faderift | CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

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CLOSED | one minute you say we're a team

WHO: Darras & Yseult
WHAT: A random courier mission
WHEN: Before news from Tevinter
WHERE: A road into the Vinmarks
NOTES: Pirate language probable. Maybe giant spiders. Who knows.

[ It's not exactly a glamorous mission, which is fine. The problem--Yseult thinks to herself but does not say when she is handed the assignment--is that it's also not a good use of her skills. Yes, the agent needs to be met in the pass midway from Wildervale, the message needs to be collected and delivered the rest of the way to Kirkwall. But surely they could send someone else, like an actual messenger, or anyone with two legs and a brain, and not a highly-trained spy? At first she'd thought perhaps there must be some other dimension to this, some suspicion about the courier, or some potential threat. But no. This is the Inquisition, and as it turns out their rumored egalitarian leanings are both very much true and also seem extend even to their internal assignment structures. It's all very different than she's used to.

So her horse is not the only one champing at the bit to get going and get this over with as she waits just outside Kirkwall's northern gate. Even this early, the road toward Wildervale is busy, merchants and farmers coming and going, wagon traffic stirring up dust to make the already-sweltering day even less pleasant. Her horse is a big grey mare who immediately ate every green thing in reach and has now taken to snorting impatiently, head tossed as much as the reins tied to a tree branch will allow her. Yseult leans against the trunk out of biting range, arms crossed, squinting at the gate. "Someone from Forces will meet you," she was told at the last second, over her protests (not in so many words) that sending two skilled agents was even worse than wasting one. But it seems there have been reports of animal attacks, and they are taking no chances.

She doesn't expect to see Darras, and even shades her eyes with a hand to be sure (as if she could mistake him). She doesn't expect him to come towards her, either. What are the chances, after all, that out of everyone in Forces, his name was pulled? And that he actually turned up to do the work? Slim, but here they are. She pushes off the trunk and lifts her hand in a little (awkward, ill-advised) wave. ]

Good morning.

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I've don't know what you're talking about, [ Yseult demures, allowing him to take the skin from her hand. ] I've never dawdled in my life.

But it is necessary to take a break from time to time to ensure that the horses don't overheat. They seemed to be straining, and I thought it best to trajectory precautions.

[ The horses looked fine. She flashes him a smile. ]

Is that it.

[He raises his eyebrows at her, gives it a beat, before he raises the water skin to get a good long drink for himself--then another quick sip, before he wipes his wrist across his mouth.]

Kind of you to be thinking of the horses. Are you sure it wasn't yourself that you were worried about? You're looking a bit pink in the cheeks. Could be that freckles start to show through soon.

I think lunch in the shade's a marvelous idea. For you. And the horses.

Freckles? I can't have that. [ Yseult deadpans. But he's not wrong, she is likely on her way to a sunburn, tan beginning to take on a pinky-red undertone that doesn't bode well. Even at sea, with the sun reflected off the water, there's always some escape between tasks, and it's not as if her work had her spending all day up in the lines. There's only so far one can adapt to sun like this.

She tosses him her bag, which contains bread mostly and some fruit, and slides down to sit at the base of the tree, leaning back against it and stretching legs out in front of her. ]

I didn't bring much I'm afraid, I didn't think it would last in this heat.

[ As she waits for him to serve himself, she presses a finger at her forearm and watches the skin pale slightly and then the color return. ] I think all my freckles may have merged into one.

Edited 2018-08-17 16:49 (UTC)

[He catches the bag mid-cross to her, and undoes the top as he's sinking down to sit beside her on the ground. Too familiar, again, too close for the distance he had set out to maintain. She's ceded ground on that distance already. He might as well do the same.

And--busy cataloging the lunch offering--he only catches the end of her assessment, the frank press of finger to forearm. It makes him grin anyways, as he holds the bread out to her, so she can tear off a hunk to start her off.]

Now, that's a disturbing image. Perhaps you'd better stay here and I'll go off and do all the work myself, and pick you up on the way back. What d'you think? Your conscience stand that sort of laziness?

[ It is too close and too familiar, too tempting. Too easy to give in to that temptation without even having to really decide to do it. A shift here, a lean there, a lucky accident of timing, an unconscious gesture. Much too easy. She doesn't move away, instead reaches over to take the water back from his lap as he's busy with the bag and drinks. It gets set in the grass between them when she's done so she can tear off a handful of bread, pulling against his grip on the loaf instead of just taking it away. ]

It might, as long as I can trust the work is being done. [ She'd never, but she is admittedly not in any great rush to get back on the road now that they've made some solid progress instead of their early plodding. ] But there have been reports of bear attacks in the mountains; I can't abandon you to be eaten.

You think I couldn't handle myself against a bear?

[He holds the bread steady, for her--and, once she's gotten her piece free, takes a bite right from the bit where she'd ripped from. Chews a little, before he adds, still with his mouth half-full--]

Could. Definitely. How big can they be? I've managed horses, now--trees, managed those-- Bears? Can't be anything.

Smaller than trees but larger than horses. [ Yseult replies between bites. ] Somewhat more dangerous than either.

[ She smiles, tearing off another chunk of bread and holding it between fingertips. ]

I've seen a bear but never had to fight one. Perhaps I imagine it more difficult than it is. Or perhaps you imagine it too easy. But I'm sure between the two of us it wouldn't be much trouble in either case.

Can't be more dangerous than one of those giant squids you find out on the Amaranthine. Much larger than a tree, doubly larger than horses. If they're more or less dangerous, I s'ppose that would depend on how you were qualifying the danger...

[Thoughtfully, he takes another bite of bread and chews it.]

Never fought one of them either. But I've prepared for it at least. Mentally, you know. So I think I could take on a bear. If it was the two of us, I'd say neither squid nor bear nor tree would stand much of a chance.

'Course, a bit of personal bias comes into me saying that. What else is in these woods, that we're going to find ourselves fighting?

[As to what else is in the sack, Darras reaches in and comes up with two pears. He holds one out to her, invitingly.]

Edited 2018-08-17 21:33 (UTC)

Those aren't actually real. [ A pause, in which she turns toward him. ] Are they? I've never heard a story of them from anyone at all reliable.

[ Including Darras, who is not at all reliable when it comes to things like this. Other things, maybe. Tales of possibly-mythic sea creatures, not a bit. She takes the pear and sets it in her lap, leaning back again and finishing off the rest of her bread piece by piece as he talks up their chances. ]

In these woods? There shouldn't be much. Wolves, maybe, and Dalish pass through sometimes, but both are more likely to steer clear of the road. Big cats, possibly. I don't spend much time in the woods.

I've heard tell from men I'd trust with my life, that they're real. And you consider me reliable, yeah? So by association, you've got to be believing in the reliability of the truth of giant man-eating squids with the massive fangs.

[He bites into his pear as punctuation, eyebrows arched with great significance.]

Might want to be adjusting the parameters on your reliable. Now, me, I trust you to be telling me the truth, that it's only wolves and bears and the Dalish that we'd have to be worrying about. Big cats. Really, the Dalish?

I don't know that I can call you reliable when it comes to prizing the truth over a good story. And giant man-eating squids with massive fangs are a very good story.

[ Yseult fixes him with a look that's skepticism and just as much eyebrows, and takes a bite of her own pear in punctuation.

She nods as she chews, saying after she's swallowed, ] They've been known to kill humans who wander across their path or their hunting grounds. I assume they're not related to those running the Inquisition.

[Chewing, he gives her a helpless it's-all-out-of-my-hands shrug. Clearly a man who would never purposefully prize truth over a good story. It might be something that happens, inadvertently.

He takes another bite as he looks about the surrounding woods, as if to pick out the shapes of Dalish creeping up on them now.]

Not that the Inquisition would know, if they were relations, considering that vetting process they do. [Or don't do.] I've heard some of them have got massive fangs as well. S'ppose that could have been only a story as well, but I can't say that with complete certainty.

Their vetting process is bizarre [ Yseult agrees, gesturing with her pear ] I come to them with an official letter of introduction, seal and all, and they have people checking up to make sure I'm legitimate before they'll trust me with anything. Anyone else wanders in off the street and claims they want to help and they're accepted without a single question asked of their background, as far as I can tell.

[ She takes another bite, shaking her head before leaning back against the tree again with a faint thunk, eyes on the canopy overhead. ] I just wish they'd give me something worthwhile to do. I haven't been stuck running messages since I was sixteen. [ a beat ] Not that this is so terrible.

Should've kept that sealed letter up your sleeve, held it for an actually useful time. You went and wasted it right up front.

[Mind, Darras isn't complaining that he wasn't carefully vetted. Nor would he complain that the Inquisition seems perfectly fine with actual pirates, fine enough that Darras could tell the truth, and he'd not likely be stuffed in a cell. A whole ship of pirates comes sailing in to the harbor, and the Inquisition lets them take up housing. It's nothing he'll be raising with Yseult, but she can't have missed that particular arrival.

Better to keep all that to himself. He takes two brisk bites, with a little smirk at the content of her complaint.]

And what is it, that would be more worthwhile, in your mind?

[ All of those pirates are certainly who Yseult has in mind when she complains about lax vetting standards; if they're allowed to just walk in openly, who all is the Inquisition unwittingly accepting? It's worked out in Darras's case, but it's not what she'd expected the Inquisition to be. Very little of it is, so far. But she doesn't want to steer this conversation there and risk giving him ammunition to renew the argument that they should both just go. ]

Intelligence-gathering. Determining which side suspected enemy sympathizers are on. Stealing correspondence between enemy agents, finding out about their meetings and spying on them, mapping their network. Feeding bad intel to those we can use, eliminating those we can't. [ She shrugs, and tucks the bite of pear she's just taken into one cheek to add ] Choosing the missions is over my head, but something that makes use of my actual skills. What do they have you doing?

[He spreads his hands out, in a small gesture of presentation.]

This. So you're not alone in being undervalued. S'ppose I can't blame them, really. They can only make assignments based on what they know, and I was less than honest about my true line of work.

[Three more bites, and he's done with his pear. An overhand throw sends it rolling away into the underbrush, and he wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, clearing some of the juice.]

Now, if I was to be honest with them, d'you think it would forever ruin your chances of ever getting to do work worthy of your talents?

[ Good question. And good that he's asking it to begin with. Yseult's still got a few bites left to go, and she takes one as she considers. ]

No, I don't expect that it would. All we told them is that you were a contact of mine enlisted to help in that attempt, we never said you weren't also a pirate. The Commander at least may be more suspicious of me for concealing it, but they can hardly blame us. [ And apparently they've no problem with pirates. ] You should tell them if you want to.

[ Yseult finishes off the last of her fruit and wipes her fingers on the grass, and then her pants. She looks up as she's doing it, and flashes Darras a quick little smile before finding a reason to look away again, picking dirt from beneath her nail. ]

Thank you for asking first.

Yeah, well. Despite first impressions, I'm not actively seeking your failure.

[He says it lightly, means it as a joke. It's true, though, and as he admits it, Darras remembers, again, that night in the tower, stood face to face with a woman he'd assumed dead. Relief and disbelief, a flood of feeling that took his breath from him, left him gutted and weak. And then angry, when she'd not stayed in that moment with him.

She's still here, alive. Complicated, a puzzle Darras had thought he understood, before turning it over and finding another new facet, cripplingly complex. He looks over at Yseult, lovely in the shade of the forest.]

If you're here because you believe they're doing good, I'm not here to stand in the way of that. Never was. That's what I wanted for you, anyways-- [More or less, and his shrug denotes that, as he drops his eyes.] If you think you'll not get punished. Then I might as well tell them. The Commander, [with some sarcasm.]

[ Yseult smiles, as warm and true as he's seen in months. But it hangs a little too long--not changing, but the moment changing around it as it lingers past its natural lifespan without the expected follow-up. There's still these couple feet between them, and everything else besides, and even Yseult gets wrongfooted by that, the tangle of competing impulses.

Her eyes drop first, smile turning self-consciously crooked, and then she looks away altogether, brushing her hands together unnecessarily and pushing to her feet. ]

We should get back on the road.

[He's smiling back, without meaning to. The expression comes over him in answer to hers, and then it sticks, because hers is sticking too. He thinks for a moment about saying something, when she doesn't. How to fill that silence that falls between them. It isn't entirely empty. That's part of what stops him. There's something to it, a charge like what comes before a thunderstorm.

Yseult breaks that silence before it breaks itself, and Darras lets his gaze linger on her face a moment longer as she hauls herself to her feet. Then he grabs for the sack, still weighted with uneaten fruit.]

And here I was getting to just like the forest.

[He shoots another half-grin at her, and then all at once, his expression drops. There's a shadow, over her shoulder. It wasn't there before. Hulking, seething--moving almost soundless, closer, only now he can hear the whisper of it against the dry leaves--]

Yseult.

[She'll have heard it by now, if he's seen it. His hand has gone to a sword that isn't there. The falchion wasn't anything to ride with. It's back on Horse. And he's got a sack of food, and there's a bloody giant spider.]

[ She senses it in the same moment Darras sees it, the sudden absence of his smile in time with the prickling at the back of her neck. She turns just her head, far enough to make a rough guess at distance and determine she's got space enough to move swiftly back to Darras's side.

There's no blade at her hip either, but there are a few little ones tucked here and there, and she bends to produce the longest of them from her boot and hand it over, in case he hasn't got his own. The next she keeps for herself, fitting into her grip as she eyes the creature skittering menacingly toward them. ]

Even with eight legs it can't fight us both at once if we separate [ she says, voice low. As if might overhear. ] I'll draw it off, you circle around and hack off a leg. When it turns its attention to you, I'll take another. Good?

[Trust Yseult to have extra knives. Darras was just thinking longingly of his own when she produces one for him. He accepts, with a half-second grateful glance, unwilling to take his eyes from the spider for too long, lest it leap suddenly forward.

It doesn't. Content to approach, slow, with a hiss that raises the hair on his arms.]

Good, [he agrees.] Except for the bit where you didn't tell me to be watching out for bloody spiders. Bears, Dalish... no spiders.

[She'll move, as lithe and as graceful as the sidestep that put her at his side again. She'll draw it off, keeping well clear of it. Darras tightens his grip on Yseult's knife.]

You owe me, after this. For not giving the proper warning.

I didn't know there were spiders! [ Yseult replies, and there's a laugh in there, threaded through the tone of her protest, but already it's fading out as she shifts her focus to the task ahead.

The spider is still approaching, but slowly, by fits and starts, although it seems to be realizing that it's lost the element of surprise, and so scurries suddenly closer. Yseult darts ahead of Darras, makes herself noticeable with a lunging slash toward the beast, and then quickly circles and back out of range, moving into a wider space between the trees at Darras's 10 o'clock, hoping the spider will follow and leave its back exposed. ]

[Like clockwork, the spider follows, turning with surprising agility. The weight of its abdomen swings almost pendulum-like, forelegs raised off the ground, first, a menacing pose--one that doesn't last long. Darting forward, eyes glittering with a black malevolence--

And then Darras darts forward right after it, clean as clockwork himself. The knife is short--of course it's short, it's a bloody knife, but he's used to the sword, and he's got to get in close to hack at a leg--which he does, gamely, with a broad stoke.

The spider's scream, all rage and pain, almost makes Darras leap back again. He digs instead, hacks again--broad, brutal--and feels the leg give under the blade. Like chopping wood, but warmer, more alive--more angry, as the spider wheels around to seethe toward him instead.]

[ The spider's scream is horrible, almost enough to throw Yseult back a step or two. The beast wheels around to confront Darras and lunges toward him, front legs raised and fangs dripping, all the cautious build-up now abandoned.

The stump of the leg Darras has hacked off nearly whacks Yseult as the spider spins, and she does jump back then to avoid getting hit with what's left of the lower leg, still dangling. She leaves it, already made useless, and attacks the leg beside it. Her first attempt to chop through the leg as Darras did sticks in the spider's flesh and is nearly jerked back out of her hands. But it comes free and she re-sets her grip and steps in even closer to the spider, arm raised to stab repeatedly at the leg joint itself.

She's totally focused while she's doing it, the need to stab in the right area to incapacitate this second leg meaning that it takes her a while before she calls over to check: ]

All right?

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