There’s no violence, at least, when they’re turned away from Lac-Vide. Just stony indifference to their scorch marks and scrapes, to their uniforms—to everything but their staves and the gossip that got there ahead of them. The watchmen won’t even open the gates.
The Inquisition would have them, but the front is several hours in the wrong direction. In the right direction, it’s an hour’s ride at least to the next town large enough for an inn, where the story might just repeat.
So camping it is. And camping might not have even been so bad, even injured and exhausted and setting up in the dark. But not five minutes after they’ve found a place to stop, sheltered out of sight of the road by a cliffside and cluster of trees, the heavy clouds overhead—previously so helpful in the attack—rumble a bit louder, and the sound of heavy rain on leaves and dry ground rolls in closer until it becomes a roar. A very wet roar.
camp. Matthias is already working when the rain comes. He's been working, actually, having slipped away from whatever everyone else was doing and striking out on his own. He's been industrious with a triangular piece of canvas, crouched in the brittle grass, sharpening short bits of wood into stakes. As the rain begins in earnest, he squints up at the sky, and thrusts his knife into the dirt so he can pull up his hood.
"Oi," he calls out, cheerfully, to whoever is passing by, "c'mere. I need about six of these."
tent. Once his tent is established, it looks like this: the circle skirt edge of it stretched and staked intermittently, and the tip of the canvas pulled taut and lashed to a narrow scrubby tree, leaving that whole side open. Matthias begins to build a fire easily, feeding it with his magic. The rain can't touch the flames, given sharp angle of the pointed tip of the canvas. The fire cuts a cheery patch of color in the otherwise dismal setting of their camp.
He's generous with it, too, and scoots over to make room for anyone that looks like they need it. The price you'll pay is conversation. Only a moment passes, and then Matthias--cloak pulled tight, huddled around his staff like a funny little hermit--will say:
"Not that good at this, are you?"
Just saying. Or, if there's more than one person, he'll wait for a lull in the conversation to speak up.
"Right, so. 'Cause this is boring. Truth or dare?"
Kitty squints over at Matthias, not certain whether or not to take offense.
"Not good at what?" Before she decides, she'll need a bit of clarification. "Camping?" To be fair, of course, she quite transparently isn't - no one good at camping would look quite this miserable. Still, it's not necessarily something that ought to be pointed out.
Kitty debates a moment longer whether to be sour or not about his obvious amusement, but, well...He doesn't seem mean-spirited about it. So instead of snapping, she sighs, and replies -
"It is so bad. The outdoors is dreadful. Full of nasty bugs - " She slaps at a biting insect for emphasis. "And why would you sleep on the ground when you could have a bed?"
"Well, if you've got any spare beds in your pocket, I'll not turn one down. Otherwise I think we haven't got much choice."
He gestures, to their surroundings. At least beneath his weirdly-shaped tent, things are warm and dry, with plenty of open ground to roll out a blanket or a bedroll. Or set up a bed, if there was a bed about.
"You're from a city, then? Where there's no bugs at all?"
"Well, of course we've got bugs. But not ones like this." In truth, London actually had many bugs like this, but, well - she'd sound rather stupid if she admitted that. Plus, they were quite a lot smaller, which is enough of a difference to justify the claim, really.
"Free Marches, yeah. Where the bugs are larger, but at least they haven't got Orlesian accents. Go proper bzzz instead of--" How do you do a bug with an Orlesian accent? Well-- "Bizzzet," and he does a little flourish with his left hand and bends forward slightly in a seated bow.
He continues normally, and sensibly, once he's sat himself up again. "If you slap a bit of mud on you they're as like to leave you alone. Only then you've got mud on you, and I dunno how your city sensibilities handle that one. It does work, though. Honest. Sounds as if I'm taking the piss, but I don't mess about with bugs. You can get sick off of 'em, y'know. Nasty. Saw it a few times in the field."
Edited (i'm sorry i have to edit to break my icon repetition ugh) 2019-09-22 22:15 (UTC)
"I used to be better at it," Derrica answers, a little sheepish as she crosses her legs and settles into the space he's made for her. "But it's been a while since I had to even pretend to try to make a tent."
It had never really mattered very much at Dairsmuid. There'd always been someone more capable for her to rely on the few times they'd strayed out into the trees. Derrica takes a deep breath and cuts that memory off before her thoughts snag on it.
"You did well back there," She tells him; the praise feels important to impart. "I always wanted to be better with fire than I am."
"Thanks," Matthias says. And then he looks very hard at the fire and tries not to fall to pieces over a few words of compliment but, really. How can he do anything but fall to pieces, or at least grin, hugely--which he does, now, even though he fights against it.
Look: he likes being good at things. He likes people recognizing him. He likes especially people that he likes or respects--likes and respects, sometimes--recognizing him for a job well done. Enchanter Peggins used to call him puppy out of that eagerness, you'd kill yourself trying to earn a kind word, Matthias, but even shame hadn't curbed that instinct in Matthias.
He hunches his shoulders and leans forward, hoping the fall of his hood will shield his stupid smile from view. At least until he can master his expression.
"I mean, like, so, fire's always been easiest for me. Probably 'cause it's quick and it, y'know. Destroys the way that it does. First time I did magic it was fire, and it's always been there for me since. Which is it you're best at, then?"
Derrica spreads her hands out over the fire. She'd put on her own cloak again, but her skin is still chilled from the rainfall. She doesn't feel clean, exactly, but the grit and rust of battle has been passably rinsed. At his question, she makes a little face; it's long-suffering and amused all at once.
"Healing," she tells him. "But I'd always wanted to be better at other things."
Much had been made of that when she was smaller. A blessing, the First Enchanter had said. Maybe it was, just not in the way anyone had expected it to be. It had helped her flee, gotten her aboard a ship, instead of being the kind of tool she'd have used in the villages, at the Seers request.
She breathes out hard, rubs her palms together over the flame.
"People don't usually think the healer's going to be the one leading charges, you know?"
And he probably does. He'd fought properly, likely had to think these sorts of things himself.
He grins a little--yeah, he does know, and quite well.
"Wouldn't get anywhere without healers, though. Which is likely what everyone says to you, but s' true. I've been properly fucked before except by the grace of a healer, I wasn't."
Loads of Matthias' stories go that way, darting from danger to danger as they always were. The fact that he's sitting here to tell it means that healers really have saved his arse, time and time again. He scratches at the corner of his mouth, thoughtfully.
"But like, you could learn. Yeah? You've got loads of time now. Just 'cause healing's easiest doesn't mean that's it. I bet I could show you something of fire. If you wanted."
Extremely sincerely. Derrica wants to break the earth apart, throw grown men across battlefields and root them in place to be cracked down by her staff, but there's a certain appeal in starting fires.
"I don't mind healing. It's nice, it's just..." Derrica trails off, shrugs a little. "Sometimes I want to do more."
She opens and closes her hands over the fire once more, then curls in slightly on herself, pulls her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them.
A good healer tends to others before herself, one of her instructors had told Derrica once. She'd had thin, spindly hands, and delicate features, and very specific ideas about how a healer functioned in battle. She had imagined Derrica serenely waiting, out of sight; certainly not in the middle of things, collecting scorch marks and bruises of her own.
But still, certain things stick in your mind. Derrica's thinking of her old teacher as she slides off her horse, eyes the rest of her companions. The adrenaline is fading. She's aware of the aches in her own body, the places where blood has been washed away by rainfall. Her hair has come loose from her braid, curling in the damp air. She'd imagined time to get settled, assess before deciding how to divide her attention.
Then the sky opens up. Derrica sighs.
"I thought we'd been able to outrun it," She says regretfully. "Is everyone alright to set up camp?"
The implication being: is anyone about to fall over from an injury before they start dealing with tents?
( ii. tent )
Derrica has never put up a tent, and it shows. It lists to the side, droops sadly in the middle. She regards it from a few feet away, considering the chances of it caving in on her and whoever else is unlucky enough to share with her in the night.
She'd rather sleep in the rain, but—
"Can you help me with this?" She asks, a faint grimace in her tone. "I can't get it to stand up right."
"Sure, give me a minute," Nell says, heading past Derrica to dump a rather measly armload of fuel into the growing stack beside the main fire. She brushes her hands together, and then on her pants as she returns, stopping a few feet back to survey the tent's current state.
"Alright," she says after a minute, "I think what's happened is you've got this pole--" she waves at one end, "Swapped with that one. And you need--. Actually, let's just start over. Do you mind? I think it will be easier."
"Better it come down now than in a few hours when we're all mostly settled," Derrica answers, though she's less fussed at the idea of being dripped on in the night than her tent falling on top of her. Living for years aboard a ship, she's gotten used to a certain measure of wetness permeating living spaces.
"I'll need to get all of you onto a ship next time, so you don't think I'm completely useless."
As she says this, she carefully pulls the tarp from the rickety skeleton of poles she'd managed to construct. She can see what Nell had meant now. A few look improperly placed and now she has an idea of why instead of a faint, nagging sense that she was on the wrong track but unsure of how to correct it that had been pulling at her during her earlier efforts.
Kostos isn't everyone. But his role in any given combat scenario is usually to make sure as few injuries exist to be healed afterwards as possible—which means he takes injuries as personal failures, which in turn means he notices them occurring, usually, with the same focus that makes people remember every possibly-stupid thing they've said after a conversation ends.
His instinctive response to rain is to try to hide from it by making himself smaller, like a cat, but the rain is so heavy that he gives that up after only a few seconds, broadens his shoulders again in a resigned sort of way, and looks Derrica over. Fine and unscathed aren't the same thing. His forearm is blistered from a burn, he remembers just in time to keep from scraping it over his face to get water out of his eyes, and if he remembers correctly, she used to be bloody.
"I know we will be. The barriers deflected some of the worst things they were throwing," She tells him, running one hand down her horse's neck soothingly as the beast snorts. Even just having the barriers up, and someone dedicating themselves to a specific kind of defense was a far cry from the types of ambushes Derrica had gotten used to.
Fighting with a group of mages is vastly different from fighting alongside a pack of pirates. She's still processing the experience of it as she smiles, looks quickly around at their companions.
"And no one's fallen off their horse yet. That's a good sign." Just what you want to hear the healer say. She extends a hand towards Kostos, nodding at his arm. "Can I see?"
No one is following them. But there are highwaymen, opportunists, wild animals—plenty of reasons for a watch rotation, and Kostos takes his turn in the last stretch before dawn. He alternates between staring at the sky and stalking restlessly around the perimeter of the camp while a pair of wisps trail behind him. Or trail behind him part of the way and then get sidetracked by looking at the bark on a tree.
He isn't in the mood. He's cold, he's damp from the lingering drizzle, he's stuck in a mental loop imagining a comeuppance that Lac-Vide will never actually get and that he'd be sorry if they did. But they're curious, excited, and incorrigible, so when they stop he stops, too, and sulks against a tree while they get it out of their systems.
less early.
The rain has let up by the time they start getting ready to leave again, at least, and he packs his—Riftwatch's—horse with practiced speed. "Is there anything we cannot live without before we reach Val Royeaux?" he asks whoever is nearest. "If we have to stop at one of these fucking villages again, we should split up and keep the staves out of sight."
"They're awfully cute." Kitty isn't on watch, but she's not sleeping, either. Instead she sits with her legs drawn up to her, elbows on her knees, huddled in on herself to try to trap some bit of warmth. She looks tired, but there's a faint warmth on her face - a sort of fondness that other people direct towards a pretty bird or a curious little cat.
"They are only slightly smarter than rocks," Kostos answers, but under the dour insult there might be some faint fondness of his own. Without detaching from the tree he's leaning against, he rolls a little bit in her direction so he can see her properly. "You should really sleep."
She shrugs back at him. "Not exactly that easy, is it. No one ever got commanded to sleep." She pauses for a moment, then amends, "Except by hypnotists, I suppose. But people who pretend to get hypnotized are just faking, anyway."
Then she tilts her head to the side slightly. "Have they got personalities?"
“Barely,” Kostos says, but after a moment he relents. “They are mostly curious. Excitable.” He pokes his chin toward the nearest one, the one that’s humming at the tree bark. “That one is interested because the tree does not move. And that one—” whirling in circles overhead with increasing speed “—is on thin ice, if it does not want to go back.”
She puts her elbows on her knees and watches a moment. Then - "Do you like them?" Almost immediately, she wrinkles her nose, because: "I know that sounds stupid. But - you know what I mean. You treat them like they're real things."
Then he realizes that he's not talking to just anyone. Few days out in the field and he's fallen into the mode of camp complaint, where you can say things like these tents are shit or when will we stop getting stale tack for breakfast or if I've got to hear that arsebiscuit snoring one more night I'll cut his throat, and it's a general rumble of camaraderie that is all right, even in mixed company. Only here, Matthias has committed the critical error of having spoken his wish aloud to Enchanter Averesch, without meaning to.
What's the difference? Well, they're not exactly comrades in arms, are they, and he mostly wants very badly to impress Enchanter Averesch, which means being cool and not complaining. And he's not properly complaining, but it's not as if Enchanter Averesch will know that he's not properly complaining. Enchanter, or: whatever title would be appropriate. Is there a title that would be considered appropriate? What does decorum and title matter anymore--only, really, then again, people did a lot to earn them, so perhaps they do matter--but if they were granted under an old system that's defunct or really burnt to the ground, then, really, does it matter. But perhaps it's better to err on the side of being respectful, even if only in his head, because if he actually said it aloud Averesch might look at him in some way.
And all of this thinking goes on in about two second's time, as the horror of his stupid trite confession spreads a numbness through him. And, well, okay. His socks are rather squashy.
He tries a grin on. Feels all right. Perfectly self-deprecating, an easy balance to strike, because he feels like such a tit right now. "And a palace with a massive fireplace. Only joking. I can live without anything. Have we really got to go into Val Royeaux?"
Edited (sorry i got precious about punctuation E:) 2019-10-16 00:56 (UTC)
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misery.
The Inquisition would have them, but the front is several hours in the wrong direction. In the right direction, it’s an hour’s ride at least to the next town large enough for an inn, where the story might just repeat.
So camping it is. And camping might not have even been so bad, even injured and exhausted and setting up in the dark. But not five minutes after they’ve found a place to stop, sheltered out of sight of the road by a cliffside and cluster of trees, the heavy clouds overhead—previously so helpful in the attack—rumble a bit louder, and the sound of heavy rain on leaves and dry ground rolls in closer until it becomes a roar. A very wet roar.
matthias || ota
Matthias is already working when the rain comes. He's been working, actually, having slipped away from whatever everyone else was doing and striking out on his own. He's been industrious with a triangular piece of canvas, crouched in the brittle grass, sharpening short bits of wood into stakes. As the rain begins in earnest, he squints up at the sky, and thrusts his knife into the dirt so he can pull up his hood.
"Oi," he calls out, cheerfully, to whoever is passing by, "c'mere. I need about six of these."
tent.
Once his tent is established, it looks like this: the circle skirt edge of it stretched and staked intermittently, and the tip of the canvas pulled taut and lashed to a narrow scrubby tree, leaving that whole side open. Matthias begins to build a fire easily, feeding it with his magic. The rain can't touch the flames, given sharp angle of the pointed tip of the canvas. The fire cuts a cheery patch of color in the otherwise dismal setting of their camp.
He's generous with it, too, and scoots over to make room for anyone that looks like they need it. The price you'll pay is conversation. Only a moment passes, and then Matthias--cloak pulled tight, huddled around his staff like a funny little hermit--will say:
"Not that good at this, are you?"
Just saying. Or, if there's more than one person, he'll wait for a lull in the conversation to speak up.
"Right, so. 'Cause this is boring. Truth or dare?"
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"Not good at what?" Before she decides, she'll need a bit of clarification. "Camping?" To be fair, of course, she quite transparently isn't - no one good at camping would look quite this miserable. Still, it's not necessarily something that ought to be pointed out.
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The cowl of Matthias' cloak casts a weird shadow over his face, but nothing so severe that it will disguise his grin.
"Yeah, camping. Obviously. You look a fair bit miserable about it. S'not so bad."
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"It is so bad. The outdoors is dreadful. Full of nasty bugs - " She slaps at a biting insect for emphasis. "And why would you sleep on the ground when you could have a bed?"
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He gestures, to their surroundings. At least beneath his weirdly-shaped tent, things are warm and dry, with plenty of open ground to roll out a blanket or a bedroll. Or set up a bed, if there was a bed about.
"You're from a city, then? Where there's no bugs at all?"
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"Well, of course we've got bugs. But not ones like this." In truth, London actually had many bugs like this, but, well - she'd sound rather stupid if she admitted that. Plus, they were quite a lot smaller, which is enough of a difference to justify the claim, really.
"What about you? Free Marches, you said, yeah?"
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He continues normally, and sensibly, once he's sat himself up again. "If you slap a bit of mud on you they're as like to leave you alone. Only then you've got mud on you, and I dunno how your city sensibilities handle that one. It does work, though. Honest. Sounds as if I'm taking the piss, but I don't mess about with bugs. You can get sick off of 'em, y'know. Nasty. Saw it a few times in the field."
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barges in here
It had never really mattered very much at Dairsmuid. There'd always been someone more capable for her to rely on the few times they'd strayed out into the trees. Derrica takes a deep breath and cuts that memory off before her thoughts snag on it.
"You did well back there," She tells him; the praise feels important to impart. "I always wanted to be better with fire than I am."
welcome
Look: he likes being good at things. He likes people recognizing him. He likes especially people that he likes or respects--likes and respects, sometimes--recognizing him for a job well done. Enchanter Peggins used to call him puppy out of that eagerness, you'd kill yourself trying to earn a kind word, Matthias, but even shame hadn't curbed that instinct in Matthias.
He hunches his shoulders and leans forward, hoping the fall of his hood will shield his stupid smile from view. At least until he can master his expression.
"I mean, like, so, fire's always been easiest for me. Probably 'cause it's quick and it, y'know. Destroys the way that it does. First time I did magic it was fire, and it's always been there for me since. Which is it you're best at, then?"
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"Healing," she tells him. "But I'd always wanted to be better at other things."
Much had been made of that when she was smaller. A blessing, the First Enchanter had said. Maybe it was, just not in the way anyone had expected it to be. It had helped her flee, gotten her aboard a ship, instead of being the kind of tool she'd have used in the villages, at the Seers request.
She breathes out hard, rubs her palms together over the flame.
"People don't usually think the healer's going to be the one leading charges, you know?"
And he probably does. He'd fought properly, likely had to think these sorts of things himself.
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"Wouldn't get anywhere without healers, though. Which is likely what everyone says to you, but s' true. I've been properly fucked before except by the grace of a healer, I wasn't."
Loads of Matthias' stories go that way, darting from danger to danger as they always were. The fact that he's sitting here to tell it means that healers really have saved his arse, time and time again. He scratches at the corner of his mouth, thoughtfully.
"But like, you could learn. Yeah? You've got loads of time now. Just 'cause healing's easiest doesn't mean that's it. I bet I could show you something of fire. If you wanted."
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Extremely sincerely. Derrica wants to break the earth apart, throw grown men across battlefields and root them in place to be cracked down by her staff, but there's a certain appeal in starting fires.
"I don't mind healing. It's nice, it's just..." Derrica trails off, shrugs a little. "Sometimes I want to do more."
She opens and closes her hands over the fire once more, then curls in slightly on herself, pulls her knees to her chest, wraps her arms around them.
"You've been in a lot of fights, haven't you?"
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you know what's fun when you think of a question and then forget it before you write the tag
i did the same thing yesterday i'm sympathetic
ty for your understanding
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derrica | ota.
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"Alright," she says after a minute, "I think what's happened is you've got this pole--" she waves at one end, "Swapped with that one. And you need--. Actually, let's just start over. Do you mind? I think it will be easier."
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"I'll need to get all of you onto a ship next time, so you don't think I'm completely useless."
As she says this, she carefully pulls the tarp from the rickety skeleton of poles she'd managed to construct. She can see what Nell had meant now. A few look improperly placed and now she has an idea of why instead of a faint, nagging sense that she was on the wrong track but unsure of how to correct it that had been pulling at her during her earlier efforts.
i.
Kostos isn't everyone. But his role in any given combat scenario is usually to make sure as few injuries exist to be healed afterwards as possible—which means he takes injuries as personal failures, which in turn means he notices them occurring, usually, with the same focus that makes people remember every possibly-stupid thing they've said after a conversation ends.
His instinctive response to rain is to try to hide from it by making himself smaller, like a cat, but the rain is so heavy that he gives that up after only a few seconds, broadens his shoulders again in a resigned sort of way, and looks Derrica over. Fine and unscathed aren't the same thing. His forearm is blistered from a burn, he remembers just in time to keep from scraping it over his face to get water out of his eyes, and if he remembers correctly, she used to be bloody.
So: "I think," he amends. "You would know best."
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Fighting with a group of mages is vastly different from fighting alongside a pack of pirates. She's still processing the experience of it as she smiles, looks quickly around at their companions.
"And no one's fallen off their horse yet. That's a good sign." Just what you want to hear the healer say. She extends a hand towards Kostos, nodding at his arm. "Can I see?"
open. theoretically.
No one is following them. But there are highwaymen, opportunists, wild animals—plenty of reasons for a watch rotation, and Kostos takes his turn in the last stretch before dawn. He alternates between staring at the sky and stalking restlessly around the perimeter of the camp while a pair of wisps trail behind him. Or trail behind him part of the way and then get sidetracked by looking at the bark on a tree.
He isn't in the mood. He's cold, he's damp from the lingering drizzle, he's stuck in a mental loop imagining a comeuppance that Lac-Vide will never actually get and that he'd be sorry if they did. But they're curious, excited, and incorrigible, so when they stop he stops, too, and sulks against a tree while they get it out of their systems.
less early.
The rain has let up by the time they start getting ready to leave again, at least, and he packs his—Riftwatch's—horse with practiced speed. "Is there anything we cannot live without before we reach Val Royeaux?" he asks whoever is nearest. "If we have to stop at one of these fucking villages again, we should split up and keep the staves out of sight."
early. theoretically.
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Then she tilts her head to the side slightly. "Have they got personalities?"
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The whirl slows to a chastened drift.
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She puts her elbows on her knees and watches a moment. Then - "Do you like them?" Almost immediately, she wrinkles her nose, because: "I know that sounds stupid. But - you know what I mean. You treat them like they're real things."
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kicks the theoretical to the curb
Then he realizes that he's not talking to just anyone. Few days out in the field and he's fallen into the mode of camp complaint, where you can say things like these tents are shit or when will we stop getting stale tack for breakfast or if I've got to hear that arsebiscuit snoring one more night I'll cut his throat, and it's a general rumble of camaraderie that is all right, even in mixed company. Only here, Matthias has committed the critical error of having spoken his wish aloud to Enchanter Averesch, without meaning to.
What's the difference? Well, they're not exactly comrades in arms, are they, and he mostly wants very badly to impress Enchanter Averesch, which means being cool and not complaining. And he's not properly complaining, but it's not as if Enchanter Averesch will know that he's not properly complaining. Enchanter, or: whatever title would be appropriate. Is there a title that would be considered appropriate? What does decorum and title matter anymore--only, really, then again, people did a lot to earn them, so perhaps they do matter--but if they were granted under an old system that's defunct or really burnt to the ground, then, really, does it matter. But perhaps it's better to err on the side of being respectful, even if only in his head, because if he actually said it aloud Averesch might look at him in some way.
And all of this thinking goes on in about two second's time, as the horror of his stupid trite confession spreads a numbness through him. And, well, okay. His socks are rather squashy.
He tries a grin on. Feels all right. Perfectly self-deprecating, an easy balance to strike, because he feels like such a tit right now. "And a palace with a massive fireplace. Only joking. I can live without anything. Have we really got to go into Val Royeaux?"