faderift | [Closed] The Bone Pit

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[Closed] The Bone Pit

WHO: Adasse Agassi, Sorrel Ashara, Cyril Ashara, and Ygnvi
WHAT: Three elves and a dwarf go to a creepy old former slaving mine. What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
WHEN: End of Kingsway
WHERE: THE BONE PIT
NOTES: Possible warnings for violence and derogatory terms about elves, dwarves, and the Inquisition.

The journey to the Bone Pit takes about as long as it would take to get to the Sundermount, so really not long at all. A few hours on horse, and the three elves have arrived at the entrance. Adasse climbs off the horse that James Kirk has left him, and pats the animal's neck fondly, before looking around the area, dark eyes sweeping, looking for threats.

He's trying to be all Scouting Business, considering that he's here for Beleth.

And yes, he might be trying to impress his current lover and his former one with just how professional he is. Mostly though, he's just trying to figure out if they have to deal with giant dragons.

"You know ..." He says almost conversationally, not looking over at the other two, but off into the setting sun. "I hear the Champion used to own these mines. Do you think that means it won't be cursed, or it'll be twice as cursed?"

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"Twice as cursed," Cyril replies as he makes sure to get his bow ready just in case. He doesn't even skip a beat as he answers.

"Definitely twice as cursed."

"Actually, I'm surprised the mines still exist, after contact with the Champion," Sorrel adds, busily checking to make sure the precious lyrium he's been outfitted with isn't going to leak or shift, "That's how you know they're at least thrice as cursed."

And he grins at Cyril behind Adasse's back. Whatever else lay between or behind them, they're both the terrors of Ashara now. Or at least the Keeper might say so.

"If we clear out the mines, we get to keep them, right?"

Adasse snickered softly at the two of them, before pulling his own blades out so they would be on the ready. They had no idea what they were going to be dealing with - the report said some sort of haunting with lights.

"Do you really want to own a mine that's been twice cursed by the Champion of Kirkwall?" He said wryly, as he nodded at the path. "There's the direct way in. Who wants to do it the smart way and come up over the ridge instead?"

"When you word it like that, why would we ever choose anything other than the ridge, hm?" Cyril asks. He should probably take things more seriously, but it's really difficult to do so when he's with them. Making jokes and flirting is one of the few ways he knows how to interact with Adasse.

"Alright, but only if both of you go first," Because he's wearing these rather nice robes that are woven to make casting a bit easier and not because he wants to look at butts. That would be improper, "You're both wearing leather, is all."

Leather armor, which is really quite protective when properly made, and properly fitted. And no one can fault the Inquisition for the quality of their armor, even for elves. Nor the fit. Ahem.

And off we go.

"Don't worry love, we'll protect that beautiful face from getting bloody." Adasse winked over his shoulder at Sorrel, before he jerked a chin at Cyril to follow after him. He was the one who was the short range combat fellow here, after all. Cyril at least would be able to keep people off Sorrel from range.

Hood pulled up, he went into a crouch as they moved through the brush. He sniffed, then frowned. "...do you two smell something ... burning?"

Sometimes a person has shit to do because when there are three stipends coming your way that does in fact mean there are three corresponding sets of obligations to be set to rights.

The burning smell might well be the entrance Yngvi makes because he's been galloping along to the Bone Pit on one hell of a tourney horse, wearing sunglasses (found or stolen) and the horse is also, somehow, wearing sunglasses.

And because he's a dwarf, and because dwarves are the stone and therefore their bones are not made of glass, he's able to just jump off it in one go to land in the dirt.

"Gaspard fuckin'...look I know. I know but just slum it. For a bit." Sometimes a dwarf has to console a horse who might have preferred the butcher's block to present company as Yngvi strolls up and says: "Still stinks of doglord."

"I don't want to tell you to shut up," Sorrel says to Yngvi, as he arrives just in time to ruin all this good mood, "So I won't."

Which is to say, he both does and does not hope Adasse overhears that kind of talk. Never seen a dwarf get eaten by a dragon before.

This is technically a greeting. Hi, Yngvi.

Cyril nods his own greeting at Yngvi but mostly considers the complaint that the dwarf had shared.

"I've always wondered what people think 'doglord' smells like. The only Fereldans I've gotten close enough to smell, end up just smelling like humans. It's almost disappointing."

"Maybe dogs?" Sorrel replies, always game for the joke, "Probably not like burning."

Which is, incidentally, what he's smelling. He moves up with Cyril towards Adasse and Yngvi.

"What is that?"

Adasse is not going to get into a discussion about 'doglords' because 'doglords' were the ones who owned mabaris and those were rich humans. Not poor elven servants, like his parents were.

He is going to roll his eyes where none of the rest of them can see him, and keep creeping forward.

"Definitely burning." He murmured, then jerked back as a bright flash came across the sky, "Maker's Balls! What the - "

Another explosion and another flash of bright sparks, somewhere in the distance. Something in his stomach plummeted.

"Demons?"

The explosions and sparks are creepy enough, but then Cyril's stomach twists up at the mention of demons. Could there be some kind of Rift here or something similar? They didn't have anyone with shards to deal with such a thing.

It doesn't seem like that, though. They know what Rifts look like, after all. People have been falling out of them for ages now.

"Sorrel, you're the only mage here. Have you seen anything like that?" he thinks maybe if it's not a Rift it could be something else to do with the Fade, especially if demons are involved.

It's almost out of Yngvi's mouth to say well don't but instead he offers up half a prayer to one of the Avvar gods and privately thinks that it falls under some blurry line of discretion is the better part of valour. They're a capricious lot and this is Kirkwall they're in, it's a place where the lines are meant to be blurred.

"None of you knew Asher then," he says under his breath instead because ten years give or take of intensive rearing in the armpit of hairy unwashed part-Avvar doglord inures you to a near-tangible funk that rises off them, mist on the moors, low cloud on the hills.

"Might still be apostates hidin' out here. Bunch of them got sent from Starkhaven when their Circle was burnt down," Yngvi remember that, it'd been good for trade for a bit they'd all eaten well. "After everything what went down if they wanted to stick around but not right in the hot seat, wouldn't be so bad."

If people think a dwarf might not be light on his feet well that'd be there business to think it, he's not a stout thing, practiced at this anyway so he creeps forward because even if Orzammar wouldn't want to admit it, Yngvi is as good under the earth as any of that lot are. "Mages flash more than demons, lightning spells and all that shit that makes your teeth go funny for a few hours after if it hits you right."

Sorrel concentrates for a moment, eyes slightly unfocused as he feels with that strange blind-groping sense for the veil... but it seems all as it should be. He shakes his head slowly, then with more certainty.

"It's not a demon, I don't think. Nor a Rift," Says Sorrel, and his tone says something to the effect of Thank Mythal's blessing for that. He has no desire to see a demon today, nor a Rift, even one so conveniently located for all the Rifters, "Could be apostates... Whatever that means, nowadays. I've never seen magic that smelled like that before?"

He's not a confident person, alright?

"Let's get a better look, yeah? Nothing we can't handle."

"Well, not sure I'm really happier with it being apostates in the Bone Pit ... " Because that meant they were probably blood mages but Adasse wasn't going to judge, "But yeah, we got this."

He met Ygnvi's gaze, "You go left with Cyril, I go right with Sorrel, we clamp this problem in the middle?"

"Hm-mm, but don't get distracted you too," he teased a bit, unable to let the fact that Adasse picked to go with his boyfriend slide without comment. He lets it drop after that, though, not wanting Ygnvi to think he wouldn't take his part in this seriously.

Keeping low to the ground, Yngvi rifles through his pockets to slide brass knuckles on in the event that there's something to be dealt with so that he's not someone that has to go rifling through his pockets looking for brass knuckles.

"If people want to call themselves apostates instead of whatever else they're going that's their own business." Have you ever really listened to a Circle mage saying 'well I'm an Aequitarian' and kept a straight face or not wanted to ask if they need a lie down or something to flush out all the shite they're talking? "It's the Bone Pit, so long as they're not rolling around in their own blood trying to bring back a dragon."

Because it's Kirkwall and that'd be par for the course after all. Yngvi is half-saying this to Cyril in a low undertone, half into the crystal since it makes this sort of thing easier than the Boneflayer days of hand signals and whistles that tended to get lost or echoed strangely in places. The smell is worse as he goes but that's being a short as he is, still, it's not as terrible as Orzammar, and infinitely better than getting landed with a forest assignment so he'll take his relatively few comforts where he can find them.

Sorrel rolls his eyes at all this, thinking with annoyance that this, of all things, would be what it took for him to want to defend Dalish mage politics. But he creeps along behind Adasse and doesn't say anything aloud; communicative grimaces are plenty enough, he figures.

It really is a strange smell, almost like burned chalk more than wood. Rotten-smelling, even, like... eggs?

There's another flash, up ahead of their little pincer maneuver, and it's accompanied by a fine mist, much attenuated by the shortening distance. Sorrel quints at it. Sparkles? It's not fire. It's just... sparkly.

"...Is this even magic?" He whispers, doubtfully, and glances at Adasse for confirmation.

Dalish mage politics had little to do with the Bone Pit, honestly. All of that could be taken to Sundermount, as far as Adasse knew. Er. Well. It could. Before, uh, the thing. With Merrill - he was just going to shut up in his own brain.

Adasse also frowns at this show of ... sparkles, tipping his head to the side as he breathes in. Sulfur, like in the swamps.

He glances back at Sorrel, before shaking his head in turn, whispering into the crystal as well. "I ... don't think so. Alchemy? Maybe?"

Something else lurches in his stomach, but he immediately calms it to ask more sanely, "Gaatlok is a lot more explosive, yes?"

Cyril has never really seen anything like this and doesn't have anything to really add to their speculation. He grows quiet as they watch the sparks. The smell doesn't help either.

He can't see the other elves any more so he looks over to Yngvi to see if he has anything to add.

"If this is that tit Javaris he's got some explaining to do, I call dibs on account of him being a dwarf." It's only fair to let a dwarf sort out another dwarf, turns into a bit of a scuffle usually about the sensitive regions on taller folk anyway. "We'd be buried if it was Gaatlok and the Qunari aren't sniffing around Kirkwall, they're protective about that, wasn't fun when they were there and everyone wanted a snifter of it."

Like it was port after the fancy dinner. Yes, Arishok, some of your finest Gaatlok we won't blow up half the city with it we know what we're doing. Yngvi rolls his eyes letting out a heavy - quiet - sigh. Kirkwall hadn't been a fun place to be for the end of his time there prior to the grand Inquisition homecoming.

"Dunno about alchemy," more to Cyril since they're underground and the crystals might carry now he's said his piece on the Gaatlok. "I only know the test subject side from my brother, he was more potions, salves, poisons, nothing that'd be drawing attention to dwarf lads in Kirkwall. Think there's some who do the throwing flask thing? Gets called something stupid, should be storm in a teacup it's all they are."

(They're lamer than artificers who know what true art is and his tone implies he's gotten into fights over it. Fights he's won because he's not throwing bottles of fancy piss at people in battle from a hundred yards back.)

Sorrel shakes his head with a grin when Yngvi singles out any potential troublemaker for a dwarf-on-dwarf sort of justice. They'll all have to write reports, of course, promise or no. And then the whole business is the Inquisition's problem, present work aside.

But it's a nice thought. Would that all troubles could be solved so straightforwardly.

They creep forward and find, in the cup of the Bone Pit's.... pit... a gaggle of humans. Or well, teenagers, really. They're doing what those possessed of more youthful exuberance than sense do; hooting and laughing and cheering with every throw— of the bombs. The latest one to be lobbed explodes in a shower of sparkles and a satisfying thoom, bursting impressively against a large flattish stone already caked and spattered with silver and pink and blue flecks. Glitter-bombs.

"Fenedhis lasa," Sorrel curses, with exasperation, and straightens from the crouch, "It's just a pack of kids."

"... if this is some damned alchemist throwing about things, you can have him. Cyril, Sorrel and I will head back to town with appropriate levels of 'you stupid frigging idiot blowing up things out here ...'"

He trails off as he peers over the top of the ridge with Sorrel, and then stands up as before he huffs out a breath.

"Maker's Balls. Yeah, of course it's stupid shem children." Even money they were about to get called racial epitaphs for breaking up this idiot's gaggle.

Adasse eyes his daggers, then eyes the kids, then eyes his daggers. "Could just go running in there, all armed and make them piss themselves."

"Crazy knife ear threatens to stab adorable young people just having a good wholesome time playing with fire, why does the Inquisition tolerate these degenerate thugs," Sorrel replies, in a tone of dry, painful sarcasm, "Better throw him in the prison forever."

And you're getting a look to go with it. No fun zone, Adasse, and here's you right at the middle of it, courtesy of Sorrelean Ashara.

The bombs are actually pretty impressive and Cyril kind of wants to figure out how they made them, but he doesn't say that. Instead, he tries to figure out what they should do now.

"Sorrel, your mom's the Keeper, can't you come up with your best 'I'm disappointed in you and you'll never amount to anything' voice and go talk to them?"

"I'm sorry, why am I always the Keeper One?" He whines, clearly already resigned to being just that, "If this were a proper clan, I'd just let Adasse do what he liked. I like Adasse's plan."

It was a nice, mean-spirited plan. And a proper clan would have the benefits of a defensive position and the ability to leg it at the first sign of trouble. And the benefit, of course, that none of this would be their problem in the first place.

"If I get exploded into sparkly bits, you are to avenge me immediately."

"And yet you shut down the 'frighten the piss out of the shem children' plan right away." Adasse drawled, smirking over his shoulder at Sorrel.

He hummed softly, before tipping his chin to the side. "All right, we're not allowed to scare them. Since Sorrel doesn't want to blow up, conversations are the way to go."

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[Closed] The Bone Pit

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ugh sorry for the delay guys. this month has suucked.

work was wild apologies

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