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WHO: Cassandra Pentaghast and you
WHAT: Cassandra, in and around Skyhold
WHEN: First half of Drakonis, before the ball
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Does your character want to yell at Cassandra about Anders? About Galadriel? About her choices in general? Alternatively, do they want to celebrate her on a job well done and thank her for her vigilance in keeping Skyhold safe? Maybe try to finally get a straight answer about exactly what is going on? This is the place!

For timeline purposes: post-Anders announcement; before/in the midst of/after rifter interrogations; either pre-Galadriel's imprisonment or while she still languishes in the cells.

She might be found swinging angrily at the dummies in the yard, assisting Cullen in training what recruits they have, or nursing a large ale at the Herald's Rest. More than likely, she's dodging Vivienne and her endless preparations, instructions, and reminders for the ball. Wherever she is, Cassandra is likely not in the best of moods, and there is a certain righteous fire in her gaze whenever she is challenged. Leliana's words and the way she had looked at Cassandra still sting, but she does not regret what she has done.

Still, no one can possibly be angry all the time, right? Maybe you'll catch her on a good day...

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Despite all that had occurred in recent days, Cassandra has not forgotten her promise to Seeker Darton. He had wished to see the Divine's final writ, and she means to grant him that. It is the least she can do for him, in the wake of Justinia's death. To offer him some final peace, if she can.

It will be good to speak to him as well, she muses, in any case. It has been years since the boy she had known at Montsimmard, and she is curious to see the man he has become.

She sends him a short note inviting him to meet with her, and settles herself behind her desk, determined to at least try to make some progress in the seemingly perpetual stack of paperwork waiting for her.

She had spent little time with the former Templar since that day in the Emprise. Something about fighting dragons seems to demand one's time and energy like nothing else.

But once she is back in Skyhold, surrounded by Inquisition soldiers and thrust immediately back into all of the politics and problems inherent in keeping the Inquisition together, Cassandra is reminded of the soldier's oath. Nerva will be waiting for orders, and it is up to Cassandra now to ensure that she has them. Besides. They should probably...speak, she supposes, about all that has occurred in recent days.

Maker help her if Nerva agrees with Leliana on all of this.

She has no idea where she might look for the woman, Cassandra realizes. Her best recourse is to send a note with one of the ravens and hope it finds her. That done, she finds a training sword and begins running through a few practice drills on one of the dummies in the yard. She had made a misstep or two in her battle with the dragon that she does not wish to repeat.

She appears surprisingly promptly, after she is summoned. The raven took no trouble in finding her, and she was already in full gear when she recieved the note. So she made her way immediately to the yard, to find the Right Hand, sword sheathed at her side. When she stepped up, she clasped a fist to her chest and offered a tight bow.

"Seeker. You summoned me?"

Aleron climbs the stairs to the loft over the armory in a somber and reflective mood. There is no small amount of curiosity as to the woman Cassandra has grown to be. He has a few lingering memories of that period in his youth, another preteen cohort. An angry one. They were both of them angry in those years. She lashed out at anyone and anything; he pushed down those feelings to simmer in silence until he was an unemotional, unmovable wall. Professionally, she has done well for herself. Hailed as the Hero of Orlais, made the Right Hand of the Divine as a very young woman. How many dragons had she slain? He'd heard eight, or perhaps it was nine. Regardless, he expects to find a woman who is larger than life.

She is perhaps not quite the dreadfully imposing figure he'd expected after all. Aleron can see traces of the girl in the woman bent over paperwork. Same dark hair, intent fire in her eyes, profile of her face. She's actually quite beautiful though he's not the one to say such things aloud.

"Lady Pentaghast." He bows formally on reaching the top of the staircase, waiting to be invited to enter her workspace.

Maxwell had come away from his meeting with the unearthly Galadriel feeling no better. If anything, the pit in his gut had only deepened. While he wouldn't expect many to be honest about their guilt, she hadn't seemed to lie either, and Gavin had known her - had come to him that night in her defense, believing her innocence.

He needed to know more. He wanted to believe the Inquisition better than that. That after the outburst by the Templar on the crystals, after Anders, after the attack on the Dalish woman....

There had to be more.

(He had to have this, if nothing else.)

"Seeker Pentaghast?" He'd been warned away from approaching her in person, but still there he was, daringly stepping up amongst the training dummies. (Though back far enough that she would at least have to do some reaching to hit him.) "Maxwell Trevean, I was hoping I might speak with you."

Cassandra glances up immediately, pausing as she looks over Aleron. He has changed, of course. He has grown - grown into a man, and a fine figure of one, though the faintest trace of a smile touches her lips as she notes his eyes, still so blue, and the familiar, serious set of his jaw.

"Seeker Darton." She rises from her desk, gesturing somewhat impatiently for him to come in. She has never been one for ceremony, and certainly not with someone she once knew so well. "Please. I trust you have recovered from your journey?"

Cassandra turns, unable to completely hide her surprise at how quickly Nerva had arrived, and fully equipped for battle at that. It is good, of course, that she is so prompt, but she cannot help but wonder just how long Nerva had been expecting her summons - if she has been painstakingly outfitting herself every day, waiting patiently for Cassandra's call. The thought gives her a faint twinge of guilt.

"Ser Lecuyer." She nods in greeting, frowning at Nerva's bow. "Please. That is - not necessary." But she had summoned her, and she sees no point in wasting either of their time. "I thought it best that we discuss your duties."

"Ser Trevean."

He is a stranger to her, but that is a more and more common occurrence, with the flocks of people entering Skyhold these days - more nearly every week, it seems. Cassandra nods, lowering her training sword as she turns to face him. Stranger or not, she can at least do him the courtesy of hearing what he has to say. "Of course."

Luckily, for Cassandra's sake perhaps, it was a ritual that Nerva preformed daily, regardless. She far preferred her armour to anything else, and besides, constant vigilance and all that.

"Of course, Seeker," She replied, straightening to attention. "I am happy to assist wherever I am required."

"Good," Cassandra says. She pauses, glancing around the courtyard - not too crowded, but hardly a place for private conversation, either. She sticks her practice sword into the ground next to the dummies and nods at Nerva. "Walk with me."

They wander up to the battlements, looking down on the mountains below, before Cassandra speaks again. She is not nervous, not exactly. But she's never been very good with words, and she needs Nerva's support on this. She needs her to understand what Leliana had not.

"What do you know of the elf named Galadriel? She is a - what they call rifter, not of this world."

"I have heard mention of her, and the others, but I have not met her personally," Nerva admitted, after she had fallen into step alongside Cassandra, the steal of her armour clinking with each step, lending it a weight her footfalls would not otherwise have.

"I understand that she believes she comes from a different world, that she has powers similar to our mages."

"Believes?"

The word is enough to disrupt Cassandra's own train of thought, as she turns to look at Nerva in surprise. It had never occurred to her not to take Galadriel at her word, or to question what little she did admit to - for all that she had refused to say, refused to swear to, she had seemed quite clear on who and what she was. "You think her confused? Addled?"

"I don't presume to guess, Seeker," Nerva said, with a frown.

"I am not a theologian. She came through the Fade, as did the others. We would be destroyed, attempting such a thing. Spirits are turned into demons. Who is to say, what form they would have had, on the other side? What their true purpose is, and how the rift effected them? It is certainly not something I can claim to understand. They are not demons, I am told, and that seems all I can be sure of."

"It's in regards to Lady Galadriel." It seemed best to be honest, and direct. He held his ground even as his heart kicked anxiously, concerned where this talk might take him. "I've heard some concerning things regarding her arrest, I was hoping you might be able to clear some it."

Cassandra frowns.

He is not the first to approach her regarding Galadriel. But he is the first to do so in person. She sets the sword aside, giving him her full attention. Still polite, but more wary now, her defenses just slightly raised.

"What exactly have you heard?"

Cassandra listens, frowning in thought. Nerva's wariness makes sense, and Cassandra shares it, to an extent. Yet even still.

"There are so many of them, and they all claim to come from elsewhere - from their own separate worlds," she says ponderously, working through it for herself as well as Nerva. She shakes her head. "They are not demons. If they are not as they say - if they did not truly come from other worlds, like ours and yet not - then I do not know what else they might be."

"But it is true that we do not know their purpose - their loyalties." She glances at Nerva, her eyes sharp. "Some may be trusted. Others have proven that they cannot be. This Galadriel is one of the latter."

"Can you tell me why she was arrested?" he asked, concern clear on his face. "Because what she says, what she's telling people is that it's because she refused to give an oath to the Inquisition. Which, forgive me Seeker, most of Thedas would be guilty of that - including the refugees we are currently sheltering here."

"I had no concept that such other worlds even existed, or that they could. But I am sure, once Corypheus is defeated and we have a new Divine, that she will be able to figure out exactly what they are, and where they come from."

She caught that sharp look, her own expression pure stone. "That does not surprise me in the least. What happened?"

Cassandra makes a noise that is not quite agreement. Unlike Nerva, she had known Divine Justinia well, and while she had respected, trusted, admired, even loved her, she had had more opportunity than most to see past the trappings of her office to the woman herself. Justinia had been wise and fair, she had been holy, but she had not been omniscient. There is no reason to think her successor will be able to discern the truth any better than the Inquisition can.

But she lets that discussion lie for now, choosing to focus instead on the immediate issue. Galadriel.

"I spoke to her, during my course of the investigations of the rift that was opened here in Skyhold. Galadriel did not open the rift, but she was one of those who assisted in closing it." Her words are slow, measured. She will not allow her emotions to get the better of her - she will explain calmly, thoroughly, and perhaps Nerva will understand what Leliana had not. "I had meant merely to hear her version of events, to ensure that things had transpired as I was told by the others. But Galadriel was - hostile, nearly from the first. She mocked my authority, and then she refused to acknowledge it. She would not answer the simplest questions."

She closes her hand into a fist, and then slowly forces herself to release it. Galadriel had not been the first to exasperate and disrespect Cassandra during an interrogation, nor had she been the last. That is not the issue here.

"And then she said - no. She implied that she understood not only the mysteries of closing rifts, but those of opening them. I asked her to tell me clearly what she knew, and she would not." Cassandra is determined to get this right, to tell Nerva only the truth, unbiased. If she is wrong - Maker, if she is wrong, and she had overreached -

She does not believe she had, even now. But she needs some confirmation. Some reassurance that she has not strayed from the path of justice.

"She said that she knew more than one such as I could understand, and that she would not explain it further. That those who came here through the rifts risked themselves in closing them. That should she open a rift it was not my concern, and that she would do as she pleased and tell me only what she deigned to."

The last, at least, she remembers word for word, burned into her mind. Cassandra's hands clench into hard fists again, this time on the stone of the battlements as she stares unseeing down into the valley.

"I asked her to swear an oath that she would open no further rifts, and she refused. I took her staff and had her locked in the dungeon."

Cassandra makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. It does not surprise her in the least that Galadriel had twisted the story to make herself out as an innocent.

"They would," she agreed, "if they also refused to take the oath that Galadriel would not. But how many of them have overtly threatened the Inquisition, and refused to swear not to endanger its people?"

His head pulled back slightly, eyes blinking, once, before widening.

"She threatened the Inquisition?"

Time enough has passed that Araceli feels settled again; she has her time with her lute where she's less likely to be disturbed, time to go through Leliana's not insubstantial reading list, as well as resuming the climbing lessons when she's able.

She's not joking about the reading list. Or learning the finer points of the Orlesian tongue.

Like most days, she enters the Herald's Rest via the battlements so she can get a look at the crowd. She's been on something of a mission anyway, trying to find the Seeker for something she might have left out at the interrogation. Not that it was about her precisely but still, better these things are out in the open, and so she quickly orders a drink before she clears her throat, standing a little to the side.

"Seeker Pentaghast? If you don't mind an intrusion? There is something I would inform you of." Her tone at least is light enough but she's hovering, up on the balls of her feet with a smile that looks too tight at the edges to be real. Once again, her marked hand is thrust into her pocket, casual enough but the tailors prodded it plenty and she'd rather forget about it for a little while.

"Yes." Simply put, because it is a simple matter. "She threatened the Inquisition, and when I gave her the opportunity to retract her threat, to swear she would not put all of Skyhold at risk yet again, she refused. She knew what would happen if she did not reconsider her actions."

It was clear this was a new twist for him. Not that he'd expected that Galadriel's version was all there was to say on the matter, but Gavin had been so insistent. A part of him was validated, relieved even - his faith wasn't misplaced, he'd been right to tell him to wait - then, quickly on its heels, came guilt. A worry.

"What did she say she was going to do exactly?"

Edited 2016-03-22 00:14 (UTC)

Cassandra looks up, surprised to see Araceli. She'd more or less expected the girl to avoid her, after the way she'd been dragged into Cassandra's office to be interrogated. But here she is, and Cassandra sets down her drink, leaning back in her chair.

"What is it?" She frowns, taking the note of the slight tension in Araceli's expression. "Is something wrong?"

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