![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[Lord of the Mysteries] For the Ones We Left Behind 5/15 (5087 words)
Title: For the Ones We Left Behind 5/15
Fandom: Lord of the Mysteries
Character/Pairing(s): Audrey Hall, Leonard Mitchell, Melissa Moretti, Benson Moretti, Klein Moretti, Xio Derecha, Fors Wall
Rating: PG-13
Warning: none?
Summary: MI9 catches Benson Moretti, and end up with more than they expect.
“If it helps,” the blue-eyed gentleman said gruffly, “you can blame that brother of yours for your trouble. After all, the dead make perfect scapegoats.”
Inside the interrogation room, Benson Moretti found himself wrapped in a white sheet, one that started moving on its own the moment its handlers released it, like a phantom racing toward him. He tried to turn and run out of panic, only to be bound by the cloth before he could even realise there was nowhere to run to.
He let out an involuntary cry of pain as the cloth wrapped tighter, focusing especially around his head and forcing him to claw at it as threads dug into his skin, tightening like a noose around his throat.
“This isn’t how I wanted to do things, Mr. Moretti,” the gentleman said, his smoker’s voice deceptively gentle. “To be quite honest, your secrets shouldn’t be worth my time. But orders are orders. It was either this, or a pain that you may be unable to handle. Believe me, I am taking the gentler route. Civilians do not do well under psychic piercing. This way, we get our information, and after a session with a hypnotist, you have a chance of being released scot-free.”
The cloth was wrapped so tightly Benson couldn’t breathe through it, even if his panicked huffs travelled through the thin threads. No, it was the strength in which it was sticking to him, strangling him, as if attempting to physically get inside his head, and he could only claw his fingers at it in futility.
“Sir…” one of the men in the room said nervously.
As Benson struggled, the gentleman waited a long moment before deciding, “There must be something. Let it be.”
It felt like threads were attempting to dig under his skin, through his pores like roots growing under soil. In all his years, Benson never imagined being in such a situation, or that a feeling like this existed. White threads covered his eyes, blurring his vision at too close a range, like it was reaching ever closer and closer—
“Let him go,” the blue-eyed man said, and immediately the men in the room reached to help Benson dislodge the sheet from his face, their movements deft and rehearsed.
As Benson coughed and wheezed, his weight pressed against the table as he struggled to get his bearings over the sheer confusion and panic over what just happened, the man continued, “It seems you truly know nothing at all. A completely ordinary person.”
“You,” Benson rasped out, because at this point he felt like common sense was already thrown out the window, and now the anger was swelling to the forefront once more. He coughed again, wheezing to catch his breath, before saying, “You don’t get to say that about my brother. Don’t blame your own actions on him!”
His thoughts felt slow and sluggish, a little like he was drunk, and Benson wiped the back of his hand across his face, only to be met with dampness that scared him nearly blind for a moment before he pulled back and saw it was merely sweat and not blood.
Benson looked up and saw the men holding that cloth again, each at a corner, and he cringed back in case any of them let go once more. The fear and anger combined to make his limbs shake, and Benson gritted out, “What do you even know about Klein? What do you mean— what do you mean information hidden from you? What— what is a nighthawk?”
“That information wouldn’t do you any good when you leave,” the man dismissed, the embers of his cigar falling from his fingers. “Perhaps we’ve been looking at the wrong sibling. Surely Melissa Moretti also has a pendant like this.”
The anger erupted into fury. “Don’t!”
“They should be bringing her in now.”
Bypassing all his fear, Benson lunged.
—
“We wait, we wait,” Fors whispered urgently to Xio, huddling close to the other woman as she held tightly onto her friend’s hand. They got lucky when they saw the men carrying what had to be an extraordinary item, and followed along at a careful distance to one of the smaller interrogation rooms.
With someone who seemed like a powerful Beyonder standing at the doorway, neither of them were keen on getting too close lest they draw his attention.
It wasn’t until the yelling started that the man stepped into the room, allowing Fors and Xio to move closer.
Inside the dimly-lit crowded room was a man struggling against a long white sheet wrapped around his head and twisting above him like a vortex, the fabric fluttering continuously and morphing into shadow, like words appearing atop the fabric except they were— concepts. Direct transfer of information.
Benson Moretti, Fors and Xio knew the moment they saw the sheet. The information almost felt whispered into their minds, an oily slithery thing that told them: he is a diligent eldest brother and hard-working employee with a crush on a lady working at a cafe close to his job.
They really found Benson Moretti! Fors thought in that moment with some shock, only to hear Xio growling softly under her breath. It was all Fors could do to hold her back, the two of them forced to watch as MI9 continued to torture a man that the extraordinary object declared as an ordinary civilian.
“We have to wait,” Fors hissed as Xio tugged at her. “Miss Audrey and Mr. Star will arrive soon, but right now we’re outnumbered!”
She could get them out if something happened, thanks to her Travel ability, but she doubted that they would be able to get back in again to help if the others did arrive and then get into trouble.
They were here to collect information! In this case, they had all the information they needed, except for why Benson Moretti was captured in the first place. They could even lead the others directly here, since luckily the room wasn’t very deep into the building and only one floor up.
Xio was tense under her hand, with faint tremors running down her arm. Fors could only squeeze her hand in sympathy, guiltily wondering how Xio must be paralleling this situation with her father’s death.
“They won’t kill him,” she continued to whisper to Xio, trying to keep her attention. “He’s just a civilian, not even a Beyonder! The man just said he’d let him go after this—”
And then Benson Moretti lunged at the high-sequencer and was immediately caught and thrown down before he could make it halfway, the men holding onto the extraordinary object managing to also take him down one handed.
They pressed his head against the ground despite his struggling, and Fors squeezed her eyes shut as she heard him yell out, “Don’t you dare touch my sister!”
It was that moment of distraction which allowed Xio to slip Leymano’s Travels from her pocket and flip to an earlier page for Mr. Moon’s Wings of Darkness ability.
“Wait—”
But Xio didn’t wait, summoning a large swarm of illusory bats down the hallway where someone screamed loudly at their sudden appearance.
“What was that?” The man in charge asked briskly, and then pointed at his four underlings in the room. “Stay here.”
He turned and strode out the room, an irritated grimace at the corner of his mouth and his cigar between his teeth.
The moment he was more than ten paces away, Xio dragged Fors into the room and flipped the pages of Leymano’s Travels again to a Lullaby ability placed by Mr. Star, “Calm is the morn without a sound, calm as to suit a calmer grief.”
Despite the surprise attack, the men inside didn’t all immediately fall asleep, although they wavered for a moment, losing the strength in their limbs. Fors could only breathe a sigh of relief that Xio wasn’t attacking them immediately, but rather attempting to knock them out.
Xio, however, wasn’t done. She tossed the notebook back to Fors, who caught it clumsily one-handed, and then demanded, “Imprison.”
The men were now not merely listless, but moved as if stuck in molasses.
With those men down, Xio dropped her grip on Fors’s hand, letting the psychological invisibility ability sleuth away from her, allowing her form to be clearly seen in the room, visibly trembling with anger.
“It’s not fair. It’s not right.” Xio said tersely, hands balled into fists. She breathed out a long moment, and then visibly pushed her anger aside as she crouched down and said in a louder voice, “Are you alright, Mr. Moretti? We’ve come to rescue you.”
We haven’t! Fors thought in a panic, because that wasn’t what they planned out at all!
The man on the floor looked to be in a daze, the force of being shoved down having completely knocked the breath and anger from him. He stared at Xio blankly, as if unable to understand why this woman suddenly appeared while the men who held him down were now all frozen in place.
“What…?”
“We’re here to rescue you,” Xio repeated easily, and reached to help him up, easily pulling him despite her small frame. “Are you alright to move? Any injuries we shouldn’t aggravate?”
Fors stood awkwardly to the side, still under invisibility, and nervously gripped Leymano’s Travels.
Benson Moretti, a man who had thinning black hair and clear brown eyes, didn’t bother to ask who they were but rather took himself into account before shaking his head in a negative.
Xio held onto his shoulder and reached out for Fors’s hand. “Alright, then let’s—”
“Teleportation is prohibited here. Invisibility is prohibited here.”
The man from before had come back, and Fors let out a startled squeak as she felt eyes on her once more, and a falling sense of dread as Xio stepped in front of both her and Benson Moretti.
The confident gentleman smiled triumphantly, the cigar between his fingers now reduced to a third of its starting size.
“Ahh,” he said with a low glee, “I knew there would be mice coming from the woodwork with this one. Now whose spies are these?”
—
It took mere seconds before things escalated into a fight, with Fors pulling Benson with her behind the frozen men holding onto that extraordinary object. The room was small to begin with and unsuited to the way that both Xio and the blue-eyed man at the doorway could move, both with a grace and strength that belied their frames.
“What?” Benson exclaimed under his breath as his eyes followed the movements and the gentleman threw a punch the blonde lady ducked under, only for his first to hit a wall and heavily dent the sturdy wood, resulting in a spew of splinters. “How is this—?”
Xio went low and aimed a kick to the man’s knee, forcing him back several steps to avoid being thrown onto the ground. She didn’t stop advancing, but instead continued to push him outward, using her small size to make herself a smaller and faster target.
Fors took advantage of that to drag Benson with her toward the wall when the two took the fight to the wider hallway, and she pressed next to the doorframe to eye the fight carefully, knowing better than to get in the way of two Arbiter pathway Beyonders in a fight. Her pathway didn’t give her any physical strength enhancements the way it did for Xio!
“Unlawful intruders are guilty of trespassing! Trespassers will be punished!”
As Fors felt pain on her skin like whips, Xio called out in a similar authoritative tone, “Punishment without proper investigation is prohibited!”
Fors felt the pain fade although it did not go away entirely, and the man laughed in response.
“One of ours?” He asked, and then smiled darkly. “Interesting. A traitor? You’re brave, but far too weak to face me.”
Too weak? Their enemy must be a demigod!
He pointed at Xio with a smile and whispered something, prompting Fors to stand and flip through Leymano’s Travels for a specific page as Xio collapsed with a shout of pain, hands clawing at her head as she screamed.
Found it! Please, please let this work, especially when she didn’t hear what the man actually said to Xio—
In Ancient Hermes, Fors declared as confidently as she could on the Notarization page, “God says it’s ineffective!”
Turning the page, Fors squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed onto Benson’s shoulder tight enough he stumbled under her grip, and then summoned a blinding beam of light directly where the man stood, shoving the notebook deep into a pocket in one smooth motion before dashing forward to grab Xio’s arm and running the opposite direction blindly, attempting to get as much distance between them and that man before the blindness wore off.
Both Xio and Benson Moretti stumbled along behind her, but Fors didn’t dare allow them to slow, using her fear of that man to be her strength as she dragged them toward where she recalled the stairs to be.
It wasn’t far, it couldn’t be far—!
Within a few seconds, Fors opened her eyes, blinking the blind spots away as she skid to a halt in front of the stairwell down, and stumbled forward a step as both Benson and Xio tumbled into her as well.
“Down, down, we have to go down,” Fors blubbered, and saw the other two also blink rapidly to adjust their vision, having more trouble than her because they had been unprepared for the Light Supplicant spell.
As both of them pressed carefully against a wall and stumbled their way down the stairs, Fors had a brief thought of just pulling Xio along and leaving the man they were rescuing behind, as he was much slower and was wasting precious seconds. Surely MI9 wouldn’t kill him merely for—?
What am I thinking? Fors shoved those hysterical thoughts away guiltily. Even if they weren’t going to kill him before, they might now that they think he’s associated with us!
Oh, they really should have waited for Miss Audrey and Mr. Star…
Luckily, there was no one at the stairs, but there was no way they wouldn’t run into more people on their way out of the building—
“Confinement!”
It was like running head-first into a wall, and Fors yelped out in pain as she bounced back in the middle of the stairs and then lost her footing, nearly twisting an ankle as she fell. In front of her, Xio hit the invisible wall with a shoulder and stood in a daze, almost frozen in place for a second. Benson Moretti bounced back and fell onto his butt on the edge of the stairs.
Slowly, they heard the sharp footsteps of expensive dress shoes on the parapet floor coming toward them; unhurried and confident that they would not be able to escape.
“Xio,” Fors called out in a frightened tone close to a whisper, “Xio, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Xio responded tersely, a tinge of pain still in her voice. “But his sequence is higher than mine, and I can’t break his confinement—”
Benson was staring between the both of them, but unwilling to interrupt despite his unvoiced questions.
Fors clasped her hands together, her panic seeping into her prayer to Mr. Fool, hoping once more that the hidden deity would help them out of this situation.
It was too much, she knew, especially since Mr. Fool already blessed them earlier, and that was likely how they were able to slip in so easily and also remain undetected for so long, but they were under direct scrutiny now, and—
Please help, Fors prayed desperately, remembering how the man walking toward them stood by coldly and watched a civilian be tortured. I think that man will kill us!
Almost immediately, an answer came: Call for my Blessed.
Could she? Fors always assumed that such things had to be discussed prior to the act, especially since she would be disrupting Mr. World in whatever matters he was handling, but as the silhouette of that man appeared in the stairwell, Fors shoved her hand deep into her pocket and pulled out Leymano’s Travels once more, flipping it to the very end.
Historical Void wasn’t an ability that needed to be announced, merely activated, and Fors reached her hand out beside her and prayed desperately once more, hoping Mr. Fool’s previous blessing would allow her to be successful the first time around, and grabbed onto the air.
Grabbed onto an arm, pulling out the figure of Gehrman Sparrow, hard enough that once she let go, Fors fell against the wall of the narrow stairway, now entirely out of breath and spirituality.
Next to her, Benson Moretti yelled out in shock at the sudden appearance of another person.
Mr. World stood there for a moment, blank as a puppet, before a light came to his eyes and he immediately looked around, assessing the situation.
“Confinement?” He asked, and Fors merely nodded while Xio squinted at him. His hand reached down and grabbed onto blank space, and he frowned when he realised he was completely unarmed.
“Sorry,” Fors shrunk back slightly, inexplicably guilty for her low spirituality. With the previous abilities she used, it meant Gehrman would have very little spirituality to work with, while all she wanted to do now was settle down for a nap.
His eyes glanced over at Benson Moretti before passing him, and he asked Xio, “And you?”
“I’ll be fine in a moment,” Xio responded, reading his question.
Below the stairs, there were sounds of shouting and running footsteps, a group of backup coming to trap them from below, and the high sequence Beyonder above. Gehrman looked in both directions, and then said to Xio, “I’m borrowing your blade.”
“Do you know how to fight with a sword?” Xio asked, but she conceded the short sword on her belt, easily overseen by others with how it was nearly invisible. “The effects can’t be sealed after this until I get home. I’d have to commission another sheath.”
Gehrman didn’t comment on the sheath, having heard about the downsides of the grade two sealed artefact Wintery Blade already in the Tarot Club meetings. He accepted the near-invisible sword made from the remnants of a Wraith and gave it an experimental swing and then a roll of his wrist.
“I’ve dabbled,” he answered her question. “I’ll take bottom first, and then we’ll switch.”
“Got it,” Xio responded.
“Intruders!” A voice called from the bottom of the stairs, and there was a rush of three agents up the stairs toward where they were huddled in the middle of the stairwell, prompting Gehrman into action.
The moment the first agent entered the confinement area, he was kicked back down, grazing a second agent and causing him to stumble. The third made it past the others and swung out a baton that was easily countered by the Wintery Blade.
Gehrman used the force of the agent to lean into the swing and skim the blade down the baton, creating sparks even as he pulled the agent into the momentum of his movement to dodge down and then pull the man over a shoulder, flipping him onto his back and then dislodging the baton to flip it up in the air and catch it himself in one smooth motion.
Fors watched with a strangled sound, already well aware of how dangerous Gehrman Sparrow could be, but seeing him in close combat for the first time. She yanked Benson Moretti out of the way, the man having frozen at the sight of the fight.
Next to them, Xio was already recovered enough to slam the heel of her palm against a certain point on the agent’s neck, making his eyes bulge as he choked, hands automatically going up to protect his vital spot as she rummaged around his clothes for anything useful.
Finding nothing of use outside of pens and a wallet, Xio grunted her disappointment before calling out a warning to Gehrman and pushing the man she fought down the set of stairs, using him as a barrier for the others attempting to run up.
At that point, Gehrman Sparrow disarmed another agent and tossed the Wintery Blade back at Xio, who caught it easily and shivered the moment the cold guard hit her palm. There were two other bodies out cold and blocking the steps downward, and by then the gentleman at the top of the stairs made his way around the bend to stare down at them.
He looked startled before his expression settled into something grim.
“Gehrman Sparrow,” he greeted, which made Benson turn to stare at the man fighting for them with wide eyes.
Gehrman kicked one more agent down and then took the moment to gaze upward calmly, as if he wasn’t in the middle of a physical fight against multiple people.
“Admiral Amyrius,” he returned the greeting civilly.
The gentleman, or Admiral, gave the scene a calculating look, eyes barely registering his downed agents.
“Here on commission?” He asked as if chatting with an acquaintance rather than trapping a group of intruders to MI9.
“You could say that,” Gehrman nodded in agreement before he returned his attention to another young man attempting to attack him while he was distracted, blocking the hit with one baton while using the other to strike at the ribs in one smooth manoeuvre, beating the breath right from the man’s lungs.
“Is there any chance you would take a higher offer?” Admiral Amyrius asked casually.
“My apologies,” Gehrman said, “I don’t take other offers until a job is complete.”
Xio used this time to stand in front of Fors and Benson, nudging Fors to take stock and stand back up again, ready to escape at the slightest opportunity.
“You do get the job done,” Admiral Amyrius mused, and then extinguished his cigar on the stairwell railing, grinding it down to ensure there would be no embers remaining. “Then I’m afraid we’ll meet as enemies this time around.”
“I’m afraid so,” Gehrman agreed genially.
Admiral Amyrius raised a hand and declared, “Gehrman Sparrow will be depr—”
He was interrupted as Gehrman threw one of the batons in his direction with unerring accuracy, forced to duck away from the spinning baton that ended up embedded into the wall right where his head had been.
“Whoops.” Gehrman said flatly, and then turned his attention toward Fors and jerked his head toward the bottom of the stairs, covered with downed and groaning bodies. “Go.”
Fors didn’t need to be told twice, and she grabbed onto both Xio and Benson just as before and charged ahead, letting Mr. World bring up the rear against the high-sequencer who was bound to come after them again.
This time around, they managed to get through, and Fors wasn’t going to linger on how Gehrman Sparrow managed that until they were all safe and out in one piece!
To her surprise, the area at the bottom of the stairwell was clear of people, but there must have been more than the dozen that Mr. World knocked out on the first floor, right? She passed more people than that with Xio on their stroll up!
She remained surprised until she saw a lady step out smoothly as if from thin air, beckoning to her with a gloved hand. The familiar lady had a modern green dress with a wealthy and youthful look, and blonde hair in a carefully pinned coif.
It was Miss Audrey! Fors could have wept with joy.
Behind her was a young lady in darker and plainer clothes, grasping onto a leather shoulder bag as her wide eyes scanned their group and teared up with relief.
“Benson!” The young lady cried out.
Mr. Moretti’s steps suddenly grew faster than when they had to escape an angry demigod, flying past both Fors and Xio with his arms extended to hug the young woman. “Melissa! Thank the goddess you’re safe!”
“You’re the one who worried me!” The young lady, Melissa, exclaimed, voice slightly muffled in the hug.
“Yes, yes,” Miss Audrey said with a subtle urgency. “Let’s take the reunion outside now, I’m not sure how long Mr. Mitchell can—”
The sound of a gunshot from the stairwell echoed through their ears so loudly that Fors could hear it continuing to ring even after the sound was gone.
Before she could even think about worrying for Mr. World, she heard his voice call out to them, “Watch out!”
A white flash shot down the stairs, its movement like a ghost as it charged toward their group. Surprisingly, it was Xio who reacted the fastest and pushed Fors out of the way, which put her in the direct path of the white sheet that hit her square on, quickly wrapping around her person with the excess fabric rearing upward like a vortex and compelling everyone to look at it.
“Xio!” Fors cried out, reaching out in attempts to help Xio free herself from the extraordinary object, terrified at the memory of what happened earlier.
“It’s—” Xio sounded panicked, hands grasping at the fabric futilely. “I— I can breathe?”
Above them, the sheet fluttered and morphed, moving like a shadow as information was presented on it; not quite words, but like thoughts projected into the heads of those who viewed it.
Xio Derecha, it broadcasted, sequence 5 Disciplinary Paladin of the Arbiter pathway. There was the feeling emitted of her being a loving daughter, an older sister, and protective friend.
It continued to reveal: Tarot Club’s Judgement Card.
There was a sharp inhale, although Fors didn’t care to see who it was.
Behind them, Amyrius’s voice bellowed in the stairwell, “Summons are prohibited!”
There was another gunshot, and then a shout.
“What is that?” Melissa’s voice shook as Fors kept trying to free her friend from the fluttering sheet that continuously slipped through her grasp. “Is it— is it hurting her?”
Another pair of hands joined Fors, and she recognised Miss Audrey’s white silk gloves, which weren’t doing a much better job at grasping the fabric until the pale forearm tensed to the point muscles could visibly be seen under the skin, and then a sheen of white scale patterns coated her arms in a manner that made Fors dizzy even as she turned her head away to not look at it.
With the partial mythical creature strength, Miss Audrey managed to get a solid hold of the sheet, and this time pulled more effectively until it stopped its vortex of information above Xio and started struggling away from her, trying to get away from the dragon-like grasp that Miss Audrey had on it.
“It’s working!” Fors’s was relieved, even as her head felt like it was spinning from the close proximity to something she shouldn’t see. She dared to glance up just once more at the flailing vortex of fabric, and then caught the horrified eyes of Benson and Melissa, who looked very similar to each other now that they were standing next to each other.
“It doesn’t matter,” Xio said urgently. “It’s not choking me— focus on getting the civilians out first!”
There really were times Fors was reminded of how good a person Xio was, and what kind of a person she herself was standing next to her.
“You can do that,” Fors snapped at her, “after we get you out of this!”
“Don’t worry,” Miss Audrey said to Xio as she pulled, “Everyone on the first floor should be asleep. Mr. Star—”
“You!”
Fors startled and looked over her shoulder to see Admiral Amyrius storming toward them, blue eyes lit from within like a storm of fury while the rest of him looked like he had been hit by lightning, his recently impeccable clothing dishevelled and with a bleeding cut on his face.
He was staring at the sheet around Xio with a dark smile.
“A cultist,” he declared, “we truly are fighting a war within and without.”
Behind him, there were staggering and limping men who seemed to be catching up, some holding their head or their ribs, all of them looking murderous.
The sheet was finally pulled off by Audrey just seconds too late, and it struggled within her grasp until escaping up into the air, hovering near the coffered ceiling in a trembling manner out of their reach.
Fors felt like Amyrius saw something to justify his actions, but she couldn’t figure out what. Xio was one of the most honourable and just people she had ever met, and nothing of what was shown via the sheet said differently.
“I had my doubts about whether we would find anything under internal investigation. Now I admit my mistake.”
The men behind Amyrius gestured, and the sheet lingering on the ceiling flew down into their grasp on command.
“Time to go,” a voice behind Fors broke her from her daze, along with the hand yanking her shoulder upward. Startled, she looked up to see both the figures of Mr. World and Mr. Star, both bleeding from various cuts, and she marvelled for a moment at the Star’s makeshift hood to obscure his features and wondered why she hadn’t thought to do the same thing— now MI9 knew what she looked like, and if she understood anything of Arbiters thanks to Xio, it was that they never forgot faces.
She really had been too confident in her ability to sneak in and out.
But there was no hiding the face of Gehrman Sparrow, who frowned as he pulled her up and glanced over to see Mr. Star to the same for Xio. Miss Justice, on the other hand, was coaxing the two civilians in their group to move as well, pushing them onward physically when she had to.
While Mr. Star moved with a limp and was holding his ribs tightly, Mr. World had blood running down the arm that wasn’t holding onto Fors, dripping onto the floor steadily. Fors felt yet another pang of guilt about his low spirituality, and wondered if there was any way to help Mr. World find another way to fight a demigod to get them all out.
As if the chaos of the scene wasn’t enough, before they could make it too far, Fors heard the front doors of the building slam open and suddenly a cacophony of noises from outside burst forth to disrupt their fight.
A/N: So while rushing this fight during November I figured I'd just muddle through and then fix all the parts that didn't make sense later. But as I was editing I realised I am not smart enough to fix anything, that will get worse as the story goes. Why is Klein's spirituality entirely limited by Fors? Because he's too OP otherwise. How did Klein and Leonard manage to get around MI9 to appear behind Fors, Xio, and Audrey? Something-something-shadow-something, a way that doesn't break the prohibition on teleportation. How did they break confinement the first time?
It's all Leonard to the rescue, actually. But since it's from Fors's POV, she didn't see anything.
Previous || Next
Fandom: Lord of the Mysteries
Character/Pairing(s): Audrey Hall, Leonard Mitchell, Melissa Moretti, Benson Moretti, Klein Moretti, Xio Derecha, Fors Wall
Rating: PG-13
Warning: none?
Summary: MI9 catches Benson Moretti, and end up with more than they expect.
“If it helps,” the blue-eyed gentleman said gruffly, “you can blame that brother of yours for your trouble. After all, the dead make perfect scapegoats.”
Inside the interrogation room, Benson Moretti found himself wrapped in a white sheet, one that started moving on its own the moment its handlers released it, like a phantom racing toward him. He tried to turn and run out of panic, only to be bound by the cloth before he could even realise there was nowhere to run to.
He let out an involuntary cry of pain as the cloth wrapped tighter, focusing especially around his head and forcing him to claw at it as threads dug into his skin, tightening like a noose around his throat.
“This isn’t how I wanted to do things, Mr. Moretti,” the gentleman said, his smoker’s voice deceptively gentle. “To be quite honest, your secrets shouldn’t be worth my time. But orders are orders. It was either this, or a pain that you may be unable to handle. Believe me, I am taking the gentler route. Civilians do not do well under psychic piercing. This way, we get our information, and after a session with a hypnotist, you have a chance of being released scot-free.”
The cloth was wrapped so tightly Benson couldn’t breathe through it, even if his panicked huffs travelled through the thin threads. No, it was the strength in which it was sticking to him, strangling him, as if attempting to physically get inside his head, and he could only claw his fingers at it in futility.
“Sir…” one of the men in the room said nervously.
As Benson struggled, the gentleman waited a long moment before deciding, “There must be something. Let it be.”
It felt like threads were attempting to dig under his skin, through his pores like roots growing under soil. In all his years, Benson never imagined being in such a situation, or that a feeling like this existed. White threads covered his eyes, blurring his vision at too close a range, like it was reaching ever closer and closer—
“Let him go,” the blue-eyed man said, and immediately the men in the room reached to help Benson dislodge the sheet from his face, their movements deft and rehearsed.
As Benson coughed and wheezed, his weight pressed against the table as he struggled to get his bearings over the sheer confusion and panic over what just happened, the man continued, “It seems you truly know nothing at all. A completely ordinary person.”
“You,” Benson rasped out, because at this point he felt like common sense was already thrown out the window, and now the anger was swelling to the forefront once more. He coughed again, wheezing to catch his breath, before saying, “You don’t get to say that about my brother. Don’t blame your own actions on him!”
His thoughts felt slow and sluggish, a little like he was drunk, and Benson wiped the back of his hand across his face, only to be met with dampness that scared him nearly blind for a moment before he pulled back and saw it was merely sweat and not blood.
Benson looked up and saw the men holding that cloth again, each at a corner, and he cringed back in case any of them let go once more. The fear and anger combined to make his limbs shake, and Benson gritted out, “What do you even know about Klein? What do you mean— what do you mean information hidden from you? What— what is a nighthawk?”
“That information wouldn’t do you any good when you leave,” the man dismissed, the embers of his cigar falling from his fingers. “Perhaps we’ve been looking at the wrong sibling. Surely Melissa Moretti also has a pendant like this.”
The anger erupted into fury. “Don’t!”
“They should be bringing her in now.”
Bypassing all his fear, Benson lunged.
—
“We wait, we wait,” Fors whispered urgently to Xio, huddling close to the other woman as she held tightly onto her friend’s hand. They got lucky when they saw the men carrying what had to be an extraordinary item, and followed along at a careful distance to one of the smaller interrogation rooms.
With someone who seemed like a powerful Beyonder standing at the doorway, neither of them were keen on getting too close lest they draw his attention.
It wasn’t until the yelling started that the man stepped into the room, allowing Fors and Xio to move closer.
Inside the dimly-lit crowded room was a man struggling against a long white sheet wrapped around his head and twisting above him like a vortex, the fabric fluttering continuously and morphing into shadow, like words appearing atop the fabric except they were— concepts. Direct transfer of information.
Benson Moretti, Fors and Xio knew the moment they saw the sheet. The information almost felt whispered into their minds, an oily slithery thing that told them: he is a diligent eldest brother and hard-working employee with a crush on a lady working at a cafe close to his job.
They really found Benson Moretti! Fors thought in that moment with some shock, only to hear Xio growling softly under her breath. It was all Fors could do to hold her back, the two of them forced to watch as MI9 continued to torture a man that the extraordinary object declared as an ordinary civilian.
“We have to wait,” Fors hissed as Xio tugged at her. “Miss Audrey and Mr. Star will arrive soon, but right now we’re outnumbered!”
She could get them out if something happened, thanks to her Travel ability, but she doubted that they would be able to get back in again to help if the others did arrive and then get into trouble.
They were here to collect information! In this case, they had all the information they needed, except for why Benson Moretti was captured in the first place. They could even lead the others directly here, since luckily the room wasn’t very deep into the building and only one floor up.
Xio was tense under her hand, with faint tremors running down her arm. Fors could only squeeze her hand in sympathy, guiltily wondering how Xio must be paralleling this situation with her father’s death.
“They won’t kill him,” she continued to whisper to Xio, trying to keep her attention. “He’s just a civilian, not even a Beyonder! The man just said he’d let him go after this—”
And then Benson Moretti lunged at the high-sequencer and was immediately caught and thrown down before he could make it halfway, the men holding onto the extraordinary object managing to also take him down one handed.
They pressed his head against the ground despite his struggling, and Fors squeezed her eyes shut as she heard him yell out, “Don’t you dare touch my sister!”
It was that moment of distraction which allowed Xio to slip Leymano’s Travels from her pocket and flip to an earlier page for Mr. Moon’s Wings of Darkness ability.
“Wait—”
But Xio didn’t wait, summoning a large swarm of illusory bats down the hallway where someone screamed loudly at their sudden appearance.
“What was that?” The man in charge asked briskly, and then pointed at his four underlings in the room. “Stay here.”
He turned and strode out the room, an irritated grimace at the corner of his mouth and his cigar between his teeth.
The moment he was more than ten paces away, Xio dragged Fors into the room and flipped the pages of Leymano’s Travels again to a Lullaby ability placed by Mr. Star, “Calm is the morn without a sound, calm as to suit a calmer grief.”
Despite the surprise attack, the men inside didn’t all immediately fall asleep, although they wavered for a moment, losing the strength in their limbs. Fors could only breathe a sigh of relief that Xio wasn’t attacking them immediately, but rather attempting to knock them out.
Xio, however, wasn’t done. She tossed the notebook back to Fors, who caught it clumsily one-handed, and then demanded, “Imprison.”
The men were now not merely listless, but moved as if stuck in molasses.
With those men down, Xio dropped her grip on Fors’s hand, letting the psychological invisibility ability sleuth away from her, allowing her form to be clearly seen in the room, visibly trembling with anger.
“It’s not fair. It’s not right.” Xio said tersely, hands balled into fists. She breathed out a long moment, and then visibly pushed her anger aside as she crouched down and said in a louder voice, “Are you alright, Mr. Moretti? We’ve come to rescue you.”
We haven’t! Fors thought in a panic, because that wasn’t what they planned out at all!
The man on the floor looked to be in a daze, the force of being shoved down having completely knocked the breath and anger from him. He stared at Xio blankly, as if unable to understand why this woman suddenly appeared while the men who held him down were now all frozen in place.
“What…?”
“We’re here to rescue you,” Xio repeated easily, and reached to help him up, easily pulling him despite her small frame. “Are you alright to move? Any injuries we shouldn’t aggravate?”
Fors stood awkwardly to the side, still under invisibility, and nervously gripped Leymano’s Travels.
Benson Moretti, a man who had thinning black hair and clear brown eyes, didn’t bother to ask who they were but rather took himself into account before shaking his head in a negative.
Xio held onto his shoulder and reached out for Fors’s hand. “Alright, then let’s—”
“Teleportation is prohibited here. Invisibility is prohibited here.”
The man from before had come back, and Fors let out a startled squeak as she felt eyes on her once more, and a falling sense of dread as Xio stepped in front of both her and Benson Moretti.
The confident gentleman smiled triumphantly, the cigar between his fingers now reduced to a third of its starting size.
“Ahh,” he said with a low glee, “I knew there would be mice coming from the woodwork with this one. Now whose spies are these?”
—
It took mere seconds before things escalated into a fight, with Fors pulling Benson with her behind the frozen men holding onto that extraordinary object. The room was small to begin with and unsuited to the way that both Xio and the blue-eyed man at the doorway could move, both with a grace and strength that belied their frames.
“What?” Benson exclaimed under his breath as his eyes followed the movements and the gentleman threw a punch the blonde lady ducked under, only for his first to hit a wall and heavily dent the sturdy wood, resulting in a spew of splinters. “How is this—?”
Xio went low and aimed a kick to the man’s knee, forcing him back several steps to avoid being thrown onto the ground. She didn’t stop advancing, but instead continued to push him outward, using her small size to make herself a smaller and faster target.
Fors took advantage of that to drag Benson with her toward the wall when the two took the fight to the wider hallway, and she pressed next to the doorframe to eye the fight carefully, knowing better than to get in the way of two Arbiter pathway Beyonders in a fight. Her pathway didn’t give her any physical strength enhancements the way it did for Xio!
“Unlawful intruders are guilty of trespassing! Trespassers will be punished!”
As Fors felt pain on her skin like whips, Xio called out in a similar authoritative tone, “Punishment without proper investigation is prohibited!”
Fors felt the pain fade although it did not go away entirely, and the man laughed in response.
“One of ours?” He asked, and then smiled darkly. “Interesting. A traitor? You’re brave, but far too weak to face me.”
Too weak? Their enemy must be a demigod!
He pointed at Xio with a smile and whispered something, prompting Fors to stand and flip through Leymano’s Travels for a specific page as Xio collapsed with a shout of pain, hands clawing at her head as she screamed.
Found it! Please, please let this work, especially when she didn’t hear what the man actually said to Xio—
In Ancient Hermes, Fors declared as confidently as she could on the Notarization page, “God says it’s ineffective!”
Turning the page, Fors squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed onto Benson’s shoulder tight enough he stumbled under her grip, and then summoned a blinding beam of light directly where the man stood, shoving the notebook deep into a pocket in one smooth motion before dashing forward to grab Xio’s arm and running the opposite direction blindly, attempting to get as much distance between them and that man before the blindness wore off.
Both Xio and Benson Moretti stumbled along behind her, but Fors didn’t dare allow them to slow, using her fear of that man to be her strength as she dragged them toward where she recalled the stairs to be.
It wasn’t far, it couldn’t be far—!
Within a few seconds, Fors opened her eyes, blinking the blind spots away as she skid to a halt in front of the stairwell down, and stumbled forward a step as both Benson and Xio tumbled into her as well.
“Down, down, we have to go down,” Fors blubbered, and saw the other two also blink rapidly to adjust their vision, having more trouble than her because they had been unprepared for the Light Supplicant spell.
As both of them pressed carefully against a wall and stumbled their way down the stairs, Fors had a brief thought of just pulling Xio along and leaving the man they were rescuing behind, as he was much slower and was wasting precious seconds. Surely MI9 wouldn’t kill him merely for—?
What am I thinking? Fors shoved those hysterical thoughts away guiltily. Even if they weren’t going to kill him before, they might now that they think he’s associated with us!
Oh, they really should have waited for Miss Audrey and Mr. Star…
Luckily, there was no one at the stairs, but there was no way they wouldn’t run into more people on their way out of the building—
“Confinement!”
It was like running head-first into a wall, and Fors yelped out in pain as she bounced back in the middle of the stairs and then lost her footing, nearly twisting an ankle as she fell. In front of her, Xio hit the invisible wall with a shoulder and stood in a daze, almost frozen in place for a second. Benson Moretti bounced back and fell onto his butt on the edge of the stairs.
Slowly, they heard the sharp footsteps of expensive dress shoes on the parapet floor coming toward them; unhurried and confident that they would not be able to escape.
“Xio,” Fors called out in a frightened tone close to a whisper, “Xio, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Xio responded tersely, a tinge of pain still in her voice. “But his sequence is higher than mine, and I can’t break his confinement—”
Benson was staring between the both of them, but unwilling to interrupt despite his unvoiced questions.
Fors clasped her hands together, her panic seeping into her prayer to Mr. Fool, hoping once more that the hidden deity would help them out of this situation.
It was too much, she knew, especially since Mr. Fool already blessed them earlier, and that was likely how they were able to slip in so easily and also remain undetected for so long, but they were under direct scrutiny now, and—
Please help, Fors prayed desperately, remembering how the man walking toward them stood by coldly and watched a civilian be tortured. I think that man will kill us!
Almost immediately, an answer came: Call for my Blessed.
Could she? Fors always assumed that such things had to be discussed prior to the act, especially since she would be disrupting Mr. World in whatever matters he was handling, but as the silhouette of that man appeared in the stairwell, Fors shoved her hand deep into her pocket and pulled out Leymano’s Travels once more, flipping it to the very end.
Historical Void wasn’t an ability that needed to be announced, merely activated, and Fors reached her hand out beside her and prayed desperately once more, hoping Mr. Fool’s previous blessing would allow her to be successful the first time around, and grabbed onto the air.
Grabbed onto an arm, pulling out the figure of Gehrman Sparrow, hard enough that once she let go, Fors fell against the wall of the narrow stairway, now entirely out of breath and spirituality.
Next to her, Benson Moretti yelled out in shock at the sudden appearance of another person.
Mr. World stood there for a moment, blank as a puppet, before a light came to his eyes and he immediately looked around, assessing the situation.
“Confinement?” He asked, and Fors merely nodded while Xio squinted at him. His hand reached down and grabbed onto blank space, and he frowned when he realised he was completely unarmed.
“Sorry,” Fors shrunk back slightly, inexplicably guilty for her low spirituality. With the previous abilities she used, it meant Gehrman would have very little spirituality to work with, while all she wanted to do now was settle down for a nap.
His eyes glanced over at Benson Moretti before passing him, and he asked Xio, “And you?”
“I’ll be fine in a moment,” Xio responded, reading his question.
Below the stairs, there were sounds of shouting and running footsteps, a group of backup coming to trap them from below, and the high sequence Beyonder above. Gehrman looked in both directions, and then said to Xio, “I’m borrowing your blade.”
“Do you know how to fight with a sword?” Xio asked, but she conceded the short sword on her belt, easily overseen by others with how it was nearly invisible. “The effects can’t be sealed after this until I get home. I’d have to commission another sheath.”
Gehrman didn’t comment on the sheath, having heard about the downsides of the grade two sealed artefact Wintery Blade already in the Tarot Club meetings. He accepted the near-invisible sword made from the remnants of a Wraith and gave it an experimental swing and then a roll of his wrist.
“I’ve dabbled,” he answered her question. “I’ll take bottom first, and then we’ll switch.”
“Got it,” Xio responded.
“Intruders!” A voice called from the bottom of the stairs, and there was a rush of three agents up the stairs toward where they were huddled in the middle of the stairwell, prompting Gehrman into action.
The moment the first agent entered the confinement area, he was kicked back down, grazing a second agent and causing him to stumble. The third made it past the others and swung out a baton that was easily countered by the Wintery Blade.
Gehrman used the force of the agent to lean into the swing and skim the blade down the baton, creating sparks even as he pulled the agent into the momentum of his movement to dodge down and then pull the man over a shoulder, flipping him onto his back and then dislodging the baton to flip it up in the air and catch it himself in one smooth motion.
Fors watched with a strangled sound, already well aware of how dangerous Gehrman Sparrow could be, but seeing him in close combat for the first time. She yanked Benson Moretti out of the way, the man having frozen at the sight of the fight.
Next to them, Xio was already recovered enough to slam the heel of her palm against a certain point on the agent’s neck, making his eyes bulge as he choked, hands automatically going up to protect his vital spot as she rummaged around his clothes for anything useful.
Finding nothing of use outside of pens and a wallet, Xio grunted her disappointment before calling out a warning to Gehrman and pushing the man she fought down the set of stairs, using him as a barrier for the others attempting to run up.
At that point, Gehrman Sparrow disarmed another agent and tossed the Wintery Blade back at Xio, who caught it easily and shivered the moment the cold guard hit her palm. There were two other bodies out cold and blocking the steps downward, and by then the gentleman at the top of the stairs made his way around the bend to stare down at them.
He looked startled before his expression settled into something grim.
“Gehrman Sparrow,” he greeted, which made Benson turn to stare at the man fighting for them with wide eyes.
Gehrman kicked one more agent down and then took the moment to gaze upward calmly, as if he wasn’t in the middle of a physical fight against multiple people.
“Admiral Amyrius,” he returned the greeting civilly.
The gentleman, or Admiral, gave the scene a calculating look, eyes barely registering his downed agents.
“Here on commission?” He asked as if chatting with an acquaintance rather than trapping a group of intruders to MI9.
“You could say that,” Gehrman nodded in agreement before he returned his attention to another young man attempting to attack him while he was distracted, blocking the hit with one baton while using the other to strike at the ribs in one smooth manoeuvre, beating the breath right from the man’s lungs.
“Is there any chance you would take a higher offer?” Admiral Amyrius asked casually.
“My apologies,” Gehrman said, “I don’t take other offers until a job is complete.”
Xio used this time to stand in front of Fors and Benson, nudging Fors to take stock and stand back up again, ready to escape at the slightest opportunity.
“You do get the job done,” Admiral Amyrius mused, and then extinguished his cigar on the stairwell railing, grinding it down to ensure there would be no embers remaining. “Then I’m afraid we’ll meet as enemies this time around.”
“I’m afraid so,” Gehrman agreed genially.
Admiral Amyrius raised a hand and declared, “Gehrman Sparrow will be depr—”
He was interrupted as Gehrman threw one of the batons in his direction with unerring accuracy, forced to duck away from the spinning baton that ended up embedded into the wall right where his head had been.
“Whoops.” Gehrman said flatly, and then turned his attention toward Fors and jerked his head toward the bottom of the stairs, covered with downed and groaning bodies. “Go.”
Fors didn’t need to be told twice, and she grabbed onto both Xio and Benson just as before and charged ahead, letting Mr. World bring up the rear against the high-sequencer who was bound to come after them again.
This time around, they managed to get through, and Fors wasn’t going to linger on how Gehrman Sparrow managed that until they were all safe and out in one piece!
To her surprise, the area at the bottom of the stairwell was clear of people, but there must have been more than the dozen that Mr. World knocked out on the first floor, right? She passed more people than that with Xio on their stroll up!
She remained surprised until she saw a lady step out smoothly as if from thin air, beckoning to her with a gloved hand. The familiar lady had a modern green dress with a wealthy and youthful look, and blonde hair in a carefully pinned coif.
It was Miss Audrey! Fors could have wept with joy.
Behind her was a young lady in darker and plainer clothes, grasping onto a leather shoulder bag as her wide eyes scanned their group and teared up with relief.
“Benson!” The young lady cried out.
Mr. Moretti’s steps suddenly grew faster than when they had to escape an angry demigod, flying past both Fors and Xio with his arms extended to hug the young woman. “Melissa! Thank the goddess you’re safe!”
“You’re the one who worried me!” The young lady, Melissa, exclaimed, voice slightly muffled in the hug.
“Yes, yes,” Miss Audrey said with a subtle urgency. “Let’s take the reunion outside now, I’m not sure how long Mr. Mitchell can—”
The sound of a gunshot from the stairwell echoed through their ears so loudly that Fors could hear it continuing to ring even after the sound was gone.
Before she could even think about worrying for Mr. World, she heard his voice call out to them, “Watch out!”
A white flash shot down the stairs, its movement like a ghost as it charged toward their group. Surprisingly, it was Xio who reacted the fastest and pushed Fors out of the way, which put her in the direct path of the white sheet that hit her square on, quickly wrapping around her person with the excess fabric rearing upward like a vortex and compelling everyone to look at it.
“Xio!” Fors cried out, reaching out in attempts to help Xio free herself from the extraordinary object, terrified at the memory of what happened earlier.
“It’s—” Xio sounded panicked, hands grasping at the fabric futilely. “I— I can breathe?”
Above them, the sheet fluttered and morphed, moving like a shadow as information was presented on it; not quite words, but like thoughts projected into the heads of those who viewed it.
Xio Derecha, it broadcasted, sequence 5 Disciplinary Paladin of the Arbiter pathway. There was the feeling emitted of her being a loving daughter, an older sister, and protective friend.
It continued to reveal: Tarot Club’s Judgement Card.
There was a sharp inhale, although Fors didn’t care to see who it was.
Behind them, Amyrius’s voice bellowed in the stairwell, “Summons are prohibited!”
There was another gunshot, and then a shout.
“What is that?” Melissa’s voice shook as Fors kept trying to free her friend from the fluttering sheet that continuously slipped through her grasp. “Is it— is it hurting her?”
Another pair of hands joined Fors, and she recognised Miss Audrey’s white silk gloves, which weren’t doing a much better job at grasping the fabric until the pale forearm tensed to the point muscles could visibly be seen under the skin, and then a sheen of white scale patterns coated her arms in a manner that made Fors dizzy even as she turned her head away to not look at it.
With the partial mythical creature strength, Miss Audrey managed to get a solid hold of the sheet, and this time pulled more effectively until it stopped its vortex of information above Xio and started struggling away from her, trying to get away from the dragon-like grasp that Miss Audrey had on it.
“It’s working!” Fors’s was relieved, even as her head felt like it was spinning from the close proximity to something she shouldn’t see. She dared to glance up just once more at the flailing vortex of fabric, and then caught the horrified eyes of Benson and Melissa, who looked very similar to each other now that they were standing next to each other.
“It doesn’t matter,” Xio said urgently. “It’s not choking me— focus on getting the civilians out first!”
There really were times Fors was reminded of how good a person Xio was, and what kind of a person she herself was standing next to her.
“You can do that,” Fors snapped at her, “after we get you out of this!”
“Don’t worry,” Miss Audrey said to Xio as she pulled, “Everyone on the first floor should be asleep. Mr. Star—”
“You!”
Fors startled and looked over her shoulder to see Admiral Amyrius storming toward them, blue eyes lit from within like a storm of fury while the rest of him looked like he had been hit by lightning, his recently impeccable clothing dishevelled and with a bleeding cut on his face.
He was staring at the sheet around Xio with a dark smile.
“A cultist,” he declared, “we truly are fighting a war within and without.”
Behind him, there were staggering and limping men who seemed to be catching up, some holding their head or their ribs, all of them looking murderous.
The sheet was finally pulled off by Audrey just seconds too late, and it struggled within her grasp until escaping up into the air, hovering near the coffered ceiling in a trembling manner out of their reach.
Fors felt like Amyrius saw something to justify his actions, but she couldn’t figure out what. Xio was one of the most honourable and just people she had ever met, and nothing of what was shown via the sheet said differently.
“I had my doubts about whether we would find anything under internal investigation. Now I admit my mistake.”
The men behind Amyrius gestured, and the sheet lingering on the ceiling flew down into their grasp on command.
“Time to go,” a voice behind Fors broke her from her daze, along with the hand yanking her shoulder upward. Startled, she looked up to see both the figures of Mr. World and Mr. Star, both bleeding from various cuts, and she marvelled for a moment at the Star’s makeshift hood to obscure his features and wondered why she hadn’t thought to do the same thing— now MI9 knew what she looked like, and if she understood anything of Arbiters thanks to Xio, it was that they never forgot faces.
She really had been too confident in her ability to sneak in and out.
But there was no hiding the face of Gehrman Sparrow, who frowned as he pulled her up and glanced over to see Mr. Star to the same for Xio. Miss Justice, on the other hand, was coaxing the two civilians in their group to move as well, pushing them onward physically when she had to.
While Mr. Star moved with a limp and was holding his ribs tightly, Mr. World had blood running down the arm that wasn’t holding onto Fors, dripping onto the floor steadily. Fors felt yet another pang of guilt about his low spirituality, and wondered if there was any way to help Mr. World find another way to fight a demigod to get them all out.
As if the chaos of the scene wasn’t enough, before they could make it too far, Fors heard the front doors of the building slam open and suddenly a cacophony of noises from outside burst forth to disrupt their fight.
A/N: So while rushing this fight during November I figured I'd just muddle through and then fix all the parts that didn't make sense later. But as I was editing I realised I am not smart enough to fix anything, that will get worse as the story goes. Why is Klein's spirituality entirely limited by Fors? Because he's too OP otherwise. How did Klein and Leonard manage to get around MI9 to appear behind Fors, Xio, and Audrey? Something-something-shadow-something, a way that doesn't break the prohibition on teleportation. How did they break confinement the first time?
It's all Leonard to the rescue, actually. But since it's from Fors's POV, she didn't see anything.