The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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The vicious skirmish, for no one yet had wanted to label it a battle and admit that it could be the start of a new campaign, continued on relentlessly at the gates of Santa Nada. The strict military discipline of the defenders kept any signs of panic hidden, while the natural bloodthirstiness of the attackers made it clear they didn't plan on stopping the assault any time soon. For a short time, neither side had any casualties; then, one by one, warriors on both sides began to fall to the crashing waves of noise. More stepped up to take their places, and no longer could anyone deny that it was a battle.

Meanwhile, on an entirely different stretch of wall far away from the fighting, three grappling hooks sailed over the heads of a pair of dead guards, clinking quietly against the stone as they nestled themselves securely against it. Three viking commandos pulled themselves up by the ropes, then reeled them in and threw them over the side of the wall, outside of the city. The bodies of the dead guards soon followed. The commandos then snuck down the stairs of the watchtower. In two other places along the wall, similar commando squads made their entrances. Each had the same goal - enter the city undetected and activate the Symphony, using it to kill the seven of the prophecy who were not on their side.

The viking commandos were a secret weapon of sorts, generally kept in reserve unless absolutely required. Part of their deadliness lay in the fact that no one expected a viking to be capable of even speaking softly, much less of being stealthy. Unlike most vikings, who generally chose nice, loud instruments to fight with, the commandos were each armed with a pair of tuning forks and a dog whistle, allowing them to kill quickly and quietly while staying light on their feet.

The commandos made use of their skills to slip through the town, approaching the Symphony while avoiding detection by sticking to the shadows. As they passed a street where a small crowd was gathering, however, they spied something that made them take pause. At first they noticed only the figure cloaked in shadow, who was unlike anything they'd seen before, but a quick examination of the two women beside him showed that they stood out from the townsfolk as well, albeit to a lesser extent. Theremins were unheard of for viking and villagers alike, and the device on the back of the other one was more than a little out of place. After some communication with hand gestures, the vikings raised their tuning forks and snuck up towards the unprotected backs of the contestants.

But not everyone missed things in the shadows so easily.

Klendel had had the three commandos pegged as unusual the moment he'd detected them sneaking past in the shadows nearby, but until he felt them raise their tuning forks he had thought they were simply very good thieves trying to avoid a crowd. He casually placed his arms on Cascala and Harmon's shoulders; in any other circumstance, it might've looked friendly or even flirtatious. The unexpected touch barely seemed to register with Cascala, lost as she was in her own little world, but Harmon tensed slightly at the unexpected touch of cool, smooth shadow.

But Klendel had other things on his mind than picking up chicks. Just as the commandos, in perfect unison, raised their tuning forks to strike, Klendel pushed Cascala and Harmon forward. A tuning fork hit his back, vibrating quietly, and he crumpled to the floor in an unmoving pile. Harmon and Cascala turned around in time to see the other two forks stabbing at the air where they'd been standing just moments before. The vikings stepped over Klendel's inert form, and before she even knew what she was doing, Harmon had already opened her mouth.

"You've got your whip and your mule stick, think you can string me right along," she sang, starting out clumsily but quickly forming a rhythm, which Cascala dreamily joined into with her theremin. "Well I've got some news here for you buddy, I'm gonna let you know you're wrong!"

The vikings found themselves pushed back by the unexpected musical front, but instead of stumbling back onto the floor, collided with a cold, shadowy rope that bounced them forward again, as if the alleyway were suddenly a wrestling ring and they'd been pushed into the side.

"Because I'm LOUD!" The vikings were shoved back again before hitting the ground, and again bounced forward off the black rope. "And I'm PROUD!" Again they were pushed back and forth, looking increasingly dazed as each musical blow struck them. "And I'm THROUGH!" The gathered crowd wasn't sure whether to watch the woman beating up the three men or the man beating up the hydra. "With YOU!" Harmon paused for breath, and the vikings crashed forward onto the ground, unconscious. She peered at them curiously.

Klendel's voice came from the side of the alley. "Interesting. It seems someone has decided to send assassins after us."

Harmon looked up to see him leaning against the wall of one of the buildings. Preoccupied as she had been, she was certain that he had been lying dead on the ground. But no, she realized, he couldn't have been. Then the round would have ended, and they were still here. And he was still there, of course. "How did you survive getting stabbed in the back?" she asked, squinting at him. "That's usually pretty lethal."

Klendel waggled a shadowy finger at her. Harmon couldn't tell which one; it could have been a trick of the light, but it seemed less that he had raised a finger, and more that the others had receded into his hand. "You're out of questions, Harmon, and I don't think want you to start piling up a debt of owed answers to me." He gestured towards the three unconscious men on the floor; Harmon noted that his hand again had five fingers. "Besides, I think figuring out who's trying to kill us should be a bit higher on your list of priorities."

Harmon blinked. "Who? Not..." She cut herself off, realizing that she already knew the most likely reason why. "Let me guess. You think it was one of the other contestants."

Klendel nodded. "Yes, very good. I've ruled out both you and myself - we've been together since the start of the round, after all - as well as Cascala, as she doesn't seem in the right mind to hire an assassin, and likely didn't hire any to stab her." Hearing her name mentioned, Cascala looked up from tending to her theremin, but quickly lost interest in the conversation and continued trying to find some sign of wear and tear on her instrument.

Harmon put her hand to her chin pensively. "Cedric is too stupidly proud to get someone else to do the killing for him. I've got no reading on Nalzaki. Ivan...maybe? He attacked me last round, but we were both after the same thing, so I don't think it was anything personal." She shrugged irritably. "You wouldn't be offering these opinions unless you already knew the answer, so why don't you go ahead and tell me?"

Klendel sighed. "A pity, it's fun to watch you work. As for who I think it is, I'd have to go with Phere. Last round, by the time I found her, she'd already gotten an entire gang under her control; sending minions to kill people definitely seems to be her style." He shrugged. "Then again, maybe it was the horse. One never can tell."

He knelt down and started sifting through the unconscious form of one of the commandos, searching for both weapons and any form of identification. He quickly found both the dog whistle and the tuning forks. He held the dog whistle up, aiming at a wall next to him, and gave an experimental blow. Although no noise seemed to come out, a neat crack appeared in the siding. "Strange that they didn't just use these to pick us off from a distance. I'd have done that."

Harmon looked around cautiously, eyeing the shadowy alleyways. "Not to interrupt your little CSI: Santa Nada moment, but shouldn't we get moving before more of these guys get here?"

The pop culture reference was completely lost on Klendel, whose world had only recently developed steam power. He looked up at her questioningly, then laughed. "Ah! I'd forgotten, you've probably never dealt with an assassination attempt before. Don't know how that slipped my mind." I must have had you confused with someone else. "Assassins generally work alone, and if they fail, there'll be at least a couple of days of lag time for whoever hired them to find out they failed and then hire someone else." He stood up from the commandos. "In fact, I'm starting to doubt these even were assassins. They were too inefficient to have planned this in advance - they could've taken us out from a distance with these weapons, with no risk to themselves. Add to that the size of the group and the military efficiency - highly unusual for freelance hitmen, to say the least. I don't think these were assassins. They were en route to something else, saw us, and tried to take us out."

Harmon completed his train of thought. "...which means that whatever they were after must only be a means to an end, and the end is killing us. Because unless it was a shortcut to completing their mission, they wouldn't have risked exposing themselves by trying to take us out."

Klendel nodded. "Precisely." He looked closely at Harmon, something she found slightly unsettling for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on. "I like you. You're smart. You remind me of someone I knew once." The grin which Harmon was beginning to associate with him showed up yet again. "Not that that really makes you any more trustworthy, of course." He glanced towards Cascala, who had apparently decided her theremin hadn't suffered any damage from being played and was looking around at the rooftops with a frown on her face. "I wonder...could they have been searching for what Cascala was leading us towards?" A shot in the dark, perhaps, but it was better than nothing. And he'd never been unduly bothered by the dark.

Cascala cast her gaze towards Klendel, then Harmon, then back again, flicking between the two at arbitrary intervals. "They were looking for the source of the song. It is getting louder, and more are hearing its call. Come! We must add our voices before it reaches the final verse!" Abruptly, she began to half-walk, half-stumble down another alley; Klendel noted with satisfaction that it was the same general direction the three men had been sneaking in. Both he and Harmon followed the mage.