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faderift2019-09-11 08:10 pm
wythersake) wrote in faderift2019-09-11 08:10 pmEntry tags:
wythersake) wrote in faderift2019-09-11 08:10 pm
snapshot of me writing this tag: https://i.imgur.com/SHNyQaZ.jpg
As if in contradiction, a pair of arrows catches him as his horse topples. He hits the ground hard, hears screaming. A barrier is somewhere close in the dark, and John considers in the span of a few seconds what happens if any of them die here. He considers, briefly, what happens if he dies here. (He considers Madi.) Pain is rippling outward from his shoulder, from the somewhere in his back. The agony of it blurs together as he gropes for his crutch.
"Isaac!" is the first thing he shouts, because they'll need to know whether or not the healer is dead. (And it changes what this night means afterwards, when the bandits are dead and they need to put themselves back together.) He can see Leander stagger, caught. Ilias, Flint, still atop his horse.
In a way, the arrows are a blessing. There is a price, he'd been told once. You won't be able to cheat your way past it. You will have to pay it if you wish to cast. The blood is already soaking into his coat, and the pain is a second heartbeat. Magic is thrumming just under his skin, close at hand. He reaches for it in the same motion he levers himself to his feet, and draws his hand through the air in a single, sharp motion.
It's less a spell and more an impression; John's will takes shape as a specific force. A rider slips sideways from his horse, crumples into the dirt, chest crushed. John regrets it the moment it's happened. Too showy, too easily discerned for what that action had been, but there's no taking it back.
cw body horror here on out
You'd be forgiven the mistake -- for two thousand pounds of terrified animal, for the scream and crack of his fall, one side soaked in blood.
Isaac staggers up. He isn't dead, but you'd be forgiven the mistake: His face scoured into ribbons of earth and red. Flesh dangles from his cheek to expose a flash of white tooth. (He's always hated this angle.)
The hand bracing his ribs ripples strange about the motion of rejoining bone. Dirt flakes from bubbled pink skin, mud drips loose along gobs of meat; dries in grey puddles along the path. Muscle stretches to grasp itself, knit,
"Get back," He spits, sloppy on the shape of healing lips. Lurches half-drunk ahead of the two. No time to search for a lost staff, or to comprehend that ripple-crunch of Fade. Not Ilias, that one wasn't Ilias. "Get clear."
The words already taste cleaner. There are still three men with blades drawn.
Isaac rips his hand into that other place, and toward the closest rider. He raises the sword, and for half a second it must have gone wrong. He's faster, an impossible blur of motion --
Then the horse's knees buckle, broken under their own weight. He wheels against air, and his arm forces itself from socket. Man and mount tear, a frantic, kicking collapse.
#teamwork
Ilias — who is still half tangled in his stirrup when an arrow jolts horribly into Leander's shoulder; who does indeed whip his head round to track a sudden fourth source of magic; whose face goes utterly bloodless at the sight of Isaac's — does not stay back, even as horse and rider come to a tumbling skid ahead. The butt of his staff thocks to the dirt a few steps behind Isaac.
"Let me," he says, gentle as a damp cloth taken in hand, only it isn't fabric he's pulling from Isaac in cupped palm now. Spears of ice spring from the ground at their feet, cracking through the underside of an equine skull. Thrashing, ruined limbs go still. Its great heart stops.
And then shattered knees press into the ground, grinding as chalk between millstones. Jagged bone tears through cords of hanging muscle. It doesn't matter; the horse isn't feeling anything anymore, and the spirit that pushes its mangled corpse to its feet again isn't bound by mere physics.
Still dragging the armless smear of its rider by the heel, the creature lurches back into the fray, colliding with the bandit nearest Flint in a braying mangle of bone and meat.
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The balking horse plows into the cluster of riders already beginning to break apart. If that's all he accomplishes - some delay, some flash of confusion for the seconds required to rally from surprise - then it will have been a success. That he isn't pin-cushioned by arrows or on the verge of some swordpoint by the time he wrenches the horse around and has his own sword to hand is either a minor miracle or a testament to--
(Caved in ribcages and some remote flay of flesh, the snap of joints and the subsequent murderous collapse so loud that is sounds like one of the great hideous grappling bolts fired from one of the Walrus' fixed ballistas finding its mark.)
--the murdeorus crunching of some broken animal plowing into the horse and rider nearest to hand. The impact interrupts the striking line of the anonymous rider's sword and Flint's own move to block it. There is a shriek of steel on steel, a baffling split second of absurdity as the living animal is suddenly thrown against his own and the rider all but comes over the neck of Flint's horse and into his lap. Then Flint's horse spooks, leaping up and forward with all the grace of a bounding deer.
The moment of weightlessness is nauseating. For a stricken beat, Flint is aware of leaving the saddle and his boot from the stirrup and the tangle of the bandit's fingers grasping at him and both their bare swords. He sees that last pair of horse and rider, a thin faced woman drawn and pale with terror, driven to the roadside and untouched by the chaos but whirling now to break fully from it. That, he thinks distantly, could be a problem. Where will she go? What will she say when she gets there?
Then the instant is over. He loses sight of her as the gap between his horse and the tangle of dead and screaming living flesh opens, as the reins are wrenched from his single hand, and he and the frenzied rider and their swords disappear down into the fray of road mud and striking and stumbling hooves.
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Vague, fleeting, is the notion that he'll be disappointed if this is how Captain Flint dies: in a stupid ambush.
But it's Isaac and Ilias that ultimately command his attention. It's the broken horse, the rider, risen in a ghastly pantomime of life. It's the two of them standing there together, brave and powerful, bending destruction into this beautiful thing. The sight squeezes him inside, sharp, and then warm, like fluid from a burst fissure—not physical, no competition to his shoulder—ah, yes. That. His hand finds the shaft where it meets his clothing, and his fingers part around it, just to press. If he leaves it in, it'll keep the blood inside—
An arrow pierces the ground nearby. He follows its trajectory back to the hill, and unbelievably, the archer—one-third a mess of char and blood and lymph, clothes still smoking—has risen in a heroic attempt to finish his target, and failed to make a steady shot. The creases of pain pinching Leander's face disappear; his eyes gleam sharp beneath a predatory brow.
He goes up the hill after him.
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He's aware of Leander's gaze, even if his own attention is split between all the various factors at play here. Isaac getting to his feet, looking like a ghoul, to rend an attacker into pieces. Ilias wielding ice and dragging a corpse back together to do his bidding. Some jealous sense of yearning cuts through his furious regret at his actions. That kind of power brought down like the strike of a hammer, it hooks into the part of John that's always craved the ability to inspire awe and terror on that level.
Painstakingly, John leaves their orbit. Flint is somewhere in that tangle of bodies, hopefully alive. He entertains no alternative. His heart is in his throat, some terrible, coiling apprehension cinching tight in his chest as he approaches the fray. Out of the corner of his eye, he notes Leander is moving up the hill. The urge to call him back passes; all the better if there are no witnesses, and if there is someone alive up there, best they deal with that now.
Every step jostles the arrow, but John doesn't need to be moving forward for this. He doesn't even need to lift his hand. There is blood in his mouth, likely a bad sign overall, and John grits his teeth, gathers the power prickling beneath his skin, and pulls.
There is a shriek. She has gotten far enough that the sharp cracks of bone cannot be heard, one after another after another. Perhaps she is alive after her horse throws her, perhaps not. John doesn't waver. The screams choke off with a short gurgle. John exhales hard, and draws his sword as he wades closer to the tangled mess of bodies in the middle of the road.
"One of you two, go help Leander."
Not that John knows whether or not Leander actually needs the help or not. It just seems prudent at this late moment not to take chances, to pretend any part of this disaster can be handled by the rules of combat he's learned since toppling onto the Walrus.
forgive icons dw's still down etc
Isaac falls back. White knuckles in Ilias' shoulder, blind to the smears of gristle left behind. He fumbles for the will he'd held only a minute before, but it's empty as the opening space before them, the momentary absence of terror. John picks his way through the wake, an unsteady buzzard; another scream.
Then none.
Flint grapples in the road. Leander drags his own wing uphill. His weight is on Ilias, and they could just go. The wounded would live, but they'd make easy prey: Infection. Another raiding party. The birds,
"Go." Beneath the blood his skin scalds raw pink. Hairless, new. It's still moving. "He listens to you."
Isaac doesn't want to know whether Leander will listen to him. He coughs a clot of -- something -- and starts after John.
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And drop away only at the length of an outstretched arm. But it's true; Leander listens to him. Safer for everyone, if he's there — and Ilias needs them all to be safe now, Leander included. Flint, too. In the distance, the ruined trunks of horse bones scoot in an aimless arc in search of lingering threats.
"Take it carefully." The healing. The walking, for that matter. "I will bring him to help."
After— well. After. Long strides carry him up the hill on Leander's trail, to find out what exactly that means.
cant believe i finally get to use this dreamy artfully cropped covered in blood icon
The bandit is dead. Some blow from either the corpse or his own horse has struck the side of his skull. Save for his ruined face, he otherwise appears as a strangely perfect body lying belly down with lifeless arms still tangled around his companion's midsection.
By comparison, Flint where he lies half under him in the dusty road seems somehow worse for the wear. There is the mess of the dead man's head soaking into his side, and the hot sob of blood over his thigh from the naked edge of some sword (whose sword and whose blood, he isn't yet sure), but what stopped him from rising and is stopping from untangling himself now is the ugly collapsed shape of his side. He's rolled half over as if on the verge of trying again once he catches his breath, sucking air down as if through a choked pin hole.
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Those left behind and below may sense a violent pulse in the Veil, like a hammer striking canvas, as Leander impresses his willpower on the man already staggering in retreat from the shape that crests the ridge after him. At once the archer's limbs stiffen: stunned. He collapses on the hillside.
Lea rises panting in ragged effort, clutching his left arm close against his ribs with his shoulder up to keep the muscle raised, to keep the arrow from acting as a lever against his own collarbone, no confidence lost to his physical state. A little coordination, maybe. Less than it would be were he bleeding freely; the missile still lodged in his flesh has seen to that. Still, blood creeps out with every bump, every involuntary flexion around the shaft, to mingle with his pouring sweat into long streaks of wet black against black. By now he's pulled the wrap from his face entirely, and so the man on the ground has something human to look at while Leander bends down to drag up his lost bow from the pebbled slope.
Human-shaped, anyway.
He could say something. There's plenty of time. A glance to see who's coming up the hill after him—still he says nothing, but there's a smirk to his open mouth when he looks back down to the bandit's face. Dazed and fearful, staring, slowly returning to consciousness. Leander waits until he's nearly coherent enough to speak, and thus to properly struggle, then drops the bow across his neck and stands on it.
Untroubled by the need to balance through the jostling, the hysterical grasping and battering about his legs, the straining croaks and too-infrequent sucking sounds. Legs churning gravel and dirt behind him. Unburnt flesh becoming vivid. Slowly, steadily, cruelly relishing each deep lungful of air, he catches his breath.
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The impact of Leander is unmistakable. The force of it reverberates in John's chest. The last loose end has been taken care of, he assumes. And in the absence of any other throats to cut (to pretend he is reliant on steel) his attention narrows down to Flint.
"Isaac!" John shouts, without knowing whether Isaac is any condition to hurry forward. What did it cost to knit your body back together? John had seen the shift of bone beneath torn skin before he'd turned away—
Isaac had been upright. It will have to be enough.
"Those fucking horses," he mutters, dropping to Flint's side. There are no bandits alive to blame for this now. He grips Flint's shoulder with his bloody palm, inhales sharply and exhales, pulling in the lingering energy in the air and letting it flow through him. It's a stop gap measure. It blunts the pain and stems the bleeding, but John doesn't know how to repair the damage. This is the best he can do against the labored wheeze of Flint's breath. He becomes a conduit as traces of power pass from his palm to Flint's body; he is once again diving down through the wreckage of the Walrus after Flint, lifting his head from beneath the waves.
"Lay still. It's finished," John tells him, suppressing the urge to cough. It will only bring up blood. "Isaac's alive, and Leander and Ilias went after the last archer."
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His hand shakes on separation, steps swerved past the mass of meat -- peculiar. Someone else's dream. Halfway across, he thinks to recall the staff. Thinks it snapped, between the crack of horse and earth. It costs enough to do this, more without a focus.
He drops to his knees beside the pair, skin an ugly, inflamed shade of improbably whole. Painstaking, he works the strap from about his shoulder; dislodges muck and a wild swing of nausea. His fingers close about John's wrist.
"In the bag."
The little satchel ought to be soaked, smashed glass-full. Miracles preserve it: Rolls of bandage, dull-coloured vials.
"Drink red," Elfroot and herbal sludge, the sluggish crimson of numbed pain (of overconfidence). Wouldn't chance it unless he needed John aware. The war bought some notion of how this works, as a mite to feather; mouth to belly: It costs less, among mages. "Hand me blue."
Lyrium, prickling electric.
Isaac swallows it like water. Stills his palms to the work. Flashes Flint an eyeful of knife before burying it into shirt-seams, slicing free the crush of his chest.
"Broken ribs," Several. His palm is delicate, though it must feel anything but; watchful for reaction, the motion of breath. "Segmented. Help me hold him."
Bad -- but that much can be dealt with. The true danger's in what they might pierce, whether impact sent some organ splatting loose. No way to know but to wait, to watch for black bile and blued face. No way to warn for the flux of energy that startles skin-to-skin, seeps into bone. The pain of breaking is alien to mending. A lesser price.
It takes a while. It costs enough. Eventually, it's done.
(Cuts untouched, side still fragile with bruise. Commander Flint is not equipped for a second melee.)
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It's a stupid, childish thought. Boots thrash in the gravel; rocks grind into soft, peeled-back flesh, and what else would they do with the man? Let him crawl away to tell the tale of how three blood mages and a Mortalitasi made ruin of his friends. Let infection take him first, slowly, over days or weeks. Let Leander squeeze the air from his windpipe for minutes that feel like hours, while down below, Silver yells for a healer; there isn't time (he feels sick), and he just wants it to stop.
Frost seeps up the man's coat, out along tattered sleeves and trousers to encase flailing limbs, swallowing red welted flesh from chest to chin until it covers his mouth. Nose. It isn't much quicker; it's just still.
A hand comes to rest between Leander's shoulder blades. Fingers slide wet across bloody cloth. He can't heal the wound. Silver isn't the sort to panic over nothing, so Flint must be alive, bad, with Isaac still knitting his face back together, and Ilias can't heal any of them.
"They'll need you whole." The words strange and raw after the stretch of silence between them. "Take from me. Like in the woods."
A sacrifice, freely given.
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Like in the woods.
He doesn't need to ask if he's sure. Instead, "Let's get this out first." The arrow is less difficult to break than it would be for someone without the ability to press it thinner between two fingers, and he bears its swift removal with a hiss. Presses Ilias's hand between his own and the perforated muscle, next, then clasps the back of Ilias's neck, smearing blood.
Lean on me, he doesn't need to say, with barely half a step between them. Instead, "It won't hurt."
It doesn't. It's a chill, like the fatigue of illness, sensation of flowing, a silken swell of enervation. Breath and blood pressure momentarily subdued. The mind remains active while the body sighs. It doesn't hurt, but the wrongness of it—one may wonder if this is what it's like to die—and it is. It is. But only in part.
Leander steadies him, whispering reassurance, cups a cheek to look into his face, his eyes, to see that he's all right, and the world around them has gone soft—the nearness—this shared vulnerability—
Instead, a smile. Fleeting. Bittersweet.
He helps Ilias down the hill, finds him somewhere not so muddy to rest, and crouches by him just a moment to murmur something—confirmation, it seems from a distance, a hand on his shoulder, more briefly grazing his jaw—then finally turns to the group in distress. He's coming at a jog, rolling his renewed shoulder, his arm, flexing his hand. Bright-eyed and fresh.
"I'm here—where do you need me?"
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It's an easy question, direct to the point of hacking through the bewildering, jagged agony of remaking. Whether it lands anywhere amidst the dirt and the blood and the heated iron thrill of magic is debatable, but he hears it. That counts for something.
(It counts for twice that. It leverages at the corner of his attention where it's gone fixed on Silver - knifelike and wounded and viciously calculating through the crack of ribs and under the line of the arm used to hold him still. What did you do?, it doesn't say. It's closer to What did you take.)
"Can you heal?" It sounds like he's aspirated dirt, or just like he shouldn't be the one answering this question but is.
Flint fights first up to an elbow and then to have his legs out from under the dead man. There's a distant, numbed satisfaction in finding all that dark blood either isn't his or has stopped pouring out of him. Isaac looks like he's been dragged by the face across loose gravel; there are hunting bolts buried in backs.
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He can feel the arrows grinding against bone as he moves, but there isn't time to try to rip either of them free. They're of more use to him embedded in his body than wrenched loose. The pain, the slow-spreading pools of blood soaking fabric, John can make something of that. The potion blunts the agony, reverses some of the damage, but leaves enough that John can inhale in what the bandits left behind. (An impression, some lingering traces of breath and heartbeat whispering behind the Veil.) It all adds up to enough borrowed strength to hold Flint down while Isaac goes to work.
(Is this what it had looked like from the other side, when Howell had severed the mangled mess of his leg from his body?)
John feels more than hears the moment when Isaac finishes. Flint draws a deep, unlabored breath. The ripples of Isaac's magic go still. Across Flint's body, John meets his eyes, looks down into Flint's face, then breaks away to sit back clumsily, finally coughing a disgusting glob of blood into the dirt. The lance-sharp focus of Flint's scrutiny had not gone unmissed, just as Leander's brief, knowing stare had registered. Achingly, he eases his grip, lets the last breath of magic slip from his fingers as he turns his attention to Leander and Ilias.
He almost asks What happened to Ilias? but thinks better of it.
"You killed the archer?" John asks, begging confirmation for what he already knows had happened on that hill.
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Isaac rocks to his haunches, hip bumping the hand of a corpse. A reflexive shudder. Flint sits, John hacks, and Leander springs across the dim scene; stained by a wound that isn’t there. Ilias, sat pale in the dirt behind.
Hate swells.
"He’s dead." Doesn’t need to hear it said. His eyes slip, head buzzes sapphire. "I’m spent."
Agreement: Leander, take John. He could push, but it’s better to slip beneath the croak of Flint’s authority. It’s a stupid relief to stop making choices. To sip on self-loathing and the prickle of regathered flesh.
He knew exactly what he was doing, when he sent Ilias uphill.
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Nearer, something cold and wet nudges at the side of his hand, and for a moment Ilias just squints down at it, puzzling over the intruding sensation. The knobby bulk of a shoulder follows, weight sighing in against his hip. The creature is chill and damp, no more alive than the dirt under him, but it's solid. Grounded. Gently, he lifts a hand to rest against its spine, to stroke down too-still ribs, and just-- keeps tipping over until he's settled against it.
He's fine. He just needs a minute.
Breath deepens. Dark eyes find purchase again in the dim light. Leander is moving to help, Flint is moving at all, and Isaac is-- hm.
A hand extends, palm up. Beckoning. Offering. They've neither of them much strength just yet, but not so little he can't try.
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More field medic than physician, having spent more time drawing than mending, Leander has neither the schooling nor experience of Ser Self-Loathing over yonder, but his hands are quick and careful. From some inconspicuous place he produces a little folding knife (not that one) and widens the tears in Silver's clothing so he can see better where arrows penetrate skin.
"Keep still, now." Steady. Composed. No impression of a racing pulse. "Stay just there. This is going to hurt."
And it does, only not for the reason it should. There's no brutal tearing-loose, no barbs shredding on their way out, but a strange whispering twist in the Veil, pain as Leander grasps the arrow, crawling sharp along the embedded shaft, dull sensation of pulling, and a sudden release as it comes loose. The exit is smooth, lubricated by blood filling the channel as quickly as it widens—such a little widening, barely visible to the eye, but nonetheless a thrilling manipulation, and with only moments of enhanced discomfort for the man who wears the flesh. Until now he's never done it this quickly—
Well. Not to a living thing.
Serious, keen eyes, lips pressed thin, he does it again.
"Keep still," a close murmur, focused. With great care, he leans over each wound and pinches it shut, from depth to surface. One final welling of blood as it's squeezed up and out. His posture eases, then, and he presses both hands to Silver's back, and now comes the more familiar healing warmth.
Where another mage might now draw and release the sigh typical of critical success, Leander is quiet.
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If there are questions - are there are a dozen boiling up in the dark and ragged quiet which follows - they can be asked not now. By the time the arrows are deposited into the road, he has unearthed both his sword and the bandit's but hasn't gotten any closer to rising from the position generously described as sitting up. He talks over Leander's work (or under or around or during it; Silver's face and the pain that does or doesn't show there creates more continuity than anything else can). Short of breath, but because it hurts and not because he can't choke down the necessary air:
"We'll bring the archers down to the road." There are two rings on the dead man's fingers. Flint removes and pockets them. Turning the corpse over is more than he can manage, but the small pouch at its side is opened and its contents strewn feebly over the blood soaked earth. A bundle of tinder, a short piece of soft wood carved halfway to the shape of a bird whistle, a stone with a letter scratched into it, a spool of hemp twine, a spoon.
"Take weapons and anything of immediate value from them. Look for a line we can tie. Ilias--" that's not loud enough to carry where he wants it, but he doesn't try again. "--The horse can pull the bodies down where we need them. Otherwise, they'll have to be carried."
Good thing they've all practiced this.
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It isn't graceful as Isaac's work had been, nor is it Howell's blunted, precise approach. John has the sense of being shaped, as if Leander is drawing the flesh of his back languidly away from the shaft of the arrow. The momentary sense of something amiss unsettles him, but John hasn't screamed yet, and he doesn't scream now. This is pain he can grit his teeth against and groan through.
And reacting to Leander's ministrations deflects, for the moment, Flint's scrutiny. His hand balls in the dirt beside him as Flint speaks. Leander's timing is almost perfect, with his palms lifting from John's back just as Flint finishes discussing what's to be done with the corpses.
"It would be better to burn them," John says, and he thinks his reasoning is fairly clear. There's evidence here. Too many of these corpses were very clearly created by magical means. That's harder to hide than their earlier staging of the coach.
And then, turning enough to see Leander: "Thank you."
Whatever strangeness he had noticed about Leander's technique, the reaction afterwards, he keeps to himself. Mutual silence is going to have to do for the rest of this trip.
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A man in black, a pale horse — the sort of thing that used to frighten him in stories, the curling lines of ink and superstition to occasionally adorn even Chantry tomes. The mouth would dry, if it weren’t full of ichor.
Separates: Leander’s speaking; Flint is. His drifting chin snaps up.
Leander's working.
The night stinks of blood and torn bowels, impossible to pick the particular drops. He doesn’t need to, imagination already cradling the means to this end. A warped door, a patient eye. Could you? Et voila,
The sort of thing to frighten him.
Flint’s still speaking. John hasn't screamed. Isaac finds his way up, palms the stone; carries an order. If he mislikes leaving Commander and Conspirator together, it's unavoidable. He’s walking better now, pushes past the pause in his step to lay a hand upon Ilias’. Fingers tangle in cold, damp fur, and his skin crawls. He tightens his grip, past the urge to recoil.
"I’m sorry," Spoken to dead ears, warm flesh. The moment hangs; two of them are breathing. "We need to move the bodies."
The rock and its lonely letter. Ilias’ pocket. His hand moves; they overlap.