TAKING SULEDIN KEEP

[faderifting]

WHO: The Inquisition
WHAT: Capturing the Keep
WHEN: Guardian 23
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Violence, gore, etc. This log contains closed prompts for quest participants, but is open for anyone who wants their own battle- or post-battle logs. ICly it will take most everyone they have in the region to take the keep, so any character could be part of the assault and its aftermath. It's also forward-dated to the 23rd, so if your character isn't currently in Emprise, they could be by then!

By 23 Guardian, the Inquisition has pressed the Red Templars out of the hills and snow and into Suledin Keep. The assault on the keep starts before dawn and is long and deliberate; there are no trebuchets here. By the time the sky has turned a bright enough gray to pass for morning, the Inquisition has worked its way into the snowy, twisting maze of gardens in front of the fortress. Soldiers weave around the walls and the rubble and the spikes of lyrium. Archers climb up mounds of tumbled stone and into the ancient, twisting trees for better vantage points. By the time the fortress itself is breached, the sun is setting again behind the clouds, and snow is falling.

The Red Templar forces are many and though for them this is a retreat, a last stand in the region, they are well-organized. They fight with the single-minded fury of the corrupted, and indeed many of them show signs of advanced lyrium infection, eyes red, crystals jutting up out of skin, sometimes so numerous that they begin to form their own sort of armor. A few have been so completely consumed that it is difficult to tell they were ever human to begin with. The battle will be long and bloody. Courtyards and wall positions must be taken one by one and held, and more than once retaken again after a successful Templar resurgence. Any Inquisition member able to fight is likely to be pressed into service before the day is done.

As the forces press forward the snow behind them is left checkered red: lyrium, blood, Inquisition uniforms. There are bodies to identify. Wounded to tend to. Enemy soldiers beyond hope of recovery to be put out of their misery, perhaps, for those so inclined. A giant's carcass is laid out in the gardens for inspection; two more are already dead and rotting in cages and chains, with red crystals infesting their bodies. Bigger crystals have infected the castle itself, sticking up from the ground and out of walls almost as if they have been cultivated here. They must be smashed as the army advances, for any who linger near begin to feel its effects, particularly the wounded.

Comments

[heda]

"Truce," Lexa corrects. There is a difference, in practice as well as principle, and the outcome of the battle does not displease her. She didn't come looking for Clarke specifically, just a healer, but they are spread thin across the field in the aftermath and Lexa doesn't know enough people to locate one that isn't elbows deep in trying to save someone's life already.

Clarke's greeting—if it can be called that—isn't exactly welcoming but it's words instead of spells, so she takes her chances and closes the distance to stand on the other side of the fallen Templar. Even without any aptitude for healing it's plain to see that the man has no chance at survival, and his wet burbling cough fills the silence between them. Lexa looks at the knife in Clarke's hand, and then back at Clarke, and after a beat she sinks to a knee. The blade in her boot is drawn out and across the man's throat before he has time to cough again, let alone for Clarke to stop her. She presses his eyes closed.

"There are two wounded in the woods," she says, wiping her blade on the edge of her cloak before sheathing it again and straightening up. "Inquisition soldiers. They'll be dead before anyone else finds them."

[levered]

Truce earns something short of an eye-roll: a gesture with her chin, a tilt sideways and a stubborn outward jut, and narrowed eyes above it. The difference between a truce and an alliance doesn't do a thing for her or a few dozen dead villagers. But it isn't something she's going to argue about while a man dies between them—

quickly.

She's not an actress. There's no hiding the relieved slump of her shoulders or the sharpening of her gaze into something less overwhelmed. She blinks a few times, rapidly, for the first time since she first laid eyes on the Templar, and she needs a beat after Lexa speaks to retroactively pay attention and understand what she's saying. Offering.

It's enough to dampen the resentment on Clarke face until it isn't much more than wariness. She slides the knife back into her belt. "Show me."

[heda]

Lexa notices but she is an actress, and she keeps all of the many things that little slump makes her feel off of her face until she has turned her back. None of them are good, even as Clarke's expression eases into something less hostile.

"This way," is all that needs to be said, and she leads Clarke away from the main thrust of the battle and into the woods. The terrain on this side of the keep is rocky but not difficult, room to weave between the great humps of boulder that heave up between the trees. But it doesn't really go anywhere, and what path there is is clearly little-used except for what must be Lexa's own tracks. They strike out toward a far corner of the keep, the dregs of the battle and the sounds of the Inquisition's victory growing more and more distant, dampened by the woods and the snow.

She doesn't say anything, leaving it to Clarke to initiate conversation if she'd like.

[levered]

She wouldn't like.

Not at first.

She lets the snow crunch—and creak, when the wind shifts coated tree branches above them—and she keeps her eyes ahead, Lexa only in her peripheral vision from her position behind and to the side of her. Ten paces of silence, and she thinks, do you know what you made me do?

At fifteen, she says, "What does this mean for you?"

The fact that it's a plural you—you, your people—doesn't carry in the common tongue, but maybe it carries in the distance of her tone.

[heda]

Lexa is content with silence, and resigned to it even if she weren't. It seems like progress. So does Clarke's question, however miniscule and grudging that progress might be. She considers for another three paces before she answers.

"With the last of them fled, my people will be able to safely return to the area. Beyond that I can't say." It's not clear whether 'can't' really means can't, or won't. Lexa had confided a little of her broader goals for her people back when she and Clarke were allies making plans together, but things since then have changed and she does hesitate here, letting a pause stretch, unnaturally quiet.

"There are too many holds plagued by demons to focus on expansion now," she finally says. "And this Inquisition on my doorstep." There's a sort of question implicit in that observation, in case Clarke would like to share her insight, now that she is apparently a member.

[levered]

"They aren't here to stay."

That's not a promise she's qualified to make. And they will keep the Keep for the time being. Maintain a presence. She assumes Lexa knows that as well as she does, because whatever insults she could and has and will fling in Lexa's direction, stupid isn't one of them. But they aren't here to seize power permanently. Restore order, address threats, move on. If they were coming to conquer, she wouldn't be with them.

"They're—we're dealing with the Templars and the lyrium, that's all." She keeps her gaze ahead, searching for the wounded. "If you want to make any new bargains, now is probably a good time."

[heda]

"I meant in the Frostbacks. The fortress they have taken as their headquarters." Their movement into Emprise has complicated Lexa's plans, but they were getting complicated without the Inquisition's presence here. She may have grievances, but they're not about the occupation of Suledin Keep. She didn't make a deal with Red Templars because she liked them.

They skirt a boulder and she is able to gesture up ahead, drawing Clarke's attention to the dark smudge against the snow of two figures, slumped against the trees. When she picks up her pace it's in anticipation of Clarke taking off toward them.

"Two arrows in the one on the left, and the right has a gut wound." Clarke will find when she is close enough to examine that someone (presumably Lexa, though she does not speak up to say so) has tied a tourniquet around the arm with an arrow sticking out and shoved cloth into the deep slice across the woman's stomach. It has bled through by now. Both soldiers are unconscious.

Lexa crouches but sort of hovers, hands willing but waiting for Clarke to direct her in how to help if she chooses. If she is honest, Lexa cares less about the lives of these two soldiers than she does about Clarke getting to be the one to save them, but because she is not stupid she doesn't mention that either.

[levered]

"Why, did you want it?"

Flippant, deliberately obtuse. She isn't done being angry. Discounting and oversimplifying Lexa's goals is as good a way to show it as any. She catches the beginning of Lexa's gesture in her peripheral vision and turns her head to follow her hand out and then ahead—and takes off, yes, at a jog reasonably calibrated to get her there faster without making her staff or her cloak trip her on the way.

She stops before them. does triage in two glances, and crouches beside the one with wound. She has her knife back out to cut cloth away before she looks up at Lexa and her waiting hands, and she stops to unfasten the buckle of her belt and hand it over in its entirety, with its pouches and hanging odds and ends. The spellbook usually kept tucked over it at the small of her back falls into the snow behind her. "Elfroot," she says, brusque reference to the vials in one of the pouches, and digs her knife into leather to widen the slice in the woman's armor beyond the edges of the wound.

[heda]

It is an effective means of demonstrating her anger, judging by the annoyance in Lexa's flat look and the huff of her breath. It's more seen than heard, a burst of steam out her nose into the cold air. Mockery's still not the product of a strong mind, Clarke.

It takes a minute of fumbling with the belt dropped into her hands to find the right pouch, pulling each open with care not to break the fasteners until she finds little glass vials, and picking through them until she finds the elfroot. She tugs the stopper free and holds it out to Clarke, watching as the woman's wound is revealed. It's ugly and bleeding steadily, but not so fast as to put her already beyond hope.

While Clarke works Lexa leans her free hand over to retrieve the spellbook, brushing the snow off and glancing at the cover and spine before tucking it into her own coat to stay dry.

"Is that where you've been? Skyhold?"

[levered]

Her eyes dart at the movement and follow her book into Lexa's coat while her hands hover over the woman. They don't shake. Maybe they will afterwards. Right now she's steady and certain, glancing up at Lexa's face as if to say I saw that. As if Lexa was surreptitious. As if she would steal a spellbook. Clarke knows she wouldn't, if only because she has no use for it, but she also knows the mistrust will rankle.

"Yes," she says, looking back at the woman's split flesh and the faint light from her own hands. One held flat, the other clutching the vials. She can't do much, so she's doing what's important. Knitting the tears in organs, mostly. The magic takes only so much direction from her, taking instructions to mend and working from the inside out, invisible beneath the blood. "They're doing a lot of good."

[heda]

Just as Clarke had hoped, Lexa's irritation builds, between the deliberate misunderstanding of her policy and now the way Clarke watches her put the book away. It's petty, and beneath them, and she nearly says so but bites it back because obviously that is exactly the reaction Clarke's seeking. She lowers her head and picks through the contents of the pouch, holding up vials to peer inside and identify the herbs within for future reference.

There aren't that many, and when she has finished and tucked them away again (not a single one slipped up her sleeve, Clarke, aren't you relieved?) she turns to watch the healing magic in progress. Not that there is much to see. She reaches over to blot carefully at the worst of the blood, but still can't see anything, and sneaks a look up at Clarke instead, watching her face as she works, and as she answers.

"So they say. You have found it to be true? They've given you no trouble? As a mage."