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[center][sub]Dates: December 22nd - January 5[/sub][/center]

[hider=12/28: Varis]
[center][u][b]The Isty Bitsy… Snake?[/b][/u][/center]

Varis glided silently across the lawn. He’d triple checked the guard schedule; they were in the middle of a shift change and they were conveniently lax in maintaining a patrol on the periphery of the estate during that time. It afforded Varis a little more than four minutes. His stopwatch was running, not that he needed to check it to see the numbers distinctly in his mind, but he wasn’t concerned. He’d run this scenario a hundred times and it would take him just over three minutes to get to where he needed to be if everything went smoothly. He couldn’t help but sneer in contempt at this duchess and her laziness. He would never tolerate this kind of security breach in his own household. Everyone knew the consequences; if they were lucky, they’d be sold off to one of the Astorio arenas as dog chow. 

He stopped just underneath the terrace that jutted out of the duchess’ castle like an ugly, malformed ear. Whoever designed this building must have been on some kind of hallucinogenic because only someone with no sense of perspective could have come up with this. It looked like a twenty-year-old fledgling threw paint against the wall and said it was art. Why this vampire hadn’t fixed it all already was beyond him. If he was the one who needed some low grade vampire to guard a life-changing secret, he would have taken one look at this place and decided that it was better off razed and redone with something better than two-hundred year old locks.

Varis rolled his neck as he considered the height. This was the tricky part. He’d gotten rusty over the years and this would be his first time scaling something this high up, not to mention outside. He’d brought three bottles of blood just in case he needed a refresher on the way up; he’d spent the past two nights poring over his plan and decided he should only need one by the time he hit the balcony and one more on the way back down so naturally he brought one more just in case. The extra weight shouldn’t drastically alter his performance but he’d have to stay focused the entire time. He checked to make sure the bag was shut tightly, zipped, clipped, and tied off just in case. The last thing he needed was something slipping out and clattering down on the ground below him. Satisfied, he hoisted the straps a little higher on his shoulders and closed his eyes.

He never enjoyed this. Whatever old vampire came up with this must have been out of their mind to even consider it but considering how instrumental it had been to several of his plans, he probably shouldn’t complain. He could [i]feel[/i] his blood writhing and shifting, like it was a living creature rather than a food source, as he concentrated on it. It rose to meet him, eager to move, and he shivered at the sensation of his skin bloating and deflating as his blood shifted and sloshed until it was whirling, faster and faster, against his stomach and chest. Disgusting.

He took one step, and then another, and then another until he was fully on the wall and walking up it. He kept focused on putting one foot in front of another and not the occasional slip of the foot and brief moments of terror before he wrangled his blood back into behaving. Varis remembered the brutal war over the damn scroll holding the technique. Some silly, backwater Duke thought he had a chance against Varis. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the thought. Of course, he didn’t realize it would take a decade to even master this degree of competency or even that it would come in stages; it was supposedly a flying technique. Although it could be he was too young but this was useful enough and that’s all he cared about at the moment. 

Remembering the scroll made him remember Malek’s naive grandchild who nearly cost him the scroll and his next step didn’t move him at all. Instead, Varis clapped a hand over his mouth as he almost screamed as he slid halfway down the wall. He growled in frustration and focused again, grumbling as he continued his ascent. Too bad he sold the child; should have saved him as a stress reliever because he was certainly going to need something after this.

He pulled himself up and over the balcony, collapsing onto the stone floor as he stared at the night sky. He hated to admit it but that wasn’t his best performance. He was rustier than he thought. Varis groaned and unzipped the bag, pulling out a bottle of blood, and unscrewing the cap so he could chug it down. He wasn’t really certain what the mechanics behind the blood techniques were but they were exhausting and that was probably the most unsettling thing of all. Varis rarely felt exhausted or drained from physical activity because he rarely did physical activity but this persisted deep in his bones and he did not appreciate it. How the Astorios dealt with this on a regular basis was beyond him; it felt like everything inside of him wanted to come up and then some. 

Eventually, Varis got to his feet. The next line of defense was just a locked glass door. A beautiful and ornate glass door, but a few hundred years out of date with a lock to match. Child’s play really. Varis skulked across the landing and knelt so the lock was just above eye level. He nodded a few times and dug around in his bag until he felt the familiar cloth, pulling out a roll and unfurling it on the ground in front of him. Several pockets filled with various picks and tools greeted him and he picked them out and compared them to the lock until he found the ones he wanted. It took barely any time, the old lock clicking open with ease, and Varis packed everything up in a flash and slipped inside before anyone noticed. 

The halls were just as expected, large draping tapestries of various conflicts the Astorios believed they dominated. The particular attention to detail of the gorey mess of battle made Varis roll his eyes as he slipped from one corner to another as quietly as possible. He checked his watch. If his informant was honest, he had a little under eight minutes to find the room and get inside. He frowned. He was behind and that was a problem. Security for the room he needed was a bit more complex and those two minutes he lost in the climb were going to be sorely missed. He pressed on nonetheless.

Door 8622 was all on its lonesome in a tiny dead-end side hall. With how it was set up, Varis thought it would have been better protected but not even a single camera could be found. Had there been, it would have been a problem because there wasn’t a tapestry or art piece or furniture for him to at least try and hide behind. He moved quickly and quietly to the door, blinked at it, and sighed. Instead of the easy pin pad and door key combination lock he expected, a shiny new, steel reinforced deadbolt mocked him in the faint light. The damn vampire probably knew and fed him shitty intel to get him caught. The cylinders were probably pick resistant chambers too if they’d installed reinforced steel guards on the damn thing.

Varis mouthed every explicative he knew, repeatedly, as he settled in to try and pick the locks. The clock was down to three minutes and Varis could feel the tension pressing down on him. If he got caught, his little distraction wouldn’t be a lie anymore. This was breaking and entering Lord Pieron’s private record rooms and Varis had seen how the Astorios handle their private affairs. If he could sweat, he probably would be. His hands trembled as he picked up his picks, checking each other against the lock to see what would fit. He took a steadying breath and started.

Voices started carrying down the hall, their footsteps getting louder. Varis muttered a curse when he slipped on a pin and the whole damn thing reset. A voice laughed, just around the corner.

He managed it just in time, slipping off the lock, pulling the dead bolt, and all but throwing himself inside just to hastily shut it behind him. Hopefully, it was such an out of the way location that they’d just glance, see the door shut, and move on. The footsteps stopped. 

Varis closed his eyes.

And then they continued, unhurried and unrushed, another soft laugh ringing out into the still air and Varis slumped to the ground. Ryner owed him. The favors she traded did not equal the stress he was going through. Still, he pulled himself to his feet and gave the room a better look now that the constant threat of Lord Pieron’s axe wasn’t quite as imminent. Varis could feel his blood pressure rising.

Filing cabinets. So. Many. Filing cabinets. They hadn’t had the common decency to modernize their systems at all? Varis groaned, hand hand running down his face. How in the ever living fuck was he supposed to find something in here? There had to be forty fucking filing cabinets and none of them had labels! Not a single one! The little slots, the little metal frames meant for [i]labels[/i]? All empty. It was everything Varis could do not to slam his head repeatedly into a wall.  

So he opened the nearest few, hoping at least the file names would help. They did seem to be organized alphabetically so Varis started rifling, looking for a project named [i]Midnight Genesis[/i]. What that meant, he didn’t know, but it was a stupid name. Pulling open cabinet after cabinet, he found the M’s scattered across two and quickly discovered that the Astorios were incredibly unimaginative. There were seven projects just labelled “Marn 1-7” and at least six midnights with different adjectives. Hopefully, they all had some connection but still. They had the entire language to work with and they repeated themselves constantly. That and family member names. Over and over again. A bunch of barbarians, honestly.

It took him long enough but finally he found the [i]Midnight Genesis[/i] file. He plucked that right out and stashed it away, planning on reading it once he made his escape. He closed the cabinet and zipped shut his bag, intent on quitting this horrifically inefficient place, when another idea struck him. He had a lovely little Astorio as his new neighbor. Maybe there was something on Victor here he could leverage against him. Varis grinned wickedly.

Now, it wouldn’t be under Victor Astorio because if he knew old vampires, they would slight him even here. No, no. Victor’s family were [i]honorary[/i] Astorios, gifted the name for services in the war, but he sincerely doubted they’d be under their new name. What was that name? Varis snapped as he thought, the name on the tip of his tongue. Strigois. That’s right. Varis skipped right over to where the S section should be and poured through it eagerly.

And find something he did. [i]Several[/i] somethings. He giggled like a child on their birthday as he lifted them out and into his bag. Perfect. There would be something there he could use to keep the Astorio under his thumb. He bid the room adieu, locked it again, and slipped out the same way he came in, little more than a shadow on the wall, and just as ignored. 

Except he missed the prickle on the back of his neck as he slipped back into the forest as a heavyset woman watched from the balcony, expressionless.[/hider]