faderift | CLOSED | the perfect stormrider.

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CLOSED | the perfect stormrider.

WHO: Erik Stephens, Gabranth, Diana, Benedict, Edgard, Tiffany, Dick & Jone.
WHAT: The Gang Fights A Dragon.
WHEN: Cloudreach.
WHERE: The Thenuviet estate on the Exalted Planes.
NOTES: if something looks wonky or is misspelled, please know I’m typing this on mobile & have mercy.

GETTING THERE isn’t a short journey, and they’re hardly traveling in comfort. Most of the horses are carrying equipment, armor, weaponry, and anything else those volunteered for this expedition thought to include. And there’s camping equiptment. Anyone who said the travel overland involved staying at inns was lying. Inns are notoriously stuffed with murderers, anyway.

Every night, there’s a campfire and food. Sometimes it’s fresh caught, but if it is, Jone certainly didn’t catch it. Just as likely that it’s rations, salt pork and jerky and whatever dried fruits and nuts Riftwatch can spare.

There’s a STOP AT A BATHHOUSE in the town near the Thenuviet estate, however. It’s stupid, they’re just going to dirty themselves up later, but presentation is important to these people.

Surely all of you brought fancy dress and masks, because IT’S TIME TO SCHMOOZE. There’s a small party of Orlesians dressed to their finest, having a cozy little soirée on the edge of a cliff. Literally on the edge. Don’t indulge too much in the fine wines and cheeses, because there’s a dragon waiting, but for now? It’s never a bad idea to look good in front of rich people of influence. At least, not these days.

Eventually, it’s time to move forward, which means PREPARING FOR BATTLE. Climbing down the cliff is easy stuff, if you’re good with rope or have basic upper body strength. But now is probably the time to set up any traps, get in good positions... because it’s not long before the party on the cliff above begins to cheer.

...Because a few dead swine are unceremoniously kicked off the cliff to fall into the ravine now filled with you and yours.

The cheers from the cliff face only increase as loud thrashing, howling sounds start and become increasingly closer. How long have they been feeding the dragon like this?

But then it’s DRAGON KILLING TIME. You probably know how that goes. Stormriders are huge, dark scaled, and shoot thunder instead of fire. This one is angry you’ve interrupted lunch time.

AFTERWARD, it’s time to heal, take a breath, poke around the dragon bits for fancy heirlooms, and climb back up that cliff.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jone comes out of the baths clean and satisfied. Her hair is, for once, its proper bright color, instead of being weighed down with dirt and sweat. Her clothes are new, well, new-ish. Unsoiled by sweat stains and mud, no dark places where the blood never washed out. She's trying to braid her hair back when the spots Gabranth.

Not that it's bloody difficult.

It takes her a moment to understand what's happening. She looks, sees people coming in and out, looks back, studies his helm, imagines his eyeline. Imagines his face.

In her mind's eye, he looks like any other man.

"Alright, alright," she says, as though he's begged her. "I'll scare everybody out of the place. Give us a minute."

Edited (im HILARIOUS) 2021-04-09 00:15 (UTC)

There’s a restlessness in his posture, in how his footing shifts from ball to heel where he stands braced against the edge of an outdoor balcony, entirely unrelated to the sight of her so renewed (though it suits her in ways she’d never care to hear, he thinks— the brightness of well-kept hair, the pleasant drape of clothing that isn’t weighed down by the ruddiness of mud or layered muck).

He’d not asked her to accommodate him. And truth be told there’s a difference between the deference shown to a Judge Magister in due matters of respect, versus a particularly precise decision to shoo an entire bathhouse out of their perfumed leisure.

“I can wait.” He counters, as if the refusal alone could ever possibly deter her.

"Get in last of the night, and barely have a second to yourself before the bath closes, you mean."

She doesn't sound particularly cheered by that prospect.

"That really what you want? 'Cos I could just run in and clear 'em out, tell 'em a leper's coming."

One hand is already raised, set apart from the middle of his chest— the midpoint where he'd held them tightly crossed for a good hour or two on end, not so much as minding the clutter of metal and straps pressing back in return— clearly intending to wave her off in absolute dismissal. To let her enjoy what remains of her evening in peace, without a thought spared for the rigidity of his own rituals.

But then he pauses, helm tilting ever so slightly by degrees.

"...would that truly work?"

A soft sound, almost a laugh, escapes her throat. She raises her hands, palms up. "Always works for me. Ever since I was little."

So, this is a con she's been running a long time. She takes a step closer, "you deserve a fucking break, mate. We all do."

Selfishly, she thinks, she doesn't want him on edge during the fight. Still, she thinks she's just smart enough not to say that.

Clever girl.

“Do not spoil me, Daughter of Denerim.” Gruff as that command is, it’s more akin to the grumbling of a beast pulled away from afternoon sunlight: utterly toothless, nothing more than mild grousing brought on by a mixture of familiarity...

And trust.

Still, there’s a lingering consideration yet to be spoken of:

“...Will trouble find you for it?”

Surely someone might take issue with her elaborate ruse, if discovered.

"If I can figure out a way to spoil you," she says, cocky and self-satisfied, "I'll do what I like with the intel."

She looks back at the bathhouse, staring over her shoulder. "You'll come out looking the same, right? All black and shiny?"

“What else would I look like?”

It might be a joke. It in fact sounds like a joke. That said— this is Gabranth: if anyone were to be some sort of vaguely person-shaped void or three dwarven figures stacked in a six foot tall suit of armor for all the trouble he goes through to avoid the idea of visible humanity, it would be him.

"Then naught can prove I lied." Her grin has more teeth than it needs. She feels a little gleeful at the prospect of someone actually going along with her harebrained schemes, actually giving her ideas a moment to breathe. "Just a concerned citizen, me. Helping out. I'm bloody charitable."

“On your way, then.”

He’ll owe her for this, in gratitude. Whatever time it takes for her to see to the task of shouting away gathered bathers like frightened cockatrice, Gabranth spends mulling ways to repay her— things she surely must want or appreciate.

He supposes he can think of one.

Jone saunters in, and about seven minutes later, the majority of the bathhouse residents shamble out, looks of concern ready on their faces. Some of them spot Gabranth, and while his armor may generally grant him a wide berth, now it also elicit looks of pity.

Jone comes out later, evidently arguing with a woman in a robe, hair still wet. "He's a very holy man," Jone embellishes. The woman rolls her eyes and wanders away.

Jone grins up at Gabranth. "Told you, mate."

Edited (keyboard....) 2021-04-09 17:21 (UTC)

"Come." Spoken as he moves past her without so much as a tilt of his helmet, that remarkably heavy cloak brushing faintly against her in the process, a vague little tug across the set of his shoulders that he hardly minds.

He can't imagine this will last long, the lull between visitors.

She bats the cloak away, still faintly smiling. "Don't worry, luv, I'll keep watch. I don't do favors half way."

She doesn't do anything half way, not if she can help it, but she's had her brag for the day, and she's still grinning like a loon. Maybe keep it down for once?

"That is not what I requested."

Those footfalls stop, audible enough to emphasize the given point. Helmet turning towards his shoulder, catching the light just along the curvature of those heavy horns.

He had, after all, demanded she come with him.

"Right, right."

Jone generally isn't one to follow orders blindly, especially when given so little context; part of the reason she's a mercenary is the freedom to make up her own mind about which jobs she takes, how, and why. But Gabranth's a mate, and his stubborn composure reminds her, in this moment, of when he foisted her armor back on her.

It does nothing to weaken the smile still clinging to her face.

"Odd bird, ain't you. Ain't we all, though." She reaches up to poke-- lightly, lightly-- one of his horns as she follows him.

It’s a simple enough thing, locating a decorative partition to step behind. Seeing to the matter of tugging off the countless straps that line where armor runs across his forearms— taut laces following shortly thereafter.

“Keeping to the doorway ought be sufficient enough for your work.”

From there she can speak to him, can hear him without straining whether he’s casting aside armor or sinking deeply into warm water. A full view of any incoming traffic should manage the rest of her chosen duty: she can turn visitors away as she likes.

The process in its entirety is tiresome. Perhaps that’s why he limits the amount of times he goes through the motions: bracers, guards, shoulders— laces, buckles, breastplate, leathers and leg guards and the thickly woven cloth-armor beneath last to peel off with a single, firm pull from overhead. Still, considering Jone’s own familiarity with matters of dress and knighthood, the time he burns doing it might come as nothing but routine.

In the end, his hair feels loose without the burden of his helm, his shoulders lighter, as if a different person entirely, and he finds himself exhaling for the trouble, as he’s not been able to sleep without some form of protection while the long journey was made, rough hands scrubbed along the back of his neck for a beat.

“The party,” he starts, moving directly from screen to bathing pool with only the faint sound of displaced water to mark it. “You intend to dress for the affair, do you not?”

Jone considers how, if this were happening even four years earlier, she'd be peeking. Orlais really fucked her, didn't it? And now she's back, unwilling to be cowed by sense or manner. What a virago she is, truly.

Yet Gabranth sounds so much more relaxed, in that moment of quiet, she can't stop the feeling of pride in her heart. A gift, she gave a gift, for all the silly strangeness of it. She can never quite manage to just give; it's a good day when, against all odds, she can.

"Nothing too fancy," she says. "I been to these before. Fereldan muscle ain't expected to clean up too nicely, lucky me."

His own palm draws up, scraping a listless path across his forehead, his neck braced against the side of the pool, perfumed scent of oils and herbs more relaxing than he’d remembered. Judge Magisters were, when not fulfilling their duty, granted as much finery and rest as the Emperor himself. But that was an eternity ago, and since his arrival here, well—

He closes his eyes. Breathes deep. It all aches less, somehow.

“Will you petition them beforehand, then?” For her tournament funding, he means— while she still smells of clean cloth and open air, rather than the metallic tang of blood.

"For the tourney?" There's amusement in her voice that he remembered such a silly thing, and it makes her voice louder. She loathes the echo, her rough accent mocked by polished stone, and tries to ignore it.

"S'a good idea," she admits. "Though you know they'll only agree after. Have to make a bet of it. Promise the ponces a good show."

It was easier for Gabranth before he’d gotten in. Now that he’s there— now that the heat works to sink itself deep into viciously overworked muscle (he works like a man with minutes to live, wears perpetually the burden of armor save for when he sleeps, eats so infrequently that it borders on uncomfortable owing to the need for privacy)— each time his mind demands he stop soaking and focus on the matter of washing, his limbs almost refuse to move of their own accord.

But he’s far more disciplined than that.

“They’ll not lack for that.” He promises, shifting where he rests to reach for the nearest abandoned cloth.

“The others that we bring with us, how well do you know them.”

How well do you trust them.

"Trust Si with me life. He's a healer, and no slouch-- the other ginger." That is automatic, said without thought; it's obvious and genuine. "Silas, his proper name is."

She considers the rest of them. Gabranth knows how she feels about Ben already.

"Diana, I've not had cause to speak with more'n once. I trust her in a fight. Don't know her other uses, but I reckon she's got some. Clever eyes, something behind 'em."

Which just leaves...

"Edgard's good people. He don't look it. He don't know how to... to show the best of himself. But he tries, he does, and that's more'n most manage their whole bloody lives."

The rest, unmentioned, she doesn't know.

“He was the one who assisted me, when I was first cast into this world.” Edgard, he means. Few words, rough around the edges, but— undeniably sincere in both deed and speech, and there’s something about that Gabranth finds he can respect.

The sound of scrubbing slows, ebbing away for a gentle beat as Gabranth— no, as the man he’d been before that— steals a moment to sink down in warm water up to his chin. His ears. Just one second longer than he ought spare for the task.

The smallest possible indulgence.

“I might not have endured save for his intervention.”

"He did? I'll have to thank him." Jone thinks to herself, Ed could use the thanks. He might appreciate it more than most. They haven't talked much since those dreams, and that's more her fault than his. Something to rectify.

She feels more capable of fixing things in this moment, perhaps because she's just fixed something else. Remarkable, what that can do to a person.

"Good bowmen are a fucking blessing in a fight. Glad to have him. And you. That's about the size of the team I'm used to, honest."

“Why take more on, then? Aside from Lord Artemaeus.”

Asked as he shrugs off that brief lenience, head rigidly knocked back into the water to slick damp hair before it’s saturated with soap.

“Surely it isn't a matter of sympathy.”

...perhaps obligation? It occurs to him now he’d asked too little initially: she’d said come with me to slay a dragon, and he said, without so much as a breath between voices, yes.

She snorts half-laughter. What good would sympathy do anyone?

"You only need three or four fighters to down a dragon, true," she says, "but it don't look so pretty for Orlesians. They want a show. And we want the 'Watch to look impressive. That's the real point, innit?"

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