OPEN: Like the High Tide Takes the Sand.

[keeperofmagi]

WHO: Nerva and OPEN
WHAT: After swearing an oath to Cassandra, Nerva has foresaken her title as Templar, and sworn to serve the Inquisition only.
WHEN: Over the next couple weeks so that whoever is wherever can still come bother her.
WHERE: Either Emprise, directly after her oath, or in Skyhold after they return
NOTES:The Oath, also warning for Nerva and her Opinions....

There is something uncharacteristically quiet about Nerva, these days. A solemn silence where the passion should be, a held tongue instead of the lash. After returning from Nevarra, after trudging through the snow of the Emprise, she retreated further and further into herself.

That didn't mean the passion was gone. Rather it was turned inward - almost self-flagellating in its intensity, ripping through everything she believed, and the things she thought she believed, until her soul was left at it's most raw, most pure state.

She needed a purpose. She needed a path.

And so she made one.

Any doubts she had, she did not voice. Any doubts she had, were gone, after she made her oath.

She did not have room in her heart for doubt. She did not have room in her heart for the wretchedness that had been there, for months. No. She only had room for commitment, for the cause. And if she could not fully live one, she would live the other.

If she could no longer be Templar in word and deed, then she would be no Templar at all.

She would turn herself into a sword for the Right Hand.

Over the next few weeks, her downtime was used to carefully and painstakingly remove all symbols of the Templar Order from her armour, her clothing, her weapons. Everything she had owned, had come from the templars, and she had no funds with which to simply replace them, so she worked. Mostly on her own, removed from others. She had no desire to make a big display. Her faith - her purpose - was her own, no one else's. There would be no announcement.

Just the careful and purposeful continuation of Duty.

Comments

[nofury]

A better part of a month away from Skyhold had done her a world of good. Time on her own, out in the open wilds, always had. Maria trusted her own instincts far more than the general consensus, and it was with a small sense of resignation she returned to the fortress and all the politics and daily dramatics it entailed. Still, duty called.

She'd put her horse up, sent the mission reports, and now she had to bring her armor down for the small patches and repairs so long away always demanded. She was in simple tunic and breeches, hair still a ruin as she handed her plate mail off with specific instructions, and just leaving the smith when she spotted the other Templar, the woman absorbed in a task of her own.

"Lecuyer."