player plot: the battle for starkhaven.

[luaithre]

WHO: All
WHAT: Riftwatch and the rebel mages come to the aid of Starkhaven
WHEN: Last week of Wintermarch
WHERE: Starkhaven and outlying territories
NOTES: Open to all, with instructions/suggestions below for what your character can do, dependent on skillset and division. Violences within.



The news has been the same for seemingly endless months: the Tevinter Imperium stays encamped, entrenched, at the doorstep of Starkhaven. The Free Marches city is long besieged, strangled and dying, and its proud stone walls that keep Corypheus' forces out also entomb its own citizens as supply dwindles fast over the winter.

The Exalted March has not come. The scattered militias and militaries of the surrounding territories have not rushed to its aid. Riftwatch has done all it can with the personnel it has, sabotaging enemy movement, collecting information, supplying villages and redirecting refugees, but it seems as though all it can do for Starkhaven is stand vigil to its collapse.

That is, until some hasty conversations were had.

A trio of Riftwatch agents approached Grand Enchanter Fiona, ad hoc leader of the rebel mage forces currently under the Inquisition's banner, with a question: what would it take, for the rebel mages to lend aid to Prince Sebastian Vael?

23 Wintermarch: Stoneweale Fort

Closed: The Division Heads, Derrica, Fenris, Julius, Marcus Rowntree, Petrana de Cedoux

It rains for the entirety of the ensuing negotiations, ice wet winter striking the impassive walls of Stoneweale Fort and the tents erected within its walls. The fort stands south of Starkhaven at the edges of Tevinter's influence, and contains the entirety of Prince Sebastian's available forces and, newly, Grand Enchanter Fiona, several rain-swept griffons, and a collection of Riftwatch agents.

Not all of them take up space in the war room (for instance, the griffons don't need to be there), but those that do bear witness to a deal being struck:

Prince Sebastian speaks plainly: the situation is beyond dire. They are at the precipice of surrender, and between himself and his commanders, they've been preparing for a last-ditch effort to save as many of his subjects as he can spare. By directing his forces in a (likely suicidal) full-scale attack against the enemy, he has hope that this will distract them for long enough so that a select few of his soldiers can fell the far gate and evacuate as many citizens as they can. He welcomes any assistance the mages could offer.

Fiona, understanding the lethality of what Prince Sebastian and his men are going to attempt, first states that the rebel mages can be mustered to assist in this evacuation by destroying the wall and shepherding Starkhaven's people to safety. She also pledges to personally join the Prince and his men in their attack on the main force.

It's with gratitude that Prince Sebastian accepts her offer.

And there is little time to prepare.

23-29 Wintermarch: The Minanter River

In the coming days, Riftwatch redirects its focus towards the preparation of Starkhaven's last stand. The movement of a small army of mages from the Orlesian frontline to deep into the heart of the Free Marches is the kind of logistical effort that one would hope to have plenty of time to organise, particularly in the interest of evading the Imperium's notice for as long as possible, but time is a luxury, and there are few of those available these days.

To ensure a swift and relatively stealthy travel time, the rebel mages are broken up into still sizeable detachments – they ride on horseback, or travel on merchant vessels that have been acquisitioned for the war effort, quietly coursing down the Minanter. They camp in thatches of forest or huddle within long emptied warehouses in semi-abandoned trading settlements.

Riftwatch agents of any combat capability join them, ride with them, and stay in contact through crystals to ensure coordination.

In the sky, griffon riders are tasked with keeping close monitor of any Tevinter detachments that might push close to the small army of mages moving in from the west. The going is often lonely, long hours, solo flying with reportage over the crystal network, before gathering together in small camps to feed their mounts, themselves, and sleep in hastily erected tents that protect them from the winter-time rain.

When necessary, members of Forces and Scouting will be deployed to run interference and push back and redirect Tevene scouts or soldiers and Venatori. Sometimes, larger groups of Imperial forces threaten to intercede, in which event, Riftwatch agents may find themselves working together with rebel mages to not only prevent the enemy from interfering with their people, but killing them so as to ensure there is no reporting back of a sudden influx of mage activity.

Members of Research may find themselves based at Stoneweale Fort. After some convincing, Prince Sebastian allows his various commanders to coordinate with Riftwatch to identify locations and pressure points within Starkhaven and its defences for the purposes of sabotage in preparation for Tevinter's taking. Now is the time to plan, analyse maps, prepare explosives or enchantments, and try not to look too excited about it.

Meanwhile, those within Diplomacy, if not hovering helpfully around Stoneweale Fort, are sent to make ready for Starkhaven refugees by speaking to villages further south, negotiating for supplies and accommodations, rallying any militia that are willing to assist in their protection. It's all a little thin on the ground, but if there was ever a time to cash in some of Riftwatch's local goodwill, it's now.

30 Wintermarch: Starkhaven

The wall

A horn sounds out, long and mournful. Voices and horse hooves and sword clashing and magic casting beneath the stormy sky is reduced to a dull roar as Prince Sebastian, accompanied by Grand Enchanter Fiona, leads his forces in a frontal assault against the overwhelming Imperial presence at his gates.

As a result, the far gate has been left undefended.

Slaughtering the remaining unit of Tevinter soldiers guarding it is borderline perfunctory, but there is much still to do. The majority of the rebel mages (less those volunteers who have joined Fiona in Sebastian's host), along with any mages of Riftwatch who choose to join them, gather en masse upon the stone bridge and the shallows of the river – a small army of men and women in robes or in armor, but all holding a staff to mark them for what they are. As they begin to draw from the Fade, the air takes on the scent of bitter-storm, energy crackling and prickling across exposed skin, ruffling hair and clothing in unseen winds.

Stone cracks and wood splinters under gouts of raw magic and white-hot bolts of summoned lightning, slamming in unison against walls that have remained previously unbroken all this time. Beneath them, the ground rumbles and shivers, and debris spills where cracks form and open and widen from the base of proud walls to the ramparts.

A small group within the rebel mage forces then move together in coordination, and the stone wall before them all at once comes apart. Giant broken slabs of stone and support lift into the air as if in an explosion slowed in time, drifting away from one another as magic carries it in shimmering green-tinged telekinetic influence.

The ground shakes, again, as pieces of Starkhaven's walls land safely, if heavily, on the mud-thick river on either side, leaving a yawning opening where once were sealed closed gates of oak and iron.

On the other side, where rain beats down the rising dust, gathered citizens of Starkhaven, frightened and war-worn, stare out at an army of mages.

The sky

In the sky, over the chaos, Riftwatch uses the distraction of battle to send swift-flying griffons over the walls and into the city proper to enact acts of sabotage to Starkhaven's infrastructure. Below them, civilians flood the streets, pressing in a constant stream of bodies towards the crumbled wall. Up here, the sounds of a raging battle drift clearer from the front.

Everyone in the sky knows where they are going and what they are doing, under strict orders to avoid any harm coming to civilians. Either as a passenger or on their own, members of Scouting (and some non-Scouting mages) carry with them precise instructions from Research and the means to enact them in the form of alchemical explosives and enchanted grenade-like items that will detonate in bursts of raw Fade magic (or their own magical ability). Common targets include: the defensive weaponry and ballistae posted up on the ramparts, the chains that man the major gates of the city, certain storehouses and administrative buildings indicated on maps. Likewise, there are wealthy estates to pillage and deprive Tevinter of any coin they might find there.

But soon the city will be overrun, and those on griffonback may find themselves under assault of arrows and magic as they make their escape.

The retreat

On the ground, floods of Starkhaven citizens, soon to be refugees, flow through the crumbled wall, staggering across the bridge and through the shallows of the river that surrounds the city, helped along by mages and Riftwatch alike. It is a lengthy and exhausting process as hundreds of ordinary people, wide-eyed and terrified, are herded out of the valley and onto solid ground, streaming south for where villages have been fortified and prepared to receive them.

Then, the sound of cavalry.

Racing across the rocky plain, under Imperial banner, a horde of dracolisk and their riders come galloping at a furious pace towards civilians, mages, Riftwatch alike. Their presence does not speak well for the main battle, but they arrive all the same. Reptilian screeches and hisses pierce the rumble of thunder above, and frightened cries from the refugees begin to sound out as panic grips them, turning to run in panicked stampede at the sight of Imperial soldiers upon their poison-spitting mounts.

It was enough of a likelihood that the Forces members who have been deployed to ensure the security of the evacuation are prepared to move with the rebel mages to meet them. The battle is quick, bloody, magic crackling through the air in time with clashes of shield and flying arrows. Searing poison sprays across skin and armor and flame ripples across scaly hide as a brutal skirmish ensues.

But the battle breaks when the worth of continued harassment weighed against the potential cost. By order of Itaeus Ferra, astride his own beast, the dracolisk cavalry withdraws, tiding back towards Starkhaven, now lost to the forces of Corypheus.

31 Wintermarch: Southwards and Vallomire

Men, women, children march through the cold and into the night, but blessedly, the rain eases itself to an icy misting of constant damp instead of the driving downpour from earlier that day.

It becomes clear that among the refugees, there had been those prepared for this journey. Temporary campsites, guarded by mages and Riftwatch alike, strike up so that all may take a few hours of rest. There is some food passed around, if not very much, and as the sun rises on a new day, the procession resumes, if no less wearily.

Eventually, all arrive at the half-abandoned township of Vallomire, chosen for its largely empty barnhouses and warehouses on the shores of a distributary from the Minanter. It is not large enough or manned enough to permanently house so many of Starkhaven's people, but it will do for the next few days of recovery and rest.

There is food, gathered in from as many corners as was willing to part with it, and warm blankets, and, just as important, a reduced sense of impending doom amongst those that had lived under its shadow for so long.

Spirits are not high, but they are tired. Mournful, but alive. As the day lurches into the evening, as the rain finally withdraws and bonfires are lit, and mages and ordinary citizens of the Free Marches mingle in this moment of necessity, news finally trickles in from Starkhaven.

It is as feared: the city has been claimed by the Tevinter Imperium. Much of Starkhaven's military has been destroyed, giving their lives to buy this opportunity for escape. And, in murmurs that spread from campfire to campfire, two names in particular are spoken in low, reverent tones: Prince Sebastian Vael, and Grand Enchanter Fiona, have fallen.

Stories of prince and mage charging side-by-side into a wave of enemy soldiers, fighting back-to-back against overwhelming odds after all their fellows had fallen, rising again and again from the mud to continue the fight, to hold back the inevitable tide until the city was emptied. Toasts are raised and tears shed for the saviors of Starkhaven—its people, if not its stones.

Smoke rises in the north, a black mark in the sky, as the sun begins to set.

Comments

[luaithre]

Cast, the glyph from the Barrier slowly fades beneath their feet, but the light of defensive magic stays shining off armor and skin and weaponry, good for at least a few strikes. Marcus takes a sharper breath at that little surge of bolstering magic.

Dracolisks strike the ground differently to horses. The slamming of hooves have a more thunderous cadence, whereas these creatures claw into the mud and launch themselves forwards. The clanging of plate is reminiscent, however. The rush of it. From experience, Marcus knows that slinging magic forwards now will just reroute them, or get dispelled. They need to draw them into a fight. He could use one of those.

He says, "The one on the left," which is also the one closing in quickest.

And breaks from Julius' side, racing forwards, smoking trailing in a steady constant stream off the edge of his staff's blade. The rider does not emote very much through his helm, nor does he slow, but his spear raises up high, dracolisk giving an angry shriek as it corrects its course just slightly to meet him head on.

Marcus draws his staff back as if to swing, begins to despite the twenty feet between them, before he vanishes into a cloud of black, cinder-filled smoke, and moves with unnatural speed to rush up out of the mud and into the rider's space.

[overharrowed]

Even knowing Marcus's fighting style, he very much did not mean which one are you going to start running toward; Julius' style has always involved trying to stay back as much as possible, even if he'll understand the logic later, when he has time to think about it.

It's not now. The way he turns toward Marcus when the other man runs costs him half a second, but only that before he releases the spell he'd prepared to the right, the force rippling out in an almost-visible wave from his staff. It's not aimed at the rider directly; he knows as well as Marcus does that it's as likely as not to get dispelled. Instead, the ground erupts as if a giant had just slammed its fist into it, forcing the dracolisk to reroute. It means they're not both on Marcus at the same time, and gives Julius a moment to start on a glyph. He swings his staff with practiced ease, but he knows he's starting to tire beneath the adrenaline. The faster they can deal with this, the better.

[luaithre]

In that cloud of churning smoke, that stings eyes and chokes lungs, the momentum of Marcus' blade carries through, catching the rider somewhere at his back and shoulder. Both men go down, slamming hard into the muddy, rocky ground, a startled cry from one, bracing silence from the other. The dracolisk races forwards, riderless, momentarily lost.

No smoke now, save for the run-off from mage staff, from the edges of his armor, stray soot in streaks over silver plate, his skin. Marcus is faster to his feet, dragging blade up through the mud as he sets his focus on the rider still on his back. With an inarticulate snarl, Marcus brings his staff down in a large arc aimed to cleave blade through skull.

The rider is fast, instinct seeing him pull his shortsword from his belt and raise it to just barely parry the blow, Marcus staggering into his lost momentum as blade sinks into the earth instead. The rider goes to stand, barely manages to turn his pauldron in time to catch the next swing of mage staff in a surprisingly loud clang of metal on metal, and (despite all the heat and dry smoke) ice spreads over and gets its needling cold in where the weapon had connected, numbing his sword arm.

Marcus is not aware of exactly what Julius chose to do, and he doesn't need to. Trusts the other man to keep the second occupied or worse, and so all his focus, blazing with hostility, is on the soldier in front of him, intent on keeping up the pressure.

Another swing has the soldier lose his footing, a shimmer of energy rippled down the bladed staff that sends him sprawling. Marcus takes a breath, and casts, slamming blunt end of staff into the ground in front of him, and immolating fire consumes the fallen rider.

[overharrowed]

Left to his own devices, Julius might want to throw his support directly at Marcus. More rationally, however, he knows that the main thing Marcus needs is not to be surprised by suddenly having another opponent.

The second rider had managed to keep his seat, for all that it had taken him a moment to reorient his mount. It's slowed him enough, however, for Julius to get a glyph of paralysis more or less under the dracolisk's feet. It flares as both mount and rider are pinned in place, though not so frozen they can't yell their displeasure. The effect will only last for a few seconds, but it's enough for Julius to think of his next move. He glances Marcus's way again, just for a moment.

The choice, though, is ultimately that the best defense is a good offense. He shifts his stance and adjusts his grip, turning his staff behind him as if to counterbalance as he reaches up with his free hand. The glyph fades just as he brings down another wave of force, this one not designed to push back, but rather to pull the rider directly to the ground.

Julius has the fleeting thought that he should back up, but he's not going to outrun a rider and he's not entirely sure he took out the dracolisk in a lasting way. Better to hold his ground for the time being.

[luaithre]

The column of fire dwindles, vanishes. Physical and spiritual fatigue are quick to get their claws in him as Marcus hefts his staff again, but he is practiced at ignoring it. He looks up in time to see the second rider wrenched off his mount to land on glyph-glowing terrain, the force of it causing the dracolisk he was riding to stumble aside, caught in the confusing tangle of both magic and simply his riding equipment.

With a swipe of his staff, a torrent of fire flares, flashing across the tangle. Burns, but doesn't catch, something dispelling it before it can hurt.

Well, that's fine.

Marcus moves in, stepping past the charred remains of the first rider to approach the second and the struggling mount. Renewed heat flares across the edge of his blade as he brings it to bear with the aim of simply sinking it into the dracolisk's throat while Julius has it pinned. If Julius had it pinned.

And the dracolisk is faster than a horse. A different animal altogether. It turns faster than Marcus could have anticipated, abruptly breaking from its tangle in wild rage. Marcus reacts, bringing the blade around, but it scrapes against scaly hide as the creature simply tackles him to the ground, a snake-fast bite that closes over leather armor, fangs sinking in.

The blow and the fall get no sound from Marcus, first, the shock of it denying response. It's when black poison is expelled through those fangs is when he cries out, and the air surrounding them both ripples with instinctively summoned magic.

[overharrowed]

In general, Julius tends to approach combat as a chess game: a series of considered moves and countermoves. Yes, the consideration is usually quick by necessity, but it still feels like one move leads to the next, and to the next after that.

There's a moment where it feels like that sensation has stretched, as Marcus moves toward the downed dracolisk and Julius realizes too late that he thinks it's gone down harder or more permanently than it actually has. He sees, but can't act.

And then time snaps back and he's not made a decision at all. He's already hefted his staff and hit the dracolisk squarely and hard with an arcane blast, and the entire action is full instinct alone. He can do it again fast, and he's moving forward as he lifts his staff again.

In a moment, he'll remember the rider, but getting the animal off Marcus has the full force of his attention for a few seconds.

[luaithre]

Marcus feels the impact of that first strike in the way the dracolisk shudders and braces against it, and the second—

Fangs tear out of flesh and leather, the sudden absence of pressure like a new ache, Marcus gasping in where he finds himself splayed on his front, rolled with the movement of the dracolisk struck backwards. Hands empty. It is almost as shocking as the bite itself to find he has dropped his weapon, left hand setting fingers into the dirt as he looks for it.

He hears the dracolisk hiss, buckled back under the assault of arcane violence. Strange, stinging pain shoots from shoulder to fingertips, Marcus keeping that arm folded to himself as he reaches for his staff with his left, wrapping his fingers around it without even trying to lift it. Runes flare, all the same.

The magic he summons is purely defensive, surrounding himself in a near-invisible field of elemental chaos that Julius would better be able to feel than see. The dracolisk is caught in it for a moment, lightning crackling across its shoulder, heat spreading across its scales in fire-tinged blooms, until it gets wise enough to retreat back the further feet necessary to get out of the way, wounded and chittering.

[overharrowed]

Julius manages to focus enough to note that Marcus has, at least for a moment, effectively bought himself some room. It's hard to resist the urge to run immediately to his side, but first he needs to clear them some space. He turns his staff, using both hands, and a corresponding whirl of energy starts to take shape between the dracolisk and his stunned but conscious rider. The magic starts to drag them both inexorably toward its center. Julius hopes that he'll be quick enough on the draw to hit them with something nasty while they're close if Marcus isn't up to it.

[luaithre]

He is breathing a little like he'd just sprinted some distance and not those thirty, forty odd feet forward a moment ago, heart pounding accordingly too. Working on governing this, Marcus looks towards the dracolisk in time to watch it give an enraged shriek, blood spattering from its snapping maw as magic drags it across the ground, out of sight.

With a grunt, he pushes himself up onto his knees, dragging his staff with him in his off-hand. There, he sees dracolisk and rider hauled together, and he can feel his own rising urge to do violence like a separate pulse of poison.

This requires no grace, at least. No balance or finesse. Marcus grits his teeth and hauls his staff around, carving through the dirt with the edge of his blade. Beneath rider and dracolisk, the earth shudders, cracks spidering around around them like a web, out of which erupts long lashings of molten rock. Where lava hits, it burns, protection wards damned, and both man and animal's cries of protest and rage hit a different pitch as smoke rushes around them.

The smell is terrible. Odd, crackling warmth in the winter air, spreading.

But stillness, then. Lava seeping in its cracks, still, flaming and smoking. Marcus drops the staff, still holding it, magical drain briefly reducing his vision to a pinpoint but staying, at least, on his knees.

[overharrowed]

The smell is terrible, but between that and the screams, Julius does not feel the need to check to ensure both are beyond doing more damage. Between his spell and Marcus's, that immediate threat is done.

Which means he can immediately rush to Marcus's side, swearing softly under his breath. He's thrown a lot of fairly large magic around, but digs deep to press his hand to Marcus's uninjured shoulder and summon a basic battlefield healing spell. It's one he'd learned more than 20 years ago but that has never been meant to do more than get someone on their feet long enough to make it to someone who actually knows what they're doing. The silent prayer he offers with it is not strictly necessary, and he's not sure it'll do much when he isn't even sure he believes anyone is listening. But it doesn't hurt to put a please into the universe now and then.

"Come on, we're falling back," he says, more for something to say than because he thinks that isn't obvious. "Can you find your feet if you lean on me?"

[luaithre]

We're falling back, and there's instinctive protest, a flash of new tension across his expression as he tries to clear his head, the warm prickle of healing stinging at broken flesh beneath layers of leather. But then Julius asks if he can find his feet if he leans on him, and when Marcus has to give it serious consideration for a second—

He nods.

Up and onto his feet, anyway, as the exhausting rush of overexertion pulls back out like a tide. The rain sluices off them both, tracking clear streaks through where the natural accumulation of soot from his own magic has greyed some of his face. More mud, everywhere, than blood. The sticky black of poison spattered over his armor, stubbornly clinging.

He leans into Julius, gripping his staff in his good hand while keeping his injured arm still, folded. Around them, it's their own people pushing forwards in the opposite direction as they—better, certainly, than dracolisks in the same.

"I'm alright," is, at least, not an argument to rejoin the fray. It's the hand from his injured shoulder that he uses to grip Julius' arm. Breathless, but speaking anyway. "Just a shock. And that spell takes much."

[overharrowed]

"It's more than just a shock," is bone dry, though he's relieved both that Marcus isn't actively trying to fight the decision and that Marcus can stand. He can take a great deal of the other man's weight, but he's fairly certain he couldn't deadlift him. "I remember being bitten by a dracolisk, and I'm sorry to tell you you're going to have an unpleasant time. But we can worry about that when we get somewhere more secure."

He slides his free arm along Marcus's back, doing his best to match the other man's stride despite the mud and the rocks. At least they can both use their staffs for balance.

"I vaguely remember being in an extremely rickety cart and resorting to singing terrible folk songs to keep myself distracted, so if you feel suddenly musical, know that I understand." The joke has only the barest portion of his attention, as he picks out the quickest way to get them out of the fray.

[luaithre]

Marcus replies with a sound, halfway between a wheeze and a grunt, pained. "Don't make me laugh," he grouses, which is apparently what that sound was. Affectionate, anyway. He hopes people aren't dying in scores behind them.

They aren't. The battle is (for more than only them) brief and bloody, Tevinter driven backwards to pick over the carcass of Starkhaven.

The day becomes this, a march forwards. Marcus keeps up, bids Julius to do the distracting when he isn't content to just walk in silence, which is most of the time. There's a brief stop where they drink water, tired. If there is pain, sickness, it's patted down beneath the surface, no longer given to speaking very much at all outside of single words, shorter sentences, or sounds, when he can get away with it.

The sun sinks, sets. The convoy is coiling to a halt, beginning to make camp, a river of people now a lake as tents are erected, although there will be plenty who will need to tolerate a lack of shelter. The rain has converted into a clinging mist rather than driving downpour.

They'd been slowing down, Marcus' breathing taking on a long, laboured rhythm. Quiet, determined. But it's still sudden, when one leg seems to simply give, and he goes down. It's likely fast hands on Julius' part that prevents him from collapsing like his strings were cut, but his arm jars where he half-catches himself and the shout of pain is without inhibition.

Vision swimming. Beside him, his staff is dropped in the dirt.

[overharrowed]

Marcus is, at this point, presumably past caring about his pride. Even if he isn't, Julius is already yelling for help. His tone isn't panicked, but it is authoritative; he's a senior member of Riftwatch, has held a leadership position for years, and isn't above leveraging it.

The Riftwatch personnel he commandeers give up more or less on trying not to jostle the wound in favor of getting Marcus where he needs to go quickly. There's no question, at least, of giving him one of the limited field cots. They've been marching long enough that Julius can — ill-advisedly — draw on a bit more of his own magic once they're settled to at least slow the poison. He is keenly aware, though, that he's not a proper healer.

He's sent those who helped him move Marcus out urgently in search of someone who can do more about his condition. For his own part, Julius stays where he is, continuing to murmur a low stream of unimportant words even though he knows that Marcus is probably in no shape to require a distraction anymore. He holds Marcus's hand a bit harder than necessary, as if he can bodily haul him into better health.

[luaithre]

There'd been some sounds out of him from the manhandling, until there aren't any, slipping into enough unconsciousness that Marcus at least makes for a compliant patient. Everything in snatches and fragments.

A crash has occurred. Heart pounding, breathing in smaller gasps, as if strangled. His hand in Julius' is ice-cold and damp, loose in the other man's grasp. The braided signet ring on one finger still present, the insistent edge of it when that grip tightens diverting a feverish, scattered focus.

By the time Richard Dickerson has been summoned, it's been some crucial minutes. There are a lot of people, out there.

A lantern has been lit, but deep-gold firelight doesn't mitigate the sheet-white that Marcus has gone, clammy and cold and semi-conscious. There is still dirt on his armor from when he was struck down into it, and the persistent rain from earlier hadn't removed all traces of clinging dracolisk spittle from where fangs had punctured through the leather at his right shoulder, blood and black poison mingled into a harmful alchemy.

Stray battlefield healing draws his consciousness back to the surface, at least for a moment, and for better or worse.

[nonvenomous]

The mud-thick stamping of hooves marks Dr. Dickerson’s arrival on a borrowed mule in the boot-churned bog outside, both of them stinking and seething with steam. A voice calls out and Dickerson is directed inward, his coat shed as he shoulders breathless through the flap.

He passes well for a civilian out of his armor, lank and scar-nicked and smudged with mud and blood and everything between. His sleeves are already rolled, wine-stained past the elbow, arterial spatter still drying in a sticky arc across the black of his jerkin. His eyes cut first to Julius and then to Marcus; there is a beat of pause where the worry in him settles into something else upon recognition.

Something steadier, as distinct as it is inscrutable.

Coat still in hand, he glances to Julius again on his way to dropping it aside. The cold is as miserable here as it is out in the mud. He still has his gloves to trade for a knife from his belt, a step forward to take for closer assessment of the fang holes.

“How long has it been?”

Trust a snake to recognize a bite.

[overharrowed]

If he'd been privately hoping for Derrica, it doesn't show; his relief at someone arriving, while muted, is more evidently present. He stands, though he doesn't immediately release Marcus's hand.

"Maybe an hour, or or take a few minutes. I've done a little battlefield healing, but there was no practical way to get him off the battlefield other than walking." Julius isn't a healer, but he knows enough to know that moving around is not ideal for a poison victim.

"Is there anything you need?" He isn't keen to leave, but he's very ready to have something to do, if there is anything. (He probably should have gone back to the battlefield, and he would have if it hadn't been clear that they were pulling out more generally. By the time he'd gotten Marcus to a tent, there was very little to go back to.)

[luaithre]

That sense of conversation happening overhead is familiar, uncomfortable, and there's nothing that can help it. Everything slides by faster than he has time to think, even if he could catch his breath. Clinging to comprehension, though, like a rock in stormy ocean. Richard looms into this small little world, firelight, tight breaths, and the slightly out of place stink of sourceless black smoke underneath blood and sweat.

Recognition in return, a flinty glimmer of it. If Marcus had been privately hoping for Derrica, it really only occurs to him now to do so, a pinch of more open discomfort than he'd normally allow showing in the curl of his brow.

Puncture wounds in a rough semi-circle, closing around his less intensely armored right shoulder. Strong bottom jaw fangs, getting good leverage to crunch down before getting torn away. There's probably some matching wounds behind. Blood, bruising, swelling.

Spends some effort to grip Julius' hand in return, a brief pulse of it. His injured arm he keeps reflexively frozen in its fold against himself.

[nonvenomous]

Cursory glancing-over complete, Richard leans to rap forefinger to the slab of Marcus’ armor, testing at the pectoral muscle beneath. There’s no sweet stink of rot beat out to the time of his tapping, nor any squelch or give.

A pulse is -- present, he determines, and hooks Marcus’ lip down with his thumb to peer at his gums in an extension of the same reach.

“Your discretion,” is the answer, at what he sees.

If there was any question as to his awareness of Marcus’ fully conscious state throughout this inspection, he sews it up neatly with a claw snag of eye contact before he withdraws.

Fastens and straps are weaker than boiled leather or plate. Without apparent concern for permission, Dickerson sets to trimming through the binds of Rowntree’s armor and any clothing beneath. Quick with a knife and confident as an oyster shucker with the curve of the blade. This deep into an envenomation, even a wounded wolf should be hard-pressed to put up much of a fight.

“And your blood.”

[overharrowed]

Julius's reputation is of a man who values practicality. A diplomat with a past on the battlefield, someone who isn't above a carefully incomplete report or a cut corner if it achieves a worthwhile goal. Given that he and Richard don't know one another especially well, it may be a surprise when he goes white at the last three words the other man says.

(Then again, Richard has been in Thedas long enough that it may not be as surprising as all that.)

"No, that's not." Marcus, if he's conscious enough to register it, can feel the ramrod of tension that's gone through the other man's grip. "There are other ways."

Even as he's saying it, he's doing the math of how long it's been since Marcus got the bite. How much he had to walk in the meantime. How much time there is before the damage is too much. He can't help the brief, bleakly funny thought that he's spent his entire life fortifying himself against potential attacks on his pride or his ambition, only to find himself here, struck from behind by something else entirely.

[luaithre]

Down here, things are simpler. Richard takes his pulse, inspects his mouth; Marcus, on a delay, seems to coil in tension as if he could get away by moving down through the cot beneath him. Hostility doing its part to focus his eyeline on Richard's, a warning graze of a look that promises

not very much, it seems, as a knife begins undoing his armor, and there's only a rasping exhale from Marcus at its fast work. The manner of injury made plainer, now, as sodden fabric is peeled back (a hiss, a spasm of his hand in Julius'). Punctures and scrapes, dry and wet blood both clinging to pale skin along with sticky poison that had gotten in under the seams. There's angry looking inflammation around each wound, right arm stiff in its socket.

It looks painful.

They speak. Julius reacts. Marcus' focus swims back to him, his contribution to the above stand off being just his quick breaths. 'Your blood', and it has less to do with sinister connotations, unclean magics, that the next wheezing breath in sounds like protest, than it does the person being asked for it.

[nonvenomous]

Having detected a note of Something in Julius’ voice while he works, Richard is silent as he peels a tatty bit of cloth out of the mat of blood and venom. This is quite the mess, trace contempt to the scruffy lines furrowed in around his mouth.

He slashes the blade through sticky fiber and flicks the cut section aside into a bucket with a wet slap. Then it’s time to change knives, from the mean grey hook at his hip to a slender folding knife from a pocket. It’s polished. Silver.

“I suppose you expect me to use mine.”

Another sting of eye contact. Fleeting, whetted sharp in the lamplight. But it’s Julius he straightens to eye dead on with the knife open in his hand, extending the following offer as a professional courtesy:

“Unless you’d like to prolong his suffering by debating the need?”

[overharrowed]

He can't help looking down at the shuddering breath that registers as a wordless protest, and what he sees doesn't make this any easier. He's aware of how many mages through the centuries must have thought "but it's different this time," even as he has the same thought himself, and the immediate guilt that follows.

"I am not squeamish," he says, hard, looking back up when he's directly addressed. "Blood magic carries a cost, and if I could guarantee that you or I would be the only ones to pay it, it would be a different thing." He looks back down at Marcus, expression strained. "I'd take the entire wound for him myself, if it worked that way."

And what if, he can't help thinking treacherously, he dies because of your delicate sensibilities?

[luaithre]

The stupidity of this has been setting in. Slower than poison, subtler, but there. The absence of decisions that he can himself make, here, for all that he could have pretended at options while trudging through the mud, before he felt like his own throat was strangling itself and his own shoulder was gnawing itself off at the hinge. It sets in as they talk over him, about him.

Burns off some of that anger when Richard next looks at him, bared teeth aside. There is none of it as Julius looks down at him, says the things he says. Marcus twitches the hands they are joining, his other moving stiffly at the wrist as if it would like to add it to the tangle, but the shooting pain that comes with even thinking about doing so lays him back flat with another undignified sound.

Fresh cold sweat, prickling at his brow, shoulders. Focuses, trying to catch his breath enough. Says, sort of, "He," first, giving up, settling on, "It's alright," breathlessly.

That'll have to do, as his vision swims.

[nonvenomous]

Julius looks down at Marcus. He is handsome, dying, dramatic. A good distraction. Richard looks down at Marcus also as he turns the proffered knife to slice slow across the back of his own arm in Julius’ periphery, casually as he might unbutton a cuff. There’s no darkening of shadow, no accompanying swell of sinister music.

Blood forks into runs down the snaky muscle strapped into his wrist; he reaches to flatten his bloodied hand to Marcus’ chest, back to watching Julius in aside.

Cats reach to test the boundaries of others in the same way, no rush, stored tension spring-loaded in anticipation of a fight.