faderift | ( closed ) No longer I can justify the bloodshed in his name

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( closed ) No longer I can justify the bloodshed in his name

WHO: Leliana & various closed threads (for now - open stuff later)
WHAT: Wicked Grace night goes horribly wrong and Leliana is kind of dying
WHEN: forward dated to the night of the 22nd, post-assassination attempt
WHERE: Leliana's creepy Rookery chamber place
NOTES:
1. Pretentious images in the main post and starters in the comments because I'm a bit ridiculous.

2. Content warning for attempted murder/violence/poison/all that implies.

3. Party style threading is welcome and encouraged, it might make it a bit easier to discuss side matters after the initial discovery.

4. This will probably open up for including other threads and stuff that can be forward dated, but initially just closed.

5. There will be some terrible poetry in here and I'm not even sorry; it is only one in a series that will be left around Skyhold and will be posted later. Belle, Jansen & Libby are beautiful humans for enduring my rambles.

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aka. We Just Wanted To Play Wicked Grace
aka. Sorry, Josie
aka. It Was Probably The Nugs

Feel free to post individual starters as a sub-comment to this for that initial scene!

Threading altogether for the initial discovering by Josie and the arrival of the others will work best and Leliana will be able to respond some...what... but for side conversations with each other or one on one interactions with Leliana or whatever else you'd like to do then feel free to have your own starter, yes yes.

The last people seen to descend from the Rookery departed some time ago. Two attendents, moving with a calm sort of slowness down the steps, one of them holding a bundle of papers - a delivery, probably. One hour ago, perhaps two, it is hard to know sometimes when one is mired in work, as so many in the library below the Rookery tend to be.

It is the twenty-second day of Justinian, and Leliana has burns that are making her skin that pull and make her skin feel too tight when she moves or does something a bit brash like stretch or hold her posture upright. The burns are all hidden below chainmail and leathers, and like the rest of her scars and marks that means they don't count. They are invisible, and she is slightly removed from human when she seems to be made of armour rather than flesh.

The scene itself seems very calm. A room, table with a single stack of cards on it (Wicked Grace, a specialised edition with nug theme that probably cost more money than is reasonable), candles burning around the room and on the table, a leaf of parchment on the table that seems rather unremarkable at first glance, and otherwise the room is sparse, practical. One door leads back to the Rookery stairwell, another to Leliana's bedroom, equally sparse. At a first glance, the hosting chamber is unremarkable, until a closer look reveals a chair askew, the carpet pushed off centre, the table and chairs not arranged as meticulously as seems to fit the careful organisation of everything else. And then, then a look beyond the chair and towards her chambers reveals the Left Hand of the Divine on the floor, silver cup on the floor with the remains of something in it that will smell stronger with each passing minute - what had once been scentless has now been left to react too long, acrid and earthy and strangely sweet all together, that makes the air taste of rotting leaves.

Leliana faces the ceiling, eyes flickering just barely, though her body is strangely twisted. Thick grey-black coils of scar tissue wind up her neck and mar her throat, some reaching up past the collar of her self-imposed uniform and starting to wrap under the soft flesh leading to her chin and jaw, and her hand reaches towards the cup grasping it and holding it upright despite the state of the rest of her.

Upon closer inspection, the parchment on the table has a poem written in a careful hand;

A viper,
Cold, slithering,
Hand awash with red.

The Bloodied Hand
Crimson, sanguine
And overreaching

Red of the sacred
Washed away by the tide
The whipping waters of her corruption

Honourable cliffs endangered by her
Only to be saved by a delicate bloom

Grasped for power and fell upon
A vine of asphyxiation
In her Cursed Descent

Cast upon the thorns of the Faithful
The brambles of the True
Shredded upon Virtue.

The Corruption of her grasp will be pried loose
The Roses will Bloom
Kissed by the Radiance of His Will.

More copies of this can be discovered in the library on the way up. In fact, they can be discovered scattered throughout Skyhold, hundreds of copies of the thing, as well as two other poems.

Edited 2016-06-08 12:35 (UTC)

CONTENT WARNING: reference to past torture also just gross poisoning effects.

She is moved, and though she is aware of that she could not tell you where to - the journey feels much longer than a trip from her chambers to some room off the library, vacating her own space so that it might be investigated.

When Leliana is laid out on the table (she assumes that is what it must be, hard under her back and cold, although presently everything feels cold) it feels as though her body is behind held under water. Pressure on her chest to keep the whole of her weighed down, and each effort to breathe and see is sabotaged.

Her eyes are open but what she is afforded is a broken mess of light versus shadow rather than colour and the clean lines they allow her mind to organise. It has been a long time since she has felt so out of control of her own body and of what was happening to it, and the sheer memory of Harwen Raleigh's dungeon makes the urge to breath all the more urgent.

There is a messy film forming over her eyes, grey and sticky, and slowly spreading cords of grey-black tissue that started on her throat have slowly reached up to wrap past the left side of her jaw.

She will lunge and she will grab the throat of whoever is above her and she will demand this stops—

Her hand spasms by her side, and she does not move, though a dry rasp drags from her throat.

Edited 2016-06-08 21:25 (UTC)

He's without Justice, without a spirit at all, but that doesn't mean his own strength and training are useless. If anything, it makes him want to be useful all the more so when the messenger comes for help, Anders is quick to go up. By the sound of things they'll need what they can get, and Leliana is quickly coming to gain his respect.

The sight is worse than he'd been prepared for, though. Her breathing is a mess, a touch of her arm tells him she's cold, and the continuing growth of visible symptoms tell him this is nothing he's ever heard of before.

"Get blankets, now," he tells the person who brought him up, hand resting for the briefest moment on her spasming one. "You're not alone, Leliana." She likely can't see well at the moment, so hearing that might help. Anders casts, trying to get a sense of what's going on in her throat and any idea of what's going to help, finding burning that doesn't seem to respond to the usual spell. Poisons. How he hates them.

Hobbling over from her table takes time, staff used less as a focus and more as a walking stick as Adelaide limps to the secluded room as best she can manage. "How is she breathing?"

First thing is first- pulse, breath, blood. Steady, thready, absent- they've handled similar cases before but never something quite like this.

The blankets are brought over and he covers Leliana, using that to keep his focus until Adelaide makes it in. There's guilt in the look given to her that's not going away anytime soon, but again he seizes on a task and a focus. It helps with the fog.

"Not well, and something's wrong with her throat. A sort of burn that didn't initially respond. I'm going to try elfroot and embrium." And that's easy, because he doesn't have to worry about the dramatic drop in his strength making this task difficult. His bag gets set on the nearest flat surface and he starts pulling out the emergency vials, adding them together quickly before bringing the drink right back. A hand goes under Leliana's head as he holds the potion to her lips.

"Drink this, please. I know it will hurt to swallow and I'm sorry." They should at least ease symptoms, if not do more - elfroot's the obvious first choice for poisons and the state of her throat makes it clear she'd swallowed something.

At least she can hear. That's something, and there is a certain amount of comfort in the ones she hears. Anders-- unexpected. Adelaide perhaps less so, but given that not so long ago she was wondering if she should have let one die and had the other in an interrogation room, one could suppose their relationships have improved quite dramatically.

Her initial instinct to having something held to her lips is to attempt to jerk away, but it's weak, even as her fingers curl toward her palms. The effort to resist is shortlived, at best, and she swallows.

The cough that rakes through her is a rattling thing, dry and heaving, the sound seeming bigger than the motion that accompanies it, and when she breathes it is a painful struggle.

Part of her is aware that they are neither of them in a fit state. It's a fact she knows, but she is not in a really strong position to protest.

"I have never seen anything like this-" She leans against the table to peer at the strange discoloration on Leliana's throat as much as to hold herself upright. She can work like this, she must. "Be easy, Leliana. We have you."

A token murmur of comfort as she daubs at Leliana's eyes with a damp cloth. IT is not mucus- but it is not nothing either. Thick and gummy and strange- not at all like what comes from sleep. Another symptom on top of the breathing, on top of the chill and rattle in her throat. Burned like acid- "They have someone tring to identify the poison?"

She doesn't think about it, not really- calling Compassion's power to bear and cast a simple spell of Restoration. Something to ease the pain, to counteract some of the effects.

"I'm sorry," he says again to Leliana. The cough sounds bad, and combining that with what he sees and he felt, he's not sure how well this can possibly go.

"I heard that," is the start of Anders' answer. "The servant who fetched me said as much." He hadn't asked questions about who or what they were using because it doesn't matter to him. The person(s) would be competent, everyone trying to help had to know where Leliana was, and Anders has no experience with poisons.

He takes a step back toward his bag and stops for a moment, waiting to hear a voice that... doesn't come, and its absence leaves him feeling all the more guilt before he manages to push that back enough to resume moving. Spindleweed. That's what he'd been thinking. "I don't like the cough. Let me try a tincture, spindleweed, see where that gets us."

The aide who had brought him blankets gets a gesture. "I need honey." A glance at Adelaide, and he adds: "I'll add it in, let it coat her throat protectively." The aide takes off, and Anders starts the dissolving process. One step at a time. He is still a healer.

Being able to see is a relief. Not clearly, exactly, her eyes struggle with the light for longer than they might normally, but she can see. (To think, that it would ever be a relief to see Anders, but it is. She can recognise more of the overlap between them, now, for better or worse.) There is the faintest flicker at the corner of her mouth, nothing near a smile but echoing gratitude for the presence all the same. It is a weakness that she would not allow herself were she at her full strength.

For a few moments, it seems as if the Restoration is doing good things. Her breathing eases a little, and the whiteness in her knuckles fades as her fists loosen. Less tense, less of a frantic grasping at air, and Leliana feels as though breathing is not entirely beyond her, even if she can still taste the potion from before on her tongue and it tastes not so very different to if she had swallowed ink and rotten foliage, and had she better grasp of her own thoughts she might wonder if that were the poison's after effects, or the potion itself.

Even as the magic appears to be helping, though, there is a change in her. The scar tissue appears to turn more grey, and the colour already leeched from Leliana's lips drains away all the more, before they start to turn an unhealthy blue. Cyanosis is seeping into her fingertips, now, and a pain starts in her chest that seems to spike outwards, making her arch upwards. No matter the loss of control, that she could not will herself to move before - now Leliana's spine archs, sets her neck at an unhealthy angle, and though her eyes were at least a little clear before, now the pupils are blown.

"The sooner we know what it is we are trying to cure, the easier it will be." Whatever fear, whatever concern she might have aside from the professional is locked away entirely. There is nothing more than the cool flow of Compassion's power from her hands as she attempts to undo the damage wrought by the venom. Poison? Toxin. Something that is carving along a merciless path and is utterly foreign-

Her skill lies in wounds, in broken bones and torn flesh, in plagues and illnesses and burns and frostbite- not this. Without knowing what or how all she can do is offer general relief. And for a few hopeful moments? It seems well. Leliana's pain is eased, the tension seems to go from her. She can breathe.

"Faster would be better-" She calls after the aide, eyes flicking up to Anders. "It is nothing common-"

Of course it wouldn't be, of course the color would drain and the chill would spike and Compassion screams on the other side of the veil as what they have crafted to help? Hurts. Adelaide starts almost as violently as Leliana- hands slipping to her shoulders to hold her still- "Her neck, move her head, she won't be able to breathe-"

Shit. Anders darts over, getting his arm underneath her head to support it, holding her steady, trying to mix the tincture with the swirling of his wrist rather than with a stick.

"Relax, Leliana. I know it's not easy, but relax. Tensing will make breathing more difficult." The marks have spread since last he looked, and he shoots a look over at Adelaide. "What changed? Did you feel anything?"

It's not likely. But maybe they can figure out something despite how poisons aren't their areas of expertise.

"She's in more pain, now." There's little they can do when her throat is so damaged, when what he'd sensed didn't respond to what he tried, and clearly wasn't responding to what Adelaide had been doing. He can feel a tickle in his mind, nearly forgotten, and he knows an offer of power is there, an offer to fix everything, and it would be hilarious if not for everything else going on. "Leliana, please try to relax. I know it's not easy. I don't know if you can even hear me, but there are people working on this. Between them and us, we'll get you through it. Relax your muscles, slowly, and air will come."

The door crashes open, and through it-- well, a spell, one that carries unnatural wind through the chamber, ruffling clothing and guttering candlelight, a scent of storm on it before that feeling settles, a feeling only mages know well. The dispelling effect strangles the connection between the Fade and the two healers, and thus, Adelaide's healing magic on Leliana.

This could well feel like attack, which is why Dorian throws up a hand in apologetic surrender as he enters the room in the path of his own spell. In his other hand is a silver cup.

He'd been moving in a hurry, but stops short now, looking towards the writhing figure on the table. "Venhedis, how much magic have you used on her?" he asks -- sharply, but not necessarily accusatory, more pragmatism than emotion for all that he rarely does anything without emotion, this included. By now, there's an added smell to the room, something that smells both earthy as well as like that of decay, wafting invisibly from the cup he holds in an exceptionally careful hand.

Dorian sweeps into the room, finding somewhere safe to place it while he glances towards Leliana. "Has she been able to speak?"

Edited 2016-06-10 12:31 (UTC)

With the severing of the magic her body eases, albeit slowly, and without the real indication of relaxation that might make the moment a relief. The limpness is more akin to a flower that has been left to wilt, unwatered, pliable where it should be crisp and upright. A rasp signals that she is breathing, and her head is heavy in Ander's hands, eyes shut tight for a moment. A second breath, and a third, and she opens them to try and look up at him. To look at anyone, really, though moving her head is a struggle.

Instead she manages to lightly tap a couple of fingers against the table. Not quite so communicative as speaking, no, but at least an indication that she is present in more than body, that for now she has some grasp of her mind and her senses, though with how her head feels and the rawness in her throat she has to wonder how much more consciousness she has left in her.

"Something is reacting-" But to what? The herbs? The poison accelerating? That smell of rotted leaves wafts for a moment and she scowls, pulling deeper on Compassion's power to counteract whatever it is that causes Leliana so much pain. This isn't what should happen- she should be able to breathe by now, she should be able to take the bulk of her pain and mitigate some of the damage to her throat- not try to outpace the strangling grasp of the poison.

Doors slam and her mana falters, flares- cut off from Compassion she's scrambling with nothing- it would do to make certain they couldn't heal Leliana if they wished to be certain of her death. Adelaide has a hand on the knife she's kept at her belt but never truly felt the need to use for months now, braced for-

Dorian. Mouth half open for something sharply acidic- this is what she does, this is her patient, how dare he come in and cut her off short- save the question. Save the sudden limp drape of Leliana's body against the table, the abrupt lack of tension under her hands. "...A simple rejuvenation. I'd not done much. She has barely been able to breathe, let alone speak- Dorian. What is this?"

His attention is on Adelaide until the sudden entrance, and then he's wishing his hands were empty because he can't cast, and his staff is right there. Dorian is with the Inquisition, but in the end that doesn't have to mean anything. He could have other loyalties. This could be an attack. Except Leliana's suddenly breathing better, and Dorian isn't approaching directly. Yet.

"While you answer Adelaide's question, please move slowly." He wants to trust Dorian, but he can't without knowing more. For now, all he can do is support Leliana's head and wait for some answer, some idea of what's going on. "Anything you know, anything that can help."

Because the implication is that Dorian entrance is clear. "And tell me if spindleweed is going to cause problems as you seem to feel the magic will."

"Let me look at her."

He wants to answer questions; as an insufferable academic, it's among his favourite pastimes, and he moves-- well, perhaps Anders would prefer that 'slowly' be slower, but Dorian is as insistent and naturally assumptive as a housecat, winding his way to get a better view of the spymaster lying prone, sidling up by Adelaide. He doesn't touch around where Anders is touching, mostly for the sake of peace -- but he does lay a hand gentle on where Leliana's had twitched against the table, and duck down so he can see the markings on her neck.

When he straightens, he's leaning in just enough so as to address Leliana directly. "You've been poisoned with something called magna vitis. I wouldn't normally expect to see it this far south--" And he addresses the other two more directly, now, with a glance. "It's a charming bit of Magisterium politics -- hence it reacts in adverse to magic, when normally intended for magisters. Spindleweed won't have an effect either way, but if it would make you feel better--"

The hand on Leliana's squeezes gently. To her; "Don't try to speak."

Josephine notices that something is wrong the moment she steps foot into the room. Leliana is many things (fierce, frustrating, passionate) but she is certainly not careless.

She tries to tell herself it is nothing to worry about, that what they have motion is wearing them all down and it would be short-sighted to believe that Leliana, for all her strength, could be immune from their stress.

Nevertheless, her fear eats away at her and settles upon her chest in the shape of trepidation.

Josephine sets down the wine and nibbles she'd brought with her on the nearest available flat service, and scans her surroundings for any sign of Leliana's whereabouts.

The door to her chambers is open.

"Leliana?" Josephine calls out, just in case Leliana is in the middle of something, does not wish to be interrupted. Yet even as she's calling, she's walking, towards the room --

-- and that's when she sees the body on the floor.

It takes a moment for her mind to process what she's seeing: the body; Leliana's body; Leliana.

Once it does, however, it's as though everything happens at once. Without thinking, she's knelt down by her friend's side, almost touching but refraining at the last moment, in case whatever has afflicted Leliana can affect her as well. Her mouth is moving without her knowing and it is only once she has said it once, twice, thrice, that she realises she is shrieking Leliana's name.

It's only then that she notices the blinking. The blinking! How had she missed that before? She could weep, almost does, but not before whispering, "Oh, thank the Maker you're alive."

It's a strange relief that Dorian is here. Of the three he is probably closest to the realm of friend, even if it is a camaraderie born of mutual torment and laughing about the exploits of the Herald. A strange thing, not a true friendship perhaps, but Leliana is learning there is little room in her life for friends.

Morrigan, she realises, very abruptly, and there is an urgency twisting in her gut, even as she nods to Dorian's instructions and, to the best of her ability, shifts her hand under his as she looks at him, a poor effort at returning the offered comfort. She is not sure what is in her expression.

Despite his instructions she does try to swallow, does mean to try to speak, but the swallow alone makes her wince.

"If he was going to do something he would have already." Adelaide does not stand aside- but she does make room. Dorian knows Leliana better, might know what this is as it is entirely unlike anything Adelaide has encountered.

Of course it's Tevinter.

Of course it reacts badly with magic. Adelaide allows herself a moment, little more, of swearing violently under her breath in Orlesian. "Is there an antidote?"

It being from where it is- her coin would be on no. But she would rather know for certain what their options might be instead of hopelessly guessing.

The gentle touch on Leliana's hand sways him more than Adelaide's words. There's always a possibility of a delayed attack, waiting for guard to drop, but Dorian's careful. Anders exhales and sets the tincture down. If it won't do any good, then it won't do any good.

"And if we've not got an antidote just yet, some way to relieve the symptoms while she fights it off."

He's never heard of this poison before, but it's no surprise. Simply frustrating. That there is an antidote he has no doubt - magisters wouldn't stop at anything to find a cure to a poison designed to help them - he's simply worried about what it might entail. ...And also worried by the way Leliana looks.

"I know it's terribly dull to lay here and focus on breathing, but that's the best thing for you right now, Leliana."

"The good news is that wine isn't remotely magical," Dorian says, with the kind of brisk chirp with which he can talk about almost anything, even if those that know him better can sense that undercurrent of sharper worry -- in his voice, around his eyes. This is addressed to Leliana and the healers both, with the latter, a little flatter, "The bad news is, I'm not entirely certain of what else there is to do without further research. Herbal remedies to slow damage -- royal elf root might buy us a little time, yes?"

He straightens slightly. He does not say, right now, how much time he anticipates that Leliana has. "I have some contacts in the Imperium who ought to have better insight. This isn't exactly my forté."

Dorian has brought wine for the occasion, which isn't exactly an act of generousity, considering its one of many he's outright stolen from the Inquisition's cellar. He also completely expects Josie to complain charmingly at him about it, and he expects to be able to deflect even more charmingly. Ruffling Ruffles' ruffles is, all the time, good sport.

But his mind turns from that, very quickly, when the shrieking starts.

He arrives swiftly, heralded by a heavy-footed dash up the stairs, into the chamber, then towards the other open door. He's wielding Orlesian wine and not his staff, but that doesn't stop a crackle of electricity from dancing across the backs of both his knuckles in preparation to electrocute whatever's making Josephine wail so.

"Josephine?"

Magic crackles, dies. In a rush, Dorian puts the bottle down, a noisy thump of glass to wood.

Stubbornly she tries again to speak; she may not have time, this is important, the Inquisition and their safety is important.

But her head feels foggy. The words seems warped out of shape and strange sounds that are sharp against her eardrum, and Leliana sets her teeth. She can't grasp the word, something so simple as a word.

Thorn.
She can hardly even recall why it is significant or why she must say it, only that it truly must be given voice-- her eyes shut, and she forces a sound past her throat.

It is a hoarse, rasping breath that only the first syllable survives.
"Ép--"
The 'p' is incompete, evident in her lips more than in the sound that passes them.

Again she tries, but it is weaker on the second effort. For Dorian's efforts or for someone who needs to be warned of a threat she doesn't remember clearly, thorns . Leliana shivers, and her breath catches audibly, painfully.

Spend a little time with people his own age, get away from the baby, play cards, drink. Things he has needed desperately for some time and only just now managed to wrangle- he'd been looking forward to the evening quite a bit. Dressed for the occasion, took time to sand off the rough edges left by sleeplessness and child rearing to be more of his old self again. It felt right to be thus and he had a spring in his step that'd been absent as he made his way to the room-

Where Dorian is sprinting in, magic in hand-

Where Josephine shrieks Leliana's name-

Zevran follows swift and silent, slipping daggers from his sleeves between one moment and the next, tucked into the shadows until it is plain there is no present danger-

"Touch nothing." Breathing, blinking- life remains but for how long? He smells no blood, sees no true signs of struggle, no wires, no traps, no needle like bolts she might have pulled from her skin to spare herself a poison.

A moment after Zevran arrives, a woman enters. Her uniform marks her as one of Leliana's scouts - an elf, with blonde hair that might be very long if it were not tied back, and green eyes that are startling in how they interrogate with a look, moreso than anything to do with their colour. Bonheur, Leliana calls her. Whether or not that is her name is immaterial.

"He's right." Very quiet, as she holds her distance - do not disturb the room, do not disturb any evidence. Zevran is a known and trusted ally, despite somewhat recent events. The same can be said of the other two. Her hands did not need to find their way to her knives, it seems, and her grip eases.

"Ombra Nera," she starts, "I will notify the Advisors and Knight-Captain Hill, and leave this room in your hands." Although her gaze lingers on the Ambassador, and her gaze flickers to Dorian. "Perhaps she needs assistance."

Leliana, for her part, remains still. Her eyes are unfocused, and her hand squeezes around the cup in hand, willing them to look to it, willing herself to be able to speak, to help.

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Page 1 of 3

( closed ) No longer I can justify the bloodshed in his name

discovering the body; closed to josie, dorian, zevran & leliana.

healing time phase one; closed to adelaide, anders & leliana.

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