faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ NONE TO RETURN

MOD PLOT ↠ NONE TO RETURN

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition regroups and heads home
WHEN: Covers the period immediately post-battle (11.28) through the journey back to Kirkwall (11.29-12.1)
WHERE: North of Montfort, Orlais, and on the road to Val Chevin
NOTES: This is Post #2, covering the immediate aftermath of the battle and the journey back to Kirkwall. It's a free-for-all. Post #1 covers the battle itself. More info on the OOC post.

The Inquisition and Orlesian armies eventually limp to a halt along the Imperial Highway north of Montfort, where wide fields and gentle hills offer clear lines of sight and a sparsely equipped fortress provides some shelter and fortification. It's a soundly strategic location—if Ghislain is lost, Montfort is the last major city between the invaders and Val Royeaux—but among the rank and file there may be too much chaos to appreciate it.

For the remainder of the day and well into the night, the fortress and surrounding land are a frenzy of activity. The wounded who were not left on the field must be triaged and tended to with limited supplies, while many healers and surgeons out of commission themselves and the remainder worked to the bone. Scouts, soldiers, and even support staff in sturdy enough condition to keep working may be tasked with assembling camp from the few remaining supplies, taking reports on known casualties or acquired intelligence, or further fortifying the new location. The Orlesian army sends one of its battered cavalry units toward Ghislain to attempt to provide some warning, and from the Inquisition's number a few patrols are sent back toward the battlefield or toward Ghislain, with stern orders not to re-engage, only to watch for signs of pursuit, and to direct any stragglers.

Those who remain in the fortress are in for a long, miserable night, with meager rations and makeshift bedding, if any of either, while the wind shifts directions and grows colder. By morning a number of the wounded have died, but attempts to build a pyre are hampered by the sudden swell of a storm that starts with freezing rain and then transitions to early and unpredicted thick, heavy snow.

For a few hours that morning the two armies attempt business as normal, but it soon becomes clear that the storm is getting stronger, and they risk being snowed in with more people than they can feed. Many, including the Inquisition's Gallows contingent, are ordered to disperse. Many crowd into wagons, with any transportable wounded receiving further attention en route and neighbors hunching close to preserve heat whether they like one another or not, while those able to do so follow on foot or horseback over the rough, flash-frozen highway toward Montfort and then west toward Val Chevin. The storm doesn't abate until they've nearly reached the city, but once there they're able to stop, eat, and spend a few hours indoors thawing out before proceeding home.

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"Irony," Colin repeats with a flicker of a smile Julius might recognize from an apprentice he once knew. The one who deflected about any personal question with a harmless joke. The one who built walls around difficult things he could not surmount, because at least then the problem would be contained. Separated. So he can remember to take deep breaths and big coughs every so often to keep his lungs clear, no matter how much it hurts. It takes him a moment of looking at Julius, remembering the things they've been through together since the Circle, that he is reminded that they've discussed the isolation business and how they weren't going to do that anymore. The smile fades; dark eyes glance away, as if a little embarrassed at catching himself.

"The mages attacked us. Inquisition mages, like us."

"Maker." He'd heard as much, but had hoped it was exaggerated somehow. That the reality was less than the hearsay. "That's a dozen sorts of fucked in a single package," he says, lower. Betrayal by anyone would have been bad.

Betrayal specifically by mages is something of a catastrophe.

A gloom comes to Colin’s eyes. After a few seconds of shallow breathing, he speaks distantly.

“One of them, I knew from the Circle. She must have fought in thr war. I used to admire those people, fighting for my freedom while I hid. Now I’d made up my mind to fight for myself, instead of making other people do it for me—just as much death, but I could claim it wasn’t me causing it before. She...she wasn’t fighting for anyone but herself. Just started killing people. Maybe she was put off by the compromises made with the Chantry. And then I was supposed to do to her people exactly what she was doing to mine. Only, all of them were my people, too. I was just the only one who knew it.”

He wants to ask who it was. He doesn't, which is its own form of not putting pressure on a wound.

For a moment, it seems like he might not say anything more. However, after a longish pause, he says: "I know a lot of people assumed I fled, during the rebellion, because I was a coward. And perhaps they were right, but it wasn't fighting I was afraid of. Not really. If it was anything, it was having to fight someone who shouldn't have been an enemy in the first place." It was all too easy to picture what Colin was describing, on another battlefield, in another time.

He exhales, and it shakes a little, from pain or otherwise. "I'm glad you made it through, but I'm sorry you were so in the thick of it."

Colin looks at him, and there is still some gloom, but it's not misery, at least. Misery would be being alone with this. Julius is just what Thedas needs, isn't he? On hearing the sigh, Colin shifts and gently tries to arrange Julius' shirt to take a look at his wounded shoulder.

"The only people who would call you a coward are people who don't know you," he says quietly but firmly. "And people who don't think about the strength and will it takes not to be violent when the rest of the world is. Killing isn't brave; it's expedient, and impossible to reverse. You don't have to talk, or listen, if your enemy isn't there to argue."

The shoulder was cleaned and bandaged a while ago, but the puncture was deep, so prone to sluggishly bleeding whenever he moves too much (or sometimes even when he doesn't). When they stop, he'll have it rebandaged, but it's really a stopgap until he's somewhere safe to actually lie still and heal.

He lets Colin take a look without protest, though. He understands the need to be doing something.

"A thought that occurred to me, a time or two, when arguing with a particularly stubborn senior enchanter about politics," Julius says, wry, a joke from Colin's real point. "A shame it's so difficult to negotiate with Darkspawn, though."

A bob of the head. Brown eyes venture off to watch something in the distance as it drifts by, slowly, with the beat of horse-hooves.

"I do keep wishing pacifism was viable. Viable, in a medical sense, almost. Something that could survive on its own. I'm cynical enough to think people can't be trusted with violence, but I'm also cynical enough to think people will never give it up. And slaughter the pacifists."

Julius' shoulder is bare. Colin peels back the bandage carefully. As quickly as they have been moving, there hasn't been time to tend to every individual wound the way it needs, so he makes sure it is clean and the bleeding has stopped. No magic, for now. His ability is spent, and he is still feeling a little lightheaded from all the lyrium potions he took yesterday.

The wound is jagged and deep -- torn with teeth, not cut with a blade -- but it's not showing any signs of infection. Julius hisses slightly, despite himself, at a bump in the road (though that might as easily be his foot).

"It's something to work toward, though, isn't it? Even if we never manage completely, less violence is still a victory. Every time something could have come to blows, or to a battle, but doesn't. It all matters." It's not optimism, not precisely; it's a willingness to grind out victories in inches, rather than demand wholesale change. It's a position he know feels a bit of a cheat to many of his compatriots, but it lets him keep moving when actual optimism might have left him prone to crushing in the world they inhabit.

The bump in the road has Colin's hands tearing away from Julius to brace at his sides, avoiding the actual wounds but trying to keep his torso from bending. It's futile. People are squishy and there's nothing to be done about it. His face twists in pain, but he remains silent. After a moment, he starts to catch his breath and resume his treatment.

"Less violence," he agrees. He spends another moment catching his breath, then his brow furrows a little. "But what if...what if you ran into, um, someone who...what if you had an opportunity to kill, and it could...save others suff--"

He cuts himself off and looks away, not sure if he actually wants to talk about this yet. Does he? Maker, this cart. And he feels the thought of the topic bringing a pressure to his chest that definitely isn't the broken ribs.

"Never mind. We'll talk about it another time. Can we, can we change the subject?"

Julius visibly wants to pursue that thread, but at Colin's request, he does let it go. "Yes, if you like. Have you another topic in mind? I'd request it be dracolisk-free, but otherwise I'm game for whatever you like."

After a moment, he adds, "How's business?" His tone is wry, but Colin can take the question as seriously (or not) as he likes.

Colin makes that dry glance-away face he makes in lieu of rolling his eyes. So the question has the intended effect, probably.

"Fine." His customers are very few, of course, but they do exist. He even likes one of them. Then there are some weird ones. "There's this one who's always a bit unnerving, but he's in and out fast enough. Might be a bit mad already, though he seems young for it. I don't really know how to tell."

"Unnerving in what way? It seems that Kirkwall's population offers a selection." Perhaps unkind, but the remark is based in observation. Of course, some of those people might just be Orlesian.

"Sort of creepy. Big man, but hunches. Nervous. But he's not...friennnndly, like they can get. And I don't think he's putting on the nervousness, I think he really is nervous, I just don't know why. Unless it's my grim look and intimidating countenance."

The last sentence is dry.

"You never know." He manages a brief smile. "There are a variety of things that can shatter a man's nerves."

Julius and Colin have both lived through a few.

"I trust you've got a decent eye for someone who's a threat. Trust your instincts; they likely won't steer you wrong, at least in this sort of thing." One thing Julius can say for a Circle education; it teaches you to read people's intentions quickly, identify potential threats. Mages who don't learn to do so tend not to make it.

Colin doesn't reply for a moment, till he shakes his head.

"I don't have instincts, Julius," he says softly. "I'm just scared of everyone. Which works, I mean, I'm not dead. But then I stopped having friends. I thought it was a problem I could live with. But no, I don't have instincts. It's like those all got burnt off and scarred over, and now I just have this."

That gets a faint frown, though perhaps it's not entirely clear why.

"I put that incorrectly, perhaps," he says, after a moment. "Are you equally scared of everyone, all of the time? Because I would be surprised if you couldn't separate an immediate threat from a lineup."

'Having friends' is not a thing the Circle teaches one to do, not really. Whatever Julius feels about Colin's characterization, it's a simple enough truth.

"Though if I'm wrong, perhaps we'll have a talk about that when I can think straight about things that aren't how I can feel my heart pounding in my foot somehow."

A soft laugh, and Colin moves to take off Julius' shoe and whatever else might be separating him from his foot.

"It's..." Everyone equally isn't quite right. But his own head is swimming with pain, and the more he talks, the more he has to breathe, and breathing hurts. He shakes his head and focuses on healing. The sheer exhaustion of mana yesterday hasn't quite gone, but he can do this, calling on Compassion to soothe the swelling and dull the pain.

"It's better left for another time," he agrees with a sigh as the glimmer fades from his hands. He stiffly pulls out a pouch of herbs. "Let me get you some thyme and elfroot. You'll want to wrap the leaves into a sort of wad and give them a chew, it'll help balance the phlegm and take down the swelling. And if we can get it elevated, it'll be better."

"Another time," he agrees; he might have pushed, in other circumstances, but they're both in pain and tired and now isn't the moment to pick at it.

Something for the swelling is likely a good idea, in the meantime. Colin finds Julius foot well wrapped against both blood-loss and cold, but bootless.

"Alright, give me the leaves, but then you should probably try to rest a bit. I've probably kept you talking too long in the name of distracting myself."

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