faderift | OPEN: enough to shake and kick holes in the ground

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OPEN: enough to shake and kick holes in the ground

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: The Inquisition brings peace, stability, and inadvisable skinny dipping to the people of the Emprise.
WHEN: Guardian - Drakonis
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: The locations in this post are opening in the wake of their respective quests. The Inquisition's work will be done and the bulk of its forces returned to Skyhold by Drakonis 15, the Inquisition will maintain an active presence in the region for the foreseeable future, with its activities centered in Suledin Keep.

After nearly a month of crises and combat, the Inquisition has successfully pushed the Red Templars out of Emprise du Lion. Their efforts culminated in the capture of the red lyrium quarries and in the decisive battle that reclaimed Suledin Keep, shattered the Red Templar forces, and sent their remainder fleeing from the region. Not only have they scored their first real victory against the forces of Corypheus, but Inquisition agents have also overseen the repair of an ancient bridge and the killing of three (3!) high dragons, reconnecting the beleaguered town of Sahrnia to the rest of Orlais.

For much of the Inquisition's army the hard part is over, but there is still plenty of work to be done.

VALESKA'S WATCH - RED LYRIUM QUARRY - SULEDIN KEEP - POOLS OF THE SUN & COLOSSEUMS

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"I probably should have guessed this would be boring," Alistair says—to Galadriel, without prompting, whether she's come conversationally close or is still at a distance. It doesn't matter. He is, as he just said, bored. He's leaning with one shoulder against the heavy, open door to the fortress' innermost chamber with his arms crossed and his posture slouchily advertising disinterest. "Watching at the Watch. It's right there in the name."

What he's watching isn't particularly interesting. There are no darkspawn, for starters. There could be, any moment now, that's why he's here, etc., but beyond the doors there are only workers—civilians, builders—busy taking measurements and arguing in quiet tones about structural integrity or the risks versus merits of collapsing the tunnel rather than only walling it off or blah blah blah. It's dimly lit, and the air feels thick. Alistair might fall asleep where he's standing, sword and armor and all.

Or he might have, before. Now he has company. He turns his head to look at her properly, evaluating, and decides, "You're not a mason," which is a compliment.

She would be hard-pressed to say whether she disliked this sunken fortress more or less than the lyrium poisoned land above them. Heavy ceilings above dark pits held a special dread in any elven heart, true, and this watch was one she shared with a Grey Warden, but the land above was stained red with tainted light. It was nearly crippling to be above; the stone, at least, muffled the sound of discord. ...Then again, she did share this watch with a Warden.

There were many of them in these lands, traipsing two and fro, but identifying them was a trial. Many wore armor, but not all bore their crest, and she hadn't the patience to pick the hidden from the throng of soldiers. The old song was too loud in the Emprise du Lion, to listen for them singly was to listen for a trickling stream amid a thunderstorm.

This warden was not, by her estimates, as terrible as the ones she had met previously, but that was not much of an achievement.

At his comment, she wondered if, perhaps, she had not given him enough credit. There were hours yet on their vigil, it was entirely possible that he could exceed her expectations.

"I am not," she confirmed dryly. She stood across the doors from him, in a space that allowed her to glance aside at the dwarves and the pit they sought to close. Her staff rested against the wall beside her and her armor, leather and cut in the Dalish style, creaked quietly as she shifted.

"How quickly you take the measure of me," she commended in that same, utterly flat tone. Her attention listed from the workers and settled on him. What weight her stare normally held was gone, sacrificed to the weary, throbbing drum of her pulse in her ears.

"Tell me, if no one watches the Watch, does it not cease to be anything at all?"

Alistair eyes her.

If she were someone else, his eyebrows would do something more severely disbelieving, during this eyeing process, and the crooked twist of his mouth might have had a sharper, more mocking edge. If she were someone else she couldn't say things like that without sounding completely ridiculous. But from her it sounds like something that might actually mean something, as opposed to something that is only trying to mean something, so his smile is more charitable in its bafflement.

"And if no one keeps the Keep or holds the Hold," he prompts, to play along. "This was still something. A really big house for some darkspawn, if nothing else."

Galadriel listened to him and, at once, regretted that decision. His reply, asked with a smooth edge of philosophical musing was...nonsense. A Keep that was not kept and a Hold that ceased being held both immediately became nothing at all. True, it was entirely possible that had been his point, but Galadriel lacked the patience for charitable assumptions.

"It is a pit," Galadriel replied an arched a brow, "infested with poisoned creatures risen from the darkest, festering shadows of this world. By all counts, it is barely a Watch, even with us watching it."

But, unfortunately, this conversation was unlikely to go anywhere of value or, even, slightest merit if the subject remained unchanged. It was not yet an argument, though she found she had both a talent for and the inclination to start such things with Wardens, but it would rapidly become one if it continued unchecked.

She had no desire to argue over semantics in a blackened cave.

"Why they do not simply flood it with steel is beyond me," Galadriel added after a moment, exasperated and impatient in a way that was both obvious and pervasive. Behind them several dwarves argued the merits of various types of locking mechanisms versus explosives. "Do you people often build doors to cover forsaken chasms in the deep?"

"Yyyes," Alistair says, dubiously, not as if he doesn't understand the question but as if he isn't sure why she doesn't understand how silly it is—for show. It's not that silly. He's only bored and uncooperative. "If it isn't one foresaken chasm it's another. We would have to melt every sword in Thedas to flood them all. Then they would find another way out and we'd all be caught swordless."

Are there many foresaken chasms in the world this elf is from or believes she is from or is claiming to be from? Are they all flooded with steel? He'll ask in a moment, when he's done talking too much while looking smirkingly, indulgently baffled.

"With a door, if we need to pay this particular foresaken chasm a visit, we can pop right in. It's very convenient." There. "Do your people blow open foresaken chasms every time they need to have a look?"

And so the deterioration of this conversation continued. Galadriel found that she was entirely unsurprised, or she would have been, were she not increasingly irritated by Alistair's slow, casual drawl.

"My people do not forget what lies waiting in the deep,"* Galadriel replied waspishly and cast a long, pointed look at the human warden. "Nor do we feel the need to 'pop right in' and gape at ancient horrors."

If nothing else, she could be grateful that she was unlikely to meet anything truly terrible in the deep of Thedas. The old song was pervasive, but everyone she had warned of Dark Lords and shadowed enemies had seemed very much baffled by the very idea. If the Lord of Night had lieutenants in these lands, they were either well hidden or long dead.

...Else they stood in plain sight and delighted in grating against her nerves--no, she disliked him but even she could not pretend that this man was a lieutenant of the enemy.

He was a foot-soldier at best.

"If you lack the steel," she continued with as much patience as she could muster, "rock is more difficult to manage but can be melted all the same. They are fewer here than they should be, but certainly you could find mages to assist you."

Alistair considers this suggestion with a thoughtful frown and raises eyebrows, nodding. Rock. Mages. Innnnnteresting. "Right," he says slowly, "but the popping-in—that's actually quite important."

Try to keep up, beautiful mysterious elf lady with way more than one person's fair share of gravitas. Popping. In.

He settles back against the door frame to gesture toward the hole in the floor beyond them. "We know what's down there. That's what we're for. Everyone else will forget, probably, in another hundred years, and be shocked when there's another Blight, but we won't. Unless we're all dead, of course. That's looking likely." Also: "If you're gaping at ancient horrors, you're going about it wrong. You're supposed to kill them."

Galadriel stared at him, her expression an odd mixture of worn patience and horrified confusion; why, in any world, one would want to 'pop-in' on the terrors of the deep, she couldn't fathom. They knew precisely what was sealed below, the need to check seemed pointless, but they also intended to kill it? It was a strange mix of sentiments and, sadly, everything else he said was little more than gibberish to her.

"What--" Galadriel asked, her own drawl an unconscious imitation of his own. "--in the Valars' name is a Blight?"

Obviously he was not speaking of a plague upon the lands, not in the general sense. If he had been, his untrustworthy order would have been tasked with this whole rift ordeal and the Inquisition would serve no purpose whatsoever. He could not be referring to the blight that crept into the stones, into the blood of people in Thedas, for no one seemed eager to discuss or deal with that, so, clearly, there was a notable event that shared the name. One that, distressingly, seemed to happen every few hundred years.

The languages of men often wanted for words but, in times like these, Galadriel was truly astonished at how limited they could be.

"And if it is your duty to slaughter what is sealed below, why have you not done so already? I was given to understand that your sect was Ages old."

She should have refrained from goading him but, unfortunately, she was annoyed. Between his tone and his blood she was finding it difficult to regain her calm.

"Or is the delay for lack of readily available doors?"

Alistair laughs.

Before anyone gets too excited, it's a very short laugh, a single hah, more air than sound. But it takes him by surprise—maybe he'll decide to like her, eventually—and he spends a moment looking startled at himself and at her before he withdraws, visibly, back into his distant drawling, and says, "We're working on it."

Clarel is. It's going really well.

"The darkspawn search for the Old Gods. The ones they used to worship in Tevinter, the story goes—dragons with weird souls. They can hear them calling. When they find one, it takes command of the horde. All of this—" A gesture away, toward the rest of the world, where darkspawn periodically attack caravans or drag women into the deep. "—is only what they do in their free time. During a Blight they're an army. The first one lasted two ages before we learned how to defeat them—there are still whole regions where nothing really grows. The last one was ten years ago, though, so it's nothing you need to worry about."

Since she's not immortal. Obviously.

His laugh startled Galadriel as much as it had startled him and, as he reined himself in, her irritation waned enough that he had her full attention when he spoke. Despite his drawl and easy manner, she had no doubt that he spoke the truth. That she didn't doubt him was disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as what he spoke of.

Galadriel's expression had been neither light nor pleasant when this conversation began, true, but as her smile fell and a grim, ancient sort of graveness settled over her face, her flat stare and disregard seemed utterly jubilant by comparison. The expression she wore, then, was truly exceptional. There few in Arda who had seen her so severe, who had experienced the full weight of her fathomless, piercing stare, and now Alistair had the full weight of both heaped upon him as he spoke.

The creatures in these tunnels, tainted, twisted things that ravaged the world, sought out...gods buried in the deep? Gods that commanded them, bent them into an army, and razed the earth beneath their marching? They had done this a decade ago? They would do it again?

"And it is your purpose to slay these armies, then? To halt their advances?" Galadriel asked, her tone no longer mocking or, indeed, anything as lighthearted as "annoyed".

What she knew of the wardens was little more than a handful of tales, stories and the thoughts that swam through Scipio's mind when she delved inside it. They were fools, they conscripted to their cause, they poisoned blood, they were not to be trusted and--indeed--if he spoke truthfully, her assessment was all too correct. She couldn't picture the generals of old as dragons, not easily, but the concept of ancient darkness sealed below was not one that she was unfamiliar with. That they tainted blood and controlled their forces thusly, was not even in question.

Suddenly a surge of revulsion welled up in her. They installed doors? Doors so they could pop-in on these creatures, so that they might check? Her stare turned hard and took on a very distinct air of hostility.

"And you fight them how, exactly? Crafting doors and standing watch at empty pits is not a grand purpose, nor does it herald victory over your foes." Her grip on her staff tensed and Galadriel's eyes narrowed on the human.

"Do you help them, perhaps? Comfortable that none in these lands can hear the Old Song that commands you? Convinced that you cannot be caught out? You pose as heroes in gleaming armor, spinning stories and flying banners, and bide your time until the greatest of them is found, until a new Dark Lord arises.

"What is its name, then? Or have you forgotten? It sings so clearly into your hearts."

Edited (I DIDN'T USE AN ANGRY ICON, I HAVE SO MANY.) 2016-04-27 01:53 (UTC)

The good news is Alistair doesn't cry. Nothing so embarrassing. But he does freeze in the face of that ancient, unforgiving gaze, like an alerted prey animal, smirk slipping off his face. And it doesn't come back. A particularly loud exclamation from one of the bickering dwarves snaps him out of his freeze, but there's no more smirking. His eyes narrow instead. Belatedly: how dare she.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says, which is only partly true. What it? What name? Razikale and Lusacan, he knows which remain—Urthemiel, too, but that's one secret he's keeping close.

Other secrets, though, he's been loose-lipped about, and he doesn't wonder how she knows what they hear. Not yet.

"We die before we serve them. We see to it," he says. "You have no right—"

To question them? No. He doesn't mind that. He questions them, too. But to doubt their intentions or their resolve—he's too angry to say anything so wordy as that, now, so he doesn't finish the sentence at all.

Galadriel doesn't rise to debate him, not this time. Her grim expression persists and she leans back against her staff. When she answers him, it is with a short hum. There's a note of expectation, of resignation in the sound; it is not a kind response, it is simply the only response a falsehood so blatant deserves. He gathered himself well, better than Scipio had, but she has not brought power to bear on him, either.

She is uncertain if it is wise to try, given the lands above and the persistence of that song.

It is deeply tempting to pry his knowledge from him, more than anything has been in some time, but it is an urge best resisted. It would have been easier to simply ask, to feign innocent curiosity and attempt to learn of the Wardens, but she has no patience for corruption nor the corrupted. She has spent far too long staring at a dead and darkened horizon to embrace guile with such creatures.

Fortunately, this one is talkative and fancies himself clever. If it is not possible to goad him into revealing himself, to unsettle his secrets from him, then she will take them.

"If you truly believe you can resist, that you will not die on your knees, bent to that song, then you are far more foolish than I could have ever imagined," Galadriel says, casting the words between them without remorse.

She is not convinced, even in the face of so many wardens, even watching the Watch that they had cleared of beasts, that each of them isn't a servant of the enemy. Whether they bend in open supplication or resist to their final breath, whether they are sincere in their heroism or simply clever liars, it matters little in the end. A corrupted being is corrupted and this, this poison, runs too deeply for even immortal hands to cleanse.

"There is no hope in resisting it, not when it lives within you. You are tainted, poisoned--I would pity you but for the fact that your order spreads the shadow, corrupts others, and drags them to the dark by your side."

Galadriel doesn't push—or not hard—but that does approximately nothing to soften Alistair's glare or the rigid line of his shoulders. It isn't her. It isn't only her, anyway. It's also the bodies of nearly everyone he's known for the last ten years burning out west, while he's waiting for the day they'll have to explain the demons and the blood magic to people who are already forgetting why Wardens are needed at all. They might not disagree with her, in the end.

"We know what we are," he says through his teeth, because if he opens his mouth too wide he'll wind up loud enough to draw attention. "When it catches up to us, we find a fight we can't win and take as many of them with us as we can."

He looks her over; he doesn't manage to look entirely disdainful about it. He can't make his face do it. She's too—too. Something.

"Who have you been talking to?"

"Of your order?" Galadriel asks, her tone almost flippant with how dismissive it is. It is an air she is affecting, but with only mixed success; her expression is still far too severe to pair with so light a question. "I have met only two ere I came to stand with you at this pit.

"The first," she starts and, despite herself, despite her great mounting rage, she feels a great wealth of pity and sorrow well up within her. She would have burned the poison from his blood, slain him without remorse, but of all their order she felt some measure of sorrow for him. The enemy did not think so fondly of butterflies. "He was but a boy, poisoned in recompense.

"The second," she continued and, this warden, if the steel that crept back into her tone was any indication, was far less pitiable. "She was a crass and foul-mouthed brute.

"But their temperaments matter little, in the end, because I have seen your like before. I am caliquendi and discord is a song that is familiar to me. If you truly knew what you were, you would be far more terrified than you are. I know the darkness that spawned that poison; I would see it scoured from this world.

"Nay, I will see it scoured from this world, once I have regained the means to manage it."

Scipio, Alistair thinks silently, and Kaisa; most of the Wardens here, and everywhere, are not what people expect them to be, but those two cases are particularly egregious.

Alistair himself is, of course, a perfect specimen.

A perfect specimen who once again needs a moment to collect himself in the face of her certainty and severity. But he does all right. His glare shifts into something a little more amused, after a delay, and he slouches back against the doorway.

"Riiight. You sort that out, then by all means," he says, gesturing expansively toward the chasm, "scour away. In the meantime, we've been the only things keeping the blight at bay for a thousand years," which is a very long time, she should be impressed, "so--" He inhales and exhales, at length, showily. (When are they getting married? Summer would be nice.) "Deep breaths, my lady."

(Definitely Summer.)

"A thousand years? Is that meant to impress me?" Galadriel asked, honestly surprised that he would throw such a pitiful number out as though it were a victory. She gestured, as he had, toward the pit and the mounted skeletons adorned in Warden armor. The air of dismissal in her motion was palpable.

"Doors and pits and poison, yes, you've certainly attempted keeping the darkness back, haven't you? And, apart from ten years ago, of course, no armies of discord have recently marched beneath the open sky."

She didn't often mock people, let alone mortal men, but he practically begged it.

"Your efficacy astounds."

For a moment Alistair looks particularly, childishly disgruntled, because yes of course it was meant to impress her, but it doesn't last. There's a clatter and a brief escalation from discussion to argument from the workers. It gives him something else to look at, all the better to play at unbothered disdain.

"If only you'd arrived that much sooner," he says, sighingly. "I could have stayed home—" He would have found a home of some kind specifically for this. "—and put my feet up."

His gaze listed away from hers and, in the chamber at their backs, the dwarves' argument escalated. Three voices became five and firm statements became low shouts. It was a heated discourse, yes, but only barely as hostile as Galadriel and Alistair's own. Thus far the dwarves were without anger and, as such, their shouting was not enough to draw her from her own furious fixation.

Wardens, it seemed, were quite skilled at drawing out the very heart of her ire.

"Strange, at a glance I would assume that was what you were doing," Galadriel replied, voice heavy with disdain. Her tone shifted from waspish to cold in the span of a few words. "The Men of Thedas are a poor sort, indeed, and the Wardens are a cruel, listless jest.

"For five and a half thousand years, I have fought the shadow. I have watched darkness poison the eastern skies, burn the earth and raze lands that were once fair and beautiful. I have driven it back with Men at my side, watched it fall and arise anew, and now I am come to this place," Galadriel told him, her tone as frigid as the grave, and turned to stare at the far entrance of the Watch, to let her eyes wander over the stairs that led up to the wintry landscape above.

"Now I stand here with you," she said and the word trailed with the depth of her irritation. She could not recall the last time she'd muttered aloud, but she did so then: "That much sooner, indeed."

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OPEN: enough to shake and kick holes in the ground

forever ago, closed to Galadriel.

Aaaah late to this party, but let's do this.

later than you on purpose so you wouldn't feel bad, probably.....

I totally feel better, this totally worked.

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