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

[@VitaVitaAR]

The aftermath of the field, in Gerard's experience, was always when the senses truly defined it. Battle itself was chaos— churning, tumultuous, and far too sudden. A whirlpool of noise and motion, where shouts and clashing steel melted away into a dull roar, flashing swings and blurs of force shattered any time for detail in favor of kineticism, and the other senses turned wholly within. Touch became grip, weight, and pain. Taste and smell became only a little metallic, all but vanishing entirely within the maelstrom. If you stopped to take in the sights and sounds, you were more than likely dead. On some level, you gave yourself to the flow in order to live.

The fact that the voices of his companions either trading jests or barking orders cut above it all now certainly didn't change things. It wasn't until the battle had died in full, the bandits' ambush breaking quickly as it smashed into the rock-solid defenses of their company, that Gerard had truly looked upon the destruction in their wake.

"Ease the suffering of the dying," came Knight-Captain Fanilly's orders, off to his right. Just behind he and Fionn as the pair of erstwhile mercenaries had carved a bloody path back to the main conglomerate, she'd done well enough in fending off and finishing the lone bandit that slipped between their paired fangs towards Sir Rickert. "Bind any survivors and take them prisoner. If they have any information, do your best to extract it from them."

His fault, but nonetheless, it proved they'd not need to babysit her... [i]Overmuch[/i].

[color=goldenrod]"Right, ma'am."[/color]

In the breath these words took was when the smell, finally, hit. Iron, copper, and something charred and acrid, all in a heady mix among the slain ambush as he walked through it, a bloodied vulture picking at corpses or the soon-to-be. Blood, for one, made sense of much of the metallic— but he spied out the corner of his eye the small frame of the witch, Alodia. It was she who had called the storm from the night sky, who had roasted these men alive with the hammer of the heavens— and now that he thought of it, the smell of a passing storm was mixed within that formerly unbearable musk of charred flesh. No distant thunder accompanied it, though, owing to its arcane nature— save only for the pained groans of the injured, and death rattles of the mortally wounded.

[color=goldenrod]"To whatever rest you've earned. Reon'll show you."[/color]

He stood over one such of the latter, holding a line of captured moonlight that was streaked by dark, drying red. No sense in cleaning it yet... The stricken bandit was drowning in his own blood as it pooled around his stricken form, a chunk of his clavicle missing. Such a death would take minutes, ones he would spend unable to move, or speak, or do anything but contemplate and fear the awaiting oblivion. Gerard saw as much in his eyes, panicked and pained brown meeting stern, dutiful amber.

He thrust into the man's heart quickly, blade slipping between bone and into flesh, and watched the light fade. Even in spite of the crimes he had committed, death itself was a form of penance. Inwardly, he allowed himself a moment of hope that such would prove enough— but it wouldn't be up to him. The man had no means of speaking any confessions, and had thrown himself into a fight with the order willingly— a quick end to the suffering was the most the young man could have ever done for him.

He moved on, sinking his sword into the next, who hadn't moved. Already gone. Corpse. The next three were the same, though their injuries had differed wildly— for how commonplace the sword he wielded was among the romanticized vision the stories had always painted of knights, he was now truly struck by the wide array of their arsenal. Spell and steel, maces and arrows, pikes and even shields— if he could name a weapon, it had a wielder among the Roses. In more than a few ways, familiar— which meant it differing from the legends he chased.

He breathed out his nose, advancing on one final fallen form along the left flank as he looked down to his sword again. The stories never spoke of many things that were still realities of knighthood— certainly not the same grim task he'd performed time after time on the field before all this. It was a battlefield necessity, that much he'd known for ages— checking for survivors and ensuring the dying were all the way dead. Any force worth their salt cleaned up after themselves, at least in this manner. Making the rounds and stabbing anything, just to be sure of where it stood. It was grim work.

[color=goldenrod][i]Doesn't make for an inspiring tale, no matter the station of who's doing it.[/i][/color]

Out of the corner of his eye, something shifted—

And his boot slammed down onto the palm of the shambling mass, eliciting a sharp cry of pain as something beneath his heel cracked. The "corpse" had been far from it, evidently, trying to slowly, surreptitiously claw his way back into the brush while beneath their notice. He wore armor of the crown's soldiers— one with a crossbow bolt through the back of its cuirass. It would have hit him in the kidney. Maybe even lungs. Regardless—

Someone's death had spared this man's life [i]once[/i].

Reaching down and grabbing the man roughly by the armor's gorget, Gerard yanked the bandit over onto his side and pressed a knee into his side, just below the metal and forcing his weight onto him. It might not have been quite as [i]painful[/i] as properly grinding into the ribs might have been, but he was well and truly immobilized all the same.

[color=goldenrod][i]... She [u]did[/u] say "do your best".[/i]

"Not happening, pal."[/color] he snarled, gaze promising much worse fury than this as he held the pommel of his sword a few inches away from the hinge of the mandible. [color=goldenrod]"Choice is simple: tell us what you know Jeremiah's got waiting for us in there, or..."[/color]

He tapped the heavy, diamond-shaped steel of the pommel against the man's face, illustrating plainly to him.

[color=goldenrod]"You ride off to the capital and face your trial with a broken jaw."[/color]

...Not much in the way of knightly interrogations that he could recall, either.

Previous experience'd have to do.