[closed] DANGEROUS GAME

[esquive]

WHO: Kylo Ren, Anna, Etienne, and Marcoulf
WHAT: In exchange for his support at the front lines, a small group has been dispatched to clear bandits from the Comte Chantral de Velun's estate. Spoilers: they're not bandits.
WHEN: Early Harvestmere
WHERE: Orlais, the Heartlands
NOTES: CW: violence, death, murdering innocent folks on the behalf of THE RICH, setting-typical discrimination; it's not great, bob. ASSIGNMENT INFO

The Orlesian Heartlands bloom in every season. In Spring, it is daisies and apple blossoms; in Summer small white flowers and black-eyed susans and poppies all red; and here at the beginning of Autumn the trees burnish themselves and black-green and golds, yellowing grasses ceding to white limbed poplar with their spinning coin leaves. Even far from any field for growing in, the Velun lands paints itself in harvest colors. The land and air recognizes what Celene might not yet admit - that change is a season rotating, and that some things have been the same for long enough that they insist on circling.

Comments

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A pause - Marcoulf lifts his eyes to her, though his fingers continue to work their way through the flour and water until it forms a paste. After a beat, his attention lowers again.

It sounds like Templars and mages and broken circles. It sounds like abominations spilling out into the streets and countryside unchecked. It doesn't sound strange - these things are more normal than they were when he was a boy - but it is odd to recognize the things that Rifters say as something familiar.

There's an argument to be made here about the comfort of the expected and what demons might use that. There are people who would hear it and see it as proof that the ruling of a Divine-less Chantry can't be true, that Rifters must be demons. But Marcoulf has no business in politics and he thinks if they are demons, then Rifters have been doing a sorry job of tearing the world to pieces.

"A shame," he says. It is, even if it has no bearing here and even if saying it will make no difference to her. "Something like it happened there in Kirkwall too. The city nearly razed to the ground and blood running red in the street, evidently."

[notched]

She had said: Much of it looks the same, first brush, then... Something different under the surface. But not that different.

Maybe there weren't werewolves and other twisted beasts lurking the streets of Kirkwall in packs in the night, but this place had its own ambitions, its own misguided magicks, its own arrogant researchers. She hadn't left the Hunt in Yharnam. There was no leaving the Hunt. The Hunt was everywhere.

"Not a surprise," her tone as dull and matter-of-fact as his own. She likes that about him. Minds himself. Doesn't say too much. "Wouldn't surprise me if they did it all again, a few years time."

[esquive]

"In Kirkwall? No, I wouldn't either. That city is cursed." As truly as some rune enchanted ring might be. Harder to tell under all its people and trade and that pretty story about its Champion, but he isn't lettered and even he knows history hates that city. The cliffs could one day fall away into the sea and he thinks no one would be shocked by it.

"Let's hope to see it," he says, a macabre kind of humor as he rolls the sticky dough between his hands and divides it into pieces. Presses them flat. Wraps the skinned apples in them.

[notched]

That is bleak, and the pure ugliness of it makes something akin to a smile curl her mouth. She hides it in the collar of her coat, turning her head, chin tucked down. There's something to the idea of watching the fall of a city she hadn't invested so much of her heart into. A great cataclysm that she could watch, untouched by.

"From a distance," she agrees. A tragedy at a distance, without all the wretched nuance she had come to learn about in Yharnam: all the good intentions and evil ones, all the desperate bargains and delusions.

She stops her skulking, taking off her gloves to kneel by the fire and add the apple he had handed her to the workings. If she's not going to eat it, it might as well get prepared with the rest.

[esquive]

He chuckles, teeth flashing behind his whiskers as he pinches the dough shut around the small apples. "Of course."

Even better would be to hear about it while drinking in some distant tavern, he thinks but doesn't say as he retrieves the wet cloth from the now boiling water and shakes it out. It's laid damp out over his knees and the wrapped apples twisted in each corner until they form four tightly wound hanging bundles. Marcoulf cheerfully runs a stick between them, sets the lot in the boiling water and hooks the stick on the edges of the pot. At last, he dusts his hands. There; in an hour they'll have something worth eating.

"And you, my dear?" Asked as he wipes out the shallow bowls, stacking them inside each other. "Are you reliable?"

[notched]

Her nose wrinkles, a childish expression of distaste. When she was out in the open like this, it became much more obvious that her face often gave away what she was feeling. Whether it was distaste for being addressed as a dear, or whether it was utter sorrow for the fate of Yharnam. It becomes even more obvious at the question of her reliability: a little nauseated.

It was easier to play the stoic Hunter all buttoned and tied up in her leathers. That was why the Hunters wore them, a meticulous facade that helped them to remember they were not beasts, but nor could they really be men while on the Hunt. That was why she bore the whip, to keep the things at a distance. That was why she wore the hat and the gorget and the gloves, to keep their blood from touching her. It wasn't practical armor, it wouldn't protect her from fang, claw, nor magic. Not her body anyway, but maybe a little sliver of her mind.

Even then, how reliable is her mind. Her hunt -- for the truth, for answers -- had ended with her turning tail from the screaming monster on the beach, running back to Yharnam after having seen too much. The Yharnam of the Dream was at the center of a web of nightmares. She had peaked into each and not had the courage to go any further.

"For this," she decides to be the best answer. "Reliable enough if... you need a killer. A scout."

She could creep and crawl like a shadow, usually to the ends of gutting creatures open from behind and revelling in the rain of their blood-- but she could probably control herself. Probably. Although, when was the last time she had to?

[esquive]

"Plenty of use for both those things these days," Marcoulf says, mild as milk while he tucks the stacked bowls away into his travelling bag. The satchel of flour follows after them, then the bag's string is drawn tight and its button closed. "If you'd come ten years ago, the work would be harder to find."

There'd be no reason for her to be here at all then, of course - the circumstances of her arrival having something to do with the way to the work is coming undone like a blighted sweater -, but the point stands. These days, living on your sword or barbed whip or whatever bloody thing you might care for is easily done so long as you don't kark it in the process.

"But good. I suspect there's some fighting to be done ahead of us."