player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.

Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.

Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.

Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.

Comments

[cozen]

“That might wait a little longer,” Bastien says out of reflexive you don’t need to worry about that kindness, before amending, “Not much.” It’s an important job. More important now. Why not finish them off while they’re wounded? Or drive home the message that anywhere that they go might face a slaughter, even a city like Kirkwall. “But Marcus had us in good habits. I’m sure everyone can keep them up for a while.”

Not that Byerly didn’t. But new requests are rolling in. New problems. Convincing anyone at all to continue their financial or political support now, when they must look like a lost cause—when they might be a lost cause—

Bastien does want them to succeed, Riftwatch. Without him.

(And certainly without him in charge of anything. The reasons he coordinated a dozen interviews with outside candidates, all those years ago, and then nudged Byerly into offering himself up as a sacrifice without being willing to do so himself—they all still apply. He is not much of a leader, he’s blackmailed and/or betrayed and/or killed the family members of too many people they need to impress to risk the sort of scandal that might occur if he were recognized and that difficult to disown, and there is truly no overstating how much he would hate the job. Add to that how it would now entail sitting at Byerly’s desk and being called by Byerly’s title, and he has not imagined the possibility even enough immediately to reject it. It is not a possibility at all.

Plus, he’s leaving.)

“I suppose they might give it to one of the Templars,” he says, watching Julius’s face for signs that he’s overstepping—for next time, as it is too late now—“and find out if pure irritation can bring someone back from beyond the Veil.”

[overharrowed]

He exhales; it's not quite a laugh, but on the other hand, it's not like Bastien is wrong. "Except for Redvers, it seems like they're all ready to take pains to remind you they aren't Templars anymore before you can assign them anything." It's an observation without real bite. Given Riftwatch's reputation, it makes sense to him that they've attracted the individuals they have. It is just a little bit funny, though. (Then again, Julius has long been ready to take a more nuanced view of Templars, former or otherwise, than a lot of Riftwatch mages.)

"That said, Redvers or Orlov wouldn't be mad choices. The real issue is how much watch there is to captain, at this point." A bit quieter, yes, but logistics are one of the relatively easier topics. Even if they brush more painful things, Julius has always been good at compartmentalizing. His fellow Riftwatch agents have almost been able to see it in real time, the past few days. Talking about work, even when work is fairly bleak, is one of the first systems back in place.

[cozen]

Bastien nods, eyes sliding away to nothing in particular in the corner of the room. If it were up to him—

"We don't have to stay here."

He isn't staying here. But in general.

"It is a lot of fortress for so few people. And if they come for us where we live, there will be a lot of collateral damage, here. But with the eluvians, we could go anywhere, and still be here in a few minutes if we needed to be. Set up underground, in the mountains, at sea—all three. If we positioned the mirrors correctly we could have one base spread across the four corners of Thedas and hardly notice the difference. Easier to escape if we need to, that way. If we lose a location, we do not lose everything. If the weather is awful and depressing in one place, you can go work in another for the day. But, you know—"

He shrugs a little, looks back at Julius, and manages a shruggy sort of smile.

"—it's not up to me."

[overharrowed]

"It's an idea worth talking about," Julius says, more muted. "The eluvians are a different sort of vulnerability, but after what happened, maybe not having everyone in a central physical location is only wise."

Assuming Riftwatch survives this at all, which Julius still doesn't take as a given. He'll stay until there's nothing to stay for. Then he expects those with anchor shards will, as a practical matter, need to make a collective decision. He's not going to leave Petrana, so wherever they go will effectively be his destination. (He's not sure which way Stark will lean, which he imagines will hold some weight.) But all of that will hold for at least a week or two, probably.

"I've been thinking of the dream Trevelyan sent us a couple years ago. Most of it is fairly hazy, and I have to assume we've already undone at least some of it, but even so." The impression of a handful of survivors holding onto the little they have left feels less distant than it had a week prior. "Sorry. Not especially helpful. But I suppose an illustration of the idea that Riftwatch in some form could survive a displacement from Kirkwall."