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The engraving at the entrance ('Arrogance became our end. Come not to a prideful place. Now let humility grant favor.') sits with him as he beckons Beleth over, one sword in hand and the other yet sheathed as he turns and begins to lead them down the staircase into the temple proper.

The unease creeping down the back of his neck has dissipated, rolled off like clouds after a storm, and he finds himself able to step a little lighter.

"Healer," he calls, not looking back, "have you another name for yourself?"

Beleth had been a fidgety mess at the door, the magical unease mingling freely with her very unmagical anxiety. Her hands grasped her bow tightly, ready to attack if need be, but she paced, bounced, fingers digging into the fine wood of her bow. But now, the prickling agitation of the door fades as she steps further into the hall, and she quite nearly sighs in relief.

Thranduil's beckoning is answered without hesitation, and bow lowered but still ready for trouble, she hurries after him. Back straight, face all business, look at how serious she is, she's totally ready for this!! Despite the attempts at serious business, she still steals looks around her, craning her neck as she tries to take in as much as she can. So far, it looks pretty standard for an Elvhen ruin. Random skulls lying around, rubble, the usual.

Keeping close to Thranduil, she can't help but turn her curious glancing to the Medicine Seller as his name is asked after. It's certainly something she'd wondered herself, but had shied away from right out asking. Go Thranduil.

The Medicine Seller had stopped momentarily at the top of the stairs to pick a bit of moss off the wall and had given it a perfunctory sniff. He definitely wasn't going to lick it next.

He arched a sharp, pale brow at the question.

"Healer is far to auspicious a title for a humble merchant. I am only a medicine seller."

That was about as much as that question was going to get answered. Sorry Thranduil, it was a good effort.

"Would you both be so kind as to extend your fingers?" He asked setting his medicine box down on the flagstones of the steps. There was an ominous, muffled rattling that could be heard occasionally from the top compartment.

"...You see, I will need to make some preparations."

Eating strange, corpse-fed plants or not, Thranduil's face remains placid. He had no time for this sort of behavior with the Outsider. Galadriel earned being the Lady, but that was at least shorter than the mouthful of a title this one wishes him to use.

"Oh?" Thranduil says, and because he is fairly sure of himself- or at least sure in the fact that the Medicine Seller has ambitions in Thedas that do not end with a comrade killed in a temple, he makes short work of the ties of his bracer and gloves, and offers one uncallused hand, and all the fingers on it. Better him first, and then Beleth, once she sees it to be safe.

"Would you respond to Glaewron? Your title would be a mouthful, if we find ourselves in combat." Patient, though, and open to an objection, should he give it.

Beleth can't quite mimic Thranduil's calmness, not when this guy (who is already pretty strange, in Beleth's book) refuses to offer up a name, but expects them to offer up their fingers. The ominous rattling does not do anything to convince her that this is not as sketchy as it looks, and she takes a step away from the large box, closer to Thranduil. It's probably haunted, like that pot, possibly attracted to throwing itself at strange, mysterious men who want her fingers for strange, mysterious reasons.

Wait. A man reluctant to provide names, wants body parts, attracts demons--Creators, he was a blood mage, wasn't he? Just her luck.

She spends plenty of time staring suspiciously at the box, then suspiciously at the man, and then worriedly at Thranduil. This is so suspicious. But Thranduil seems to trust this man, so she reluctantly, still staying close to Thranduil, holds out her hand. "What kind of preparations? What's it going to do?"

"If it pleases," said the Medicine Seller, his tone one big shrug. He had no name to give and if his title were inconvenient then he wasn't about to object. If Thranduil was using it to insult him, then he was sure he'd been called worse in the past.

He tucked the moss away in the bottom drawer of his pack for later inspection, and opened next the middle drawer. What came out wasn't some toolset for unholy blood rites and human sacrifices or snipping off proffered fingers.

It was a set of scales. They were small, delicate looking things, and shaped like white birds taking wing. Their frames were lined with gold, and inlaid with precious gems. They lifted up from the drawer to perch on the Medicine Seller's extended finger as if it were an actual bird. Beleth may recognize the set of one of many that had been all over the floor when she saved him from the flying vase.

"There are already demons here," he explained as a pair of gold bells dropped from the scales' trays. He twitched his finger upward, and the scales lifted into the air, hovered a moment, and then drifted serenely down to rest in Thranduil's hand. They even dipped a little bow before righting themselves. Another pair emerged from the drawer, and he sent them to Beleth.

"These weigh the position and distance of such beings."

He paused, recalling the scales were not always perfectly reliable.

"...Usually."

A third pair emerged, which he set on on his shoulder, and then he rummaged through the top compartment of the medicine box. The rattling grew louder, more insistent, and then there was a click of a box opening and the noise quieted. He tucked a short sword into his sash. Its sheath and handle were red, and like the scales was inlaid with jewels and gold, with the same eye motif he had on his box and robe. It was certainly a pretty thing, save for the carved head of some grotesquely grinning goblin creature that served as a pommel decoration.

With this and a few other bits of paraphernalia which he tucked into the folds of his robe or some pouches he looped onto the rope that tied his sash, the Medicine Seller closed the drawers, and hefted the pack onto his shoulders.

“You do not risk coming unprepared,” he acknowledges, examining the little scale where it rests upon his finger. The banging was concerning, yes, and the way Beleth inched towards him not unfounded in her caution, but he is not endowed with power enough to lecture or order change, so instead he simply takes the thing off his fingers and rests it in Beleth’s palm (with an apologetic glance, first) as he pulls his gloves and bracer back on.

Once more armored, he takes it back, looking over some of the finer detailing. “I am intrigued that you were able to attune it to the Fade.”

But a free hand is a free hand, and surely they do not need three scales, so after examining it with one last glance, he inclines his head politely and offers it back to the one he’s decided to call apothecary in his mother tongue. “I am grateful, but would prefer both my hands free.”

There's a measure of relief in Beleth's eyes when she recognizes what the Medicine Seller--Glaewron--pulls out of his bag. And more specifically, recognizes it as something that is probably not some kind of hideous blood magic apparatus or demon-infested decor. The weird scales were still, of course, kind of weird, but they were weird on a level that Beleth could deal with, and she had yet to see any of them chopping off fingers.

So she takes hers with a nod, then Thranduil's, as well. Both of the scales are brought close to her face and squinted at. Well, if what he said about them was true (and Beleth can't help but snort when he tacks on the 'usually'), then they would be pretty useful. However, like Thranduil, she needs both hands free (more than Thranduil does, truthfully. Have you ever tried firing a bow one handed? Of course you haven't, because it's impossible). But after a moment of thought, she takes hers, and places it on her shoulder like the Medicine Seller has. Well, it works for him...

"Do you really need to take that sword?" Is the only comment she has to offer, staring at the red goblin face that she quite clearly recalls having moved on its own at one point, and now it appears to have been the source of the rumbling around. That thing is cursed. "It's...loud."

"I do not know if it's the Fade they are attuned to," he admitted. Demons and abominations were similar enough to Ayakashi and Mononoke that they simply worked as they always had, if a bit more erratically.

"Regardless, as you can see, they are quite capable of moving without needing to be held onto," he explained, gesturing to the pair that sat neatly on his shoulder. "And they will make you easy to find, should we become separated." Or at least easy for the Medicine Seller to find them - the scales were bound to him after all, but from his perspective, that was all that mattered.

Most of the time, he would be content to remain ambiguous about the nature of his tools. But that was when he was working alone, or with the occasional foolish charlatan who's experience with spiritual matters was born from superstition. These two were no charlatans and they were far from fools, and even in all his apathy, he was aware enough that there was more at stake in this venture than a handful of mortal lives who probably had it coming anyway.

And Beleth's expression could mean problems later if a weird sword was enough to evoke that kind of tone. So the Medicine Seller offered something he was not very used to giving.

Reassurance

"I am taking it," he affirmed. "There is no cause for alarm. It is not something that can harm you."

Well. It was an attempt. Maybe one day he could even inject something that sounded like sincerity into his voice rather than the constant, slow drone that had all the emotion of a graham cracker.

Tenderly, he settles it on his shoulder, letting it hover, hoping it is not loud like the sword. Why a sword would be loud is another matter, but even if Glaewron proves to prefer fighting alone, he is sure he and Beleth will work together as easily as ever.

The door is unexpected. Most of the works of this temple are unexpected. He takes a moment to savor the cold, to lay his hand upon the door and savor that he, excluding a few rats and insects, is the first to touch this door since one of his kin. Their fall was such a short time ago, the space of a breath, but still forever to Beleth and the Dalish.

He pours a few shards into his hand, and offers them to her- the number suggests there will be more locked chambers after this one and that Glaewron will have his chance, but the first belongs to Beleth, for the symbol if nothing else.

He looks to Glaewron, steps back, feeling the cold settle around him, and prepares to guard Beleth should anything leap from the new room and aim for the rogue.

Well, he tried to be reassuring. The attempt was certainly made, and that counts for...something. It counts for the fact that he doesn't want to alarm her, and that he doesn't seem malicious enough to try to lull her into a false sense of calm. So. Maybe the creepy sword won't be terrible.

Reassured (to a degree), she instead turns to the matter at hand: the door. And more importantly, the fact that Thranduil is offering her the key to opening it. Her eyes widen, and she glances up at him, then back to his hand, before carefully scooping up the shards. There's a moment where she has to take it all in--standing there, in front of this door created by her ancestors, side by side with two other elves (Glaewron was an elf, right? Yes, it's been decided, sorry dude). Who knew what lay on the other side, what fragments of history long lost could be revealed?

Once the moment of drama has been allowed, Beleth proceeds to actually open the stupid door. It's a little slower than she'd like, because the door is really damn cold, and the chill renders her fingers clumsy. One the pieces are pressed into place, she steps back, holding her hands up to her mouth to breath on them as she watches the door light up brilliantly. Then the door swings open, and Beleth only has a few seconds of attention to spare, taking in the large, snow-covered room, before something more pressing catches her eyes--corpses. Lovely.

(Elven corpses, of those ancestors I was reminiscing about. She thinks to herself, dourly, only slightly comforted that these are not the actual elves, but demons possessing abandoned husks.)

"We've got enemies!" The announcement is useless, as both men have perfectly functional eyes, but it seems like the thing to do. That, and notch her bow again, fingers almost fully recovered from the cold door.

Edited 2017-07-01 00:41 (UTC)

The Medicine Seller watched the proceedings with a sort of detached interest. Despite others' assumptions, he was not an elf, and that made him a trespasser of sorts on this moment as they unraveled a bit of their tangled history. He stood to the side so as not to disrupt this momentous occasion - he was aware enough of what the Dalish and city elves had lost that he had no intention of letting his presence interfere.

As the last piece was inserted and the door lit up, each of the scales, almost in perfect unison, tilted towards it, the tiny bells dangling from their trays giving a soft chime.

He made no move to draw his sword when the door opened, nor when Beleth shouted her warning. In one swift motion, his hands disappeared into his sleeves as he drew out what appeared to be many bits of paper, tightly folded. As the corpses shambled upright, he flung them outwards, where they unfurled, creases rippling away to smooth paper. And then they launched forward towards the desiccated bodies with a momentum that should have been impossible. The rectangular papers stuck to them, black writing appearing on the sheets. This, apparently, slowed them, and they moved as though they were trying to wade through molasses.

Edited 2017-07-06 05:42 (UTC)

Ellana leads her group down the right hand set of stairs, the pouch of shards tied securely to her belt and a glowing orb of light hovering above one hand to help them see. She's becoming far too used to elven ruins just like this one: eerily quiet but with the possibility of traps and enemies around every corner. She's on her guard, keeping an ear out for any footsteps beyond their own, but seeing how there are two other teams about, she probably won't get a whole lot of information there.

It's the orange glow that catches her notice first, and she looks ahead to see a door downstairs, with the glow of fire coming up from a metal grate in front of it. That's... weird. Is it meant to burn the feet of any who try to get through? Ellana nods towards it.

"Let's get a closer look at that one."

Petrana is out of her element.

From the start, that has been obvious; presumably someone had seen rifter, witch, research division and presumed her suitable, and when given the assignment she'd not known how to effectively decline it. It was apparent when she spent the entirety of the journey in near-silence, an anxious shadow to Anders (if she blanched when separated from him by Thranduil's division of labor, she did not protest) - it is apparent now, a good deal slighter than both of her companions and feeling out of place and uncomfortable in the trousers she'd been given when outfitted for the journey by the quartermaster.

Judging by her soft hands and her careful manners, they well might be the first pair she's ever worn.

She is - not on guard. She's on edge, which is not at all the same, desperately wishing that there were something useful she might do - the elven woman, Ellana, she seems competent enough, and Melys seems ... certainly willing to fight anything that comes near them, so she has little choice but to trust in their protection and allow that perhaps something useful will simply be 'not getting in the way'. They will, she is sure, protect her; Ellana doesn't seem the sort to abandon her to her fate and Melys sensible enough to not wish to be remembered as the person who'd done it.

Maybe there'll be something she can carry for them.

In her quiet voice, "What is it?" Magic, clearly, fire magic; but this is not her world, and perhaps the others will know more details. What to expect. What it is they're to do.

This isn’t what she’d meant by I’ll look after the horses.

Seems this is a lot less looking after horses, and a lot more looking after fair Madame Not-Orlesian; to say nothing of watching her own back.

(Facepaint can handle herself. Dalish sure love to crow on how they do, anyway.)

This isn’t what she meant. But it’s a bit late to back out now. Big elf has a way about him, kind of way that she knows’ll piss her off she gives it half a chance. She doesn't plan to, not until they're out of the desert at least, not until she knows they won't all ditch her on some dune.

So this is what they're doing now. Punchlines to knock-knock jokes.

"Fire," Bluntly. It’s not that she doubts they’ve caught that much, it’s just that — It’s fire, right? How else do you ever deal with fire? "Y’all got water?"

She gestures with her empty sleeve. Look. There's magic fire, okay. Fine. Surely there’s such a thing as magic water too.

Ellana would never deny a person the chance to see and explore ruins if they were interested, but from Petrana's body language and tone of voice, it feels like she'd been forced to come at sword point. Surely she could have protested to whomever assigned her that not only is she new, she's far from comfortable with combat. But from her meek demeanor, it's probable she didn't want to make waves. Now Ellana and Melys will have to keep an extra close watch on her unless she comes out with some miraculous battle skills.

"We do, but ice magic might work better, so we can save our water supply." Descending the steps, she stops at the bottom to look around and make sure everything is clear. There are some broken bits of pottery lying about, but that seems standard for elven ruins too, and they don't appear highly decorated, so she leaves them be.

"It looks like the shards will fit into this door," she adds on her approach, stopping before the fire under the grate and getting down on her haunches to hold out a hand towards it, to gauge its heat.

The prospect of Petrana surprising anyone with some shocking combat skill is decreasingly likely from its already vanishingly small possibility; the Inquisition has been a series of shocks to the system for a woman who has spent all of her life with a standing guard (first her father's men, then her husband's, fully armed shadows at her back), who is decidedly unaccustomed to either the way the common folk speak or having them speak so to her.

Her magic isn't even likely to come in useful here. The last thing they need is more fire.

"And that will open it?"

Shards. Shards from dead people, if she understands the least bit of all this — and that's a big if. And you go around collecting them and shoving them into doors, and that's supposed to be a key,

Elves. Can't just have a bloody lock like normal folks, no. Shit's fucked up.

Distractedly, "Guess you better hop to it, then."

Not like she's going to be ripping ice out of the air. Melys shifts on the balls of her feet, antsy. Been a while since she’s had good steel to hand, though really it hasn’t been so long at all.

Feels the same as it ever did. Feels like a key, itself. Feels like it might do some opening real soon.

"What're we even expecting to find back here —?"

Subtext: Is a blade even going to do a bit of good.

Ellana has a theory that these elven sites have needlessly complicated forms of entry as tests for the people who wish to access them. A sort of laugh beyond the grave for those who can't figure it out and a slow clap for those who do. She can't say she approves, but at least such a security system has kept most people away for so long that elven ruins are often untouched.

"Huh," she says, mostly to herself as her hand registers a bit of heat, but certainly not enough to burn her. It's fire underneath metal. It should definitely be hotter. Standing up, she waves a foot over it before shrugging and holding her hand down parallel to the grate. Better safe than sorry. "It's not even that hot, but I'm going to cover it up anyway." Ice spells are her weakest, but she can at least do the simplest ones, and a layer of heavy frost shoots downward to cover the grate. The fire wants to melt it, so she keeps it up, building up layers of ice that will last a little longer. Well, until her mana runs out.

"Trouble," she answers as she eyes her ice shell. "These places almost always have corpses possessed by spirits, or skeletons wandering around. It's a really big downside to not burning our dead." She will admit that right up front. Laying their loved ones to rest and planting a tree over them? Beautiful, poetic, a fitting tribute to a people so attuned with nature. Also? Really inconvenient when the Veil is thin and spirits are in a possessing mood.

"But if I have to guess what else? Probably gold, maybe an ancient weapon or two, and -- if we're lucky -- another piece of the elves' lost history." Ellana really does love getting to fill in those missing pieces. One more story to bring back.

Much as Petrana can appreciate the need and desire to fill in the gaps of one's history - hasn't she despaired over how little of magic could be saved from the church's fires? - it is little more for her here than an abstract idea, the history of a people whose present she knows even less of. It's hard to muster much excitement or interest at the prospect of what they might find behind those possessed corpses when she's stuck on the possessed corpses part of what Ellana's just said, falling back a step without her own say-so, an instinct.

Marius had taught her magic to protect her, but that protection had always been in buying her time, in a last ditch effort, in the hope that if she were pressed to the wall she would have a means to escape. It had been heating the water around them when she clutched Veda to her chest, hiding beneath a pier with her hand over her daughter's mouth and listening to the heavy boots overhead - it had been flinging a handful of fire at the drapes on her way out a window and onto her horse below, kicking it into a gallop before she'd properly got her seat.

It's never meant fighting for her life. She finds herself in no particular hurry to rush forward -

though she'll follow rather than be left behind.

Melys snorts derisively as Ellana speaks of not burning the dead. You don’t grow up in South Reach without developing a healthy respect for funeral pyres.

"Great. We gonna get a move on, or?" She jerks a thumb to the melting ice. "Be a real shame to miss all the fucking corpses."

Seeing as they’re so historical. If she doesn’t have an ounce of appreciation for whatever unnecessary mystery a bunch of dead savages cooked up down here, plenty of folks with money do. She’s been banking on some ponce paying for secrets of legend and all that nonsense (like it’s going to do anyone an ounce of good to know how much spiderweb it takes to choke a statue —), but weapons, artifacts. That’s something else. That’s gold itself, right there.

That’s a lot harder to tuck away when no one’s looking, but she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

"Y'should go in the middle," She nudges Petra with an elbow. "I got your back."

And a blocked exit. If they've got to bring out everyone they brought in, better no one bolts dumb down some corridor, gets stuck full of the elves' lost pit spikes.

"I know you must be bursting with excitement," Ellana says in response, clearly kidding about that. Few people jump for joy at the thought of facing corpses. It's just a necessary thing in these dark, abandoned places. But she opens her bag and sticks several shards into place without further ado. They light up once all are in the door, and then it splits into two, revealing itself to be two doors as they open inward.

By now the ice is melting, and Ellana turns back towards the two. "It feels hot inside, but not unbearable." In fact, she's pretty sure this fire is just for some sort of ambiance instead of roasting feet. At least they won't have to slip slide over the ice to get through the door?

"Want me to sneak ahead and see what's what in there?" She doesn't mind going in alone, especially now that she has stealth spells.

"No," involuntarily, and then, in a more moderate tone, "I think we ought not separate."

Three together have better odds - certainly the one in the middle - than two and one separated by God can only guess what might lie ahead. Who's to say that they will be able to follow if parted, that Ellana will not find herself in some mischief that prevents ready aid?

Better they not risk it.

Melys hasn't read a lot of books, or she might invoke one here and now, about the part where the foolish young search party decides to split up —

She hasn't read a lot of books. But this isn't the first time she's gone into a shit situation, as tail or point, and what she knows is this: It's damn easy to get picked off, one at a time. They don't have the numbers or need to justify much scouting here.

"Pass." Whatever's in there, it's going to find them one way or another. "Let's get this over with."

She cracks her neck, taps a foot; the picture of impatience. Like everything she does, it's an exaggeration — not every day you see something like this, and she's not entirely immune to wonder.

It's just that 'wonder' is so often a synonym for 'pain the ass'.

"Sure," Ellana answers. She's not pressed either way, but she'd thought she would afford them both the opportunity to not head into the unknown without any information first. However, since they're all going in together, Ellana starts in, staff held in one hand. The entrance is simple: a sand-covered floor and bare stone walls with alcoves filled with fire and covered by grates leading up to a wall up ahead. The path then turns right. The air is humid, but not unbearably so. This is just another of those ancient elven things that Ellana can't begin to understand until she fills in more missing pieces. What do these fires represent? How have they stayed lit out here for so long?

Moving along, she turns right and sees the room open up before her. In the middle lies a sarcophagus atop a dais with grates on the floor on either side. Firelight and shadows bounce off the walls, but those aren't the only shadows she sees. Corpses are loitering around the space, carrying swords, and she spots a fire mine on the ground up ahead to the left. With a sigh, she turns and sets a protective barrier over the three of them. "This will protect us for a little while," she explains to the rifter, before adding, "Don't step on the glowing orange glyph."

Ellana's spell layers over her own, and Petrana has the brief thought that that answers one question - that her own witchcraft does not consider theirs so alien as to need to protect her from it. It will merit more study.

She should have thought to warn; she should have, she realises, thought to share, but the only one not herself she's ever had to worry about is beyond worry, the instinct in the moment to reach out to someone is different from the muscle memory of preparation that's never involved anyone taller than three feet high. Nevermind it, done is now done, and she can't berate herself for not sharing the instincts of warriors and their kind, can only remind herself to learn from the experience.

Presuming, which she still does not entirely, that she will live through it.

Real polite of ancient mages, ain't it, to make sure their horrible traps glow for easy recognition. Or maybe it's like that Orlesian thing, aesthetics —

(Who's in charge of arranging the bodies for all this? Elf number one, you pulled short straw, so it's your turn to drag in the corpses,)

— Swords aren't great news. Dead things, they're mostly dumb, most don't have much beyond intent to keep them moving. She still doesn't like the odds on closing that distance without making a few close calls. She hasn't fought along enough mages to guess how long the shield might last.

"There's gonna be some awful shit in that box," A prediction she really wouldn't mind being wrong about. "You take left, I'll take right."

Better someone who can put fires out handle that nonsense.

"If nothing comes up from behind, yell,"

Casually, to Petra. Without further ado, she swings her blade and moves in.

Awful shit is sort of what the ancient elves excelled at. Eighty booby traps and a battalion of corpses and everything else they could have thrown at the hapless treasure seeker as a deterrent. If there's a clearer way to say "Don't touch our shit," she doesn't know it. And yet Ellana keeps poking because there are answers to be had. She just likes it when those who are with her have signed up for this instead of being drafted.

"Got it." Though Ellana has a better idea than just avoiding the fire mine. She waits until the corpses linger a little too near it before setting a static cage above it. They keep lumbering forward, swords lifting for the attack, when they reach the outer corner of the cage and are immediately dragged back to the center, over the mine. That sets it off and a burst of fire kicks up, engulfing three of them.

Petrana -

she would like to be able to say that she does something brave. That she contributes in some useful way. That, at least, she keeps her wits and her dignity about her.

What actually happens is that she flattens to the wall behind her like a frightened animal, reaching blindly for a hand that isn't there and curling her own into a fist when she realises her (stupid, stupid--) mistake. (He is not here, he has not been here, he will not be here. No one is coming to protect her.)

The flames rise and the roar of them covers, for the most part, the sound she makes in her shock; in the quiet immediately afterwards, she realises with a start the lowering reality that she is crying.

Edited (i got new icons that one was super wrong) 2017-06-25 15:06 (UTC)

Staff held before her, Morrigan offers a 'shall we' over her shoulder to Alan and Anders as she leads them off from the rest and to the door without further words for Thranduil after their last discussion on this place. More well-preserved than other places she has been to; for all that there are bones, this is truly worthy of the title of temple rather than tomb as more of them might more aptly be named these days.

That this door blooms green has her shifting the staff to a grip better suited to combat. "You might wish to stand ready, there are all manner of...obstacles to be found where the ancient elves once lived and breathed," she warns. There might be green branches and fresh leaves as one would expect but together with such a place it could also mean something like a sylvan. (Morrigan is not fond. Not in the slightest.) It opens to the shards slotted in place and in she heads.

Human for now. We'll see, we'll see.

Alan follows behind, gawking open-mouthed about him. He’s seen ruins before, has slept in them a time, but this place is something else. The carvings, finer; the bones —

— Well. A lot more of those, too.

"Alright,"

His eyes dart from surface to surface, reluctant to leave the sight behind; still, a moment later, air and flesh displace around the lean form of a wolf. Scent paints its own picture, nearly as vivid,

(Please excuse his brief distraction, to paw at a bone. He’ll be in after Anders.)

He glances back at Alan as he shapeshifts before focusing on what's in front again. He's wandered through more than a few old buildings too, but for all of the ruins, there are still things that are intact here. That's new.

"Standing ready," he acknowledges, pulling his staff off his back and casting barrier around all three of them preemptively. It's best to be prepared, and it's easier to put barriers around one wolf and two people versus a wolf and some other animal darting around and himself.

"Have you seen anything like this before?" It's an open question for either, even though he's staying closer to Morrigan.

Well Morrigan did much the same not once but twice in Kirkwall; rot in her nose after the battle when a spider was more useful towards the end both to fight and to terrify Venatori.

"None that felt quite so...vital." Morrigan replies because alive carries a certain weight and certain values with it in Thedas that may or may not apply here, that they are yet to see. A lie however when there is the Crossroads that made her very skin seem to sing at times, a place that she could mourn for when time has forgotten the true name of it, when it diminishes even now, when there is no chance of the likes of that or Solasan ever again. Mankind crushes and this is what they are left with. "Many are in such corners of the world that they have been forgotten, reclaimed by time, reclaimed by others and abandoned time and again until lack of use wears upon them. Then come the wild beasts and the passing of the years where the Veil splits itself so easily that a fingertip would burst the seams.

"Skyhold, perhaps. In its own way. Bones laid upon bones," her gaze slides to Alan, she can't help it, "In many places the magic will seep into the very place itself. The inscription outside should be kept in all our minds as we continue."

A sneeze. Maybe it's agreement; maybe it's just corpse dust.

Hard not to be humble beside the weight of so many unknowns, left for so many years unseen. There were places in Skyhold that none must have laid eyes upon since laying the stones — and not the same places for it any longer. Rock crumbles. Flesh rots, eyes close. Magic seeps,

And what is magic, but the Fade? What is the Fade, but change? Everything shifting, reclaimed. Creation in the raw. There's something vital here, true; it won't be the same vitality those that brought it knew. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

Knowing didn't seem to do them much good.

Alan trails after, keeps ears and eyes and nose peeled for newcomers. That there'll be spirits here seems a foregone conclusion.

Alive. Places as living things is a concept that takes work to wrap his mind around. He can't heal a place, but could rebuilding be a sort of healing? It's an abstract thought on a trail that doesn't seem significant right now - it's not likely to give him any better of an understanding of this place.

There's a shifting noise, something moving.

"I doubt I'm the only one who heard that. ...And is there some significance to bones upon bones? I saw you look at him."

Even in an impending fight he has questions. He can't help it. He likes to talk.

A brow rises. Poor Kieran, he gets it from mother and father both, his own are likely to take flight one day. Morrigan would laugh but experience has taught her respect enough for that so she allows another look at Alan as a wolf, then to Anders. Perhaps she has spent too long among Fereldans. Or too much time steeped in her own sort of conversations where everything she says does sound as though it has two meanings.

"He is a wolf, they are as fond of bones as hounds in my experience though from the age of these? One cannot be certain of their origin. Unless this is how you wish to experience the world, with your teeth?" A question he can't answer but going after red lyrium like that was...well, call it an experience and you can shade it any way you wish and people will fill it in themselves as they would anyway.

Still, even if she is herself, she listens. As do other things. Several other things. Old and dead but not dead because the dead never rest easy in Thedas, least of all the dead when they're in an elven place; the world built upon the blood of the elves then and now, until it all turns red then wet then black and can you tell what the dust was once? The elves left no roads but they left their bones on their long marches so perhaps they did leave their bones since the world made roads after. Shambling they come, have they waited for this? What comes is called and they have been called and the three walking did the calling as did the rest, entering the temple so brazen, so proud to have come like this--

Ancient sinew tightens around a blade, air passes through lungs almost like breathing as they move, and the moaning comes out of one, angry and hungry, full of hate. Two move together, swinging with their blades and through the air whistles an arrow. It's been so long that the flesh and the bow fused together, a thing that remembers only what it is to draw, aim, release, to kill.

Morrigan curses under her breath and summons a spell, staff pointed at the first of the corpses.

[ closed ]

THE COLD ENDURED (Thranduil, Beleth, the Medicine Seller)

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THE FIRE CAPTURED (Ellana, Melys, Petrana)

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THE SPIRIT CALMED (Morrigan, Alan, Anders)

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I apologize for the ridiculous delay here.

you were sick, don't apologise it's totally understandable getting better comes first