faderift | [CLOSED] For the world's more full of weeping,

WHO: Sina, Kit, Myr; later: Yngvi, Herian, Kaisa, Nari
WHAT: Something's not right about a warehouse down by the docks...
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway, while the rest of the Inquisition's off playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Warnings for child abuse and abandonment, implied violent death.

There's a warehouse down near the Kirkwall docks with a mystery crouched inside it.

Myr had smelled it first on passing by the place: Decomposing meat, spilled bowels, rotting corpse. Something wrong, even in the bad parts of Kirkwall; something that demands investigation.

He'd left a glyph nearby to remind him of the place, returned the following evening to hunt around for the source of the smell. It wasn't so hard to isolate it to the one particular warehouse, not with the mephitic funk of recent death oozing from the back windows. Lingering long enough to place another marker, he caught the faintest high-pitched wail--and had to flee back to the road to evade the warehouse's inattentive guardian before he could make certain of what he'd heard.

Quiet inquiries made of passers-by didn't serve to unravel the mystery. Not many of them were inclined to speak to an elf--but the scraps he could garner were food for suspicion. It was empty; someone's cousin-or-other had heard it was up for sale; the single guard's posted to keep away squatters; no one knows or cares what had been stored there before.

A tidy story. A dull story. A story that doesn't explain the stench or the sound. Someone needs to dig further into it; how convenient that someone's here to dig.

It isn't the first time Myr's acted on mad impulse since coming to Kirkwall; it is the first time he's hesitated long enough to question if it's safe for him to do this alone. Elves are disappearing from the city and none of the authorities care. What's one more killed for nosing around somewhere he doesn't belong, even if--especially if--he's a mage? It wouldn't be hard to walk away from this. No matter the itching sense of urgency in the back of his head, he could walk back to the docks and hand this over to the Inquisition guard there. It would be the safe option.

The wind shifts, bringing with it the scent of rot. You don't have that kind of time. He clasps the sending crystal at his neck, awakening the enchantment and thinking of Kit and Sina.

"Have you two got time to come to the docks? I've turned up something down here I don't like." His description of his find is quick and to the point and doesn't neglect that heart-chilling, half-imagined cry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hate to ask, but see if he's got anything identifying on him."

Kit takes a breath and lets it out in a single, long exhale. It's a sound idea, and he can't find fault with the logic of it. "Right," he says, more to himself than to anyone else. This isn't the first dead body he's ever seen, nor is it likely to be the last. It shouldn't make his insides lurch so to pull that blanket back and reveal to himself, yet again, the bruised and battered face of the elf whose only discernible 'crime' was tending to ill children.

He searches the body with as much respect as he can manage, trying to move him gently when he must. The stink of decay doesn't cause his gorge to rise; he's long accustomed to that from his tenure in the Deep Roads. At length, however, he pauses. "He's got a mark on him of some kind," he says, considering it. The design isn't one that he recognizes, but it makes him chill in a way that is all too familiar; he could be looking at a casteless' brand. "Doesn't look like the kind of tattoo anyone would willingly put on himself, frankly."

"Are there certain ways to mark the difference?" It's not interrogative, or accusatory - Herian genuinely wants to know, because there is so much she is still learning. She believes Kit, without hesitation, in his assessment, and perhaps she would have drawn the same conclusion, but she doesn't know that, and if there are markers she had better understand them, know what exactly to look for. Her own tattoos are willing, a sort of liberty that she admittedly would likely not have been allowed in the Circle, and she has seen them on others for different reasons.

"Do you think it the marking of a criminal, or," and she feels a little sick before she says it, but she suspects they've all felt ill this entire time, in spirit even if not physically, "property?"

And looking back to Myr, she returns to the idea that is uncomfortable, as necessary as it is. When she had burned bodies in the ruins of the Spire, at least they had been people she knew; when she burned a chevalier she had (miraculously, it must be admitted) bested in battle, he had been a felled foe. This man is a stranger in every sense, and it feels so impersonal— and yet, it must be done. "Are we ready to proceed?"

Slave brand, is Myr's first thought, child of the Hasmal alienage as he is. They'd had their share of Tevinter escapees there--thin-faced men and women haunted always by the thought of recapture, who hid their marks beneath their clothing but never so perfectly a child might not glimpse one now and again. Might go home and ask his Tevene father what they meant...

Herian's questions are good ones, necessary ones, when Myr's all but ready to leap to conclusions about the unwilling kinds of tattoos. It's the last, though, that shakes him loose of his moment's reverie.

"Are we ready to proceed?"

"We are--if you are, Kit."

It'll be the most flagrant display of magic they've engaged in tonight, and it feels like damned poor repayment for all the help Kit's been to spring it on him without warning. Myr takes up his staff and rises to his feet once more, taking a step back from the corpse to await his friend's response.

"I think it's a slave brand," he says softly, and commits the design to memory, before draping the covering over the body again.

"We are--if you are, Kit."

"Atrast nal tunsha, salroka," he bids the dead man one more time. If this is to be what becomes of him, it seems only right to send him on his way into the dark with some solemn words before hand. He touches his fingers gently to the covered head, then rises to his feet and steps back.

Myr will need to ask, later, what the words mean; now, it's enough to know they're meant as a benediction. Once he hears Kit safely away, he raises hand and staff alike to invoke a shimmering barrier into being around the corpse. Thick enough to bend light and faintly luminous in the darkness, it's more than sufficient to contain a flashfire.

He knows what comes next. Grimacing, Kit folds his arms defensively over his chest and steels himself to bear witness to it, standing silently at Myr's side.

She feels she owes Kit some manner of apology, from his demeanor, but she find herself lacking the words to articulate such a thing. Herian murmurs a near-silent prayer, and holds out her hand towards their charge, the other grasping the staff, that seems to make the air around it warp and shift, and whether it is from heat or from the world being not quite so solid as they might have believed... that is hard to discern.

Flames burst over the body near immediately, burning with a ferocity beyond that of a simple flashfire - the flames burn brighter and hotter, consuming the body all the more quickly, so skin and sinew are scorched away.

Her focus is steady, her control precise, and the spell keeps on burning until there is nothing left.

Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky.
Rest at the Maker's right hand,
And be Forgiven.

The barrier shimmers out of existence as the last of flames die, leaving behind only a smudge of white ash where the body had lain. Myr grounds his staff and breathes out in a half-heard sigh. A moment of respectful silence is in order--time to commend the slave's soul to the Maker, to beg restitution for the man's death--and he lets it stretch out long before turning his face toward Kit.

There's an unasked question there--are you holding up?--should the dwarf happen to see it. "Are we taking the guard with us?" is what he asks aloud, that creeping feeling that they won't go unnoticed much longer settling once again on his shoulders.

"We must. Anything delivering him to the Inquisition might allow them to glean of the situation is worth the effort, some clue that we may not know the value of. If we fail to deliver him then we fall short in our duties."

Even the slightest trace of information, the barest hint, must be allowed the opportunity of discovery, to be weighed by those of higher rank and insight than themselves.

He doesn't turn his face away from the flashfire as it erupts into existence within the confines of the barrier, but grimaces in a pained way like someone watching a bone reset. It's necessary, it's for the best. Still, what a horrible spectacle to bear witness to. Who has this man left behind, who will mourn his absence--or worse, wonder at it for the rest of their lives, wondering whether they'd been abandoned?

"Are we taking the guard with us?"
"We must..."

"Right," Kit agrees, voice a little hoarse, a little rough. He clears his throat, then jerks his head to the unconscious lump that he's hauled into the corner of the warehouse. "We should get him back to the Gallows. Sure there's a cell there waiting for him." And an interrogation.

[CLOSED] For the world's more full of weeping,

cw discussion of dead bodies I guess

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