For some reason I felt stupidly inspired to write a lot today, so I did a sort of drabble that I may end up using for Part II of Perci's overarching story. This was written pretty quickly and only loosely edited, but I'll still post it anyway because I think it's been ages since I posted some drabble or another. Idk it kind of helps me work on some stuff with Perci and Cassandra, an exercise I guess.
“Are you headed out again tonight, then? To sniff around for some new, unsuspecting lad to latch onto?”
Perci glanced up from the sword in his lap, the polishing cloth in his hand coming to an abrupt stop. He glared at Cassandra and then returned to cleaning the metal.
“Do you think I have never noticed it?” Cassandra asked, continuing to taunt him. “The way you always say ‘I’m going out for supplies, my lady’, only to return with a lazy few sundries and reeking with the scent of manwhore? What is it? Trying to replace your pardoner?”
Perci shut his eyes and bit down on his lip. It had been like this ever since they’d left home, ever since he’d made his reluctance to leave entirely too clear, clinging to Samson’s grave like a vine to a castle wall. He could feel Cassandra’s ruthless gaze upon him, could feel the way she scrutinized his every move. Would she unearth some hidden meaning behind his actions should he carry on with the task at hand? Let her, he decided.
“What would your dear Samson have thought, seeing you in such a way? Would it have pleased him?”
Perci shook his head, feeling bile rise into his throat.
“He would not have thought anything of it at all,” he finally landed on.
Cassandra scoffed. “Well of course he wouldn’t now, what with his being six feet underground. As it turns out the pardoner was quite sinful, and received a fate fitting for his offenses.”
It was enough. Perci stood from the bed and glared at her with vitriol.
“Damn it, Cassandra. Must you continue to insult him even now? Can you not simply let the man remain dead and buried?"
The maiden barked a retaliatory laugh, eyeing the rapier in his hands. “Can you?”
Perci let a breath ease out from between his lips and crossed the inn room to the window.
“You always did envy him, didn’t you?” Another breath. “There are days I long to put his sword against your throat, Maiden Cassandra.”
He stared at the streets below, watching as a man lit a standing torch with one in his hand, eyes drawn to the way it quickly burst into life. Perci drew a hand across the length of the blade he held, running his fingertips over each engraved letter that had been carved there. Mors mea, vita tua, the letters read.
“I would do it,” he echoed.
Cassandra said nothing at first, watching him with a smile as he turned back towards the room and made his way to sit on the bed once more.
“What then?” she finally asked from the desk chair, crossing one leg over the other and placing her laced hands upon her knee. “You’d go rogue? You’d certainly be no knight-errant, and the assassins would be on your tail in an instant.”
“What would I care, my lady?”
She sighed, long and drawn out. “‘A poet’s heart’,” she muttered, reminiscing on something he’d told her long ago. “Cov told me,” Perci had relayed.
Without warning, Cassandra’s expression shifted into something poisonous. Perci took no notice, focused once again on making sure Samson’s rapier looked as pristine as the day the pardoner had received it. When his maiden spoke again, it startled him.
“I received news from Francesca, not long ago.”
Cassandra shifted positions to reach into her bag at the foot of the desk. From it she pulled a stained envelope, a letter within.
Perci raised his head, uncertain of how curious he should be. News from back home was a rarity. What he did not expect were the words that emerged from her mouth.
His eyes grew wide, the rapier clattering to the floor. “You’re lying,” he retorted, voice strained. Perci met Cassandra’s eyes, taking the letter with a shaking hand.
“Dearest Sister,” it began.
“There is horrid news to share. A knight from your cohort was tracked by the Curved Blades for the crime of murder– rumor is that it was to have been a murder-suicide, only he escaped undead. Sir Covrin, he was called, and I recall that Sir Percival was familiar with this man. You will remember his maiden, for she had great status and wealth as the child of Baron Rennick, the Silver Hawk. Maiden Avalea was the girl's name.
The Knight of Morne was returned home and tried upon arrival, but only after they had paraded him through the streets like a common criminal. A Knight of Morne, being treated in such a way– it was just as you imagine. The crowd was quite stunned by it until they were made aware of the severity of his crime. A knight murdering his own maiden is unheard of, after all.”
Perci paused there, raising his eyes to Cassandra. “This cannot be true,” he insisted, shaking his head, his eyes wide.
“It is no forgery of mine, if that is the implication you are attempting to make, Sir Percival,” she answered. “My sister deals only in truths. She is the only way I know of happenings from back home.”
He continued to stare at her for a moment more, and then Perci’s gaze returned to the page.
“The trial was public and went as expected, for what criminal ever escapes a conviction in this city? And with a crime of that nature, the boy really had no chance. No one can go up against a man like that baron and take him down, and especially not someone with so little to his name. Sir Covrin’s fate was read aloud, and his grandmother appeared to weep ceaselessly. It was terrible, Cassandra, and no one would console her for raising such a monster. She passed away soon after the trial, may the gods have mercy on her soul.”
Perci had to break again, to think of Covrin’s grandmother. Cassandra’s sister did not know the woman, did not know how much care she’d put into raising him after the death of his parents. No one could have loved a boy more than that. He willed himself not to cry and forced himself to read further.
“Sir Covrin was sentenced to reside in the depths of the church prison and to an endless punishment, being undead. They called it ‘endless’, though I suppose it would end once he lost himself to it all. I do not know if he has hollowed by now, for his fate remains unknown. Perhaps we shall never know, for those who end up in those depths are often forgotten about in the end. He will be sent to the tunnels just as all the others are."
“The tunnels,” Perci murmured, thumb trailing across the word.
“I’ve heard they are labyrinthine,” Cassandra mused, “filled with monsters and completely inescapable.”
It was not the truth, Perci knew, though it may as well have been. “They are horrible," he stated.
The maiden raised a brow at him, disbelieving. “You've seen them? They say no one makes it out of them alive.”
Perci felt himself grow cold, remembering clearly what they had been like. Samson had not been well in those days, not in physical health nor in mental, and upon learning of the Church’s fate to force him into martyrdom over something he could not acquiesce, he had fled to those dreadful tunnels. When Perci had found him pieces of skin were missing from his body, his face coated in blood and grime. It was still a wonder the pardoner had not died then, but Perci had refused to let Samson carry through with the desperation that had rooted itself within him.
Carim is cursed, he thought. Everyone I love must die.
When he spoke again, Perci's voice felt weak. “I do not wish to speak about the tunnels,” he forced out, eyes returning to the letter to finish the last few lines.
"This is all I have of news, for now. I hope that you and Sir Percival are well, though please do be careful on your journey by his side. If you relay any of this news to him, do it with caution.
When he was finished, Perci found himself unable to speak, and Cassandra merely stared at him emotionless. Finally, the words left her.
“Should you take my life the Curved Blades would likely view it as a conspiracy of sorts,” she stated bluntly. “You were indeed close to Sir Covrin. His ‘dearest friend’, you've called yourself before." Cassandra gazed at her knight. "Tell me, Sir Percival, is there a conspiracy at play here?”
Perci’s face quickly became wrought with disgust. “Is that what you take from this letter? Fear for your own life without concern for the people involved in this?”
“Not at all,” Cassandra answered swiftly, keeping her voice smooth. “Maiden Avalea’s death is truly a shame and should be looked upon as such. Caitha knows what she went through with that despicable father of hers.” She gently took the letter back from Perci, returning it to its envelope and replacing it in her bag.
Her knight shook his head, expression shifting from disgust to despondency. He had known. Just as Caitha, Perci knew everything that Avalea had gone through for she had relayed it to him herself in the protective cocoon of Velka’s chapel. He sighed.
“Samson stated on multiple occasions that the baron was close with Earl Arstor,” Perci mentioned.
“Earl Arstor?” Cassandra met his eyes, curious. “That spear-wielding lunatic who lived beyond the city gates? That sight of that castle always filled me with dread.”
“The very same. Supposedly the earl had ties to a man called Aldia in a place far beyond Carim. There were many rumors attached to him, few of them good.”
“All of it is some sort of shady business,” Cassandra replied, sitting back in the chair. “That doesn’t change the fact that your ‘dearest friend’ took his maiden’s life before attempting to take his own.”
Perci let out a breath, looking beyond Cassandra momentarily, gazing out the window in thought. It was true– he had known Covrin exceptionally well, perhaps better than anyone apart from Avalea.
“He would never have intentionally taken her life.” Perci returned his gaze to Cassandra. “No one was more loyal to a maiden than Covrin was to Maiden Avalea. Something does not add up here. Has Francesca written anything else about it?”
She shook her head. “That was the only thing. But…was his loyalty not strangely obsessive? I had heard things from other maidens, even back then. Some of them were captivated by it, but others felt there had to be something sinister behind it.”
“No,” Perci answered firmly. “Overzealous perhaps, but there was nothing– it was nothing like you’re saying. He would not have harmed her.”
For a moment the two of them remained completely silent, staring past one another and refusing to make eye contact. As Perci opened his mouth and began to speak, Cassandra quickly interrupted.
“I know what you are thinking, and we are not returning back to that city,” she said with finality. “He will have been long hollowed by now. I received this letter weeks ago.”
A ray of anger pulsed through Perci’s body. “Why did you not show it to me sooner? Perhaps we could have–”
“No. We could not have. I would not have gone with you, and you would have returned alone, and your fate would likely have been the same as his. It still will be if you make that choice, you know.”
Cassandra paused, glaring at him. “He will have hollowed.”
Her voice was insistent and Perci let the subject drop. He clenched his fists and bit down hard on his lip. He could not let himself weep, not in front of her now, for that had been his mistake all along, showing her his weaknesses. He could recall her expression when she learned the nature of his relationship with Samson, and her relentless cruelty over the pardoner's death. He knew that he must drop this, and in truth, he knew that she was right. Covrin would not have made it out.
