semi-closed; i cannot see the path

[redinside]

WHO: Samson, Cullen, Mia, Anders, Thranduil, and more perhaps
WHAT: Even more dungeon visits
WHEN: One backdated, the rest current
WHERE: Skyhold Dungeon
NOTES: Preemptive warning for strong language and substance addiction.

the commander's visit;

How long since they first hauled his sorry carcass down those steps and dumped him in a cell? Hours? Days? No sun or moon to tell by, not down here. In the lingering aftermath of his own foolishness, consciousness has been elusive. Through the murk of his memory he glimpses a brisk voice and gentle hands, faces reduced to indistinct shapes, there and gone again. He slept after that—for how long, who knows—and it's from that same sleep he's just been jerked by a well-aimed boot.

Samson is hoisted up from the bedroll before his wits even have time to congeal into awareness, strangers' hands gripping him rough under the arms. They jostle him till he'll sit on his own. Now awake enough to be aggrieved by it, he shrugs them off abruptly, and thereafter two armed and armoured men leave the cell to join others outside it. Shadows and torchlight beyond, bodies moving or leaning to look, the man at the cell door glaring down at him expectantly. The chains are heavy on his wrists as he drags them toward his lap.

Someone important's coming down. He can tell that much.


a captive audience;

First hours, then days, and now weeks later, Samson is still here. Same clothing, same sweat-stained bedroll, same small space to call his own. Apart from sluggish but persistent beard growth that waxes and wanes from week to week, not much else has changed since the first day—not at a glance—only now there's a pail sitting outside his cell, the long handle of a dipper keeping its wooden lid just slightly ajar; from this he can drink when he likes.

It's just as likely you'll find him sleeping as standing. Occasionally, he'll be seated on the bedroll without any shoes or stockings or gloves, biting or tearing at his nails when they grow long enough to need a trim. His hair might still be wet from the occasional wash achieved by bucket and rag. Sweating or shaking, listening or waiting, he's still here.

Comments

[redinside]

There are none like me, he might have said, if Thranduil faced him while he still wore his unholy armour. None like us, perhaps, if red templars stood loyal by his side. But his men are far from him now, his armour no doubt locked up somewhere dark. It must be. They couldn't fathom how to destroy it. (Could they?)

Samson watches the elf wearily for a time, his eyes dark in the torchlight, his breath a bit too shallow, a bit too quick to be relaxed. When his answer finally comes, it comes as a murmur: "I can. Sometimes. When the keep's gone quiet, it whispers... burns." His eyelids slip shut beneath a creased brow. "You can't even imagine how deep it burns."

[rowancrowned]

Throw it into a volcano, he might have said, if prone to joking about such things, armed with knowledge from his own future. This red lyrium grows, corrupts-- he supposes they are lucky that reducing it to power and throwing it in the air doesn't cause a risk of infection. He can guess how his own flesh would react to such a thing. His skin is not wholly his own, not since the dragon came down, and he is... hesitant to allow it to be degraded further.

"Would you purge yourself of it, given the chance?" 'Do you want to live', voiced more cleanly. Even if given a proper bed, somewhere warm, somewhere dry, would he last. Thranduil stares into the dark of the sell, watching Samson. You could speak with yrch, pull information from them, but they were made to be as they were. The Men, though, that had chosen Sauron-- they were the interesting ones.

[redinside]

"Given the chance," he breathes, along with the shadow of a laugh. Would he purge it, the elf asks. He's already a hypocrite for not sharing the same fate as his men, receiving only the red lyrium's power while they grow into monstrous things—would he abandon them entirely, not even share in their pain? And if he could escape, if freedom were even possible, would he deserve it?

"That's a cruel question." Samson's eyelids barely lift; he looks at Thranduil through the slits, brow creased in a frown, lips almost smiling. A cold squeeze within his chest, his belly, to the idea of playing at hope. "What's the use of asking? If you know it sings, you must know what else it does. So you know there're no chances left for me."

[rowancrowned]

"In hopes of a telling answer." His right hand, palm up in his lap, laying atop neatly crossed legs. "The melody is foul, true, but some of my kind might have been able to stop the spread, if nothing else."

Elrond had stopped the burns from killing him, but the dragon had taken away most of his beauty and only inflamed his vanity in the end, what little fairness he had left zealously guarded. This is different. Samson's affliction is beyond Thranduil's ability to grasp it. The Song is muted, and with it, his understanding. Maybe that's why he's so curious.

"How long do you have?" How long before he turns into one of those living giants of red lyrium Thranduil's heard so much about-- and studiously avoided. They cannot have one of those in Skyhold. Or, Thranduil would not keep one around if he had any say in the matter.

[redinside]

Might have been able, past tense. So this is merely a hypothetical conversation, then. Good. This elf can see as many telling answers as he likes, as long as there's no chance of disappointment, no further failure waiting for Samson down the line.
The chill in his guts begins to unwind again—as much as it ever can.

"Months. Years. Who knows? The Elder One delayed it spreading. He never bothered to offer an estimate, I never bothered to ask... too wrapped up in the thrill of it all. Excitement. Terror. I was up to my neck in it." Swimming through a sea of red, always reaching for the promise of more, more lyrium, more respect, more power. "Never thought the consequences would matter—perhaps they still don't."

[rowancrowned]

"Have you always been so fatalistic?" There's a song being sung about him in the taverns, and he supposes there must be someone here who knew him before. He cannot quite pick out Samson's age from his face alone, but it is weathered in a way he assumes means hard living rather than actual age. The expression of his face is still placid, the occasional raised brow at the end of his question.

The red lyrium unsettles him more than he's comfortable admitting.

Nor is it hard to see why others pity him. But for all that he's wounded and aged and now caged, he's still a danger. He wouldn't dare reach between those bars. "Did he ask you to call him that? 'Elder One'?"

It sounds pretension. Thranduil does not sneer.

[redinside]

Samson is still considering an answer to the first question when the next comes—he might have laughed if he felt more like laughing—and so leaves it lie for the time being. He shakes his head. "Not personally. It's how they—the ones working with him. Venatori and others. They called him that, or Master. I picked it up quick."

As if he can sense that sneer wanting to emerge, he adds, "Being in the Master's presence is... arresting. You find yourself breathing more carefully. You can't bear to look away. And," he pauses to cough once behind his fist, lips against knuckles, "he's endured for more than a thousand years. Say whatever else you want about him, but a being like that is worthy of some respect."

*pretentious oh my god jxjc

[rowancrowned]

"So he is able to command a room," Thranduil says, shifting, refolding his legs. The floor is cold-- and he spares a thought for Samson. Perhaps he ought to be given a blanket. There is a pause as he waits for Samson to work through his fit, having no tissue to offer him. "And he has endured. That is a very long time for a Man."

But from what he has been told, and from what he understands about Corypheus, what might have once been a Man is certainly not now. Shaped like one, but beyond what it might have once been.

Thranduil does not think of yrch.

this hiatus has been like a tar pit, please excuse

[redinside]

Curiously, Samson can feel himself becoming quickly annoyed by this simplification of the Elder One's being, by the elf's attitude in distilling the ancient magister's essence into that of a mere person, stripping away his divinity. His longing for divinity. Command a room, bah. For a time he is quiet, remembering the way Corypheus sounded during one of their last conversations, face to face—something in his voice like regret, or sorrow. Something kept locked away. Back then he wondered at it, why he was allowed to glimpse even that brief hint of vulnerability, took it and curled his fist around it and kept it close.

Now, the notion of trust—of a trust betrayed—sours his voice with a defensive note. "Corypheus is no man. He's much more than that." He has to be.

[rowancrowned]

"No, not any more," Thranduil admits, readily. Some men do things that turn them into legend, and then that too is swept away until all they are is a story, a myth. Corypheus has proven very stubborn at hanging onto life. Thranduil's pause and meaningful glance at Samson is... almost apologetic.

"But he was, once-- he is man-shaped. I do not suppose he has confided in you just how old he is?"

[redinside]

"Not down to the year, no... it ain't as if he told me his entire life story. I was his follower, not his friend." Whether it's Thranduil's weighty glance that does it, or his own sense of importance butting up against the truth—that he is of no real value to Corypheus except as a tool of war, the very same way the templars are tools of the Chantry—a cooler mood covers him like the shadow of a high cloud. "You want to know his birthday, you can ask him yourself."

[rowancrowned]

Dryly: "I fear my attempt at an introduction and polite conversation would end with me in a great deal of pain."

Certainly not in a pretty little cell with gryphons for roommates and the little pile of food Samson's assembled from admirers. Or the high fashion he's sporting.

He considers, briefly, trying for soothing, but decides against it. It's not his job to try and pull things from Samson. They're just having a nice conversation.

"Though it is an admirable attempt on your part to have me surrender myself to your people."

they definitely did not stare at each other for an entire month between tags

[redinside]

A few minutes earlier, and he might've grinned at that—now he snorts, shows his teeth only by the curl of his lip. Your people. His people. His men and the tattered remains of their honour, their last shreds of humanity reserved only for each other. A brotherhood soaked in blood. The Elder One he could take or leave, in all honesty—but without the rest of them, he's nothing.

"Been a long time since anyone's used that word to describe anything I've done." He figures it was a joke, but still... "Not since I was young."

Samson is not yet fifty. Compared to his master and current company, both, he's still a child. But still.

they could have

[rowancrowned]

"Admirable?" he clarifies, and then goes on. "The Templars are a military force. The structure of command, your hierarchy- it is little wonder you are as successful as you turned out to be."

They were far from a sparse grouping of bandits. The Yrch had no concept of familial loyalty, no respect for structure- and it was a weakness, gladly exploited.

"I needn't like you to recognize your methods as successful. Only a fool would discount an opponent's strengths."