by Serrus » Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:01 am
There are ways to know the intentions of another person carrying steel. The mere reach of a hilt or grasp of a knife isn't something that immediately should cause alarm on its own. There were signs to know of another's intent, and whether that intent is indeed malicious. A shift of the eyes, a tensing of certain muscles, movements in the throat, a swallow, or a sudden shortening of breath, intense gaze, one looking through you or at the area in which they wished to strike.
The girl shows none of these things, and so when she reaches for the knife, the sellsword sits as he sat before, nary a movement nor a stirring as she takes that blade, as if she had merely taken the spoon to eat some more of the cooked stew. When she slices her arm, fist bared upwards, and that blade cuts through skin and flesh, rendering sinew and coursing blood down the wrist, over palm to trickle through fingers, he does cant his head a slight, not sure what this is about. Some of the wildling folk in the north wetlands and southern hills were reputed to do the same, blood rituals, moon sacrifices, the usual druidic nonsense. He didn't know how much of this were true, or whether this was relevant. But when that blood stops, clotting as if it had healed for days, when the wound seals shut like a a tightened seam, there is another look upon his features. Distaste. Aversion. Black magic. It's with this aversion the man turns his head to the side and spits through teeth onto the cave floor -- a superstition often carried in the Grange.
Mercy seems bothered, or perhaps taken aback, and there's a look in the healer he doesn't like, as if this were something she were not expecting. Serrus had a good inkling what to expect from the get go, and this is nothing but devilry, through and through. Something he could not and would not be part of. Though the wildling girl does not speak of any notion of wanting the creature gone, and with that, the healer assures that there was no further requirement of her services.
He turns a glance back to the wildling girl at her question, words spinning through his head. The creature saved me, banished my memories of my old life, and raised me. How many memories had he forgotten, and how many had the man taken from him? Forget her, she's nothing to you now. Never was. It was a relief, finding an easy way to forget one's past, to simply forget the horrors as if they never were, so you could live without them. That, for the most part, he understands completely. As for the other choice, however...
"There's but life or death girl. There's no middle ground. Anythin' that comes betwixt that is nowt but devilry. Would I choose life over death, by makin' some bloody pact with a daemon?" He leans forward, meeting the girl's pupils, stare for stare.
"No."
A glance away as he turns to regard Mercy again, nodding once with one hand slapping a knee. "Can we go now?" he asks facetiously.