Let Andruil's bow crack

[arcaneadvisor]

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."

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

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?

sorry for my slow

[dashing]

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.

ssh you're good

[arcaneadvisor]

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.

[faithlikeaseed]

"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.

[dashing]

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.

[rowancrowned]

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.

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

[arcaneadvisor]

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."

[dashing]

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.

[faithlikeaseed]

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.

[rowancrowned]

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.

[arcaneadvisor]

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.