"Oh? Thank you."
The girl was good enough not to comment on the tattoos that had attracted much attention in the past. Crypt could catch several brief glances though; it was perhaps a tad annoying, but he couldn't simply remove the tattoos - or hide them for that matter. He was Drykas, and they were his Windmarks. Where would his pride be if he hid them from sight?
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A man it was - Valerius had a feminine touch to it, although Crypt supposed that it was masculine enough for the Nitrozian family.
"Yes, sir."
Crypt made a short bow after he moved closer to Valerius, taking a seat after doing so. The armchair was just as comfortable as the couch in the entrance hall, and he allowed himself a moment to luxuriate in the unfamiliar feeling before looking over the Nitrozian.
Dear me, his outfit looks terribly expensive. There's definitely no doubt that being a Nitrozian has its benefits. Perhaps I should have bought a set of clothes at Azure Reflections. I may have to, considering the... quality of this place.
He considered the query for a few moments, concocting an answer before making a reply in a voice as polite as Valerius'. No sense in inadvertedly insulting or offending the potential employer in an interview. That would not make a very good first impression.
Straight to business then. Excellent. No beating about the bush.
"I have heard rumors of the... attempted assassination. I have several skills - which I have mentioned in my letter to you, Mister Valerius - that could very well lend themselves to preventing such a thing from happening again.
First. I am able to defend myself and others with my longsword."
He gestured to the longsword on his left.
"I cannot hope to stop a master, but I believe I can occupy him long enough for reinforcements to arrive or for his intended target to escape. I cannot demonstrate my skill here, for it would be too confined, and I would most probably damage items, but if need be I can do so later.
Second. I am a mage. Of sorts. I do not use the more destructive magics, but I have some skill in Auristics, the Art of reading auras and extracting information from them. I can detect poisons whose properties are not automatically sensed. If, for example, a pumpkin pie contains poison, I can detect the agent by means of its taste, smell or by its aura, if I am familiar with it. If the poison is magical in nature, the easier it is to detect. It is, admittedly, not as effective as a food taster, though.
Another part of Auristics is sensing emotion. Strong emotions - animosity, hatred, anger - I can detect relatively quickly. Anyone with a grudge against the Nitrozians would feel such emotions, unless he or she were trained to conceal them, and I would recognise them for what they are and keep a watch on them.
Auristics allows me to detect any hidden presences and look through walls - but with some difficulty. Allow me to demonstrate."
Crypt closed his eyes, concentrating on mentally grasping his Djed. A switch in his brain was flipped, and he opened his eyes, turning his head to stare into the wall separating the room they were in from the next.
Ah. The wall is rather sturdy - high-quality. It will not fall easily. But that is unimportant.
The aura of the wall was dense enough that Crypt had difficulty looking through it to observe the auras beyond. Staring at it, he attempted to differentiate it from the other auras, blocking out the dark brown aura that kept telling him things - that the smell was one of paint, that the texture was generally smooth and so on.
He pushed onwards, noting the aura in its entirety once he had gained sufficient information about the wall, then ignoring it totally. It was more of a conceptual obstacle - he had to imagine that the wall was not there, that there was no actual obstacle. He knew much about the wall, and it helped him in negating it, ignoring its presence as he searched for the auras behind the wall.
Hmmph. There. We have it.
Two relatively massive auras were located at opposite parts of the room. That marked them as humans. The complexity - the iridescent auras, the nuances that marked bursts of emotion - only served to confirm his observation. As continued to focus on the twain, information began entering his mind.
Two humans. Forms indicate that they are female. Their hair... Identical shades of black. Wearing uniforms shaped like... Colored like... Aha. Maidservants. What is that object the first one is holding? The texture is soft, even ticklish, but it terminates at a blunt, but solid end. A featherduster, then. She is dusting a vase. And the other? Moving around the room. Dancing?
He ceased the flow of Djed, blinking his eyes to moisturize them.
"Two maids with black hair are in that room. One is cleaning a vase - a small vase - with a featherduster while the other is... I'm unsure. She's moving about the room, and it looks like she's dancing. Either that, or she's chasing something."
He paused for a moment, before continuing. Crypt held up his left palm to Valerius, allowing him to see the black scythe that marked him as one of Dira's.
"Dira's mark. Eiyon. It allows me to sense the presence of death on anything and anywhere I can access. Given the failure of the assassination, more skilled assassins may be sent. They are most probably experienced, and that means that they have shed blood. The more blood they spill, the more strongly I sense it. Coupled with my Auristics, I am uniquely suited to detection of assassins before they try anything."
He rolled up the sleeves on his left shoulder, exposing an inverted Sierpinski's triangle, each individual triangle's colour kaleidoscopic in nature, repeating the shape of the equilateral triangle over and over again.
"Ionu."
Crypt grinned widely, subconsciously channeling the spirit of the Trickster... God? Goddess? Thing.
"Illusions are my trade. Large-scale ones are but a dream for me now, but I can do some things."
In a blink of an eye, Crypt layered five illusions on himself and his immediate surroundings. One on his clothes, one on the upper parts of his body, one on his lower parts of his body, one on the shadow of his body caused by the fire, and the last on the chair itself, removing all trace of him having seated there.
His voice turned more guttural in nature, but alight with hints of mischief and laughter.
"Now you see me, now you don't."
