Thar Shaddin

163 PW

Given a preference, Tagi would have much rather been attending to the biological needs suffered by the shifters of Ciasse rather than playing bodyguard to...to...

She shifted her weight to one foot. She was on door duty with Sertor who, she was relatively sure, had threatened her with some sort of bodily harm if she asked the same question again. But, considering his clumsy way of talking, she couldn't quite be sure.

They were waiting inside a rather squat building, in front of a rather elaborately made door. Not that it was fancy by the standards of anywhere besides the city they had been assigned, but within the city it was certainly one of the best buildings. At least by human standards. Or shifter standards. By Tagi standards, there were several hole-in-the-ground type of cellars and basements that felt quite cozy to her.

She shifted her weight to her other foot. They were really taking forever in there. Forever, and nothing was happening. Nothing had happened, and that was really the pitiful part, despite the fact that the guy had moaned and whined about his imminant demise for daring to speak up against the shifters. As if assassins had already begun to track his every move. Assassins who hadn't shown a whisker. Although, admittedly, the cold did several things to her that she didn't much care for. She was a creature made for dry, warm tombs. Not ice buckets in the middle of nowhere.

The door creaked, and then opened, and out filed a stream of fat people still chattering away. They looked anywhere from stern to hungry, which told Tagi absolutely nothing about the state of affairs, besides the fact that the guy they were guarding still probably thought everything was going to turn into corpse dust. Which, okay, really, it would, eventually.

Tagi sniffed as she took up position behind...their guy. She looked sideways at Sertor, wondering if he'd try to break her in half like he may have threatened if she asked the answer to the question that she kept forgetting.

She stifled another yawn (it had become a common occurrence over the last few weeks) as they headed to the door to the outside, each group who made up the diplomatic shuffle sorting themselves out to go to their resting places. Attaches and clerks zipped this way and that under the watchful gazes of numerous guards. Finally, the doors to the outside were opened, and a parade of fat people were let out to their various forms of transportation, several stopping along the way to talk.

Bells rang, signalling the end of the meeting.

Tagi stifled a yawn as she filed into line behind their guy, doing a casual sweep up and down the street, and then up and down the -- shit!.

She charged forward, but it was too late. The body of the Zhaltevite representative sprouted two arrows before her tackle took the man she was protecting to the ground. It was possible that the unlucky Zhaltev git could still live. People took arrows all the time to various places of their bodies. Not that the rest of the shifters would take all too kindly to that, but that wasn't her problem. It was still --

and then all hell broke loose.

Now, to be clear, hell breaking loose takes many forms. Sometimes those forms occur simultaneously in a clusterfuck of collossal proportions. And on some occasions it can just gradually and gracefully snowball into an avalanche of shitty circumstance.

Perhaps appropriately for the snow-fucked city of Khrivne, hell decided the snowball approach was best. It started with the sound of outraged and fearful voices among the meeting's attendees and their entourage. It gathered some momentum as the Zhaltevite emissary yanked an arrow out, growling as the missile's silver head burned him. It grew in size as a crossbow quarrel sprouted in the Zhaltevite emissary's skull, ending his efforts to survive permanently.

It threatened to go full avalanche mode as one of the Zhaltevite entourage howled in rage. The howl was answered from outside the city. The merchants paled, the Ciasse emissaries looked troubled, and the Zhaltevite entourage looked murderous. Although there were only a dozen Zhaltevite 'guards', if you added their own 'clerks' and 'attaches' Zhaltev had ensured the presence of twenty werewolves at the proceedings.

Sertor barrelled through the crowd to set up shop with his pavise-sized scutum, shielding the mercantile faction's leader Ruprecht Armaurer von Poznan. The portly Teutonic merchant was pale as fine linen and stammering to himself. Snow began to gather on Sertor's woollen headwear as the Kerostriarius mercenary listened carefully, ears twitching and rotating to gain some sense of where the danger was.

---

In two nearby locations, a pair of assassins plied their trade. The crossbowman had done their job, and was quietly making his way out of the building he'd used as his vantage point. The archer, however, had one final task.

Shifting location, they fired two arrows into the Zhaltevite entourage. "After the emissary is down, blood them." the archer had been told "Their nature will do the rest."

As the arrows found their targets, and the Zhaltevites began transforming into the raging beasts the merchants had feared all along, the snowballing shitfest achieved a proper 'because fuck you' avalanche status - and hell was very pleased indeed with how it had broken loose.

---

Sertor heard the sharp report of the bowstring, and with the second arrow shot he pointed to the chimneyed rooftop the archer was using "Tagi, there". Ruprecht moaned "This is a disaster. The talks are over and we will all die as shifter food. Why did I agree to come. Why did I not send Erhardt? I never liked him anyway."

Sertor drew his oversized gladius "Be of ftout heart Ruprecht. Ftay refolute and we will furvive thif. Now, hold ftill, we are in danger." The merchant whined "Then un-danger me. That's what you are being payed for!"

As two more of their entourage were wounded, the Zhaltevite entourage all howled in unison, sounding a hunting call picked up by others outside the city. Like a hairy howling relay system, word spread quickly, and Khrivne was suddenly on the shifter itinerary for a good violent night out on the town.

Ciasse and merchant guards all readied their weapons, but with the merchants no longer in a centralised location, they found their attention already split around multiple attack paths with little time to get their own defences in order.

It should have come as no surprise that the Zhaltevites attacked as a pack, knocking aside three guards and tearing out the throat of a shocked Undenvakian merchant who'd not stayed to chat but had walked further from the meeting hall than his comrades.

As panic spread and guards tried to shepherd their bleating merchants to a more defensible position, the wolves began to prey on the flock. Sertor readied himself for a shifter assault and Tagi... well, Tagi did what Tagi did best. Whatever that happened to be on any given day.