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WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Late night evacuation drill
WHEN: Early Harvestmere, don't think about it too hard
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See OOC note below.
WHAT: Late night evacuation drill
WHEN: Early Harvestmere, don't think about it too hard
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See OOC note below.
Lashes of rain batter at unyielding fortress walls. It is dark, quiet, and peaceful save for all the rolling thunder summoned from over the sea. It is a good evening to be warm in bed.
Until it isn't a couple of those things.
Wherever you are sleeping (or working) late at night in the Gallows, you will hear it: an incessant and noisy bell ringing, handheld, clanging and clanging loud and obnoxious from the top of each tower and downwards, lingering in the key residential halls until there is sign of people emerging from their rooms. Gwenaëlle has been assigned to harass the Central Tower, while Abby takes the Mage Tower and Matthias is assigned the Templar Tower. Even if you happen not to be in either of these places, the muffled cacophony of bells is liable to still reach you.
It may take a second to realise what's happening, and how real this emergency is, but in the past week, all will have received some suspiciously timed updates as to evacuation procedures, including the protocols surrounding what to do when the instruction is to shelter in place (because they do, after all, live in a fortress).
The first step is moving without hesitation when the warning bells ring out loud. The next is to descend the towers, down dim stairwells lit by lyrium glow, in as orderly a fashion as possible. From there, it's a matter off finding the correct subterranean chamber (tonight, indicated with lamplight) and waiting it out.
At least, this route does not take them outside.
In the basement chamber will be Edgard and Marcus, the former equipped with a medieval clipboard and the latter marking the time in his head as people enter, while semi-supervising the other man's work and guarding the exit. The space is large enough to comfortably fit the whole company, although it is also cold, dripping, and musty. There are places to sit, chairs and tables both, and a few blankets if you find yourself underdressed.
And if you attempt to leave too early, you'll be bid to wait it out a little longer to accommodate and cause no disruption or confusion to late comers.
To encourage this, there are a few bottles of wine set aside along with some lukewarm tea. Stay a while.
[ ooc ; feel free to top level at any part of this interaction! I will handwave the cooperation of anyone who doesn't tag in or assume they are out of the Gallows, so don't feel like you have to, but there is also a comment below for anyone who deliberately wants to be on the naughty list of no-shows. ]
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It's the way one deals with cats. The scent of him is human, even to Jude's currently nose-dead form, but the prickliness is happily familiar to his wolf.
And so he leans into his instincts.
Ignoring Viktor's challenge and protest, Jude instead stays where he is, tilting his head to one side.
"Shifting's hell on clothes," he says simply. "You ever seen a big-ass wolf wearing pants? These are easy to kick off without giving you an eyeful."
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Never mind that, though, Jude's saying something that should sound ridiculous but instead, thanks to his gluttonous appetite for texts about Thedosian magic and other manifestations of the Fade, it's instantly compelling. His head tilts differently in return—a slight turn, an angling down—
"What, are you saying you're..."
Kindly fill in the blank.
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It's nice to have some things be familiar.
"A wolf shifter." Jude nods, spreading his hands again, palm up, as if he's submitting himself for Viktor's inspection.
"My wolf is bigger than my man," he goes on, knowing he's laying it on a little thick, but: "And if the person I'm conveying is on my back instead of in my arms, and we run across a threat-"
Fill in the blank.
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"Your wolf," he repeats, while his yellow eyes flick their interest, as if accepting the invitation to inspect this half-dressed figure will reveal more about his marvellous ability now that he's aware of it. (It won't and does not.)
"Are you," prepared for inappropriately timed questions, fire drill what fire drill, "are you native to Thedas? Or is this a... a translation of ability?"
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"Came through a rift a few months back," he clarifies. "It's an ability, and part of me. Shifters - my people - have more than one form. Thankfully, the rift didn't take that from me."
It would have been like losing half of his heart.
But he tips his head back, towards the stairs, where the bells are still ringing.
"If you want to keep talking, we should get ourselves down there."
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His attention follows the prompt on a delay; looking to the stairs seems to nudge him back into gear. Also a factor: the part where Jude says they should use them.
"Have you forgotten the brief, or did the plan change while I was busy?"
He's grumbling, but not only grumbling. There's a real question in there too. This would absolutely not be the first time he's been too engrossed in a thing to pay attention to what people are doing outside that thing, conveniently or otherwise. Sometimes it's on purpose. Sometimes it just happens. (Often he only pretends not to be paying attention.)
The set of his eyebrows isn't as scowly about this as it could be, at any rate.
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"No change, this is still just a drill. We meet, go through the motions." Viktor is still excused for the purposes of this drill; Jude won't go hauling him unwillingly down the stairs when there isn't an actual, life-threatening reason at hand. More than pissing Viktor off, it'll make things difficult for them when the time comes for them to actually be bug-out buddies.
"But I'm due to report."
And a pause. Then, sincerely:
"Much as I'd rather keep talking to you."
Then, with the air of someone who knows it could well be a lost cause, but has to try anyway, he gestures down the stairs. "Couldn't persuade you to humor me? On wolfback, if you prefer."
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"No, I—"
Automatic refusal, because that wasn't the plan, because he's not prepared to change his mind on a whim, because it's a strange suggestion, because a shirtless guy he just met is suggesting it to him. Because even though he despises the idea of being carried, this is an unforeseen loophole, the part of him that always leans into the unforeseen is already winning this argument, he needs to go through the motions of considering it, and doing so is an incredibly self-conscious thing. His eyes flirt with the idea of looking away, darting, his shoulder comes up.
"I don't think," he starts, but curiosity pulls him back, eyes and all. "What... would that entail?"
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"First, getting out of these pants. Then, changing over to fur. And I do recommend looking away. It's normal when you grow up with it, but it can... come as a shock."
To put it lightly. Just a casual bit of breaking every bone in your body and then re-forming them in a handful of seconds.
"Then I crouch down a bit, you mount up and get a good grip with your knees, and hang on."
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He does, though, turn his hand over and point down to his leg with a few little taps in the air. The hinges and shanks, the thick hard angles at his knee, the shell encasing his shoe.
"And this won't cause you any discomfort?"
When it digs in.
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Like marching a man in plate armor all the way to Cumberland.
Jude drops down to a squat to get a better look, the movement fluid -- he's big and heavy, but he doesn't move like it. He laces his fingers together, lifts his shoulders.
"It's hard to hurt a shifter."
He considers the shell across Viktor's shoe, gestures to it with a crook of a finger.
"Hanging on will hurt me less than letting this hang limp," he adds. "Undercoat cuts the friction."
If they do this often, they can troubleshoot. But for now, it'll work. He rolls his eyes upward to look at Viktor's face.
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(And maybe being crouched at has something to do with it. Maybe some part of him is satisfied by it. Maybe, once in a while, he imagines being the tower that turns heads and casts a long shadow.)
Viktor's yellow eyes, aimed down from above, are steady. He answers the advice with a nod: just the one, firm.
"OK."
OK, he'll ride a wolf-man down the stairs. Why not.
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"Don't mind being watched, but if you have a weak stomach, look away," he warns-
And then he changes.
It is disgusting. The wet snap and scrape of bones breaking and moving under flesh. The way Jude steps out of his trousers is smooth, practiced, so much so that the black fur racing along his skin preserves his modesty well enough even if Viktor chooses to look, and that might spare him the sight of Jude's maw breaking open into impossible, glinting fangs before skin and fur cover them properly. His eyes turn from warm brown to glittering wolf gold.
The whole change takes only a few seconds, but it sucks all of the air out of the room, and in his place is an absolutely fuckoff enormous wolf, midnight-black and rimed with deep brown. Jude's lips pulls back from his teeth as he scents him, his tongue lolling out once, demonstrating huge fangs and jaws that could easily envelop a man's head and crush it outright.
Jude wags his enormous tail to one side -- and in a way that no wild wolf would do, stretches his front paws out before him in what is obviously a modified bow.
Yes, he's in there.
(And so is his wolf, who thinks this is all a great game.)
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this grotesque rearrangement of parts, the undulation of meat and bone, stretching, pushing, growing—
this is challenging.
He doesn't choose to look. Not there. Like any living eye, his are drawn to the face, seeking language, familiarity, something to comprehend. The face bulges and opens and bristles with teeth. He comprehends only endurance of pain: a familiar language, reflected back to him in a yellow eye.
And then it's done, and his awareness expands to include his own wild pulse and shallow breath. When did he reach the wall? The bones of his back ease off stone and into stiff balance. For long seconds he stands just there, drawn in small around his crutch, shoulders up, arm across his belly.
Then that arm lifts away, breaking his closed and cautious silhouette, to extend the relaxed shape of his hand.
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Jude tilts his head to one side with watching eyes, swishing his tail to the other side, letting Viktor come to terms with the horror of what his eyes have seen. Though he was in company with humans now and again back home, he's still learning just how disturbing they find this. He's also learning the capacity of how quickly they can accept something new.
It's astonishing, really- and something he very much likes about them. Humans are adaptable, stubborn, enduring, and most of all, they will pack-bond with anything.
Jude gets to his feet, head dropping lower to delicately sniff over Viktor's fingers, scenting his skin, the sweat, the old pages of books, the dust of the library, quills and ink. He is so young, younger than Jude's first impression of him, and it fills in more of the blank spaces. They ache.
Jude's tongue is pink, and the soft lick is delicate, friendly, reassuring. He laps across Viktor's fingertips, then eases in to push his giant head under his hand, soft ears flickering up and back as he steps in close.
His fur, if pressed, is impossibly deep and dense, his ears sensitive and welcoming the touch. He politely tucks his teeth away and sniffs at him curiously.
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The lick reminds him—not of fur, but of rough-smooth skin, the way it would barely wrinkle under his hand, so delicate. A big, bright eye looking at him, warm soft foot pawing at his pant leg, huge head filling his lap from knees to chin. Her strange sounds and peculiar smell.
The withering shape of her, suspended.
This is a grown man, he reminds himself. The both of them are; he's young, but not much younger than Jude himself. And there's a bell ringing. He releases the gentle fistful of fur, the roll of loose canid skin.
"I, ah... how should I..."
Little abortive movements, indecisive, unsure how to arrange himself. Most people around here know how to sit on sittable animals; Viktor isn't one of them. There's the matter of his gear, besides, and points of inconvenient stiffness or looseness where the opposite should be true of a body—
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What a thing to carry. What a thing to so utterly refuse to bow to.
The sentinel in him stretches, presses, bigger than his skin. He leans in to gently push his head against Viktor's chest, inviting the touch with a cool nose.
One ear flicks back at the question, and Jude eases up, turns to present his back to Viktor, and sits. The slope of his back is nearly as long as Viktor is tall -- and moreover, he eases down on forepaws, head up.
Gives a soft woof. Unlike a horse, he can do most of the work.
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He falls, more or less, onto Jude's back. No standout cause makes it happen, he just falls, because of course he does, because what's more embarrassing than falling because you're doing something stupid? Falling when you're hardly doing anything. His crutch slips loose, clatters in metallic competition with the alarm bell.
"Guh," he says, approximately.
Fine. There. At least no one is here to see, and it's furry muscle, not stone, that catches him.
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It takes a touch of fiddling, but then he slowly eases himself to a standing position, paces the few steps forward to pick up his crutch in his jaws, swivel his head to hand -- teeth? -- it back, checking on him as he does so.
They won't head downward until he's far better settled.
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"Aah," unsteady, tremulous, "let's... leave that here." If he has to worry about carrying it, he's going to slip off and fall on his head, he's pretty sure. "I'll get it later." Or someone can bring it to him.
Reminding himself of the context—they aren't just screwing around, this is meant to be a drill—doesn't do much to mitigate the anxious frustration rising within him. At home, even if left to his own devices, he'd have a fair shot—but here there are no clever evacuation lines to rely upon, no flameproofing or express lifts, no unyielding doors to seal a passage behind him, only flight after flight of thick stone stairs.
He keeps looking at them. The stairs. They're already steep enough when he's standing at the top, in command of his own locomotion, and down is always more dangerous than up. Up, you fall into them, bang your shins, clip your chin if you're unlucky, but at least there's something to grasp. Down...
Well. Down is bad.
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On a wolf, it's going to be more difficult to balance, and more difficult to trust.
That's what's going to be key to the success of this. Trust.
Jude opens his jaw, lets the walking stick roll down his jaws contemplatively, catches it again in a loose grip, thinking. He flicks one ear back, indicating said thought. Would that he's able to speak like this, but Viktor's not connected to him like pack, and even in packs more than vague concepts are difficult.
Jude places one paw on the stairs, which just barely dips his body forward. He pauses to judge Viktor's reaction and how he's going to hold himself.
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And this with just one step, when he was so sure a minute ago.
With that thought it rushes back in, a tide of foolish determination that urges him to hug in close and cling with every available limb. It is difficult, it does hurt to use these meagre muscles in ways they've hardly been used, and head down is the worst way to descend any incline—but everything hurts all the time, anyway. In his professional opinion: fuck it. Might as well try.
"Go," he croaks, and squeezes his eyes shut. "Just— one flight. Go!"
Before he changes his mind.
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He wishes he were surer of the recovery.
Instead, he is smooth as they descend, keeping his back as level as possible in the way a horse would not. His feet are fast, quiet. He's never been one of the ghosts of his pack, but he's studied the way the sentries move in the rare times he's allowed to see them with his eyes.
He tries to channel that, now. Swift, smooth, flowing. They curve, dizzyingly, then even off at the first landing available, where Jude steps well away from the stairs, pausing to check on his passenger, let him adjust his grip, get his bearings.
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The stairs end, they come level, and Viktor nearly bails on impulse, but rises instead on quivering arms.
"That wasn't so bad."
And that sounded queasy, even to him. He swallows against it, steadies his breath.
"One more?"
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(What is under his waistcoat... thing?)
Jude pauses again for all manner of settling Viktor wants to do, then moves when he's given the all clear. He takes the flight just the same as the last time. Oil-slick down the stairs. Even if Viktor's confidence is up, it won't do to get cocky.
He braces for the possibility that it will go wrong. He can shift back in an instant, if arms are needed for catching. He will, rather than let Viktor get hurt. It would be extremely painful and probably awkward, but nothing he hasn't done before.
behold that roll
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