faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ BLAZING LIKE STAR-SHINE

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition faces off against the armies of Corypheus
WHEN: Covers most of the day on 11.28 (forward-dated)
WHERE: The Fields of Ghislain, Orlais
NOTES: This is Post #1, covering the battle itself and the retreat. It contains top-levels for each of the teams and an open prompt for the retreat. The OOC post with more information/explanation is HERE. If you're not sure which team your character is on, there's a LIST. POST #2 covers the aftermath of the battle.

Scouts accurately report the enemy's movements: after a slight slow-down believed to indicate that word reached the of the Allies' sudden appearance in their path, they have elected to remain on-course, and arrive almost precisely when and where they were expected. By sunset the night before they are making camp just over the rise to the northeast, easily visible from the hill, and as night falls their fires can be seen winking along the horizon, a close-packed glow.

The mood in the camp is tense, openly jittery rather than the tightly-wound nerves of the past month, but with a sense almost of relief that after so much preparation and so many weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived. Some corners of the camp, particularly the greener recruits and the Antivan veterans, are raucous around their campfires, singing and drinking, playful brawls breaking out, but commanders are strict about the wine rations, and even those who choose to take the edge of this way make an early night of it. A scattered handful of men attempt to quietly slip away during the night, mostly Orlesian conscripts, but a few Inquisition agents as well. Some succeed, but others are caught and imprisoned--the Inquisition's few held to be returned to Skyhold where it can be determined if they are traitors or merely cowards, the Orlesians only as long as it takes to find a tree and an audience to watch them hang and spread the cautionary tale.

It is expected that the enemy, hoping to make up for its surprise at finding the Allies prepared for their arrival, will attempt to catch them off-guard by attacking before dawn instead of waiting, as is traditional, for first light. They are all roused from their beds to form up in the dim grey as quietly as possible, moving into formation in the wet grass, a heavy morning fog lingering on the field ahead. It's cool and raw, the air still. But the ground moves: the shudder and rumble of hooves striking earth, felt before it is heard. The Orlesians raise their pikes, the front line braces, and it begins.

TEAMS 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • RETREAT
Team members can break off into smaller groups within their top-level prompts—it doesn’t need to be one 13-character thread—and the retreat is an open free-for-all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I am in a great deal of pain," Thranduil pronounces. "If you want a silver tongue, come back to me once they've dosed me with enough elfroot to kill a hart."

Which will be days from now. Others need it more. His complaints are as salt in the ocean.

"I have no right to ask anything of you," he says. "I will ask anyway. Before you hand me over, will you put me to sleep?"

So he can get past these next few hours. So he doesn't have to look for his son, his wife, his lover. This is not Dagorlad, but it is a battlefield, and he does not need care, or to give orders. He will be settled in a wagon and left alone, and if they need him awake in the next few hours it will be to slit his throat or cut out his shard, because it will mean Corypheus has come to catch them.

"I have no intention, but I thank you for the kindness of the offer."

There is nothing in Solas that demands that he spend more time in private with Thranduil; the risk is too high. One secret has slipped already and the risk of losing another is something that he cannot gamble. Solas' empathy on why he spoke and shared does not mean that the other man is entitled to forgiveness, not when it comes to this. Trust is a hard-won concept in the eyes of the Dread Wolf and he is not inclined to give it back when it has been lost.

Many have discovered that the hard way. He thinks of a slow arrow and breathes.

"You do not have that right." Solas says nothing more on the matter. When they reach the carts he will encourage sleep, will send Thranduil to whatever parts of the Fade it is that the Rifters spend their time, the place that he can reach and few others can muster. He could find the other man there and bask in his company, but he shall not. That right has been lost to him as well.

"Only kindness for you," he says, and turns his cheek against Solas' chest, away from what lies before them. His next exhale deflates him. While he's managed chatter for the sake of distraction from his running thoughts, he can no more keep it up than Solas can carry him all the way back to Kirkwall. Solas' steady, plodding steps are the only way he has to mark the distance, as the sky is only blue and grey.

He does not want to listen to the sounds yet coming from the field.

It reminds him starkly of the soft words spoken between them before and as Thranduil leans on him - still too tall, Solas thinks, with an odd sense of bitterness, a longing for what is long gone - he wonders if the breach between them might ever be repaired. He glances to the sky as they walk, feeling a bang, knowing the Anchor shard is there in Thranduil's body and there is nothing Solas can do to take it.

He is envious, just a slight amount, of those that carry them. That have the power that should be his.

"Foolish," he mutters quietly, and leads him to the carts, footsteps more sure, more careful as he goes.

He doesn’t laugh this time, and would smile if Solas could see it. His body is too firmly in the tense grip of pain to ripple out with amusement or be mistaken for having the lazy loll of surety.

But Thranduil has wound himself too throughly into Solas’ life with kindnesses and treats paving the way, and if a ghost of that smile or that laugh weasels in to echo in Solas’ mind, he will have done his job well.

“Wolves and deer alike run in packs,” he says, muffled. “Hardly foolish. Sentimental, perhaps.”

The silence is almost comfortable, companionable, the kind they might have shared before - before everything. Solas manages himself as well as he can, buries his feelings deep within himself as he has so often done, tries to swallow it all back, but it is a difficult thing indeed. There is nothing that he can do to force himself to ignore the pang of his heart, not when his friend - former - is so close and so harmed.

At least until he speaks, and something bitter rises, making his tongue taste of copper, of blood, of death.

"He Who Hunts Alone," Solas says softly. "The People are dead, Thranduil. There is no pack."

"Who called you that, Solas? Or did you pick it for yourself, in a fit of youthful pique." He feels warm, now, sleepy. It would be a bad sign if he were not safely in the care of someone he trusted. Too sloppy to kill him now, too messy, two chances turned down and Thranduil bloodloss lucky.

"We could be your pack," Thranduil murmurs, the tips of his fingers light, his body his and yet not, the odd mixture of hroa and fea and holding them together, which he has not thought of in a long time. "If you would allow us."

Or they could do away with the animal metaphors entirely, and speak of families, of kin and home and hope.

"Why would I chose it? I was never alone." Lord of Tricksters, The Great Wolf, Roamer of the Beyond, the old wolf, and Bringer of Nightmares. All words for rebel that they could not bring themselves to understand; all words for a man who had freed their people and been punished for it. His heart rebels against his mind even now, weighed down with all the choices he must make and the paths that twine out in front of him.

The touch is too light. There is something thick, heavy, in his throat. He feels too much, too keenly, and it burns from the inside out. He cannot abide this, and yet he longs so desperately for it. He has been alone for such a long time.

"Pack requires trust," he mutters, "and there is no trust to be found here. I will allow nothing for there is nothing to be given - there is no option, now. You have made your choice and so I shall make mine."

Here is what Thranduil has build for himself in the absence of His halls: the shelter of a lover, the security of his son returned to him, the roots and branches of friends. Everything that grounds his fight is love and duty and history in this strange, terrifying land, in this shape he finds himself in, in the Fade-crafted vessel that calls itself Thranduil and makes promises in his name.

He does not like to think about it, but he can, now. For as long as this haze lasts, for as long as Solas tolerates his presence.

"Make a different one," he says. "You have the freedom to."

Solas isn't a spirit, bound to one course of action, unable to change from it or risk abomination.

And- inaction is also action.

Solas does not have the same things; he has no lover, he has no children, he has no kin. The elves that live in Thedas now as nothing akin to the people, nothing like what he had before his long sleep. He wishes that the People were still present, that he could see them in the way he had dreamt for their futures, but he cannot. It had been surely ripped from him, his own spirit destroyed in a process that he made.

All he wants is to undo what he had done, but the human price... It is why he cannot believe in the reality of this Thedas. He cannot let himself.

"No." Solas sighs softly. He is being worn down, his determination broken in the weight of his own exhaustion. He cannot trust Thranduil and the other man must be aware: he cannot deny it. "I cannot make any other choice than the one I have made. You know that as well as anyone."

This is the path he has chosen.

MOD PLOT ↠ BLAZING LIKE STAR-SHINE

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