faderift | CLOSED | i'm not one to ever pray for mercy

Blackbirds follow them from Val Royeaux.

Ravens on messengers’ wings, crows to the gibbets that warn these roads — and small, piping things, that twitter and pluck squirming life from the earth. Wings follow them, out past seeds, and shit, and the vast spreading sky.

But it’s a while before any land.

They've rested by a broken crossroads (the arranged meeting point). There's no one, until there is: A ripple of feathers and Fade that leaves a skinny young man before them, peering down to scratch his bare, scabbed chest.

Bare feet, too, bare hands. Small blessings: He’s trousers.

"Kirkwall," He looks up, smiles — and it’s the sort a dog might wear, coincidental in its curve. Dirty nails stop digging to press up over his heart. "Alan."

Their guide.

Her patience tested by their guide's absence, it's perhaps incongruous that the appearance of said guide sets her so immediately at ease—or maybe not, because there is one with the Inquisition who Gwenaëlle has been linked to since her first days in Skyhold, and how shocking can it really be that Morrigan so firmly instilled in her a notion of what a mage can and should be? He looks feral. Gwenaëlle relaxes.

“Gwenaëlle Baudin,” she says, straightening, tilting her head towards their other companions: “Adalia, and Felix Guilfoyle.”

The latter of whom inclines his head at his name. He looks vaguely like their chaperone, were chaperones habitually quite so armed.

If Adalia were not fascinated by the casual display of shapeshifting badassery going on in front of her, she might be a little disgruntled by Gwenaëlle being the one to introduce her. Since she is so fascinated, though, all she does is smile brightly and wave, almost shyly.

It's a pleasure, is the sort of thing that Margaux says, when she's taking the piss out of people who say that. The pattern of manners doesn't elude Alan now so much as disinterest him. He steps sidelong, and the answering tip of his own head is half an effort to observe: He sizes up Guilfoyle's blades, Adalia's — lack of them —

"Hello," Alan decides, after a moment too long. A glance to their horses, restless for his arrival, "I'll travel above you, there are teeth coming south."

That's an intelligible thing to say to other human beings.

"We can stable the horses in Val Foret, borrow a boat from there." His tone shifts, more animated. "You have the painter now? In Kirkwall?"

What else does Solas do, really.

Edited 2018-08-12 07:58 (UTC)

They paddle the better part of an hour before it strikes something angry.

Black water roils, flesh surges upward in furious symmetry. Claws the size of sabers smash the prow and drag the little canoe under.

Yellow stripes flash a warning too late — for all the fog it’s easy to see the teeth that precede the scream. Breath bursts hot and rank from jaws almost wide enough to walk through, as the beast pulls back to spit.

Edited 2018-08-02 07:12 (UTC)

Adalia reacts as much on instinct as on anything else — the canoe cracks, buckles, sinks under an unexpected weight, a maw filled with terrifyingly sharp teeth opens up in front of her, and her hand whips out to shoot giant sparks of lightning down the thing's throat, hoping to stymie the whatever that was about to come out of it.

The thought comes too late, then, that lightning and water is a bad mix.

Instinct, as well, is what launches Gwenaëlle from the canoe towards the heavy overhang of tree limbs, catching it with both hands and using all of her momentum to swing up until her belly hits the solid branch and she can roll forward, snag a knee and push herself all the way up. Her athleticism predates the Inquisition and Wren Coupe's tutelage, or she might not have managed it—

but the force with which she saves herself is violent, and the canoe is already struggling under the wyvern's weight, and when she's steady enough to throw her left-hand towards Guilfoyle it's necessary, the shield that her shard creates protecting the dark smudge of him in the water from Adalia's friendly fire. She can see the glint of his knives in the murk of fog, the white of bared teeth not so sharp as a wyvern's; one-handed and with her knees she drags herself higher, directly above the beast, fingers flexing, eyes on the sparks and water.

This will have to be carefully timed, that the release of her shield doesn't immediately expose him to the very conductive mix of lightning and water. She is so focused on it that she sees only that one set of teeth, readying to pummel it from above with fade energy, and not

the second

below her tree.

Ice crackles out in sudden, blistering cold, battering the sides of the barrier with force. The lightning breaks upon it before it can find Alan: Now half-submerged, and wearing an expression of —

Faint curiousity.

The first wyvern reels, gagging on electricity and the sear of its insides. If there's loyalty among its breed, that's not enough to stay the second from easy prey; it slams its bulk (smaller, paler) upon the trunk, neck darting up to snatch at a dangled leg and pull Gwen down. At this distance it acts less the lizard, ripping to and fro like a dog with a haunch.

There's blood on Alan's hand, must have nicked between the frost. He extends it, and the slick ripple of energy across the Fade precedes a sudden slowness in the beasts. The first wyvern turns to charge Adalia again, acidic venom hacked forth with burnt imprecision. Its movements are clumsy now, dazed, but momentum remains dangerous, massive tail slamming for Guilfoyle.

Edited 2018-08-12 07:20 (UTC)

She only earned herself a momentary reprieve — Adalia presses one hand to her chest and reaches the other toward Guilfoyle, granting the both of them Haste. He will use it better than she can, more likely than not, but she doesn't let herself worry about that, instead turning her focus inward and convincing her bones to — shift —

A dire wolf stands where Adalia had been only moments ago, and ducks away from the wyvern at the last moment with uncanny speed, avoiding its venom only to dart back with teeth aimed at its vulnerable throat. The wyvern's hide is thick, difficult to tear at, but the chunk of flesh in Adalia's jaws is enough to drag the thing around by and so she does, pulling it down and attempting to wrestle it into a belly-up position.

It's a lot of commotion, a lot of thrashing limbs and splashing muck. The wyvern's tail is still a problem — though for Guilfoyle more than anyone else.

Edited 2018-08-12 07:42 (UTC)

Agony whites out everything including its own source, so it isn't immediately clear to Gwenaëlle why she can't breathe—something is glowing nearby her, which is interesting until the fact that she's choking on filthy water penetrates the haze that will come upon a person who's just been dragged out of a tree and hit half of it with her head on the way down. She seizes air when she surfaces, heaving breaths that are equal parts water and pure fury. She cannot locate her blade. She can barely locate how her head attaches to the rest of her body, but something is screaming above her—

it might be her

—no, it's not her, it's something else, mingling with the growls and slap of dislodged muck, a black thing all shining feathers and sharpened beak. Her hand curls around the thing, glowing, and it's bitter cold in the way that clarity is, suddenly. How many fucking wyverns are there. A wolf is fighting a wyvern and she is unclear on exactly where the fuck a wolf came from, but the blur that is Guilfoyle is ignoring it despite a clear opportunity to rip into its flank as he comes knives out for the beast currently trying to rip her in two, so it's probably on their side.

The teeth sink in deeper with the weight of Guilfoyle's blades in its throat; Gwenaëlle cannot entirely feel her fingers, sighting down the length of the arrow the way that she's watched Iorveth do, loosing it at so precise an angle as to ruffle the wolf's fur on its way past her face. She feels the thud too far away from her to even hear, its point penetrating the beast's eye and lodging in the back of its skull. The wyvern that had prepared to take Adalia off-guard distracted with her kill slumps, teeth snapping in the air where they'd have closed upon her shoulder.

The water around her feels warm. That's probably all the blood.

Blood. Enough of it to draw the shape of small, sucking fishes below, bumping stupidly between slushed reeds. One of them nibbles experimentally at Alan’s knee,

Not as pressing as the teeth on Gwen’s. A curled fist pulls backward, the other palm rising to find the pattern of death about them. The wyvern beneath Adalia lashes her back and forth between rocks and rotten wood, wrestling with little regard for teeth and pressure (thick scales their own protection). A third —

— It sputters out like a light, the arrow in its eye glinting silver between spurts of black ichor; an echoing shine to the armored bones now exposed nearby. Still dying, it staggers toward the fray, collapses in Adalia's path like so much meat.

Guilfoyle’s on the last, and as Alan crooks his fingers the life of it pulls free into them both: Like an arrow from bowstring, old power slithers loose to coil unpleasant in the air.

The wyvern’s jaws grind open and away. The ice melts before Alan as he strides for Gwen, hand splayed to puppet the monster off of her. It makes it but a step or two before remembering Guilfoyle, tries to shake him for all the blood still streaming from its throat. All dragons heal fast. This one doesn't seem to be healing at all.

Adalia’s temporarily on her own.

Edited 2018-08-12 09:03 (UTC)

It's difficult to maintain a shape when one's concentration is constantly being battered at — somewhat literally, even — but Adalia refuses to allow herself to fail. There's a thump nearby as a wyvern falls, only significant in that it means they are, presumably, winning —

but to a wolf there is no winning or losing, there is only dead and not dead, and Adalia means to be in the latter category when all this ends.

She's forced to relinquish her grip on the wyvern's throat when it slams her into a rock, the force of the blow snapping her jaws open, but she doesn't give it time to gear up for another acid attack, lunging immediately upward with her paws to claw at its eyes. The wyvern shrieks and hisses, rearing backward not yet blind but halfway there. Adalia takes the opportunity to launch herself forward again, this time landing more securely on the wyvern's side and forcing it down into the muck as she searches for a weak spot on its hide.

It's an iron thing, old — older than the bones that choke this stretch of river — hide burnished for near an Age of skins shed and regrown.

And shed again. There's a hollow in the great hump of its neck, where shoulder meets muscle: A young wyrm's injury, never knit again quite whole. It gives beneath the press of teeth, caves unnaturally in place; enough brute force, and she'll have an end of this at last.

(A small dynasty of scale, snuffed out.)

"Let me see," Alan crouches beside Gwen to take her mangled leg, disregards the thrashing thing, the knives yet nearby. Pressure collects in the air nearby, or. Not the air. Something near to it. "Does it hurt?"

Probably. But the way she answers matters.

The beat of wings overhead and Gwenaëlle, dazed, oblivious momentarily to Guilfoyle struggling (not for much longer) with the last breaths of the wyvern, “Did you see the bird?”

—she flinches at his hands, pain sharpening focus in this moment and not wherever she was before, knuckles white clutching the bow and cheekbone and temple turning deeper, muddier colours where she'd collided hard with unsympathetic foliage. It hurts, and she's pale with it but pulled taut with triumph, too. The impact of arrow in beast still reverberates behind her sternum, rage a fist she's learning to wield and not a mouth sewn shut.

(This is probably fine.)

"Yes," He saw the bird. It’s entirely possible that Alan notices birds before he notices people, or the time of day, or whether the room is on fire. "Did you know him?"

What mangled muscles? They’re talking about birds. A hand to her face, slick with her own blood (as holy as the creatures dying about them, as much one). The other takes a tear in her sleeve, rips cloth free. There's no hope of soaking all the blood, and this isn't water to pour over a wound; enough death in it already.

The last of the wyvern's life slides out upon Guilfoyle's knives. The red thread winding through their little circle rips at once tight as cord, unspools itself into flesh with fever-heat. It's imprecise. Bruises bloom brown-green-yellow-gone before the marks of teeth begin to mend themselves. Awareness clears and —

That may not be ideal. The bow's good, for all its absent string: It's something to grip. This isn't pleasant.

It's not enough, either. Skin crawls with stolen life, restitches meat to bone, and Alan turns to bite his own hand, chews a great rend in old scar with the unflinching expression of old practice. Hurt can be turned outwards, but there are limits, and he's already overspent. The eroded edges of the Fade have worn a little farther from his grasp. Can't do more without digging in his own guts, or another's. That Guilfoyle might volunteer doesn't mean he's about to ask.

Gwen won't be walking steadily for a bit, and sickness is certain without minding. Adalia might see to that upkeep, if she's the skill — else they may need to make new contacts. Alan shoots a glance over his shoulder for the wolf.

Takes a while sometimes, to come out of a place. Takes a while to remember your own.

Edited 2018-08-27 03:48 (UTC)

The wolf stands over its kill, one massive paw planted on the wyvern's partially-removed foreleg and rent chest, maw bloody and dripping. Her head lifted and ears pricked to attention, they swivel this way and that as she listens for more enemies. None seem to be forthcoming, and the wolf gradually relaxes, licking its chops of blood as it turns to lope toward Alan and Gwenaëlle. The human she sniffs at, looking down at the wound in her leg —

and suddenly Adalia stands where the wolf had been, dropping to her knees next to Gwenaëlle, heedless of the muck. Some things fade with the sloughed-off shape; the wyvern blood around her mouth does not.

"Are you stable, can you walk?"

She might be able to give Gwenaëlle slightly more mobility, but this wound is larger than she can heal in one day.

Edited 2018-08-30 02:26 (UTC)

Pain strains her voice—awareness is terrible, her knuckles turning white around the bow that she is unlikely to release her grip on any time soon—but she is sufficiently stable to bark a laugh, to say, “Apparently I know the wolf as well,” which means yes, of the bird, or at least she thinks so—

It couldn't be, but maybe it was. It's gone, now, when she looks; maybe it's stupid that she looked at all. She doesn't believe in those things, she's sure, except perhaps while she's bleeding.

“I can try,” she says, but Guilfoyle is already wrapping an arm around her waist and lifting her from the water, only a tightening of his jaw betraying how much more effort doing so requires of him now than it once might have.

The shift hurts, too, but she grits her teeth through it. It's Guilfoyle who says, “Your own wyvern bite will need attention,” to Alan, impassively rewriting history. What blood magic.

It says something, maybe, that Adalia didn't even notice Alan's own wound, too preoccupied with Gwenaëlle's. She pushes to her feet, looking between Gwen and Alan with a rather torn expression — she can only do so much, and if she spreads her limited healing abilities between both of them she can do even less.

Not to mention that that hardly looks like a wyvern bite, but that's not particularly important at the moment, is it.

"I could... help? With that? I can try to help Gwenaëlle walk better or I can try to close that up some, or I could do both with less efficacy, what would be most helpful?"

It’s slow going.

Through the muck and patches of trees, patches of fog, past stilted shacks and wary eyes.

Elves are rare, regarded with caution (even unmarked Dalish sometimes range west). Open spellcraft draws open hostility; one woman makes a sign across her chest to see Alan pass.

The Chantry sister who tends these scattered villages is away several days’ journey, and the world has gone with her. Those with enough Trade to be understood — or enough patience to try their peculiar dialect of Orlesian on foreign ears — ask of the cities, the war. This, they insist, is not the Empire.

(A deserter or two have ventured this far to vanish again. Strangers are only welcome so long.)

The Inquisition brings confusion, and talk of the Herald, of her worship as a god. Is it truth? Heresy? Theirs is a devotion made fierce for its isolation, but it strays, warps.

The herb brings — eventually — an old man with an axe. His accent's difficult to place: Uses the clear, unhurried speech of someone who expects to be heard. Possibly that’s the axe. His face is a vicious ribbon of scars, thin as the point of a very fine knife.

He doesn’t require an introduction. He doesn’t want trouble. And if they agree to leave quietly, he’ll show them how to wring something useful from these roots.

Edited 2018-08-02 07:23 (UTC)

Guilfoyle is a man of few words, most days; he has been a man of few words this trip, speaking briefly when spoken to and when necessary, offering his guidance where prudent but fading—habitually, it had been quickly evident—into the quiet background of most moments.

So it's unusual that he doesn't fade back a step and let the little ones tumbling across the Orlesian countryside ahead of him handle this old man and his axe on their own, a shadow whose interest in Gwenaëlle's safety has been both obvious and obviously paramount. His coat hangs to show where his weapons are, and how far from them his hands, and he says,

“I trust you've no desire for our return,” which is so mild it cannot possibly be but a warning.

He wouldn't mislead them, would he. Because Felix would hate to have to come back and drag him arse-first out of retirement.

Elouan’s frown is slight, temperate. Even here, certain graces are required, for old friends and new.

"A long journey." To purpose. He hasn't gone this far to be found. His grip on the axe shifts — "Your knees, this weather."

— Loosens. Hasn’t gone this far looking to go out like that. If word of him makes its way back to court, it will see him some days gone. A gesture to follow, over sodden ground, past ladders grown slick with damp.

He moves little like a younger man, but there's the shadow of it in each tired step, over to one of the few dwellings left at ground level.

Nothing in here can be a permanent installation. Gwenaelle's offered a hammock, but he keeps conspicuous distance, won't press the issue if she protests. The others are allowed close, about a worktable as scored as its owner. He gestures to them before proceeding: Which of them need showing?

(Felix is capable, and elves are so often promising poisoners. But the boy isn't someone he imagines trusting measurements to.)

Edited 2018-08-12 07:35 (UTC)

Adalia steps forward, unthinking, curious and eager to learn. This is all so very cloak-and-dagger for some plants, everyone thinking so many things they're not saying — whatever, who cares. There's something to be taught, and she's always eager to learn, so she crosses her arms and leans forward, tapping the tip of her boot against the floor as she waits.

Elouan's brows lift up at the tapping, a touch of life returned to grim features. Easier to imagine now, how once they might have puppeted into place over an amusing joke, a private indulgence.

He brushes dust from the root, strips free the offshoots to place aside, in a jar steeped with swampwater. The roots are gnarled things, twisted as the years they've grown around. He lines them up neatly, precise,

And brings the axe down with jarring force.

"Important," He drawls, stepping aside so that she might see better. That it puts his back to the wall is surely coincidence. "To miss one’s fingers."

Great force is — apparently — required to chop it; if the skin isn’t soaked first (a matter of weeks in similar waters to these) they’ll have a blunted blade at best. Preservation is a delicate process of boiling, pickling, dilution. Additives, each requiring their own preparation. If it all seems a complicated dance to be done over a firepit in bumfuck nowhere, well.

There’s a reason this isn’t common knowledge.

"You understand," At last, when it’s settling, when he’s certain she's caught the important bits. When there’s a different vial in his hand, one that needn’t sit and wait some months ahead. "What this does?"

He isn’t asking Guilfoyle. His eyes find Adalia's, and don't so much linger as settle into place. He can wait all day.

Edited 2018-08-27 04:19 (UTC)

CLOSED | i'm not one to ever pray for mercy

INTRODUCTIONS | single thread pls

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WYVERNS | single threeeeaad

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VILLAGERS | single or multiple i'm not your boss

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