faderift | CLOSED | Nug Quest

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CLOSED | Nug Quest

WHO: Adrasteia, Holden, Jone, Joselyn, Sawbones, Val de Foncé, Wysteria, and Dick.
WHAT: Poachers run afoul of a Riftwatch research expedition.
WHEN: Cloudreachish. Time is a flat circle.
WHERE: Minranter River, Free Marches
NOTES: Animal cruelty, some gore.

JOURNEY:

Their trek north across the Free Marches to the Minranter is light and mild: Jone’s mule, Loghaine, hauls the bulk of any heavy gear. The wind stays brisk beneath steady cloud cover, only rarely committing to rain, and there’s an inn to curl up in once they reach the river. Have a drink, rent a bunk with a moth-eaten blanket, splurge on the “luxury” suite upstairs.

For those that aren’t willing to cough up the coin, there’s always the stable.

Further into the wilderness, the white noise roar of the river at night makes for restful sleep and long watches, where the crack and rustle of a bear through the underbrush or the sound of approaching horses might go unheard until it’s too late. At times flashing eyes reflect the watch fire from the treeline, only to melt away without incident. Pawprints pressed into the river sand and traces of bone-littered scat hint at the nature of their nightly visitors -- more fascinating to some than others.

DESTINATION:

Vultures spiral overhead -- an ill omen, easy to mark at a distance. Far below, hoof-beaten grass is streaked with gore where a herd of nugs was pursued out onto the river flats, blood still wet despite the wind, one little body left broken underfoot on the trail. They never had a chance.

Ravens squabble and hop between flayed corpses left to stiffen on the beach. Flies zip from haunch to haunch, spoiled for choice.

There are a dozen nugs here, most of them quite young. Their skulls are crushed, the sand churned with tracks where they struggled.

A few still have their hides. The leather is mundane, for anyone who has the heart to check.

Further west across the river, campfire smoke drifts skyward over the trees where the sunset fades orange to purple. A pained squeal carries across the distance, accompanied by the sound of cruel laughter on the wind. Eventually a few of their voices rise in song.

The killers are close, and night is falling.

AFTERMATH:

An earlier drizzle keeps the fire from spreading into the surrounding wood: by the time the battle is dying down and the nugs are freed, the flames have dwindled to a forlorn lick across blackened canvas and crates of supplies. And the corpses: some burnt, some on the beach, one bobbling slowly downriver.

Something should probably be done about those.

The two fade-touched nugs they’ve rescued need tending. They are wild and distrustful, but they are also exhausted, and injured, and desperately thirsty.

Near the remains of the campfire, a spit-roasted nug still has attracted a fly or two, but still has meat on the bone. There are fade-touched nug hides to be found on the wagon that survived.

A few dazed mounts linger where they were tied off at camp or tangled in the woods nearby -- at some point, a dracolisk had plunged past Jone into the battle-darkened water. Like the armor of their previous owners, they’re rugged and diverse -- beasts captured, won and stolen. A great, shaggy white Avvar horse has taken to Adrasteia, lipping at her sleeve.

Let them roam free or round the others up for an easier ride home.

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They don't always, or often, as far as Adrasteia knows; she has no idea what the Keeper of Helec's clan would have made of it, since most Dalish look down upon the Alienage elves (for fairly decent reasons, though sometimes not).

"Are we nearly the same age?" Adrasteia grins. "I was twelve, just about to turn thirteen; my parents died before my fifteenth birthday. Fortunate that you'd left, for what it's worth. My understanding is that the Blight didn't leave much of Denerim intact."

"What I've heard, yeah," Jone says, her eyes leaving Adrasteia's shining face for the line of tree. Anything but look at another person, when darkspawn are on the subject.

"Been back recent like, it's all changed save the streets and some of the neighborhoods. Some things can only go one place, I reckon. Were Amaranthine hit so bad?"

They likely are the same age, and that gives Jone pause. A dead husband, service to an order of honor, and this woman has landed in the same place as reckless, loveless, bitter and spiteful Jone. She can't let her mind linger on how cruel this world is.

"It was pretty terrible — and then when the darkspawn began fighting each other in the city just a month after the end of the Blight, it went from barely survivable to worse."

She shakes her head. "Unlike you, I haven't been back since I left; I don't know how the reconstruction effort went, only that there was a strong Warden presence at one point." A pause. "They'd been given Vigil's Keep, at the end of the Blight. I wonder if any Wardens are still there..."

Jone's heard of Vigil's Keep, but it's too far north for her to ever have gone. "What's that like? Always wondered what proper Warden fortresses were like, I have. Wanted to be one when I was young."

Wanted. The urge has long since passed.

"Oh, it's quite something, one of the oldest in Ferelden." Adrasteia nods, recalling the history she learned years ago. "You can see the ocean from its towers; it was built originally to keep a lookout for invading ships from Tevinter. It didn't start out as a Warden fortress, I think it was originally a site for the Avvar. There are Deep Roads pathways beneath the fortress too, which didn't help when they were overrun at the same time as Amaranthine by the darkspawn after the Blight."

She smiles at Jone. "I didn't particularly want to be a Warden, as a child. I wanted to be a seamstress. Seemed like they always had work, and an opportunity or two if they were skilled enough."

"Sounds like a bloody nightmare to defend," Jone says, thinking of sieges. When the Orlesians came, she imagines she knew how it fell.

Elven seamstresses aren't unheard of. The folk are good tailors, tinkers, and workers generally. Jone knows she wouldn't have been. "Wanted to be a knight as well. I reckoned... never gonna be anything, may as well imagine."

"Definitely from below. From outside, it's a lot easier. Lots of towers, several walls. Though I think it was the last to be liberated during the Ferelden Rebellion, so you've probably got a point, there."

She sets some organs aside. Liver, heart, lungs.

"But you're a well-known fighter, now." A gesture, with the knife. "Is it more or less what you imagined knighthood would be?"

Jone snorts, laughter repressed, but she sobers when she remembers who she's talking to, and about what. Jone doesn't consider herself a great friend of Elven kind, knows she'd be a poor friend to have even if she tried. But knights and elves go together like a knife and a neck.

"I were a small thing, in those days," she says, voice soft, "thought knights had honor. Thought anyone did."

"Honor is a tricky thing, especially when there's coin to be made."

Which is to say: most people set theirs aside for a bit of wealth, and an improvement upon their station. Adrasteia peers up at Jone seriously.

"Don't seem much like the dishonorable type to me, honestly, but I've been told I look for the bright in others and ignore the shadows."

Jone does truly laugh then, wide-eyed and disbelieving. "I murder for coin, luv. Scruples ain't my virtue. Ta all the same."

She shrugs, a little lift of one shoulder, but her smile stays the same. "How long have you been with the Riftwatch?"

"Few months," Jone says. "Nine, I think. Enough to have a very green baby."

She says it while staring at her wrist, imagining the green glow under thick leather gloves.

Adrasteia notices the point of Jone's gaze and sucks her teeth a little. "You've got a rift shard, then?" Has there been any research done into removing them? Probably, but she doubts it's high on the list of tasks the heads of each division have on their plate with the war on. "I know the Rifters all have one, but I didn't realize it was striking out to Thedosians as well."

Jone nods. "Doing a job near a rift. Fucking thing exploded, and here I am-"

She pulls the glove off, waving with a hand that glows slightly in the half-light.

"Maker," Adrasteia breathes out upon looking at Jone's hand, because this is the first of these shards she's seen in person. To see Fade light emanating from a body that isn't dead, demonic, or possessed is quite something.

"Other than it being there, has it changed anything for you?" Stronger dreams in the Fade, or something, she imagines, could be possible.

Jone lets herself be poked and prodded. She's had worse from less gentle hands. "Not that I've seen," she says. "Hurts something awful when I'm away."

At least Adrasteia's poking is just to gently hold the back of Jone's hand and put her own palm hovering above the other woman's. She can feel the Fade energy emerging from it, but beyond that, she can't do anything to it. "I'm sorry," she says, both for the pain and for the strangeness of it all, but mostly because there's nothing she herself can do about it.

She closes Jone's fingers over her palm and then lets go.

Jone laughs, comfortable in her sense of place. "It ain't a death sentence. Not yet, anyway."

Edited (a letteR) 2021-04-30 21:58 (UTC)

"There is that, at least." She picks up the knife again; almost finished with dealing with the stag. "May it never become one."

"I can fight one-handed." Jone grins. "Don't underestimate me."

"I shan't, now that you've told me."

There: the meat is sectioned out, the organs separated, the bones gathered together and the skin ready for tanning. Adrasteia's arms are bloody, but her sleeves at least stayed rolled up, so she just has to wash her hands and the knife before she returns the latter to Jone. "Do you like working for the Riftwatch?"

"Pay's shite. People're good." It's more complicated than good or bad. "You having fun?"

"Fun is a tricky concept," Adrasteia admits, "but I enjoy it, though. Mostly I've been nomadic, as a Warden, and working by myself since the beginning of the war." Because the man who initiated her into the Wardens was probably killed at the Conclave, as far as she can tell. "It's very different, having a base of operations."

"Good different, or bad different?" Jone cocks her head to one side, then the other. "Fun's pretty simple."

"Good different," Adrastiea insists, but then she pulls a face. "It's hard to say I'm having fun when I know that other Wardens are fighting for the wrong side, either under some sort of duress or as a result of poor judgment, either way."

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