[CLOSED] PLAYER PLOT: The Ashes Underneath His Nails

[amygdalae]

WHO: Jim Kirk, Hermione Granger, Adelaide Leblanc, Herian Amsel, Anders, Inessa Serra, Raylan Gibbs, Ciri
WHAT: The Inquisition sends a group of agents to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious disappearances.
WHEN: Kingsway 1st - 8th
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Plotting post is here - feel free to post in there still for queries and concerns and further stuff where needed. Warnings for blood, violence, talks about death, experimentation horror, abomination-related stuff etc and eventual on-screen child death. ALSO no tag order - just respond when you feel like you should and I'll try to hit it back if it feels appropriate!!

QUICK JUMP LINKS TRAVELLING TO FROMAGE & FROMAGE GENERAL THREAD ROUTE INVESTIGATION SEEKRIT CAVE ENTRANCE INTO THE SEEKRIT CAVE CAVE INVESTIGATION - LEFT TEAM CAVE INVESTIGATION - RIGHT TEAM KID ABOMINATION THREAD BACK TO SKYHOLD

(—he remembers the chill of the frost and snow biting at bare skin, its usual pure white now tinged a horrid pink from the blood on his hands. He's far away from them now, the danger and the pain and everything else, but the blood will forever be on his hands no matter how much he tries to wash it away. His father had been right all along. He truly was a monster of the greatest kind.)

QUEST: THE ASHES UNDERNEATH HIS NAILS (PART I) The message had come swiftly, the letter itself hastily written with a shaky hand. The request itself was simple; a plea for help from a village at the outskirts of Emprise du Lion, whose people have been mysteriously disappearing over the last few weeks. Considering the ongoing civil unrest that's still transpiring in Orlais the Inquisition made its decision to send out a team of agents to look into this message and see exactly what was going on. The eight agents tasked with the mission were given enough time to prepare for the trip ahead. They would all meet up first at the Inquisition camp set within the Emprise and from there travel for about a day until they reached where their destination was - Fromage, a quaint little village that rested at the outskirts of the area. From that point on, it was up to the agents of the Inquisition to solve this ongoing mystery. The mission: to discover the truth behind these disappearances - and to stop it, if possible.

Comments

[fleurdesel]

"I am a Spirit Healer." When it comes to this? It is no question of mana. That more than anything else tips Herian's hand, shows how tightly she is wound, how her penchant for self recrimination has coiled and sunk in its fangs. Where could she have learned this and oh. Of all the lessons Adelaide meant to teach? Self flagellation had never been one of them. "We cannot undo what has been done. But we can ease your pain and fulfill our purpose."

Again, her hand extends, palm up. Full of cool blue light for there is precious little Herian might say or do that would have Adelaide take no for an answer. "I ought not to have argued."

The fault is hers.

[dashing]

A tilt of her jaw, at that, a very well not given voice. She doubts it would have made any difference, even if she had insisted, and there is no good in being ungracious.

"Pray, do not take this on yourself." Quietly spoken, an evenness that she was never very good at in the Circle now perfected to an alarming kind of flatness. "I could not have known that a cure was impossible; it was arrogant and headstrong to be so certain that steps could not be taken, even without knowing," of Anders, "of that apostate. It has been done before, by Circles."

They were not in a Circle, now. Perhaps that was where her doubt lay. She hardly knows, herself. "And you could not have known what had been done to that child. Mercy was the more befitting action. If there is anything to be said, it is that I lacked faith."

And what were knights, without faith?

[fleurdesel]

"Herian." Things had been done in the past, certainly. A litany she couldn't begin to think of in the moment. A ritual wherein a mage walks into the fade. Her own tests with Anders. Variations on a monstrous theme but the point when flesh twists and blood runs like red stone-

That is the point when all is lost. "Why else would they have left him behind? They completed their work. There was nothing that could have been done and had I not been so arrogant as to assume that I could save him? It would've been a swifter death. A kinder one. What was done for Anders would not have helped him."

Compassion's will wells and flows, curling over Herian's skin in a comforting drape of power. "We were both of us mistaken. All we can do-"

Is do better in the future. The most common refrain to their lessons.

[dashing]

"Councillor." It is a brief echo of exasperated student, reframed. "Have you a reason you are so eager to speak my name with such emphasis?"

It is rude, and it is more than she would allow herself with anyone else, mouth clamping shut as soon as it is spoken, fingers curling towards her palms, one hand still resting on the staff across her lap. Calmer, again, "I apologise. That was... inappropriate and rude. Perhaps you are right."

It was the Marcher demon girl that the Senior Enchanters lamented, more than once, not the Knight-Enchanter that stalked chevaliers and made them regret all the ills they inflicted.

"They think me a monster. Those others here." She had seen the way they looked at her when she readied her blade, and when she was covered in the blood of a child. It doesn't matter, what others thinks, but—
it seems fitting, and terrible unfitting, in the same moment,

[fleurdesel]

"Concern and affection." Though she certainly doesn't sound all that affectionate- a wry edge the her voice slipping in where her mask holds true. "Concern for your well being and affection that I thought might warrant a lessening of formality."

Perhaps she is mistaken. The implication that she might be is as plain as the glow to her eyes in this particular moment. Things are...strained. All around they are weary, they are tense, they are defeated. There was no winning this particular mission. No great victory save knowing something had been done but not to what end. Bitter ashes upon the tongue where they might have expected honey.

"We all know what must be done for abominations. Cures are infrequent for a reason. But knowing of what must be done does not make it any easier to swallow." She and Ciri had the right of it. "It is easier to think someone you disagree with as such a monster than to see them as a person."

[dashing]

"In that case, Adelaide," that sounds so strange to her own ears, and she glances to Adelaide to test whether it is truly acceptable, even as she says it so carefully and precisely, "I thank you for your concern." That is not really any less formal, and there is a strange tug at the corner of her mouth as Herian notes it, and turns it around, trying to work out how to make it better.

For a moment, Herian just nods, glancing down at the tattered, scorched gap across the front of her robes where the demon had burned them away, looking at the skin there; no longer an angry red, or blistering and warped. It is as it had been before the battle, as if the wound had never been inflicted, and there is a wry tug at the corner of her mouth. "If only Spirit Healing could soothe all hurts so easily," she comments, fingers smoothing over the family plane of her own skin, ever fascinated by Adelaide's talents.

Speaking of monsters, and of spirit healing— "He... the apostate," whose name she still cannot say, because it makes him a person and she is not sure she is ready for that, herself, "he said he knew an aunt of mine, in Kirkwall. She was a Spirit Healer, he said. Working with a Spirit of Love." It seems so strange, that so many in her life are healers, and she is ever one with blood on her hands.

[fleurdesel]

Terribly strange to her her name in that voice. Terribly strange to see the barest flickers of who Herian used to be behind the furious mask of who she is. Again she berates herself for not remaining. For not waiting outside the tower for those that were yet within and might have had need of her and her skills. It will not be the last time this weighs upon her.

It is a burden she does not quite know how to set aside.

Compassion's power ebbs and flows, settling in deep and fading once the healing is complete. Not a scar. Not a hint of injury for all that her robes are charred and burnt. She prides herself on this skill, on this precision- but the juxtaposition between smooth skin and ragged cloth twists something in her gut she cannot put a name to. "She must be talented indeed- Love rarely speaks to mages. It is rarer still that they partner with any. She must be a remarkable woman."

[dashing]

"Liliwen. A white lily. My father always spoke of her in the highest terms." Her mouth snags at the corner, and she looks to Adelaide with sharpened focus, with a storm of something she cannot express rages in her gaze, seas that churn and clouds that carry thunder. "She is - was - a remarkable woman who aligned with the demon of Kirkwall, if he is to be believed. Part of his network. Someone who died for his cause, he all but crowed."

Her fingers draw away from her abdomen, and there is a moment of a student wanting answers, a solution, before she forces it down.

"I have oft wondered what it would mean if all mages needed to partner with spirits, as you do. If we would all of us be beholden to some better moral compass, or if it would be our undoing."

[fleurdesel]

"...There are things I tell him he ought not discuss. I tell him this, he does not listen, why am I surprised?" A weary exasperation coils in her voice- a muscle twitches in her jaw but- He is his own man and might speak as he likes. So long as he is prepared and not surprised by the consequences. That Herian should find such a thing objectionable, offensive, enraging? Comes as no surprise. "I do not know of what it was like in Kirkwall- but I have come to understand the lengths desperation might drive someone. How hope can be as sweet a poison as any."

Reasons a Hope spirit has never partnered with her- she is forever wary of the sentiment.

"Not all spirits are discerning. Not all care so long as they are allowed to fulfill their purpose. For some it would suit them well, for others? Justice was....a unique situation from what I understand. Likely tainted before they ever..." She shakes her head. "Morals do not come from spirits. They come from men."

[dashing]

"I cannot reconcile the idea of a woman who my father always said was gentle and loving even in all the brutality of the alienage with someone who would help such a man. That she might have had a hand in what he did—"

Her voice is quiet and steady, but she pauses then, and shakes her head. No good will come of this, of agonising over what truths the apostate might speak, what acts Liliwen Amsel may or may not have participated in, over what might have become of her in the time between.

Herian's head tilts slightly, an acknowledgment, though a faint curl of amusement lingers at the corner of her mouth. A moment skips past before she ventures, "Precious little good comes from men, in my experience."

It does not come quite so easily at the jokes and the droll comments that she seemed to throw out so easily in the Spire, but she's— she's trying. A little, as if a joke might make Adelaide feel better. It feels very childish.

[fleurdesel]

"From what Varric wrote and what I have learned of him? No one knew. Not even Hawke until the deed was done. Trying to assist those that wished an escape, protect those that wanted to hide? That I can understand. But he attempted to be noble in telling no one- and only served to convince himself that it was his only option. Cooler heads may have dissuaded him if not Justice." Where one might have been given pause, the other would have taken over. Dangers of possession. Things she would never wish for any she knew, would never want to endure.

Things that if they are careful? They will never experience.

A moment and she seems, a bit, like the girl in the tower. The hellion of the Spire- and Adelaide finds herself warmed with a twinge of fondness. "I would argue that they have their uses-"

Now her hand strays to the favor on her wrist. A reminder of someone warm and kind and good waiting for her at home. "But I have found my leisure elsewhere."

[dashing]

The gesture does not go unnoticed, and Herian's brow quirks a little at contact made with the braided leather, looking to it for a moment. "I had never known red to be your colour," she observes, nodding to it. "A favour from one dear to your heart, I take it?"

She could have said one with whom you take your pleasure, but that was a step or two beyond, that was too much the dreaded Starkhaven girl that made so many Orlesians sigh. It is good, she thinks, that Adelaide has someone whose favour she would wear gladly, if she is correct in her estimation. Mages are too much isolated, and Adelaide has always held herself to a standard to which Herian aspired.

More often than not she failed, and she had never in the Spire denied herself company, but only once had she loved, and that had been—

"If they prove unworthy of you, I will make them regret it."

[fleurdesel]

"I have become fond of it as of late." Difficult to not when the woman in question's very name is Ruby, when red becomes warmth and comfort and home rather than blood and anger. For a moment she allows herself this reminder, that she has someone to come back to that has missed her, that would speak with her if she called and think noting of her strangeness-

Someone that understands the strangeness and awkwardness and admires her all the same. "Yes- it seemed fitting."

Leather is not something she wears often, but it is Ruby's and that? Makes it worth wearing. Herian's promise drives her out of pleased reverie, fondness easing into vague amusement. "It is far more likely that I shall prove unworthy of her. I have long held that romantic entanglement is unwise for mages and am...out of practice with such tenderness."

[dashing]

Out of practice with such tenderness. It seemed to Herian that there world entire was disconnected from tenderness, that affection and gentleness were like to be be met with volatility, that love could be beaten from from the all. She observes the favour a moment longer, and her gaze flickers back to her teacher.

Her is another matter Herian of Old would have teased her for, claimed devastation that it was no she Adelaide so cared for. Herian of Now left well enough alone, no matter her surprise.

"Hold out your heart to her, that she might see it clearly, know that you trust it unto her. We must be guarded in so much, but in love? In... adoration? A demon cannot hope to claim you, if that which they seek to corrupt is guarded to another for safeholding. If she knows you, can understand the steps you walk, then she will not condemn you the learning curve."