[color=goldenrod][i][h2][center]Gerard Segremors[/center][/h2][/i][/color]

[color=goldenrod][i]...Is now really the time to be humoring this?[/i][/color]

Perhaps wisely, the swordsman held his tongue as he watched the scene play out before him in the evening light, focusing instead on the colossus of iron that emerged from the courtyard opposite them. If nothing else, this was better than rising to the barbs in earnest. More importantly, this "Bors" character's appearance answered a number of questions that had floated around within Gerard's skull. "How exactly were those gates blown open", "are we set to run into the rumored member of the Shark's retinue with Giant's blood I remember hearing about", and "what sort of person would Jeremiah's sword have even initially been forged for, anyway", to name three at random. Towering over any man Sagramore had ever seen and speaking with the voice of a distant avalanche, it wasn't hard to see how he served as an equalizing show of force for Alette, given her spending the majority of this standoff plainly surrounded by their number.

Difficult to take down for certain. If he knew of the aforementioned vampire at all in his time with the Order, he'd make it a safe bet that she would swipe up the chance to cross blades with someone of his stature— which would inevitably produce a comical study in contrasts. Regardless, now that he was here and the two parties had more or less levelled out their chest-puffing to a healthy balance... Well, the third body showed the exact same wounds as the rest. The question was why— something he figured would only be discerned further inside.

He floated towards the interior keep, passing the Knight Serpenta and sparing a momentary glance as she bent down to inspect another corpse. The Naga was... hm. In many ways a kindred spirit, in many others a voice of reason to check those such as he. Yet for all her casual demeanor as she flipped a man's body onto its side to find a long slice down his back, he felt the need to reconfirm it for himself before continuing on. She'd gone and encircled Alette— however slowly and lazily, it was all the same a fairly clear message, even to a dim country boy.

Lucky it didn't escalate then and there. Playing with fire, ma'am.

He forged ahead, in the wake of his fellow Reonite, entering the bloodsoaked antechamber to little fanfare aside from the rummaging of the mercenary before them, and his senior's offered greetings. The woman was deathly pale from what he could see beneath her tanned leathers and the curtain of moonlight waves down her back. Adorned with knives seemingly at anywhere that wasn't a joint as she was, a quick examination revealed the wounds of the garrisoned men to be more of the same as outside, rather than anything that would indict her. The blood was too old for that anyway— beginning to brown over, and tainting the air with the smell of metal.

What sort of shared madness could have caused this?

[color=goldenrod]"Must be some sort of magic to drive an entire garrison rabid enough to kill, right?"[/color]

He knelt, fruitlessly trying to glean new detail from the same kinds of evidence as before, brow truly furrowed into a tight knot of inquisition. Some poison in their food? Not his forte in the slightest— he neither knew of one that could do such a thing, nor a method of procurement and dispersion. 

[color=goldenrod]"Even rowdier soldiers for hire rarely take a brawl that far. We didn't. Men on the royal pay line ought to be much the same."[/color]

Where Fleuri wore the friendly mask of a courteous gentleman, Gerard's grimace edged ever closer to a scowl as his mind raced to find possibilities.