faderift | EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The water is dark and running, the Waking Sea's current swirling here in late Spring eddies. It's a testament to Anders's swimming that he'd gotten this far; that the two drowned rats in the bottom of the wherry managed to keep their heads above water is practically miraculous.

But he won't think to give them any credit for it after he's finished wrestling the capsized boat upright. It's a tricky thing: finding the right angle, using his weight and the catch of the sea and the line to dredge it slowly up onto its side. Don't go over, he thinks as he clings to the combing. Not just yet. If it rights immediately, it will be as a bath basin filled with water and sink immediately.

"Haul away!" This shouted at Anders in the wherry once he has the line secured. "Slowly!"

For the briefest of moments Anders is tempted to row toward the non-Gallows shore. There is basically no time when freedom isn't calling to him, and when curfew's imposed it's all the louder. But he's worked so hard to get a fraction of respect and right now, somehow, this organization is still the best shot for mages to stay free once Corypheus falls. So Anders puts his weight into rowing toward the Gallows instead, now hauling another boat behind him.

"Slowly is as fast as I can go!" he hollers back, because what's physical effort without talking? Then it occurs to him that it doesn't have to be such a physical effort. With a quick cast of Haste he starts to move at a decently steady and slow pace toward the shore.

By the time they've reached it and Anders has convinced the woman to toss a line to the dock so they can be secured, his arms feel like rubber and he's fairly certain he looks enough like a wet dog that every Fereldan is honor-bound to love him on sight. He contemplates just staying in the boat that might decide to sink at any moment and seeing what happens before clambering upright, climbing out, and looking over at Flint.

"You looked like you've wrestled boats in the water before," he says tiredly.

Flint's soaked equally to the bone, and though he's spent the last ten minutes bailing out the refit rowboat with little more than cupped hands and desperation, he's somehow managing to wear it well as he winds himself into the dock by way of the rope between both boats. Maybe it's the lack of squishy shoes, or the close crop his hair, or that the blacks and purples of his clothes look more or less the same whether wet or dry.

"Tie her off," is his only answer, slinging the boat's bowline to Anders on the dock.

Once it touches, he's up and out - barefoot on the warm stone of the Gallows' slip - and descending promptly on the pair of would-be escapees. The young man turns, likely ready to say something very honest in his defense or some statement of gratitude, and is immediately clocked in the face.

He's considering talking back as he ties the boat up... and then the other guy gets decked. In a rare moment Anders chooses self-preservation over snark. He's been punched enough in his life. As the swimmer scoots away from Flint on his backside, demanding to know if Flint knows who he is, Anders snorts and finishes the solid-if-messy knots.

"Maybe don't beat more out of him than his memory? I'd like a break, somewhere warm, and a drink, rather than having to heal just yet. They're idiots, but no one's hurt and nothing's lost." He stands and joins Flint near the sorry pair, bracing for the possible 'and you'd know' comment.

'Do you know who I am,' and other such objections in the half-whimpering-half-sardonic curl of a young man who must be the child of someone important, here in the Gallows as a leftover from when notable families felt the need to install themselves at the Inquisition's fringe, is categorically the wrong tack to take in this instance. Despite Anders's lighthearted word of caution, Flint snags the boy by the sopping shirt collar and the waist of his pants and hauls him bodily toward the end of the slip. The young woman flits after them, slapping at Flint's arm in protest until - with twin cries from both, he reaches the end of the ferry slip and pitches the boy back into the water.

"How dare you! He can't swim!" The young woman howls.

"Best fish him out then. There's a line right there."

She snatches the coil of rope and fishing after the young man floundering in the water. Flint leaves her to it, padding barefoot back to the rowboats and Anders.

"Quick thinking jumping in after them." This said practically over his shoulder as he steps back down into the ragged wherry to fetch his coat and boots.

He stares at the couple with no little surprise as Flint walks past. It's a little harsh, he thinks, but doesn't say.

"Healer," Anders mutters. "Trying to keep people alive, that sort of thing." She gets the rope to the man and he can finally look away. A moment later he trots after Flint.

"Thanks for the follow. I've swam some distances before but Lake Calenhad was a lot calmer. And I wasn't trying to haul someone struggling back to shore." Plus pursuit had certainly given him no small rush of adrenaline. "I don't think I could have gotten both of them back without your help, on reflection."

He retrieves his own kicked-off boots and hop-yanks them on.

"I doubt you would have either. Next time," - said in the tones of 'Maker so help, if there's a next time I'm letting everyone drown' - "Try being smart instead of just quick."

All this said without looking up as he tugs his boots back on. Flint stamps his foot, clearly a habit born of working his foot past some tight part of the old shoe, and the board of the decrepit wherry's old bilge cover simply disintegrates under it. His boot plunks down into the slimy, dark bilge water below.

"Oh for--"

"Hang on. Let me stop and wait and think about this, as at least a life doesn't hang in this balance," he says very dryly before coming alongside Flint and holding out an arm.

"Look. I'll not deny that I could sometimes do with a little more forethought. But there's not a chance I could have rowed out there quickly enough. And yelling for someone else to do something while people could die or are dying isn't something I can accept doing anymore." Been there, done that, have the crater to prove it. "I'd like to work more with people. But that takes thinking people might want to work with me."

EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

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