"The shark huh?" Maritza merely grunted in response to the small mercenary's teasing words. The Naga was vaguely familiar with the mercenary in passing, and then only by reputation. So when Gillian and Gerard stepped forward with more experience on the matter, Mari was happy to let them take the lead in the conversation.

Tucking her axe back into her belt, she slid around Alette, making sure to stay out of the spearwoman's weapon reach as the Naga moved to inspect one of the corpses behind the diminutive merc. Meritza made a brief show of inspecting the dead body before turning to watch Alette out of the corner of her eye, having now effectively pincered the mercenary leader between herself and the others. It wasn't exactly subtle, but in this situation, subtlety was the last of the Naga's concerns.

Fleuri Jodeau

The name Alette the Shark didn't ring any bells for Fleuri. Truth be told, he hadn't paid any attention to mercenary companies since the War of the Red Flag ended. Fortunately, the other knights in the group were not nearly as ignorant of such matters. Gerard, particularly, seemed to ease up at the mention of Alette, and if anyone here knew whether or not whether a soldier of fortune was the real deal, it'd be him. Fleuri couldn't yet be sure if the girl's story was to be believed, but he'd give her the benefit of a doubt for now.

I have to admit, her story makes more sense than this unexplained "come here and help the fort" message that the now-deceased messenger had sent. Many of the knights had suspected something was amiss before they got here, and this mercenary's story- that the fort's occupants had been killed and replaced by imposters- would explain the suspicious circumstances of the message.

With tensions eased up a bit, Fleuri dismounted so he could help investigate things more closely. The first thing he did was pick up his lance, drive it into the ground like a massive stake, and tie his horse to it as an impromptu hitching post. It wouldn't stop the powerful charger from pulling free if it was sufficiently motivated, but Fleuri just needed it to not wander off while they investigated the fort. By the time he was ready, however, Gerard had already made a key discovery. The corpses- including the one whom they had witnessed Alette kill- bore the mark of mercenaries whom Gerard recognized. His word is good enough for me. If Gerard thinks Alette is telling the truth, I believe her too.

With some of the knights investigating the corpses lying about the courtyard, and others interrogating Alette, Fleuri decided to heed the mercenary girl's suggestion and head inside. According to her, things were even worse inside, and it was where they'd find answers to what was really going on. Fleuri also figured it was where the rest of Alette's group would be found, and if so, it might be worth asking them about this mess.

"Captain, I'll head inside and see what I can find," he announced. Fleuri took off his helmet and stepped into the interior of the fort, mentally preparing himself whatever gruesome scene awaited him within.

@VitaVitaAR

Jarde's investigation yielded some interesting discoveries. The lifeless body had a tattoo on its left shoulder, a boar with golden tusks and red eyes. A mark of membership, Jarde was sure. Still, he did not recognize the emblem but it was certain that this was no Thaln soldier. The young knight went over to the other corpses and found the same tattoos, but the oldest-looking bodies had clean shoulders which probably meant they were the Thaln defenders, long killed before Alette's arrival.

"... Search... search the bodies, everyone,"

The other Iron Roses went ahead and investigated, and yielded the same results. But unlike Jarde, they recognized the boar emblem and confirmed that a mass infiltration took place. One that Alette and her forces so rudely interrupted. Jarde was kind of impressed at these boar mercenaries for theamount of effort and care they put to kill and replace an entire fort's worth of soldiers. Still, that begs the question: Why?

While the other Iron Rose Knights talked to Alette the Shark, Jarde approached Captain Fanilly while watching Sir Fleuri head deeper into the fort. "While we're still not sure what Sharky's here for, we do know that these boar guys she killed are up to no good since it looks like they tried to replace the troops stationed here." He gave his thoughts on the matter. "As to why they would do this," He sighed before continuing. "All the possibilities I can think of are... pretty bad." With Fort Daelantine directly connected to the capital, Jarde feared the worst-case scenario.

"What're your next orders, Captain?"

Fanilly was struggling to understand what she was seeing.

"Mercenaries? Then they were looting the bodies, but how did they..."

She trailed off. Had these Golden Boars killed off the fort's guards? But how had they managed it? She shifted uneasily on the back of her horse, hands gripping at the reins. With no signs of an attack on the fort itself, just how had they managed this? Had they infiltrated prior? But even if they had, a scene of carnage like this precluded the possibility of some kind of perfect stealthy assassination of the fort's occupants.

How had the soldiers died in such numbers?

"Oh? Well, I think you can count the number of Boar bastards I slaughtered by their wounds," commented Alette, cocking her head to one side with a smirk. Indeed, a considerable number of the tattooed corpses had been dispatched with swift, precise spear thrusts that had opened holes in their necks or torsos, "But that fool with the crossbow had tried to ambush me after the rest of his cohorts were dead, so I broke off to finish him."

She shrugged.

"If he'd just run he'd probably still be alive. Idiot."

It was clear she was evading the question of her employer, which was really to be expected. Mercenaries who went outing their employers' identities at the drop of a hat weren't liable to look to good to those in need of their services.

As she spoke, she glanced towards Maritza.

"Oiii, Bors," she called suddenly, "Want to come out?"

With that, the door opposite the main entrance to the innards of the fort swung open, and from within emerged one of the largest people Fanilly had ever seen. She didn't even know if he was a person, at first. Her initial assumption was that he was some sort of gigantic iron golem, clad head to two in dark gray plate and standing several heads taller then even the tallest knight.

He had barely managed to squeeze himself out of the fort.

When he spoke, his voice was like thunder.

"Very well, captain," he replied, calmly, "I see all has gone well."

After getting over the sheer size of the mercenary that had emerged, it was easy to understand what was going on, to Fanilly. Alette had noticed Maritza's movements and responded by calling quite possibly one of the single most threatening mercenaries she had at her disposal, just in case, even it it appeared no violence was likely to ensue.

"That it has!" declared Alette with a grin, "The virgin rose captain here seems pretty reasonable."

If the situation had been less serious, Fanilly would have buried her face in her hands and screamed. Why had the mercenary chosen to describe her like that?

But...

This situation was far too grim to express such feelings. Any embarrassment she felt was buried under her fears over what had occurred here.

"... Putting that aside," she began, "What happened here?"

Alette's cocky grin faded. For a moment, her smug, playful attitude seemed to dissipate.

"I've seen plenty of dead, but this is different."

Within the fort, the situation was far worse.

Soldiers in Thaln's colors lay dead, haphazardly scattered across the floor. Some were slumped on tables, throats slit, or swords buried in their backs. Others had been beaten, some killed seemingly in the middle of a fist fight with a fellow soldier. Two soldiers had died on one another's swords. Some had been taken by surprise, others had died fighting among one another.

A few of the mercenaries under Alette's command were visible here, as well, searching for something other than corpses. Among them was an exceptionally pale, almost bleached white woman in leather armor. She was far more pale then the Shark herself, looking as if she was truly dead, carefully searching drawers. Her long, wavy, pale hair hung to her waist, and she was practically adorned with knives.

One thing was clear, if it hadn't been already.

The soldiers of Thaln...

"... They all killed each other."

@HereComesTheSnow@TheFake@Crimson Paladin@PaulHaynek@FlappyTheSpybot@Raineh Daze@ghastlyinc@Krayzikk

So she wasn't answering? That was fine, she'd get the answer before Alette left. It would be nice if it wouldn't come to violence but if it did... well, the half-giant seemed like an exciting opponent, maybe more than the merc captain did. There was something more exciting about opponents who couldn't be physically overwhelmed, especially when they were hidden behind so much armour. An excellent test of finesse...

"Hey! You don't know that," Tyaethe said, reacting to Alette's... odd description of Fanilly, "You might be right but it's not as if it's that strict a requirement or if we check. Well, unless you've got some strange divinatory ability..."

Fleuri Jodeau

Fleuri made his way to the door just as a massive metal-clad warrior emerged from the opposite the courtyard.

That must be the Bors she mentioned. That'd explain the state of the fort's gate, he silently noted as he looked back at the new arrival, not wanting to enter the fort until he was sure that the situation wasn't escalating into violence. Truth be told, he couldn't really blame Alette for calling someone like Bors to her side, not while she was surrounded by Iron Roses. A few tense moments later, once it was clear that the giant fellow hadn't been ordered to attack, Fleuri turned around and entered the fort.

The inside of the fort was a gruesome sight. Previously Fleuri had assumed that the fort's defenders had been killed by the boar-tattooed mercs via some act of treachery, perhaps an infiltrator or two opening the gates during the cover of night. The state of the corpses inside the fort, however, suggested something more disturbing. It didn't look like a battle had taken place here, it looked more like a massive, lethal brawl had happened. A few of Alette's mercenaries were also milling about and searching the place. Perhaps Fleuri should've been a little concerned about mercenaries rummaging through kingdom property, but his mind was more focused on the shocking state of the bodies.

This wasn't the first time Fleuri had seen the aftermath of a battle. Back when he was a squire, his mentor, a Reonite paladin, was investigating possible evidence of body-snatching going on in one corner of Thaln during the War of the Red Flag. A group of traitor soldiers had carried out a number of successful ambushes in one corner of Thaln, and a few of the victims were always unaccounted for when the ambush sites were found. At first they thought it was slaving, but when the ambushers were caught off-guard and defeated (in a battle that Fleuri, at the time, lamented that he had missed out on), the survivors swore they hadn't taken anyone alive. Fleuri's mentor had a hunch that they should visit the battlefield where the ambushers were defeated. To make a long story short, this eventually led to the two of them bringing down a coven of necromancers who were covertly amassing undead from the dead of both sides, but he never really forgot that first battlefield, and how what he saw now in the fort was nothing like that.

Mercenaries don't discard their swords in the backs of their victims. They don't forego their weapons to beat foes to death. And if Alette's story is true, they couldn't have already been fully disguised when this happened, Fleuri noted as he looked over the bodies and examined what killed them. But if these are all Thaln's soldiers, that must mean...

"... They all killed each other," spoke one of Alette's mercs, a deathly pale-white woman in leather armor and a plethora of knives.

This conclusion painted a far more worrisome picture than murderous infiltration by mercenaries. To compel the entire garrison of a fort to kill one another had to require immense magical power. It was certainly be far beyond anything an average mercenary band ought to be capable of. Perhaps Tyaethe, in her centuries of experience and knowledge of magic, would have some idea as to how this could've happened.

"Have you found anything here that might give a clue as to why these soldiers would kill each other like madmen?" he asked the pale girl. No sooner had he asked this than he heard the voice of Tyaethe, confronting someone about something outside. He hoped that the First and Youngest wasn't going to turn Alette hostile, because Fleuri didn't want to suddenly find himself in combat with all of these mercenaries.

"Apologies, I haven't introduced myself, have I? Sir Fleuri Jodeau, Knight of the Iron Roses," he said as he turned back to the woman, hoping to break the ice and assure them that he had no hostile intent.

@VitaVitaAR

Sparing a brief glance at Bors, Maritza returned attention to Anette. While the half-giant was almost certainly more of a threat to her than the mercenary leader, the Naga was confident in Tyaethe's ability to handle such an opponent. The mountain of a man seemed like the unique kind of opponent that the first and youngest would find most interesting to fight. Or at least, that's what Mari hopped was the case.

Casually sliding a little too close to The Shark, the Naga lazily circled Anette, her tail beginning to form a circle around the Merc. "You know, you still haven't told us why you're here in the first place. A prominent mercenary, this far into the kingdom, the situation being what it is..." The Knight Serpenta paused for a moment, gesturing to the carnage around them. "...does not inspire trust." She finished in a hard tone, arms crossed as she had Anette loosely encircled.

Letting the threat sit for a few moments, Maritza shrugged and began to break off. "Fortunately for you, I'm not the one giving orders. That being said, she's the one who's patience you don't want to test." The Naga added, casually nodding towards Tyaethe as she moved away to inspect another corpse. ...Let her mull that one over. Hopefully someone with a far more silvery tongue than I can coax some answers out of her...

Gerard Segremors

...Is now really the time to be humoring this?

Perhaps wisely, the swordsman held his tongue as he watched the scene play out before him in the evening light, focusing instead on the colossus of iron that emerged from the courtyard opposite them. If nothing else, this was better than rising to the barbs in earnest. More importantly, this "Bors" character's appearance answered a number of questions that had floated around within Gerard's skull. "How exactly were those gates blown open", "are we set to run into the rumored member of the Shark's retinue with Giant's blood I remember hearing about", and "what sort of person would Jeremiah's sword have even initially been forged for, anyway", to name three at random. Towering over any man Sagramore had ever seen and speaking with the voice of a distant avalanche, it wasn't hard to see how he served as an equalizing show of force for Alette, given her spending the majority of this standoff plainly surrounded by their number.

Difficult to take down for certain. If he knew of the aforementioned vampire at all in his time with the Order, he'd make it a safe bet that she would swipe up the chance to cross blades with someone of his stature— which would inevitably produce a comical study in contrasts. Regardless, now that he was here and the two parties had more or less levelled out their chest-puffing to a healthy balance... Well, the third body showed the exact same wounds as the rest. The question was why— something he figured would only be discerned further inside.

He floated towards the interior keep, passing the Knight Serpenta and sparing a momentary glance as she bent down to inspect another corpse. The Naga was... hm. In many ways a kindred spirit, in many others a voice of reason to check those such as he. Yet for all her casual demeanor as she flipped a man's body onto its side to find a long slice down his back, he felt the need to reconfirm it for himself before continuing on. She'd gone and encircled Alette— however slowly and lazily, it was all the same a fairly clear message, even to a dim country boy.

Lucky it didn't escalate then and there. Playing with fire, ma'am.

He forged ahead, in the wake of his fellow Reonite, entering the bloodsoaked antechamber to little fanfare aside from the rummaging of the mercenary before them, and his senior's offered greetings. The woman was deathly pale from what he could see beneath her tanned leathers and the curtain of moonlight waves down her back. Adorned with knives seemingly at anywhere that wasn't a joint as she was, a quick examination revealed the wounds of the garrisoned men to be more of the same as outside, rather than anything that would indict her. The blood was too old for that anyway— beginning to brown over, and tainting the air with the smell of metal.

What sort of shared madness could have caused this?

"Must be some sort of magic to drive an entire garrison rabid enough to kill, right?"

He knelt, fruitlessly trying to glean new detail from the same kinds of evidence as before, brow truly furrowed into a tight knot of inquisition. Some poison in their food? Not his forte in the slightest— he neither knew of one that could do such a thing, nor a method of procurement and dispersion.

"Even rowdier soldiers for hire rarely take a brawl that far. We didn't. Men on the royal pay line ought to be much the same."

Where Fleuri wore the friendly mask of a courteous gentleman, Gerard's grimace edged ever closer to a scowl as his mind raced to find possibilities.

Even given the fact they had only been around one another for a short time, Fanilly could tell that Alette had spoken with uncharacteristic graveness.

"But... what happened here?" she pressed, stepping closer to the mercenary. They'd killed one another... the thought was almost too horrific to imagine. These proud soldiers of Thaln, stationed here for the sake of her people, now dead from killing one another... Who did this to them? What could have caused them to take such measures against one another? "Why would they kill one another so horribly? It's like some sort of madness took them..."

She trailed off, as Alette simply shrugged.

"I can't say," she replied, "Don't have the first clue why they'd turn on one another like this. Pretty nasty business."

"Captain," spoke the iron-clad mountain of a man that had emerged from the fortress, "There is no reason not to tell them, now."

"Tch, as if I'd rat on our employer," she folded her arms, red eyes narrowed, "Bors, you know by now that a mercenary gets no-where by giving out information like that."

"You can inform them of what our employer asked for without telling them of their identity, Captain," Bors insisted, "You would prefer this mystery to be solved as well, would you not?"

"..."

For a few moments, the blue-haired mercenary was silent. Then, she let out a huff, reaching into a pack at her side before retrieving a sheet of paper, thrusting it at Fanilly while looking away.

"Fine."

After a moment, the smallish blonde knight took the paper and unfolded it.

"Something has gone wrong," Fanilly read aloud, "And so you must perform the duty I hired you for. It is a black, glossy piece of metal, appearing dark even in a well-lit room. It should be wrapped in several layers of cloth, but if it is not take care not to touch it with your bare hands. Do not allow anyone to come into direct physical contact with the shard. Wrap it carefully and return to me."

She lowered the sheet. A black, glossy shard? What did it mean?

"That's all we know," declared Alette with a idle wave of her hand.

Meanwhile, within the fort, the deathly pale woman straightened. She was, ignoring her corpselike pallor, stunningly beautiful with slender, soft features and amber eyes.

"Abigail," she began, "Abigail the Stingray. It's a pleasure to meet you, Sir Fleuri."

Her voice was airy and strange, almost dreamlike as she curtsied, as if this was a meeting of high society.

"... They butchered one another," she commented as she straightened, "So much blood, oh my... but my dear, dear Alette wasn't phased at all. Isn't she lovely?"

She placed a hand dreamily to her cheek, staring past the knights and out the door, towards where the mercenary captain stood.

"... I don't know why they did it. No-one does but them, and they're not moving. How unfortunate, all of them dying and not a single one getting up..."

She trailed off for a few moments as her gaze drifted back to the corpse at her feet.

'Abigail the Stingray'

It was rumored that among the Shark's mercenaries was a strange, ethereal, enigmatic figure. One who had lost entire limbs unphased, simply to reattach them to her body. One who coated her blades in poison so foul it could curdle the blood like old milk. One who called herself 'The Stingray'.

"... I took this from one of those ugly pigs, do you want it?"

She drew a note from her bag, and offered it to Fleuri.

It would be hastily scrawled, telling of a 'black shard' they were hired to pick up, and not to touch it, and to kill anyone who showed up to stop them.

@HereComesTheSnow@TheFake@Crimson Paladin@PaulHaynek@FlappyTheSpybot@Raineh Daze@ghastlyinc@Krayzikk

The small knight had gone very still, almost shockingly so, as Fanilly read the description aloud. A glossy black shard? Oh, there was some chance that it was just an enchanted bit of rock or the like, but then their surroundings would be so much less... this. Unfortunately, there was something that very much matched the description of the item Alette had been contracted to achieve.

"Angroron. It's a piece of Angroron," the paladin said, not explaining the story behind it--that was, after all, one of the most well -known pieces of their religion's history; how Saint Lilianna had defeated the Lord of Domination and broken his blade. Less well-known, for good reason, was that all the pieces were still around. As for what touching them did... well, the ones who died were lucky.

Initial shock aside, Tyaethe was rapidly moving onto anger, strangling a frustrated yell, "What idiots were keeping that around without telling the Church? Who sent you?"

Why was there always someone who thought it was a good idea to play with divine evil just because it was strong enough? Not that it was Alette's fault, but the glare she was fixed with increasingly resembled an attempt to kill by looking alone.

Interacting with: @VitaVitaAR
@Raineh Daze

"She...just said she wasn't dumb enough to give that info out Radistirin." Gillian huffed as the diminutive knight asked for what had to be the third time for the name of the Sharks employer. A tid bit of information that Gillian was sure they could only get if they beat it out The Shark. And that hardly seemed like a good idea at the moment, large iron giant bodyguard not withstanding.

Not that Gillian didn't understand the paladin's annoyance, and more distressingly agreed with it. "While I'm all for going tits-out-Reon-crusader on whatever moron decided to keep this here, much less the idiot who wants to snatch said evil bullshit up...." he started carefully, eyeing up the two mercenaries. "The more pressing problem is that neither of us have aforementioned shard. Or if its even still HERE."

He turned towards Bors who, for the moment, seemed the more affable of the two. "To sum up, whoever hired you wanted you to find this stone, neglecting to tell you its a shard of Angroron. You come here, everyone is dead from its influence save these idiots." He said, giving the corpse of the fallen Boar warrior a swift kick to punctuate his point. "You kill them, we show up. I take it from the fact you're still here that you've yet to FIND said evil bullshit that I promise you aint being paid enough for. So either its still here or these idiots were covering whoever was extracting it." He finished, stretching his arms above his head.

"I move we pool our resources and just find this thing before whatever did this..." he said, gesturing to the veritable corpse collage arrayed before them. "Starts having an affect on us, if its still here. If its not, we clear the fort faster anyway and have some mutually assured reinforcements for the hypothetical transporting group of cultist or what-have-you. All that said..." he slowed, raising his arms into the slightest of guards and angling his body subtly away from where Alette would be the most likely to strike at him from this distance.

"You realize we can't exactly let you walk away with the artifact. I imagine your employer is going to be a bit cross about that, but is that going to be an issue with your lot? Don't know what you're getting paid, but I doubt trading blows with the Roses was included in the billing." He said, not really wanting to tangle with the Shark or her retinue. Less out of fear of the exchange (fearsome as The Shark's reputation was, the Iron Roses would be a historical footnote long before a mercenary band fought them to a standstill), but more out of not wanting to let an artifact this dangerous to get anymore distance from them than was strictly neccessary.

Fleuri Jodeau

"There's definitely something very strange that happened here, Fleuri spoke to Gerard while accepting the note from the well-mannered mercenary. He didn't recognize the name "Abigail the Stingray", but he did notice the similarity of her name to her leader. Were there any other mercs in the band named after aquatic animals, he wondered, or was it unique to the two of them? It wasn't really any of Fleuri's business, but way Abigail spoke of Alette implied sounded like they were lovers. All the more reason that the Reonite knight hoped that the others would not set Alette off.

Find a black shard in the fort, don't touch it, kill anyone who interferes...is this black shard what caused the soldiers to go mad? Hold on...surely it couldn't be... Fleuri's eyes widened as a most dreadful possibility dawned on him. Having been educated by Reonites and mentored in the ways of knighthood by a paladin, he was familiar with the tale of Orodrunn, and the dark lord's shattered weapon Angroron. Fleuri hoped that there was another explanation- any explanation- but only something of incredible evil power could cause an entire garrison of loyal soldiers to kill one each other in a fit of murderous insanity. Also alarming to him was the notion that at least two groups knew about the shard before the Iron Roses did.

"By the goddesses...could one of the shards of Angroron really be here?" he asked in horror. "We'll help you locate this thing, Lady Abigail," he offered, turning his head towards Gerard as if to "volunteer" him.

"I don't know how much you and your fellow mercenaries have searched this place, but I'd like to take a look at the commanding officer's quarters," he spoke to Abigail. "If a strange artifact passed into the fort, whoever was in charge might have had a log or record or journal mentioning it. It could have been stashed away in whatever passes for storage, or it could simply be in a chest in the barracks, hidden away by a greedy, maddened, or malevolently-intentioned soldier. Assuming, of course, someone didn't leave with it before the other mercenaries got here."

There was still the problem of who got the shard when they found it; the mercenaries wouldn't want to fail their employer, whoever it was, but the Iron Roses surely couldn't let some anonymously-hired soldiers of fortune to walk off with such a dangerous and evil artifact. Nevertheless, the potential danger posed by this shard- particularly the unsettling possibility that it could affect them if they were here too long- made it seem prudent to focus on locating it now and worrying about who gets it later.

@HereComesTheSnow

"Something has gone wrong, and so you must perform the duty I hired you for. It is a black, glossy piece of metal, appearing dark even in a well-lit room. It should be wrapped in several layers of cloth, but if it is not take care not to touch it with your bare hands. Do not allow anyone to come into direct physical contact with the shard. Wrap it carefully and return to me."

"Angroron. It's a piece of Angroron. What idiots were keeping that around without telling the Church? Who sent you?"

"You realize we can't exactly let you walk away with the artifact. I imagine your employer is going to be a bit cross about that, but is that going to be an issue with your lot? Don't know what you're getting paid, but I doubt trading blows with the Roses was included in the billing."

"Hold on, guys. What's an 'Angry Moron'?" Jarde's question was drowned out by the other knights who were infuriated that a piece of immense evil was housed secretly in this fort. But context was enough, if it angered the veteran Iron Roses and somehow managed to cause all of this carnage then this 'Angry Moron' must be quite the artifact. Not only that, it appeared that multiple groups were aware of its location and had come looking for it. The pileup was just making Jarde's head spin.

Sir Gillian suggested to team-up with the mercenaries for now in search for the evil artifact, something that Jarde completely agreed with, but he made it pretty clear that once found, the 'Angry Moron' piece would be coming with the Iron Roses. Something that might cause an issue with Alette's band who was sent here to retrieve said artifact.

"W-Well, why don't we actually find this black metal first and then worry about who gets it later?" Jarde tried to diffuse the tension. "Who knows, maybe Miss Sharky-Shark may later change her mind about lugging around a piece of wacky evil that took down a fort by just being there. She doesn't want the same thing to happen to her own mercenaries, does she?"

"Now then, who goes with who and who goes where? Most importantly, does anyone have some extra sheets or cloths to wrap 'Angry Moron' with?"

A shard of Angroron?!

Fanilly's eyes widened in shock. She had no idea shards of Angroron were even still in existence, let alone that one had been in Thaln. How was this even possible?

"You... you can't be..." she stumbled over herself for a moment, before shaking her head to try and clear her thoughts, "A real shard of Angroron? Here? I can't believe it, who would possibly want it?!"

The abominable black blade wielded by Orodrunn, the Lord of Domination. A hole in reality itself in the form of a sword, into which was sucked light, life, and all else. Never to be seen again. An unnatural thing that had been broken to pieces by Saint Lilianna with the power of the Sun and Moon at her side. But even the fragments of the blade, it was said, were so utterly corrosive to anything alive, so opposed to the very concept of life itself, that it could shatter the heart and soul. Killing anyone who touched it, or worse driving them beyond madness. It had been called the Absent Blade, once, because its very existence was as an 'absence' of anything else.

"Tch, I knew it had to be bad news when they said not to touch it but that's beyond bad news," commented Alette as she rested her spear on her shoulder, "Hmph, no way I'm telling you who hired me, but I guess I can see your point. No reason not to cooperate when it's something like that."

The fact that Alette refused to divulge her employer's name even now did have at least one implication: She didn't believe her employer had treated them as disposable tools.

"If you won't tell us the name of your employer, can you tell us what they were planning on doing? Do you know?" Fanilly asked, after taking a moment to clear her thoughts.

"No idea," Alette responded with a shrug, "Just they wanted to put it somewhere safe, who knows what they planned to do after that. I don't exactly ask about that kinda thing, you know?"

"... If it's still here, it's likely inside," Fanilly concluded, "So... we must search the fort. Don't touch anything suspicious!"

Inside, Abigail tilted her head slighty.

"We'd only just begun our search, really... finished cleaning up all the ugly piggies~" she replied, giggling to herself lightly as she did, "The captain's quarters must be upstairs, right...?"

Indeed, upstairs lay the quarters of the fort's captain. They were a grim sight as well. While they were mostly undisturbed, the captain's desk unmarked, the bookshelves undamaged, in the bed lay the captain himself, a strong-looking man with a short black beard and mustache.

His throat had been slit while he was asleep.

@HereComesTheSnow@TheFake@Crimson Paladin@PaulHaynek@FlappyTheSpybot@Raineh Daze@ghastlyinc@Krayzikk

Gerard Segremors

@Crimson Paladin@VitaVitaAR

Even through the stern cast of his face all throughout the pleasantries exchanged between his knightly senior and former peer amongst mercenaries, Segremors found himself compelled to draw out a low whistle, awed by what the former had suddenly proposed. Though he doubted his education was anything more than fragmentary, one could hardly live long as an Iron Rose without hearing tell of their honored founder's duel with Orodrunn, how her divine favor granted her the might to shatter his accursed weapon, a sword of shadow. If the curse was to spread its darkness by darkening the hearts of man with merely a touch... Yeah, little wonder that picture of composure, rivalled only perhaps by Sir Nicomede, stood plainly wide-eyed before him.

At the tilt of Sir Fleuri's head, Gerard nodded and stepped forth, more alert than ever. "Gerard Segremors. Pleased to be cooperating rather than meeting the Stingray on the field. Heard a lot about your toxins." He'd long been familiar with the rumors surrounding the ethereal figure that stood before him, and now having the association of deadly toxins coating the edges of all the knives on her person made him quietly relieved that her company's reputation had preceded them.

He doubtlessly would have run himself onto a swift death had he fought them unknowingly, at the behest of all those who had seen him expendable. And ended life that accomplished the mission was noble sacrifice, one he figured himself still willing to make, but suicide through ignorance was beyond even he. As Sir Fleuri spoke, he made for the door, deferring to his elder comrade for much of the conversation.

While for it to have affected the entire garrison this shard needed to be somewhere that all could touch or at least feel its presence, Gerard didn't deny his better's point— something so valuable, so dangerous, surely must have warranted record, assuming it was passed here through standard procedure. Captain's quarters were as good a start as any— overseeing the entire fort meant he would have a hand in all forms of administration, even if only as a signatory.

As they traversed the stairs, Gerard's mind was awash with possibilities regarding where the supposed shard could have ended up. Mess hall? Public, certainly, and likely would have allowed for it be in the immediate vicinity of a lot of soldiers. Likewise the barracks. For how it would get out of storage... Well, the same question could be extended to how it even afflicted more than a handful of men. Either it took less than touching it, or the first soldiers, in a maddened frenzy handling the slivers of an immensely powerful sword... used it to attack eachother?

No, they died from what looked like their own weapons. What the hell? Did it get crushed up and mixed in with the food that had been sent down their gullets?

This is going to give me a fit.

Why would such a dangerous object be transferred here to begin with? Surely the crown would not have been so careless...

As the somewhat unlikely trio gazed upon an undisturbed room, nigh-pristine from when it was lived in, and a cleanly cut gullet of the Captain of the base, a thought occurred as Gerard wordlessly began to search, scouring the man's desk for any charters or documents regarding a black shard that was not to be directly handled.

"What if it was planted here by another party?" he ventured after a few moments of searching, breaking his silence as he felt around the bottom of the desk. "By people further trying to destabilize things around Thaln, I mean. Feels like a concerted effort with all the recent stuff we've been through, Knight's Doom aside."

If there was a power that it was now certain that the vampire didn't have in any capacity, it was the ability to cut through things by staring hard enough at them; both Gillian and Alette still had completely intact heads. Yes, they were just dealing with a hole in reality that would kill anyone who so much as touched it, but this ridiculous client confidentiality was so important... because it wasn't as if it was the utmost importance to find where this had come from so they could determine a motive or even who was keeping secrets.

Of course, if it was something that powerful and that evil, completely unshielded by magical means, then there was possibly a way to tell if it was here without turning over every last room in the fortress looking for a bit of not-metal...

Although she appeared to be just looking at her umbrella now, Tyaethe was facing in the vague direction of the sun. Maybe she'd get an answer, maybe not, it might take a while to tell.

As the conversation unfolded, the Knight Serpenta's trail of thought took a notably different turn from the others. Wherever the shard of Angroron ended up, it would be easy enough to track through the devastation left in it's wake. A horrific loss of life to be sure, but an acceptable cost if it meant they made good on the opportunity to hunt down whoever wanted it in the first place. On the topic of said individual, Maritza's eyes narrowed behind her visor as she stared down Alette, vocalizing the rest of her thoughts.

"You know..." The Naga started off slowly, a hardened edge to her tone that had been missing previously. "The livery of the Iron Roses is hard to mistake for anything else, the armor of our captain especially. So, now that you what kind of mess you've been hired for, along with the fact that you still won't tell us who hired you, leads me to one conclusion." There was a cold pause as Maritza lowered herself in a fighting stance, one hand dropping the rune-lined head of the axe in her belt. "You believe that your employer is an enemy to both the Church and Crown of Thaln. I think it would be in your best interest to prove me wrong."

Interacting with: @VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze@PaulHaynek@FlappyTheSpybot

"Sounds good enough for me." Gillian shrugged at Alette's defense of her employer. If he was annoyed baiting her with the implication of her being disposable hadn't worked out, it wasn't showing. He hadn't missed how the shark had avoided answering whether or not she and her trope would be willing to walk away from the shard, which pretty much told him all he really needed to know. Which was to say, a fight was more or less postponed rather than off the table entirely.

Still, that didn't mean the Rose's couldn't take some mutual advantage of the situation. "Who their employer is isn't really useful to anybody at the moment." He huffed, waving off Maritza's words with a nonchalant wave. "We can all circle back to the issue of killing each other after we find the shard. Alette, the Captain, myself and..." He cast his gazed towards Tyaethe, who seemed to be doing her best impersonation of a statue.

"Fucking vampire has a stick up her ass at all times except then one I want her to. Great." He thought grumpily, snagging Jarde by the collar and dragging him to his side before doing the same to Fanlily. "Billy." He said, bestowing a name onto his newest hostage comrade. "Will head up to the captains office. See if we cant find something useful like a storage manifesto or something. Bors, Verenna and Radistirin can secure the area and make sure no one leaves. And yes, the fact that two thirds of you happen to be plus sized IS the reason. Everyone happy with that plan? No? Perfect." He said, giving his two fellow Roses a playful shove toward the fort before gesturing the Shark to follow.

Fleuri Jodeau

The fort captain's quarters was a stark contrast to rest of the fort. Judging by the wounds on the captain's throat, it appeared that he had been murdered in his sleep. Compared to the other soldiers they had seen, it was a far more peaceful scene. Fleuri was loathe to call the victim of such a murder lucky, but...at least he had the dignity to die as himself and not a murderous madman. The Reonite knight looked at the captain for several silent moments before finally speaking.

"Curious, I don't see any wounds on him other than on his throat," he observed. "No sign of struggle either. This doesn't look like the handiwork of a maddened soldier."

If Fleuri had to guess, it'd be that whoever brought the shard to the fort had also murdered the captain. But why, exactly, would they go out of their way to kill him in his sleep and not just not subject him to the same murderous impulses as the rest of the fort? What sort of threat did the captain pose that they didn't want to leave his death to chance?

"I think you're right Gerard, someone probably planted it." Fleuri spoke to Gerard. "Furthermore, I think whoever did it also killed the fort's captain here. I wonder why they bothered to murder him, instead of just letting the shard drive him mad like the rest of the garrison."

Fleuri walked over to the desk and began carefully rummaging through it, looking for anything that might give a clue about what occurred at the fort. He did so slowly and carefully, however- he didn't want to damage the late captain's belongings or destroy any evidence, and if the shard happened to be in here, he didn't want to accidentally touch it.

"Gerard, could you help me search this room? There might be something in here that could shed some light on what happened here."

@HereComesTheSnow

The group ignored Jarde's words. Disheartening, but at least they were now more concerned with finding the dangerous artifact rather than argue who gets it. That is, until Lady Maritza speculated as to who could be Alette the Shark's employers and how they could be enemies of Thaln. Fortunately, Sir Gillian took the lead and pushed the idea of splitting to comb the fort for the artifact.

"We can all circle back to the issue of killing each other after we find the shard. Alette, the Captain, myself and... Billy."

"Ow, hey!" Sir Gillian grabbed Jarde by the collar and dragged him along as well as Captain Fanilly. Being rude to him was one thing, but was it alright to do this kind of thing with the Captain? He may be a senior knight but Fanilly was still his superior. "Sir Gillian, with all due respect, that's the Captain..."

If no one objected to the plan, then Jarde would be joining Sir Gillian, Captain Fanilly and Alette in searching for the dark artifact in the fort captain's office. Perhaps they could find some clues or leads there, being the seat of the fort's leadership. Although, the place might already have been investigated since a couple of Iron Roses already went inside the fort to check. "... and who's Billy?"