Chapter Text
Envoy
1b: a person delegated to represent one government in its dealings with another
The feeling of things being out of balance is, as ever, his first sign that there are voidsent about. He is making his way out of setting up for a booked performance, late into a seemingly empty alley; were he advising someone else on how to proceed when they had this feeling his advice would be “turn the fuck around and go back inside”, but Hyacinthe is not deterred from the idea of stepping into the alley. He fishes around in the pocket of his jacket, uncertain of what he’s going to find until he tugs out a pack of clove cigarettes he keeps in there for Shrike. Shrugging, he fishes one out and lights it with a flick of aether, leaning on a wall.
The jester manifests alongside the diplomat, beaming, earning a very irritated eye roll out of him.
“You look so thrilled to see me, hunter.”
He takes his sweet time taking a long drag off the clove cigarette, nose wrinkling. “Rest assured I’m not even a little thrilled to see you, Agostino.”
“Such an attitude. I thought you were the diplomatic one!”
A long drag, an exhale of smoke that somehow, despite it being an ordinary clove cigarette, manages to smell like funerary incense and grave dirt.
“My mate would have already attacked you. He barely restrains himself when I’m being kind, and you annoy me. Your intel keeps falling through.”
Agostino giggles madly, hovering upside-down in midair. “I can hardly help that. I am merely an envoy of my lord!”
The priest stares, lip curling above disconcertingly sharp teeth. “An envoy.” A quiet snort, stubbing out the cigarette in his hand. “More like a pest.” The voidsent scarcely has time to be indignant about it before Hyacinthe’s fingers curl and yank in the air and one of Agostino’s ribs wrenches violently out, leaving a hole in its wake and getting crushed to dust in the Elezen’s hand. “You will bring me intel that is useful this next time, clown. Or you will wish for the mercy of me letting my mate have you, because you may be assured, my diplomacy does not make me a doormat.”
He pushes off the wall as the voidsent falls from the air, sputtering incoherently. “I’ll be keeping your rib dust until you bring me back a useful map. Fuck around and I’ll take another instead. Or tell your lord he can come try my patience himself, and I’ll start taking his ribs too.” The priest does not bother waiting on a response from the so-called envoy - only spins on a stiletto and marches out of the alley, unbothered by opening his back in the process. He knows a coward when he leaves one.