Good Riddance

Captain Nikolajs Laubergs is dead. He nearly didn’t believe the dark raven who delivered the news. Murdered. Old Nikolajs… Not precisely a friend to Alastor, but a peer he had known for many years. They had trained together in their youth, and Captain Laubergs had earned some semblance of respect from Alastor – as much as he was able to give, anyway. Now the man was dead and buried, and his killer locked away in the filthy dungeon. Murdered… And not even during the war! At least there was honor in dying on the battlefield.

The circumstances of his death could not be properly communicated through messenger corvids. But as the gray-clad brute soon discovered, rumors abounded. And the only way to find the truth was to search for it. So he had given some excuse to return to Rionna from his station near the border, and Alastor headed straight for Yorkshire and its feared dungeon – a dark, dreary, dreadful place that he had always found rather delightful. The lean faces of prisoners, sunken eyes and protruding bones. Anguished cries from the depths of the torture chambers. Justice.

The edges of dark lips curled upward into a sinister smile at the sight of the wretched wolf who wasted away behind iron bars. He announced his presence with the clearing of his throat before he addressed the prisoner by name:"Sulliven Karsia." The tilt of his head, a still-growing grin, and then, ”I had to see you for myself.” The soldier examined the state of the criminal, beaten and battered and looking dreadful… to put it mildly. ”I hope the old bastard put up a good fight, at least?” Crimson eyes squinted against the darkness of the dungeons to get a better look at this man who had somehow bested one of King Adamh’s finest. "Oh, dear. You look unwell." His lips pursed in feigned concern... but the smile was swift to return to its rightful place upon his steel-colored muzzle.


@Sulliven

coding: gutz

meph

Sulliven loved trees. Stoic, unspeaking sentinels they were, but he’d always trusted their ability to safeguard his childhood home within the rainy pine forests. They were better friends to him than any wolf had ever been. The loss of them was what Sulliven lamented most as he wasted away below the earth. It hurt too much to think of Reuben, but he could at least have a moment’s reprieve when he thought about the trees.

Lost in reverie, he hadn’t noticed the approaching footfalls, only the scent that preceded them. Cedar—not sweet like his heart tree, but still refreshing all the same. That association rapidly soured as a sneering tone greeted him from the door. Did it pay to turn over? He’d been in dark isolation for so long that Sulliven wasn’t sure he could even see anymore, and he’d adopted the habit of keeping his eyes shut throughout the day, listening to what sounds he could. He almost didn’t dare opening them as his head turned toward the sound. It was more desirable to pretend he was blind than to know for certain.

But Sulliven did dare. And all he saw were the most hateful red eyes he’d ever seen, at odds with the sickening smile on the soldier’s face. A shiver instinctively fled down his spine, seeking refuge somewhere in the matted fur of his tail. He regarded the man with unmasked apprehension, quiet still after his taunting lips pressed together. “I feel fine," he managed to mutter eventually, knowing that his silence could as easily be his damnation as it could be his salvation. More vitriolic words wanted to emerge than what had been uttered, but Sulliven stayed his tongue, letting them fester in his thoughts and turn vile. He wasn’t normally a man that was prone to such impulses. That man had been ruined by the dungeon.

Alastor gazed in at the miserable excuse for a wolf:
A mottled pelt of grays and silver, made shabby by the filth of his surroundings and neglect. When finally the prisoner sought the soldier’s crimson sights, Alastor saw dull green hues staring back at him. A quiet voice responded: “i feel fine.” The soldier’s tongue clicked, head shaking slowly. ”If you saw yourself…” The smile remained. “You would understand my grave concern, Master Karsia.” Mockery dripped from his words like a viper's venom.

Blood-red sights flick to the entrance of the dismal solitary cell, where two soldiers stood sentinel – two guards, assigned just to this wretch! But those eyes were soon fixed upon the Highlander again. “I hear you’ve been receiving special treatment,” he remarked, alluding to the battered state of the man. “Special treatment for a… special wolf.” Suddenly, his voice barked out an order to the guards who watched from the darkness, interrupting the ominous quiet with a voice that echoed through the earthen chamber. ”Out now, gentlemen, thank you!” There was no room nor desire for argument; the soldiers practically tripped over themselves to hastily depart the squalid cell in which the prisoner was kept. Now, it was just Alastor… and him.

”What do you have to say for yourself, Sulliven Karsia? Are you proud of what you have done?” The words he spoke didn’t seem to match the cheerful expression he wore, with a jagged smile and sights like burning embers that never departed from the broken man wasting away before his very eyes.


@Sulliven

coding: gutz