faderift | 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.

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"Jone," he starts, attempting to catch a word in edgewise as she so visibly battles her own impulses, that stolid voice of his catching differently without the barrier of metal between them. Whatever seething contempt had snaked its way into his veins is no more, lost in the way she recoils from him.

Ironic that the armor served as better comfort than his own face.

"How can you stand me, when you-" She shakes her head, it's just daft, making it about her, but that's where her thoughts keep returning. She puts her head in her hands, now hiding her face.

"So bloody much for being able to handle it."

It's her game to lose, and she has.

"Enough."

What is he to say? What kindness can he offer? He is more ill suited for the matter of ease than his own brother (and Basch was nearly just as stoic in mercy given or outstretched hand)— he hardly means for his voice to bear a cutting edge, but it's there all the same: lingering in his tone like a command, though he knows she's hardly one to tolerate it.

The harshness of his tone gets her attention, her spine suddenly rigid, her face up and expression harsh. She gives his armor, his shoulder, a push.

"Don't you fucking tell me what to do, prettyboy. Bloody- it's perfectly bloody reasonable, getting spooked. How's I to know there was a fucking- a fucking statue under there. Maker!" Another push. "You're an arse, Gabranth."

Which is to say, her confidence is back. She's never known what to do with kindness.

It’s easier with that burdensome helm in place. To be shoved and seem immobile against that desperate momentum, to be barked at and weather it without glimpse of anger, or embittered frustration.

Instead, she reaches out to push him, and his lip twists back into a scowl for it.

Gauntleted hand rising to snare her outstretched wrist, working to pull it aside in order to cease that volatile shift, rather than weather it without consequence.

He’s always expected more from those around him than from himself.

“Be silent before you are heard—“

She lets him grab her wrist, only to lean in closer, whispers hissing forth, "I'll say what I like, Gabranth. I'll lay down me life you you, but you don't own any part of me. None do. That idea might just get through to you, without the metal fucking interference."

She's close enough in that moment to likely feel the heat as he exhales through his nose in the wake of her coarse whispers, snarling lip still set and twitching with the vivid aftershocks of his own frustration.

Why? Why does she reel, and falter and fight—? What has he offered her that she did not ask for from the moment they first met? She makes him to be the villain, so far as he understands, and—

And he's tired. So much so that his hold on her recedes to settle instead on his own helm, warring somewhere inside as to whether or not he'd played the fool in thinking such a revelation suited either of them.

"You wanted to know the truth," words dripping with vitriol, with the sting of what feels akin to rejection in that moment prickling along the back of his neck— soon covered by the weight of his helmet once more. "Bask in it, Daughter of Denerim."

"And do not think to depart without me."

She tamps down on the bubble of laughter-- if she goes from sad, to angry, to sniggering, he's going to think she's gone mad.

"I did," she says, still whispering, not giving an inch. "And I lost me bloody mind over it. Told you, people call me a monster. But you know what? I don't regret it."

'—I lost me bloody mind over it'

He pauses where he’s already risen to take his leave, his fist clenched so tight at that whispered little addendum that the leather in his grip gives an audible creak. It takes a single breath for some sane part of his mind to urge dignity— discipline— and another before he’s whirled on her, that heavy cape fluttering at his back where he leans in with an index finger pointed furiously at her seemingly satisfied expression.

The first to break his own demand for hushed caution, growling words without suppression:

“Was that all this was to you? A means to mock me?"

No, Of course not— if he’d take a moment to even look back on her fearful response to the sight of him surely he could recognize that it wasn’t done in jest at his expense.

But he’s beyond rationality now, such as he's always been too quick to burn.

And she realizes that she's fucked it all up. That she has the right to is indisputable. But that doesn't mean she should have. She knows this, knows it fucking well, but living by that credo is hard, always has been. She's always too rough, when people need ease and comfort.

Gabranth did, and- "I failed you."

The words pop out of her mouth, unbidden. So much for self control.

She can't make any excuses for herself. It feels like lying. Better to stay small on the grass, an easy target, ready to be hit. Her bell is overdue for a ringing.

"I'll make it up to you. I will." She doesn't think she can, but an impossible promise, in this moment, is too tantalizing to pass up. The inevitable failure is what she craves, ample punishment for ruining a fledgling friendship.

A flame can’t carry without air to keep it burning, and her admission serves all too suddenly as cut fuel for whatever spark his own hateful heart had been working hard to ignite. She stalls him there, where he still looms, stance still posed as if he means to be a threat: back hunched, shoulders drawn too far forward, but—

The sharp huff that leaves him is clearly one of disbelief, not malice.

What is this? Why does she—

“ —what?”

She doesn't move. She doesn't have any right to.

He needed something, and she didn't give it; it's simple, really. It's her job to protect him, as much as he sees it necessary to protect her (that order barked at Ben flickers in her mind, now free of battle's heat). And she fucked it up and hurt him.

She doesn't say that; she's not a completely fucking thick.

"I failed you," she repeats, neither sorrowful or angry. It's just a fact. "I never know... I always hit too hard."

Metaphorically and physically. She'd done the same thing with Ben, at first-- pushed him too far and scared him senseless. That she hasn't done it again is a testament to her own caution, which she's sure will fail with time.

(She always expects people to just take the blow, like she does, while knowing she'd hate to see such a fall under her fists.)

He doesn't like it. To look at someone else and see himself.

Maybe that was the problem with his brother as well, for everything he so despised was only ever the shadow of his own reflection, staring him fully in the face— reaching out for acknowledgement. All bitterness aside, all oaths forgotten, even after an eternity of waking nightmare he still finds himself utterly incapable of bearing it on his own.

"I..."

He'd asked her not to think too much of him, once. What must she think of him now?

"We shall not speak of this now." said as if he means to bargain for time, or perhaps a better frame of mind for the both of them— but what it really means is that not now, if left alone, will become ever.

Jone nods, taking his words at face value. The thought of never seeing his face again inspires fledgling feelings of fear. "Get some sleep," she says instead. "We'll leave late tomorrow; I'll want to see everyone out of the Planes first."

She turns back to the stars.

CLOSED | the perfect stormrider.

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