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( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS
WHO: Alistair, Herian, Myr, Nell, Prompto, Saoirse, Wren.
WHAT: ( Plot post ) Shady rumours concerning the Tranquil lead to a remote Circle in the Northern Anderfels. Its relative isolation from the rest of Thedas has prevented news from reaching the Inquisition sooner. Our crack team investigates.
WHEN: forward dated, around 21st-ish Cloudreach
WHERE: Salzklippe, the Anderfels.
NOTES: Content Warning for violence, murder, and other grim Dragon Age things. The grief demon threads in particular include themes of death, suicide, and gore. Please add additional warnings to subject lines where necessary.
WHAT: ( Plot post ) Shady rumours concerning the Tranquil lead to a remote Circle in the Northern Anderfels. Its relative isolation from the rest of Thedas has prevented news from reaching the Inquisition sooner. Our crack team investigates.
WHEN: forward dated, around 21st-ish Cloudreach
WHERE: Salzklippe, the Anderfels.
NOTES: Content Warning for violence, murder, and other grim Dragon Age things. The grief demon threads in particular include themes of death, suicide, and gore. Please add additional warnings to subject lines where necessary.
  — Making the approach (group thread) — Into the catacombs (individual starters) — Discovering the lake (group thread) — Into the tower (individual starters) — Bossfight (multiple group-ish) — Later Stuff (individual starters) FOR GROUP THREADS: in order to keep threads moving, I will be aiming to do a GM tag once every 24 hours. Don't worry about a strict tagging order, but please don't tag more than three times every 24 hours, just to make sure no one gets left behind. |
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Though stepping into it through a waking door instead of the quiet advent of sleep, he’s caught in flickering superposition between the bright-eyed aspirant and the blind man he became, a ghost laid over flesh. He catches his breath at the question, at the vista spread out before them, and thinks to say, when last I dreamed—rejecting her implicit offer out of hand, as one must always with demons. It would be an easy answer, a safe answer, an answer to end this here and free him to find his companions.
It would also be a lie. The aching clarity of each stalk and burgeoning head of grain, kissed with brilliant color in the rising light that kindles a spark in every drifting dust mote—he has not seen its like, he knows now, in dreams or Veilfire. Those run together at the edges in storybook pastel, details softened until even a beloved face was only recognizable because he knew who it should be.
Whatever in his mind still knew how to see was forgetting, and sooner or late his dreams would be dark. (Even Thranduil’s glamour could not rescue it; sharp and lovely as those glimpses were they weren’t enough.) A last insult after everything else that one panicked moment had ruined; a fitting recompense for all the good he might have done if he‘d not maimed himself.
(Sina wouldn’t have encountered the cough that killed her, had Myr not needed help from the sighted to unravel the warehouse’s hideous mystery; Kit may not have died if he’d another friend watching his back in Darktown.
The bodies rotting in the tower; Philomela’s other brood called out into the world to save mage lives; five men dead of blood magic in Nevarra, self-made victims of an ambush he should have seen coming.
Vandelin, guilt-wracked and bleeding for a horror that wasn’t his fault.)
“Years.” The Maker abhors a liar. “Since before—our Circle fell.”
Reluctantly, he pulls his gaze from the vista of farm and field, regards his questioner. “And you’d offer it back?”
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Her hands are gentle as she picks a flower. Its petals are bright and vibrant, the petals pink and darkening to a rich purple. A stripe of that same dark purple edges the outermost part of the petal.
A soft exhale. "But I think for now we can just enjoy the view. You have had much heartache, these past years. A reprieve is not undeserved."
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It's not a sin simply to ask, he tells himself. It isn't a sin to know how it might be done, to ponder if it's something mortal mages alone might accomplish. Much had been discovered in cautious discussion with spirits. Much had been added to their knowledge of the world--
(But discourse with demons was a short route to Tranquility or worse.)
His gaze is drawn to the flower, as she'd intended; he's fascinated despite himself by the color and clarity of it, drawn to stare. (The chance to wonder if it's a type he'd come across in the waking world, all-unknowing now, without his sight. She could bring that back.) The offer of respite surprises him therefore and his glance up is sharp, sudden. "And I thank you for that view, but somehow I don't think I've got the time for it."
There's a forced sort of humor in the words, a mask for how deeply he wants what she offers. All of it.
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There's a quiet laugh, and— she is changed. It was hard to immediately choose the form to take, but knowing Myr's heart and being able to draw on the visual memories from the others, that helped immensely. She could suppose it would not matter, but where would the artistry be in something so clumsy as a guess?
It is Kit that Myr is looking to, not Lupeo. He has a cigarette in hand, as yet unlit. His laughter is warm. "Shit, salroka. You want to tell me about running out of time?"
The tilt of his head says it all - come on, buddy.
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It is him. It must be.
(Is that how it will always be--seeing them in the Fade as part of that final goodbye?)
It can't be. It isn't.
"Don't," low, controlled; a mage without control is a danger, "use him this way. Don't wear him--you haven't the right."
Not to masquerade as Kit. Not to remind Myr he'd not been there for a proper farewell, that they'd parted on see you later because there'd be time, there would always be time.
He takes a step in despite himself, thinking it's to intimidate, to drive the demon off--looking like he's worn through, and seeking comfort from his friend.
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For a moment, the look he gives Myr is quizzical, as though he's about to ask something and thinks better of it, and seeing how run down Myr is. He keeps turning the cigarette over between his fingers; it’s less about the smoking of it, and more about disentangling the situation with his hands. If only that were possible.
(Lupeo thinks, absently, how interesting the dwarf’s mind might have been to pick through. Ah, well.)
“Looks like life’s taken a real bite outta you.” His sigh is heavy, and he cigarette is moved to tuck the cigarette behind one ear. The distraction is set aside, so he can focus just on his friend, just on the man before him. Myr is exhausted, beaten down; lucky for him, a friend is here to help. After a long silence, Kit settles both hands on Myr's shoulders.
"Gotta start taking better care of yourself, salroka." The fingers grip a little tighter. "I need you to look after Vandelin, really look after him. Whatever it takes, alright?"
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Dwarves didn't dream--the Maker created them, of that Myr's sure, but He didn't create them to walk the Fade when they slept. Who knew if they found their way here in that last sleep of all? He could worry the problem in a circle, pick and pry at it as an excuse not to focus on what's before him--but that's so much energy, so much work when it's easier to trust what's before him. To play along.
Kit or not, the dwarf can still see right through Myr, and there's some relief in not having to lay his sorrows bare himself. His shoulders round beneath Kit's hands; he makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "I always do," he replies. (Except for those three years he didn't.) "You know I do--and you know how he bristles at it."
And yet Myr keeps trying, because Van's family, because that's what he owes his own flesh and blood. His lips twitch to an ironic smile and he lays a hand over one of Kit's. "Don't know he'd spring for whatever, at that. He was always looked after back at Hasmal; it smothered him."
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Why do you think I'm here? is the energy that sort of rolls off Kit, off the demon puppeteering his form. He's here to help, to support, and he just stays steady with his hands on Myr's shoulders for a time. The view and the rippling fields still surround them, and yet at the same time, the world seems to be only them.
"I know you wanna be there to watch everyone's back all the time, but sometimes you can't." (Those three years for Vandelin. Those nights when Kit was in Darktown.)
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"You're dead, and who was watching your back?" Not him. He's not equipped to watch anyone's back any longer; a liability, sure as Philomela had said. A researcher who couldn't read, a knight-enchanter who couldn't be there for the friend who'd needed him. All because his nerve and reason failed him the moment he most needed them.
The gulf of self-pity yawns wide, devouring. That shadow of who he'd been flickers, winks out.
"What do I do?"
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(He seemed the sort, Lupeo thought, the sort to want to steady, even as he himself was shaken.)
"But just because it happened to me doesn't mean you have to lose someone else for the same reason." Kit's exhale could almost be amused. "Just say yes. Just say you want to be able to help."
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Some of it-- "No one," Kit says, and it jars off Myr's own grief-saturated memory of that night. No one, but the Medicine Seller was there before Kit's corpse was even cold, and Maker knew there were rumors. Whatever Myr's own ingrown guilt might say (in the voice of a friend, of near-family), Kit hadn't been alone for want of him. It just hadn't been enough.
But would Kit hold that against him? Demand something of him he couldn't give any longer? How much do the dead change?
("And I'm old enough to know that some shit is just broken, and salroka--you don't get to fix everything you do wrong."
"So what's the point in piling more wrongs on top of it? Fine--some things can't be fixed; Maker knows I'm not getting my eyes back--but isn't that a reason to hold to what you've got?")
It's not him.
"When haven't I," Myr replies, the shadow of a sad smile playing around the corners of his mouth. "You know I'd help to distraction, Kit. I'd meddle in anything to fix it if I could. But we don't get to fix everything we do wrong."
It doesn't make it hurt any less to reach back, take "Kit's" hand from his neck and--gently, fondly, as if it were his friend still--push it back against the dwarf's chest. It doesn't hurt any less, yet something heavy in his heart falls away and shivers to dust with the gesture.