WHO: Sebastian, Lintu, Liber, and other friends! WHAT: Investigations WHEN: Sometime after the council meeting WHERE: Ashelle and elsewhere WARNINGS: None
Bastian stood in the center of the Way, his breathing moderately strained from the effort of walking the twisting, turning paths and his brow creased with focus. It never got easier. It should, he thought, but it never did.
Exhaling heavily, he took the Screaming Shield from his back and slipped it over his arm. It warbled softly, sensing his anticipation. His nerves.
He was no fool: he understood this endeavor could kill him, Lintu, and Liber. The Library was a quick and easy escape, and he’d given Liber permission to enter it for their excursion, but that didn’t mean no one would get hurt. That didn’t mean this would go off without a hitch. Bastian had no problem catch blows for others. He didn’t like when they caught their own blows.
Steeling his nerves, he assumed a defensive position and checked behind him. Liber and Lintu were making their way toward him, moving as briskly as one could on the Way. Too much more delay, and he’d force them to stop on its winding paths.
“Take me to Roche’s killer,” he told the Way.
The sensation starts at at his feet and continues upward, giving him a strange tingle until his body feels weightless and then disappears from the Way. When Sebastian finds himself solid once more, he’s standing under a dark night sky, he’s feet on a metal balcony. It’s raining but he’s covered by the balcony above him, giving him reprieve enough to take a look at the sights around him.
He overlooks a sprawling but still incredibly city, a series of towering buildings with neon light signs blinking back at him. Vehicles zoom by, flying high above the ground below and racing down seemingly invisible highways, weaving through opposing traffic with ease (though not without the occasional honk).
Behind him is an open set of glass doors, leading into a minimalist apartment - just a few lounge and a coffee table before his gaze would lead him to a kitchen. Presumably a bedroom would be one room over.
Before Sebastian is the back of a figure, the long coat obscuring much of their silhouette. All he can make out is their short hair and the cigarette they hold in their right hand.
Well, then. That was easy.
Sebastian stowed the Shield—this seemed to be one of those Echoes where shields were strange and outdated.
Stepping forward, he tapped the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir. You’re under arrest for the murder of the king.” And then he punched him in the temple hard enough to drop him.
The man flinched and stumbled, his cigarette dropping to the ground and bouncing through the grates to the city several stories down. He nearly dropped but held onto the balcony, the metal resounding as one hand gripped it tight. The other pressed to the temple that Sebastian had hit.
“A murder?” He gave a huff of a laugh, the sound somewhat familiar to Bastian, or maybe it was the the words. Shaking his head again he turned to look at his intruder.
“Hard to charge with me murder,” Roche said as he looked at his son, one eye covered with a patch and the other staring hard, “considering I’m not dead anymore.”
“Anymore?” Liber was sweaty, beneath the thin layers of armor, his fingers on his weapon, but he’d followed all the same. He’d stumbled out of the Way and into some other sort of twisty game, and then: “If we were tracking our father’s murder, and it is our father, either it was...a suicide, or this is not actually our father?” Except his voice cracked a little on the end of that.
Because Liber had mourned Roche, in his own way, and the whiplash of seeing his father here now was…”People died, with the attack on Ashelle.” Came quick, a tiny bit accusing, tripping on the heels of that. Had Roche had something to do with the attack itself? He didn’t come closer, for the moment, to the man they’d found. He hung back and waited at least a few answers.
No matter how many times he walked the Way, it was always difficult and tiring and Lintu hated it. So he wasn't in a particularly good mood when he followed to where Sebastian and Liber were and saw what, for all intents and purposes, seemed like someone playing a rather sick joke.
Tired as he might be, Lintu still responded quickly to the scene; he started muttering a spell under his breath rapidly, his fingers making the motions to activate the spell he'd hung in the pouch of powders and salts hung at his waist. It was a very similar spell to the one he'd used on the door to get into Roche's room in the first place. A spell to counteract magic, but quicker and dirtier than before as he'd set it up before leaving with the vague notion he might need it to counteract something more imminent and deadly.
But, as he snatched the pouch free and threw it as hard as he could manage at Roche's face, he figured it would work just as well to unmask whoever it was masquerading as their father.
Roche managed to snatch up the pouch, hand moving faster than the spell and stopping it before it could even go off. Something between a smirk and a sneer forming at the corner of his mouth. “Distrustful still. Smart.” He tossed it up in his palm, feeling the weight of the spell before tossing it casually back at Lintu. “You should keep that to yourself. I’ll only get uglier with that.”
For a moment Roche stared at him, letting the magic over his face shimmer and revealing a long and ugly scar the ran farther down his cheek from under the patch he wore over his missing eye. Then it was back to the way it was, smoothing over the scar until it disappeared once more.
Turning back to the others, his hand shot his hand and another cigarette appeared, a flame igniting the end until smoke danced upward.
“So you found me. Now what?”
“Now you tell us what part of your plan this is,” Bastian said, voice cold. “Your kingdom is without a king. People have died. And you chose to walk away, to let them die. You tell us why, and you tell us what you’re going to do from here, and we decide if we’ll allow it.”
“Allow it?” Roche laughed before taking a drag of his cigarette. “People die in Ashelle. That’s what happens. It’s best not to concern yourself too much with it.” Another drag.
“Who is reigning in my absence?”
“No one, really.” Liber said a little bit dryly. “Lirdja, presumably, at least for the moment.” Liber was smiling, loose and not-at-all cheerful, “Unless you want to tell us you are secretly ruling from here, I suppose.” Did they still have a corpse, back in Ashelle? Was it a mannequin? Was this truly their father? “Were you behind the attack, or was it truly an attack on all of us, including you?” The scar proved nothing to him - it could be linked, but it could also be some other castle drama.
“For—” Bastian bit off a curse “This isn’t a joke, Your Majesty. You left. Either do us the favor of abdicating or get back on the throne and do your fucking job.”
Ah, well. So much for biting off the curse.
“If something or someone outside Ashelle is threatening her, you have us to take care of it. You, a king, sit your ass on your throne and work.”
"At the very least we should drag him back to Ashelle so the people can see what their king is like," Lintu said, tucking his pouch back away and trying to smooth his feathers back down from their fluffed up annoyance. He didn't quite trust that this really was Roche - anyone that had killed their father could also have just as much magic and be potentially able to stop his magic - but either way getting him back home to face the music, whatever it would be? Seemed a good idea.
"You'd better start explaining if you don't want us to just take you back," he added. "What reason could you possibly have to desert everyone, put your children and your wife through that?" Because while Lintu mightn't get along with Lirdja or even really Roche for that matter, he liked the idea of a man who'd fake his death and abandon his loved ones even less.
“Lirdja will live,” Roche shrugged and waved off the concern. “As will Ashelle. It’s stood fine thus far and will probably do the same for as long as you’re all around. The eldest will stand up. Take the throne.” Another offhand wave. “Abdication isn’t needed, especially now. As long as the blood sit on the throne, it will stand.” Something flickered upon his face as he said it, a start of a sneer at his mouth or a wrinkle of his nose, but it was gone before he let it reach fully. He took another long drag before flicking his cigarette off the side of the balcony. It disappeared into nothingness before it could even properly start falling to the ground below.
“What true danger lay was with me. And I’ve taken care of it. I still am.”
Bastian’s face remained impassive. “Do you remember my fifteenth birthday?” he asked. “The year I went through the Initiation and received my first title. Do you remember what you said to me after the ceremony, Father?”
Roche sighed, deeply disappointed in his son, his right hand rubbing his brow tiredly. Then anger flashed in his eye before he swung at Sebastian, far faster than him, but still very strong. His fist connected with Bastian’s chin as he sneered.
“Couldn’t just leave well enough alone. Fucking Ashellites.”
Lintu would like to say he'd seen the blow coming, but truthfully the suddenness of it startled him and the sound of Roche - or whoever he was - striking Bastian echoed through his mind.
This was going to get ugly, he realised. But he didn't let him stop him in responding. He'd figured this would happen when they'd left the castle and he'd prepared for it.
"Bastian! Get clear!" he snapped, though Lintu didn't wait to see if he was listened to. He trusted Bastian enough after all this time to expect him to either move or have a reason he couldn't. Just as he knew Bastian trusted him to do what he had to.
This time it wasn't the pouch but a flask that he snatched up, thumb flicking the stopper off and following through the motion to toss the contents - meltwater and ground diamonds, among other rare and expensive things - in an arc towards the imposter. He had no intentions of letting him catch the spell this time, and if he had to freeze Bastian in place along with Roche to catch him, well he could always make it up to him later.
Roche was faster than Lintu as well, and he glanced at Lintu long enough to have an idea of what was going on. Following through with his punch, he ducked and weaved, spinning around Sebastian’s and pushing him forward so the Ashellite son would catch the brunt of the spell contents.
“Watch out, Bastian,” he taunted as his hand slid off Bastian’s back and moved back to clear the splash radius of Lintu’s spell.
Liber was frozen for all of two heartbeats before he was moving to join the fray. He wouldn’t take the splash for Bastian - that would be dumb, Bastian was far better at defense than he could ever be - but would instead move offensively to try and catch the “Roche” with a quick blow. He wasn’t as good at unarmed.
It wasn’t his best.
But even if he strongly suspected this person was not his father, it was still hard to stick a dagger in someone wearing his father’s face.
Unfortunately for Roche, his luck outmaneuvering the sons of Roche was shortlived, and Liber was quicker than him. One step back had him coming up against Liber, and before he could move again, he caught a suckerpunch to the face. It was enough to surprise him but not enough to daze him. Instinctively he moved to the side to get his bearings before, hopefully, scoring a punch on Liber in kind.
Bastian’s head snapped back, but he recovered quickly. The Shield lurched forward with a shriek, swinging around the man’s head in a wild, unpredictable pattern. It had just enough thought to allow Liber and Lintu’s strikes through its whirling patterns.
It slammed into the back of the man’s knees while he was distracted with Liber, and Bastian, also capitalizing on that distraction, slammed a fist into the side of the man’s head with all the force of two suns colliding.
Liber grunted as the man made contact with his side, a low noise, but he lashed out again in the twist of being struck, using the pommel of his dagger for a body blow. Continued distraction rather than trying to debilitate. He let Bastian have the head; hopefully Bastian would knock the man out.
Although he was a little worried the head blow might kill the man.
Between the shield, Liber, and Bastian, Roche couldn’t keep up for much longer. His knees buckled first and his body bowed under the force of Liber’s strike with his dagger. When Bastian’s hit came, Roche crumbled completely, hitting the metal grates of the balcony they all stood on with a vibrating thud.
“Lintu, can you pull his true name from him and use it to bind him?” Bastian asked.
"No," Lintu said, already digging out a section of rope. It wasn't as effective as the freezing water would have been, but he'd be sore about the loss and grateful it hadn't effected Bastian later. For now he wound the rope loosely around Roche's wrists and murmured under his breath. It moved like a living thing under his touch, extended and winding around Roche's arms in a complex, ornate pattern. Once it was done it fused together, magical and physical bindings setting hard.
"I'll need time to learn his name, but this should hold him. It was made for someone stronger." He quirked a brow at Bastian. "And that word we discussed not too long ago is the key, so you can undo it as well."
“‘The word you discussed’, the ‘someone stronger’, the eyebrow waggling from me can wait till we’ve wrested more information from our dead-father-who-isn’t-our-dead-father, but trust that it will come.” Liber quipped as he rubbed loose, kneading fingers over his side, where ‘Roche’ had hit him. “And if he isn’t our father, did he know we were coming, or did he just plan to wear this face indefinitely?” Was mostly to himself.
Mostly.
"Let's just get him back before he has the chance to wake up or spring more surprises on us," Lintu sighed. He wasn't looking forward to how walking the Way was going to go with a captive but he imagined Bastian and Liber could handle it.
"Then I can get started on trying to find out who he really is."