166 » to pay the cost of my regime

[niflungr]

fanart by CaLoserrr.

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[niflungr]

[ It's such an inconvenient thing, honestly, when people start dying.

The fainting spells, the swooning — at first, Sleipnir had been more than certain that House Harbard's women were simply suffering from some degree of hypochondria, if not hysteria. He'd rolled his eyes, moved on with his day. His aunts and the maidservants have always been rather high-strung. He has better things to do with his time than soothe their concerns.

But then a young pageboy had gone missing. Just disappeared into thin air, and he wasn't the type to get lost or run off on his own. Sleipnir can't claim any particular sense of loss over the boy's disappearance, but he'd liked the child well enough; he'd always been fastidious about cleaning his lord's riding boots.

And then things had gotten worse. Gory. Alfr, a cousin of Sleipnir's, was found dead in his room with claw marks all down his torso, torn from limb to limb. Not in the way that suggested a coeurl, or some biast (and how would such creatures have crawled in through the windows anyway)? Something else. Something darker.

Voidsent, he'd figured. A haunting.

They're a lesser house sworn to House Durendaire, but no less flush with coin for it, and so it hadn't been terribly difficult for them to spend gil in the pursuit of clearing their little problem. Nothing had helped, though. The priests in their mitres had all been quite useless. Then came the thaumaturges from Ul'dah, the conjurers from Gridania — none of them had helped in a way that mattered, though one of the conjurers had commented that there was something wrong with the aether in the home.

Sleipnir has thus far been unaffected. Barnabas has, too, which suggests that whatever is afflicting their house has the good sense either to avoid outright conflict with two very skilled masters of the blade, or has chosen to pick off the weak and sickly, first.

As long as it's not affecting him, and he doesn't wake up in the middle of the night with a beast on his back, Sleipnir figures it's not a problem that he can fix. So he isn't going to worry about it. It's been great fun watching everyone else panic.

This doesn't stop him from raising one silver eyebrow when Barnabas's next decision is to bring a witcher in to serve as curse-breaker.

It sounds like a load of shite, really, but then Barnabas has always been the more religious one — he'd turned to irrational thoughts and strange superstitions after the death of their mother — so. Whatever. It is what it is. Sleipnir isn't about to argue with his dear brother's decisions, and he's had more than his fair share of amusement, watching all these pretentious, accomplished strangers enter their mansion to try and determine what is killing people inside of it. They always try so hard, too, to earn their bit of coin.

This man won't be any different, Sleipnir thinks, as he strides out to the courtyard to greet their guest. Barnabas is too busy overseeing their various duties at Falcon's Nest, and anyway, with half of their house out of commission in one way or another, this sort of thing has fallen to House Harbard's responsible, reliable, and utterly unfaithful second son. ]

You must be Master Geralt?

[ Sleipnir does not bother to hide the judgmental once-over he gives this so-called witcher, long-lashed eyes scanning the white-blond man in his crude leathers. The smile he wears is the sort that implies no kind conclusions. ]

A pleasure, a pleasure... Why don't you come in from the cold? Our Ishgardian winters, you know... very rough, for those unaccustomed to them.