![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
or are you emblems of truth?
WHO: Ellis, Ellie, Abby, Vanya, Marcus, Strange
WHAT: Road trip into the Hunterhorns.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Hunterhorn Mountains
NOTES: Trying to find a Warden in a mountain range.
WHAT: Road trip into the Hunterhorns.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Hunterhorn Mountains
NOTES: Trying to find a Warden in a mountain range.
THE JOURNEY
Seeking a camp in the Hunterhorns is—THE CAMP
Difficult. To say the least.
In the eyrie, in the midst of saddling the griffins and strapping supply-laden saddlebags into place, Ellis had unfurled the map and spanned the likely places a hidden contingent might be found. It had not looked like such a formidable stretch of mountain range to search, bracketed by Ellis' thumbs.
In practice, it is weaving through high peaks, bundled against cold. It is alternating between dipping low to examine traces that may be tracks or signs of a past camp, and soaring high to avoid less than hospitable wildlife or weave through jagged peaks. It is painstaking work, seeking a trail within even this narrow strip of range.
Each night, they must descend. Find a ledge upon which the griffons can land without scrabbling for purchase and nearly toppling. Hope for a cave that might house them, or a flat ridge upon which the griffons can roost while they sleep in the saddle.
And in the morning, they must do it all over again.
But eventually, the search ends.
Not in retreat, but in a small camp, cleverly hidden. We'd rather not be spotted by air, their leader says, a self-possessed, serious woman who introduces herself as Mila. She studies each of them intently, lingers on the griffon embossed on Ellis' breastplate.
Yes, they are permitted to stay. And to talk, mingle among the dozen or so Wardens within this camp. Ellis vanishes, first into a tent with Mila, and then later, when campfires are lit and a cask of wine is cracked open in a kind of welcome, into a second tent with a tall, dark-haired man, for a time.
The Wardens around the fire are pleasant enough. They answer questions. They speak frankly, if carefully. Some defer to Mila. Some prefer to speak in tandem with a partner. Some sigh through their recitation. But most speak of the same things when explaining what drove them away from their fellows in Weisshaupt—Questions that piled up and up, with few answers. Some speak of Adamant and the binding of mage Wardens to demons, and how many of those mages died of it. Or how many of those mages disappeared into Tevinter to be treated and never returned. Some object to the use of darkspawn and demons by Corypheus' army, murmur darkly about the rumor that Corypheus is a darkspawn himself. Some worry after red lyrium, and the new strain of darkspawn that have been reported as fused with the substance. Many speak of their distrust of Tevinter.What have they been doing? This is a topic the Wardens speak more freely about.
One, Reynald, speaks of something wholly new, absent from Riftwatch's records until now: he was tasked once with guarding a portion of the Deep Roads along with an entire contingent of Tevene Wardens. Venatori mages came and went, he explains. He saw nothing of what took place, but he heard darkspawn, and the jangle of chains, and red lyrium had been maneuvered out past the Wardens in near-overflowing carts.Setting up a pipeline, they explain. A pipeline to help Wardens, and any others who oppose the Tevinter regime or draw the ire of the new authorities in the Anderfels escape, and join them in the mountains.We aren't leaving, Mila will inform them the next morning. But now you know where we are.
They're trying to spread word, they say. They want it to be known that the Wardens are heading in the wrong direction, following bad ideas into worse outcomes. But this is not going so smoothly, because they are still Wardens, and they are occupied with protecting local villages from increased darkspawn activity in the western Anderfels. They have contacts in Hossberg, and in Weisshaupt, and in other towns and cities, and they travel when they can to grow their network and spread word, but they are only a small company, and all this takes time. Sometimes they do not have any time at all.
A send-off, of a kind: Mila's decisive answer to an unasked question and the implication of parting on friendly terms before shooing them onto griffon-back and out of their camp.
another ancient latecomer pls forgive
Thankfully, this passenger is easier. It turns out the older man is surprisingly comfortable in the air, unflinching about that sweeping vertigo in the pit of one’s stomach, accustomed to peering down from a birds’ eye view. He does a lot of scouting over her shoulder, squinting at the ground and looking for signs of travellers or camping. The main thing which keeps throwing him off is the griffon itself, having to get accustomed to the rhythm of those beating wings and stay out of their way, and balance his weight on a living creature instead of being magically suspended in the air.
So this is the start of Doctor Strange’s griffon training: the occasional oh, fuck as he tries not to lose his balance and fall off behind Ellie; and then after long hours scouting in the saddle, climbing off stiff-legged and wobbly as he sinks to the ground. They’re perched on a treacherously narrow ridge, and everything hurts. His hands are aching from the cold air, even in his warm gloves.
“Did I ever tell you about my sentient cloak?” he asks, conversational as Ellie also dismounts and starts to tend to the animal. “I don’t really know how it worked, but it always knew what I was thinking and where I wanted to fly. These griffons seem more difficult.” A beat, reconsidering, “Alright, sometimes it disagreed with me. But still. Point being. I’m not used to needing to guide them with reins and knees or whatever.”
But he’s gonna have to get used to it. He misses the sky, misses quicker travel, hates being landbound: he wants to learn.
if you can forgive me please and thank you
Strange tends to trail off into thinking other thoughts, losing sync with her, but so far they've managed well aside from occasional curse.
Ellie's feeding Artichoke what looks like some type of preserved meat from her pack, which by the quantity of it is a treat, just a few cubes. Not that the griffon cares, because he horks it down so fast he can't have tasted it. Ellie gives his ear-tufts a fond scratch.
"No?" she asks, turning her head with one of those bright-eyed looks she gets when Strange talks about magic from his world, a glimpse of something much younger, who still thinks it's all amazing. She likes his stories.
"That's so fucking cool," she says, shaking her head, rubbing her hand along Artie's beak.
"I mean... maybe it read your mind about where you wanted to go. Or maybe it just felt your body language." Since he doesn't ride he probably doesn't know, so she pushes to explain.
"You can guide a griffon with your reins or your knees or whatever, but they're actually way more sensitive than horses. He can tell where I want to go, and how fast, because of the way I lean or hold onto him. I actually started really getting good at flying when I stopped trying to tell him what I wanted and just... felt it?"
She shrugs. She's not explaining this well. "Like if I wanted him to spin while flying. I'd just lean over like I was gonna pitch myself out of the saddle to the side. And he'd go into a spin. I bet when you flew with your cloak it was like that too- you leaned into where you wanted to go."
Ellie comes to a pause, then pulls a face. "Or maybe Artichoke reads my mind because he's magic or something, fuck if I know."
no subject
The griffon stares inscrutably back. Then, beak empty and snacks gone, he makes a snap at trying to affectionately eat Ellie’s hair.
“Hm,” Strange says, “I guess not.”
The others in their party are alighting on the craggy peak, finding their own safe spots to settle. Carefully picking through his own supplies, Strange takes out his own preserved food to chew on. “You’re probably right, though. There’s so much to nonverbal communication and body language — it’d make sense that we’re clearly telegraphing where we want to go, even if we’re not consciously aware of it. It was handy being able to give the cloak commands in plain English, though. It was— did you ever get to see that children’s movie, Aladdin? The Cloak of Levitation has big Carpet energy.”
no subject
Ellie throws a look at Artie as he tries to nip at her ponytail, which of course does nothing. Besides, Strange has some possible treats for him, Artie, because who else could they be for?
"Carpet-" Ellie pauses, then laughs out loud. Yeah, she saw that one on a movie night. "Man, it sucks that it didn't come through with you. That sounds like a lot of fun."
Ellie pauses, tilts her head.
"How'd you get something like that, anyway? Break it out of a tomb?"
no subject
A little wistful; like missing a favourite pet from back home. He’s staring thoughtfully into empty space over the mountains when there’s the clack of a beak, a startled yelp, and Artie successfully, contentedly inhaling some of Strange’s lunch. He frowns at the animal and retreats into himself like a hermit crab, drawing his meal closer and out of reach.
“At least the Cloak doesn’t eat. No feeding costs.” Strange looks over at Ellie, remembers their conversation from the crystals the other day. “You’re good with them, you know. Griffon Keeper seems like it would suit.”
no subject
Artie gives Strange a personally affronted look, like how DARE he guard from being stolen from, but then seems to grumble and accept it.
"That and it doesn't try to eat your fingers, I'm assuming." Ellie shrugs one shoulder, gives Strange a wry smile.
"Thanks. I guess I am settling down into having a job and shit in my old age." She chuckles wryly under her breath. "They used to think they'd never make a soldier out of me."
To be fair, she still isn't one. But it's plenty more official than the rest of what she's done.
no subject
It’s cold up here in the mountains, but a little warmer now that they’re not actively flying and the wind isn’t cutting right through them even higher in the sky; a few too many hours in the saddle and Strange can feel his extremities starting to go numb. He wiggles his hand out from a glove, tries to rub some life into his pained fingers between those bites of his food.
At Ellie’s rueful humour: “Yeah. Aren’t we all soldiers now, technically?” He was in Research, yes — holed up in those labs and libraries, yes — but he still schleps out into the field when necessary. Case in point: today. “Although I guess Riftwatch doesn’t try to brand ourselves as a standing army.”
no subject
"Nah. We're all just a bunch of assholes trying our best."
She cups her hands near her face, blows into them, paying attention to the stumps of her fingers, nodding as she listens to him, but this is the first time she's really had her attention drawn to his hands when they've spoken.
Scars are nothing new to her, she's got plenty of her own. But these kinds of scars...
"Holy shit," she mutters, and this is rude, probably, but she sounds impressed as she points. "How the hell do your hands still work?"
no subject
Once upon a time, that might have destroyed him with self-consciousness, but he’s had a few years now to get used to it. “Ah,” Strange says instead, flexing his hand. Those lines and ridges running up and down as if someone had carved open each finger. (They had.)
“Not well,” is his answer, crisp and precise. He had had to explain this more often at Riftwatch than back home. What can you do and where are your limitations and how can you be of service were so much more relevant when he had to keep the limitations in mind, when he couldn’t use magic as a convenient crutch anymore.
“I can’t hold a pen. Couldn’t aim a gun, back in Seattle, which is why I stuck to an improvised club or staff. Basically, fucked if there’s any precision or detail work needed.”
no subject
Her heart sinks a bit.
"Sucks," she says emphatically, a brush of empathetic frustration in her voice. Because wow, that does suck- and it's suddenly all the more clear why he gave up being a doctor to become the Sorcerer Supreme.
(She never asked. She regrets now that she assumed, and never asked.)
"What happened?" she asks, then pauses. "You don't have to tell me, I can fuck off about it if you want."
no subject
“Clarisse asked me what happened literally the first time I ever met her,” fitting for how blunt the young woman could be, Ellie would know far better than he does, “so I don’t mind. I wish I could say it was during one of those grand superhero battles, but pitifully, it was just a normal car accident. My own damn fault. It was a narrow winding road, I was speeding, I was on the phone at the same time, I was careless. The car went off a cliff and I barely survived, but my hands were ruined.”
It was a reminder. Each twinging stab of pain through his fingers, each bone-deep ache, each time he looked down at the ugly mangled shape of them, the stiffness and reduced range of movement: it was a stark reminder of what his hubris had done, and how he needed to do better.
“My career as a surgeon was over, after that. Hence: magic.”
no subject
"Glad you made it," she says, while the gravity of it lays itself down in stages. There's a lot of tragedy in mistakes, one off twists of what Ellie still refuses to believe is fate. "But it must've sucked hard."
Simple words for a whole life shattered in an instant and being left to pick up the pieces.
"I know magic's not a substitute or anything," she adds, "but it's still really fuckin' cool."
no subject
“I do miss surgery — I spent twenty-two years getting very, very good at what I do, and it’s a rotten shame to lose that — but you’re right. Flying, scrying, teleporting around the world, walking the astral plane, visiting the dream dimension… whenever I’m not sitting around feeling sorry for myself in the Gallows infirmary, I can admit it’s a more-than-fair trade. I could technically have gone back, even, and I still chose to keep the magic. Because it was more important, in the grander scheme of things. Also, cool points.”
no subject
Ellie looks down at her own hands, the stumps of her fingers, and rubs her thumb over the edge of one of them.
"I didn't have, like, decades of experience. I wasn't a professional or anything," she says haltingly. "But before I lost my fingers, I used to play the guitar."
She twists, like someone would a ring, a worry stone.
"Now, you know-" she gestures, curling her hand to demonstrate how she wouldn't be able to finger the notes on a board. "I can't."
She halts again.
"Joel taught me how to play the guitar," she says quietly. "And when I was finally ready to start playing his songs again after he died, I couldn't."
no subject
She’d mentioned Joel before — talking about being fourteen years old in Salt Lake City — but he’d neglected to push for context. Even in Seattle, their energy had been so focused on the singular effort of surviving the infected and finding a way out of Seattle.
“I used to be able to play the piano,” he says after a pause; an unexpected ripple of synchronicity and understanding. A thing which was taken from both of them. “With yours— Could you perhaps swap sides? People learned to play off-hand, back home. It might be expensive to purchase or commission a leftie guitar, but surely someone in Thedas has built one.”
He always snaps into problem-solving mode, instantly bending his thoughts towards a solution, but he also has to keep reminding himself: not all wounds can be healed. Not everything can be fixed.
“Joel,” Strange repeats, delicately piecing together that context, metaphorically walking around it. “Family member?”
no subject
She shakes her head. "Tried, but it doesn't work like that. I'm working on learning the dulcimer, though."
She pauses, rubbing at her fingers for a moment before she looks down.
"Sort of," she says, haltingly. "Joel was this old grumpy asshole of a smuggler. And once, a long time ago, I was cargo. Turned out nobody was there at the dropoff point. So we stuck together. He taught me a lot of what he knew, and it kept me alive."
It's a very condensed version of things, but it works.
no subject
“He must have done a good job of it. You kept all the rest of us alive in turn, using what you knew. I’m indebted.”
Ellie and Abby and Ellis et al — all of them here on this mountain, they’d been there in Seattle and he’s too-aware that he owes them all for keeping his useless self breathing in that nightmare.
no subject
"He would have been pissed that we took all those risks," Ellie admits, pressing her lips together and look up at the sky. "But it paid off, and he's not here to lecture me."
It's said with false lightness, and she can almost keep her voice steady now, through it. Almost.
But even this much is a huge step from where she's been before.
"I'm glad I could keep you safe," she adds, this time more quietly. "It's a miracle we all made it out."
no subject
He wants to make a Nightmare on Elm Street reference; thankfully resists the temptation. There’s something to be said for seizing that faux lightness and batting the same kind of flippant humour back, but that quiet cast to Ellie’s voice deserves a bit more solemnity.
Just a little.
“Was any part of it good, being back there?” he finds himself asking, instead of deploying inaccessible pop culture reference #1282. “Homesick is probably an unusual description for a place like that, but…”
But surely it was still some kind of home. With Joel, with her girlfriend, on that ranch.
no subject
The next question deserves consideration, and Ellie quiets to give it that, letting everything rest in the back of her throat.
"I'm homesick," she says, haltingly, "but it's- for a time. Not a place. There's no going back."
Seattle wasn't it. And the last time she was at the farm, it wasn't it, either. Jackson would be crowded with ghosts. The mountains and woods with echoing emptiness. And Boston's good memories were buried in a shallow grave.
"Even with as fucked up as this place can get, I'd rather be in Thedas."
poss closed or yours to wrap?
There’s some kind of slow-brewing realisation buried under the topsoil, shifting beneath his feet. Ellie’s been building a new life for herself here, and yet he can’t stop looking backward; this is a man who once burned up his entire life and all his resources to get back to what he had before. Now that he can’t do that any longer…
He looks at the griffons near them, where they’re shaking out their feathers and tucking their heads beneath their wings for warmth, settling in to roost.
“We make the best of it, I think.”