faderift | [ closed ] go ahead and cry little girl, nobody does it like you do

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[ closed ] go ahead and cry little girl, nobody does it like you do

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin, Lex Luthor, Alistair, Bellamy Blake, Thranduil, Herian Amsel.
WHAT: Comte Vauquelin has information and records for the Inquisition. A small group including his daughter go to collect it. Everything is fine.
WHEN: End of Kingsway.
WHERE: Orlais, the Vauquelin estate.
NOTES: Violence, character death, assholes.

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No.

The thud of an arrow and the sight that greets her when she snaps to look towards there attackers makes a tension roll up her back and across her shoulders. Dalish. Always, unavoidably the Dalish, and she has reached for her spirit blade with no hesitation, the blade of light called into life with strange shimmer that cuts through the air. She wields her staff in her left hand and the blade in her right; there is a snap of energy as the blade deflects an arrow shot to strike her, and Herian moves towards the Dalish. Intercept, keep the party safe. These were things she could do.

Working with strange mages isn't Bellamy's style. He sticks to his own. But he doesn't have a choice here; there's him, there's others, the big elf and the Warden behind them somewhere, Gwen's probably useless scholar, her maid, Gwen--and in a crisis, Bellamy goes for what is familiar. It's reflexive, force of habit, putting his conviction in his ability to fight with greater effectiveness alongside a mage. Plenty of experience there.

He has nothing against the Dalish personally. The force of his blind anger has always been aimed elsewhere, to threats more present. But this is a very present threat, to his people (which is Gwen, one of the spare few he cares about), so he's got his sword in hand and his shield up as Herian deflects the next arrow aimed at her.

The Dalish mage is readying some attack in response. Bellamy spots it, the clear telegraphing of movement, the pull at the Fade at the edge of his consciousness, something he has learned very well to feel--like someone grabbing on his eyelid and tugging, and he pulls up to mute that spell before it can take proper shape, neuters the mage's magic neatly without interrupting Herian. And without saying anything to her, so, sorry.

The archers are readying another volley anyways, so she'll have plenty to distract her.

Strange Templars are, so far as she can fathom it, the same potential risk as mage or Seeker. A sacred order, by her reckoning, men and women who sword oaths to serve the Maker, to protect Thedas. She had not any whit of loathing for a good many of the Templars that walked the White Spire. One she had adored, and yet so many of them had been read to strike; their honour had been decayed.

(Many, she realised, believed honour was secondary to survival. Herian herself wondered what the worth of the latter was without the former, if all were rendered vicious, feral beasts, a dangerous and spiteful as the very Dalish before them now.)

While Ser Bellamy remained relatively unknown, she did know this by reputation: that he had helped bring back the missing shardbearers, two of which she holds in some affection, and he fought side by side with Sabine, the closest thing she has to family and her favoured source of ready insults. That is enough, and even if were not known to her, she would still fight at his side readily, because they are both for the Inquisition, both for Lady Vauquelin's safe travel, and both against the Dalish. In ideal circumstances she might communicate before she casts, but they've not that luxury, just as he has not the luxury - or perhaps it is simply the inclination - advise her before he neutralises the gathering magic. No harm is yet done--

A pale green light marks a glyph on the ground, a soft colour that might seem cool and shimmer like the ripples of a stream's shallows playing under the sunlight. Barrier, to bolster health for them both. Her heart beats too hard and too fast, and then the clarity of combat settles over her.

Honour cannot be cast aside or overlooked in any circumstance, else all is undercut, decay set in its heart.

"We have no quarrel with your people," she calls, voice clear and sharp. "We hail from the Inquisition, and seek safe passage alone. No blood need be spilt; no harm need befall any soul hence."

She has said these words before, in variations, but always the same message, and the Dalish have yet to stay their blades. "Stand down!"

Edited 2016-09-30 02:23 (UTC)

Bellamy shoots a look sidelong at Herian when she starts into that short speech of hers. There's a little something of a patient you've got to be kidding in that look, but he humors it, doesn't interrupt her.

But the thing is, in Bellamy's experience, whoever comes up on your party unannounced and shoots first isn't going to be talked down. Proof of his point: one of the Dalish rogues yells something back at Herian, her voice rough with anger. The words are incomprehensible to Bellamy but tone and intent read clear. They will not stand down. They are not standing down, this is a fight that will be joined.

"Nice try," Bellamy says, short, to Herian. Here's the clever banter you were waiting for.

And then the clever banter ends, because they have to shut up and fight, because the archers loose another volley. Bellamy raises his shield to block himself from those arrows as the rogue that had shouted out leaps forward, the blades on her double daggers glinting wickedly.

They do not relent.

Part of her knew they would not, knew Dalish to be as relentless as an ocean current, fit to drag you beneath the surface, silence you, drown you. The ocean was not merciful, nor was she kind; she dashed ships to pieces, and housed all manner of monstrosities.

That she expected does not mean it brings her any measure of joy or satisfaction. Her mouth sets into a firm line - there is no time to say that it was worth it to protect these people if they could, or that she would never give the Dalish the satisfaction of having an excuse to turn against her. A declaration was made, peace offered, and now they must do all in their power to protect the people with them. (The foreign elf, she suspects, may be an obstacle, the nobleman may be of use or may a burden, and Lady Vauquelin and her maid were untrained. So it was two warriors to count upon and herself, so far as she could calculate it.)

The archers are far - too far to immediately reach with her blade. She slams the base of her staff (it's not at all creepy, promise) to the ground, as flames engulf the feet of the archers, sudden and climbing fast, and a second heartbeat drums over her own.

The staff is a little creepy, but creepiness can be exonerated by usefulness, and that's exactly what happens as flames burst to life under the feet of the Dalish archers. Shrieks pierce the air--that and the bloom of heat tells Bellamy it's safe to drop his shield arm and move.

No fancy flourishes, no tricks. While the archers are distracted with the fire, Bellamy goes for the rogue, who has made nimble progress in closing the distance between herself and what's passing for their line of defense (also known as Herian). She pulls up short when she sees him coming, leaps back from the broad swing of his sword--and back again when he rushes her, bowls right into her and catches her chest with his shoulder. They go down hard, together, Bellamy's weight crushing the rogue to the dirt--but she's not done; she spits in his face, heaves up one arm to stab at his arm. The leather of his armor protects him, and Bellamy twists, drives his elbow into her face.

On the field, the Dalish mage has recovered his magic, and tendrils of some spell play between his fingers as he gathers his strength to himself. One of the archers has gained the treeline, disappeared into the shadows; several of the others lie on the grass, badly burned.

When her staff was broken by angry villagers, she did not seek out another until she found this one, taking up the sword instead so that she might travel more discretely, and so it has been some two years since she has regularly used all the spells she had learned. The unfortunate truth of it is that Herian has neglected some of her magics to better herself as a Knight-Enchanter. Hours each day spent working with a sword, training drills, focusing on how to better her mastery of her Spirit blade and her barriers.

There is not time to cast haste on Bellamy and attempt to intercept the mage. He is strong and able, and the mage will do more damage to them. One archer is missing, and though she is not fool enough to dismiss how very able they are, the mage remains more pressing. She casts disruption field, slowing the rogue Bellamy is struggling with and the enemy mage, before she advances at a run to throw herself at the mage, blade cutting a wide arch that she hopes will render him too injured to cast—

But the mage can still cast even if he is slowed, and the magic of the Dalish is strong as it is foul. Nature's vengeance draws enormous roots up through the earth, striking at any who might be in reach, capable tangling or impaling or knocking them back. Herian, for her part, is caught and tangled in vines even as she reaches the mage, her strike attack still vicious but weakened for her need to fight with nature.

The mage is more pressing. The mage is more powerful, more immediate - a broader threat. The mage is where Gwenaëlle is looking, Guenievre's hand like a vice around her arm, dragging her shocked and unresisting toward the same treeline they didn't see the archer melt towards and out of the immediacy of the fight. It isn't what she sees that alerts her to new danger, then, but what she feels; the abrupt way Guenievre jerks her arm and pushes her down, her gaze only belatedly following her mother's to where the archer has come into her eyeline.

Instinct is something it takes a long time to learn - longer than the short time Alistair has been throwing small objects at her unexpectedly, especially when he's still hitting her in the backside with fruit a solid fifty percent of the time.

The second arrow impacts with her shield, breaks, falls.

The second arrow.

The second.

Guenievre isn't holding her any more. The blood spattered across her cloak and gown and skin is not hers so it must be Guenievre's, and it is very difficult, suddenly, to understand this and to hold her shield up at the same time, so she - doesn't, on her knees and crawling to where her mother has fallen, the small and panicked sounds coming from the back of her throat not really words, although it feels like they were intended to be. The arrow protrudes obscenely from where it has lodged in bone between clavicle and throat and there are not going to be any other words, for all that Gwenaëlle -

There is so much blood, she despairs, pressing her hands there with all the force her small form can muster and succeeding in nothing but soaking them in what pushes through her fingers with Guenievre's slowing heartbeat.

"I tried," she says, because it's important. "Mama, I tried, we're nearly there, there will be a healer," as if she has to persuade her, as if it's as easy as convincing her not to go. "It's only a little while - it's only -"

Lex is not on this excursion to protect the party. Of course, Gwen's probably useless (mostly useless) scholar (not actually) doesn't really need to be protected either, he pretty much does that for himself by being out of the way of arrows or stabby things or magic blasts of fire, so...small blessings, or something. The reasons he is here were probably more inscrutable, since he hasn't said much to anyone, exists to do his job, mostly, before--well, before all this, before the arrow and shattered shield and all that blood.

The memory of getting there is hazy, before he is terribly unwisely in the middle of the whole mess; his hands aren't much bigger than hers, but he's always in so many layers it's easy to shed one to press around them, even if the brutal practicality that governs the forefront of his mind says he just ruined a perfectly good something for no reason; it's too late for that kind of simple first aid to matter. Mostly, if he's honest, about which he would have no qualms being, he wants to distract Gwen with something enough that she won't protest moving, being moved, because if he's noticed one thing everyone else on the field has, it's the absence of that archer from formation.

Absent, and then--not so much. Suddenly very present; Lex notices, bloodlessly, gray eyes and a long, ropey scar down the side of the face and neck, under distinctive tattooing, notices that in what seems to unfold like an hour, another arrow hocked back with a kind of terrible precision he recognizes--

(He's not a combatant. But he's kept himself alive this long, meaning mostly he sees openings where they exist.) Meaning, his single contribution to this entire mess is an accurate throwing arm and one moment where everyone is focused somewhere else, meaning a smart, ornately handled little knife protruding, abruptly, in a spray of blood too bright to seem real, even if it's only as bright as all the rest spilled in the grass, from the seat of that scar. Meaning, the archer topples and Lex stops caring about that particular problem immediately.

The wheeze of the rogue's breath through ruined nose and teeth; the crunch of bone--none of that is quite drowning out the sounds that pick their way clear, however quiet they began: Gwen, panicked. It would not be inaccurate to say that Bellamy is tuned mostly keenly toward people he cares about. At the same time, it is easy to hit that plane, the part of the fight where you don't give a shit about anything except the person you're grappling with, and, in vague periphery, the next person you'll have to grapple with, the shadowy future foes that could be the death of you in the next second so stay focused, stay here, present--easiest by comparison to that honed spike of lyrium but not so zealous, and here's how the difference goes:

Bellamy drives his elbow into the rogue's face a second time, and a third, then shifts, presses his hand to her forehead and uses that as a brutal leverage point. Her fingers are witless now and offer him no resistance when he takes her dagger from her and cuts her throat with it. And then he actually looks up and finds Gwen, across the field, closer to the trees than she ought to be, and the useless nobleman with her being suddenly not useless. And Gwen is knelt over her maid, and he picks out what she's saying next, clear as day.

If he thinks of his own mother in that second, who knows. But he does feel helpless. That's familiar, and he knows how to dispel it. Reality tries to order itself around this new fact, Mama; reality simultaneously comes together in the cacophony of the Dalish mage's spell. Bellamy's gaze whips over to Herian, twisted in the roots that have torn suddenly out of the earth. One thing at a time. One thing at a time, and he shoves up from the ground and runs right for the mage, who is still for now gripped in Herian's slow mire of a spell.

"Get her out of here!" is what he spares for Lex, shouted across the field, and he means Gwen, not her maidservant, her mother, whatever, only one of them is alive now and it's the one Bellamy cares about anyways, and no one better screw that up. He's got to kill the mage or at least draw the mage's focus, get Herian free enough that she can do it herself, because as long as there's a mage, there's a threat to them. The rest of it comes later. He jumps over one of the roots, ducks under the next--clearing the space between him and this particular foe with the rogue's dagger in one hand and his sword in the other.

One word, and the entire battle is changed.

Many times was she told, Better control yourself, if ever you wish to control your magic.
Control she has, the steady thrum of her anger fall too familiar and too raw, in ways it had rarely been before the Spire, save where the Dalish were concerned. The Dalish, who took and took, and who even as refugees came to their gates who had been injured by the Dalish, were allowed influence within the walls of the Inquisition. Perhaps if they killed more humans it would be of greater consequence. (Even with the bitterness of the thought that she will not remember until later, that does not have time to register now and simply passes as a ripple beneath the surface, Herian knows that she is still not more than a half-breed.)

The maze of thoughts will come later. Now there is only one thing true in her mind and it is her own father, bloodied and mutilated in the dirt, and a blade at the corner of her mouth.

Her grip tightens on the Heart of Rage, and she yells with exertion as the enemy mage's robes begin to smoulder and flames lick over the cloth to consume it. He cannot save himself from fire and a Templar, even if she is still slowed by the vines, using the Spirit Blade to slice through them. If does not take long, but time does not weigh the same as a battle as it might elsewhere.

He will look, in a moment, to make sure that Gwen's nobleman has gotten her safely out of range; he will look, in a moment, and do it himself if he has to. In the immediate, all of Bellamy's focus is on the mage, the narrow tunnel of vision singling out his target. A thick root writhes across his path and he jumps over it, clears it easy--comes down hard, with a scuff of loose sod, and the mage looks around at Bellamy's entrance just as his robes catch fire.

Herian is hacking through her bonds. Bellamy leaves her to it. She's proved she can handle herself and her Spirit Blade is sharper than his own sword could ever hope to be. The Dalish mage is contending with the bloom of fire eating at his robes, a frantic backwards shuffle with a wordless cry of pain. Bellamy clears one last root and slashes crosswise at the mage with the dead rouge's dagger.

Half-bent to deal with Herian's fire, the mage catches that strike across the face, and a deep cut splits his cheek. As he howls, Bellamy throws down his sword and grabs hold of his robes in his fist, forearm braced across the mage's chest. This time he stabs, low, at the stomach, pulls bodily at the mage so he meets that strike.

A new root bursts up from the earth, right under Bellamy's feet. The force of it knocks him on his back. He looses his hold on the mage--and on the dagger, too, which protrudes from the mage's stomach. Dazed only for a moment, Bellamy twists to grab for his cast-off sword, but the mage is ready for that. However injured he is, he raises his hand and staff, and Bellamy feels the pull of that gathering force--

But by this time, surely Herian will be free.

Vines pulled tight over her ribs, and she was half certain they would see her crushed were the mage free to fully focus, rather than simply struggling for her breath. Her Spirit Blade cuts them away, her lungs feel raw with the chance to breathe fully, and she has not a moment to relish it. The mage is bleeding fiercely, but Dalish are dangerous until their last breath, no matter their ties to the Fade.

She lunges forward, and in her head she remembers the abomination, the child turned demon with lyrium crystalising over his wounds and her sword not being enough, and no one deserves a fate so slow or messy, Dalish or no. All her strength goes unto the strike, and the solid magic of her blade makes the parting of flesh and sinew and bone seem momentarily less messy than it might truly be. The mage's head falls from his body, the magic dissipates, and she has turned before the rest of him hits the ground, holding a hand to Bellamy to pull him up.

She would ask him if he can stand, if he is harmed, but she will have to do it with a look and a nod, because it seems they do not have time for more if rogues remain on the field.

The clean thud of the mage's head coincides perfectly with the lift of that pressure from the Fade. Like a bruise healing all at once, too quickly; a weird relief. Bellamy grabs his sword first. Then he grabs hold of Herian's hand and uses it as leverage to haul himself up. The body keels over in counterbalance.

Of the few remaining archers, most of them haven't made it far from the site of the incineration Herian set against them. Bellamy keeps his eye on them, stoops to grab hold of the dead rogues dagger and yank it out of the mage's corpse.

"The other one," he says, like she needs reminding, the rogue, currently unaccounted for. He's got to be saying what she's thinking, they both know it's not ended with the dead mage--and perhaps Bellamy would have followed up with something more, but the rogue's arrival preempts that. The bastard has circled around behind them and now leaps forward, with a yell. Two daggers, like his dead compatriot, and it's Herian he goes for, in a Backstab. Bellamy reacts without thinking, turns to block that strike as best as he can with his sword.

The fight is in close now. Bellamy heaves bodily forward, shoves the rogue back and releases the clash of their blades, but the rogue only darts forward again, cuts broad across Bellamy with a sweep of his second dagger and some insult in Dalish.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ closed ] go ahead and cry little girl, nobody does it like you do

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gloms on to your attack

YEEEEE

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tfw you realise you didn't hit "post comment" 15 hours later

the tag was maturing ok like a wine

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