faderift | Let Andruil's bow crack

Entry tags:

Let Andruil's bow crack

WHO: Morrigan, Thranduil, Myrobalan Shivana, Herian Amsel, The Medicine Seller
WHAT: The hunt for Flemeth continues in the depths of the Tirashan where the elves are wilder, the rumours bloodier. The shaman in the Wilds said she must look to the past and here they worship not the Creators but something other...
WHEN: Early Drakonis
WHERE: Tirashan Forest
NOTES: Some discussion/mentions of human sacrifice, violence and gore.
ooc post
previous catch-up to part one with all relevant links

Once Morrigan had heard the tales when staying in Serault. Soldiers clashing with Dalish elves unlike others. Elves in Vallaslin the colour of blood, who do not invoke the names of any Creator when they come to fight. And on the way the evidence of attacks still linger; skirmishes, true, but elfshot if the eyes know what to look for in the arrows, some small farmhouses burnt, people who look to those of the party with pointed ears with cold suspicion.

But the Tirashan beckons, dark and forbidding as it has ever been. Home to legends as dark as the swamps some of the party had been witness to before but no welcome awaits them. This time there is danger, and Morrigan can feel her heart in her throat as she clutches her staff tighter in her hand, swallows hard as she leads them in. The symbols are-- strange. Forbidding.

There is blood deeper in. The terrain difficult. You are not wanted, it seems to say firmly, roots to trip, stones slick with moss, hidden pits to stumble and twist the ankle in. An unnatural silence falling the deeper the party ventures in, and from the side of her mouth with her head turned as much as she dares, Morrigan whispers a gentle reminder. "They will be friends to none of us. Be wary. We cannot afford to fight them. I have come here to slip in and out, silent as a Crow's knife."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She does not want to be here. Duty, however, has but little to do with personal wants.

She has spent much of their travel silent, a figure that might be taken for something proud and carved of marble or granite, rather than something living and breathing, with her heart beating too fast with each tale they hear. The staff she carries is headed by an ever-burning gnarl of wood, and at her side is a sword so cold as to cloud the air immediately about it. Her hair is tied back, in the act exposing the mess made of her left ear by a prior visit to the Dalish at the behest of the Inquisition; friends to none of us seems an easy understatement.

"Have you beheld aught like this before?" softly, as well.

It feels as though something were reaching to grab at her, only for her to move too slowly to see those reaching hands, no matter her vigilance.

Silence is hardly a boon to ask of him, as he has kept to it since they began moving into deeper wood. Every so often in Thedas, something makes his heart ache for the familiarity of it, as if he is looking back at Arda thought some stained, damaged mirror. The tree’s branches hang like gnarled fingers, the forest floor is cradled in a darkness offered by the heavy canopy, and he knows that the elves they seek are fearsome and terrible, but he has ever loved fearsome, terrible things.

No, no fighting—and he trusts Morrigan to lead them on a steady path, if not uneventful. She is, as always, full of surprises.

He spares a thought—has done more than spare, over the course of this trip- for Myrobalan, and the uneven ground.

Edited 2018-03-03 02:48 (UTC)

What was it that Wren had said of Herian in a letter after the plague had burned through the Templars and rifters of the Gallows? No reason to doubt skill or integrity, but perhaps discretion, at least with that matter; what they press towards is-- well, Morrigan knows where the world presses back to keep men out.

"The Korcari Wilds are friend to few, too cold for mankind to survive." Somewhere beyond lie the Sunless Lands, but well, perhaps she might offer something more useful from her time in Serault not devoted to shredding her voice forging glass into an eluvian restored. "Elves of the Tirashan do not cry out to the Creators when they come to attack and fight with soldiers. And Dalish do not drive folk from their homes."

Not anymore, not for such a long time. The temptation is there to shift to something more suited, wolf or raven neither of which would be out of place here but until they draw closer she might need her words so Morrigan steps carefully, as the wind hisses through the branches. They groan. The forest presses ever inward.

Even with Thranduil's glamour as guide and sight, Myr finds the forest difficult going. He is a child of the desert and the Circle, spaces wide open to the horizon or neatly bounded by wall and window; the twining trunks and ankle-grabbing roots are alien and strange. Had he time and leave to gawk in his way, to stand in the heart of it and listen to the sepulchral space between all those trees, he would--but they're here about a serious purpose and he won't be the one to hold them up.

His focus is for his footing, the placement of his staff--on sticking to Thranduil like a burr. Precious little room among that to spare a thought for questions, though he manages one still: "And what becomes of the folk they take?"

He thinks he knows; it's that and lowering shadows of the forest that color the quiet words with dread.

"Likely nothing you would want to dwell on," said the Medicine Seller. It wasn't the first thing he said throughout the trip, but he'd been quieter than usual and he'd often go long periods without uttering so much as a peep. A whole sentence

He carried the rear of the party, and didn't seem entirely out of place in the thick undergrowth of the forest. In addition to his verbal silence, his footfalls were equally quiet, and he moved along the tangled roots and rocky terrain as if he were born to it, stopping only occasionally to sniff the air.

He muttered something to himself, too indistinct to make out but it's definitely not the common tongue.

"Blood, that way," he said pointing someways southeast of where they were headed.

"...Human."

We cannot afford to fight them is a mantra in her head. Or perhaps not a mantra, so much as a reminder. Why is she, of all people, here?

For duty is the swift reminder, again, the thing she will keeping telling herself over and over, because it is one of the few things that sustains her. Duty, and because she can cast barriers to defend, and perhaps because of how badly her last mission involving the Dalish went, and that she is known to be wary of them.

“Rancid,” she asks very softly, an unpleasant calm settling over her, because she cannot afford to be anything else, “or fresh?”

It is disquieting that the Medicine Seller can detect scents so, but she’s been given no cause to doubt it. If it is fresh, perhaps there could be some hope of saving someone injured and abandoned. Unlikely, she fears.

Blood is blood, and human—well, nothing wanders this far into the brambles unless it is brought, and the Medicine Seller will not be the only one who scents a meal. He minds well the ground—for Myrobalan too, though it is more difficult than something as contained as four walls—‘place your feet here’ only, and he splits his attention between that and sensing danger.

Morrigan is their leader. If she is curious, they will address it. If not—further up and further in.

“South still?” he asks, because he is closest to her. “Or would you have us turn?”

A trap? Possibly, though they would be easier to ensnare in many other less convoluted ways. They are not moving through the forest stealthily. Anything else that lives here surely knows just where they are. An invitation?

Edited 2018-03-11 02:55 (UTC)

Had they the time, they might've turned to Serault before this. Stopped to tether the horses, to ask about but there is never enough time is there to find out what happened and she hasn't any reason to disagree with the Medicine Seller's assessment.

"Fresh," without much of a glance because Morrigan knows why they bring them here, why people are brough away if they don't die where they stand, riddled with elf-shot. (Perhaps they might not need to know, they may well be dead.) "We have to head that way, but I would prefer to keep out of sight of them for as long as possible. If they've been on the hunt we may be fortunate."

So Morrigan turns, slinks off the path into the nearest thicket that threatens to snag at the edges of her skirts. There's noise carried from the distance as the group moves that might be celebration but with a wildness that unsettles from the whooping, the smell of smoke mixing with damp wood. It's harder to see already where they left the safety of the borders but that's how it goes with so many tales of the Tirashan, the things that prowl in the dark.

(Are those eyes? Would they be high in the branches? Or is it paranoia creeping up to catch you by the scruff?)

Fresh blood. And: we may be fortunate, if their quarry's been hunting, if the blood belongs to whatever they had--caught.

Myr swallows hard, keeping his head down and his focus on where he puts his feet. The litany through the back of his head (this is sensitive business; the numbers are against us) isn't so far off Herian's. He is here out of duty, out of obligation, because he's a Circle-trained observer with a long memory--and the more he reminds himself of that the easier it should be to ignore the worry he's neglected a higher duty yet.

Should be.

Isn't.

He halts to let the others pass as he hears Morrigan break from the path; better he, with his lack of woods-wisdom, follow rather than lead. It gives him a moment to catch his breath and his bearings, expression grown troubled at the scent of smoke and the far-off sounds of shouting. Blindness hasn't shorn him of the sense someone might be watching him, the feeling that there are eyes watching the spot between his shoulders to sight an arrow home. He fades back toward the nearest tree-trunk, dim and half-sensed thing it is, to hide that vulnerability with his back to it. One hand rests lightly on the hilt of his spirit blade, tacit sign of his alertness to potential mayhem now that they're so close.

Thranduil fancies that he hears the noises usually beyond human ears and more the domain of those of them with larger ones. The scrape of a knife being sharpened, the susurrus of lowered voices. There is life here. There is life everywhere, at the heart of every foreboding forest, and he reaches out to brush his fingers along the inside of Morrigan’s wrist, a warning that she likely does not need.

(A bend at the waist as he picks his way behind her, snapping up a scrap of thread torn from her clothing, twisted into a pocket so they leave nothing behind.)

If they have taken their kill then they will be contented enough, but he does not swaddle himself in an assumption that they are not aware of him. Morriagn chooses her place to watch from, Myrobalan presses himself to a tree, and Thranduil fades the glamour crafted for the other elf out slowly like a long blink. He hopes the blade is not drawn, and watches instead from between branches.

Herian is not the most skilled at stealth; in this party she is perhaps one of the weaker in this art, but at the very least she knows the value of care. Thranduil and Morrigan's behaviour serves as guidance enough to when better to hold or change course.

She looks to Myrobalan, sees he is steady, and takes a place at his side, shifting with care. She dare not murmur a reassurance, but instead briefly lays a hand over his on the blade hilt. Equal parts a reminder to steadiness, to hold, as it is a reassurance. They are here to perform a duty for the Inquisition; they dare not move too swiftly.

Her gaze shifts back to Morrigan, as the acrid sent of smoke breezes past them. What next, then?

Perhaps the Wilds or a childhood raised by Flemeth accustomed Morrigan to a certain sort of violence, followed so close after by the Fifth Blight and all that came with it that she doesn't flinch at what she sees. A hand extended to Thranduil in keeping with his gesture to her and also to Herian since a Knight-Enchanter should understand; unwilling to draw attention (bare flesh in a wood is as much an invitation as a single flame in the dead of night) there's a sense of urgency and sterness to it. Careful, it says, hold.

There is a body by the edge of the camp with two deep wounds seeping dark blood sluggishly made by blades, the face turned away to the forest. The mouth still contorted as if to cry out for some absent figure to aid them. Face down. If the elves here do nothing, eventually the wildlife and then the forest shall reclaim them.

It's what's further in that has her attention. Where they have to go, where she needs to find what she seeks - elves who call out not to any Creator she's ever heard because they don't - where there is a figure bound with a bloodied rag across her eyes.

"If they are contented with their sacrifice," Morrigan manages through a tight-clenched jaw, "and we are quiet we shall get what we seek without drawing their ire."

There are two large 'ifs' even if she has dared only to voice one of them.

The Medicine Seller cast Morrigan a sidelong glance. He didn't need to say it - those were very big ifs indeed. There were definitely eyes on the little traveling party, but whether they were being hunted or just observed ... well. They'd probably find that out soon enough. But he doubted a whole tribe would be contented with what they had when a larder had wandered so brazenly into their midst.

He fell to the back of the entourage, to keep an eye on Myr and stay alert to any sounds or disturbances that weren't some wild animal scuttling through the woods. His hands didn't wander to any weapon nor did he seem any more perturbed than if this were a simple, pleasant stroll in some other cannibal-free forest. The only noise from him, however, was the occasional soft, muffled rattling coming from the top compartment of his medicine box.

A wail tears itself free of the figure, wet and ragged, afraid.

Difficult to tell if it's male or female at this point but heads turn, the sentries suddenly tense as what could pass for a Keeper if they have anything at all like the Dalish (this is the problem, how long ago did they turn away, have they always been this way with their red, red Vallaslin, rooted in the darkness here) who looms over the figure.

"The Void will have you," he says, voice commanding as the bound figure turns their head up in his direction. "Anaris, Daern'thal, Geldauran; they shall have you when we are done as they have the rest."

If they're looking for an opportunity, Morrigan already prepared to move around the edges of the camp dwellings, this is perhaps it.

He follows behind her, stepping where she steps, eyes on her and not the dramatics in the clearing. He remembers the names, considers asking Solas when this is all settled. He notes the vallaslin too, to sketch out when they are returned and to offer it to the Dalish there for identification.

Herian, he thinks, will not cause the trouble if they have any. She is steady enough, and it would be beyond foolish to attempt to intervene with whatever is going on in the clearing. They have no healer—that flesh is beyond saving to all but an idealist. But now—now is when soft hearts would be stirred to action.

Edited 2018-04-04 03:55 (UTC)

Unfortunate, that they've got an idealist with them.

He'd realized there was--perhaps--something they didn't want him knowing about, relying on his blindness to keep him innocent of whatever prey it was the elves out here hunt. He'd realized-- And still the cry catches him like a knife in his own soft heart; he stiffens, fingers tightening on the hilt of his spirit blade, face turned toward the sound. The words make obvious the fate of that desperate voice's owner.

He's sense enough to bite his tongue, reaching for Herian--she'd been nearest, hadn't she?--rather than calling her name. The look he gives her direction is pleading; Thranduil may head his division, but she's the nearest thing he's got to a commander in the field. Can't they?

Can't they?

Every fibre of her pulls her towards the figure in pain, suffering and terrified, the figure being made a sacrifice, but it is — there is no saving them. They cannot be saved, but there remains the matter of justice, of honour and duty and compassion and recompense.

Her hand clasps tight on Myr's wrist, and she speaks right against Myr's ear, so it is all but impossible for anyone else to hear. "We cannot. It is done."

They cannot because the person is as good as dead, and they cannot because their duty and their orders have them set to a task, and though it tears at her they cannot compromise that. Her heart cannot so easily shed its ideals, its impulses, and she grips onto Myr to hold herself back as much to try and hold him.

Duty, honour. It is her duty to do this. (And what then, were annulments and slaughter, if not duty? Were there not times when duty must be questioned? She cannot— ) She looks desperately to Morrigan, Thranduil, pleading that they will allow a change of course, justice to be meted out.

Should this chance slip through Morrigan's fingers, they'll all answer for it. A complaint written or voiced to those in charge of them wouldn't be beyond her when it's this. When this matters. To her.

And she can't explain that more than she has, more than she's talked about as she looks at Thranduil, looks at Herian; Thranduil who is older than any of them, than trees in this forest likely, and understands the world in a different way, and Herian who knows that a duty is an unpleasant thing. Morrigan's own face twists but she was there for a Blight. Saw the bodies hanging where the Darkspawn strung them up. Saw more left to rot and bloat beneath sky steadily turned to a bruise slow to heal.

"What would you have, Myrobalan? Would you offer up your throat?" Unfair of her to bring back an old conversation but if she's to get them moving when they might have the chance for it then what else is there to be done? They have to move, so she's going. "Would you offer up ours as well?"

(Alistair might have a thing to say of her here, had he been along. He's not.)

"None of us have any say in this, come now, quickly and quietly." She's no rogue but here she knows how to move well enough to slink down to the borders of the camp. Still in her own skin since she can't speak as a wolf though that lesson might still serve here much as she'd wish for something rather more subtle.

"Would you offer up your own throat?"

The damnable part of it is--if it were Myr alone, he would, without hesitation. (Had, in fact, nearly done that very thing not so long ago--and hadn't Vandelin nearly taken his ears off for it? This isn't penance.) But the rest of them--

He hasn't any right. He rounds his shoulders, loosening his hold on the hilt of his spirit blade. "She's right," he breathes to Herian; his tone says he'd rather she weren't, that this could be solved so simply as with a headlong charge into the village to rescue the captive alive.

The numbers say otherwise. Duty to this little band of theirs says otherwise.

A slight squeeze of Myr's arm, and she eases her hold. They are caught in this mess together. Their throats cannot save the world. Their sacrifice could not mean all that their duty must mean.

She nods, though, to Morrigan. They are both steady. They will both obey, because they must. That is what duty means.

Then they are to move on. That Myrobalan and Herian both stayed their impulses towards justice (if one could call it that) speaks well of their restraint, and his respect for Herian grows by degrees.

Secure in knowing he can take his eyes off them without risking his own life, he turns to watch Morrigan's back once more, inching through the undergrowth. Quickly and quietly indeed.

The aravels here are sturdier than elsewhere, made for cutting through the forest for the Tirashan is vast and who can say what lies in depths only suggested on maps, borders sketched out when a people such as this live within it. So Morrigan goes to where they are, where the sails are folded in, to where the belongings are.

Oddly, perhaps, there is Fen'Harel even here but perhaps some things can't so easily be pried apart. His baleful gaze upon them in a rough-hewn idol worn over countless centuries no doubt, stones as green as the moss as about him are strewn bones, skulls too small to have ever belonged to a person, the earth too wet, too dark, a sucking malice to it.

The chests, fortunately, have no locks. Why would they need to all the way out here. Who'd think to come pilfer from the cultists?

"Search for anything that might mention Creators," she dares to whisper, barely breathes out the words. "Or these things that they worship. Anything to do with that then let us be gone."

She barely dares to breathe as she keeps one hand on Myr. Admitting it is to steady herself, heart beating too fast and conscience twisting and buckling under duty, would not be beneath her. Truth is as necessary to honour as duty is. Once the ground is clear enough, once the chests are close by, she releases Myr's arm to allow him to do whatever he must, and to free herself to look to the chests. She moves with precise, quiet efficiency. Things moved are set back just so; just because they are stealing (acquiring, securing) does not mean she cannot take enough care to delay the discovery, potentially.

Writings, a tome that is ancient but carefully bound and kept, a symbol on it matching a medallion she finds in the chest, and she considers holding it out to Morrigan for a quick glance to see if it is relevant to their search or better to leave behind, but there hardly seems time for that. There is not time to deliberate, is there?

Anaris, Daern'thal, Geldauran. Those were the names.

He falls behind as Herian releases him, reaching out to the nearest of the aravels and leaving the side daubed with a smear of light. It winks, blinks, vanishes against the scarred wood, invisible but not inactive--like the others here and there he's left between them and the tree line. No harmless little locators, these, but a spiderweb network of tripwires woven through the stuff of the Fade. He can't look out, but they'll be alerted all the same if someone approaches. If someone thinks to look away from the sacrifice--

He can't busy himself looking among the books; the web of glyphs doesn't require so much concentration he can stop his ears and not listen to what's happening. Nor would he--there is something of duty in this, too, that someone hear and remember even if they can't avenge.

So he stands his watch as the others search, fingers wrapped white-knuckled on his staff, a paralysis glyph at his feet and a spell on the back of his tongue lest anyone approach.

Clever, Thranduil thinks approvingly, as he witnesses the firefly of light wink out. Well, if they are to scavenge, let them scavenge, and he considers the statue of Fen'Harel with brief, uncharacteristic longing. They are robbing these not-Dalish of their culture as readily as the Men do, for whatever they have recovered, bloody as it is.

That stays his hand. He does not pilfer, he reads, scanning for names as instructed and memorizing names and phrases with a mind well-suited to memorization as he steps with light feet through one wagon after the other, careful not to disturb stacks of possessions. A child's toy here, a bedroll there, a jar, a bottle.

So many of the Dalish illiterate, and these ones have books.

There is something in her hand and Morrigan finds that somehow she can't quite breathe.

"A price is to be paid for all things. Guide, truth, hope, justice; how heavy a price?" The shaman had said that beneath the skull she wore, and Morrigan's hand shakes as she takes it, walks away on unsteady legs then looks to Myrobalan and his magic to keep them safe because they have to hear this.

There's no other way as she tries to keep her voice level enough to speak.

"There are no gods. There is only the subject and the object, the actor and the acted upon. Those with will to earn dominance over others gain title not by nature but by deed." It's nothing she's ever heard before from anything like the Dalish, not even those who've left have voiced anything that could sound so virulent; the words hardly sound as if they come from those living now. They twist as she tries to read them, she has to stumble over the words. (Ancient Elven is complicated, she may need to sit with this again, with Thranduil before any others, she can't trust this to the project.) "I am Geldauran, and I refuse those who would exert will upon me. Let Andruil's bow crack, let June's fire grow cold. Let them build temples and lure the faithful with promises. Their pride will consume them, and I, forgotten, will claim power of my own, apart from them until I strike in mastery."

The blood has run from her face, cold sweat down her spine even in the close air of the forest. Not one word of this does she like, and her staff is clutched tighter despite the weight of memory it carries too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Let Andruil's bow crack

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

sorry for my slow

ssh you're good

no subject

no subject

no subject

who gets to find the golden ticket before we indiana jones it out

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject