open; and so we burned

[redinside]

WHO: Samson and assorted guests
WHAT: The red general has been put where he belongs; the rest is up to you.
WHEN: Harvestmere 28-30... ish
WHERE: Skyhold Dungeon
NOTES: Warnings for very strong language and substance addiction. Fight and capture, still in progress, is here.

day one;

On a certain night, deep into the coldest hours before dawn, a wagon under heavy guard enters Skyhold and passes through the yard by torchlight. It stops at a certain door, and armed soldiers drag its cargo roughly through and down two flights of stone stairs. One of the men left behind spits after it. By midday next, the word has begun to spread, and quickly: there's another body in the cells. Whether through gossip or a proper announcement by the returning war party, it won't be long before a name surfaces, and even the humblest of the Inquisition's agents will know they've cut off the Elder One's despicable right hand. Samson, the general of the red templars, the blighted traitor. They got him.

Separated now from his armour, without the heavy Kirkwall steel and thick horns of red lyrium fused to it, without the nauseating glow to lend him a towering presence and the power to break a soldier in half, he is simply a long-legged man folded on a bedroll with his back turned to the bars. He's been quiet and still, lying just where they left him. Most of what he's done amounts to slow bleeding—and even that's since stopped.
Don't get too excited, now. He's only unconscious, not dead.

During these first hours, only those who've come down to the dungeon on official business will be admitted.


days two and three and beyond;

A few days' time will see him livelier, though not by much. He's since been stripped of his filthy clothes, allowed a cursory wash with a rag and bucket, and given something different to wear. It seems a kind of uniform, fitted with straps and buckles and other odd bits of metal tackle—to restrain him, he reckons, should an authority figure deem it necessary for whatever arbitrary reason. Maybe they'll drag him up for a proper trial, though he doubts it. The hood even buckles closed—for what? To conceal his identity? As if anyone can keep gossip contained in a barracks. So he won't know where they're taking him, more likely. Or so he won't see the swings coming to dodge them.

He sighs, often. Rubs his eyes, his face, massages his forehead. Doesn't eat much of what they bring, can't get comfortable enough to feel rested. He's taken to moving around the limited space of his cell to keep the strange ache in his joints at bay, and trying—failing—to sleep through the headaches. There's nothing for it. This is his life, or whatever little is left of it, as far as he knows: suffering in this stone box until he dies in a haze of pain and madness.

The dungeon doesn't have visiting hours, exactly. Anyone without a legitimate reason to be down here might get in a bit of trouble—one of the prisoners might even tattle out of spite. There's always a guard on duty, besides. But when has common sense ever stopped anyone doing anything in Thedas?

Comments

[byblow]

Alistair watches the apple roll away, aside and past him, a little mournful. It had looked like a good apple. Now it's been dropped and kicked by a foot that—well, he probably can't be exposed to red lyrium through that, but he's not eating it. Just in case. It's already headed toward Erimond, who doesn't get to have it no matter how bruised it might be, even if Alistair has to go yank it back through the bars, but it doesn't reach him. Once the apple has stopped and is no longer interesting, he looks up to find Samson looking at Sabine. His eyebrows pinch together above his otherwise unchanging. Just a smidge.

"We're visiting the griffons," he says. He lifts his blood- and oil-stained bag of guts as if it's obvious what it is and what it's for and Samson shouldn't have to ask. "—Samson, right?" A beat. There's something a little sharp about the cavalier friendliness—mostly the same impulses that make him tell jokes after a fight no matter who's bleeding, a little bit a pointed demonstration of civility for the people nearby he can't look at without scowling, and entirely harmless because at the end of the day Samson is still going to be a dungeon cell.

Or headless, maybe.

So a beat, then: "Can you purr?"

[glandival]

Sabine was doing a pretty good job at staring down the Templar shem through the bars up until Alistair repeats her question. Stoicism and silent sass ripples into the beginnings of a surprised laugh, one hand going up to cover her mouth for a second before dropping again.

"I do not think he likes us," she says, with an elbow into Alistair's side, breaking from Orlesian into king's tongue thickened with her first language. All the while looking at Samson not unlike one might regard a shabby tiger in its cage, the sort of curiousity that is deliberately unblinking so as to hide that it is also wary. "So we may never know."

[redinside]

Fortunately for the longevity of this exchange, Samson's pride does not extend very far inward. I know what I am, he once told the Champion. The Elder One trusted him to be more than that—for a while, he even thought he could be—but, like all things he tries to grasp, that illusion fell apart in his hands. Now here he is, locked in a cell while some kids make fun of him. If this is his lot in life, so be it.
At least this place smells better than Darktown.

Alistair speaks his name, and he nods, then waits through the rest. Because of course there's more.

"Giving up already, are you? We've only just met." And it's not the worst thing that's happened to him all day. Although he kind of regrets rejecting that apple now. "As for purring... with the right sort of encouragement, I imagine I could." And with a little more effort that could've sounded properly suggestive, but his dry delivery smothers it. He's playing along because he's got nothing better to do, it says. And maybe because he appreciates a little company, even if it's the bratty kind.

[byblow]

Alistair stifles a laugh—a real one, or else he wouldn't have stifled it at all, because a mocking ha is more forgivable under the circumstances than any genuine amusement or surprise that such a wretched thing can still have a sense of humor. Alistair hopes he would, of course, in Samson's shoes, but he can't say for sure. This is a rockier bottom than he's ever hit.

"All I have is the apple," he says, "and whatever pieces of a pig aren't fit for stew."

Another lift of the bag, but not very high, because he's warily holding his arm bent and low to guard his ribs against Sabine and her elbow.

"I think we'd get into trouble if we scratched you under your beak."