Snippet #2341003

"I'm not here to cause harm."

"And that's exactly what a rotten spy would say!" Duma thought immediately before flaring his nostrils and disbelieving every word he said. For all he knew, the figure before him could have been a blasted illusion, and a patsy meant to distract him.

"Is that so?" The half-orc said in a voice almost patronizing and dripping with disbelief, the crossbow in his hands unwavering in their position, almost as if to coax the man out. The words behind the old man made him jump and turn in the direction of the voice, pulling the trigger of the empty crossbow just before he could recognize the short Lucine. His surprised face quickly turned into an angry scowl at the sight of the Necromancer's daughter and pulled the lever back to actually load the crossbow with one of four bolts in the magazine.

"So no need to waste your skills."

Duma would have told her to run off and find some lives to ruin if it wasn't for the fact that there wasn't a more important intruder right in front of him. Even with that serious look in her eye, the sort allies would give to one-another, the half-orc didn't trust her, especially her.

"Stop sneaking up on people!" He shouted at her in his guttural voice before turning back to the red-haired intruder, crossbow still in hand, probably about to regret letting the man walk but first things first:

He needed to check if their intruder was an illusion.

"Hands behind your head. Try anything funny and a bolt goes in between your teeth." Duma would walk closer with the crossbow at the ready and pat the stranger down. By Orogoth's logic, an illusionist could either make an illusion that wasn't physically tangible, or an illusion that is. If an illusion was physical, an illusion would be either be imperfect or too perfect.

The illusionist is like a clay modeller. Either he gets the dimensions of the body wrong, or he gets it too right, and the body is running on borderline perfection without a spot or blemish, unlike regular people. Save for the exceptions when aristocrats would powder their faces and their shoulders whenever they would go out to look spotless themselves, Orogoth doubted anyone would be powdering their faces nowadays, for the ball of the dead perhaps.

Orogoth's face was staring straight into the red-haired man while he patted him down with one hand, while the other still held the crossbow now pressed up against the man's chest. If Axael did nothing, Orogoth would have taken whatever he had around his belt, before going behind the man to give him instructions, noting beforehand the odd almost disfigured shape of one of his ears behind the hood.

"Food tent's over there. Start walking." Duma said, pointing to the area, and nudging the stranger at the same time to make him go forward. "You touch anyone, breath to anyone, talk to anyone, I'll shoot you. If there is an earthquake, someone chokes, or fall and crack their skull open, I'm blaming you. Now get going, you knife-eared begger."