the days that bind us

[exequy]

WHO: Lots of people
WHAT: Recovering lost phylacteries
WHEN: Guardian 23, 9:44
WHERE: The Storm Coast
NOTES: Violence! OOC post over here.

All signs point to the Storm Coast, and once scouts have narrowed down the location it's only a short journey across the Waking Sea to move a small force onto the rocky coast. They row ashore just after dawn in driving rain, and follow the beach for at least a mile before finding a path that actually reaches the top of the cliff. The rain fades to a drizzle but the day remains relentlessly overcast as they hike toward their goal, grey and dim even at noon, with a raw breeze off the water.

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[exequy]

For a moment he almost smiles, mostly around the eyes. Just a moment. Then he slides easily back into concern. "Today? Something defiant," he says, eyes sliding in the direction of the Seeker so quickly it could just be nervous shifting, "that couldn't arguably be an accident."

The wisps without other instructions flit around in search of anything interesting. One of them takes a liking to Nell's club. The other likes her hair.

[galvanising]

Nell glances at the wisps as they hover around her, lips quirking, distracted just for a moment. She reaches down to the one at her belt, cupping a hand to encourage it out of a likely path for accidental swatting. She looks back up at Kostos, jaw working.

"Anything could be an accident if we all agree it was." She glances sidelong at the Seeker, who has volunteered for this mission to assist them. Probably. She is perhaps not in the most generous mood. "Anyone who wouldn't...would be basically indistinguishable from the enemy, wouldn't they?"

[exequy]

Kostos is fairly sure no one else here at the moment, except perhaps the older Warden, speaks Nevarran, but he lowers his voice further anyway.

"And anyone who disagrees with that? Them too?"

[galvanising]

Nell looks around, tongue sucked up against the back of her teeth as her jaw shifts, side to side, chewing on nothing. She lifts one shoulder in a dismissive shrug and half a nod.

"Probably not necessary. It will be very dark. Who's to say what happened?"

[exequy]

"Nell."

The word's an argument in itself, nearly, with the disappointment and warning he packs into it, but he knows perfectly well that Nell doesn't make decisions based on what would or would not make him feel bad. And he wouldn't genuinely want her to.

"They can round us up without them, if they believe they should," he tries instead. "They have before."

[galvanising]

"Is that supposed to make me want to spare them?" Nell is unimpressed with this argument. "Because it's making me want to kill more of them."

She's not joking, precisely, but she's also not entirely serious; she's almost never this flippant about actual murder. She's just angry, and frustrated, and restless and doesn't really appreciate the disappointment in his tone, the reminder of his insistence on maintaining the moral high ground at her expense.

"What, Kostos? What is your point? You're not seriously suggesting I just leave all of these phylacteries intact? We came here to destroy them!"

[exequy]

"We came here to stop this," Kostos says. In private, he'd be—not raising his voice, exactly. It takes a lot to make him shout. But he'd at least be more urgent about it, matching her exclamation point for exclamation point.

Here, he's mindful of observers, because if it ever comes to conflict he does not actually want anyone to think there's a fault line here to exploit. He looks away from her to hold a hand up for a wandering wisp to examine and takes a breath.

"There are thousands of us. They can't fight this war without us anymore. Some of them even like us, and now they've seen what this means for us." His argument might benefit from further dot-connecting, from we can force them to make a decision now and when the war is over they won't have to appease us anymore, but saying exactly what he means isn't his strong suit. And, anyway, Nell is clever. "If you make the choice for them now, you're untying their hands."

[galvanising]

Nell glances around again, at the others not far enough off to fail to notice them arguing, even if they can't understand what's being said. She grits her teeth and presses bent knuckles between her eyes, taking a breath, putting Kostos's pieces together. It's not that difficult; she could've come to the same thought herself if she'd bothered to try thinking it.

When she speaks her voice is lower, still tight and urgent through her clenched jaw, but doesn't all Nevarran sound like anger anyway to unfamiliar ears?

"And what if they don't? What if they decide to keep them and we've missed our opportunity and delivered ourselves right back into the Chantry's hands? I'm leading this first team, I could be first into the room and destroy it. Maybe there are guards, so I can claim I was defending myself, or the structure was unstable, something. What are they going to do? Throw me out?" She shrugs, like so what.

[exequy]

“Yes,” he answers, like what do you mean ‘so what’. “Throw you out. Stop trusting any of us. Take whatever is left and put them somewhere we will not be able to reach, later, because they do not trust us.”

That isn’t even the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that Nell tries but fails, is seen, is arrested, is possibly imprisoned, is possibly—all of that, and the phylacteries preserved anyway. He’s fairly good at worst case scenarios. But he doesn’t like to be told he’s worrying too much.

“Destroying things means nothing if they’re going to be remade,” he says, and then balances the loftiness out with pettiness: “And you can’t use catastrophic structural instability again so soon. Wait six months, least.”

[galvanising]

She nearly laughs at the last, huffs out a breath that has something of that air to it. Hands are pressed together, steepled against her mouth and then clasped so she can press teeth to the side of a finger and then abruptly drop them with a jerk of her head and gesture, "I can't think, I'm so--." She shakes a hand in vague illustration. "Walk with me."

There isn't far to go, just further down the hill to pace among the rocks, and that's precisely what Nell does, linking her fingers at the back of her neck, wisp forced to relocate as she splays elbows out and takes a deep breath, the raw chill in the air biting at throat and lungs.

"If we take them back now," she begins again, still in Nevarran, "Intact. We can push the Inquisition to destroy them. Force them to pick a side, and learn where they stand. See who stands against it. And they will, won't they? The Division Heads are elves and rifters, they won't stand against us. Coupe is too pragmatic to risk losing most of us over it, and Myr is leverage if she hesitates. But what if I'm wrong? Or Skyhold steps in? Then what? Will we be able to find them and destroy them anyway? Convince enough mages to abandon the Inquisition until they agree? They've all been here so much longer, I don't trust them to give up the comforts of the Inquisition over this. And then we're back to me destroying them somehow and being thrown out."

[exequy]

While she paces, Kostos stands still, mostly ignoring the wisps that wander around his shoulders or ankles and the occasional drop of rain in the face in favor of watching her think.

"Not necessarily you."

It isn't an offer. Not quite. There are a fair number of situations where he would be willing to take the fall in Nell's place—she's better, she matters more, objective facts—but destroying phylacteries isn't one of them. Someone, though. It wouldn't be hard to find someone angry and expendable.

"Regardless, we would know it wasn't for nothing."

[galvanising]

Nell turns to study him, but she can see it's not an offer--it rarely is, from her perspective, but his loyalties are tangential at best at the moment, when what he's saying makes simple sense.

"If anything," she says, slowly, piecing it together as she stops to stand in front of him, "It might suit us if they refuse. An Inquisition genuinely on our side is better, of course, but after what's happened, with so many people affected if they're not seen to care it could turn Loyalists. We shouldn't have trouble finding volunteers to attack anywhere they chose to store them, or a shipment to Skyhold. And if somehow we did, then you and I and Gareth, Marisol. We could do it. If we had to." She looks up to meet his eyes. "Right? You'd be with me in this? We will have to push them for a decision and be ready to strike if we don't get it."

[exequy]

He hesitates, and not only for a moment. It isn't that he can't feel his loyalty to the Chantry becoming a technicality. But the Chantry, leaderless, gave the phylacteries away; the Chantry would see him executed for what he's already done, even if he does nothing else; Nell is looking him right in the eye.

His nod is nearly just a twitch.

"But we need to find yours while we're here," he says. "Just in case."

[galvanising]

Nell's answering nod is a firm jerk of her chin. "If you get there first, smash it right away. Don't wait. And Gareth's," she adds, reaching out to touch his arm, as if his attention might've wandered in the last few seconds. She tips her head, raises a brow significantly, "If any of us is likely to get into trouble with them...."

It's not an entirely fair assessment given her own antics so far, but still.

Up the hill, the team is nearing ready as night falls in earnest. Nell looks up over Kostos's shoulder as they gather. "I don't trust a single one of them to do as I say."

[exequy]

Her hand doesn’t bring Kostos’ eyes back to her face, because they hadn’t left it, but it does pull him out of his own head and sharpen his focus. His second nod is more firm. Whatever he thinks about phylacteries as a general, theoretical, amorphous topic, Nell’s and Gareth’s have to go. The hypocrisy can eat him alive tomorrow.

He doesn’t turn to look over his shoulder at the others, but he does almost smile.

“You could put me in my place while we walk back, as a demonstration,” he offers. “Say I wanted you to send them and stay behind.”

[galvanising]

"I'm not sure that would inspire much confidence, that even my closest friend thinks I shouldn't go." Nell has turned to start making her way (in no particular hurry) back toward the group, and she turns to look at him sideways. "And you really do still think that I should stay behind, don't you?"

[exequy]

“I would worry less,” Kostos says, looking ahead, which doesn’t exactly mean yes. It doesn’t exactly mean no, though, either, because it won’t matter how good Nell is if the mages in the compound make it back to the phylacteries first.

It does exactly mean that he isn’t going to try to talk her out of it. Proof:

“—but I will look fantastic with grey hair, so that’s fine.”