β And if that doesn't explain why a shared office won't do, he's willing to press the point. Strand balances the tray, picks a tumbled grain of rice from his sleeve. Eyes her plain.
(When she'd startled, he'd spied it as if in slow-motion. He moves slowly these days to match.)
"There's a storeroom with thick walls," Out of earshot of the dozen other busybodies in Riftwatch's leadership. "Or we can discuss it here and now."
The name does give her pause, and she eyes the Warden with an expression a step between alarm and suspicion for a long moment before beginning to move again.
"The events of the Pass were reported on in detail by Messere Porthmeus. As far as I know, his report is open to access by any member of the organization. It's unlikely that I will be able to elucidate the matter any further for you."
Unlikely, but not impossible, depending on what precisely he wants to knowβshe's not refusing to answer any questions, just making clear she may not provide anything he couldn't get elsewhere. As they walk, they pass the storeroom Strand spoke of, and Ness's steps don't so much as slow. There is one office guaranteed to be empty at the moment, which will be a mite more comfortable than a storeroom.
"Is an archive one account?" Rhetorical. "Warden Siorus also gave a report,"
Under the brush of new eyelids, translucent and horizontal and better at home on a frog.
"Which is why I've traveled such a distance for yours." They're past the room he'd staked, and he marks it; and he follows. "Indulge me the repetition."
Porthmeus had wanted expertise, and Strand was nearest to hand. But he isn't a scholar, he doesn't own a library, or a breadth of connections; anything but sour blood and a dead man's notes. Porthmeus wanted the Wardens' expertise. The Wardens want theirs.
Despite her determination to appear cool, unflappable, professional, especially in front of new recruits... Ness can't help a twitch of her eye and a sharp, then measured inhale at the Warden's blatant appeal to her vocation. The implication that she should want to talk about this to him, that if she doesn't she isn't really devoted to her principlesβ
She doesn't say anything. She leads Strand to the Quartermaster's office and shuts the door behind them. The bookshelves, now empty, stand against the wall. The dark, heavy desk which floats in the middle of the room still holds a handful of paperwork, ledgers and logs strewn haphazardly over the surface. Against the rear wall, various trunks and crates crowd each other next to an over-full shelf of linens and uniforms. Even devoid an occupant, there is much for one to look at in the Quartermaster's office.
Ness's eyes are drawn unerringly to a faintly-visible stain on the floor, where no one was able to scrub her blood from the flagging. She crosses to it and crouches, presses her hand to the stone and whispers a spell.
When she straightens, the stone beneath her palm sparkles incongruently clean on the dirt-strewn and scuffed floor.
"What, precisely, would you like me to say, Messere?"
She smears at the blood, and he's busy at the work he'd hoped to avoid, seeing that no one else on the crowded floor will overhear. But whatever she gets out of this place, the decision itself will do.
"You came upon a pool of corrupted lyrium," Brine, grey, a jog to memory. "How did the Darkspawn behave around it?"
That much was absent from the written account. Assured of the door, he does up one sleeve. Another: The veins gnarl black up his wrists, branches wired about a tight line of scar.
She may sound dry as the Hissing Wastes and resentful of his insistence on the topic at allβbut she's considering, too, because not being able to answer the exact question he asked doesn't mean she has no information to offer at all. Ness hums, mind on the treasure-seeker's diary, the state of the village, the children trapped in their cellar, how it all culminated in the Deep Roads. There is a story that can be spun by putting each piece of the whole together, a puzzle of Darkspawn and lyriumβbut it requires so much conjecture, assumption, inference.
"It's hard to say anything about the events of the Pass before we arrived there with any certainty," she says eventually, sighing, "but what we saw did suggest a Darkspawn raid was what finally left the village abandoned, and that the Darkspawn who conducted the raid were mutated by the lyrium in the same manner as we would discover native Thedosians could be.
"But they left no bodies, Warden," she says quietly, "I don't think they killed a single person. We fought mutated humans below the Deep Roads right beside the Darkspawn."
Strand settles on a crate. Watches her think. There's a familiar wind-up to these things, the way that a riddle's spun and unspun. Pleasure in seeing a thing done well: When you need an expert, you seek one.
"Unusual," As she'll have read enough to know. The Wardens keep their secrets, but the waste laid by Darkspawn is written across book and battlefield. Half this city was once Ferelden. "Even the old, the young?"
Even the men, he does not ask. Some things can be kept within the Order.
"The Taint β" Forearm extended, he taps fingers over black. "β Runs through every Darkspawn. It's how they communicate, it's how Corypheus moves them. And if you're correct, something else has found a way to interfere."
"The old, the young," the siblings, fused into a single being, monstrous and wailing and confused, "everyone."
It's a conclusion which has occurred to her beforeβthere was something different about these Darkspawn, priorities which did not match what she'd read of those of an Archdemon or Corypheus himself, but far as she is from an expert Ness has been unwilling to linger on them. Instincts validated, she unspools that thread again, considers its implications, supporting evidence, possible conclusions, pacing the floor.
"The men we hired to bring us to the Pass," she says, "the brothersβthey were not visibly Tainted, nor were they mutated. But when we came to the nest, they were clearly affected by it. They attempted... well. It's in the report, what happened there."
No reason to rehash itβto possibly tell the Warden more than he is meant to knowβshe will have to reread the report, to see what story they have committed to posterity.
"They weren't Tainted. But they were maddened, terrified, and driven to a goal. Something had a will in that room, and it bent both a nest of Darkspawn and a village of humans to its ends."
mea culpa for long delays, blanket it's ok to drop etc
"If it was buriable, there are limits to its influence. A radius."
There's one for the sense that pushes at his own, for any Blighted place, for Corypheus; greater again, an archdemon. This isn't only Taint, but if it works within it, they might set a perimeter. His knuckles fold.
"When you first met them, how certain are you the brothers were themselves?"
Back in Tallo, the fish would drift up sometimes, dangling a light before their jaws. A guide into the dark.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
β And if that doesn't explain why a shared office won't do, he's willing to press the point. Strand balances the tray, picks a tumbled grain of rice from his sleeve. Eyes her plain.
(When she'd startled, he'd spied it as if in slow-motion. He moves slowly these days to match.)
"There's a storeroom with thick walls," Out of earshot of the dozen other busybodies in Riftwatch's leadership. "Or we can discuss it here and now."
no subject
"The events of the Pass were reported on in detail by Messere Porthmeus. As far as I know, his report is open to access by any member of the organization. It's unlikely that I will be able to elucidate the matter any further for you."
Unlikely, but not impossible, depending on what precisely he wants to knowβshe's not refusing to answer any questions, just making clear she may not provide anything he couldn't get elsewhere. As they walk, they pass the storeroom Strand spoke of, and Ness's steps don't so much as slow. There is one office guaranteed to be empty at the moment, which will be a mite more comfortable than a storeroom.
For him, anyway.
no subject
Under the brush of new eyelids, translucent and horizontal and better at home on a frog.
"Which is why I've traveled such a distance for yours." They're past the room he'd staked, and he marks it; and he follows. "Indulge me the repetition."
Porthmeus had wanted expertise, and Strand was nearest to hand. But he isn't a scholar, he doesn't own a library, or a breadth of connections; anything but sour blood and a dead man's notes. Porthmeus wanted the Wardens' expertise. The Wardens want theirs.
no subject
She doesn't say anything. She leads Strand to the Quartermaster's office and shuts the door behind them. The bookshelves, now empty, stand against the wall. The dark, heavy desk which floats in the middle of the room still holds a handful of paperwork, ledgers and logs strewn haphazardly over the surface. Against the rear wall, various trunks and crates crowd each other next to an over-full shelf of linens and uniforms. Even devoid an occupant, there is much for one to look at in the Quartermaster's office.
Ness's eyes are drawn unerringly to a faintly-visible stain on the floor, where no one was able to scrub her blood from the flagging. She crosses to it and crouches, presses her hand to the stone and whispers a spell.
When she straightens, the stone beneath her palm sparkles incongruently clean on the dirt-strewn and scuffed floor.
"What, precisely, would you like me to say, Messere?"
no subject
"You came upon a pool of corrupted lyrium," Brine, grey, a jog to memory. "How did the Darkspawn behave around it?"
That much was absent from the written account. Assured of the door, he does up one sleeve. Another: The veins gnarl black up his wrists, branches wired about a tight line of scar.
no subject
"I regret to disappoint you, Warden, but there was hardly an opportunity to observe their behaviour before the melΓ©e began. I can't offer any more insight on the topic than Warden Siorus might have."
She may sound dry as the Hissing Wastes and resentful of his insistence on the topic at allβbut she's considering, too, because not being able to answer the exact question he asked doesn't mean she has no information to offer at all. Ness hums, mind on the treasure-seeker's diary, the state of the village, the children trapped in their cellar, how it all culminated in the Deep Roads. There is a story that can be spun by putting each piece of the whole together, a puzzle of Darkspawn and lyriumβbut it requires so much conjecture, assumption, inference.
"It's hard to say anything about the events of the Pass before we arrived there with any certainty," she says eventually, sighing, "but what we saw did suggest a Darkspawn raid was what finally left the village abandoned, and that the Darkspawn who conducted the raid were mutated by the lyrium in the same manner as we would discover native Thedosians could be.
"But they left no bodies, Warden," she says quietly, "I don't think they killed a single person. We fought mutated humans below the Deep Roads right beside the Darkspawn."
no subject
"Unusual," As she'll have read enough to know. The Wardens keep their secrets, but the waste laid by Darkspawn is written across book and battlefield. Half this city was once Ferelden. "Even the old, the young?"
Even the men, he does not ask. Some things can be kept within the Order.
"The Taint β" Forearm extended, he taps fingers over black. "β Runs through every Darkspawn. It's how they communicate, it's how Corypheus moves them. And if you're correct, something else has found a way to interfere."
no subject
It's a conclusion which has occurred to her beforeβthere was something different about these Darkspawn, priorities which did not match what she'd read of those of an Archdemon or Corypheus himself, but far as she is from an expert Ness has been unwilling to linger on them. Instincts validated, she unspools that thread again, considers its implications, supporting evidence, possible conclusions, pacing the floor.
"The men we hired to bring us to the Pass," she says, "the brothersβthey were not visibly Tainted, nor were they mutated. But when we came to the nest, they were clearly affected by it. They attempted... well. It's in the report, what happened there."
No reason to rehash itβto possibly tell the Warden more than he is meant to knowβshe will have to reread the report, to see what story they have committed to posterity.
"They weren't Tainted. But they were maddened, terrified, and driven to a goal. Something had a will in that room, and it bent both a nest of Darkspawn and a village of humans to its ends."
mea culpa for long delays, blanket it's ok to drop etc
There's one for the sense that pushes at his own, for any Blighted place, for Corypheus; greater again, an archdemon. This isn't only Taint, but if it works within it, they might set a perimeter. His knuckles fold.
"When you first met them, how certain are you the brothers were themselves?"
Back in Tallo, the fish would drift up sometimes, dangling a light before their jaws. A guide into the dark.