faderift | THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

WHO: Any Inquisition members + all rifters
WHAT: A semi-involuntary tropical island vacation
WHEN: Kingsway 20 onward
WHERE: The sea and an island east of Rivain
NOTES: OOC post.

I. THE JOURNEY

Two ships depart from Kirkwall on the morning tide, sturdy vessels crewed by veteran sailors--but a mere skeleton crew, as it turns out, or so a few of them would have you believe. They're prone to assigning tasks to anyone who happens not to look busy, shoving ropes into hands without a care for station or experience, barking out instructions and expecting to be obeyed. With plenty of work to do the journey seems quick, and besides the unexpected chores it's otherwise smooth sailing through the Waking Sea. Some claim to've spotted the Windline Marcher one night, but it could just as easily have been clouds on the horizon, and that's it for excitement until the ships round the island of Brandel's Reach and out into open ocean, the ever-present coastline finally falling away behind.

The sky is bigger out there and the waves are too, especially when a storm strikes a few days out, dark clouds and driving rain sending any inexperienced sailors below decks to wait it out. The worst of it being the pitch of the ship rolling up and crashing down the massive waves, and the way the hold fills with the stench of people being sick. But the next morning dawns calm and clear and with no lasting damage done.

The group is bound for a desert island, drawn on maps with a big deep cove like a bite chomped out the side it, and a narrow channel through the surrounding reefs to reach it. That's the only moment of true tension on the voyage: as soundings are taken every few feet and the helmsmen adjust and readjust in response, carefully threading the needle to avoid running aground on ship-killing banks of sharp coral.

Both ships make it, and anchor offshore in the bay in the sheltering lee of a cliff, safe from future storms. The first party ashore reports back that Qunari are present in the area, but while they've displayed a palpable wariness, hostility does not seem their aim today, and they retreat back up to the hills above the beach as Inquisition forces arrive. Anyone able-bodied is tasked with assisting in unloading, and those less hale with helping the quartermaster's assistants track the process to make sure nothing goes astray between hold and shore.

Camp is to be a collection of tents: large ones beneath which makeshift facilities for cooking, eating, and working are set up, and many small ones designed to hold 2-4 Inquisition agents. They're still hammering stakes into the sand and tying off ropes to the sturdier palms when a shout goes up, though anyone present who possesses an anchor shard will not need to be told: a rift has opened nearby, a couple hundred yards out into the bay, a knot of shapes splashing about it. Better hope the rifters can swim.

II. ARRIVAL

Rifters

You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, when the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself at sea. Not metaphorically (though perhaps that too) but literally: dropped into what is unmistakably the ocean, from the salt in your mouth and the incessant slosh of waves into your face, the squawk of gulls circling overhead. You had better start treading water.

Thankfully, if you can keep your head above the waves long enough to make a quick inspection, it turns out that land is in sight, only a few hundred yards off. Unfortunately, between you and it is a strange slash of greenish light. It sticks up out of the water but seems to continue beneath as well, turning the otherwise-turquoise waters the same pale greenish shade of a man gone seasick. The cluster of demons emerging from the rift are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes who flail about like stickbugs dropped in pond, but use the long reach of their arms to attack. Some are hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, their shrouds sodden and draped in seaweed. Others are mere wisps of greenish light that float easily over the surface. While you might get the impression they are as surprised as you to find themselves in the drink, any humor that might bring is probably outweighed by how angry it seems to make them.

If that were not enough to contend with, there is also the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. But there is some good news: from the beach over yonder boats are launching. Perhaps they'll save you.

Rescue

As if rescuing rifters from drowning and demons weren't hard enough work, all the commotion in the water inevitably draws the attention of the local predators. But what arrives isn't the usual eel or ray or even a shark: it's something much bigger and much...redder?

Slinking through the water comes the flash of a fin and the glint of a scaly back, so quick and sinuous it's hard to say how many of the sea serpents there are. As wide around as the circle of a man's arms, with snapping jaws lined with an unnatural number of curving teeth, but what should be smooth snakey curves are instead jagged with the jut of brilliant red crystals that catch the light and make the sea seem to be already splattered with blood. They're studded all over its body, making any even glancing blow carry twice the danger: there's not just the stunning force of the strike to worry about or the possibility of being coiled in a crushing grip, but also being sliced and gored by red lyrium.

And the serpents aren't alone. While all eyes are on the churning water and the incredible sight of demons battling it out with sea monsters (because everything in that water is fair game to the beasts, not just the Inquisition), one sailor is suddenly plucked out his boat and carried screaming down into the depths by a great, crystal-encrusted tentacle. Cleansing runes are effective, but the monsters are canny enough to avoid capture, falling back into deeper water before attacking again. The arrival of a red lyrium-tainted kraken is just about the final straw for the ship's crew, and after seeing the monsters come dangerously close to cleverly flipping one of the longboats, they insist that the Inquisition row back for shore.

If flight is hard to stomach, consider it a tactical retreat: in shallower water the great bulks of the monsters become a liability, thrashing about among the rocks as they try to give chase. Escape back to the beach is possible, and surely the safer course, but it may be possible to lure one of the sea serpents into a tide pool or to beach itself up on the sands. The rest continue to prowl the bay, visible circling the ships at anchor and making any return impossible for the time being.

III. STRANDED

Once everyone is safely on land and out of the monsters' reach—after any wounds have been seen to, with particular attention given to any that may have been exposed to red lyrium—it's obvious that there's no way to leave for the time being. There isn't much to do but to try to make the most of things and try to accomplish what you came here for.

Some of the team will be tasked with continuing to set up camp. Now that the stay might be longer than a single night, it needs to be a little sturdier. The beach and cove are protected from harsh winds and exposure by a half-circle of rocky cliffs, and the Qunari communicate in grunts and one-word answers that large predators make sleeping in the jungle itself a bad idea. They've only been here a few days (that much can be gleaned despite their reticence), but some of the untamed jungle has been cut through to make clear paths to fresh water and fruit sources.

Penetrating the rest of the island is slow, difficult work—though magic may make it easier. The goal is near the top of the formerly volcanic peak in the island's center, but hacking through the growth to create a path may abruptly become a waste of time when it gives way to a steep drop-off or an equally steep incline and forces everyone to double back and try another route. If there was ever a clear road to the top, it's gone now, grown over during centuries of abandonment. But there are signs of past habitation: the lower portions of the island are spotted with crumbling ruins, chunks of moss-coated wall rising out of the forest floor, the occasional pillar looming up amongst the trees. Some have architecture and faded murals that are distinctly elven. Others, more recent, are clearly human, including a statue of Andraste in the center of a clearing. Others are harder to identify.

The predators the Qunari were trying to warn everyone about turn out to be real--they're large, jet-black cats about the size of a height of a mabari but longer, with short manes, near-scaley skin, and horns almost like the Qunari's. And before anyone gets any ideas about keeping one, they're fiercely territorial—always likely to try to eat your face, but doubly so if you come near their adorable kittens. Feeding them may buy a moment or two for escape, but nothing is going to win them over.

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"My teachers made things a game in my lessons or a challenge. And when it was somewhere out on the streets, most of us all taught each other and children don't think like adults." Most of them had been too young to be doing what they'd been doing but they had the freedom of the main island, friendly faces on the docks watching to make sure no one got into anything that'd land them in too much trouble. "The rigging on every ship is slightly different too, it's all going to depend on the sailors who did it and who taught them and who taught them and on and on," she waves a hand with the air of someone who heard the full history of rigging and lines. Because she did. Felix Bonaventura is nothing if not thorough in his lessons.

Clambering higher, she hauls more confidently, watching where it looks like it's coming from, twisting out a kink that gives a few more inches faster than planned. "Shit!"

"Please trade me those teachers at some point in time," Waver called upwards. He had been beset in his youth by arrogant instructors who saw him and his desires something to be curtailed and brought into line rather than encouraged. Fellow students hadn't been better.

He was about to add to that when he drops a few more inches a loud, surprised squawk issuing from him. The deck was closer than before, and Waver extended his hands just a little more. The tip of his fingers just brushed against the wood.

"Actually, if you give me a little bit more from wherever you were working, I'll have half of me on the ground and I can untwist my leg from a safer vantage point for both of us."

"You say that now, if a rift spits Marjani out you'll sing a different tune!" Araceli jokes. Marjani would be a blessing, no-nonsense but warm, someone suited to bringing out the best in youngsters who want to duel and making sure they're not just the best but the ones who can keep themselves alive. A friend as much as a teach.

Grabbing the line to hold it before Waver's head cracks against the deck has her arms straining so it's a relief to hear him say that she can keep lowering him which she does. Cautiously.

"Sorry, it must've been in some of the swells the past day or two to have that mess. Easy...easy…." This kind of thing probably works best when you aren't on the more fun-sized side of life but she gets there in the end, peering up at the rope for a moment or two longer before coming back down if he needs help with the untangling. Someone's going to get their knuckles rapped for letting it get in a mess like that in the first place and she's glad it's not going to be her. "Well you've just jumped to the more advanced lessons in class already, I haven't taken anyone else down near the ships yet back in Kirkwall."

"Well it hasn't yet, so I'm good!" Waver wasn't quite sure what a Marjani was, but it sounded bad. He could improvise that.

And improvise landing on the deck as gracefully as possible. He's happy to just have his back on the ground, and once all of him is there, undoing the tangle attached to his legs is a remarkably easy process. He moves swiftly and carefully, knowing the entire situation could have been worse.

"It just seemed like the right environment. Sure, if I landed on the deck the injury would be bad, but the water? Likely survivable unless sea monsters opened their mouths at the exact right moment."

Marjani, duel instructor, pirate, greatest woman you will ever meet but takes no prisoners when she thinks you've slacked off as Araceli's rapped knuckles could attest to a few years ago when she was all flash, no substance. Don't ever set yourself up to get smacked with the flat of a rapier because that hurts.

Jumping once she's close enough to know it won't hurt her, Araceli offers a hand up once Waver's ready for it.

"We practiced on ships when I was little but I think I've told you before that we have waterways instead of streets in most places so almost everywhere anyone falls, it's going to be into water. Which can still hurt if you do it wrong." Fortunately Araceli taught Waver but she's just had enough of a scare that her bravado is going to tuck itself away for the moment until he's up and about. "The most I've seen on my trips to and from Rivain have been whales, you have to do a lot to a whale to get it to attack you. There are tales of a thing called a cetus, but those are in the Boeric ocean from what's written of them and only rarely the Waking Sea. We've left the Waking Sea behind for where it and the Amaranthine Ocean meet."

Waver takes the offered hand, pausing just a moment to dust off his rear. He tries to look as dignified as humanly possible, given that the situation he needed a rescue from was pointedly and deeply ridiculous.

"I recall that, yes. There's actually a similar type of thing in one of the cities back home. It was built on a lagoon, so the waterways are just as common as streets." But no matter about Venice. "Although now I have to ask if there any sharks or the like in this area. I've probably been taking that particular risk without even knowing it, and should try to plan better from here on out."

"What do the stories elsewhere say that so many believe the sea is filled with things that want to bite and devour?" Araceli starts walking to the nearest railing, leans right over the edge without a care as the wind blows her hair back from her face to peer down into the dark waters for any sign of life. Nothing so far. She'd spotted a whale far out earlier on and had watched until it disappeared again, fingers stiff with cold from where she'd held herself up to get a better view. "There have to be sharks, I cannot imagine waters without sharks when there are fish and octopi and crabs, why would there not be sharks swimming in the waters?

"Most sharks aren't so bad. You can swim alongside them. Some even like to be stroked. Just behind the gills." You know just like a dog or a cat or a certain fat fox back in Kirkwall, Waver do not be alarmed by any of this at all.

"The ocean is big, and deep, and you don't know what's lurking below. That kind of setting invites all kinds of speculation of horrors, and some of the residents, like sharks and poisonious fish only encourage those thoughts."

Waver follows after her, his eyes not fixated on the deep but on the horizon. There's something leaping out of the water there, maybe a fish, and landing with a splash.

"Maybe something's scaring them off, or else the water temperature isn't to their liking?" Hang on.

"How many times have you pet a shark in your lifetime?"

"They have as much right to live where they live as you or I. When we swim in the waters or sail on them, that's their home too. We have to remember that." Thedas can't even remember that elves are people for the most part so she isn't ever going to hold her breath when it comes to the idea that humanity isn't granted divine rights to whatever they want. "The stars in my sky are jellyfish swept up from the darkest, deepest parts of the ocean, it was exciting. Even to us. To find out something new. Something different. Each time we can go deeper and see what else lives with us. It's the place of possibility."

Araceli's wondered if the rifts do things since they're headed that way, and all things go to the sea which is why you have to be careful (but you can't just go saying that here, the natives don't want strangers getting more ideas than they already have) and she's about to answer the first question when she pauses for the second. And--

"I...don't know? I never counted? I swam all the time, dived off ships, went between islands or when I would row from one to the next so there would be sharks and they would be curious. Surely it must have been every other trip, more than hitching a ride on the big turtles, less than swimming alongside whales."

"You did ask me what the stories were like elsewhere. I was just explaining why they developed the way they did." Waver offered the information plainly rather than trying to mount it as a defense. "And I do know there are plenty of divers back home who'd agree with your poetry. Perhaps they'd add to it, and you could have an entire epic of praises to the sea."

That wasn't sarcasm either, that was a suggestion. Waver turned so that his rear was leaning on the rail, his elbows as well, face directed to the other side of the horizon.

"That's a lot of petted sharks for a lifetime," he said with a grin.

"I grew up with what people everywhere but my home calls a pirate preacher for a father," the tone is somewhere between apology and explanation - even for most of her people, her love of it runs deeper for growing up with someone like him. "What's real for you? Not just the sharks or whales or the jellyfish - those are the things I avoid, if I can, beautiful to look at from a distance but when I fell through the rift for the first few days my hand ached like I'd been stung - but sirens? Mermaids? Leviathans? Are those real to you? Do you have stories about them?"

It's one of those rare opportunities to talk about things without so much of an audience after all that isn't really available in Kirkwall where there's real life to be dealt with. Always the delicate balance to get just right.

"They like it, they do this-- I'm not going to do it in front of people and you can't do it on land but they wiggle?" She smiles when she says it because of course everyone should see as shark wiggling with happiness when it's had a good scratch. But talking with Waver here on a ship, she remembers something from a good long while ago now. "You know, we never did get to talk about your sort of boats and ships entirely?"

"We have stories about sirens, mermaids, and leviathans," Waver said. Some were stories he knew well, others in passing. "Krakens too, but as it turns out, there are indeed giant squids." And they were pretty unsavory, but for more personal reasons that no one save Rider knew about. No one liked a magically summoned tentacle monster threatening an entire city. "I...I admit, we only have humans back home, so coming into a place with dwarves, elves, and Qunari has all been an exercise in accepting a completly new reality."

It wasn't something Waver would admit to anyone who wasn't a Rifter but in passing. The learning curve of sure, yup, people who'd get mistaken for minotaurs of sorts are real, among other elements.

Happy wiggling sharks is a much cuter thing to think about than the steep contrasts of reality. "That's a sight I need to see one day. And ah, right. Boats. Things like this," Waver gestured to the deck and to the masts. "They were part of a major age of discovery, but were replaced with ships that didn't require sails to move. Instead, they relied on other power sources like steam and coal."

"See we have giant squid and kraken. Our kraken look something like if a squid and octopi had babies. And they were enormous." Still, at least she knows now. Listening to Waver, Araceli nods along with some of what he says because it's true. How many of them was it true for? Enough that once her and Marcel had tried to have some idea of solidarity for them all, to gather information, to make it work. Then Marcel had disappeared and her priorities had changed. "It's only humans too unless it's what comes from the sea or things my friends would tell of their homes better than I ever could. Korrin was the first person I met when I arrived and then there was the magic being very real and not just a thing in a book that goes on the shelf or something a performer does." Performers are all sleight of hand, deception, if you watch them carefully from the right place with a little knowledge of your own? You know how the trick is done and it's not really so magical anymore compared to when you were five and a coin was plucked from behind your ear by a man on a barge.

Knowing the sort of luck there tends to be in Thedas, chances to swim with the sharks are likely to be thin. Or have at least one person yell at her and demand to know what she thinks she's doing. Imagining ships that don't have sails is such a foreign idea that she can't bring herself to do it but while steam is all well and good, she makes a little face. "There's so much smoke with coal, how do people not choke?"

"Huh. And our understanding of mermaids has become either stuff sailors claimed to see, or creatures like manatees that just had the same general shape as merfolk." Well, rounder, softer versions, but still, the concept held.

"It is funny that you cite magic as you do though. For us, those kinds of illusions are absolutely called magic, but then there's what we do that's closer to what's done here." Although illusions were far more entertaing to watch and had about two hundred percent less arcane ritual to them. Also, no demons, like Thedas had.

"There's smoke stacks that, hm, roughly take the place of the masts, really. They move the smoke up and away, like chimneys." Water chimneys, and that was probably a gross oversimplification of the whole system. Alas, greater expertise was not at Waver's command.

For about a second she tries to hold in the laugh but it comes out as a snorting giggle. "Your sailors must've had more generous rum rations than ours, getting those mixed up." It leaves her with more questions but those aren't really the questions you ever actually ask people, you just ponder quietly. Maybe wake your girlfriend up with them at three in the morning because you've thought about it again.

"For us it's-- well we have duels. A lot of duels are for your honour, to settle something, for coin or goods but there are duels for show and it's about the performance, about the flair and how skillfully you can sell what you do," she explains with a wave of her hands and digs a coin from her pockets to spin it high, passing it between her hands. "It's to entertain. Some of them are making money especially if it's a card or a dice in cups trick but they might be with other performers and it's for fun. To make people gasp and enjoy themselves. Everyone can go. That's why I liked it; it wasn't just for the nobles or rich, anyone on the islands could go and watch."

Waver. Waver you're breaking her heart. What would she climb and where's the beauty, the drama? "The smoke goes up then, into the air...that still sounds-- It just sounds very dangerous to have more fire than you need on a ship out at sea. If something bad happened to those ships and then people had to cling-- the metal doesn't float same as wood. Or repairing it. Metal is expensive."

Waver grins, a little chuffed noise escaping him. "I imagine that that might be the case for a lot of them. But for a time, they hadn't seen manatees before, so they didn't know what they were loking at." Besides, manatees were pretty darn endearing, being as round and floating as they are.

"Huh. That last part is an interesting way to approach duels." Waver then shushes himself, watching the movement of the coin, and clearly enjoying the word he knows that is required to make that kind of slight of hand seem absolutely effortless. "But I follow. There's been a bit of revived interest, depending on the act. You lot haven't had escape artist magicans, have you?"

But. Boats. "Metal isn't as expensive anymore. Engines are now often electric anyway, there was an evolution in movement. Some boats still do use traditional sails though, it isn't as if the old technology is completely forgotten."

"Had they not seen seals? Or walruses? They look a little more like them but I suppose since I grew up with the mermaids as well as the manatees then I knew the difference." What a thing to write in the next set of letters she won't get to send home. Dear all, did you know there's a place where they confused manatees for mermaids? I'm as tickled as you are! It'll be one of the more light-hearted letters stacked beneath the floorboards of her shared home.

Araceli's not good enough to get the coin to go up her sleeve the way an artist is but she can catch it neatly from a very high spin and pocket it again with a pleased little smile. "We all make our living how we will - I was a thief after all. My kind of thieving made me an escape artist I think but you're talking about something very different." She thinks. Unless people watch thieves doing their work? Spyglasses perhaps? What an intriguing idea.

What a world with less expensive metal, she can picture the faces of so many merchants she's known over the years. "All our metals come from one place where the veins and seams run deep through their lands and they find more and more, it sets the price how we all set prices for some things and when travels to us by sea? Expensive. An electric engine is such a strange idea. Lights and some other things but we power ours with wind or water. If you don't have the sea like us you have rivers and even if you don't? There's still the wind." Turning to face Waver more, she tips her head to the side slightly, weighing up if she wants to say what she's thinking of or not. "So much of it for us is the journey for the sake of the journey. This sounds very - I don't know if purposeful is the right word? It's the only one I can think of."

"Yes to both, but these were men encountering new continents. They...were a little bit more fanciful with sealife that they hadn't encountered before. Manatees were new." The question of how continents had been fairly ignorant of each other was hopefully a question Waver wouldn't have to explain. Hopefully.

"Probably. These were magicians who would bind themselves up, suspend themselves in water, or other such situations, and escape from these bonds. It was a massive thing for a while, and some magicians still follow in that particular tradition."

Waver nods along with the talk of metal, but the purposeful part. That's dead on. "I think that it is the right word. Sail can be for recreation or travel, but nine times out of ten, it's only for commerce, and commerce demands faster shipping, more reliable forms of it, and all the other innovations that go with it. The journey isn't important, the end result is."

"Sometimes I think about the people who got to see the world for the first time. I used to envy them when I was younger, running around with my friends or going through estates and homes to take whatever would fetch the best price. Now I'm here and to me, this is all new. I can write about it, maybe not for anyone here but if there's ever a time to go back I have my letters of this place." She hesitates, the smile faltering as what she's said catches up to her. "It's silly, I know."

Talking about something else is easier, she's eager to rush into it. "People do that? Perform it? Oh I'd love to see things like that. I've practiced getting out of shackles but that was only for practical reasons, did people go places to see it? Like plays or concerts? Was it an occasion?" She'd love it to be an occasion, it sounds like it should be the sort of thing you take someone you care about to go see when you're both on the edge of your seats, laughing and gasping. (Some shackles are hard enough when you're good at it, start putting in extra things and her mind's racing already.)

"We go where the sea guides us. Everyone has to trade, has to travel but we sail for the love of it. Reminding people where we all first came from, making sure people don't overfish the shoals or the sharks or the whales," she explains since it's that bone-deep sort of love they have for it that's pretty much unshakeable.

"No, it isn't," Waver offers softly. "Those kinds of writings, they're what help other people understand and share an experience for centuries after they've been written. They're...in the end, they're not just for you, in a way."

The historial record is long, terrifying, and impossible to predict. This is easier. "It was a bit like going to a theatre to see a play, actually. You could make an evening out of it, and be entertained. It'd...be interesting if someone did it here, but you also have to have a lot of precautions in place to make sure no one gets hurt or does something stupid."

Something stupid being what gets one killed, of course.

"Some people have that still, I think. But it's a very different culture, in the end. I don't know if I'd say it's for worse, but I can claim it deeply different without hesitation."

It's a comforting idea for someone who hadn't been given much to writing before Thedas had really made her turn her hand to it. Oh there had been reports but when had she ever needed to write a letter? Her father was away at sea and getting messages to him next to impossible unless she played guess the port and tried to find out what ship might take a different route. "I like that idea, thank you Waver." Who knows, maybe when this is all over people in Thedas will find be reading over all the things the strangers recorded too, picking over them to see what fresh eyes made of their world.

"When I did my first climbing lessons in Skyhold, I don't know what happened with two of the young men involved. They both knew each other, both came from the same clan and I'd been warned one was clumsy but he managed to end up inside the stables with one of the horses and almost got kicked in the head. I can only imagine how much harder it is to plan any of that. Even for one person who knows what they're doing." This is why the Kirkwall lessons follow a very different format with the more public environment; if something goes wrong, it goes wrong where people know about it quickly.

"If you can claim it, make it part of yourself? That's what counts. That's what my people are as much as my friends from home are with their lands; they have tales, traditions, stories that they hold dear and love. It makes us. Shapes us as much as we shape the world."

"It's nothing. Those letters help to form histories, and those pass on and on. It's...I don't know, it's weird to think about legacies that far into the future, but it's something I've thought about a lot lately," Waver said. He closed his eyes, letting the ocean breeze ruffle at his hair. The few stray strands not pulled back blew in the wind, only to smack him in the face as the breeze shifted slightly.

"It's...it's an art, in the end. Practiced and perfected and with a high risk involved. And there's trickery involved, like swallowing keys and then throwing them up on command, but that's still a particular skillset." Waver didn't want to imagine how much time it took to gain those skills. It wasn't important. "And that's why one pays to see it done, in the end."

Waver's face goes into a soft smile at those words. They're warm, thoughtful, and sentimental without being overly saccharine. "I feel as if I need to write that down and keep it on my person."

"So much of the history here are all letters written by people to other people, or something like that. Lots from Chantry scholars or people connected to it. But I had so much catching up to do when I came here maybe I noticed it more and now it's going to say even if anything happened that I wasn't just the things I did, the places I went but I was in charge of a project here. That's...that's going to be there. So many of us getting to have a say in something that isn't ours, being trusted with that. It's a lot." It's humbling, is more what she means but some things are better kept inside and safe.

Key swallowing is...well some thieves learn to pick the locks, some learn to pick the keys off people. (Some get casts of the keys but that's usually an overlap and for very specific reasons.) "Someone I know did that. Keys didn't work when she tried getting into the house she wanted to case, by the time she picked the locks three guards had come to see what the dogs were all sniffing at." Just thief things.

Hearing that, Araceli can pretend it's the wind stinging her face that makes them heat up glad that it's impossible to spot a blush on her. "I-- I don't think someone's said that about something I've said before."

"It is a lot," Waver agreed quietly. "Sometimes I wonder if it's worth putting a little bit of space aside for writings written by rifters in the library, just so things get preserved. Who's to say how long this will go on for, and if there'll be rifters in a century from now. Or even if the Inquistion will be functioning in it's current capacity."

It was probably a bit pretentious, thinking that material was worth putting aside. But no matter. "...Well, I guess that's one drawback to using that method outside of a performance space."

As a man whose own ability to control blushing does not exist, Waver would have looked the other way if he saw blush on Araceli's cheeks. As it is, he just maintains the soft smile. "It's true though."

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THE SEAS SHALL RISE & DEVOUR, Part I

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