MOD PLOT ↠ The Soldiers of the Demon Charged

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: Striking closer to home.
WHEN: Justinian through Solace
WHERE: The Western/Central Free Marches
NOTES: OOC post. Please use appropriate content warnings in your comment subject lines.

WEEK ONE: THE COLLAPSE OF HASMAL

Recently in Hasmal, growing outrage from native Hasmalis over the swelling number of Tevinter refugees within and outside the city has led to a series of smaller violent incidents that went largely unanswered by local authorities, leading to additional targeting of more established Tevinter communities within the city and the makeshift fortification and arming of the camps outside. In the last week or so, after a period of simmering tensions, the situation in Hasmal has boiled over into violent riots. Reports out of the city conflict about what finally caused the rapid escalation, how bad things got, and whose fault they were. But they agree that it very quickly became a dangerous situation that the city authorities utterly failed to bring under control. Fires burned in some quarters of the city and deadly clashes between factions forced uninvolved citizens to barricade themselves in their homes. Some city leaders urged calm and peace while others encouraged supporters to seize the moment and fight for the upper hand. The Grand Vizier was nowhere to be seen. Somehow, amidst the chaos, the gates were opened and in marched the Tevinter army.

The violence, and then even more Tevinter's arrival—supposedly to help restore peace to the city, though it's unclear whether that has actually happened—has caused many to flee the city, particularly the refugee community who had fled from Tevinter once already. With nothing but the Tevinter desert of the Silent Plains to the north, most either jumped ship down the Minanter or came south across the river into Tantervale territory and Wildervale, with some now arriving in Kirkwall with their tales of chaos in the western-most March.

Also, Commander Flint and Scoutmaster Yseult are missing, having gone to meet a contact coming across the Minanter from Tevinter some days ago. They ought to be returning, but neither has been in contact since. In their absence, Ambassador Rutyer and Provost Stark will be running Riftwatch, and can direct Scouting and Forces as they see fit and delegate authority for those operations as necessary.

UNKNOWNS

This is a fast-moving situation, with events clearly already running well ahead of news. With limited resources at hand, intelligence networks in the previously quiet Free Marches have been somewhat neglected by the Inquisition and Riftwatch both. Much remains unclear, subject of wild rumor and conflicting reports from the few sources in the area:

There are stories that the Grand Vizier Rekam Antoninus, ruler of Hasmal, is either complicit in the Tevinter takeover or in league with refugees to try to bring down the city's nobility. There are rumors he has fled the city, or even that he's dead by a half-dozen different hands.

There are similarly conflicting reports about other Hasmal city leaders, with some said to have been encouraging the various factions involved in the riots, trying without success to calm the situation, or using the situation to advance their own interests in one way or another. It's likely that at least a few were cooperating to some extent with Tevinter, though exact numbers and identities can't be known right now.

The size of the Tevinter force in Hasmal isn't yet clear, as the numbers reported by those who fled the city at their arrival range from "most of the Tevinter army" to "five times the size of the entire Tevinter army."

All reports at this point are coming from people who have fled Hasmal, so there's essentially no reliable information about what the situation is like inside the city since Tevinter moved in.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

As soon as word begins trickling in, Riftwatch will begin sending parties north to investigate the situation. Anyone with a relevant skill or two might be assigned to venture out to:

• AERIAL SURVEILLANCE: Use griffons for aerial surveillance of the region between Kirkwall and Hasmal, to watch for any further movement of the Tevinter army. Using sending crystals, they'll also be able to send back reports of the routes any large groups of refugees seem to be taking. And they'll be charged with assessing the roads and terrain between Kirkwall and Hasmal, identifying the routes an army could take to reach further South and what chokepoints—bridges, narrow passages, castles and fortresses with defenses that might hold—could be exploited to slow them down. (The distance from Kirkwall to Hasmal is too great for the griffons to be flying back and forth every day; aerial teams will be gone for several days at a time, and in the meantime staying on the property of a druffalo farmer in Wildervale or in wilderness camps of their own making.)


• ASSIST TRAVELLERS: Intercept people fleeing Hasmal—to assist them, when necessary, but also to get as much information from them as possible to try to separate rumors from first-hand accounts or find consistencies between stories that might point toward truths. Many of these people will be refugees twice over, already having fled from Tevinter in the wake of Corypheus' takeover, so some may have relevant information about Tevinter as well. And there is always the possibility that some loyal to Tevinter and the Venatori are disguised among the refugees, so they'll need to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.


• ASSIST TOWNSFOLK: Meet with the Countess of Wildervale and local leaders of smaller towns and villages. Those south of Wildervale may need to be alerted about the waves of travelers they're about to see, while those north of Wildervale will have been reached by refugees before Riftwatch and may be overwhelmed by the sudden swell of visitors and potential long-term residents. Some of those fleeing Hasmal may be settling into these villages for the long haul due to exhaustion or a lack of resources, while many others are terrified of Tevinter at their heels and want to go further south to put at least one major city between them and Hasmal. It's a valid fear, so in addition to discussing the refugee situation and how many more people the villages can viably feed and house, Riftwatch teams will need to help assess their defenses and escape routes if the invasion pushes further south, ideally without causing a panic.

Meanwhile, in Kirkwall, those who aren't suited to fieldwork or who are between trips out of the city will:

• ATTEND MEETINGS: The Viscount, Kirkwall's nobility, and City Guard representatives in Viscount's Keep will be meeting for long hours to discuss whether or not Kirkwall will be able to accept refugees (and to what extent) and the city's defenses and fortifications. Riftwatch won't have any formal say in these decisions, but its representatives may be able to provide information as it becomes available and maybe sneak some opinions in there as well.


• READY LOOKOUT TOWERS: Assist the city with transporting supplies to and chasing bandits out of rarely-used guard towers in the Vinmarks.


• ORGANIZE RIFTWATCH'S EFFORTS: Amass, organize, and disseminate the information being relayed back from the teams in the field—for example, making sure the Riftwatch teams advising refugees on which villages and cities will be able to take them in aren't directing them all to the same place and causing it to become overwhelmed.

There are also a few specific missions that will be assigned to those with suitable skills at the end of the week. Based on the available information, teams will be sent to Hasmal and to Tantervale to accomplish the following:

• HASMAL AERIAL SURVEILLANCE: The Hasmal team will travel by griffon to conduct fly-over surveillance of the city and the territory to the north and west, to try to gather information about the Tevinter forces. From griffonback, the team may occasionally spot Tevinter scouting parties or small clusters of soldiers that can be picked off or harassed, whether from the air or by landing to confront them.


• HASMAL GROUND SURVEILLANCE: The griffon team will also be carrying passengers, a small team who they will have to stealthily drop into Hasmal so that they can spend two days gathering information about the situation in the city itself before they're picked up by the griffons once again.


• TANTERVALE OUTREACH: The Tantervale team will try to meet with Tantervale's leadership to coordinate defense and relief efforts. They'll travel by horseback (griffons would only remind folks how weird Riftwatch is) and work through diplomatic channels and court backchannels to try to gain an audience with the Lady Chancellor and/or her ministers and persuade them of the benefits of working together.

These missions will be interrupted by the red lyrium dragon, which will first arrive over Hasmal just as the griffon riders are collecting their spy passengers for departure. The dragon will chase the griffons off before continuing on to Tantervale, where the team in the city will be forced to flee its attack and escape from the city.



WEEKS TWO & THREE: THE RUIN OF TANTERVALE

After the news of Tevinter's takeover of Hasmal, its closest neighbor, Tantervale, is calling a muster of whatever fighting-age men are left in its territory. Most of Tantervale's soldiers have previously joined the Exalted March, leaving the city-state only lightly defended. Whoever remains is ordered to arm themselves and meet outside the city within the week to protect against the threat of Tevinter incursion, or possibly even to threaten to join any supposed 'peacekeeping' force in Hasmal. The exact plan is unknown, but the citizens of Tantervale—known across Thedas for their religious zeal—appear eager to answer the call to defend their home and any fellow devotees of the Chantry from the dangerous northern heretics.

But in the end, how many they manage to attract to this makeshift defensive force hardly matters. The gathered host is powerless to stop the sudden, devastating attack of the corrupted high dragon. The huge, red-lyrium-infected beast—known to be under the command of Corypheus for some years now, but rarely seen since it perched triumphant atop the Archon's palace in Minrathous 3 years ago—emerges above Hasmal before flying the short distance east to Tantervale and laying waste to that city.

Simultaneously, confused reports are reaching Riftwatch from both Orlais and Ferelden, indicating an array of calamities: scattered across both countries, several small villages and their fields were recently set aflame, an important bridge over the Drakon River destroyed in Ferelden, a noble family and their entire staff found hanging evenly spaced from rafters in their estate not far from Halamshiral.

UNKNOWNS

Riftwatch agents present at Hasmal and Tantervale during the early stages of the dragon attack witness its beginning, but as they have to run for their lives, little is immediately known about its outcome. Given the destruction they did see, it's believed that Tantervale was a massacre, resulting in many, many deaths and much of the city destroyed by fire and corruption. A wave of people have now joined the stragglers from Hasmal fleeing south, but how many of them actually managed to escape the city of Tantervale itself as opposed to its surrounding countryside is unknown, and among those who survived, many begin to show signs of darkspawn corruption on the road.

Per the reports coming from the South, the leaders in both Ferelden and Orlais initially respond as if being invaded before realizing that the incidents were not the beginning of a larger military push. It will take some time for it to become clear that all of these events happened on the same day as the assault on Tantervale, mostly by individual actors.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

Most of the work Riftwatch was doing in Week 1 will continue in Weeks 2 and 3, while pivoting or expanding to include dealing with the situation in Tantervale as well:

• ASSIST TRAVELERS & TOWNSFOLK: The attack on Tantervale will essentially double the number of new refugees fleeing south, testing the work Riftwatch did in Week 1 and greatly increasing the strain on communities in Wildervale. Some they may be able to persuade to make do and accommodate more fellow Marchers, while others will reach the end of either their supplies or their patience or both, and Riftwatch agents will need to help calm tensions and find alternatives.


• SHORE UP DEFENSES: Efforts to shore up defenses in the region will ratchet up, and Riftwatch agents will be called on to do things like help train emergency village militias, build makeshift defenses, and provide advice on what to do in case of dragon attack.

For those in Kirkwall:

• ASSIST ARRIVING REFUGEES: Pressure on Kirkwall itself will increase as the first refugees arrive at the city and an even greater number look likely to do so in the near future. Kirkwall has a fairly fraught recent history with refugees from a crisis—the influx of Blight refugees from Ferelden caused a nativist backlash that went on for years. In this case, the locals will be somewhat more friendly because the refugees are their fellow Marchers, as well as slightly more frightened because this crisis isn't happening across a sea. But there will still be a fairly tepidly charitable response to the needs of incoming people, and those escaping Hasmal who are clearly of Tevinter origin will have an especially difficult time. Riftwatch's help will be needed in connecting the new arrivals with those who are willing to help them and aiding in the construction of some temporary structures and camps for those without other means of housing themselves.


• PREPARE FOR THE WORST: Riftwatch will be called upon by the Viscount's office to work with the City Guard to review Kirkwall's defenses, work on emergency upgrades, help man observation posts further afield to provide early warning of any imminent attack. For the time being, a regular rotation of Riftwatch members will be sent to keep watch at some of the further towers, since their sending crystals will allow them to pass along more information more quickly than the warning fires. There will also be a lot of discussion about how to handle a dragon attack--with the expectation that Riftwatch will take a lead role in defending against any such attack.

Elsewhere, Riftwatch will send teams to:

• STARKHAVEN: Believed to be the most likely next target for assault other than Kirkwall. Riftwatch will send a team to meet with current leadership to offer to provide mage support against a potential dragon attack, coordination of defensive efforts, and to learn how Starkhaven plans to handle Tantervale refugees.


• OSTWICK, MARKHAM, HERCINIA, ANSBURG, & WYCOME: Too far to have been directly affected yet. Riftwatch will send representatives to court to try to meet with leaders to discuss coordinating efforts across the region for mutual defense against Tevinter, encouraging them to raise soldiers, shore up defenses, and take in refugees.


• FERELDEN & ORLAIS: By the end of Week 3 it will be clear that what happened in Orlais and Ferelden is likely a diversionary tactic, meant to compel them to keep their attention at home rather than throwing too much of their weight behind assisting the Free Marches, but a few people will be sent to investigate the sites of some attacks for any evidence of how they were coordinated and to be sure further attacks aren't impending.

(OOC Note: For attacks in Ferelden and Orlais and for small villages around Hasmal and Tantervale, you're welcome to invent the names of these places and invent details of what exactly happened without checking in with us. If your character is from one of these areas, you're also welcome to say their hometowns or places they're familiar with were affected, as long as: (1) it isn't a place big enough to be on the canon map of Thedas and (2) if someone else's character is coincidentally from the same place, you check with them first.)



WEEKS FOUR & FIVE: THE MARCH ON STARKHAVEN

The situation in the Free Marches continues to deteriorate rapidly. With Tantervale now more rubble than city, nothing substantial stands between the Tevinter force in Hasmal and either Kirkwall, home of Riftwatch, or Starkhaven, the cultural and financial heart of the Marches. An advance on one or both of those cities is believed to be the next logical step, but nobody knows for sure which it's going to be or whether it's going to come in the form of an attack by dragon or just ("just") an army.

Reports from the Riftwatch teams in and over Hasmal at the end of Week 1 spotted signs of that army readying to move, and further griffon reconnaissance during Weeks 2 and 3 confirmed that with Tantervale out of the way the army is now moving quickly. Their path is clearly pointed east toward Starkhaven. Like Tantervale, Starkhaven is lightly-defended, much of its forces—along with its ruler, Prince Sebastian Vael—in Orlais with the Exalted March.

Help from elsewhere is unlikely to arrive in time. Those Marches who might have been best positioned to support Starkhaven in its time of need find themselves with problems of their own, as coastal communities in Ostwick and Hercinia suffer a rash of brutal and unusually well-organized pirate attacks. The port towns of Torbay and Ogwell near Ostwick and Noli near Hercinia take the brunt of it, sacked and burned by marauders. There are several attacks on shipping reported as well, with prizes taken from normally safe waters where the Waking Sea meets the Amaranthine. Both city-states have increased naval patrols and are now on alert, but they're looking outwards, not inland.

UNKNOWNS

How quickly reinforcements will arrive. Agents and Inquisition contacts in Orlais report that the Exalted March is now aware, and that there are urgent debates among the commanders about how to react. Prince Sebastian Vael is thought to be planning to return imminently, but precisely how long that will take—and how many men he will bring with him—remains unknown.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

• SLOWING THE ADVANCE: Riftwatch will do its best to slow the enemy advance and buy Starkhaven time to prepare. Without the numbers to engage the host directly, teams will instead be tasked with making the journey as difficult as possible by creating obstacles along the way: think rockslides, blown bridges, washed out roads, felled trees clogging the river, sabotaged boats and wagons, and so forth. Traps or small guerrilla-style attacks may be laid at some of these points, but with strict orders not to risk it unless conditions allow Riftwatch the advantage to attack swiftly and then escape again. The goal is to harass and pick off low-hanging fruit, not get caught up in an unwinnable battle.


• PREPARING STARKHAVEN: Preventing an attack on Starkhaven seems impossible, but Riftwatch can at least help the city prepare for it. At this point a siege is the best option, but it will mean being (or at least looking) strong enough to withstand an initial assault. Top priorities are:
  
  • Reinforcing city defenses. These efforts were already underway by Week 2, but will become far more urgent, and leaders will be much more eager to hear from Riftwatch anything they know about the enemy forces.
  
  
  • Stocking the city. This includes bringing in supplies to prepare for the siege they now hope comes, whether by wagon or boat or griffon, and Riftwatch may even be asked to help negotiate with merchants and farmers to get deals done and goods delivered faster if possible.
  
  
  • Bolstering numbers. They need all the fighting manpower they can get, so Riftwatch will be helping recruit by explaining the situation, the context of the war, and encouraging anyone able to fight to help, and then transporting them from the countryside to the city walls as fast as possible. Bringing in fighting men means more mouths to feed, so Riftwatch will also be asked to help ferry vulnerable people out of the city to safety in other Marches. At first this effort will focus on the young and old with political importance, but it will be expanded (if Riftwatch pushes and also if they work fast enough to make it feasible) to include young and old of all classes.
  
  
  • Helping keep the peace and avoid a panic. Between the news of the on-coming army, the rash of high-profile assassinations (see below) and the horrific fate of Tantervale, the people of Starkhaven are understandably on edge. The mood in the city is one of barely suppressed terror, and city officials are anxious to avoid any incidents that might light a spark and distract from necessary preparations. Riftwatch will be asked to assist the guard in patrolling public areas where people tend to gather and help defuse situations, from breaking up brawls and preventing theft and hoarding of supplies to chasing off an obnoxious crier who won't stop stirring up fears with his vivid tales of how he received his scar at the hands of the vicious, unstoppable Tevinters.


• PROTECTING THE COUNTRYSIDE: The enemy journey through the Marches isn't as orderly as it was in Orlais. Parties of enemy soldiers and mages are veering south (occasionally north, into the strip of Marches before the Antivan border, but mostly south) across the river to attack travelers, sack villages, burn farms, and generally cause chaos. This will also involve periodic dragon attacks in the regions between Hasmal, Wildervale, and Starkhaven. These attacks are sudden and brief, hitting random locations, causing death and damage, and leaving as quickly as they arrived. Riftwatch agents traveling through the region for any purpose will need to be on guard, and teams will also be tasked to help patrol the countryside and major roads to protect against enemy attacks. Some teams may be stationed in towns and villages for days at a time, ready to respond to any reports of enemy attacks nearby and coordinate via crystal.

And in the midst of this work, there will be some additional specific missions:

• STARKHAVEN ASSASSIN: An assassin is stalking the streets of Starkhaven. Four prominent citizens have been murdered in the past two weeks, including two high-ranking guard captains, a celebrated knight who won the Grand Tourney not long ago, and Lord Kennech, a frontrunner to replace Lord Greer as regent. The murders have been brazen and bloody, not identical but each marked with the sigil of a prominent family drawn in blood, the first (over Lord Kennech) being the symbol of House Harimann, now most famous for having arranged the murders of Prince Sebastian Vael's family in a coup attempt in 9:31. The other houses referenced similarly have prominent betrayals and power-grabs in their history. No one is quite sure what any of it means, but it has certainly set the city even further on edge and has suspicions between members of the ruling class nearing a high. As a neutral party, Riftwatch will be asked to help provide security for potential targets.


• DRAGON TRACKING: Corypheus' dragon has rarely been sighted very far from him, and its presence in the Free Marches raises the possibility that he's somewhere nearby. A few different small teams on griffon- and horseback will attempt to track it to where it's resting between its excursions to terrorize the countryside, with the hope that Corypheus is there and this may present an opportunity to confront him directly with fewer fortifications.


• FIREBOMBING THE ARMY: As the army nears Starkhaven, another griffon-based team will make one last push to slow them down. The evening before they inevitably reach the city, the team will fly over their camp with mages, Antivan Fire grenades and breakable flasks of oil, and anything else they can come up with to rain literal fire on the Tevinter camps.

WEEK SIX: FALLING ACTION

The Tevinter force finally arrives at Starkhaven. After all the work to delay the enemy and speed preparations, the city is ready to hold fast against them at least until Prince Sebastian can return from Orlais with the army and (they hope) the Exalted March in tow. The Tevinter force, clearly still hoping to take the city before those reinforcements arrive, sets up camp as if for a siege but then launches a pre-dawn attack in hope of breaching the gates. This is repelled, but periodic assault (mostly magical) on the city walls continues—thus far with little effect.

Now that the enemy has arrived at Starkhaven, there isn't much more Riftwatch can do to help directly. The force is still too large for them to take on, and while they can get away with some limited griffon stealth missions in and out of the city, the large-scale operations of previous weeks are no longer possible. Prince Sebastian and the fastest part of his forces will arrive by the end of the week, and he will then take the lead in determining how to defend Starkhaven. He'll be happy to talk to Riftwatch about what they've seen and done in the interim and will be grateful for their efforts on behalf of his city. But there's a lot for him to figure out at present, and coordinating the type of smaller-scale work Riftwatch is best suited for isn't top of his agenda at the moment. Essentially, he'll be in touch.

RIFTWATCH'S WORK

All agents in and around Starkhaven are pulled back just ahead of the Tevinter force's arrival, along with any last group of vulnerable citizens they're able to get out. Riftwatch will continue to put more focus than it previously had on the Free Marches, with increased patrols and surveillance, and will keep an eye on the refugee situation as things develop. The enemy presence in the Marches will continue to cause trouble, with occasional parties of soldiers and mages marauding, posing new hazards closer to home than before that will periodically require Riftwatch's attention. And the situation in Starkhaven will continue to develop and may require more assistance in the future. But otherwise, it's more or less back to business as usual for now, just with a new set of issues added to the pile.

Comments

[heorte]

Briefly, Ellis seems at a loss as to what to do with the weapon in his hands. It keeps him in place rather than moving immediately to follow her, before he considers and lifts it from the branching support of the fork to turn and reverently return it to the canvas. For all the sturdiness of the weapon, Ellis still handles it with extreme care. A fold of fabric is even drawn down over it for good measure, before he straightens and turns to follow after her.

"Show me," he agrees, hand catching briefly at her elbow and squeezing tightly. The incandescent glow of her joy is so good. He has no choice but to mirror it back to her, light bouncing back in instinctive response. It is easy to be happy for her, knowing how long she has labored to bring this weapon into creation. There has never been doubt she would accomplish such a thing, but it has been a long time in coming.

That she thought to share any part of it with him wedges some sliver of warmth through his chest, the kind that will stick and stay, carried along with him as he goes forward.

[heirring]

And so traipsing across the length of the clearing they go, Wysteria leading by an excitable half stride with a swish swish of her skirts and her hard soled (and thoroughly beaten in) field boots rasping through the grass.

"The main predicament we have found is a certain finicky quality of the spindle and engraving plate. The alignment has a tendency to become misaligned. And the current which charges the metal, of course. The exterior pieces will have to be insulated or covered to avoid accidentally shocking anyone who doesn't have time to mind their hands. And of course there is the—"

And so on and so forth, an endless stream of semantic chatter which she clearly doesn't expect him to have an opinion on but that she cannot help but rattle off.

When at last they come to a halt beneath the aggrieved tree, it is immediately clear that gruesome was not a word Wysteria had chosen at random. There is the black scorch mark, and the grey ashen center where the fire had burned briefly white hot. And there is the heavy ball, morphed by the impact, lodged at the very center of the fired section of trunk.

"Trees are very robust targets," Wysteria informs him cheerfully, her hands at her hips at they squint up through the foliage. "But you must imagine the effect otherwise."

[heorte]

The flow of information is more or less beyond his capability to answer. There are snatches and stretches where he can almost grasp her meaning enough to offer opinion, but Wysteria has moved on already, recounting the next aspect of her creation or further development she intends to consider and so on, and so on.

He has grown so very fond of hearing all of it, over months of sitting alongside her and Tony as they debate and bicker their way through experiments and all other manner of things. After so much time spent apart, it's familiar and welcome, sustains the smile on his face as they walk.

It's only upon surveying the damage that Ellis considers they were lucky not to set some kind of fire. Still, after a moment's scrutiny, he goes up on his toes to touch a hand to the ash, the inset blotch of the ball, with the tips of his fingers.

"Aye, I've been thinking of it," he tells her, withdrawing a few steps back to her side. The utility of the weapon is so clear. They could make much of it, on the field and beyond that, in the Deep Roads alone, this weapon could—

Well. It's not for him to decide.

And if he's feeling some real relief in the idea of Wysteria having created a weapon for herself that keeps her at range that she actually enjoys using, well.

"Have you told Tony yet?"

[heirring]

"I have written him a note," she confirms cheerfully, sounding more and more pleased with herself in each passing moment. "And have said that I believe the thing is ready to show to Mister Rutyer, though I doubt very much that the Ambassador will be at all pleased with its development. Surely with Tevinter at our doorstep, he can hardly refuse to acknowledge the thing's use."

Here, a very small pause. The thought doesn't concern her too badly, though it would be so preferable to have one or two other Division Heads present. —For any number of reasons, of course, but certainly also because it would be ideal to have the possibility of swaying the support of some kind of majority.

But beggars cannot be choosers, which in this instance applies to Byerly at least as much as it does for her.

"I should like to make a second one, I think. And not only because Mister Dickerson has gifted me with a considerably sized dragon bone from which to craft the stock. No, there are modifications already which I could wish to implement. But I suppose that may come in time."

[heorte]

"It'll go faster for you, now that you've accomplished it once already," Ellis surmises. It's a very easy vote of confidence to make. And then, turning in towards her by degrees, he offers, "Let me write down a few things for you. Some potential strategies, in case the Ambassador drags his feet."

Here is the thing: there is very little Ellis can give her in the way of advice on modifications or mechanics. That is not his arena. But he knows instinctively how he would make use of this weapon, were a Warden in his outfit carrying one. He can put that to paper for her. The Ambassador is a fool, but surely not enough of a fool to throw away an advantage when they are in dire need of whatever they can draw together.

[heirring]

Her hands spring away from her hips as if repelled from them, grasping briefly in his direction as if she might seize him by the elbows—and then she corrects her own trajectory, planting her hands firmly back on hips again as if there is no rational state for them between those two points.

"You—You would do that, Mister Ellis? You would endorse the project?" She has begun to turn very red, flushing with that kind of delight which is equal parts flustered and pleased and stricken.

"Surely he would respect the opinion of a Warden."

[heorte]

That she seems caught off guard by the offer is something of a surprise. To Ellis' reasoning, it was a foregone conclusion. Of course he supports her work, in whatever minor avenues are open to him with which to do so. There is no other option.

"He might," is Ellis' more tepid assessment of potential receptions. Maybe, maybe not. But putting one more advantage into Wysteria's hands could only help her. Tipping his head, slight smile widening, he presses on, "Did you not know you've always had my endorsement?"

Whatever it was worth. Whatever use it could be.

[heirring]

"That is not—No, not precisely," she blusters back. "I mean, yes I knew it. But it is a very different thing, Mister Ellis. To support the idea of a thing behind a closed door or among friends is all well and good, but it is quite another to—to write it down to argue the point to someone else entirely. Particularly when it is someone such as the Ambassador, who you will forgive me for saying can be very cruel when he cares to be."

The flush has carried all the way up from her neck and into her face, tingeing her ears and touching into her slightly grubby hairline. Puffed up, she cuts her gaze from him and returns it to the iron ball lodged into the scorched tree trunk.

And then adds, as if compelled, "It is a very serious thing in Kalvad, you know."

[heorte]

Good sense says Stop looking at her. Wysteria has returned to the study of the splotch of iron in a ring of ash, and so should Ellis, but he cannot persuade himself to cease his own study of Wysteria's flushed face and her mussed hair, the set of her mouth.

At her addition, he thinks, Good.

It doesn't change anything. It's a relief, in a sense. A way to say a variation of a true thing and have it be safely contained within the boundaries of her work. Of course he would support her. That has always been true.

"That's just as well. I'm very serious about how I feel about you and your work," he tells her, voice steady. He has finally looked away from her face, followed her example to further examine the scorchmark. "I would offer the same in Kalvad as I would here."

He's sat alongside her and watched her work for such a long time, has the benefit of being so familiar with her capabilities. What risk is there, in putting his voice alongside hers? His faith in her has been such a steady, unshakeable thing for years now.

[heirring]

He doesn't know what it means; he couldn't. Thedas is not Kalvad and it would be difficult to explain exactly how serious serious means. But all the same, the conviction of it is so very pleasant that it is easy to be swept up by the heady fantasy of it. Perhaps it is possible after all that the Wysteria Poppell who is still in the Empire will one day find a way of exacting a similar sort of regard.

"I know that it will sound very ridiculous to say so given all the terrible things which have occured in these past weeks alone, to say nothing of the scope of the war effort in general, or the chafing of certain social differences or disparities of education inherent in being suddenly thrust into a place very different from the place from which one came, or even the inconvenient fact that I know my presence here cannot be relied upon," she says, still studying the tree's wound with the sort of fixed determination of a person who simply cannot decide what to do with her gaze otherwise.

"But all the same, I think that I am very glad to have come. It has been most intellectually stimulating and very good to be allowed all manner of responsibility and I think— Well, I suspect that I may have been somewhat lonely in Kalvad. And that is not the case here."

[heorte]

Even without knowing, with only her reaction to draw on, it is very simple for Ellis to be assured in this promise. He can count on one hand the limitations of what he'd do for her, and even those waver, depending on the day and how far they are from highly flammable material.

Ellis abandons his examination of the tree to watch her expression in profile. She is still flushed as she unspools a list of collected minor grievances, winding her way to a point that reminds Ellis of another conversation they had, ages ago. She'd been crying then, and he had been—

A fool, surely.

"Rifwatch is all the better for having you here," he tells her, praise delivered firmly, without room for argument. "And I know there are many people who are very fond of you, who are better and sharper for having known you. It's good you've come, and better that you're happy."

That's all he's ever wanted for her, isn't it?

Without anything to occupy his hands, he has hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his trousers in the course of this recitation. He wishes abruptly that this were something put into a letter rather than spoken aloud. There is no other way to say such things than very plainly, but he wishes, for the first time in a long time, that he were more gifted when it came to speech.

[heirring]

Her mouth sets briefly, a line which must be familiar to him for he has seen her be very ridiculous a great number of times. It's the thing her face does when Wysteria becomes suddenly aware of the burgeoning prickle of something foolish like tears rising up in her and she is determined not to let them get the better of her. This would be the most silly thing over which she might possibly cry, after all. Never mind that it might be the kind of emotion that comes from being extraordinarily pleased.

"I'm quite glad we agree," she says after the few seconds required to master herself.

"Not that I am at all surprised, of course. Though I think also that it would be only right to note also that surely I have been made at least a little better as well. And so you and Misters Stark and Holden and Dickerson and Lady Asgard and Miss Van Klerk and Warden Adrasteia and a dozen others and I suppose even de Foncé—though you must never say so to him for it would make him very difficult—must take some credit."

[heorte]

Yes, he has seen that look before. It draws him only a single sideways step closer, his elbow near enough to brush hers if they sway too far to one side, only to be on hand in case—

Not that it matters. Wysteria composes herself. What a strange thing, to have stayed here long enough to be included within that list. To be valued in such a way by someone who is not a Warden.

"Only a little credit," Ellis tells her, passing up all opportunity for credit on behalf of all listed names. "But aye, I think that's true. You've grown since I've known you."

And Ellis has been changed too, however subtly. The knowledge of it is inescapable, particularly in this moment, as he thinks to say something else, finds himself without the proper words for it, so it manifests as a deep exhale, a shift of his hands where they have settled, hooked into his pockets.

[heirring]

"I should hope so," Wysteria says once she has sorted her way past the clenched tight thing in her chest. It is the good kind of claustrophobia, she thinks. Like hiding in a coat closet at an wearisome party while the music seeps in from beyond the door. She turns her face to squint at him.

"For I am quite old now, and it would be a terrible shame if I were to be one of those women who is very silly even in her decrepitude."

[heorte]

"You won't be," Ellis reassures, looking up and away from her to the branches overhead. "I have a sense of it, and I can say that you'll be very dignified."

Or intimidating. Doesn't it come to the same thing? The effect will surely be close enough.

Ellis won't be there to see her, not unless the Calling comes for him very late in life. It stretches belief that he might live so long as to see Wysteria grown decrepit. This realization ghosts along the edge of his awareness, but finds no purchase, for once.

"What about me? Am I grayer now than when we first met?" is a frivolous question, drawing them back towards the present. Thinking of what he might be in the coming years is strange and painful, dredging up guilt that Ellis does not wish to invite.

[heirring]

Her attention is still fixed on him and her answer is immediate:

"Yes."

Ha ha, she is so very funny. But also it's true. Or—

"Or at the very least I have spent more time looking at you, when I hardly did at all to begin with. And so I have noticed more of your gray hairs."

[heorte]

It is funny, or funny enough that Ellis laughs over the answer. It echoes back to that dream, the rain-soaked cottage, Tony's wan face, Wysteria's cold hands on his face as she exclaimed in dismay over the state of him.

"It strikes me as a favorable assessment," he tells her, schooling his voice back to seriousness. "I can live with you having noticed."

As that seems to be where her observations begin and end, and Ellis is content with that limitation. He's turned back in towards her by minor degrees, study of the foliage abandoned even with the slow return of birds to their business.

"Is there anything else noteworthy? Exempting what's left of the bruises. In a few days more they'll be gone."

Though the physical doesn't matter. Whatever change has been wrought on his body hardly compares to how he's changed in the course of his time with Riftwatch, working alongside her and Tony. But it's easier to quantify how fast he can smother a fire or identify a bad chemical reaction than to try and measure any internal differences.

[heirring]

"Replaced, no doubt, by new ones in relatively short order," she rattles off back at him, her wide smile flexing wider still.

It isn't the sum of her answer though. That much is clear in the way her examination of him draws in, narrowing on him as if he is a passage in a book with some secret meaning. That is a thing she likes to do, he will know. To stare at all the words on a page until the space between them gives her some seemingly secret message like Do you see, Mister Ellis? The author is clearing drawing a line here between Andraste and Empress Celene in this passage here—'

She is still smiling when she makes her more rigorous assessment:

"You are here more often than you used to be. In the room, or field, or wherever you like. Rather like your place is one which belongs to you opposed to one you are only borrowing temporarily. I suppose I can understand why it might have been that way—I know you've traveled for a long time."

(And that the place he'd left had been erased, though that is far too grim a thing to say aloud on such a fine day when they are all in such happy tempers; she hardly thinks of it at all.)

"And it is very easy to make you laugh or I have gotten quite good at sorting what will. Regardless, you have become very agreeable company. I think this winter if we skate again, I will be able to convince you to come onto the ice. And," she adds still further, quite pleased with her list and very approving of every item on it. "I believe you have gotten a little fatter."

[heorte]

"A little fatter," Ellis echoes, mock-dismay giving way so speedily to a small smile. "Do you say that to be sure that when you ask me to skate with you, I've more than one reason to say yes?"

Of all the charges, that is the easiest to parrot back to her, to tease her with. The rest—

True, yes. Even things he had understood of himself. It is easier to be here. It is easier to smile at her, or at Tony, or Jone. But those things come with their own counter-weight; it is hard not to turn them over in his mind and see all the ways in which he is undeserving of every part of his present state.

It has become easy to be here. He admitted as much to Jone days ago, and hearing Wysteria chart the effect that's had on him is only a little jarring. It is one thing to have felt some shift within himself, another thing to hear it observed by another, regardless of how close that person is to him.

[heirring]

She scoffs, all faux dismay as her chin rises by a few self-righteous (and very self-satisfied) degrees.

"It is outrageous that you would accuse me of such base manipulation. And when I have said nothing at all that wasn't entirely complimentary! I think it suits you." All of it does. "You're fortunate that I'm in too good a mood to be at all offended."

Wysteria leads with her chin and her nose in the air when she makes her about face from the shade of the tree. The birds have resettled in its branches. The stench of smoke and ash has faded, and they will need to make use of what light remains if they mean to exercise the gun further.

[heorte]

Ellis catches her by the hand, stalls her before momentum carries her back the way they came.

(His thumb draws down the back of her hand.)

"Forgive me," comes first, equal parts amused and sincere. But he veers towards seriousness after, deflection giving way to something more weighted.

"All of it is due to you," he says, a beat hanging there between them before he continues, "And to Tony. I wouldn't have stayed with Riftwatch so long otherwise. You should know that."

Without them, he would have left after their time spent in the fields of Ghislain, perhaps. Richard alone wouldn't have been able to sway him from the sickening sense of guilt at having shirked his duty that had rose up after the events there.

And important to say, perhaps, in the wake of the dream, in the wake of a building falling onto his head: he doesn't care to leave them, and that truth has changed him.

[heirring]

She is very prepared to be stopped, and so it's easily accomplished. Her high spirits however are less willingly tarnished; even his lapse into severity does little temper it. The halting quality of—what? His confession? Doesn't diminish her smile, but maybe its contents do soften the egotistical jut of her chin by a few degrees.

"Did you know that one of the new rifters—Miss Ellie—suggested the most fascinating theory to me when she first arrived. That Rifters must be somehow anchored to this place to stay in it. And I remarked how the Rifters who have been here the longest are the ones which have acquired sincere friendships, or wives, or"—two men and a large dog is a subject she is not prepared to broach with Ellis—"Well, other people is what I mean."

With her free hand, she reaches up to pat his scruffy cheek.

"So," Wysteria says cheerfully. "I think it quite possible that the thing is entirely reciprocal."

[heorte]

The sweep of his thumb repeats in response, drawing slowly once more along the back of her hand.

"Ellie is clever," must be said, just to take the opportunity to underscore that quality. The theory itself is a good one too, reassuring. Ellis has carefully not considered the permeance of Rifters. That particular concern is walled off, alongside many other things Ellis prefers not to think of.

Briefly, his head tips in against her hand, straightens as it falls away. Wysteria's good humor catches, preserves his own smile as he looks back at her.

"I promise, I'll be here in the winter to skate with you," stands in for a different, heavier promise.

[heirring]

"Good. I would be very disappointed otherwise. Although," she says, turning her hand in order to hold his properly and so steer him around with her. She is quite determined to cross back over the length of the clearing again to where they've left her tender offspring in its swaddling. "If you are a truly terrible skater, you must warn me ahead of time. Because if so we will both need quite a few remedial lessons before we can hope to wage war against the likes of Lady Asgard and de Foncé should the game of biscuit become a traditional one. You will recall that I performed shockingly poorly."

With some momentum behind them, Wysteria separates their hands. Not to disengage from him—merely to hook him instead elbow to elbow, for it is a far better point with which to tow him.

"Dancing, skating, all manner of traded books. Yes, Mister Ellis, I'm afraid you have indeed become a very good companion. In fact soon I will have to insist that you develop a few more bad qualities for I will begin to feel somewhat outclassed otherwise."

[heorte]

Ellis is easily towed, falling into step with her as Wysteria arranges their arms to her liking. It's a shape Ellis knows already; they have walked together this way often enough.

If his smile is checked and dampened slightly, then it is surely only coincidence, a return to his natural state rather than out of Wysteria's inadvertent, glancing brush against a whole field of things he has kept to himself. Bad qualities indeed.

"I'm a passable skater," Ellis tells her, trying to recall the last game, what his particular difficulties were. His thoughts snare instead on Val de Foncé, and the complicated tangle of emotions attached to him, and consequently the quiet draws out unnecessarily before Ellis continues, "Not so adept that a reminder wouldn't be of use to me."

It would be a different game, in some ways. Maybe only for Ellis, which is all the more reason to keep that consideration to himself.

"We can make time," is a very optimistic statement in the middle of their present circumstances. Ellis looks away from Wysteria to the cloth-draped gun, an immediate reminder of what will be occupying Wysteria once this crisis resolves one way or another.