faderift | NOT IN MY CROSSROADS

There's only three of them, but the way still feels narrow. A cold and peculiarly damp wind slaps at the back of the neck, tugs at the hem of cloaks and dogs at their heels. And there's a smell, on the air, if you stop to catch it.

The steadiest sound, apart from breath, is the crunch of glass underfoot. Silvery shards of mirror like quicksilver spilled on the ground make a path before them. There hasn't been glass all this way. The swathe seems concentrated here, as if someone ran through a mirror-maze smashing everything in sight. Most of the shards are small, and dangerous in that way, but every now and then, there's a shard that's dagger-long and just as wicked. They all reflect the torchlight as their team pass over it, glittering and winking--but out of the corner of the eye, the light looks different. Indoors, somehow. Like firelight from a hearth might look. There's no way to say how anyone would know that, the difference between torchlight and firelight, but it is different. Isn't it?

That's what Matthias is thinking, at least. He keeps finding himself looking down, no matter what he does to fix his eyes on the way ahead. Before long, his gaze has strayed down again, watching the pieces of the mirror as they walk over them.

"Hey," he says, breaking the silence. "Is there--something funny about these?"

He kicks at a large bit of shard with the toe of his boot. It flips over, revealing its back to be just as reflective as its front, and there's-- definitely something there, a face, a woman with a long nose, thin cheeks, and Matthias looks about so quickly he nearly has his had off, but there's no one. Nothing. All the hair on the back of his neck is standing on end and his staff is in his hand and there's no one there.

"There's something funny about these," he says, firmly.

"If they told a joke, I didn't hear it."

Most passages feel narrow to one of Barrow's size, and he's had to turn sideways once or twice just to get through. He doesn't mind the cold so much, but it being from the Fade--or something like it?-- and not a completely normal source like the damp of Ferelden or the wind off the sea has his hackles up.

"Seen a ghost?" he asks the lad, raising an eyebrow, though not entirely unsympathetic.

"No," Matthias says, quickly. "Seen a shard of mirror," and then he can't finish that sentence, because it's too ridiculous. A shard of mirror that reflects what isn't there? Come off it, Matthias.

So it shouldn't be a problem, to pick it up off the ground and look at it. He stares, hard, at a bit of mirror in the path ahead. A large bit, maybe the size of his forearm from fingertip to elbow. When their path reaches it, he stoops and shrugs one shoulder forward, so his cloak falls in the right way, and he can wrap his hand around it and pick up the piece of mirror without cutting himself on its edge.

There's darkness in it now. Too much darkness. The three of them have light enough to see by. The mirror's face should reflect it, even if it's a scrap of mirror.

"Look," he says to Barrow, and twists in his crouch so he's holding up the mirror shard for him to see. The hand wrapped in his cloak clasps at the broadest edge, obscuring that bit of it--but there's still a sliver by which to see. "S' too dark, like. That sort of funny."

"Careful," Derrica cautions. She's trailing, distracted by the crunch of glass under her boots. "It could be cursed to do something awful to you."

Or all of them. But one potential disaster at a time here.

Barrow squints at the shard, coming no closer to it.

"...yep, that's curse material," he agrees, "put it down, mate."

"S'not," Matthias says, immediately, doing the very teenager thing of disagreeing on principle, "if it was cursed I'd not have been able to pick it up even, right? It'd have my hand off. It's only," and he turns the shard toward himself, and there she is again, glaring at him. The shard of mirror shows only half her face, nose up to forehead or so, but he knows the face and he looks around quickly.

And there's no one and nothing behind him. When he looks back, the mirror is reflecting only darkness again, and a little bit of his face. Mostly his mouth, which is caught up in a nervous frown.

"Look in one, would you."

Obligingly, Derrica steps up to peer into a mirror alongside Matthias. When a flash of unfamiliar face appears and vanishes, she grabs the back of his tunic instinctively. Certainly nothing here can hurt them, not unless they give it a little more of an opening, but—

"I don't like this," she says. "Did you see that?"

She looks first at Matthias, and then turns to look directly back at Barrow. Someone saw that strange passage of shadow on the other side besides her, didn't they?

"If curses couldn't be picked up, our jobs would be a lot easier," Barrow sighs, and happens to be glancing at the same shard as Derrica when she catches sight of the Dread Visage.

"Shit--" he sputters, and steps back, meeting Derrica's eyes with a knowing look. Oh Hell no.
This is above his pay grade.

Used to having the back of his tunic (or shirt, or cloak, or robes) grabbed like a puppy being grabbed by the nape, Matthias doesn't pull away immediately. He permits the grip unconsciously, focused on the mirror shard. The phantom face has flitted into view again. Then ot passes out of sight, like someone stepping to the side, moving away from a window. He tips the shard, leans to the side, trying to see--finds himself hampered by the pull of his tunic on his underarms--and that's when he pulls a little face, and struggles a bit.

"I know her," he says. "Get off a second, would you? I want to see--"

She's not there. Darkness, like he's looking into a room without a candle to see by. Impatient, he tips the shard the other way, and there she is again. Blindfolded now. Old linen, wrapped and knotted tightly. This is the last time he saw her. Blood matting her hair. He'd never seen her hair before. Lank, dirty, stringy about her face.

"This is mad. What is it?"

Edited (oops) 2019-10-25 18:53 (UTC)

The eluvian stands like an archway, tall and shimmering and flawless. Except, you know, for the smear of blood and gore at the base. And the corpse at its feet.

Well, half a corpse, really. Matthias crouches beside it with a grimace. The body is fresh enough that it smells only a little. Not as bad as a six-day-old battlefield, only the faintest hint of bloat in the face below the half-mask, and the heavy sweetish scent of rot has just begun to settle in.

"Posh boy wasn't fast enough," he says. Keeping his nose plugged from the inside, it sounds as if he has a headcold. He leans in to look at the face, examining the lips and the skin and the eyes, which are still open behind the mask. The slackness of death has stiffened up his expression, peeled back his mouth from his teeth and cast his expression in a bizarre grin. "Or else something went wrong. Anyone ever actually seen one one of these things before? The-- eluvie, not the dead body. Seen those."

"I haven't," Derrica tells him, rightly assuming Matthias isn't talking about the corpse. "I wasn't even sure they really existed anymore."

Derrica looks up, considers the eluvian itself for a long moment. The urge to tell Matthias not to get too close to it comes and then goes.

"Here, help me. Maybe he's carrying something useful."

She crouches, begins carefully going through his pockets.

"Never heard of them till recently," Barrow admits, keeping on his feet while the other two crouch to investigate the body, his hand on his sword pommel as he scans the area and the large mirror with growing distrust.

Agreeably, Matthias crouches, and shoves his hand into the blood and gore damp doublet, searching for interior pockets. He's not squeamish about it in the least, not even when he finds rot-soft spots under the fabric of the corpse's shirt, or when he has to shove aside cloth and fabric and really get in there with his fumbling. A little less careful than Derrica, but his looting has always been functional, and brisk.

He grins over his shoulder at Barrow as he works. "Dare you to put your face through it and see what's on the other side."

Still with his nose plugged from the inside, so. He sounds a bit funny. Maybe the dare is a joke. Considering they're going through the pockets of a man that got cut in half from his attempt, hopefully it's a joke.

Derrica makes a soft noise of objection almost immediately. But Barrow doesn't move, so she doesn't follow it up with any more concrete expression of disapproval. She comes up with a palmful of coins, a gold bracelet, some bits of wire and a button. Nothing of note.

She holds the bracelet up for a moment to inspect before speaking.

"I don't think he was anyone important," Derrica tells them, though she sounds a little sad. "They just left him here after whatever they were trying to do went wrong."

Barrow scoffs, smirking a little. This fucking kid.

"Why don't we chuck you through it," he amiably replies, but falls silent when Derrica chimes in. He grimaces faintly, looking over the corpse again.
"Nothing unusual about that."

"We can burn him, before we go."

Matthias pulls his hand out again and transfers his find to his other hand, so he can wipe the dirty one briskly on the front of the dead man's doublet. Two pieces of silver, a scrap of paper with a faint scrawl of writing on it, and that's all. Not all that exciting, even if the coin is nice.

"I'll give it a go, if we really want someone to. I'm not scared of it." A little nervous to be cut in half, perhaps, but if Barrow is going to make it sound a challenge, you bet Andraste's arse Matthias will take it. "Or I'll put my hand through it and we can see what happens. Here, why don't we put his hand through it?" He pats the corpse on the chest a bit. "He's not using it. And if it's off, he'll not complain. They're meant to connect to another eluvie, aren't they? So we've got to know where this one goes to."

"His hand, if you please. Not yours." Derrica's voice is firm. "I don't want to try reassembling limbs in here."

It's a tricky, exhausting business. Derrica puts the bracelet on as she speaks, shakes her wrist lightly to see if it will fly off. It's pretty enough to keep, though no one has really discussed what they're doing with the loot.

"I'm not bringing you back with only half your limbs," Barrow says pleasantly enough, eyeing Derrica and the bracelet but saying nothing on the matter, "either we bring you back whole or not at all."
He's probably joking. He pops a rolled cigarette in his mouth and lights it, looking back down at the boy. "...try the stiff's hand."

"Okay okay," Matthias says, agreeable and cheerful, and grabs hold of the corpse's arm. "C'mon, Gareth, help us out--"

The surface of the eluvian looks very solid, but perhaps that's the trick of it. There's a particularly corpsey stiffness to the half-bloke, so twisting his arm about takes a bit of work, and a great deal of sickening snaps and sinewy sounds besides. But eventually, the hand is in the right place, and Matthias takes a breath, and pushes it forward--

THUNK, goes the flat dense sound of a very dead hand hitting very solid glass.

Matthias frowns. And tries again. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

"Hang on. There's meant to be like, a password, or something. Isn't there?"

THUNK, goes the hand again. Behind the frame of this eluvian, there are others visible, rising up like giant silent Chantry sisters, with their heads bowed and shoulders slumped. Among them--if any of them take a moment to lean to peer around this eluvian--they'll see the one they're probably actually looking for: a springy carpet of new-grown grass at its feet, instead of half a dead man, and the sign of footprints trod about it, a well-worn and telltale path.

Matthias is way too busy to see any of that. THUNK.

How do you break a mirror? Easy:

"Throw a rock at it," Matthias says, with his mouth full.

He's started eating, which is not really surprising. As his companions will now have learned, he eats pretty much whenever he has the chance. He's eating handfuls of berries, which he'd picked along the way here, and gnawing at a salted sausage that's leaving his hand greasy. He has the table manners of a mildly tame animal, so it's not exactly a pretty sight. But there's half a corpse still about, so, it's not as if they're dining in splendor.

He swallows his bite and wipes his mouth on his shirt-sleeve, leaving behind a smear of mashed berry. "Or I could knock it apart myself, but I think it'd be loads more fun if we threw rocks at it until it fell to bits. Satisfying, like."

"We could start with rocks," Derrica agrees, though she isn't sure if that will get the job done. "But you should see about melting the pieces after. Or scorching it all enough that they can't salvage anything."

Which is mainly what Derrica is worried about. She doesn't know enough about how eluvians work to know if just smashing them to pieces is enough to prevent someone from gathering enough bits to make a new one from nothing.

"It's a shame, but might want to send someone back to collapse the cavern entirely."

"I can burn 'em. Leave the bit to me."

He grins, confident, at Derrica. Like, please: that's no issue at all. The grin pulls at his cheek, which makes him register that there's food on his face. Matthias scrubs at his cheek with the back of his hand--which really just rubs the berry in to his skin, but. That can't be helped. It makes him look like he's got a strange pinkish birthmark, or a fading bruise.

"Only if it's broken to bits and burned up, why would the cavern need to be collapsed? We'll have done it all already."

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