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

ii. Alistair

[justice_is_blond]

"Is that one of the ones that eats hair?" He watches the greedy one flounce off with a shake of his head before he's opening Buggie's stall and offering her a fish. She takes it and gulps it down, staying put so he can brush her.

"No, wait, you're right. That's the one that likes hair the most. And then getting sick after. Welcome back, by the way." It's nice to see Alistair around again. It makes the place feel a little less... something, and more something as well. "Have you seen if Chawcey's feeling up to making a new friend? Last I heard he's often got extra energy."

Buggie squawks and he shakes his head. "Hush. I'm not abandoning you."

iii Kostos

[altusimperius]

Kostos' month/year/life isn't the only one heading rapidly down the shitter, which means it's been high time for Benedict to find the seediest, saddest, most repulsive dive bar in all of Kirkwall and drink himself stupid in it. It's exactly what Lakshmi wouldn't have wanted, but seeing as she's not here, who's to stop him?

Maybe just a big filthy Marcher who was talked down to one too many times, and who's solving the problem by throwing the little nonce out in the very same alley that's already hosting its own festivities.
They're at least briefly disrupted by the sound of a projectile Vint being hurled into a pile of crates on the far wall, the lot of them avalanching onto him in a cascade of plywood. He scrambles to free himself with a whine of irritation, then, still seated on the ground, focuses his eyes on the scene before him.

"Kostos," comes the observation, confused. Who's this, it seems to ask, as his gaze next moves to one dwarf, then the other.

Bastien 2

[bouchonne]

"By the Maker," By says archly, "you're quite dreadful."

Which is perhaps an unfair assessment of a fellow who did just just land a number of very good shots. But By had known Bastien back in the day, back before, and nowadays, by comparison - terrible. He leans against a post, smiling archly at Bastien, waiting for a glib response.

ii Kostos

[justice_is_blond]

"Are you... training them?" Anders isn't exactly sure of what he's just walked into. Kostos looks irate, which is nothing new, there are wisps, also nothing new, but that Kostos is just watching them tear apart a dummy seems a bit out of the ordinary.

"Or are you controlling them in some way and training yourself?" They're certainly putting effort in. As much as wisps can. He thinks. Can they do much more? Now he's even more curious.

alistair ii.

[swordproof]

"I do not think that is the best way to encourage their kindness," Six admits with a smile, stepping over to the Griffon she had bonded with without too much hesitation. It's clear that she is accustomed to being there; there's an ease about her that's not shown as well in other places and she reaches out to touch its beak, careful of her hands as she breathes out.

This is a comfortable place for her to be and she accepts it as it is; animals are easier than people.

"Would you like to try with mine?" Not her animal, of course, but her bonded.

closed.

[exequy]

[ That it takes this long is due equally to Nell and to Nikos. Nell—she can go die, and he’s pretty sure, almost completely convinced, that he won’t care, but he’s never betrayed her confidence before, no matter however much he disagreed with her about something, and if nothing else that gives him a sense of martyred moral satisfaction. Look what he won’t stoop to. He won’t turn her in. He won’t even tell Nikos she told.

And Nikos, he’s almost been getting along with. Or he’s felt like he had a brother in the present tense, which doesn’t require getting along at all to be a step up from feeling like he doesn’t have anything except something from his past come back to irritate him. For as long as Kostos doesn’t see him again, doesn’t talk to him, he doesn’t have to shatter that and set it on fire.

But the Gallows aren’t that big or that densely populated, and Kostos does see him eventually, sitting on a bench in an otherwise deserted courtyard. Once that’s happened there’s no real decision to make. Maybe that’s why there’s nothing unusual about his approach; the way he walks, the look on his face, he could be going over to tell Nikos his beard looks stupid. He doesn’t know. He isn’t thinking about it.

Usually, in this sort of situation, Kostos throws a punch first. Leaves open the possibility that he’ll stay on his feet and maintain his dignity, even if it rarely works out that way.

This isn’t usual. This is Nikos. It’s Nell. It’s a dead Grand Cleric, a face and a name to put to wrecked hope, someone specific to blame, and Kostos skips the pretense of civilized fisticuffs and launches straight into a full body tackle, with one fist and one clutching, clawing hand both searching for something to hurt. ]

i. kostos

[sulahnan]

Nor, for that matter, does it help track footprints that are, at this very moment, fading. All of them washed away leaving nothing but a vague idea of the direction whoever made this camp went. It might have been blood mages, or it might’ve been slavers. Or fishermen, or locals looking for a nice cave to boink in. Could’ve been anyone, really.

“You look appropriately miserable,” Athessa says, appearing behind Kostos. She keeps doing that. One more time and it’ll be three, and three makes a habit. Where she stands now, at two times, is still in the realm of accident or coincidence. She leans forward, hands on her knees, so she can speak over his shoulder and look at what he was poking at. “Any leads here? All I got is that they went thataway.”

[sulahnan]

[ Convenient, that Kostos is here. Athessa had been planning to wail on a dummy herself--that might still be her plan, but she doesn't know Kostos well enough to make a judgment call on whether or not he's a dummy.

She purses her lips and tilts her head to one side in thought. ]

Does attacking a training dummy help those things much?