open | i thought i found it

[byblow]

WHO: Alistair, Bastien, Kostos, and whoever wants to deal with them.
WHAT: Open/catch-all.
WHEN: Justinian
WHERE: Mostly Kirkwall
NOTES: hmu @ circuitry if you need to talk about something or want to plan something that doesn’t fit here! or just wildcard me without warning. and brackets are aces if that’s your preference.

–ALISTAIR→

i. project sashamiri offices

He hasn’t been gone all that long, in the scheme of things, but there are still reports to catch up on before Alistair can confidently spot himself into the reorganized effort to Make Corypheus Cut It Out.

He hates sitting and reading. It’s one of his least favorite things. Walking and reading is better. Sitting and not reading is fine. But this? Disgusting. The fact that he’s doing it anyway is proof that he cares a whole, whole lot about saving the world, even if he says things like, “Do you think it’s too late to make everyone call him Sethius instead? I think that would be better for morale.” He mimes a crier. “Orlais menaced by Seth.”

ii. eyrie

“Well, who cares what you think?” Alistair is asking one of the griffons—one that’s taken his offered strip of meat and retreated, leaving him alone with his arms crossed. He wouldn’t be fussing if he didn’t think he was alone with them, but their tussling and occasional screeches mask approaching footsteps. “You’re just an enormous bird. You eat hair.”

But he still wants one of them to like him. Just one. It doesn’t matter which.

–BASTIEN→

i. mage tower dining hall

Only the kitchen in the Templar Tower has a staff and food to serve, which is probably why Bastien has never seen anyone actually eat in the dining hall in the Mage Tower, and why he feels justified in completely rearranging it without asking anybody else what they think.

Or, he did feel justified, before it gave way to feeling tired. He’s moved all of the chairs but only about a third of the heavy wooden tables to the edges of the room, and turned most of the relocated onto their sides. But that was all his relatively meager muscle mass could handle. The tables have won. The tables were always fated to win.

Now he’s lying on his back on one of them, legs dangling, staring at the ceiling, with his lute held loose on his chest while he plucks out a messy sketch of a melody, able to be gracious in defeat if it means he doesn’t have to move for a while.

ii. practice range

Depending on how much someone knows about this and that, a couple things might be apparent.

The first is that Bastien has done this before. Good form—comfortably textbook, learned from someone who knew what they were doing—though he seems to be reminding himself of before each shot, like a child straining to recite a poem accurately.

The second is that he probably used to be better at it: he regards the arrows that land in the mid- and inner rings with the subdued satisfaction of a man whose expectations have just barely been met, not one who’s thrilled to have discovered how to hit the target at all, and when one arcs wild he drops his bow arm to his side and gives his eyes a frustrated, accusatory rub, like they’re to blame.

–KOSTOS→

i. wounded coast

If there were suspicious men along the coast, speaking a language that was definitely Tevinter (the Kirkwall guard who reported them had never heard Tevinter spoken before) and doing something that was definitely blood magic (she also couldn’t say what blood magic looked like, other than bloody), they’re gone by now, and the only signs of their potential existence are identical to the signs of standard-grade travelers stopping to butcher and cook a tusket.

That might have been fine. Better to be sure, and better that they be the ones making sure instead of a wet-eared local guard, and Kostos—crouching to poke around the campsite with a stick—is keeping the tusks, for his trouble.

Might have been fine, again, but for the storm clouds that have blustered in like they were late for a meeting. The first rain drops make him lift his head just in time for a lightning strike, not more than a few miles away, and a snarl of thunder.

“Fucking—” he says, suddenly reminded why he hates nature, and as the rain picks up he shrinks into his shoulders like a harassed cat. It doesn’t help.

ii. training grounds

The training dummy doesn’t deserve to die. But Kostos has been having a bad month/year/life, and trying to knock the shit out of the dummy with a staff has mainly served to highlight how much less useful and interesting that is than having the shit knocked out of him by Nell. Which brings him around to the important point of fuck Nell.

So that’s why, if someone wanders in, he’s standing there shirtless and a little sweaty, leaning on a training staff, and watching with dispassionate interest as four wisps circle wildly around the dummy—they’re having fun—and pelt it with ice and fire. It’s slow going, each pair counteracting the efforts of the other. The winners get a field trip and the losers go back to the Fade, however, so they’re putting their tiny wisp backs into it.

iii. lowtown

His month/year/life gets worse.

Down an alley most people know better than to traverse, with people most people know better than to bother, Kostos is currently sitting on the ground. He’s at an odd angle, because one of the dwarves flanking him is standing heavily on his right hand. The other has a handful of his shirt at the shoulder, and a third has a knife angled against his clavicle.

He doesn’t intend to lose any digits or eyes or ear lobes here. He let his nose be bloodied. And his lip. And his wrenched shoulder, fine, they could have that one too. But if it comes to genuine maiming, he’ll resort to magic—maybe. If he’s quick enough. Currently he’s attempting to call a bluff, and if he were a good gambler, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

“What do you think we could get if we sell him for parts?” Knife Dwarf asks, and Stomp Dwarf says, “Less than he owes, but more than nothing.”

Witty one-liners aren’t really Kostos’ thing, but neither is pleading, so he just grits his teeth.

Comments

[bouchonne]

"See, you say that, anticipating that then I'll fail and you'll be able to rub my face in it." By pushes off his post, and saunters over, hands in his pockets, the absolute portrait of unconcern. "But I, unlike you, have been honing my skills in the past few years. I haven't let myself go to pot."

He gestures for the bow. Soon as he has it in his hand, he nocks and then looses...only to see his arrow, dismayingly, sink into the third ring out. Blast it, there'd been a gust of wind at the last second - Blast it all. Well - He turns to Bastien, smirking outrageously, hoping that the fellow will assume that By missed on purpose in service of a punchline.

[cozen]

Bastien inclines his head while he watches the arrow fly, considers its ultimate placement with an air of patient perplexity, and turns the same look on Byerly and his smirk. It’s a good smirk—which is to say it’s a terrible smirk. It would be easy to hate him, if not for all the nostalgic fondness.

He thinks, do you ever get tired?

He says, “Ah, yes, I can see the honing. You would put L’Épervier to shame, if you challenged her after she was blinded.” But also, magnanimous: “But we can call that one a warm up, if you would like,” while he bends sideways to pull another arrow up from where they’ve been stuck into the ground like so many reeds.

[bouchonne]

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Byerly is Fereldan. With his drollness and his chattiness and his dedication to the finer things in life, he seems rather more like a northerner than a product of the harsh south. But every once in a while, his southern nature rears its head - and honestly, who wouldn't bristle at the offer to call that a warm-up? (Not at the comment about L’Épervier's blindness. That was actually quite a respectable and amusing insult.)

Of course, stubbornness is a little subtler on him than it is on many of his countrymen: just a quick flicker behind his eyes, a twitch of his mustache - and then a broad magnanimous smile concealing all his pricklier emotions. "We can call it a gift, to level the playing field," he replies sweetly. "Noblesse oblige from one such as myself to a humble printer."

[cozen]

“Humbled further by your generosity,” Bastien says by rote, with a half-bow that’s marked as sarcastic by the look he caps it off with—a warning look, though the only thing it’s warning of further verbal elbows to the ribs. Perhaps a physical one, eventually, if warranted. “And by your aim, I am sure.”

[bouchonne]

A dry toss of his head. Then he takes the bow up again, and fires - And yes; that's a far more satisfying shot. The arrow twangs into a spot just off-center of the target.

By hands off the bow to Bastien, now a shade less acerbic with his pride compensated for. "So, what prompts this show of skill?"

[cozen]

“A week in a desert and underground,” Bastien says, accepting the bow and plucking another arrow, “reliant on an enormous Avvar woman—I blame you for her, by the way.”

An accusing point with the arrow’s fletching. She’s Fereldan, arguably; he’s Fereldan, mostly. The responsibility is clear.

“She wrenched the heads off of our captors and insisted on carrying them back with us the entire way,” he says, lining up his shot, “but she did most of the hunting, and I do not know a stone from a turtle, so what could I do?”

Have a meeting about it, that’s what. And he’s off the point, but he doesn’t want to be on the point. I don’t want to die. How insipid. Letting everyone believe that you’re helpless stops being amusing when it’s true. Worse.

The arrow lands outside of Byerly’s, but not by far.

[bouchonne]

"Now, now," he says, sighting down the line at the placement of the arrow. Not bad. "You can't blame us for the Avvar. They're our barbaric forebears. You can blame the Avvar for us, but not vice versa, just as we can blame the Vints for you but cannot blame you for the Vints."

A pause, and then By can't help but ask morbidly - "The entire way?"

[cozen]

"The entire way." He drops one end of the bow to the ground, keeping it still when he leans sideways into dropped-voice secret-telling proximity to Byerly, so it looks like it's anchoring him, even though it isn't. "She did not even put them on pikes."

The difference between barbarity and civility, clearly, and may Ferelden's Rebel Queen and Assorted Others rest in peace.

"At first their expressions were frozen, and their eyes would not stay closed, but around halfway through they began to go slack—" A brief demonstration, probably the most charming face he's ever made. "—and of course the flies found their throats. Fortunately, we had a Mortalitasi." 'Fortunately.' And only so much of that is true. The flies were limited, at least, in a way he does not do anyone the courtesy of implying. Instead he returns to a fully upright angle. "Next time, you should come."

[bouchonne]

"Pass." The answer is immediate and supremely confident, as though one has any control over this sort of thing. It is nice to pretend that one has control over one's fate.

He gives a theatrical shudder in response to that rather-too-detailed description of the process of decay. "How did she even carry them? It's not like you lot had satchels or anything. - This was a bit before your time, before you got here, but when Minrathous was taken, our resident Vints had someone-or-other murdered and purportedly dragged the corpse back the entire way. The entire way. On foot, limited resources, trying to avoid detection, and here they were with an entire corpse. At least the head alone would have been more efficient. Easier to carry."

[cozen]

"No." Genuinely appalled, beneath a thin coat of pantomime. "Why? Do they not burn their dead?"

You can do that anywhere. Stack some stones, light a fire. To what nefarious end might the Northern Menace go to that length to preserve a body? Should they start stoking rumors of cannibalism at the front?

Probably not. But perhaps.

[bouchonne]

"Who can even keep track of their perversions?" By shrugs, and picks up the bow once more. "They think of us as barbarians, and sniff about the ancient roots of their civilization, but at the end of the day they're but a sneeze away from worshipping the Old Gods, aren't they.

"In any case, I think it might have been sentimental. Which is worse, in its way, than barbarism. If you're going to put your comrades' lives at risk from bloodlust, that at least is respectable. If it's because you can't bear to part from some heap of decaying meat..." He clicks his tongue in practical disapproval, and shoots.