middaeg | Intro Overflow: May

[ The lightening sky is a happier guide than milling and confused strangers, and seeing the quiet horizon doesn't make Nel feel so terribly alone. Just before dawn is normally when she wakes up for the day and goes methodically through her routines, one by one, starting with the physical...

His explanations, the information she'll remember was freely given, are totally and utterly alien; the closest comparison would be the Daemonium, but any short summary of that place is sure to offend when this Fade couldn't sound any fonder. For every similarity there are three more obvious differences.

Nel digests what he's shared, peeling off a leather glove and its stiff armguard attachment. Now bared, a rune larger than the vertical calligraphy-like script that runs down her thighs is carved into the fine-boned back of her hand. There's no way to tell how old the artwork is (if he should choose to think of it as such), but the red is vivid, not faded and not fresh. ]

I have no experience with what you describe. Just this art-- runology, something my people inherit. [ A secret art. Should it still be secret? ]

These are inscribed into us to quicken spells and more complicated manipulations of energy, like... the mold for a new sword, if the sword was made of shapeless force. They contain no 'magic' except for what I ask them to.

[ Her throat sticks, and she frowns. Nel is not used to her thoughts or voice abruptly ending. ] They conduct it... conducted it. Now they're like phantom limbs. Something should be there that isn't. My awareness of what's around us is completely dampened, too.

[The design is unlike any of his world, of course – much as Nel’s clothing. It’s a little like wild calligraphy moreso than dwarven runes, and quite as opaque as any unknown language.

They still recall lyrium. But from her explanation it is lyrium mages can use, that only carries magic when it is consciously summoned to it. Far safer than any known application of lyrium – a clever and useful art indeed. He hms in appreciation, of that. Murmurs, also, a commiseration.]

It is unnerving. All my senses tell me it is there, yet all I find is that it is my senses which are delusive.

[The markings recall other things, as well. They are certainly not vallaslin – but. Something my people inherit is disquieting. He stifles any outward expression of concern beyond his sympathetic interest, while thinking of inscribed into us – herself in there as object, something done to them. Needing to know, but not wanting to cause offence (as he perhaps has before), he balances awareness of her cultural pride and his own distrusts and fears. Lightly:]

Are all your people inscribed with the runes, or is it a selective honour? [Much as being a sentinel bound to a well in eternal vigil, and eternal sorrow, is a selective honour --]

Selective...

[ Worrisome, how the end of each thought splits into many different directions, like the slow birth of lightning. Nel must focus, for her sake and to show him the facade of an unaffected woman, if that hasn't already been lost. She presses her tongue to the back of her teeth. ]

Those who aren't in our military don't need to access so many runes in succession. They're not a requirement, but why make our jobs harder? Temporary discomfort is a small price to pay.

[ What Nel does not say:

She was very young when she gave consent, barely in training.

The gorgeous calligraphy isn't always written with delicate needles. Faster and yet still thorough application may call for a branding, as she tolerated. They're something more than ink, after all. ]

I once believed the potential for runology to be limited, but after seeing so much of the world, it isn't something I can say for certain anymore.

[ And she drops the study of her hand, letting it fall to her side, where it faces Solas with shifting red. ]

[Badges of their military, then. He matches the woman he sees before him with what he knows of a soldier. He finds they’re a fitting match for each other. Something familiar, though an alien of another world. Straight-backed, muscular and assertive: tongue in teeth, biting back any emotional tells, especially ones that would show weakness. Guarded and guarding - and guarding her people’s secrets. He doesn’t press further, only comments to suggest fellow feeling and understanding:]

I understand. In a struggle for power, one takes the advantages they may. And if a secret grants them power, [over rivals, or over the rest of the population] they would strive to keep it.

[There’s a crest of cool pink appearing in the lightening sky. From their vantage, they can see smoke, doubtlessly from the bonfires Nerissa spoke of, trailing lazy lines over the dawn.]

Yes. I appreciate your being quick to comprehend.

[ Rather than say the other things crawling off the end of her tongue, Nel turns her withdrawn gaze to the dawn after the path she and Solas have gone down introduces them to a secluded trellis and garden; some plants she recognizes for their poisonous properties, but her eyes are on the light, that inexorable, inevitable beginning.

She isn't cognizant of the time between then and resting on a bench of marble, lengthy enough for a partner to join without their sides touching. The look on her face is empty of anything describable. Some spell cast by the newborn sun demands that she be truthful. ]

Traditions are entrenched and backed by resentment, misinformation. It's in the history we're taught.

[Sitting has always felt too much like idleness. When he sits now, he’s made uncomfortably aware of the unnatural fatigue clinging to his body. He diagnoses himself, clinical: ordinarily, his body is passively sustained by the Fade. As long as he remains here, he will no doubt have to contend with tiredness (and hunger, and sickness...) as often as a human.

Needing to attend to something so mundane as his own physiology also feels too close to idleness. Every moment wasted is a moment he is not helping rid the world of Corypheus, a moment he is not working towards regaining the orb…

He watches the sky. Thinks of history, which is a sort of idleness as well.]

The first battle of every war is waged to win minds. Truth is an early casualty. [Fear and petty distinctions serve better. His kin were in this way slowly consumed and changed.]

It is difficult for a soldier. You see upfront the falsehoods for what they are, yet you must fight on as though heedless.

[ Any sleep deprivation and the effects thereof is such a familiar friend that it hardly bears noting, when Nel examines her own condition. More concerning is the deep cold in her chest where breath is drawn. It's good that they've sat for the moment.

Early casualties.

A cutting remark that she echoes to herself, only condemning as truth can be. Her veins feel like ice, freezing over and pumping blood too sluggishly. ]

The queen I obey doesn't encourage the spread of misinformation.

[ Neither does she discourage it. But as Nel would rather die on the spot than be heard to question the purity of purpose, the perfection that Aquaria XXVII, Romeria Zin Emurille, must always have, her lips only form words to worship. ]

Her subjects, however, can be led astray by anyone who wishes to benefit from their limited experience. We were at war for a very long time... complacency and privilege nearly ruined us, as well as the enemy's sheer brutality.

I won't be complacent here. [ 'We are at war' is implied. The sky leeches pink threads from the rising sun. ]

Edited (xxxxvvvii) 2019-05-27 01:53 (UTC)

[There’s the scent of fire in the air.]

When you live in the fires of war, you are forged anew. You are tempered into what you must be to achieve victory. When you do, war becomes home, and peace a foreign land.

[His people warred for an aeon to surmount their implacable ancestral nemeses: the pillars of the very earth. They had to, they said, else the cost would be their great cities. At the time, he had been so loyal and proud, had thought it all so right. Perhaps it was, and the war was justified: but it came with a terrible cost. A slow poison. Over time, the changes it brought did more to destroy his people than the earthquakes ever could.

He watches her sidelong. He’s seen the sun rise a million times, but a person of similar experience is rarer.]

[ A flash, a fraction, a tense millisecond of the impulse to slit his throat freezes Nel's blood. She can trace it back to an irrational terror that Solas can peer into her head and know every thought. Identifying the quickly passing urge can't immediately soothe the vein that stands out in her neck. Letting seconds march past without further murderous interference does the trick.

She swallows, glad that her eyes were turned to dawn and not to him. ]

Peace requires intervention to achieve and to maintain. It's just a different kind of warfare. I know what I just said about complacency, but it's imperative that not everyone knows the price. How could they live with it?

[He turns his head to regard her. How could they live with it? As though the truth is too awful to know, and their hearts would give out in despair.

He believes in secrets kept to maintain power. He believes in secrets so dangerous keeping them is a matter of safety, lest power-hungry fools destroy all. He is not sure he believes in secrets kept in kindness. The greatest kindness, he believes, is the truth, however terrible the truth may be. However happier all might be believing the lie.]

Is that what you think?

[The words themselves in another context would be hostile, but he delivers them with a softened up-lilt. Not rhetoric, but an actual question: is it what she’s come to think, or what she’s been told to think?]

[ Echoes of two others, a man and a boy who fell from the sky in a weapon, lend the query more emotional impact than she would prefer.

Nel shies from this, this... compulsion to honesty, painfully aware that whatever shroud of sacredness and secrecy this moment offers, it cannot be true. She controls and regulates her breathing with too much effort for comfort. Still, she looks to the sun.

The weight of him is apparently dismissed and unremarked upon. ]

Why should my thoughts matter?

[That is an answer, he doesn’t point out, the answer any loyal soldier invariably internalises at some point. Instead he obligingly heeds it as a polite ‘back off’, with a neutral]

Hm.

[and turns his head back towards the sunlight. A long moment elapses in the hush of dawn. The sun’s a bright ellipse, now, and it’s a radiant sight, but he watches the twin moons. They’ve been turned by the light of day into dwindling, ephemeral things, though they lit up the night. When he breaks the silence, it’s in a voice as faded as those moons.]

The light of this world has pierced my illusions. I had never imagined so much lay beyond the narrow confines of what I had imagined was all of reality. Not until I saw how small my world looked, reflected in the mirror.

If there is any chance I can learn here how my world can yet be saved... [Or rather, be saved without such an awful price. A vow, made to the sunrise:]

I will search. In the hope Geargadas has more truths yet to reveal to us.

[ Nel focuses on the seconds between each inhale, each exhale, because the alternative is to dwell on that mysterious 'hm' and turn it over and over and over again, never getting any closer to solving it.

The subdued pitch of his rejoinder restores some of that precious equilibrium. If this speaks to vulnerability, let his be the carrion to occupy the crows. ]

Small, maybe. Narrow, sure, or confined. That world is yours.

[ It hurts. Her throat and head hurt. Illusions pierced, reflections cracking, splintering, clocks and time and the fabric of a universe ripping... gone. Returned. Inexplicable, and still everything in a sacred kingdom is meant to be the same. ]

What's mine is mine. I won't compromise one reality for another, but you have my sword arm.

[Her choice of maxim is wearying. Perhaps because it is the kind he would have said himself, long, long ago, when he believed in his brave, empty words. It’s easy to assert you wouldn’t sacrifice one world to save your own when you’ve never faced such a choice. He does not admire it – but he wouldn’t wish the choice upon her, either.]

That is all I could ask.

[They’re in the light of a sunrise in full bloom, but half his face is hidden by the shadow it casts. They are allies, then – to a point. It’s better to face a new day and a new world with that in hand.]

Intro Overflow: May

revives from zombie state to reinfect this thread

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