The Intruder Kills Two

[Amanita Vernia]

An intruder kills two in the House Silenti

The house of lost youth and forgotten innocence, a place where lessons in life were first taught and corruption began. From the outside the house showed the decade or more of neglect with it's decay. The green mosses of Schendi's humid climate claimed most of the brick, vines grew along the sides of the house up to it's third floor, some even crawling over the roof and trying to loosen the shingles. A renovation had taken place since the return of the last child of the litter, Amanita, but it was mostly internal like her own. Serums were finally swallowed by the woman to stop the hands of time, but that did not keep his hands from strangling her from the inside. The return home was for more than just her mother's passing. She came more than a month after, the woman's spirit had left the house, but it was still haunted with memories. The merchant arrived almost six months ago, her plan had been an expedition into the jungles, something she has wanted to accomplish since her venture past the staked boarders at age six when she went missing for nearly two hands. That plan has been postponed and just like the branches in the garden Amanita drank her late morning tea in, she appeared to be weeping internally. The house enclosed around this private sanctuary, when she had returned just about everything was dead or overgrown with weeds, but during her healing she began to cultivate it back to a place of beauty. There were of course a few dangerous beauties hidden among the flowers and tropical plants, but what else would one expect from the daughter of Vital Silenti. This was once again, her home.

Time; a cruel and wicked thing, it had it's ways to put it's touch on a body. The sag of skin, the dull of the eyes, the wearing-down of teeth...Or, as in this case, madness. Years had passed since the Fori in Ar; long years of seclusive scouring for perhaps the largest gap in the Silenti's armour, the Eldest. Without the Serum to fend off the hands of that wicked Mistress time, the wear of those travels showed hard on Him. The once-lean grace of a fighter was changed now to the curious hard-edged grace of a blade; what once had been broad-built mass was only an echo of the past glories, lean and nimble, ropey and tight-strung, hidden away by the mass of grime-laden dreadlocked hair that fell down to those hips, the tied-off and forgotten beard of those harder days tucked into a boiled-leather chestplate. Madness was in those hard grey eyes as he near-loped through the low-set forest floor, oblivious of the choking clench of the moist air wringing every bead of sweat to the fore', stickying him inside those badly-cured leathers that hung almost entirely in tattered rags about him, wrapping feet and forearms especially, using a free hand every few paces where he would have fallen to shove ahead and get that hard pace back again. Those eyes behind the Tumit-skull mask with it's long, sharp beak, didn't hold any more cracks from that Sister's passing; he'd forgotten most of it all since the Northern ranges, where steel broke on rock and the winters lasted forever. He'd still be there if not for the curious passing of a caravan for the Torvald encampments, and the mention of a name which piqued some twang of distant memory. In truth he couldn't even remember the name anymore, but he did know he had to move south, till it made him sweat as much as he drank. Follow roads vaguely familiar, hunt animals he knew the habits of without knowing them truly...He broke from the underbrush at a hard-set sprint, shoving the tabuk-horn tipped spear back through the remains of an age-worn belt to free grit-covered hands into the creeping vines, pant-grunting at the effort made to climb those walls and heft himself bodily overtop the lip onto the shingle-tile rooftop, lumbering with the aide of a hand along the crest, to find a tree large enough to climb down by...There were no locks on the garden doors.

Amanita reached Schendi by a simpler route, she had sailed south and doing so had reminded her of her first voyage at sixteen. Cast out from her home and sent to Bazi to study as a merchant under her mother's sister. They were strict, but this only made the daughter of Vital more sly. By daylight she learned her trade and by night's watch she continued those life lessons that their father had begun. The young belladonna risked wearing steal more times than one would think to count, she dealt with those less than dashing in the bazaars, charming and stealing from them, until she had been discovered by a pirate. Soon after Amanita had taken her next journey and left the rest of her family behind. The Thassa had become her surrogate and the man her provider of lessons. Another teacher for the young woman as well as another bed for her to be taken into, sometimes even at will. Amanita learned to surrender parts of herself to safe the rest from falling, she knew when to give in and when to pull back. It was like the taming of tides she learned on the ships, but eventually her sails needed something more. A weakness for blood brought her to Ar, she had been running from something else at the time, and Fori provided a needed nest. She lived there for over a year, stayed even after both siblings had left without a goodbye.... maybe they both knew how Amanita liked to say goodbye, how she'd said it to their father as he swallowed a final breath. Could she really blame them for leaving? Oddly enough Amanita made her own friends, though she wouldn't of given any that title at the time. Corinna, however, had earned it in the desert. Sitting in the garden with her eyes at half crest still fading in and out of dreams, Amanita had not aged since Venor last laid eyes on her. In the privacy of home she not only left veils off, her robes were lighter than those she wore in public. The humid air made the white gowns cling with perspiration just under her breasts. The swell of fabric at her ankles waved in the soft breeze, but the rest of her body was still, unmoving like a statue in the private garden. There was no cover over this portion of the house even if it was in the center and surrounded by walls. It allowed the Tor-tu-Gor to shine down on the plant life and a small opening for an intruder that knew the house already. Guards had been increased since an intruder had attacked Amanita and instead killed her kajirus, but even the hired men were not aware of the man coming in through the back and climbing down a tree into the secret garden.

If only his life-lessons had been so tactile as that; those he had to see their long-dead grandfather for. The speech of the fauna, the way of the stars and the meanings of water...All integrated into the man who was learning to sever a man in two by a father who wanted his fortunes protected, both in coin and flesh alike. Their grandfather, the great-grandson of an Earth-bound slave, had taught him to live and breathe as the animals...Was it so strange to find comfort in those things he knew best? Running at one long-overgrown flower-tree, he leapt, a flailing mass of streaming hair and leather, to hit into the massive bulbs of bloom, and into the bole with a sharp grunt, holding tight just long enough to drop down the branches one after t'other. He was, by no means quiet about it...But it was too late for that, now wasn't it? He paid no bother to a still body; it was just like a tree or statue, unintrusive to a maddeningly-bound mind. He had to get somewhere particular...And these places of stone always had something to get in the way. Dropping off a low branch to all fours, he paused, whipping back his head to roll those wild grey eyes about him, as he pushed forward just a bit to put that beak to use in moving the brush aside...

If the guards of the house may not of heard the limbs giving way as he made his drop down, but the statue of a woman half lost in her own mind, did. Most women would of shrieked at an intruder coming into their house, but Amanita was calm. She had fought inner demons as well as those of flesh, but the small dagger she concealed wasn't going to aid in her protection, not against this beast. "Guards!!" she shouted, her voice lifting through the corridors and bringing a charge of ready mercenaries, men who wouldn't politely ask questions of the intruder, but draw their steal and collect his head. As far as the merchant knew this was another of Krakatoa's soldiers coming to steal the journal or even her life. Instinct drew her up to her feet as the tea cup fell and cracked against the stone floor, she was already retreating when she first screamed, but her dark eyes never turned away from the crouched man. With the beard and years growing on him, the dreadlocks that scrapped against the ground when he landed on all fours like some animal, she couldn't of recognized him... not when she didn't know who she should be looking for.

[Amanita Vernia]

It would have been something miraculous to know a man through a mask of bone besides. With the scream, that head entirely turned as he pushed up into a crouch, shoulders back to see through the brush held up by his-own person to see the source. That pang went off...but the only effect it had was it stopped him in mid-throw of that spear, causing a hesitation that gave those guardsmen time enough to come flooding through the four wide doors of the garden with their plethora of sharp nasties for him; axes, spears, nettings with trident-like lances and rope-ended snares. A visceral snarl tore free as that tabuk-horned spear was sent flying from a side-armed hurl, turning to the first to come from that west-side door with his crested helm, ripping through the studded leather to send the man not lurching, but half-flying a full three paces before he hit the ground in a sprawl and spray of tissue and vitae. Another horn was pulled from those fore-arm's leathers, with a bound bit of obsidian gripped in the other hand as that beastly man ran headlong into the now-half-confused mass of men with their foremost man dead as wood. Time enough that the stone blade had time enough to rip along the side of one's neck in another red spray-cloud, before he could ram that horn up under another's chin-guard hard enough to half-lift the copper dome before it was ripped down and out. He wasn't sticking around to chance a swarm; he was shoving and running his way amongst them for those doors.

Bare feet has not stopped moving since she first heard the man drop, not until she reached the wall and pressed herself behind a beam only peeking out to watch as the first guard went flying. It was quick, even an honorable way to die, but it didn't keep her from wishing a long and painful death on the intruder. Another man fell and she gasped, finger nails biting into the stone wall as she watched his attack slice through him in an effortless grace. This wasn't the same caliber of man who'd attacked before, that man had been more of a thief than a soldier, but this invader had a deadly accuracy that made him seem unstoppable. Another set of guards came into the gardens from the north entrance, but the man didn't appear to be waiting for them as he headed to the opposite door. He might of made a clean shot through the door and out a side entrance of the house that was mostly used by slaves, except Arculieus was standing in between him and his escape with two Scimitars drawn and a stance that said he wasn't moving. The man was more than just a guard to Amanita, his father had been a guard to their family when the three Silenti siblings were young, a loyal man who'd even helped Amanita extract her revenge on their father. Arculieus looked much like his dead father, his skin was dark and head shaven, but it was his undeterred stance that brought out the real resemblance. "Stand down and I might spare you a slow death," he said in a soft enough whisper that Amanita who was still on the other side of the garden half hidden behind a wall couldn't hear, but it was clear enough that Venor would know the words and that there was strength behind them.

To be accurate, he didn't understand a bloody letter of it all...But tones, those were easy. Even a good Sleen knew when it's owner was happy or angry with it. Then again, considering he just killed a few men, it wasn't much of a guess. But he did slide to an abrupt halt in the wet sod with a shove of a fist to the grasses before he could get all fours again, flicking those eyes from the man to the door and back...Oh, he could likely eviscerate the man easily; scimitars were mostly unwieldly hunks of metal, and he'd dragged men from saddles who swung the things around. But, still...Those pangs were hitting a bit harder as the familiarities hit. It was a confusing sensation, to have bits of memory flitter just on the edges of coherent thought; he half-turned to eye those warily-closing soldiers now, backing a bit...but it was all the mistake Arculieus needed. *Tongh!*, one fat-bladed scimitar was swung, and it's flat hit hard-enough to crack that bone-fashioned mask/helm across the side, numb hands dropping their bloodied tools as he lurched aside, and hit the dirt in a pile and faint bloodspout as the interior-bones tore at that bearded cheek and jaw within. Setting a boot atop the fallen-man's skull, one-such scimitar was heft along in one rock of a fist, while eyes looked across the way to the Lady of the house in wait for the order.

Arculieus was aware of what he was up against, he saw the two bodies and knew the men he toppled were not unwitting warriors themselves, but he himself would not allow that knowledge to cloud his duty or cost him an ounce of confidence. Some battles are won on determination rather than skill, some are won by pure chance or for unknown reason such as the man's sudden halt as memories flooded him. He didn't lower his own weapons however, so rather than take a chance that he wouldn't be leaving this world easily, Arculieus struck his blow. Hard and to the head, but not low enough to take it off with a clean sweep of blade. He did feel the helm break and the steel slash into the flesh as blood squirted before the man fell to the ground. The second weapon was ready to finish him, quickly as promised, but he stopped just shy of stabbing him in the back and to see if the merchant had other plans for the invader. With the man on the ground she relaxed her fingers from their stiff grip and took several steps closer, with her eyes and a small shake of her head she ordered her own guard to stand down. Arculieus knew better than to take his blade off the man entirely, he kept it's aim sharp and gestured the other two men to pull his body up from the ground and restrain him even if he appeared to be passed out. Removal of the mask wasn't done by the men, but the merchant who was more than curious about the face hidden behind it.

Hefted bodily from the ground, it was in no short-order that one snare was set about the ankles, tightened and bound-off, as was one about the elbows and throat, with binding-fibers pulled from a belt-pouch used to wrap the wrists, so-tight in fact that the fingers began to self-curl. Smeared by the blood of those now-dead Mercenaries, he was hardly more than a mass of black grime and sweat, with rivulets of paler skin where sweat had cleaned away the brunt of the dirt. He...didn't stink, really, so much as had a sharp musk to him, like a larl's fresh pelt, though the twigs and leaves within that beard and hair made their own problems. Greys half-lidded and lolling with the flicker of the lids, his head had to be held by one of the men more-than-eager to see it come off and used as a chew-toy for some pet or other. The beard crept high, the hair fell low, that face was gaunt, bloody, and along the right side somewhat torn with a good scar worked into the left eyebrow. Without a good long look at those eyes, he was nothing of what he was. A bath and shave perhaps would change that though...If she let him live long-enough for those luxuries.

The men were not gentle when they shackled the killer, two of their own had been taken and both anger and testosterone demanded they force as much abuse on his body before he was turned into a corpse. Amanita held an anger as well, this attack was too close to the last where Naga had been lost, perhaps it was wrong to compare the lives of two guards to that of a slave, but she hadn't had time for that wound to heal, let alone cast another. Once the man was secured Arculieus put away his blades after wiping the blood off one. He would of preferred to soak his other in the man's blood, but suspected that an interrogation would be done first. They all waited as Amanita knelt down to the mask of the unconscious man half expecting it to settle some of the questions. The last two months had been spent learning more about Krakatoa and his men, finding out exactly who they were in an attempt to find weaknesses. Once that veil was removed from the intruder they were all surprised to discover it was not anyone they recognized. Even Amanita couldn't see what was under that beard and grime, didn't know who she should be seeing in those half opened eyes as he began to come around. "Have his wound tended, allow him to drink and build his strength again.... then find out if the Mask has left the city, if not... I will buy his time." She looked again at that bloodied face covered in hair and dirt, the smell of him didn't offend her, but the sense of smell had been dulled by many things in her life. One might even say her sight had gone bad since she couldn't even recognize her own brother, but she had become numb to many senses of the years, even to the sight of blood that used to make her at least feel a warm sensation in her stomach. She stood and looked at Arculieus to make sure he would accept responsibility over the man and see that no one killed him before they had a chance to learn his reasons for attacking and why Krakatoa had hired someone outside his own group of men. It was a mystery for now and the only reason he was left alive.