@Paladienne CW: Child trafficking
This was
not what he had signed up for.
The job had seemed simple, easy money: show up at the agreed upon location, stand guard for a couple of hours, take his pay, leave. Whatever this Dorian guy was doing was probably illegal--okay,
definitely illegal, he wasn't an idiot--but Cass has sort of decided that...well, as long as he had plausible deniability, he couldn't say he was
really involved in anything too sordid.
He figured it was just a typically robbery,
maybe some sort of more advanced heist. He had not been expecting, nor signed on for, taking part in a slave operation.
He
definitely hadn't agreed to kidnap a bunch of kids.
"Godsdamned motherfucking asswipe shitheels," the dhampir growled under his breath as he jerked his shortsword out of his fellow guard's back. The man had slipped up, mentioned what it was they were
actually doing at this--this
school or whatever it was, and without blinking Cassian had severed his spine.
Breathing heavily, he gave the body a firm kick to tug his blade the rest of the way free, glaring at the corpse as it sunk to the ground. "You guys just fucked with the wrong merc," he hissed, and turned on his heel.
He wanted to just go charging in, caution be damned, but the part of his brain that was still working logically knew that was a bad idea. Though he hadn't exactly been involved in planning this operation, he'd overheard a bit of what Dorian said about the place's defenses--namely that they were nigh on impregnable.
The slavers had only gotten in through some insanely powerful relic that, if he thought about it too hard, he realized they'd probably killed for. It apparently worked as a sort of mini-shield against the school's defenses. And he had no idea how long even
that would last.
But he couldn't exactly just stand around and wait for them to come back out: not only were there twelve of the slavers left and only one of him, making confronting them as a group a spectacularly bad idea, but there were
kids in there for gods' sakes!
"Oh...
hells!" Gritting his teeth, Cassian drew his other short sword and made his way to the front gate. Least expected option, so he should have the element of surprise, right? Sure, he'd
definitely set of the wards, but hopefully he could find Dorian and take out the leader before they actually managed to grab anyone.
...If he made it out of this alive, Snowcall was
so going to kill him.