Step, stab, spin, pivot, slash; a fight was, if one knew how to navigate it well enough, a dance. Poetry in motion, if you wanted to get sentimental about it. Beryl wasn’t. Though on most occasions there was scarcely a friendlier, more lighthearted soul to be found, the business of killing was in the end just that: a business, and one she had been taught to treat with the utmost seriousness. The pommel of one of her daggers slammed into the jaw of a mercenary, and the impact snapped his neck with a gruesome sound; he collapsed onto the ground, motionless. The thing about a Crow was, they didn’t leave people alive if they had set out to kill them.
The archers and fighters on the perimeter thus dispatched, she straightened, casting a gold-green gaze onto the closing moments of the rest of the battle. If everyone had been inclined to go about their business as she was, there would have been no surprise attack from a fallen man, but she reminded herself hastily that mercy was not necessarily a bad thing, not anymore, and instead watched as the hooded man reacted. Reaver. It was by no means a common method of entering battle, but certainly an intimidating one. The small shudder that ricocheted down her spine was nevertheless not one of fear. An ingrained response, though, to the presence of someone intrinsically dangerous.
In the aftermath, she descended towards the others, in enough time to hear the Tevinters speaking to one another, and then the male addressing the group at large. Well, perhaps mostly the man who was now without his hood. She’d recognized him immediately; the Divine’s information came from someone who’d known the man quite well, after all. Still, she did not react to the knowledge that her quarry had indeed been discovered; she doubted someone who went to all this trouble to disappear would appreciate being unmasked in front of a group of strangers, and discretion was, after all, the batter part of valor.
“Felicitate tuae peregrinationis, domine,”* she informed the white robed man with a nod. His business was his own, and he was clearly not going to share at the moment, which was probably for the better. Of course, she was interrupted before she could say anything else by the mage’s argument with his Templar… guard? Whatever odd arrangement that was.
As soon as she heard the word “Apostle,” Beryl inwardly cringed. She rather thought the title was silly; a completely unneeded formality wasted on someone like her. Nevertheless, it tipped her off that she was somehow going to have to get the strangers out of here and then somehow talk to the Hero and the mage discreetly. From where she was, the Templar was in her direct sight-line, but the problem was if she tried to signal anything to him, the Tevinter woman was likely to see it also. Instead, she casually flicked the blood from her blades and waited patiently for the Hero to speak. Who knew? Perhaps there was some big reveal moment coming, and she could pretend to be surprised.
She doubted it, but one way or another, she’d work it out. Politicking was second only to killing and sneaking in her skill set.
(Good fortune in your travels, sir.)