Dickerson stands wary in the sunset gloom, distrustful, still, of what this might be: this standing stone of a mage exerting steady pressure behind closed doors.
“Self-assured,” he says. “Warm.”
How personal is he expected to get, a flash of gold foil at the backs of his eyes when his study shifts sidelong. Critical. Is the guard captain a pervert?
Not that personal, evidently, judging from the subtle ripple in Marcus' expression. Perhaps it's a good thing, when it relieves the pressure of his focus as it rolls aside to the door.
Maker.
"Trustworthy." Fun game. Word association. "Forgiving, tolerant. How about those."
Marcus doesn't really wait for Richard to participate, breaching territory in a step forwards, turning the journal and lifting it. "I don't know why me, not with certainty," he says, and another step, closer. "I can guess. Because I was already near finding her out. Perhaps it's because of all I can do. If she is as she seems to me, then she would have burned you first, had she known what you are."
The book is offered out between them. "Did you love her?"
To the first question, a tick at his brow says maybe.
He’d shown her his belly. She’d tolerated the eldritch coil of the creature around his shoulders, without once having seen membranes peeling back milky from needle fangs the way they do now, the curl of a forked tongue flashing blue when Thot flinches and spits. Not quite at Marcus’ second step, a viperous hiss synched on a delay to the question that follows.
It’s a singular spasm against the stake of D. Dickerson standing cold before his own shadow on the wall, a warning sparked and quelled without real threat. Contained. Her claws wring white at his shoulder.
It is personal.
And surely irrelevant, besides.
He doesn’t take the proffered journal, even if it’s still within reach.
Marcus keeps it held out, hand only loosely gripping the journal. Not forever.
He also doesn't think Richard is a fool, incapable of deciphering meaning from what is not (Marcus is sure) a subtle dig. Flat regard is held for only a second before he indulges it anyway, and says, "My meaning is that you have an interest in blood magic and an agent of the Chantry would have acted upon that, had she known.
"The translation was not hard to come by," added, a raised eyebrow.
Irritation sees him bristled at the chops at news of translation, crow’s feet etched in tight. Snake still while he traces the likely culprit, the means. Spittle glitters in Thot’s whiskers, her eyes narrowed to mean slits to match.
Richard reaches to tug the book sharp from Marcus’ grasp between them.
“If we’d fought to the death I’m certain we’d all be feeling much better about our futures here.”
Or at worst, not feeling anything at all, he adds with a darker glance on his way to flipping through his journal for evidence of tampering.
As Richard's focus dips to the book, Marcus looks to the cat, sparing a moment. While not especially intimidated by hissing and glittering, his assessment of her is similar to the way one might measure someone's worn weaponry, only more curious about its nature, how it could be wielded, how it was. What all can blood magic do? Petrana hadn't mentioned any cats, in her notes, but still.
The journal is as Dick remembers it. Marcus probably laid a crease into its bindings with rough handling, but its pages are whole, untorn.
Eventually, "Notes were taken," tracking his focus back to the other man, slowly. "And burned."
Some pages are more precious to him than others, evidenced by stops here and there to scrutinize calculations, notes, diagrams.
His cat tightens the cord of her tail around his throat as he reads, her hackles raised along the ridge of her spine. She licks her nose with an audible rasp, all baleful eyes and ears wedged back and splayed talons.
Richard must eventually rule manipulation unlikely. He closes the book in hand and looks back to Marcus, both suspicious of and relieved to hear this news of burned notes. Copyright Dick Dickerson 9:47 do not steal.
“‘Blood magic’ is the only means of cleansing Blight we have the capacity to manipulate.”
Deeply neutral, that 'alright'. Understated, for something of which he knows little, save for the thing he is very certain about. There is a beat of silence where Marcus is considering why Richard might feel compelled to say this thing, and continues with, "It would still get you killed out there. They don't care why a mage does anything."
A 'they' of which Fitcher—surely—is a part. Marcus keeps searching, quietly, as if a direct enough stare could peel back enough scale and layers to read how these connections work in this rifter's mind.
"One slip from you, for that, and she'd have arranged Templars to haul you to Val Chevin quicker than me. Why are you protecting her at your own expense?"
“She protects herself,” Mr. Dickerson is all too quick to counter. “Or am I so charming you believe she’d show me her throat unbidden?”
He doesn’t quite sling the closed journal past Marcus onto the table at the room’s center, a little too much snap to the release. It lands flat at the edge with a leathery smack. The cat at his shoulders flinches.
Relieved of it as a distraction, he’s free to square back to Marcus’ scrutiny, rough-ridden as his former horse and with a nastier disposition.
“I trusted her for what she was. She trusted me. We kept secrets.” Bold, really, to assume she had no inklings about his extracurriculars. She’d know the signs, surely -- recognize the scars. He’s given the matter plenty of thought on his own time, nothing new for him to mull over at the knifepoint of this hypothetical slip. “I’m sorry she prioritized a vendetta over the destruction of your world.” Resentment keeps his eyes bright. “Humans are notoriously fickle.”
The path of the journal is tracked with a glance—no flinch for sudden movements, but alert to them. Back to Richard, unyielding and impassive scrutiny locked back into place.
This last thing does get a response: a twinge of what could almost pass as a smile, an exhale that could almost pass as a laugh. When these things burn off, there is a blacker, bleaker anger that simmers low.
"You went missing, Dickerson," he says. "No follow up report, no response, no request for further advisement from your superiors. It is not your decision to make if the actions of Madame Fitcher are insignificant in the scheme of Riftwatch's priorities. This is done when I say it is."
Richard is not in the dungeon. He is in his room. That alone is indication enough on where Riftwatch is choosing to put its focus. All the same—
"You are a mage," does not quite easy up on the intensity, but there is an earnest grasp to it that is not simply aggressive. "One who may well live to see what the world is like after we're done saving it. I advise you to start caring, because people like Fitcher certainly do, and are already attempting to shape it."
Mr. Dickerson is snake still, motionless for a long moment save for the push and pull of breath tight under his jerkin.
The creature on his shoulder bundles in on herself, knuckles twisted, bowstring tension boiled flat along the contours of velvet muscle, a bolo of gristle and bone primed to unfurl itself upon Marcus’ exposed face. There’s a sickly sweet tang to the air, cloying, faint, familiar, as if from a dream. Intrusive thought.
Thot vanishes mid-hiss, a spin of vapor flushed clean off his collar.
“I understand.”
He looks down, blanched and drawn and also composed. Papers tapped, files straightened.
“I’ll notify you if I recall anything else of import.”
The tension that Marcus matches in turn is more readied and defensive than a rise in anger. As Thot's poisonous hiss begins to fill the room, white fangs and blue gullet, he once again transfers his attention to her, as if seriously considering her input and response to the conversation just as much as the real possibility she might attack. That Richard might attack.
She disappears. Marcus stops short of glancing back into the room, restraint helped along by Dick's answer. Just barely.
This next assurance gets only flat regard. That it's also dismissal does not compel Marcus for the door, but there is a resentment in his expression—matte with resignation, more than Richard's brightness—that seems to recognise an end of something, at least in this conversation. Still. The temptation to keep worrying at this bone in particular locks through his posture.
"You know," and now he does glance back, more comfortable in search of a missing cat on his own terms than when it was his instinct, then back to Richard, "I would have thanked you for your actions in our shared dream, but it wasn't my place to do so. It wasn't for my sake but Derrica's, I would think. But I don't mind saying that I'm grateful."
The resentment hasn't left his voice, the ashy leftovers of brief flame colouring his tone, but it doesn't sound like a lie, really, too direct, no hint of irony.
"Notify me," Marcus says, and then goes to see himself out, "if you change your mind."
Marcus' hand rests on the handle of the door without yet curling, gripping.
Then it does, tugging the door open. Out through it at an efficient clip, and the way he tugs it closed again is sharp and hard, the rush of air from the swing of its edge carrying with it the faint aroma of a bitterer, coarser smoke than anything that's packed into pipe or paper. Only almost invisible in the air, and fading.
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no subject
Dickerson stands wary in the sunset gloom, distrustful, still, of what this might be: this standing stone of a mage exerting steady pressure behind closed doors.
“Self-assured,” he says. “Warm.”
How personal is he expected to get, a flash of gold foil at the backs of his eyes when his study shifts sidelong. Critical. Is the guard captain a pervert?
no subject
Maker.
"Trustworthy." Fun game. Word association. "Forgiving, tolerant. How about those."
Marcus doesn't really wait for Richard to participate, breaching territory in a step forwards, turning the journal and lifting it. "I don't know why me, not with certainty," he says, and another step, closer. "I can guess. Because I was already near finding her out. Perhaps it's because of all I can do. If she is as she seems to me, then she would have burned you first, had she known what you are."
The book is offered out between them. "Did you love her?"
Maybe a little personal.
no subject
He’d shown her his belly. She’d tolerated the eldritch coil of the creature around his shoulders, without once having seen membranes peeling back milky from needle fangs the way they do now, the curl of a forked tongue flashing blue when Thot flinches and spits. Not quite at Marcus’ second step, a viperous hiss synched on a delay to the question that follows.
It’s a singular spasm against the stake of D. Dickerson standing cold before his own shadow on the wall, a warning sparked and quelled without real threat. Contained. Her claws wring white at his shoulder.
It is personal.
And surely irrelevant, besides.
He doesn’t take the proffered journal, even if it’s still within reach.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
no subject
He also doesn't think Richard is a fool, incapable of deciphering meaning from what is not (Marcus is sure) a subtle dig. Flat regard is held for only a second before he indulges it anyway, and says, "My meaning is that you have an interest in blood magic and an agent of the Chantry would have acted upon that, had she known.
"The translation was not hard to come by," added, a raised eyebrow.
no subject
Richard reaches to tug the book sharp from Marcus’ grasp between them.
“If we’d fought to the death I’m certain we’d all be feeling much better about our futures here.”
Or at worst, not feeling anything at all, he adds with a darker glance on his way to flipping through his journal for evidence of tampering.
no subject
As Richard's focus dips to the book, Marcus looks to the cat, sparing a moment. While not especially intimidated by hissing and glittering, his assessment of her is similar to the way one might measure someone's worn weaponry, only more curious about its nature, how it could be wielded, how it was. What all can blood magic do? Petrana hadn't mentioned any cats, in her notes, but still.
The journal is as Dick remembers it. Marcus probably laid a crease into its bindings with rough handling, but its pages are whole, untorn.
Eventually, "Notes were taken," tracking his focus back to the other man, slowly. "And burned."
no subject
His cat tightens the cord of her tail around his throat as he reads, her hackles raised along the ridge of her spine. She licks her nose with an audible rasp, all baleful eyes and ears wedged back and splayed talons.
Richard must eventually rule manipulation unlikely. He closes the book in hand and looks back to Marcus, both suspicious of and relieved to hear this news of burned notes. Copyright Dick Dickerson 9:47 do not steal.
“‘Blood magic’ is the only means of cleansing Blight we have the capacity to manipulate.”
no subject
Deeply neutral, that 'alright'. Understated, for something of which he knows little, save for the thing he is very certain about. There is a beat of silence where Marcus is considering why Richard might feel compelled to say this thing, and continues with, "It would still get you killed out there. They don't care why a mage does anything."
A 'they' of which Fitcher—surely—is a part. Marcus keeps searching, quietly, as if a direct enough stare could peel back enough scale and layers to read how these connections work in this rifter's mind.
"One slip from you, for that, and she'd have arranged Templars to haul you to Val Chevin quicker than me. Why are you protecting her at your own expense?"
no subject
He doesn’t quite sling the closed journal past Marcus onto the table at the room’s center, a little too much snap to the release. It lands flat at the edge with a leathery smack. The cat at his shoulders flinches.
Relieved of it as a distraction, he’s free to square back to Marcus’ scrutiny, rough-ridden as his former horse and with a nastier disposition.
“I trusted her for what she was. She trusted me. We kept secrets.” Bold, really, to assume she had no inklings about his extracurriculars. She’d know the signs, surely -- recognize the scars. He’s given the matter plenty of thought on his own time, nothing new for him to mull over at the knifepoint of this hypothetical slip. “I’m sorry she prioritized a vendetta over the destruction of your world.” Resentment keeps his eyes bright. “Humans are notoriously fickle.”
no subject
This last thing does get a response: a twinge of what could almost pass as a smile, an exhale that could almost pass as a laugh. When these things burn off, there is a blacker, bleaker anger that simmers low.
"You went missing, Dickerson," he says. "No follow up report, no response, no request for further advisement from your superiors. It is not your decision to make if the actions of Madame Fitcher are insignificant in the scheme of Riftwatch's priorities. This is done when I say it is."
Richard is not in the dungeon. He is in his room. That alone is indication enough on where Riftwatch is choosing to put its focus. All the same—
"You are a mage," does not quite easy up on the intensity, but there is an earnest grasp to it that is not simply aggressive. "One who may well live to see what the world is like after we're done saving it. I advise you to start caring, because people like Fitcher certainly do, and are already attempting to shape it."
no subject
The creature on his shoulder bundles in on herself, knuckles twisted, bowstring tension boiled flat along the contours of velvet muscle, a bolo of gristle and bone primed to unfurl itself upon Marcus’ exposed face. There’s a sickly sweet tang to the air, cloying, faint, familiar, as if from a dream. Intrusive thought.
Thot vanishes mid-hiss, a spin of vapor flushed clean off his collar.
“I understand.”
He looks down, blanched and drawn and also composed. Papers tapped, files straightened.
“I’ll notify you if I recall anything else of import.”
no subject
She disappears. Marcus stops short of glancing back into the room, restraint helped along by Dick's answer. Just barely.
This next assurance gets only flat regard. That it's also dismissal does not compel Marcus for the door, but there is a resentment in his expression—matte with resignation, more than Richard's brightness—that seems to recognise an end of something, at least in this conversation. Still. The temptation to keep worrying at this bone in particular locks through his posture.
"You know," and now he does glance back, more comfortable in search of a missing cat on his own terms than when it was his instinct, then back to Richard, "I would have thanked you for your actions in our shared dream, but it wasn't my place to do so. It wasn't for my sake but Derrica's, I would think. But I don't mind saying that I'm grateful."
The resentment hasn't left his voice, the ashy leftovers of brief flame colouring his tone, but it doesn't sound like a lie, really, too direct, no hint of irony.
"Notify me," Marcus says, and then goes to see himself out, "if you change your mind."
no subject
The words leave him while he’s still looking down, vinegar from the belly of a slit bladder, nothing left to hem them in.
A two for one deal. Think of all the nightmare trauma the rest of Riftwatch might have been spared.
“I’m sure your intentions were noble,” he adds. “Thank you for the warning.”
no subject
Then it does, tugging the door open. Out through it at an efficient clip, and the way he tugs it closed again is sharp and hard, the rush of air from the swing of its edge carrying with it the faint aroma of a bitterer, coarser smoke than anything that's packed into pipe or paper. Only almost invisible in the air, and fading.