Using the advantage her student was providing, Amalia entered the fray by sliding in under one manâs legs, using the momentum to grab hold of one with a hand, jamming the heel of her hand into the back of the same knee then wrenching forward as she rose, taking him to the floor with a smooth, efficient movement and angling him so the back of his head cracked against a wooden bench as he collapsed. Spinning, she ducked under the punch the next one aimed for her, jumping and using her torque to carry her into a roundhouse kick, the side of her foot slamming into that oneâs jaw and dazing him. Grabbing one of his hands, Amalia casually snapped one of his little fingers, causing a roar of pain. So then she broke the next one in the succession, which was enough to bring the drunkard to his knees. She left him there, nursing his hand. He wouldnât bother her further.
That left one, and she slid with liquid grace and silence to Auroraâs side, holding a fork of all things in her hand. This, she passed to her student. âAnything can be a weapon,â she explained, revealing the fact that she personally was now holding a spoon. âHigh, or low?â Amalia would take the other.
A fork? It may have been the oddest choice of weapon she'd come across, but she said nothing. Aurora knew better than to say no to Amalia. Ben-Hassrath did not take no for an answer. Didn't mean she liked using a weapon of any kind, even if it was a fork. "Low," She answered, already with an idea on how to best utilize the piece of silverware. "Though I'd rather not use a weapon at all," She said, reversing her grip on it all the same. With that, she took her first step toward the last man.
âYour preferences are irrelevant,â Amalia replied matter-of-factly. âYou must not think always in one way.â Nevertheless, she nodded succinctly and switched her grip on the spoon, holding it so that the actual scoop-end rested against her palm and the handle protruded several inches from between her first and second fingers. High it was. Part of what she was trying to teach Aurora was that there were always options, and the best skill one could pick up was the ability to assess the relative merit of them all. Amalia could kill with her bare hands, yes, but there was also a greater chance that an enemy knew how to defend against such conventional methods.
"Many paths," Aurora replied, nodding in agreement. This was a lesson she knew. There were many paths, though one destination. It was among her first, though flavored differently. However, it wasn't the lesson she was having issues with. The lesson she knew was sound, just as sound as all of Amalia's teachings. She was not so cocky as to try to beat her hands against a brick wall while a hammer lay nearby. That wasn't it, instead there was a principle she had set up for herself. "Weapons fail. I can't," She said with one last waylong glance behind her.
And she was off. A series of steps closed the distance quickly. Aurora was angled off to the side of the man, and he held out an arm to attempt a clothesline on the smaller woman. However, there was nothing there to clothesline as she had thrown her feet out in front of her and slid. Fortunately, the floor was wet enough with beer and spirits as to provide little friction, and she slid right by the man. As she passed by his leg, the fork shot out and buried itself deep into the back of his knee. The other hand whipped around and gripped his shin tight, pulling and using the leverage to drive the fork in deeper and buckling the knee.
Amalia, flowing with this decision of her pupilâs, was quite ready, and took the opportunity to leap atop the manâs chest, using the handle of the spoon and the force she was capable of applying to it to press sideways into his throat, the metal digging uncomfortably into the flesh there and cutting off the airflow to his trachea. He struggled for a few moments, but given her positioning, his flailing was ineffective, and he passed out within a minute, at which point Amalia promptly removed the implement and threw it hard enough to clock the nearest fistfighting patron in the side of the head, where the corner of the handle left a bloody gash. It distracted him for long enough for someone else to knock him out, and the Qunari straightened, stepping off the other oneâs chest. The confrontation seemed to be winding down at this point. Canting her head slightly to the side, she gestured towards where Sophia was still beating on the guardsman, and indicated that they should both head in that direction.
Lucien, now holding both chair legs, glanced down at the small heap of unconscious people with some amount of consternation. This was⊠certainly not as difficult as the hand-to-hand exercises heâd had at the Academie, but then⊠he probably shouldnât have expected it to be. Shaking his head to himself, he waded through the crowd, mostly avoiding the pockets of infighting unless someone decided to split off and go after him, which only happened about twice before the crack of a chair limb ended the ambition. He managed to reach the group containing Nostariel, Sophia, and the bulk of the guardsmanâs friends as the last few were regaining coherency, and he threw one of the chair legs at one going for the Wardenâs back. Heâd never been the best with ranged weaponry, but honestly, in this case, all that was necessary was a lot of force, and that, he could most certainly do.
The blow caught the woman in the temple, and the punch Lucien landed on her jaw took care of the rest. People who went after his friends tended to earn less mercy than others did, and this was something he knew quite well about himself. The next person to attack him, he picked up by an arm and a leg, and swung into a third, this one making for the spot where Sophia appeared to be venting her frustrations on the guardsman, or at least what he assumed was the guardsman. He doubted a random patron would have earned so much ire. Once he was done with his human bludgeon, he threw him into a nearby table, scattering a great deal of dishware and several tankards in the process.
Nostariel soon found herself the target of an array of thrown objects, including but not limited to plates, bowls, half-full tankards, and once notably someoneâs coinpurse. That one actually caught her in the head and hurt pretty considerably, probably leaving a bruise near her temple. Well. That was just unfair. Her coinpurse was much lighter than that. Maybe one of these people was actually a slumming nobleman? Her lips pursed, and she retaliated with much the same, grabbing several bits and pieces off the bar and tossing with more precision but less force than Lucien, and perhaps smiling a little with the absurdity of it all. Her rock armor was keeping her from being seriously damaged, but when she tossed a stonefist into the fray, the same could not be said of her assailant, who flew with a hard thud into the wall.
âHmph. Teach you to pick a fight with a Warden,â she sniffed, the words mostly grumbled, at least before a swung candlestick caught her in the back. Frowning, she did actually punch this time, hitting the man in the stomach and doubling him over before she clasped her hands together and brought them down on the back of his head, sending him to her feet. Amalia had taught her a trick or two, and while there was no way sheâd ever have been able to set the Qunari woman up thus, at least it worked on the kind of people it had been meant to combat.
Sophia started out on her back, shielding herself from blows to the head, but the others were doing a wonderful job pacifying the other rowdy brawlers, and Sophia's anger wouldn't stand for being pummeled like this, so with a heave she shoved him off of her turning the tables and beating down on him. It wasn't long before his face was red from the blood leaking out of his nose, which she had managed to break with one of her strikes, but still he didn't yield. He continued to try and retaliate, though Sophia had the advantage of being armored. The body shots he landed felt like little more than soft thumps.
She became a little too predictable, however, trying to hold him down with her left arm while striking relentlessly with her right, so on the umpteenth punch he lashed out with his left, catching her heavily across the same cheek. The room spun around as her head turned, and she fell away from him, blinking several times, before she realized her hand was brushing up against the leg of a stool. Closing her fingers around it, she rose back to her knees and swung just as the guardsman was trying to rise. The wood smacked harshly across his face, sending a spat of blood down onto the floor and knocking him temporarily senseless. In that time, Sophia pushed him over, before straddling him across the chest, using her legs to pin his arms down. She threw in another punch for good measure.
"What... what do you want?" he squealed, blinking past all the blood on his face. "I just did what he said. It was more coin than I'd ever seen." Good, he was speaking now, but he still hadn't given her what she needed. "And who is this he you're talking about? Who paid you?" He coughed several times as Sophia looked down on him with no small amount of disgust.
"Templar. It was a templar. I didn't get his name." A... templar. Brilliant. She supposed it shouldn't have surprised her. The templars had both the faith and the muscle to think this was a good idea. "Go on," she said, icily. He swallowed.
"We met near the chantry. He... he said taking these Qunari was serving the Maker." His eyes were pleading. "I swear, he even had the seal of the grand cleric! True is true!" The grand cleric... there was no lie in the man's eyes. He was fearful, obviously, but not so stupid as to continue to lie to them, after seeing a bar full of his former friends getting beaten to a pulp. Sophia removed her weight from him. "Get out. I never want to see your face again, understand? I have no patience for the corrupt."
He didn't argue with that, bolting rather quickly from the Hanged Man. That this troubled Sophia was obvious. The grand cleric was a wise woman, she had always thought of her as such, and if anything, Sophia had thought her a cautious woman as well. Too cautious, and too smart, to try something like this. Sophia would not believe that Elthina was a part of this kidnapping of Qunari... but that was where the trail currently led, and she had no choice but to follow it. It was starting to get frustrating. She'd felt like hitting someone... but now that she had, she only felt like hitting more. She turned to the others, somewhat ragged looking from the fight.
"We're going to the Chantry. Follow me." She departed without another word.
Nostariel certainly wasnât going to argue with that. The look on Sophiaâs face was positively thunderous, and the Warden supposed she could understand why. It was probably a lot like being pulled weightily in two different directions. On the one hand, her success or failure here may well float or sink her father and his office, because the Qunari would likely have no mercy at all if they failed to find this delegation. On the other⊠someone from the Chantry seemed to be doing this, someone powerful or crafty enough to gain the seal of the Grand Cleric. Nostariel didnât know much of the woman, but as far as she could tell, one did not make it to a position like that by being this stupid and reckless, so there was something fishy going on. She just wasnât sure what.
She used the palm of her hand to press a healing spell into Ashâs chest on her way out, smiling at him and shaking her head, gusting a long-suffering sigh just for effect, but there was no time to sit around and chat, much as she would have enjoyed it. She determined that none of the others were particularly injured, and raised glowing fingertips to her own temple, easing the bruise there and trekking after Sophia, who was most certainly a woman on a mission at this point. "You're welcome. Now run along and have fun with the others," Ashton bidded, shooing Nostariel off in between a chuckle. He simply watched as they passed out of the door of the Hanged Man.
Though the streets were well-known to be dangerous, even in the evening like this, nobody dared try and jump them, which was probably as much an effect of the presence of Lucien and Amalia as it was the sheer number of them, or the purpose with which their leader strode. Whatever the case, Nostariel was grateful. They had a job to do, and distractions of that nature would only sidetrack them and wear them out when they still needed their energy. The stairs were climbed in silence, save for the clinking of armor or the scuffing of boots, though she suspected the Qunari made much less noise than the rest of them. Passing the blush-colored lanterns arrayed in front of the Blooming Rose, they came shortly thereafter to the Chantry. Sheâd always thought it passing strange that the two buildings were located so close to one another, but then, it wasnât like she had any business at either. More steps leading up to the front of the house of worship, and there they were, arrayed in front of the golden doors, the light wood and metal catching the rays of the setting sun.
âUmâŠâ Nostariel hazarded cautiously, unsure how the observation would be received, âare you sure we should all go in? We look awfully⊠dangerous, and some of us might not be all that welcomeâŠâ Granted, it wasnât immediately obvious that Amalia was a Qunari or Aurora an apostate, but there was no doubt that some of them werenât exactly Chantry types, and a few of them smelled notably of the Hanged Manâs gutrot, which was probably not exactly the best way to walk into a holy place.
"I can vouch for you all if need be," Sophia answered simply. "I'm going in. You can follow me if you want." She pulled open the right of the double doors, slipping inside.
Amalia certainly wasnât going to be left behind while the search continued, and while she understood Nostarielâs point, it was not as though she had any plans to deface anything in the Chantry, nor was she inclined to loudly proclaim the merits of the Qun, as she understood Sophiaâs brother sometimes was. A curious case that oneâthough he should rightly be her student, he was not, though she understood he spent more time than his family liked with the warriors. Still, he had not converted yet, and that he spoke for them even so was mildly unsavory. Regardless, it was not him that had disappeared the delegation from the Viscountâs doorstep, and so she put the thoughts from her mind, for the moment assured in her subtlety.
Aurora was less subtle, but Amalia knew she would not be making the same mistake sheâd made in the Saarebas incident, given how that had turned out. It was a different person that walked at the Qunariâs side now, one that the Ben-Hassrath had decided she might even have some measure of pride in. It was⊠an odd feeling, but she didnât find that she disliked it. Amalia slid in the door behind Lucien, who propped it open behind him after following Sophia in. There was no telling what theyâd find in here, but a name was surfacing in his memory, and he fervently wished that he was wrong.
That left one, and she slid with liquid grace and silence to Auroraâs side, holding a fork of all things in her hand. This, she passed to her student. âAnything can be a weapon,â she explained, revealing the fact that she personally was now holding a spoon. âHigh, or low?â Amalia would take the other.
A fork? It may have been the oddest choice of weapon she'd come across, but she said nothing. Aurora knew better than to say no to Amalia. Ben-Hassrath did not take no for an answer. Didn't mean she liked using a weapon of any kind, even if it was a fork. "Low," She answered, already with an idea on how to best utilize the piece of silverware. "Though I'd rather not use a weapon at all," She said, reversing her grip on it all the same. With that, she took her first step toward the last man.
âYour preferences are irrelevant,â Amalia replied matter-of-factly. âYou must not think always in one way.â Nevertheless, she nodded succinctly and switched her grip on the spoon, holding it so that the actual scoop-end rested against her palm and the handle protruded several inches from between her first and second fingers. High it was. Part of what she was trying to teach Aurora was that there were always options, and the best skill one could pick up was the ability to assess the relative merit of them all. Amalia could kill with her bare hands, yes, but there was also a greater chance that an enemy knew how to defend against such conventional methods.
"Many paths," Aurora replied, nodding in agreement. This was a lesson she knew. There were many paths, though one destination. It was among her first, though flavored differently. However, it wasn't the lesson she was having issues with. The lesson she knew was sound, just as sound as all of Amalia's teachings. She was not so cocky as to try to beat her hands against a brick wall while a hammer lay nearby. That wasn't it, instead there was a principle she had set up for herself. "Weapons fail. I can't," She said with one last waylong glance behind her.
And she was off. A series of steps closed the distance quickly. Aurora was angled off to the side of the man, and he held out an arm to attempt a clothesline on the smaller woman. However, there was nothing there to clothesline as she had thrown her feet out in front of her and slid. Fortunately, the floor was wet enough with beer and spirits as to provide little friction, and she slid right by the man. As she passed by his leg, the fork shot out and buried itself deep into the back of his knee. The other hand whipped around and gripped his shin tight, pulling and using the leverage to drive the fork in deeper and buckling the knee.
Amalia, flowing with this decision of her pupilâs, was quite ready, and took the opportunity to leap atop the manâs chest, using the handle of the spoon and the force she was capable of applying to it to press sideways into his throat, the metal digging uncomfortably into the flesh there and cutting off the airflow to his trachea. He struggled for a few moments, but given her positioning, his flailing was ineffective, and he passed out within a minute, at which point Amalia promptly removed the implement and threw it hard enough to clock the nearest fistfighting patron in the side of the head, where the corner of the handle left a bloody gash. It distracted him for long enough for someone else to knock him out, and the Qunari straightened, stepping off the other oneâs chest. The confrontation seemed to be winding down at this point. Canting her head slightly to the side, she gestured towards where Sophia was still beating on the guardsman, and indicated that they should both head in that direction.
Lucien, now holding both chair legs, glanced down at the small heap of unconscious people with some amount of consternation. This was⊠certainly not as difficult as the hand-to-hand exercises heâd had at the Academie, but then⊠he probably shouldnât have expected it to be. Shaking his head to himself, he waded through the crowd, mostly avoiding the pockets of infighting unless someone decided to split off and go after him, which only happened about twice before the crack of a chair limb ended the ambition. He managed to reach the group containing Nostariel, Sophia, and the bulk of the guardsmanâs friends as the last few were regaining coherency, and he threw one of the chair legs at one going for the Wardenâs back. Heâd never been the best with ranged weaponry, but honestly, in this case, all that was necessary was a lot of force, and that, he could most certainly do.
The blow caught the woman in the temple, and the punch Lucien landed on her jaw took care of the rest. People who went after his friends tended to earn less mercy than others did, and this was something he knew quite well about himself. The next person to attack him, he picked up by an arm and a leg, and swung into a third, this one making for the spot where Sophia appeared to be venting her frustrations on the guardsman, or at least what he assumed was the guardsman. He doubted a random patron would have earned so much ire. Once he was done with his human bludgeon, he threw him into a nearby table, scattering a great deal of dishware and several tankards in the process.
Nostariel soon found herself the target of an array of thrown objects, including but not limited to plates, bowls, half-full tankards, and once notably someoneâs coinpurse. That one actually caught her in the head and hurt pretty considerably, probably leaving a bruise near her temple. Well. That was just unfair. Her coinpurse was much lighter than that. Maybe one of these people was actually a slumming nobleman? Her lips pursed, and she retaliated with much the same, grabbing several bits and pieces off the bar and tossing with more precision but less force than Lucien, and perhaps smiling a little with the absurdity of it all. Her rock armor was keeping her from being seriously damaged, but when she tossed a stonefist into the fray, the same could not be said of her assailant, who flew with a hard thud into the wall.
âHmph. Teach you to pick a fight with a Warden,â she sniffed, the words mostly grumbled, at least before a swung candlestick caught her in the back. Frowning, she did actually punch this time, hitting the man in the stomach and doubling him over before she clasped her hands together and brought them down on the back of his head, sending him to her feet. Amalia had taught her a trick or two, and while there was no way sheâd ever have been able to set the Qunari woman up thus, at least it worked on the kind of people it had been meant to combat.
Sophia started out on her back, shielding herself from blows to the head, but the others were doing a wonderful job pacifying the other rowdy brawlers, and Sophia's anger wouldn't stand for being pummeled like this, so with a heave she shoved him off of her turning the tables and beating down on him. It wasn't long before his face was red from the blood leaking out of his nose, which she had managed to break with one of her strikes, but still he didn't yield. He continued to try and retaliate, though Sophia had the advantage of being armored. The body shots he landed felt like little more than soft thumps.
She became a little too predictable, however, trying to hold him down with her left arm while striking relentlessly with her right, so on the umpteenth punch he lashed out with his left, catching her heavily across the same cheek. The room spun around as her head turned, and she fell away from him, blinking several times, before she realized her hand was brushing up against the leg of a stool. Closing her fingers around it, she rose back to her knees and swung just as the guardsman was trying to rise. The wood smacked harshly across his face, sending a spat of blood down onto the floor and knocking him temporarily senseless. In that time, Sophia pushed him over, before straddling him across the chest, using her legs to pin his arms down. She threw in another punch for good measure.
"What... what do you want?" he squealed, blinking past all the blood on his face. "I just did what he said. It was more coin than I'd ever seen." Good, he was speaking now, but he still hadn't given her what she needed. "And who is this he you're talking about? Who paid you?" He coughed several times as Sophia looked down on him with no small amount of disgust.
"Templar. It was a templar. I didn't get his name." A... templar. Brilliant. She supposed it shouldn't have surprised her. The templars had both the faith and the muscle to think this was a good idea. "Go on," she said, icily. He swallowed.
"We met near the chantry. He... he said taking these Qunari was serving the Maker." His eyes were pleading. "I swear, he even had the seal of the grand cleric! True is true!" The grand cleric... there was no lie in the man's eyes. He was fearful, obviously, but not so stupid as to continue to lie to them, after seeing a bar full of his former friends getting beaten to a pulp. Sophia removed her weight from him. "Get out. I never want to see your face again, understand? I have no patience for the corrupt."
He didn't argue with that, bolting rather quickly from the Hanged Man. That this troubled Sophia was obvious. The grand cleric was a wise woman, she had always thought of her as such, and if anything, Sophia had thought her a cautious woman as well. Too cautious, and too smart, to try something like this. Sophia would not believe that Elthina was a part of this kidnapping of Qunari... but that was where the trail currently led, and she had no choice but to follow it. It was starting to get frustrating. She'd felt like hitting someone... but now that she had, she only felt like hitting more. She turned to the others, somewhat ragged looking from the fight.
"We're going to the Chantry. Follow me." She departed without another word.
Nostariel certainly wasnât going to argue with that. The look on Sophiaâs face was positively thunderous, and the Warden supposed she could understand why. It was probably a lot like being pulled weightily in two different directions. On the one hand, her success or failure here may well float or sink her father and his office, because the Qunari would likely have no mercy at all if they failed to find this delegation. On the other⊠someone from the Chantry seemed to be doing this, someone powerful or crafty enough to gain the seal of the Grand Cleric. Nostariel didnât know much of the woman, but as far as she could tell, one did not make it to a position like that by being this stupid and reckless, so there was something fishy going on. She just wasnât sure what.
She used the palm of her hand to press a healing spell into Ashâs chest on her way out, smiling at him and shaking her head, gusting a long-suffering sigh just for effect, but there was no time to sit around and chat, much as she would have enjoyed it. She determined that none of the others were particularly injured, and raised glowing fingertips to her own temple, easing the bruise there and trekking after Sophia, who was most certainly a woman on a mission at this point. "You're welcome. Now run along and have fun with the others," Ashton bidded, shooing Nostariel off in between a chuckle. He simply watched as they passed out of the door of the Hanged Man.
Though the streets were well-known to be dangerous, even in the evening like this, nobody dared try and jump them, which was probably as much an effect of the presence of Lucien and Amalia as it was the sheer number of them, or the purpose with which their leader strode. Whatever the case, Nostariel was grateful. They had a job to do, and distractions of that nature would only sidetrack them and wear them out when they still needed their energy. The stairs were climbed in silence, save for the clinking of armor or the scuffing of boots, though she suspected the Qunari made much less noise than the rest of them. Passing the blush-colored lanterns arrayed in front of the Blooming Rose, they came shortly thereafter to the Chantry. Sheâd always thought it passing strange that the two buildings were located so close to one another, but then, it wasnât like she had any business at either. More steps leading up to the front of the house of worship, and there they were, arrayed in front of the golden doors, the light wood and metal catching the rays of the setting sun.
âUmâŠâ Nostariel hazarded cautiously, unsure how the observation would be received, âare you sure we should all go in? We look awfully⊠dangerous, and some of us might not be all that welcomeâŠâ Granted, it wasnât immediately obvious that Amalia was a Qunari or Aurora an apostate, but there was no doubt that some of them werenât exactly Chantry types, and a few of them smelled notably of the Hanged Manâs gutrot, which was probably not exactly the best way to walk into a holy place.
"I can vouch for you all if need be," Sophia answered simply. "I'm going in. You can follow me if you want." She pulled open the right of the double doors, slipping inside.
Amalia certainly wasnât going to be left behind while the search continued, and while she understood Nostarielâs point, it was not as though she had any plans to deface anything in the Chantry, nor was she inclined to loudly proclaim the merits of the Qun, as she understood Sophiaâs brother sometimes was. A curious case that oneâthough he should rightly be her student, he was not, though she understood he spent more time than his family liked with the warriors. Still, he had not converted yet, and that he spoke for them even so was mildly unsavory. Regardless, it was not him that had disappeared the delegation from the Viscountâs doorstep, and so she put the thoughts from her mind, for the moment assured in her subtlety.
Aurora was less subtle, but Amalia knew she would not be making the same mistake sheâd made in the Saarebas incident, given how that had turned out. It was a different person that walked at the Qunariâs side now, one that the Ben-Hassrath had decided she might even have some measure of pride in. It was⊠an odd feeling, but she didnât find that she disliked it. Amalia slid in the door behind Lucien, who propped it open behind him after following Sophia in. There was no telling what theyâd find in here, but a name was surfacing in his memory, and he fervently wished that he was wrong.