( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS

[dashing]

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.

— 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.

Comments

[limier]

It's difficult to be angry with a corpse.

Shouldn't be. She's furious with the pressure of them, most days; a thickness in the breath that catches. You choke on it, or you let it inflame, because at least anger keeps you moving —

But there's none of it to grab to, before a familiar manner, an inflection just two moments from another fucking fight. There's little at all, but the lap of dark sea.

"We had orders, and we had a duty." If she believed that through, this wouldn't nag as it does. "They were not one."

It had seemed a small thing, then. Three dead men, and three had needed to stay so; now a year later, and three become two. A small resurrection. Miraculous.

Did it even matter? Did that final disgrace buy him any time? Her hands curl, uncurl, aware of the sudden dryness of her mouth. Werner had family to lie to.

"I wish there was," This isn't Averie. This can't be him, because he's dead. What, then? Think. "I wish there was someone to remember you."

It's truth, pulled out reluctant through her teeth. It's truth, but it's not offered without some glimmer of plan. See what he does with it.

[dashing]

Averie gives her a bit of a look, and chuckles. It's not a totally mirthful sort of laugh, but neither is it entirely lacking. "I don't. Not when you made a traitor of me. Imagine what that would have done to people that loved me."

Red templar, Maker. He sighs. "It's well and good for you to go on about orders and duty not being the same thing. Could say the same about that mage strike, if you want to get particular about it." He weighs his hands. "Orders from the Inquisition, duty to their fellow mages. Either way, you've got shit on your face for being the templar helping run the show."

He holds out the wineskin in offering. "Must be doing your head in. Your brother, your parents, the Spire, the Inquisition balancing on a knife's edge. Everything you touch might as well turn to ash." And he clears his throat, "congratulations on the engagement, by the way."

[limier]

The engagement. A humourless puff of air — betraying your basic principles ought to come with a warmer bed. What a fuck of a thing that strike had come to, and what ugliness may still unfurl across an empty mattress. There are questions that haven't been asked, there are accusations that haven't been voiced. How long have they really known each other at all? Twenty-six years, and some days strangers for it.

She weighs how the blows mean to land. Which spirit, what’s lowered itself with that wound? Not rage. An older taste, a weary one.

"I loved you." That’s a miserable admission, must be doing your head in. The years have cost more than one brother. She moves to take the skin, to swallow whatever’s stuck in her throat, and her fingers close on his. Averie is dead. She's not dreaming, but certainly, in dreams. "Tried to. Shouldn't you be ash?"

An apparition without a pyre, rotten in the weeds. Waiting for a jay to take his eyes. (A wren, and there’s your funny joke.)

[dashing]

"If I were ash, I wouldn't make for as charming a conversation partner."

Averie - or Lupeo, perhaps it doesn't matter which - sighs. It sounds like it was meant to be a self-deprecating laugh, but didn't quite get there. "I know. I loved you, too, but duty is duty. Even a fucker like me knows that." He shakes his head, looks across the water rather pointedly - better than looking at her, perhaps. "Can't have been much, if you're so ready to shack up with the man that killed me. How's that fit into duty, by the way?"

A shake of his head, and he dips has hand into the water. "Drowning wasn't so bad, after a time. He pushed me under the surface, and slit my throat while he was about it. Dunno if he was trying to make it quicker, or just be thorough. Lovely man, his Luh-Luh-Lordship."

[limier]

And slit my throat while he was about it,

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, hasn't asked, so he can’t know. A spirit can’t know. can’t it? Death ripples against the Fade, thins it, and her fingers curl,

"What would you have me do?" It’s soft. It’s bait. It’s a perilously open question. She knows better than to know there’s any defending it; mangles a palm over the side of her jaw, her cheek, her neck — and that’s not bait at all. "He lives. The ones that live, they all. They,"

The corner of her mouth twists sudden, involuntary. Th-they,

"What would you have me do?"

[dashing]

"Join me," he says, urgently, catching her wrist in his hand, His fingers might seem a little smoother than they should, not so calloused. "Be with me. It was always meant to be us, Wren. Two warriors side by side, facing down whatever they threw at us. Not you, tormented and at the beck and call of a wretched fucking mage."

There is an urgency in his face. "We could be together. We could be at peace, without this whole fucked-up mess that the world has made of itself. You deserve better than that."

Close— close. So close. He could pull her into the water, and it would be so close.

[limier]

His skin is too soft. Not an archer’s hands, not a knight's. The bones press close if she allows herself to imagine it.

Join me, it’s absurd. This thing, calling out to her with such blunt — such, what? Such an authentic imitation? She steps, means to step back; draws closer. Knows where to break the hold, finds her hand clasped tight about his, as it must have a hundred times before. A brother,

"No one deserves anything."

Maybe it’s meant to be a last word, before they separate, before she tears this flimsy Veil aside. Maybe,

But by then it’s too much too late.

[dashing]

"Can't we at least deserve each other?" There is something aching, begging in his tone, forehead almost pressed to hers. "I've missed, Luwenna. More than I miss my own breath. More than I have missed the sun or the fucking sky. I've missed you."

There is something raw in his voice, desperation. "I love you."

He steps out onto the water.

[limier]

He’s taken it wrong. He’s taken it wrong, the way he’s always taken it wrong, picked at the underside of words and scraped them for some imagined meaning. And —

And it doesn’t matter, does it? Because her leg plunges in to the knee, and gravity carries the rest of her, fists scrabbling for purchase against the sudden liquid dark. Fumbling for his shape in it, and Maker, the way that fear floods her lungs.

You pull your arms in, She recalls telling Anders, can’t yet make herself listen. You pull your arms in and you go,

There’s no dignity in instinct. Perhaps when her legs tire, when the thrashing slows.

CW MURDER/SUICIDE

[dashing]

You can't call the dead wrong, Luwenna. Don't you remember? Don't you recall how its an insult to their memory? How when harrowings went wrong and missions to find runaways went wrong it never felt good, it felt like a fucking tragedy? Because they were always kids, or people hurting. They were always people, and no amount of education and training could change the fact they were fucking people. Pointed or round ears or whatever other fucking detail you wanted to focus on, they were breathing and feeling, and always feeling so damn much.

Some of them were funny. Some of them did whatever they could to get a smile from the people they lived alongside every day, and it fucking hurt. It hurt, every single fucking time they had to cut them down.

But they did it. They did it every time, because that was their duty.

Fuck duty. Fuck living, when all it brought was death, anyway. He wraps his arms around Wren - Lupeo wraps her arms around Wren - and kisses her.

This is it. This is embracing fate.