Come to Call.

[Urukhin]

The half-orc's blade meets nothing more substantial than shadows, and he's a couple of quick steps past the apparition as the dissipated wisps coalesce again; recovering his balance, turning with the blade in a guarded stance, yellow eyes narrowed, alert. The man - the creature - takes a more corporeal form, and the halfbreed snorts defiantly as the thing tries to bait him.
"Keep thinkin' that. Let's see if you're right."

A flicker of recognition at those twisted features, and realisation at the sight of those sleek fangs.

"'S you, ain't it? Th'children in town." He's heard about it from Mercy Tirel: the growing number of young corpses left drained and bloodless. Paired puncture wounds. Bites, pale skin marred by bruises wherever veins stray near the surface, as from the sucking of greedy lips.

"Y'ain't gettin' this one."

A defiant step forward, a flick of his gaze past the creature to the lady Egris; a subtle nod before he looks back to Varian, adjusting his grip on his sword-hilt, baring teeth and tusks in a savage and mirthless grin. Thick muscles coil, tense, readying for what is to come. The Kestrel makes her speech, issues her ultimatum, and the brute wrinkles his nose in a sneer at the idea of giving this night-thing a choice. His voice is a low growl, pupils wide and dark in anticipation.

"Balls t'that. Fuckin' have at you."

A lunge, a shout, and his blade's wicked edge flashes for the creature's throat.

[Varian]

As Murrukh spun and readied again, Varian levelled his blade toward the lady Warden, without turning away from the half-orc. His right hand drew the main gauche from its scabbard on the opposite side of his waist. Where Murrukh's expression was without amusement, Varian's was alight with it and his quiet laughter echoed through the hall.

"She's already mine." He responded venomously to both of his would-be opponents. Then, Murrukh came at him and he snapped the smaller blade upward, mere inches from his own face, to deflect the half-orc's attack. He twisted inward, toward the half-breed and just as quickly spun back out when the strike was parried. He took the same stance again, albeit mirrored.

His focus was altered, but briefly, when the door of Gloria's room slammed open. His thin lips parted again, peeled back against his vicious teeth in an all new, wicked smile. "She is a prisoner here. It is her wish to return with me, to be cared for by me, yet you keep her against her will."

Varian's eyes were inkwells in the dark hall, depthless and consuming. What dull light there was reflected only from his pale skin and the opal needles in his mouth. "Your compassion for those children is a lie, an act you put on to seem.. upstanding, heroic. It makes you weak. Pathetic." His laughter erupted again, mocking in its volume.

"I will kill you all." He whispered, as his laughter guttered out. Rather than continue with Murrukh, he turned on his feet and leapt at Egris with lightning speed. The rapier lead the assault, the longer blade angled across and outward from his chest in a swift slice toward the woman's torso. The dagger would follow close behind, aimed to find home in her gut.

[Taleinara]

Dameena had succeeded in pulling the door open, enough for her slight frame to slip from the room she found herself in. The little girl gasped in joyful delight at the sight of Varian, though the sound was stifled by the commotion from those within the hall, commotion the child summarily ignored, or maybe did not even notice at all. Silver eyes had found their intense focus upon the fellow who had become her papa.

She had succeeded, had found her papa. He'd come for her, as he said he would do. He'd come and they would be together and everything would be okay. No one else existed any longer, not once she'd set her eyes to the creature she was unnaturally attached to. Not Murrukh, not Egris, certainly not Gloria. But she was just a child, a little girl, small for her grand age of twelve, still marred by burns that had altered the way parts of her body had grown, that had stifled her natural growth so that she was as small as she was, and her diminutive state meant she was also not very strong. And so when Gloria lifted the heavy book, bringing it down in an effort to save the child from the beast who coerced her, it hit with a sickening crack that sent the child immediately crumpling to the ground, practically at Varian's feet, the girl lying half-in and half-out of the room and clearly unconscious.

She did not hear the accusation against Varian, did not hear that he had killed other children, others like her. It probably would not matter to her, even if she had, as the state she was in, the unnatural attachment, was a fever in her brain that went beyond any sense or logic the little girl may have--and certainly did--possess, at least in some small measure. For now however the child was unable to throw herself at the danger upon her doorstep. Her mind was unable to force her body to heed his call.

[Kestrel]

A glance for the half-orc as he hurled his accusations.

The children in town.

Her eyes narrowed. The already-present storm written upon her brow became a fully realized hurricane. "Oh dear, it seems that you have much to speak to my blade about, don't you?," she asked, teeth bared in a mockery of a grin.

The creature was trapped between she and Murrukh both. Their gazes slid from Varian's own and met over his shoulder in silent agreement. Blades were drawn with the sound of metal against metal. He faced her, sensing that she was the weaker of the pair. She hoped to prove him sorely mistaken in his assessment. "She is prisoner only to your manipulation. We will protect her from herself, as well as you," she assured.

The door was wrenched open by a tiny hand and the Lady took a harried step forward. The book made a dull noise against the child's skull and she slumped to the floor in defeat. To her surprise, Varian did not lunge for his next meal, but instead, towards her.

It was only her training and reflexes as a soldier that saved her from the slice. Her own met his weapon, stopping the blow meant for her torso. The well-crafted metal vibrated in protest, but held strong. The dagger was a little luckier, though her robe was plush and protected her from all but a relatively shallow cut. Hurt like hell, though.

She was not without her own skills, though, and now he was up close and personal. She stared into his eyes, smiled charmingly, and aimed the heel of her fist for the weakest part of his nose. The sharp crunch would be music to her ears, should she connect. "It is rude to stab a Lady," she informed him, in low tones.

[Rance]

Sconces in the hallway threw the shadows of the combat into the room, a black-serpent jig relieved in slashes and exaggerated figures along the opposite wall--

The book fell from her quaking hand. Swords quipped and clapped outside, ringing and singing, a wild blur of melee.

Dameena.

Gloria, overburdened by the new life barely contained within her belly, scrambled forward and grappled for the unconscious girl's ankles, her one hand lashing around a frail limb while the stump jabbed and knocked, its phantom fingers desperate to grip. With an audible heave and a long tangle of saliva hanging from her chin -- it was hard to breathe, her lungs ballooning and deflating under the plate of her chest, blowing mucus out from her mouth and flaring nostrils -- she dug her bare heels into the wooden boards.

If she succeeded in gracelessly dragging the girl (I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry) into the chamber, her second task would be to retrieve her knife. Its sharp edge smiled in the candlelight, and should someone come for the child, she was prepared--

(Months ago, thumbing through books in the Inquisitory, she fell across a funny little dog-eared pamphlet, Preserving a Soul in the Shadows of Beasts and their Kin -- a foolish tract penned by some overzealous clergyman. More historic than effective, really; a collection of passages regarding uncanny dangers, esoteric superstitions, rabid conspiracies, and ungainly tactics employed in prevention.

"It's all tripe," a fellow Inquisitor had said. "Misinformation and sophistry."

But here, perhaps not--)

"Be gone," Gloria Wynsee croaked from behind the longknife's handle. "Be gone," she cried out, feeding fright and violence to performative words. "Cast yourself out and -- and away from this child! Be gone; be away!"

Swords, she imagined, would fare much better. And so would closing the door.

Her heel sought to do just that.

[Urukhin]

The creature fends off Murrukh's blade with that dagger - a feat of strength the brute notes with a curl of his lip and narrowing of yellow eyes - but then turns his attention upon the Lady Warden, disregarding the half-orc as a sluggard, an oaf. An assumption that has cost others dearly.

The hallway confines him, constrains his movements, but he works with what he has; the creature brings both blades to bear upon the woman, rapier and main-gauche, and the halfbreed draws his own sword back briefly, head twitching slightly aside at the sound of a latch at his back, followed by a dull blow and the oddly distinctive thump of a body dropped to the floorboards.

"Back in th'fuckin' room!" Growled over his shoulder, eyes not leaving the pair as they clash blades before him. Neither time nor inclination for any pithy threats or dashing banter before he sights an opportunity as they grapple.

The halfbreed darts abruptly forward with a quickness that belies his size, gripping his heavy blade above the guard to apply extra force to two quick low strikes at the back of the creature's knees; fully intending to hamstring him, cripple him, before he brings his blade back in a high guard.

[Varian]

Gloria and the now unconscious Dameena disappeared into the room again, beyond Varian's reach. They were far safer than they might know, beyond that threshold. It was due to this fact that he paid them no further mind, for the time being.

Fully aware that he had engaged two opponents, his apparent disregard for Murrukh was one of systematic elimination. In their brief collision, he had judged the half-breed's strength and knew it to be greater than the human woman he chose to launch his assault against. The Warden however, proved to be more able than perhaps the vampire had calculated.

She struck at his face, but he turned his head and diminished the damage. His skin was cold and smooth, like ice and the skeletal structure beneath was like stone. He could see Murrukh's approach, after he gave his guttural command to the pair of girls. Varian could move quickly, perhaps far more quickly than either of the other two combatants but, like Murrukh, he was confined by the hall. Here, he was forced to defend himself more fervently, mitigate the worst of their attacks.

He turned back to Kestrel, his face distorted and bestial, his maw gaped and those wicked, viper fangs far too near her throat. A deep growl in his chest turned into a roar. His sword arm crooked behind her and sought to bring her even closer. He leaned in, feigning that he might sink those teeth into her flesh, but he attempted to spin their position and place her body between himself and Murrukh's onslaught. Whether he was successful in manipulating the woman or not, he pivoted his own position.

Unfortunately for Varian, the half-orc's blade found one of its targets. The edge sliced deep into one of the vampires legs and sprayed black blood against the wall and floor. It staggered the monster, but the measure of pain it inflicted was concealed behind white-less eyes and a sneering mouth.

He withdrew quickly from the pair and sheathed his companion blade at his waist. The rapier was held aloft again, levelled in their direction.

"All of this for a girl." His gaze shifted briefly toward the door behind which Gloria had concealed his thrall. "You've condemned her to pain, without me. When she succumbs, her death will be on your hands." As he began to back away, the shadows around him became thick and malleable.

"You've failed and Myrken will pay the cost." Tendrils of milky black enveloped him, like loving, protective arms. Varian's body shuddered like a projection, then again became that wraith-like form, before it dissipated entirely.

[Kestrel]

Unlucky hit, since she managed not to fracture the fragile bones of his nose. Her mouth slanted downward with undisguised disappointment. The chill of his skin made a shudder race down her spine in response. Unnatural.

The vampire leaned in close and her eyes flickered closed, fully expecting to feel the pierce of teeth finding unprotected, fair skin in its wake. Instead, his blood splashed against her bare feet and his hands clutched her tightly. He spun and suddenly, she was faced with an angry half-orc who was far, far too close with his massive blade. She lifted her hands to protect herself reflexively, eyes narrowed at being used in such fashion.

Varian hissed his fury at them all and she turned to glance over her shoulder - her own blade held aloft, pointing accusingly at his rapidly vanishing frame. "I will be seeing you soon," she vowed.

When he disappeared, she groped blindly for Murrukh to hang onto his strong frame, suddenly finding herself a little weak in the knees now that her adrenaline was spent.

Vampires, demons, and magic...

The Lady Warden certainly had her work cut out for her.

Luckily, she had friends.

[Rance]

All of this for a girl.

The noise diminished.

The nausea fled.

The flame on the candle's wick remembered its smoky spine.

Propelled by some wonder of guilt and momentum, Gloria managed to drag the unresponsive Dameena onto the lumpy bed, where she -- on weakened knees -- adjusted the girl's limbs into some semblance of comfortable repose. "It was for good reason," she trilled under her breath, the words bare of belief. "It was for a good reason."

Should Murrukh or Egris, in time, come to take accord of the state of things, they would find the rugged seamstress both quietly, desperately thankful for their intervention and prepared to surrender the battered child to their care--

All of this for a girl.