“How's about you untie me, pretty lady?” Mikhail gave his most charming smile to Yucca. He'd have addressed Shine who was much closer to him on that flatter of hers, but she was... Well... Brennwulf was strapped belly first to her mount like some kind of human saddle and she was sitting stop him. Not leaning forward as a rider should, rocking back and forth on his back the last few hours and groaning suggestively. One could imagine it wasn't actually so suggestive. It was quite clear that she was edging herself on his unconscious body for whatever ungodly reason. Barely alive like the rest of them, but ole Mikhail had the luck the of devil.
Fennic too... Fennic... Mikhail had no idea if the man was alive with that hole in him. Missing an arm and his entire left shoulder, they'd done his brother worse than he deserved. Gods damned mutants.
But ole Mikhail was handsome, good with the ladies, or at least... He thought he was, experience might state that he actually was, but who knew?
“You've such a silver tongue,” Yucca was riding the flatter right next to the odd contraption they were all tied to. A inverse 'T' shaped horseless wagon with little poles for their shackles to be fixed around, something made to contain mages and individuals stronger than the norm. “And so handsome a face. But pray tell, what would you do once I've freed you?”
“Mayhap I'll show you why they call my Mickey Strummer.”
“...Strummer?” Yucca cocked her head back at him, clear interest in the amused look she gave him. She was not so unfriendly as the rest of them. “You're a bard, then?”
“No.” Mikhail chuckled, uh, 'seductively', “But I could make your body sing, sweet thing.”
“I'm only 17,” She commented, still looking a bit amused at the proposition. “You're old enough to be my father.”
“17?” She certainly didn't look 17. She was the nearest and most obvious target, whatever happened, this was all a game to him. Mikhail hadn't been a mage hunter in his time, too small in position, but he knew the stories. Hand them over to a black mage and they were all worse than dead. Best to go out screaming under the axe than live to endure the ministrations of the Apostate. All the others seemed to accept it, dead eyed ever since they'd suddenly hit the dirt. But not ole Mikhail, his will was iron and so were his loins, and quite literally, he was erect and he did not know why, it certainly had nothing to do with any of these girls. “Nothing illegal about that, honey. Could use a man of experience, methinks. Got some great gifts from my lord prince and I'm sure they'll translate quite well to a roll in the hay. Or even on the back of that there big lizard o' yours, I'm a gentle and flexible lover. Savvy?”
Even so, Mikhail did not like younger women, and resisted the urge to spit at the idea that he was harassing one, out of honest want that she would kill him before he ended up a science project.
“Sure,” Yucca shrugged, flicking her fingers and releasing a very surprised Mikhail from his bondage. The chains fell limp from his frame, the barred shackles at his wrist popping open with a satisfying click. “Or, why don't you shut your fucking mouth and try to sink that dirk you've hidden in the back of your waistband in my pretty... Little... Neck...”
She smiled, batting her sultry eyes seductively and keeping her voice low and lusty. The girl had some fine features, highborn in bone structure with blue-gray eyes, pale skin, and though her chest was fair flat her rear end was something worth praising the gods for. Athletic frames were worth more than people gave them credit, lots of stout women in Haran with nice muscles, but not too many slender gals for men of his stripe, those that seemed so common here in the south.
Mikhail did not observe this out of lust, he was a married man, he observed it out of real observation of her capabilities. Stronger at the legs, mages had weird muscles that could be harder to pierce in some places, Tiber had taught him how to read the flexibility of a body. Which artery to go for and all of that on the mana capable individual.
Too bad, Mikhail sighed in resignation. He did indeed have that dirk, a decoy or method of last resort, namely to kill himself. What he also had was a pair of seemingly innocuous gauntlets that could open right above the knuckle and land a finger length bolt of deuritium with acceptable accuracy in whatever mug he pointed it at. Only had one left, had to make it count. “I can't move my arms...” Mikhail frowned, there were thin gossamer strands all around him and all sensation in the shoulders was completely cut off.
“Apologies, Sir Mikhail of the Dawnguard. I regret to inform you that our lovely Yucca is currently spoke, for.”
“Oi, geezer...” Mikhail laughed aloud, playing it off. “He's even older than I am!”
Caspian stared at him with an exhausted look. “Indeed I am, Sir Mikhail. And no, I was not referring to myself. Now if you'd be so kind as to stop playing with our master's food, Lady Yucca, we are nearly there.”
“We are already there,” Pattoli called out dramatically from the fore, riding alongside Bergen and Morden. “And what a glorious sight it is. Gaze upon it, frail things, this is where you will meet an end worse than death! Ha ha ha!”
Mikhail squinted, he wasn't much for dueling the magic capable, but he knew men, and something about the big man's tone was... artificial, odd, it didn't seem to fit his character. Leaving him wondering quite appropriately what the hell was going on.
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The Lucent was indeed a sight, seven kilometers wide at this point, the length of it demarcating the border between the successor states and Varia. And nestled in those calm waters was a host of barges as far as the eye could see. Like a floating city, the southern crusade army and all of its afforded comforts beckoning to them, a truly massive fleet.
Caspian rode off with a respectful nod. How amicable the more able members of that villainous party were. Mikhail was used to thugs and blokes with more tongue than brain, but this lot seemed alright in the oddest way. People worth sharing a drink with if the circumstances weren't what they were, he'd always imagined...
Well, they were villains. But he wouldn't get much chance to enjoy his betrayal of expectations, Yucca sidled over on that snake-lizard of hers and filled his mouth with smoke. They claimed it was darkness magic, but it just looked like dense mist to Mikhail. Then again, that probably wasn't important.
Her hands were uncharacteristically gentle, pushing him back into his harness and securing him. But something was off again. Either she was a fool, or well aware that she hadn't locked the shackles, they were on their mechanisms but one still needed to turn that key. He made to do so now, one last chance, before she clamped her hand over his face and slammed him against the single wall of the odd carriage they were all strapped to.
Strong, the woman was strong enough to break his neck with the force of the grasp but she didn't harm him overmuch.
“Give it to 'em, Yucca!” Klaus laughed in amusement, some ten meters away as she leaned close, making a show of striking him several times in the face. Odd, again, all of the adepts were physically able but he wasn't injured by the 'assault'.
“You like that, geezer!? Gods but you smell like piss! Maybe... Ah... Maybe I shall be taking you like you so kindly offered!” She shouted loudly, much to the amusement of all the others in earshot. After that, she drew a knife and put it sidelong against his 'tackle' with a frightening awareness of where the base lay in his pants.
“Mmmf!” Mikhail couldn't speak, worse than any gag he'd ever been stuffed with but at least there was no taste to it. The sensation of his lungs being filled but the inability to take in any air no matter how hard he struggled was not very pleasant. “Unfh!”
Roughly translated to:
'Eat my ass, dirty wench!'
And... Well, the second part of it probably didn't need to be repeated. Mikhail loved and respected all women but these mutants were all monsters in his eyes. No humanity in them after what they'd done to Lady Alexis. She slammed him against the rack considerably more violently, rattling his brain in his skull and silencing his choked insults.
Leaning close and locking eyes with him, her voice cut down to a barely audible whisper as she worked at his shackles but didn't actually do anything. “Be quiet, wait for the signal. I'm going to get you out of here.”
“...Mmmf?”
“I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!” She cried dramatically, slapping him full in the face, but as before, it wasn't very hard. “I have no idea what the master wants with this filth! They are all so weak!”
...Exaggerated. Mikhail knew nothing of magic, but he had been a career sheriff, a constable, and this...?
“Don't matter much to me,” Shine called back with a laugh, still rocking back and forth atop the paladin beneath her... You'd think a woman would experience some sort of chafing from the constant movements over the armor that refused to leave his body... “But boss said I could keep this one, and so I am content.”
“Ah...” Caspian coughed awkwardly, wondering what hellish nightmare Hastur had sold that young man into. A knight and paladin who certainly didn't deserve it, whatever form said nightmare took. “Very good, Lady Shine.”
“Nobody's coming to save you, you know that?” Klaus laughed, a big ugly bloke with a squashed nose, “And if they do, we'll just kill 'em.”
Mikhail had no idea what was going on, but he knew a lot besides. The 'good cop, bad cop' strategy of promising an end to an interrogation only to make the hell fresh again in the minds of a criminal. Haran was a... Reasonably decent place, with laws and statutes over every little thing, but felons were afforded no rights as a citizen. He'd picked up enough along the way to learn a thing or two about not giving in to that compulsion to spill his guts and hope for an end. Sing all the songs you want and the torture would continue, and then you'd hang or worse no matter what you said or did. Haran did not have much in the way of prisons, just the one, and it wasn't because the people were so good as to not commit crimes.
And yet these people did not ask him a single question.
“Cut it out!” Yucca hissed quietly, pushing back against him harder – staring at him like some kind of idiot. Did he want to get captured? “Just relax for one gods damned second, I'm not lying to you!”
“I'm, uh, really not doing this...” Mikhail shuddered, it felt like the whole world was shaking and with that vibration the shackles kept opening on their hinges. Yucca stared back at him with a furrowed brow, but eventually, she noted it too. As had the rest of the caravan...
Even the puddles about the ground were rippling, as though the whole world around them were coming alive.
“You guys feel that?” Klaus asked, looking all around. His voice sounded... Dull, formless, like he was a room above everyone else and speaking through the floorboards. “Are earthquakes common in this region? There isn't a fault line even remotely close to...”
“It's not an earthquake!” Caspian shouted, hands cupped over his lips to allow his voice to carry. “Get down! War magic!”
As for the source... It was obvious. A massive array in the sky and an ovoid disc of starlight in front of them. Two disembodied eyes glaring back at them through a gate in a region where dimensional magic had no business working.
“We. See. You.”
And beyond that came the wild screams of a thousand mouths, inhuman and brutal – a trumpeting cry not unlike the great wyverns found in the mountain ranges of southern Varia howling from it.
“Incoming!” The men started scrambling about in preparation for the gate's sudden appearance, but it was already too late.