faderift | [closed] The Great Nerd Hunt

It's a pity the eluvian is so far behind them, because this means they'll have to actually use the tents and bedrolls and supplies and things, which has dampened Benedict's spirits more and more the more ground they've covered. He's not carrying them, of course-- they've brought one of the griffons, who plods along behind the group with an even more marked lack of enthusiasm.

Maker only knows what they'll find; going airborne will get them back quickly, especially if anyone's injured, but will only draw attention to them if they're heading into trouble. So the griffon has to walk, and they could probably ride the griffon on the ground if Benedict weren't so nervous about them, so he has to walk too.

The sun's beginning to set, casting long shadows over the tree-lined path as they make their way into boggy lowlands. Benedict's stomach gives a loud complaint, and he immediately glances to the others in hopes that they didn't hear.

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Edited 2025-02-28 00:51 (UTC)

The village is small, but more permanent than most: Stilted houses, and steady activity, even the occasional whisper of Trade. Strangers still bring attention, and eyes linger as much on Clarisse, Abby, as Benedict's Northern manner.

It would be wise to hide the vial.

Word travels quickly here. When it finds Isaac, he's slacking; hand lifted to examine in the grey winter light. To confirm — again — that there's no scar on his palm.

A week ago, the knife slipped, plunged straight past shell and found bone. It bled like nothing else, hurt like it. But not for long. Waare watched as the muscle crawled and knit. Isaac watched his face, and saw a decision. They rinsed the whelks. They didn't speak. And now, net tangled in his fists, he sees that same choice unravel.

"Outsiders," Thick Orlesian, sideways to his own city manner. "I'll get the boat."

And Isaac nods, and Waare sets to work, and he just stands there; stupid and unshaven and soaked in half the swamp. There's a throb behind his eyes, hard enough to blink. He's never really stopped thinking about them, the places in someone else's memories. The faces that he stole them from.

"Chouke," He sounds far away. Something tastes like metal. "What do they look like?"

You can't move quiet in a place like this. Word travels, the squelch of boots announces them. Isaac turns to look.

Clarisse can't believe she's doing this with two people who are afraid of griffons. Well, okay, correction: Abby is afraid of flying and Benedict is afraid of griffons, but it all evens out to the same thing, doesn't it? Walking.

And Clarisse can walk forever, it's not an issue of fortitude, but it does mean that they're moving much more slowly than she's used to these days and that Blunder Supreme is carrying all their stuff, which the griffon reminds them of every once in a while by screaming.

She's paused on the road to dig a stone out of the sole of her boot, and she definitely hears Benedict's stomach. It doesn't help that he looks over as soon as it happens, an almost guilty expression on his face.

"What was that?" Like she doesn't know.

"A monster," Abby calls, before he can reply. She's grinning, looking back at Clarisse to check her reaction, noting the digging out of the stone. They've been walking for a long time now and they're probably due to stop soon — obviously this has all been harrowing for Benedict, who isn't used to traveling such long distances on his own two feet.

Abby, on the other hand, feels good. In her element. Would feel even better if they didn't have Blunder Supreme hanging around in the background, occasionally screeching to keep from being forgotten, but you can't have everything. "Better pick up the pace."

Har har. In reality she's been assessing the road around them, craning her neck to look ahead and off it.

She stretches her head to the side, feels the muscle stretching across her neck and shoulders with a little pop. Sighs. Carrying her share of the stuff is getting old anyway. "We're losing daylight. We should stop before it gets dark." And before they get into the bog of it all...

With a full-body flinch every time Blunder screeches, Benedict's nerves are already frayed; he casts a scowl Clarisse's way when she calls out the sound of his stomach, but Abby answers before he does. So be it. Monsters are everywhere.

"And eat something," he mumbles, with a twinge of anxiety to his dourness: one doesn't quickly forget what it feels like to actually starve, even if his current state is more accurately described as 'hangry'.

Edited 2025-03-13 00:07 (UTC)

Clarisse chucks the stone off to one side and smiles. It's not so much that the joke was funny as it is finding Abby cute, but either way the result's the same.

She could walk some more, but the other two are right. It'll start getting dark soon, and they should find a place to camp before they get too far into this boggy area. Sleeping on wet ground wouldn't improve anybody's mood, least of all Blunder's.

"Let's find a good spot."

Clarisse steps off the road and begins to make her way through the grass, searching for a place that looks level and won't be conspicuous if anyone passes by in the night. The griffon complicates things a little, but if they make camp behind some shrubs or trees or something she figures they'll be hidden well enough.

She's in luck there, everything is so... brown. And dead. The weather has been less cold lately, there's been less snow — but the surroundings have only just started coming back to life yet. This is fine, in their favour even. All their camping supplies are faded and will blend in. Abby, letting Clarisse scout ahead, hangs back to guide the griffon down the slope and off the main track, palm settling gently on her neck.

"Blunder's hungry too," she says, "If that makes you feel better."

Blunder is always hungry.

Moving ahead with Clarisse, Benedict knows well his role in all this: finding firewood, which is easy enough in this scrubby place, and then setting it alight, which… is less easy in the damp, but he’s committed.

He’s cupping a small flame in his hand under the pile he’s created when Abby and Blunder make their way back into view, and it’s only after a first cursory glance that he realizes something amiss.

“Is that—“ he gasps, fixating on a tattered mass on Blunder’s back within beak’s reach, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be a tent: “oh, Blunder, no! NO!”

He nearly forgets about the fire, shaking it from his hand before it can catch on him.

At the first gasp, Clarisse is whirling around to find out what's wrong. She's not sure what to expect—her precious griffon bleeding, maybe, or with a broken leg?—but Blunder is just standing there, looking fine. Of course "fine" for Blunder Supreme means that she has a vaguely annoyed look in her eyes, but still, Clarisse can't figure out why Benedict would yell like that if nothing is—

Oh.

"Shit," she says, zeroing in on the tent and realizing right away what must have happened. Blunder had been trailing behind them, unhappy, most of their stuff packed on her back. She must have been ripping at it with her beak all afternoon for it to look like this.

This is... unfixable, she's pretty sure.

"I mean at least it's not raining," she says finally.

Though technically Benedict's boots are made for all manner of terrain, the curl of his lip as he trudges through the bog indicates what he thinks of it, and is superseded by a look of astonishment when his gaze falls on Isaac.
The phylactery is hidden, at least partially, its glow faintly visible from within Benedict's cloak; how else to seek out someone whose name nobody knows, in a place where the accents are as thick as the mud on the ground?

"Isaac?"

He furrows his brow, keeping still, watching, as though it's a startled animal he approaches.

Waare's halfway to some reply: I don't know, it doesn't matter, hurry up — but Isaac isn't listening.

What do they look like? Tall. dark hair, dark eyes; a particular breed of alarmed distaste. At once shocked to find the world, and certain to find it wanting.

"Benedict," Supplies some distant frame. Incongruous to then ask, "Who are you?"

Isaac drops the net, steps forward insistent. Curious. His nose has begun to bleed; stops again, before he's reached to wipe it clean.

(Isaac. The name must belong to this body. In Benedict's cloak, the phylactery blazes with answer.)

Edited 2025-03-20 05:36 (UTC)

Clarisse comes up behind Benedict, panting, her boots heavy with about five layers of mud.

She stops short when she sees Isaac. It is Isaac... But nothing about this makes sense, to her—the location, the net, the look on his face, like he knows them but doesn't remember them at all. There's a single drip of blood on his upper lip.

"Whaaat the hell," Clarisse says under her breath. Then, super unhelpfully echoing Benedict, "Isaac?"

She'd been expecting something else, that's all. Like having to break him out of a Venatori holding cell. Like an "about time you showed up." Not... whatever this is.

Narrowing his eyes at Isaac, Benedict glances from him to the other and back again. The nosebleed has his hackles raised, but there's no reason to suspect foul play, not quite yet. Not of that kind.

"...Riftwatch?" he casts out, still squinting, "I train under you from time to time?" It's not impossible to believe there's still memory magic at play, but that it's lasted this long, and that Isaac is the one who doesn't remember, this is concerning.

With them all paused, Abby takes the moment to start to haul the supplies off the griffon's back — she immediately stretches her wings out, tossing her head, jawing at nothing with her beak. Up this close to her it's like being in the stables, the scent of feathers and griffon-sweat suddenly overpowering. "I think we overpacked her."

Or she's lazy and vindictive... Hard to tell with Blunder Supreme.

Anyway. The tent is dead. Or, the top one is at least, because the one underneath is totally fine.

She says, a little dismally, "We can probably all fit in one..."

What they really need is a good fainting couch for the groan-and-slump Benedict is doing, but a rock suffices as he sinks onto it with a dramatic toss of his hair. His face goes into his hands briefly, his fingers curling-- he hates camping, he HATES IT,

"maybe there's an inn," he says weakly, into his hands, "in the swamp."

Clarisse scoffs loudly. "I'm not paying for that."

There isn't an inn, obviously, but if there was.

"Just suck it up and sleep in ours." It's big enough and it's one of the temperature controlled ones she got her hands on a while back—she and Abby and Ellie had all been sharing it before Ellie left, and while it hadn't been roomy or anything, it wasn't terrible. A few nights won't kill them.

"Unless — do you snore?" She's fiddling with the rips in the canvas as she says it, rubbing the material between her fingers. If it can't be repaired they can finish the job Blunder started, turn it into scraps for tying things together. It can still be useful.

For now, it's gonna be ground cover for the base of the tent that doesn't have an impromptu skylight. It's so mucky out here.

"Help me with this," is directed at Clarisse, as is tossing over a guyline.

"No, I don't snore," Benedict scoffs, abruptly lifting his face from his hands, unable to keep the sneer from his face at this terrible but likely inevitable idea. He folds his arms, giving himself a few minutes to sulk properly as he watches the girls be industrious.

"Should just make a new one out of Blunder," he grumbles.

"Hey, shut up." Clarisse almost adds that it's not Blunder's fault, but decides at the last nanosecond that this might be what sends Benedict over the edge. Besides, this is absolutely Blunder's fault.

She goes about helping Abby set up the remaining tent, but can't resist adding, "Besides, that sounds juuust like what someone who snores would say." Hope Benedict is ready for a fun night! And however many nights it takes them to get back to Kirkwall after that!

"He definitely snores," Abby says grimly to Clarisse, but grins at Benedict to show him that she's just joking. He's already on edge about having to camp out in the mud, they shouldn't rile him up beyond the point of no return...

Actually, to that point, "Did you bring anything to smoke with you?"

Maybe they should hot box the tent.

"I don't--" Benedict is in the middle of grousing when Abby asks another question, and he peers up from his sulk, watching her calculatingly.

"--yes,"

Benedict might or might not snore, but does he roll around and slap people in his sleep? Because Clarisse does that. Don't tell her, though, she'll get offended.

"Great!" she says, because she honestly, truly believes that being high will improve this situation by... a lot. "We can play truth or dare." What else are they gonna do before they go to sleep? Clarisse had sort of planned on having the tent and Abby to herself, but now that's out, so she's improvising here.

[closed] The Great Nerd Hunt

In Which ABC Camp and Travel and Are Stupid

In Which Isaac Is Discovered and K2 Tells Us What He's Doing and Where

eventually

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