up is that I'm still in here, too. They made us cut away pieces of it, broke some off of us by force, to fit the monster in us, but they didn't wipe us out. I'm still me, the pieces salvaged of what was left from what they did to us. So is Syarra. So is your fucking 'Harvey.' And this guy right here.
"Which means, if we can figure out how or if he's chained, and if there's something else in there, it's something that deserves to survive. If it can. We don't get to keep everything when we choose to survive. Sometimes, we lose pieces. Doesn't mean someone else gets to decide if we live or die because we're not enough of what they wanted to see come back from it. We might still need to fucking kill him," Roper says to Mevlin, the sound of a cold smile in his voice. "But, it depends on if he knows who raised him, and how."
"How…" Ralaea opens one cautious eye, letting the tear contained within slip freely down her cheek, "How do we know? If he's chained. Who did it. If there's even a way to free him, other than the obvious. I prepared for Kaela Mondragon. I was not prepared to get to know a group of death knights, or see my old squad like this."
Mevlin continues to struggle, but his efforts are ineffective.
"We keep fucking asking. And we find out how to unchain them. Not a lot of things can only ever be done once. That paladin did something and he might know how to do it again." Roper sounds almost dismissive. "Yeah, well, when I died I wasn't prepared to be fucking raised up as the fucking Scourge," he drawls. "I'm managing fine." He lifts Mevlin a little higher, the strength of him disproportionate to his size more obvious, the pain of the ropes starting to dig into the other death knight, and Roper inhales a little too deeply. "Or something like that."
Syarra jerks one shoulder like she might turn towards the two death knights in pain, but resolutely keeps her focus on Ralaea. She watches the track of the tear with something like a faint curiosity. "We could take him to the Argent Crusade? They're the ones who did it before. Maybe they can tell us if he's free, or free him if he's not."
"We get Mourn to contact them, or you, Westwind." Roper adds, still looking at Mevlin like he's something fascinating. "Bring maybe some of them here. We drag this guy to them, no way to stop them if they decide to give the old 'burn him from the inside out' treatment," Roper drawls, his voice sounding softer, the echo showing up in his vowels.
"Do we know anyone in the Argent Crusade who might trust us enough?" Syarra asks, and then her eyes brighten as she answers her own question. "Actually, I think we know a few. Briellen Clay? Kit, I think?"
Roper nods. "Yeah. Just gotta figure out where they are, and who they'll listen to and trust enough to come an abandoned vrykul building." He sounds amused, and he's starting to cause more pain than he probably should to Mevlin.
Mevlin is finally starting to look uncomfortable, and his struggles turn into squirms in the attempt to get away from Roper. Naturally it doesn't work.
"It might be suspicious if I go to the Argent Crusade on behalf of a death knight…" Ralaea says distractedly, also watching Mevlin. "But I don't know how well Harvey…or…Mourn, I guess, would be received either. Suppose he was one of them, once."
"Kit went out alone with me in the Plaguelands, back when I didn't have much control," Syarra says, a faint smile marking this as something of a fond memory. "Briellen is more cautious. But cautious could also be good, if she'll listen. I have no idea if either of them is in Northrend. We would have to… ask around?"
Roper really, really should put Mevlin down. The struggles, however, make the ropes tighten more, not less, increasing the pain and the death knight holding onto them seems to have lost some of the plot in the moment of it.
"I…I think you're hurting him?" Do death knights feel pain? The question mark is obvious in Ralaea's voice as she watches Roper potentially enjoying himself. "And I can contact Tabiana and Brendol…maybe they know something. They're out here with the Argent Crusade."
"Tabiana!" Syarra says, moving her hand like she might snap her fingers. She's wearing a plate gauntlet, so it doesn't work. "I talked to her, back when I was looking for you the first time. She seemed… not entirely unsympathetic. And Bren was unwise about death knights, so we got along well at the time." Then she turns reluctantly to watch Roper for a long moment, and says in a quieter, distracted voice, "But yes. We can feel pain. Not as much, so you really have to put in the effort to…" She tilts her head, watching Mevlin struggle, and then adds a little more sharply, "Roper, she didn't ask you to hurt him yet."
Roper looks up at the sound of his name, and then back at the Toymaker. It takes him a long beat to drop him down to the ground. "Syarra." It's a strange, echoing version of her name. The echo, and the drawl are both gone when he says, "We're going to have to keep him here, until we get some of the Argent's to help figure it out. We're going to need to give Kaela a reason to think what we want, so she doesn't start suspecting. A runner, maybe, evidence of him going deeper into the fucking fjord, or west into Dragonblight."
Mevlin stops his wriggling entirely after hitting the ground, and just listens.
"If he kept to a routine…and he suddenly stopped, wouldn't that be more suspicious?" Ralaea asks, scrubbing at her cheek to dry it. "I think Kaela would keep a tight watch on her squad. They probably meet regularly."
"Yeah. Which means he's gotta look like he ran from something. Or chased something he shouldn't have. Or even…" Roper tilts his head as he looks a Mevlin. "Decided to betray the fucking bitch. He's not going back."
"Well, I hope you know how to pull that off, because I don't," Ralaea says, blunt as usual.
Roper snorts. "I'm not a fucking amateur. Yeah. I do." It doesn't even sound like confidence in his voice; he makes it sound like some sort of immutable fact, as he crouches back down to Mevlin. And there it is, that weird shifting of his body language until there's something like an eerie mirror. "I just can't do it anymore! I can't keep on like this!" It's coming from Roper, but it's a pitch perfect, exact mimicry of Mevlin. "Feeding like this…it's wrong. I hate it."
"But regardless, he can't go back, or they might just kill your allies," Syarra says, in a reasonable tone.
Ralaea flinches at Roper's words. "You did that with my brother's voice, when we first met," she says.
Mevlin looks rather impressed, now that the immediate pain has stopped.
"Anyway, I agree. One way or another, he can't go back to her, so… Hopefully we can stop them from finding him." Ralaea slowly climbs to her feet. Mevlin isn't talking anymore. That helps.
Roper doesn't deny his mimicry of Bren. "The good news is that we can keep him here as long as we need. It's not we need to sleep and since he's gotta eat too or risk going completely fucking insane, we'll get take out. But don't take long. The longer we don't know, the worse this gets for Kaela. I can get people to think they saw him. Leave a trail. It'll buy us time." Roper reaches out a hand to the ropes on Mevlin's mouth. "And then we see if you survive or if you find out what happens when something like us is destroyed." It might help if he didn't say it as Mevlin, a little sing song in his voice. It is undeniably creepy.
"Then… I'll watch him, if you want to try the Argent Crusade," Syarra says to Rae, taking a breath and turning back toward Roper. "While you lay a trail? Or Rae and I could swap, but it sounded like she might find the task painful."
"Under no fucking circumstances is she watching him," Roper says, without any particular feeling attached to it. He looks over at Ralaea. "You can do things we can't, and we can do things you can't. But we should get Mourn as well, maybe pull in Forge. Two on him at all times whenever possible. And no fucking living guards."
"If he's tied up," Syarra says quietly, "and we trust the guards, then does it matter? Maybe not Rae alone, but with… someone like my sister…?"
Roper turns to look at her, with unblinking eyes. There's a tsk from within the helm, but his eyes look like he's smiling, at least to her, familiar with his expressions even with most of his face hidden. "Fine. But with you, or me. Not the others."
Ralaea shudders at Roper's mimicry. "Yeah…the Argent Crusade. I'll…see what I can do. And you'll…keep him here? Or let me know if you have to move him?"
"Yes, I'll keep him here," Syarra confirms. "And if anything happens… I'll find a way to let you know."