adrikodol:
Adrik feels at ease, somehow. They’re comfortable with things like this, with the art of death. Of course, they know that not everybody in the Gambit is as at home with the idea, as comfortable with the intricacies of life and blood. It doesn’t sing to the others the way it sings to them, they don’t feel the warm love of the God Of Blood and Mothers –– though Adrik knows they are all beloved by Her, all cherished, their blood sweet with her adoration.
The job wouldn’t be an easy one. To fool the common man it might have been. But assassins knew their stuff, they knew when things were real and when a kill had landed well. Their job, then, was to fool a master. To make it look realer than anything else. They watch with careful attention as Antnar speaks of his own escape, eyebrow quirked in interest. It was such a hard life, such a hard thing to have gone through, Adrik’s heart ached with the wish to make sure that Antnar was kept safe from here on out. If their knives could achieve that, they would see to it.
“Someone on the inside is always helpful.” They say, a musing thought. “Unfortunately, I only know one Catelian assassin –– and Zara Myrdo isn’t someone I would trust to help us. She’d sooner see us all dead, I imagine.” They pull one of their knives out, as they speak the words. A mindless thing, something to shift around in their hand, flicking between their fingers as they run the problem over in their head.
Antnars instincts are better than he gives himself credit for, better than they might have even expected for it. “That’s not half bad. Public. She should look surprised by it. There should be blood. And –– I was thinking, as well. I’m not well versed in the subtler methods of taking a life, but there must be a venom or a potion that could make a woman…appear far less alive than she really was. I wouldn’t know what to use, but I’m sure we can figure it out together.”
◈
Antnar made sure to remember the name given just in case it would pop up again. By the sound of it, Adrik, it may not. Rather, they may not even make the assassin’s acquaintance. At least if they were smart, they would not go looking for death. Then again, the mission was about death, or at least faking it, such a grim prospect but a paying one more importantly, and Antnar was looking to get paid. At the very least, there wouldn’t be any actual killing involved. Or so that’s what he believed. Avoid Zara Myrdo then.
Death, whether delivered by him or merely witnessed with his own two eyes, was no stranger to the drow. He’s seen countless of corpses at the prison he was trapped in for years, some of them he even knew, most of them were familiar faces that never left his thoughts. A few were people he had shared words with, bread, deepest desires and fears, even carnal pleasures. Even as a young boy, death was an occasional guest at his mother’s house. He had learned early in life to never fear it, though if he had his way, he would never welcome it as well.
“ Poisons are strangely not my forte, ” he heaved a sigh. That was an understatement. Growing up, his peers were thought to become familiar with toxins and venom. Antnar, however, was a terrible student. He gravitated towards picking locks instead, his curiosity more consumed by the puzzles the art of thieving seemingly lured him with than memorizing the many ways to suffocate a surface dweller. Wouldn’t the sun be suffocating enough?, he once thought. “ I can create decent disguises, pick locks, but not poison a man. It’s just a shame I lost my tools not too long ago. ” Almost getting caught by town guards would do that to you.
“ I would suggest asking the girl herself, but I’m wary if she does not have the answers as well, she may ask someone else from her order, and they may end up piecing the puzzle together. ” He grimaced at the thought of fucking up his first mission with the Gambit. They had just allowed him membership, and to prove that he wasn’t worthy of such honor and privilege, even though he was only let in to keep him from asking too many unnecessary questions, was just not something Antnar wanted to pursue. “ Is anyone else from our merry crew well-versed in poisons? Perhaps we can ask them to satiate our curiosity? ”
