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Post by Joliette Thorne on Mar 6, 2011 8:51:13 GMT -5
Leoxander provoked several startled gasps as he shouldered open the tall door to the cathedral chambers, priests pausing in ritual and priestess in prayer, menders halted in the preparation of bandage and leech to all look toward the ragged looking pirate carrying the grown boy in his arms. "Don't bloody stand there gawking at me, damn landlubbers, HELP HIM." The demand was fierce enough to get several collecting their robes in hands to stand and move over for the fugitive's delivery, ushering the younger, in training, to bring water. They would flinch back again when he suddenly tilted back his head and took a breath, that deep, animalistic howl echoing through the cathedral to startle it into silence, through the streets of Cenril, letting everyone know he was there. Letting the pack present, if any, know he was distressed. An urgent, frustrated sound. When they tried to get Lucien out of his arms he growled, and held fast, and thus they would be leading him toward a fairly sterile, readied chamber where the healing might take place.
Leoxander made a motion toward the shadows where he thought someone to be lurking. "And you don't bloody move...!" A glance toward the door, hoping a familiar face and not the Cenril patrol stormed through, then back to Lucien to rest him down on a softer, cleaner surface.
Lucien was laid on sheets so starched, crisp and cool that he believed his father had brought him far from the sea, to Frostmaw where the baleful goat he'd wandered off to seek was currently giving the creeps to a giant's wife, who hated him with a passion, but damned if she could poison the thing.. In Cenril, the goat's owner felt the chill of delusional frost, aside from the great, yellow sun leaning over him, which had a wolfish look and whose breath was so warm it made him perspire. The sun spoke, but it was in sun-language, and the boy squinted in the effort to make sense of it. Planets, moons, stars, all circled around, quiet and efficient, while he grew steadily more numb. Must be the cold. He really ought to have worn a scarf, like his mother had told him.
Mahri is running. Pushing anyone and everyone out of her way the moment she heard that howl. There was something in it that sound that sent a c hill down her spine and lent desperation to her already considerable speed, even human. Throwing open the doors to the Cathedral, she frantically looks about, "Leo!" she hollers, before spying him, catching his eyes with her own, even from the distance. Not yet seeing Luc, even if his scent lingered strongly and didn't seem quite right, the alpha makes her way past priests and shadow-hidden bodies to the Captain's side. One look at the boy, the youngest Quartermaster she'd ever known, and a breath is sucked in. "How long?"--had he been like this is the rest of the question but she doesn't have time to ask it fully. Her tone says she expects an answer of some sort, whether Leo's fully guised as a human or not.
Leoxander was angry. Most of all at himself, and the guilt would soon eat him alive. But he'd keep himself composed with a look toward Mahri, moving only aside for her slightly. He kept his hand on Lucien's face, his skin almost warmer than his lycanthrope father, flustered. "I pulled him out of the water last night. Eel bit him, nothin' more, I thought he'd sleep it off." But a reprimanding, vicious voice told him he -should- have sought a healer, right away. "Damnit, fix him. Please..." Leo never showed manners for anything but now he was begging the clerics, begging the alpha, begging whoever would stop his son from talking in strange, confused words. He'd seen what these fevers from sea could do in a day. "Help him..." And yet, he wouldn't get out of the way.
By happenstance, perhaps, a man in grand clothing enters in just behind Mahri, one of the very people she had pushed on her way into the cathedral. He seems paranoid, this man, haunted even, and constantly he throws a look over his shoulder. "Luigi!" Someone shouts, making the green-and-black clad man jump, wide eyes darting this way and that to seek the source of the call. "It'sa me, Mario!" The man, Luigi, visibly calms when that declaration is made, running over to embrace the red-and-black clad man. "Mario, be careful. I think I was fo-" But he never gets to finish that statement, a throwing knife suddenly protruding from his throat, and another to thunk into the back of his head. The second man jumps away from his fallen comrade, but he finds himself victim of the same fate, two more knives burying themselves into his chest. The irony of the situation, death occurring where priests attempt to heal another, but it does not at all seem to phase the perpetrator of the crime. Indeed, it's not even likely the murders would be pinned on the killer. After all, no one would expect a man to be standing on a ledge high up the vaulted room. But that's not to say that someone might notice a man in dark clothes up there staring down at the bodies laying in growing pools of blood.
Leoxander noticed, to say the least. He is not so much phased by the double assassination as he is annoyed by it, and kept his lupine eyes traveling between that chamber where the priests and Mahri huddled around his fallen son, and in the direction of that particular ledge where he could not entirely pinpoint the individual to be. His jaw and arm would tense, teeth biting down and hand ready for a blade, concealed inside a skull marked jacket.
Lucien was floating, somewhere in the deep black of the sky, beyond the sun's warm light. He had no real explanation for that. But he was pretty sure he wasn't in Cenril anymore... The throb of his badly infected right arm was sensed as a vague pulse that kept him tethered to the earth so he didn't float away entirely like a deep-deep diver with the bends, without a cord to guide him up again. The view here was pretty spectacular; Luc watched comets whizz by, planets making their solemn, silent circuits. The silence was peaceful, almost holy.
"It's only a visit, lad. Don't get too comfortable."
Luc flinched at the sudden voice, and glanced around for the source. He couldn't find it. The voice seemed to come from nowhere, and everywhere. "Who's there?" he asked, feeling like a bubble made of cold.
"You're in my house," said the voice. "For a time. And we have some things to talk about."
Back in reality, things were transpiring, but Lucien was quite unaware of them.
Mahri is not about to let a damn priest touch her Captain's son. Nor is she about to even look at the fresh source of blood or anywhere else for that matter. That doesn't mean that somewhere in the back of her mind she doesn't take note of the shocked gasps coming from cowled figures or the rush of bodies past the pallet on which Lucien lies, pale and sweating with a fever raging entirely too high. A sound she never ever thought she'd hear, that of Leo pleading for anything, almost shatters her carefully crafted facade of cold indifference to most things. Raising cold silver-gray eyes to meet his, Mahri presses her lips into a thin line and nods slightly, "I'll do what I can." Unfortunately, as much as she'd like to, not even the Alpha can promise to save Lucien. The priests, as well meaning as they might be, are only in her damn way, "Get out of here," she snaps at them, getting no satisfaction when only a few look up to meet her eyes. Whatever they saw in them, the men were grabbing their comrades and pulling them away. Reaching a hand for Luc's own, the other going to rest near Leo's on the boy's forehead, the woman taps into skills she has not used in a very, very long time.
Enzo examines the fleeing masses, the priests being shouted away from the man on the pallet, the other man that...did he look at him? "Accidenti," he mutters to himself as he drops from his perch, spinning about to grab the ledge. He makes his way down to the floor like a monkey climbing a tree, finding foot- and handholds on protrusions, cracks, ledges, whatever he finds on the way down, until his feet are planted firmly on the ground. He moves through the crowds, keeping his hooded form as obstructed as possible, keeping his hood well over his head. Rather than run away, however, he moves towards his kills, eying those nearby to gauge their attentiveness. It's that man who brought the ailing one that he'll have to keep an eye on if he wants to retrieve his knives; if he is definitively connected to the murders, things might just well go badly for the assassin.
Leoxander paced a short distance toward the doorway behind the crowd, his eyes angry on the outside of the room, drifting, then he would pace back toward the patient in Mahri's care, watching her work. An impatient huff of breath and his hand clenched angrily on itself, ears alert to hear the front door open and a stern voice demand to know what was happening. Patrol guards. As if that day could get any worse. Naturally they see two men later identified as Mario and Luigi, and draw their weapons in a sudden spread across the Cathedral of the Divine Three. "Cenril Guards, we demand those who desecrate this holy place present thyself forth guilty!" And Leo whispered a curse, in a church. Add that to his list of sins. From that back chamber he began searching for an exit and realized their were none. Sure, the one day he didn't kill somebody and he was going to get arrested for it. One last look toward his son to make certain Mahri was improving on his health. "Come on, Mahri...." He didn't have time to wait, if he was going to stay free.
Leoxander was unwilling to leave that doorway, knowing there was an assassin in the room. Leaning back against the wall, he inched closer to try to peek around the doorframe and determine how close the nearest guard was.
Mahri frowns in concentration, hands that meet skin take on a faint greenish glow as she gathers energy within herself. Matter of fact, those guards may begin to feel weak, even ill though they won't know why--given the trio are at least hidden behind a partition. Directing that energy into Lucien, she first tries to slow the flow of poison from infection and bring down that fever raging in an otherwise strong body. The murmur she offers Leo he is sure to hear, "Can't..rush it." The furrow between her brows deepen and another breath is blown out as yet more energy is drawn from around her. Aside from the guards she specifically targeted, smaller creatures will feel the affect first and die soon after, their life stolen to save Lucien. Something wasn’t right though and it niggled in the back of her mind. Another indrawn breath, more energy used and perhaps a small thread of herself, her own essence is drawn along the pale light of her hands to hover at the border of self and Lucien. "Somethin's no' right."
Lucien said, to the voice, "So.. this is your house?" He glanced around at slow-spinning galaxies and asteroid clusters, not knowing where to look when he addressed the disembodied entity. "Nice. The taxes must be astronomical."
His joke was replied to with a deep chuckle that rumbled through Luc like a distant earthquake. "They're not too bad," said the voice. Then: "Oh dear. Hold on a moment. Pressing business."
In the Cathedral, the great central fire would flare abruptly, flames shooting up to almost lick the beams of its lofty vault. Priests shrieked, and fell as one to their knees, foreheads pressing to the stone below, fervent prayers shouted in an incoherent, disunified cacophony. The guards, taken aback by that, halted their line of questioning and stared. Back in deep space, Lucien waited patiently for the voice to resume, which it did.
"Sorry. Now, where was I..."
Luc blinked, though he couldn't feel his eyelids. "Um. You were saying something about taxes, I think?"
Leoxander didn't want to hear her respond with the words 'not right'. This was his son's life she held in her hands. "The hell do you mean, 'not right'?" Barked back to the Alpha Lycan quietly, but loudly enough that even weak guards might look toward the healing chamber. And then fire blinded their eyes, and even Leo backed up a step with his inked arm up in defense. He wasn't certain how the fire was suddenly started in the church, maybe a flare from the assassin, but it fortunately bought him time to move back to Mahri and his cub with a hand coming to Lucien's brow. "Come on, boy, knock it off! You quit talkin' nonsense and wake your ass up! I can't... damnit, I can't do all this without you." And terribly unfortunate for him, he didn't have an ounce of healing capability... beyond what was a virus in his veins. He gave Mahri a look, trying to judge whether she was failing, or frustrated in her expression. "I can NOT lose him." He informed her, harsher than he'd ever reassured anyone of anything before. A warning of what he would do, if she couldn't save him.
Enzo sins just like Leo, cursing in this most holy of places. But then, what is sinning in a church to a man who just killed two people in one? But the arrival of the guards cuts the killer's plans off. With the law present, collecting his used knives is a no-go, and so he starts edging towards the door, using the crowd as cover. Damn it all, though, there's that attentive man, right by his path. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes. But then some of the guards falter, and one even vomits. His attention snaps towards them, and a wicked grin spreads on his lips. Closer to the sick ones he edges while stepping over the occasional dead insect, his wrist twisting this way and that as though loosening something. "Name yourself!" is a shout that has the assassin's steps hurrying, one of the guards unaffected by Mahri's spell catching sight of him. "Are you naming yourself the murderer?" The guard comes on, readying his sword, but it's too late for his companion, the vomiting guard that Enzo has his eyes set on. He pats his hand on the man's back as though showing concern, but the quickly blood-covered blade protruding from a vambrace worn on his forearm belies his malignant intent. Well, that and the blood covering the guard's back. "Get him!" the first man shouts, and this is who the killer labels the captain of the group. "You will die before I leave this place, sciocco," he tells the guard as he draws his black-bladed saber. And then all hell breaks loose. But who knows, it might inadvertently buy time for the healer woman who's not really a healer.
Mahri is most definitely frustrated. The clench of her jaw shows as much even with her eyes closed and attention turned inward. She does hear Leo, she simply fails to answer in any meaningful way. That sliver of 'self' extends, probing within the prone body under her hands. "C'm'on Luc.." she murmurs, "Where are you?" She can hope that he hears her and she'd be surprised if he did. Perspiration beads her forehead, her pale complexion losing what color it usually held making the scar trailing over nose and down her right cheek stand out more than it did normally, almost pink against ashen looking skin. Splitting her concentration, the bite is given a burst of healing energies. The eel bite just may burn as flesh is knitted together, connecting vessels and nerves. Leo would know the feeling, given the few times she'd worked on him. The other half of her attention is given to that shred of consciousness seeking that of Lucien.
Lucien and the entity to whom he was only paying a visit, or so it had said - and Luc had the strongest feeling he could trust its words - chattered on a while about the nature of things, why no two snow flakes were ever alike and such trivia, until the voice made a soft cough, signalling a change of topic.
"Now," it intoned, in a manner that had Lucien sit upright. Or would have, if he wasn't currently a bubble. "To more serious matters. There's a decision pending below." A pause. "Several, if you like. But the important one hangs like a sword from a thread."
Lucien wasn't following, and said as much.
"Fate," replied the voice, "Fate is making one of its odd turns. Even we don't know which way things will go, sometimes. For example.." Luc could see, then, as though through a very narrow telescope, the scene unfolding in the church, "Sinners doing good. Good men, being sinful. Which is which? It's just not that clear, at times. Fate mucks things up, that way. But I digress. The Lord of the Forest has called you. But it's not for you to make the answer, is the issue." And with that riddle, which left the boy even more confused, the voice began trailing off. "Make yourself comfortable. You'll be here a while, in any case."
Leoxander quickly wrapped the fabric of a high, bunched collar over half his face, while the other hand drew a long blade from the sheath at his hip. One of two, the pair remaining concealed. He gave Lucien one last pleading look and made his way for the door to stop any other of many guards from making it beyond that barrier, so what chances Mahri had might be fulfilled. And though Enzo had gathered the attention of several weakened guards, there were two that had crawled off their knees to wander around the smoldering blaze, toward the noise. He waited, slowed his breath, until they were close enough and one had stepped in such an angle with a pause. By the time that guard looked back, his comrade was falling, clutching his throat with a deep red velvet oozing over his fingers. He'd catch just a glimpse of the rogue before an elbow viciously sent into the side of his helmet had him stumbling into the cathedral wall, and a swift stab sank through ribs into heart to end it swiftly, painlessly. Two witnesses down, how many more to go? Mismatched eyes squinted through the smoke and the hair in his eyes to count how many guards remained, divided between two assassins.
Metal sings against metal as the assassin dances with his partners, the foreign killer slashing and parrying as the moment dictates. The guards are sick, their defenses far from flawless, and they fall quickly enough that Enzo faces his designated captain and only a duo of others at the end of it all. These three, however, they are not at all as ill as their comrades, and the spread to flank the assassin in a triangular formation. They test his defenses, one or another coming in with a gouging thrust that the killer easily slaps away each time. And then they come in hard, forcing the hooded killer to spin constantly, saber and wrist-blade both used to knock aside the guards' weapons. It's a matter of who slips up first in this deadly dance, who leaves themself open before another. Luckily for Enzo, it's one of the guards. Saber slashes wrist, wrist-blade slashes throat, and that just leaves two more. "You will die, you murdering bastard!" the one Enzo calls their captain shouts. Strange, though...he doesn't seem to be in such a rush to come at him. Maybe he's just catching his breath...right?
Mahri can't pay attention to anything going on around her. It is impossible as her too-little used magics get to work trying to purge the poison from Lucien's body and break that fever. If nothing else, perhaps she can slow the spread of infection. And still, a piece of her--lets call it her soul-- drifts around in search of an answering spark from Lucien. "Luc," she calls softly, "Come on back to us. Don' make me have to tell Caedan I lost ye, or ye Da." Slowly that odd accent makes itself known, a sign of still more stress. "Do ye know what t'ey'd do t' me? What ye Ma would do t' me? Chains o' silver an' havin' m' hands smashed would be a tickle compared." Why, oh why can't she find that thread that was Luc? The healing is done for the most part. She hopes.
Mahri is probably still drawing as much energy as she can from those guards too.
Leoxander had very little to deal with once Enzo had finished up with the lot, but the rogue casually sent the heel of his boot into the face of one trying to stumble sickly to his feet, knocking him onto his back a couple feet back, out cold. Stalking, blade in visible hand, he made his way for Enzo and the captain of the guards with his different colored eyes drifting back and forth under a veil of shaggy, unkempt hair, above the black 'mask' across his nose. Apparently he couldn't decide which one he'd be fighting first, but the Captain was trying to twist to face both of them, backing up nervously. Since Enzo didn't seem at any rush to finish either, Leoxander would step in, and a few parries and thrusts with a retaliation of a brutal pirate tactic swing to the midsection, from a lycanthrope's stronger sword arm, bit well into armor beneath the platoon leader's ribs, causing him to lose that closer weapon. From there, it was finished, a second blade drawn and stabbed swiftly, precisely into a visor hole, and thus into the soldier's eye. His skull slid off the blade as a tattooed arm retracted, and the rogue turned to face Enzo.
Lucien, or the flesh he usually occupied, would stir feebly under the lycaness' gaze. Elsewhere, in some indefinable space, the lad was still looking down that narrow telescope, and frowning. It was chaos down there. He ought to be there, helping his dad out, not out here in.. wherever. And with that thought he began to feel his own weight again, a sensation like sinking to the bottom of the sea. And through what seemed a blur of light and motion, peeling the darkness back, he caught sight of a red and white life buoy, in the middle of which was Mahri's face, speaking things he couldn't make out. It seemed suddenly very important that he swim toward it, and his father, whose shape he could make out, if not his features. He could only move languidly, though, which frustrated him. In the flesh, the boy's arm had knitted a little, though the fever stayed high enough to keep him sweating. "Dad!" he shouted, kicking toward the buoy. It would emerge from his physical throat as a faint croak.
Mahri heard the sounds of blades clashing, somewhere in the distance. It went ignored. Whatever was happening outside her and Lucien's body, she didn't care to take note of. No, he was ~there~ she could sense him. "That's it," she whispers hoarsely, like she'd been screaming for sometime. "Come home, Lucien.." Now that the guards were dead or mostly so, a new source of fuel is needed. If there were priests nearby, despite the flaring of fire, they'll be the first to feel that tug and pull of essence spindled within the druid and sent again through contact into Lucien's much cooler form. "Come home for Gods' sake."
Enzo stares at his counterpart in the fight against the guards, and though the pirate helped dispatch the upholders of the law, he does not sheathe his blade. They both are clearly murderers, and that is what has Enzo on edge. "And now you will kill me, hm?" he asks, his Common heavily accented and perhaps hard to understand. "I don't think so, signore!" In he comes, his saber flashing out in quick, agile slashes across the level of Leo's chest, each re-angling of his saber accompanied by a strike from Enzo's wrist blade. He spins away by the end of it, putting space, he hopes, between himself and the other killer, taking stock of his counterpart.
Leoxander lifted both arms quick, a sharp clash of blade hitting twice for each strike as he was attacked, all of them skilfully deflected, though a brawl between that opponent would be an interesting challenge to stay in the back of his mind. But he had to make a choice between that natural blood thirst and the parental instinct that did not come so naturally. As Enzo put space between them and did not stay on the offense, Leo realized he could take a risk, and made the decision to let the assassin be, whatever his initial reasons for being there. He made the decision to almost turn his back on the hooded figure after a brief, warning stare, to attempt to run back toward the room where his son was dying, to be at his side. To make damn sure Mahri brought him back from that possibility. His heart would sink as he neared that chamber to realize she was still fighting to recover him from that dark place he'd gone. All this, from an eel? If that boy lived he'd probably lose his love of deep diving quick through Leo's frustration. Weapons would be sheathed, so long as Enzo made no final tries to impale him with one.
Enzo watches the man back towards his son, and without a reason to fight...well, he doesn't. His saber returns to his hip and his wrist blade slides back to its hiding place, and the assassin moves towards the entrance. He pauses there, however, to look back towards the trio, and most specifically the pirate he thought meant to slay him. Seen or not, a salute is given Leo, and even a small chuckle. Oh, the irony of being a killer having to be concerned for his young.
Lucien's wound was no longer a bare mass of meat, the skin pulling together thinly, a shiny red pattern where there was no skin to pull, the boy's flesh making do with a healed-over scar of raw tissue. Which had an odd shape to it, that would probably remain un-noticed for now, what with all the mayhem going on in the temple dedicated to the triumvirate gods of Lithrydel. Luc's eyes, dark and dull as two dead coals, cracked open to a world he currently understood as little as the place he'd just been. The light of the fires hurt his vision, and his arm hurt like heck. "Dad?" He couldn't see that far, though he knew his father's shape as well as he knew a land by its outline on a map. His head turned a little to take in sight of Mahri, a thin smile offered to her by way of greeting. Parched, cracked lips parted. "Haven't seen my goat, have you?"
Leoxander was speckled in blood that wasn't his, and already the priests were whispering prayers on his wicked doings, accusing eyes fixed on the man in the doorway to their sacred chambers. Some of them so bold as to make eager, shooing motions before the gods smite them all. He ignored them all, watching Mahri until he saw dark eyes crack into view, and let go of a breath he'd been holding, but only to curse, in relief. "To hell with that goat. Mahri, you're a bloody gift..." This added as he went to wrap Lucien's head up in a hug, smothering him for a moment and getting some victim's blood on those crisp, linen sheets.
Mahri 's eyes slowly open as she withdraws both her hands and that small sense of self. Whether or not Lucien felt it, the lycan gives her own weak version of a smile. "No, I'll find it though," she promises softly. A snort is all Leo gets as a 'you're welcome' for his effort at thanks. Still, she hasn't even tried to get up, afraid her legs won't hold her. Dark circles under her eyes give them a sunken look and her lips are washed of color. "Careful Leo," she admonishes, "He's not all the way better yet. For him it'll take some time." Giving her bit of sage advice, Mahri slumps against the nearest wall and closes her eyes so that, perhaps, the world would stop spinning.
Leoxander loosened his hold a bit at her words, letting him rest back down for the moment.
Mahri saw that, through a cracked eye lid, and grins to herself.
Lucien only half-returned that embrace, which threatened to squeeze the air of him, since he couldn't move his other arm. His functional one would wrap about Leoxander's shoulder though, as the youth clung to his father like a much smaller child, his face buried in a tangle of hair, belonging them both. He had a vague awareness that he wasn't where he ought to be. "Sorry..." was muttered, muffled through that blond and white mix, before he felt the hold release and he sank back to the not-so-white-anymore sheets. He was always saying sorry, for something, to somebody, but the word would never carry so much sincerity as it did when he spoke it to the Captain. The immobile arm remained limp, throbbing faintly where a scar that weirdly resembled a stag's rack of antlers would remain, for the rest of the boy’s life.
Mahri stirs herself, getting to her feet slower than she'd have liked, and stretches to relieve the ache of sore muscles, mostly in her back. Eying the father and son, something tugs at the vicinity of her heart, which she ignores firmly before moving to the partitions door. What she sees beyond comes as only a mild shock. So may dead bodies and weakened priests going from one to the other. "I always miss the excitement," she says drolly, leaning against the doorway with her back to Leo and Lucien.
Leoxander was a little emotional. He didn't mean to be, it just kinda happened to him without warning as he held Lucien and dug his fingers through the kid's white hair. Hearing the apology stabbed a feeling in his gut. Finally he let go of Lucien gently, but managed to drop a hand roughly on the bed near him with a bit of frustration escaping him, next. To replace the relief and guilt, temporarily. "Damnit, Lucien...!" He didn't have anything to reprimand the boy for, though. It was his own fault Lucien had managed to wander feverishly from the ship. His own fault. "...Your Mum is gonna bloody kill me..." A hand dragged down his face as he thought about it, and he turned his head to award the healers staring in on them a look that had them taking a few steps back. "We've gotta go. Now..."
Mahri glared back at the healers. Useless lot they'd been even if she had sent them away, "Aye, aye Captain." Still not quite up to par, but her strength returning, she glances over her shoulder at the pair, her words directed at Lucien, "Can you walk, or do we carry you?" Either way would be slow going, unless Leo had a different idea. Either way, she wasn't leaving the boy til he was fully recouperated or she was told to leave.
Lucien murmured, "I want to go home." He would struggle upward, putting undue pressure on that still-recovering arm, which made him yelp sharply and look at Mahri, then his father, with an obvious embarrassment at the lapse. "I think I can walk?" He didn't sound too sure about that.
Leoxander wasn't going to let Lucien walk or wander or talk about goats for at least the rest of the evening. He moved to that bedding and scooped out his son carefully back into his arms, turning to look over at Mahri with a frown. "You gonna be alright? I'll come back for you if you need me to..." Though that would be after he anchored Lucien to a cannon in the belly of the ship.
Mahri answers Leo with a glare and determined push away from the wall. "Lead on Captain. If I fall behind, I'll make it on my own." There's that nasty streak of independence and stubborn resolve. She was not going to keep Leo from his son, and she damned well had no plans to fall behind. Of course, should there be any other guards of the Cenrilian regiment, she'd make sure they didn't follow the pirate nor capture him --again--.
Lucien swam in and out consciousness, knowing only that he was safe, and not floating off anywhere again anytime soon, which brought him a modicum of peace. The fussing, muttering priests were crowding in, albeit in a wide circle around the rough pirate and his injured son, still making those horrified shoo-ing gestures. Until one caught of Lucien's scar. The priest, an elderly man with a pince-nez perched on the end of his red-tipped nose, whispered urgently to the acolyte beside him, who whispered to the man beside him. By the time Leo was ready to walk out, the whole lot would be hissing like a host of river-reeds in the wind, melting back against the wall to make free passage for the pair and the woman with them. And if the pirate and the druid felt followed, it was because they were, the small company trailed at a respectable and hopefully unthreatening distance by a couple of the Cathedral's stouter devotees, intent on making sure the trio got where they were going.
Leoxander started to head for the door with a low reply. "The ship's not far. Just passed the-..." A sudden, distant tromp of plated metal made him pause, and curse, under his breath. He lowered Lucien's feet to the ground only briefly, leaning the weakened boy against him so he could swiftly unbuckle and shrug out of his jacket, wrapping it over Lucien's shoulders so it would not be lost. A tug of buckles then boots, and he'd leave those behind, picking the white haired boy back up in arms that seemed a little more tense than before. That odd behavior might be understood by the alpha easier than anyone, and he ran hastily for the door, ducking his head and flattening his ears, breaking through it with a fur covered shoulder by the time he reached that wood. Sure enough, several guards on the end of the street took a look at the half transformed, still shifting creature that opened his mouth for a loud, protective snarl, and stunned, it took them a moment to realize they had weapons in their hands. As they were lifted, Leo was already sprinting north up Memorial avenue toward Beloy, stirring a bit of chaos from witnesses and passers by as they saw the werewolf creature carrying a victim boy, chased by a posse of guards. He'd spared a suspicious glance back only once, but that transformation likely gave the devotees a pause.
Mahri isn't quite sure about what's going on, but she'll keep close to her Captain and Lucien, suspicious glances sent about until they are out of the building. Fortunately, she doesn't notice a tail wearing the garb of authority and if there's the impression of priestly figures, she'll happily assume they are friar-like folks out preaching to the populace. As long as they leave her, Leo and Luc alone, she's one happy lycan.
Mahri decides there must be a need for speed..having completely missed the stunned soldiers with her lessened powers of observation, and isn't too far behind a racing Leo and dangling Lucien.
Lucien's erstwhile bodyguards did, indeed, make pause-- they couldn't expect a bunch of lunk-headed city guards to understand what was so important about the lad, or his scar-mark. Cringing at the thought of reporting to the elder priest that they'd lost track of the boy, they'd tromp back to the Cathedral, resigned to trusting the gods -- and that savage-looking half-wolf-- to finish the job for them and prevent any further disaster.
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