#openveined

He followed the money and wanted posters from Blackbyre, cutting fingers and scalps for a substantial bounty. Prices for heads were on the uptick- better here than Dundee’s shitstained roads and feck all prices. Coach robbery was a luxury sport in this little neck of the woods- but he tore off a notice- one Regulus von Bok looking for folk to hunt treasure and kill a few along the way. At a Blackbyre drinking hole he’d heard talk of the road in being cursed and steeped in banditry.

Good business.

The torn paper, stained with rum listed a name and a general direction of this old road- and when he asked for direction, it lead him on the overgrown footpath to a crumbled summer home with a single man standing outside her porch.

“...”

He lowered the paper in his hand, the heavy veil over his face tilting. That’s... a jacket he recognized. And a kerchief. An outline that escaped the axe and he could sell the neck of to the right buyer in London. He pulls the chain from his belt.

Regulus asks it over his shoulder, his head tilted back to look at Dismas quietly. the manor in the Hamlet itself is hardly more than a summer home, small compared to the manse that sits on the hill over the sea, but decorated nonetheless.

the portraits that remain have been taken down. one has been covered, a man who looks disturbingly like the heir apparent. instead, he looks at a different one, a woman with dark hair and wearing a cloak pinned by the iron crown.

it scratches. . .something in his mind. something like familiarity.

“ the portraits have survived the ocean spray all these years, despite the broken windows. ”

“You, a spirit too? That is funny. It’s bullshit how close the cunt karatakasta came to passing though.”

She lands in the chair beside him, either way. He’d done a damnably powerful thing. Taking on a horde of skinwalkers by himself? Even she had a hard time looking at him and denying that he wasn’t either batshit or that good with a blade. She orders a pint that’s set into her hand and half drunk in moments.

“Oooh, Dan Can the Highwayman He puts all the monsters into the garabge can! Dan Can the Highwayman, He’s truly the only the only man that we stand!”

Lyre breakdown.

“Oooooh, Dan Can the Thighwayman, From the Brothal he is banned! In the Abby, he found his man!! Oh, Dan Can the Thighwayman, Truly the hoe, we all understand!”

With a vicious swing of the arm, the necklace is torn asunder within the hireling rogue’s dangling grip, scattering the off-white spheres across the blackened ground. The retainer’s hellish stare sears through the narrow slit of his helmet, blazing against the other’s similarly irate expression.

“Speak all you wish of ‘uprightness’—when your earnings fail, so too will your loyalty.” Fingers flex around the handle of his sword, muscles tensed. 

“You are an idiot to think yourself above your ilk.”

      “I am surprised at the number of brigands that have been hired on this expedition,” she admits.