WHO: Ellis + OTA WHAT: Homecoming WHEN: Guardian WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: Thread collection. Closed and open starters in the comments. Holler if you want something bespoke or drop in a wildcard, I'll roll with it.
The barb of a follow-up question catches sharp in a glint of firelight at his eye, weighed and left on the table. The same light picks silver shavings out at his temple, razored down close at his ear. Would it have been cruel to transmit his findings and abandon Riftwatch for the deep roads on the return journey?
“He seems content,” says Silas, who looks next to the pattering box of Thot’s beans around the beast’s jowls. “Very handsome.” Occupied, and over there.
Ruadh is content enough. Ellis sees no reason to whistle him over, even if the pair of them make for a strange tableau.
A furrow of his brow for the sentiment, signaling perhaps some uncertainty over response. Ellis sips slowly from his mug instead, letting the taste linger. Perhaps when he's been here for more than a handful of days, the bone-deep weariness will loosen it's grip on him.
Thot enjoys existence in such a way that curling her toes between crushing jaws into warm slaver that then attracts loose dog hair and ash to cling red and grey to her coat does not deter her from whatever game she’s made for herself. She nips and rolls and at one point slides oily beneath a cot, only to prick out with thorny claws once she’s investigated. Playful, light. Not trying to leave new scars.
Static at the table with cup in hand, Silas’ study of this affair has reassured itself into the realm of a buzzard’s watchful indifference.
Should the unthinkable happen, bringing her back is a matter of time and incense. The dog seems gentle for its size, indifferent to his unease. Incurious, even. Maybe that’s how they get you.
Ellis’ question pulls his focus back around with more polished precision, question for the question in eye contact. Nothing they’ve asked so far has required preamble or consent. This has all been very amicable so far.
“If you like.”
He sips his coffee in open invitation to kill his vibe.
Has Ruadh ever played this way before? Ellis will never know. The Warden who kept him is a shell of themself now, or dead and gone in the process of making them so, and whatever life there was before that is a mystery. Perhaps when he was a puppy. Or perhaps this snuffling, slow-motion game of tag is an echo of whatever he'd played as a pup in a kennel with a pack of mabari destined for safeguarding Wardens as best they could.
Silas is allowing it. Ellis gives it only the periphery of his attention, though Ruadh knows better than to use the full force of his jaws in return.
"You are capable of more than just Research, aye?"
Dreams are just that: dreams. It doesn't mean that reality will follow. And Ellis only knows thirdhand what had been done, but he'd heard a little. And observed a little.
"You could get into somewhere you weren't meant to be?"
He starts to smile -- a crinkle at crow’s feet, a crook at the corner of his mouth for the marvel of Ellis putting this to him as an earnest question. He reins it in before his teeth show, cup shifted from the dimly glowing crux of his left hand to the wrap of his right.
His wonder is genuine, no malice. It simply can’t be helped if the shadows it carves in around his bony face are a little sinister.
“Only insofar as I was born and bred to.”
Pithy.
“Yes,” he tries again, more politely. “I think so.”
Silas' reaction lightens something in Ellis' face in response. He doesn't muster a smile, but some flex of surprised good humor sparks up at the sight of it.
And then settles, ebbing away as Ellis puts down his cup.
"The information we need is not in Weisshaupt anymore."
This would be easier with a map, Ellis thinks.
"They sent it away to Tevinter. To the university, and into a city named Qarinus."
And so here is the real implication, what Ellis is asking: Can Silas infiltrate Tevinter?
"I don't know how I would present the idea of chasing after it to the Scoutmaster."
The creases around his eyes find sharper edges upon realization of the scope of what Ellis is suggesting, lingering levity let to to escape along dry valleys as the air leaves his side of the table. No atmosphere to hold it in.
It’s not clear what he’d been expecting. A little light thieving, perhaps. Another brush with the Antivan tavern scene.
Stupid.
Life returns to him after a very standard amount of study of his coffee, silence mottled with the scuffing of the tussle at the hearth. He sets his cup down safely away from the table's edge.
“If I’m captured you will have to find another blood mage.”
"I'm not asking you to go yourself," is a quick amendment, a muted flicker of alarm breaking through Ellis' staid expression. It settles once that point is made, his hand flattening against the tabletop as he looks at Silas.
But it begs explanation. Ellis very clearly takes a moment, sorts through his own thoughts to winnow down to—
"I don't know how to come at a thing sideways, unseen. I wouldn't know how...I'm not much of a spy."
He had, after all, ridden directly up to Weisshaupt and presented himself with only the barest of untruths. That wouldn't work anywhere else.
"I need to know how you would do it. If it were you, trying to break into a place like that."
Doubt plucks the hood of his brow askance, skepticism translucent in a glance. It’s the same glance that catches the flicker on Ellis’ face, and he stifles the sentiment with a controlled breath and a hand raised to smooth his whiskers.
Of course.
Silas waits for Ellis to take his moment, pressure released back into default neutrality.
“If they sent the records to a university it’s likely they believe they contain something worth dissecting.” To business. “How long ago were they taken?”
“It would be exciting research. And dangerous. Difficult to keep quiet without evangelical dedication from all involved.”
Across the room, Thot pushes a foot fully into Ruadh’s maw while groping around his jowls. She is ribboned with glistening slobber and matte swaths of ash.
“Florus might have insight into the level of buy-in from scholars pressed into service on similar projects. The level of student involvement. Simple information gathering from the periphery might be an easier pitch than deep infiltration, to start. Eavesdropping in taverns close to the university, pursuing rumors of the blighted or deceased.”
It's a smart approach, but time-consuming. The kind of thing that requires patience, and Ellis is not an impatient man, but—
"How long do you think we would have to listen?" is a necessary question, even as Ellis considers whether they might press past that step. Or accelerate it, compress all that attention into a shorter time-frame.
He is thinking too of the pair of Tevinter agents in the lower dungeons, and what use they might make of them.
“Not very. A week, perhaps two. Long enough to identify leads or otherwise be confident it isn’t being openly discussed if we haven’t heard anything in that time frame. Much longer and we might need to enroll in the university.”
Certainly a joke, delivered without any cadence or lilt to unhitch humor from the base futility of it all: the dregs of Riftwatch up against the might of the Tevinter Imperium.
He arches a brow down into his coffee as he tilts it.
“Decisions regarding next steps could be made on the ground with anything gleaned. The spymaster could be consulted.”
All this is absorbed quietly. At some point, Ellis' eyes shift to Thot and Ruadh, observing the jabs of Thot's paws into Ruadh's scarred bulk, before he returns his study to Richard, his expression, the lift of his eyebrow.
A nod. Ellis understands. It feels sound, as far as exceedingly dangerous proposals go. Yes, they will consult the spymaster. Yes, they will have to enter the university either way, assuming all their listening indicates there is something to be retrieved.
"Do we have anyone you think might suit?"
This surely becomes the bigger question.
And it is one Ellis also finds himself less equipped to answer. He had a list ready, when Tony had asked who would be useful in the midst of Tevinter assault on Tantervale. But spywork is something different entirely, requires skills Ellis cannot fully evaluate.
This is a question that warrants more rugged contemplation, more gristle than meat to chew through in all his impatience with the dangers of Riftwatch of late. He keeps to his cup, a creep of pale light at the window sapping at the hearthfire’s glow.
Two names. Ellis doesn't flinch. This is about what he had expected. There are often very few that Ellis would trust to be capable, focus on the work, not get mired in argument and squabble.
Now Silas looks up, and Thot pauses in her grooming of Ruadh’s tattered ears with her tongue poked poisonous blue through her teeth before pressing on at half speed. Unsure.
“Of course,” Easy. He has the rest of his coffee to swallow down, and does, all at once in a bitter bolt that strikes sharp at the fuzzy lines around his mouth, nearly a grimace. The cup goes back onto the table. No need or desire for a second round.
“May I tell you something?”
Seeing they are asking permission to make the conversation treacherous this morning.
A low, rumbling noise from Ruadh at the delay. It pulls Ellis' attention back for a moment, assessing without any real concern to Thot's immediate well being.
The concern comes when he looks back again to Silas. He can't anticipate what might follow the question, but there is, of course, only one answer to give.
"Aye."
Quiet. Expectant. The business of their respective creatures shuffled to the side.
Ellis is not given to displays of emotion, so the reaction is very muted. A raising of brows. Straightening in his chair. A pause, while he draws together some response.
"I don't understand," is lacking. Ellis knows this.
But he knows too that Silas will expand on it, even if his explanation is knife-sharp, leaves a series of small cuts in its wake.
The gathering of his patience is a wearying task, writ plain in the pause he takes for the inevitability of this response, the tuck of his chin scruffy to his collar when he sits back. He’s not angry. Just unhappy.
“The withholding of information,” he explains, “the buffering from any danger or temptation you’ve decided I mustn't face. Dabbling in other dangers is desired within your limits. I should stay close by your side, or I should remain far behind. Here I have kept my word to you and still might have died pointlessly in the kitchen.”
Silas breathes out sharp through his nose, coffee breath turned in a draconic spill between them in the beat before he stands to seek out a wide-necked bottle from his desk. Empty, and clean enough to warrant keeping after a sniff.
“You’ve sought out my expertise. How do you think my list will benefit from your review?”
Ellis has stilled, straightening in his chair to track Silas' movements around the room. By turn, Ruadh has lifted his own head to scrutinize the pair of them, Thot momentarily ignored.
Response comes slowly, delayed by some hesitation over questioning what might have happened in the kitchen. Ellis hasn't heard all of what occurred, and Tony's allusions to difficulties was not—
"I'm not asking after it to second-guess you," Ellis answers carefully. "I'm asking so I do not hear it for the first time in front of the Scoutmaster."
The earlier points are left to themselves. Ellis is reluctant to counter any of them, and the impulse to do so makes him even less inclined to try. So this one thing, a minor explanation of what has passed between them in the last few moments, is what he offers up in turn.
There isn’t far for him to go. There are the two beds, the hearth, the desk, the table, all carefully arranged to make the most of limited space. The bottle, which might have been for whiskey, is now for the leftover coffee, swirled underhand in its pot to check for residual heat before he tilts it to pour.
“Then you won’t mind if I add myself to it.”
Reasonable, orderly where he stands to measure coffee down the bottle’s throat close by.
"It's for the Scoutmaster to decide whether it's an acceptable risk or not," is a very diplomatic answer.
Yes, Ellis will mind. Just as he minds when Tony and Wysteria prod at rifts and cause small explosions in the kitchen.
Only this is not quite that, because Silas had said himself: to be caught in Tevinter was to meet a very bad end, one way or another.
The resentment Ellis might feel at having to bite back any objection is muted, reduced down to a tension in his jaw, right hand folding over his left on the tabletop. Ruadh is very still where he's sprawled across the floor.
Silas stoppers the bottle, grimy with coffee dregs at its base. Enough to down like a shot tomorrow morning if he’s feeling bold. What would the Captain think? The rustling of him recedes back to the room’s tiny window, where there’s just space for him to square the bottle in the chill air of the frame.
Better to admire his handiwork there for a moment than return to the table, where Ellis is sitting very still.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I haven’t often been afforded opportunities to choose what should happen to me.” And, after a pause to fold his arms: “We can both be certain Miss Poppell will continue to terrorize this world well into her seventies.”
Thot has anchored one foot up under some fold in Raudh’s chest, the other poked blind about his neck, under his chin. She lies belly up between his paws, watchful with her ears flattened to the floor.
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no subject
The barb of a follow-up question catches sharp in a glint of firelight at his eye, weighed and left on the table. The same light picks silver shavings out at his temple, razored down close at his ear. Would it have been cruel to transmit his findings and abandon Riftwatch for the deep roads on the return journey?
“He seems content,” says Silas, who looks next to the pattering box of Thot’s beans around the beast’s jowls. “Very handsome.” Occupied, and over there.
“I’m happy for you.”
no subject
A furrow of his brow for the sentiment, signaling perhaps some uncertainty over response. Ellis sips slowly from his mug instead, letting the taste linger. Perhaps when he's been here for more than a handful of days, the bone-deep weariness will loosen it's grip on him.
"Can I ask you something of yourself?"
A roundabout approach to what Ellis has found.
no subject
Static at the table with cup in hand, Silas’ study of this affair has reassured itself into the realm of a buzzard’s watchful indifference.
Should the unthinkable happen, bringing her back is a matter of time and incense. The dog seems gentle for its size, indifferent to his unease. Incurious, even. Maybe that’s how they get you.
Ellis’ question pulls his focus back around with more polished precision, question for the question in eye contact. Nothing they’ve asked so far has required preamble or consent. This has all been very amicable so far.
“If you like.”
He sips his coffee in open invitation to kill his vibe.
no subject
Silas is allowing it. Ellis gives it only the periphery of his attention, though Ruadh knows better than to use the full force of his jaws in return.
"You are capable of more than just Research, aye?"
Dreams are just that: dreams. It doesn't mean that reality will follow. And Ellis only knows thirdhand what had been done, but he'd heard a little. And observed a little.
"You could get into somewhere you weren't meant to be?"
no subject
His wonder is genuine, no malice. It simply can’t be helped if the shadows it carves in around his bony face are a little sinister.
“Only insofar as I was born and bred to.”
Pithy.
“Yes,” he tries again, more politely. “I think so.”
no subject
And then settles, ebbing away as Ellis puts down his cup.
"The information we need is not in Weisshaupt anymore."
This would be easier with a map, Ellis thinks.
"They sent it away to Tevinter. To the university, and into a city named Qarinus."
And so here is the real implication, what Ellis is asking: Can Silas infiltrate Tevinter?
"I don't know how I would present the idea of chasing after it to the Scoutmaster."
no subject
It’s not clear what he’d been expecting. A little light thieving, perhaps. Another brush with the Antivan tavern scene.
Stupid.
Life returns to him after a very standard amount of study of his coffee, silence mottled with the scuffing of the tussle at the hearth. He sets his cup down safely away from the table's edge.
“If I’m captured you will have to find another blood mage.”
no subject
But it begs explanation. Ellis very clearly takes a moment, sorts through his own thoughts to winnow down to—
"I don't know how to come at a thing sideways, unseen. I wouldn't know how...I'm not much of a spy."
He had, after all, ridden directly up to Weisshaupt and presented himself with only the barest of untruths. That wouldn't work anywhere else.
"I need to know how you would do it. If it were you, trying to break into a place like that."
no subject
Of course.
Silas waits for Ellis to take his moment, pressure released back into default neutrality.
“If they sent the records to a university it’s likely they believe they contain something worth dissecting.” To business. “How long ago were they taken?”
no subject
Of course, that's a problem.
"It wasn't all at once. From what I could find, it seemed that they'd been sending them in batches. It's been going on for a year, maybe two."
no subject
Across the room, Thot pushes a foot fully into Ruadh’s maw while groping around his jowls. She is ribboned with glistening slobber and matte swaths of ash.
“Florus might have insight into the level of buy-in from scholars pressed into service on similar projects. The level of student involvement. Simple information gathering from the periphery might be an easier pitch than deep infiltration, to start. Eavesdropping in taverns close to the university, pursuing rumors of the blighted or deceased.”
no subject
It's a smart approach, but time-consuming. The kind of thing that requires patience, and Ellis is not an impatient man, but—
"How long do you think we would have to listen?" is a necessary question, even as Ellis considers whether they might press past that step. Or accelerate it, compress all that attention into a shorter time-frame.
He is thinking too of the pair of Tevinter agents in the lower dungeons, and what use they might make of them.
no subject
Certainly a joke, delivered without any cadence or lilt to unhitch humor from the base futility of it all: the dregs of Riftwatch up against the might of the Tevinter Imperium.
He arches a brow down into his coffee as he tilts it.
“Decisions regarding next steps could be made on the ground with anything gleaned. The spymaster could be consulted.”
no subject
A nod. Ellis understands. It feels sound, as far as exceedingly dangerous proposals go. Yes, they will consult the spymaster. Yes, they will have to enter the university either way, assuming all their listening indicates there is something to be retrieved.
"Do we have anyone you think might suit?"
This surely becomes the bigger question.
And it is one Ellis also finds himself less equipped to answer. He had a list ready, when Tony had asked who would be useful in the midst of Tevinter assault on Tantervale. But spywork is something different entirely, requires skills Ellis cannot fully evaluate.
no subject
“Bastien,” says Silas. Fitcher. “Ket.”
Richard Dickerson.
“I could provide her with a list of prospects.”
no subject
"I'd like to see them, before we go to her."
And then—
"Thank you."
For the expertise. For indulging him still.
no subject
“Of course,” Easy. He has the rest of his coffee to swallow down, and does, all at once in a bitter bolt that strikes sharp at the fuzzy lines around his mouth, nearly a grimace. The cup goes back onto the table. No need or desire for a second round.
“May I tell you something?”
Seeing they are asking permission to make the conversation treacherous this morning.
no subject
The concern comes when he looks back again to Silas. He can't anticipate what might follow the question, but there is, of course, only one answer to give.
"Aye."
Quiet. Expectant. The business of their respective creatures shuffled to the side.
no subject
It’s early enough for his eyes to be quite clear at the back of his saying so, glass shrapnel sharp without his narrowing them.
The rest of him is mundane as ever, rangy and a little rumpled without a chance for adjustment after Ruadh’s earlier interruption.
no subject
Ellis is not given to displays of emotion, so the reaction is very muted. A raising of brows. Straightening in his chair. A pause, while he draws together some response.
"I don't understand," is lacking. Ellis knows this.
But he knows too that Silas will expand on it, even if his explanation is knife-sharp, leaves a series of small cuts in its wake.
no subject
“The withholding of information,” he explains, “the buffering from any danger or temptation you’ve decided I mustn't face. Dabbling in other dangers is desired within your limits. I should stay close by your side, or I should remain far behind. Here I have kept my word to you and still might have died pointlessly in the kitchen.”
Silas breathes out sharp through his nose, coffee breath turned in a draconic spill between them in the beat before he stands to seek out a wide-necked bottle from his desk. Empty, and clean enough to warrant keeping after a sniff.
“You’ve sought out my expertise. How do you think my list will benefit from your review?”
no subject
Response comes slowly, delayed by some hesitation over questioning what might have happened in the kitchen. Ellis hasn't heard all of what occurred, and Tony's allusions to difficulties was not—
"I'm not asking after it to second-guess you," Ellis answers carefully. "I'm asking so I do not hear it for the first time in front of the Scoutmaster."
The earlier points are left to themselves. Ellis is reluctant to counter any of them, and the impulse to do so makes him even less inclined to try. So this one thing, a minor explanation of what has passed between them in the last few moments, is what he offers up in turn.
no subject
“Then you won’t mind if I add myself to it.”
Reasonable, orderly where he stands to measure coffee down the bottle’s throat close by.
no subject
Yes, Ellis will mind. Just as he minds when Tony and Wysteria prod at rifts and cause small explosions in the kitchen.
Only this is not quite that, because Silas had said himself: to be caught in Tevinter was to meet a very bad end, one way or another.
The resentment Ellis might feel at having to bite back any objection is muted, reduced down to a tension in his jaw, right hand folding over his left on the tabletop. Ruadh is very still where he's sprawled across the floor.
no subject
Better to admire his handiwork there for a moment than return to the table, where Ellis is sitting very still.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“I haven’t often been afforded opportunities to choose what should happen to me.” And, after a pause to fold his arms: “We can both be certain Miss Poppell will continue to terrorize this world well into her seventies.”
Thot has anchored one foot up under some fold in Raudh’s chest, the other poked blind about his neck, under his chin. She lies belly up between his paws, watchful with her ears flattened to the floor.
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a long delayed bow to slap on this thread