↠ WHAT PRIDE HAD WROUGHT | NPC LOGS

[faderifting]

WHO: Folks participating in the NPC logs in the Arbor Wilds
WHAT: A boss fight and an elf talk
WHEN: Solace 17-20
WHERE: The Arbor Wilds, Southern Orlais
NOTES: This post is a container for a couple of logs, to be posted shortly!

Comments

ABELAS

[visus]

ooc | one thread only, but anyone is welcome to participate

The world is quiet again, but not the way it was before. The air is hazy from extinguished fires. Outside the temple, the walls are scarred, the ancient magic that repelled invaders finally dispelled. Collecting and interring the fallen will take time, especially with less than a dozen of them left alive to do the work. And then?

They're known. There aren't enough of them left—and those who are left are mostly young, born here in the Temple, raised in dedication to memories they don't share. If they sleep again, the next time they wake will be to die. There's only one thing left to defend.

Abelas has decided. But in the absence of immediate threats, he isn't in a rush; he's sitting at the bottom of the stone steps that lead up to the Well, making sure none of the interlopers on the grounds approach it, and mending his armor. Like the walls and the well, it is older than he is. Unlike them, it's something he can preserve.

[rowancrowned]

Thranduil's approach is inevitable, really. And it's a walk he's made other times, to other elves (Merrill, Beleth, Iorveth, Solas) but that was not as weighty. But, oh, the curiosity burns in him all the more for there being no time for him to speak of the things he wants to, and this hardly the place. He minds his tongue. There is enough comfort to be drawn from being, for once, not one of the handful of responsible individuals in the room-- he is not alone. He was never alone, given, well, the furry nature of a certain someone, but just knowing that others, plural, exist--

The dead weigh on him more, for that.

"How will you do it?" he asks, in Trade, while Abelas works. He sits on something that may well have been a wall, once, legs folded. He did a great deal of walking today, and there will inevitably be more fighting, later.

[dirth]

How could Solas not be here? He can feel the weight and the pressure of the world on his shoulders, and when he looks at Abelas - looks at all the Sentinels, strong and powerful and marked with vallaslin that he once knew so intimately - he feels a pang, an ache, something that burns inside of him. It strengthens his resolve, if nothing else, and he moves forward to stand with the others, refusing to step back, refusing to do anything except be here.

He must be here. He has to be - for the People, for his past, for his mistakes. There is no undoing it.

Looking at Abelas, he knows; he clings to all that remains of his world because he does not have the power to restore it. Solas will have that power, sooner rather than later, and the only fear he carries is that these elves might note the strength of the Shards and know where it comes from, know who's strength has birthed the Rifters and their marks. He hopes that knowledge shall not come to pass.

It is good that Thranduil is here, that Solas can stand by his side, because for a moment - seeing the Well, knowing it - he cannot breathe.

"Aneth ara, lethallin."

[sulahnan]

Athessa is there, too, but she doesn't approach. She's really only there peripherally, incidentally. Accidentally, even.

She definitely isn't slowly getting closer, to the edge of earshot just in case the three actual elves say something interesting. Oh, no. She's only around here doing the little things that she can; tending to wounded, clearing away debris and broken weapons, avoiding Sentinels like the plague they seem to think she is because she refused to lay herself bare to the Pilgrimage.

If it's not one thing, it's another. Not Dalish enough, not city enough, not...whatever-the-fuck enough.

Always other.

A scoff puffs out just as Solas speaks, a coincidence more than anything because Athessa is only reacting to her own thoughts, but it could pass as a reaction to them, as well. The three wise men, holier than thou and probably with shit that smells like roses, the way they act.

[visus]

The scoff, more than anything else, raises Abelas' eyes, and saves some present company from outing, because he knows—thinks he knows—something of whom he may be dealing with, in Solas. Not specifically. Not his name. Only that they are similar in a way Abelas has not been similar to elves for longer than the continent's new inhabitants have been accurately measuring the years.

The other is something different.

But they're being listened to by a child, and the scoff gives Abelas reason to consider that, to consider the way the explorers and thieves they've questioned and killed over the years had explained away their existence, to consider what it would require for one of them to live among the shemlen, and to exercise some discretion.

"Aneth ara," he answers one, and then, "I learned the ritual when I was a young man," to the other. "My teacher laughed about it. She did not think this day could come."

Wondering whether or not those who came before him would be disappointed, if they could have done better—that will have to wait. He will have plenty of time to think about it.

[rowancrowned]

It takes Thranduil a moment to place her, but as there are less than a hundred of them, and he much accustomed to memorizing names, he eventually summons it.

“Ah,” he says. “Athessa. You are uninjured, I hope?” She’s been lingering near them—the sentinels. Something Thranduil might have been guilty of himself, the little errant glances, but that was earlier, and now the leader of them has sat to talk, and Thranduil wants—what, witnesses? He supposes that to be the truth of it. He likes her boldness well enough. “Will you come sit with us?”

He turns back to Abelas. “And what will you do, after?”

[dirth]

Solas watches Abelas and, hesitating, bows his head once in a long, drawn-out nod. Perhaps the man understand, perhaps he knows, but there is something that bonds the two of them; they are of the People, and perhaps there is something in him - his accent, the way he stands, the way he speaks - that gives that away. If he and the Sentinels can read that... Then he can accept it.

Thranduil knows enough. The new elf less so, but Solas is unconcerned with her. He cares for these People.

"I understand the drastic nature of your choice," Solas adds to what Thranduil says, voice low and quiet. He feels... Drawn to the Well, drawn to the power he knows is there, and it knots in his stomach. This, more than anything else, is an agonising memory he cannot ignore or avoid. "Is there nothing else that can be done?"

[sulahnan]

She freezes at the sound of her name--neither expecting to be acknowledged, nor expecting any of them to know her--and briefly considers pretending to be someone else. No, no, I'm not Athessa, you must be thinking of some other...person.

Mumbling her response to Thranduil, yeah fine first, and whatever following, she leaves off attending the man whose arm she'd bandaged and rebandaged twice already to seat herself unceremoniously on the ground roughly equidistant between Solas and Thranduil. Maybe a smidge closer to the latter.

At least now she can listen without eavesdropping, which is a little better than being a child hiding around the corner while the adults talk about stuff beyond the child's comprehension. This way, they can talk over her head directly. She props her chin up on the heel of her hand, and listens.