katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

This prompts a look about the room, as if he were to look hard enough at the miscellaneous patrons of the public house they might reveal the purpose behind Marcus' apparent wish for casual anonymity. Not that he can't hazard a guess or two, though the first one—playing people out of their money at cards—doesn't seem particularly applicable to this particular floor.

So, glance pivoting back in Marcus' direction:

"That may explain why only the barkeep is buying you drinks."

The barb is not expected, but not so sharp. There's a slant of humour to his pause, testing the pointy end of it, the taste of ale on his tongue.

"Are you suggesting I ought to be friendlier?" has a mild emphasis on you.

"That would depend," he says, very logically and measured. He's never been unserious a day in his life and this isn't a joke. "On whether you care to have drinks bought for you or not."

He doesn't set his cup down, but the gentle motion Flint makes with both hands above the table's edge, the rising of his eyebrows, and the tilt of his temple all suggest that this is simple math. That he is helpless but to make this calculation, and that Marcus ought not to shoot the messenger. Moreover, definitely don't attribute any humor to him, or note the wolfish glint in the eye.

Marcus says 'mm', as in, do you think so, evaluating gentle hand motion, the serious slant to his expression, the notable wolfish glint.

He tips his head as well, a semi-conscious mirroring, as he says, "That would depend how well into the month we are," which doesn't have any real note of self-deprecation in it. Another round of thumping reverberates through the wooden slats under their feet, so he speaks up just a little to continue with, "You can pick the next tavern."

Flint's snorting inhale is related to a laugh, wry bitten humor drawn predominantly in the slant of his brow and mouth behind both whiskers and the cup. Rather than immediately reply—he isn't well acquainted with many generous barkeeps—, he swallows down a healthy measure of the cup's contents and allows his attention to twist back toward the musician stood on the chair.

She is pretty; dark eyed, with high cheekbones and a sharp chin. By the time she gets to her chorus next, her audience has been trained well enough that she needn't do much more than tap her foot at the appropriate time to set them to beating the rythmn. Indeed, she has nearly stopped her playing entirely and only strums here and there to set the key (not that the accompaniment was particularly complex to begin with).

Here though, she takes up the finger picking of the lute once more and presumably intends to jaunt along for a few bars before they return to rollick through the chorus once more. She only makes a few measures of headway however before the door from the street opens and a girl of eight or nine comes hurrying in, calling in a shrill voice, "Marlena! Marlena!" as she weaves through the tables and chairs and carousing patrons toward the lutenist.

Something in the setting, the small amount of alcohol, the ease of it, invites Marcus to cut a smile across his face—a little reflexively crooked, still fleeting, but a quicker thing to gain than normal.

"That's what I thought," he says, for no immediate reply, for twisted aside attention. He focuses on his own cup, drinking deeper. An excursion to a gambling table would, he thinks, provide them amusement. Or a proper venue with proper food—not proper-proper, but something more substantial and purposeful than the hazy afterthought of a bowl full of whatever they'd prepared for the midday patrons, tertiary to ale and liquor. Or—

A shout attracts some attention, cutting through thought, but just a glance aside during the pull of ale.

His face half turned from Marcus, there is nonetheless some visible flex of muscle in his cheek that suggests some tug may be occuring at the farther corner of Flint's mouth. Stupid, he thinks. They should quit this at one another's fingertips, finish their drinks, and be on their way.

From the looks of things, even the music may be over soon. For the slight girl has broken free of the patrons, and has reached the lutenist's chair where she may tug at the pretty woman's hem. A brief, stubborn moment of attempting to ignore the child gives way quickly enough to some booing and hissing, quelled by the musician's laugh and a conciliatory hand gesture.

"My sister, ladies and gentlemen. Isn't she the sweetest little thing?" seems to win back some favor lost by the interruption.

With a winning smile for her audience, the lutenist bends to lend the child her ear nearly in the same moment that the crystal on its cord around Flint's neck illuminates—a dull blue glow against the folds of his dark shirt.

There's a semi-frequent thought that Marcus has, when they take to the Kirkwall taverns and let rooms, of interrupting the journey itself to pull Flint somewhere dark and only reasonably out of sight and see how much they wish to try to get away with. And then each time, he keeps preferring a bed. Maybe this evening could use a little regression, something cheaper, more frantic and stupid, more divorced from the heavy weight they'd wriggled out from under when they were last in Flint's quarters.

A return to form, maybe. It isn't unappealing, especially if they make it to a bed regardless. He is not plotting this in any true detail or intent so much as semi-consciously feeling out the shape of the evening as they finish their drinks, before his eyeline darts down to that bloom of mild blue light.

Hm. Swallowing down more ale, Marcus suggests, "Ignore that," which is somewhat unserious, given he's purposely drawing Flint's focus, a nod to the source.

His attention summarily drops, a flicker of irritation catching briefly at the corners of his mouth and the line of his brow as he catches sight of the glow himself. His mind instantly travels to the last sharp word he'd cut across that Maker-damned war table; if this is some additional wrinkle in that argument, he'll find an hour in the not too distant future to smother the offending party in their sleep.

The heavy cant of his exhale as he takes another swig from his cup and then sets it aside implies that no, he isn't going to ignore it. Although wouldn't it be pleasant to do so.

"Pardon," is a grunt of a sound as he takes the crystal up between both hands. Across the public room, the lutenist steps down from her chair.

The sudden bark of sound that spills free of the crystal when Flint twists the blue stone between the fingertips is brisk, sharp and demanding. The sort of tenor that raises the small hairs on the back of the neck even before the meaning of words can really be parsed. Which is fortunate, as Flint doesn't actually hear much of what's being said—('—are you? Riders are making for the eyrie as we speak—')—over the alarmed shout that rises in the tavern as a man with a bloodied face comes crashing in through the doorway.

A minor tip of his head communicates it's fine. He can, in the meantime, enjoy the collateral bolstering to the ego for Flint's visible irritation for the evening's interruption.

It doesn't last. Marcus' incuriousity and wandering focus vanish and sharpen, respectively, looking to the crystal, that specific pitch of urgency carried through it. Icy, the blood that goes through him at the next heart beat out, some nerve-deep recognition while the higher functions are slower to catch up.

He looks to the shout across the tavern, a snap of attention that is all at once alert, and background noises he might have ignored now simmer to the surface. There is shouting, outside. There are people running past, in the street. The man who crashed in is gesturing. Speaking earnestly. Someone gripping his shoulder, trying to calm him. The revelry of the tavern has simmered down low enough that some words make it back to where they're posted at the back of it: winged beasts, attacking the docks, over the Gallows.

The tankard is set down as he looks to Flint.

No similar such look is returned. Instead, Flint pushes abruptly up to his feet, impatiently kicking clear of the chair that threatens to catch at either his coat hems or the sheathed sword at his hip. And then he's moving, and presumably Marcus will follow as about them the other patrons of the public house surge in uncertain directions—toward and away from the gaping front door, both for and scattering from the man with the bloodied face who has caught himself on the first table and is leaking all over it. One of the tavern's girls had balled up her apron, and is moving to clamp it over the split in the skull—

And then Flint is shoving past the stunned patrons clustered nervously at the door, spilling past them and into the side street and only narrowly managing not to be clipped by a woman running past.

"Any member of Riftwatch on the Kirkwall side of the harbor is to assemble at the ferry landing," is a barked order, this one illuminating Marcus' own crystal as he says it. Then he turns, veering in the opposite direction of the people scattering up the street.

Flint doesn't have to look, with the sound of Marcus' boots on the floorboards in swift pursuit. The shape of him, now, moving to crest sidelong once they're out of the crowded alehouse and moving at pace through the streets.

He doesn't have his staff. It's an imposing sort of weapon even before its magical connotations, and he stopped carrying it with him absolutely everywhere more than a year ago. It is, currently, rested in the corner of his room, useless to anyone, and he is silently reminding himself that he is perfectly battle-capable without it (over the under-conscious sounds of berating himself for its absence).

A dim shimmer of light with the pattern of his hands as they move, flashing in Flint's periphery, and then nothing. A spell held in reserve, in case its need proves more immediate. Around them, people running.

"A rider should meet us," he says. "And bring a mount or two more."

"Make the call," is brisk as an order, and does nothing to impede his pace. If Marcus can get in the air and find some vantage there, it will be to all their benefits. But there will be members of Riftwatch down here in the streets—the evening is early enough that it's highly unlikely that the two of them are the only residents of the Gallows on this side of the water—, and they will need organizing. To say nothing of the fact that the sword at Flint's own hip would be shockingly irrelevant in the air.

They reach the end of the narrow lane. Flint turns the corner, swinging in the direction of the harbor like a compass needle bristling northward. In the same beat: two dozen yards away, the sudden irregular scattering of people already running, and a scream as the shape of something fetid and bristling with teeth bursts free of the next street and plows directly into the people attempting to flee its snapping jaws.

The natural instinct is to skid to a halt.

His own glowing crystal is fished out from his collar, a twist dampening that glow before it flickers back to life. He'd caught the voice of the person mobilising the griffons, and so it's a direct line to them that he says, "Have a rider meet us at the docks, with a spare mount."

The tone of the reply is agreeable, cautionary. Monster can be saddled up but the skies aren't safe. Before Marcus can outline the logistics, they turn that corner—

It's a shock, but one he'd at least been preparing for. The crystal is abandoned on its chain for that spell to be released in a splay of hands, abjurative magics wreathing them both (and several people running past) in a bright enough flash of arcane light that the monster up ahead twitches its draconic head towards it, eyes white-blind but somehow aware. Its bent wings now flare as it hisses, its body moving in both a languid roll of grace as well as the twitches and jerks of something undead.

It turns its head to snap towards where someone had stumbled, and Marcus flings a swiftly summoned stream of rock and flame, slamming into its turned jaw and knocking it off-balance. For the moment.

The unnatural stride of the animal's gait sends the small hairs up the back of the neck prickling—a wrongness so innate that it can be nothing but intentional. Not that there was much doubt that any assault on the city of the Gallows island must be the work of either Tevinter or the Venatori, but it's one thing to be logically aware of the fact and another to be watching molten stone scouring across the face of the animated corpse of a fetid wyvern.

His sword has sprung to hand, arcane barrier crackling about his person. "Don't let it have me," is a brisk, no-nonsense instruction, and then Flint accelerates forward against the tide of fleeing pedestrians.

The wyvern's scorched face writhes back around, needle point teeth bared. It seems unlikely a sword, however deftly wielded, will convince the spirit inhabiting the creature's body to lay itself peaceably down. But from the sway and snap of the jaws, and the immediacy with which its blind-eyed attention rolls to follow the flash of the blade, it is eager for distraction.

(Presumably, Marcus doesn't need to be told to avoid setting Flint on fire alongside with the lizard.)

The instinct to chase along after Flint is bone-deep to the point that staying at range feels like a mistake, enough so that Marcus compulsively follows for a foot or two until forcing himself to stop. Empty hands hovered as he watches the other man dash off through the backstream of the crowd.

The wyvern seems ready to occupy itself with any willing (and unwilling) target that presents itself; coiling and uncoiling, venomous ichor flowing freely between its fangs as it moves to meet Flint. Beneath Flint's feet, he'll detect a tremor that ripples through the ground, light enough that it doesn't stagger him, a flash of radial light across the ground beneath the claws of the wyvern.

A rush of dust explodes up from under the beast, and it gives a croaking whine as magic rends through its body, turning muscle and bone into rock—one back leg dragging and buckling as its rotting hide cracks like old stone, disease-like in the way it spreads across its flank.

Not incapacitated or even truly injured, but slowed as its back leg is pinned and fused to the earth beneath it, front claws scrabbling at the road.

Pinned is the better alternative. It affords him the leeway to plot a course outside of the swinging arc of the wyvern's head. The rest—tearing foreleg claws and the frustrated, uncoordinated wheeling of vestigial wings—is manageable. Or more manageable than the hard clamp of jaws and the Fade-touched pant of poison dripping out of them.

The first hack of the blade at the root of one wing affects little save to send the moth eaten sinews stretching between flexed joints, the trapped corpse twisting with the effort to reach him. But the second stroke has real bite, cleaving through old brittle sinew and shriveled thin muscle with all the grace of chopping at petrified wood.

How many cuts does a spirit tolerate? More than the wyvern might have alive.

The death-rattle shriek of the wyvern is hair-raising, unnatural, strangely absent in pain so much as frustration.

Heat, suddenly—a narrow streak of it is not close enough to actually singe Flint's clothes or beard but nevertheless, fire, slipping through the space just aside him, brilliantly bright to the eye. Where Flint's blade had parted through flesh and sinew, fire lodges itself deeply in rotted muscle, deeper still, a core of burning that burrows beneath the flesh and forces the wyvern to shrink aside.

Marcus nears, brisk strides and fingers tense, maintaining the burning bright runes kept between open palms. Still tracking his sense of abjurative shielding still limning Flint's shoulders and sword-arm, still focusing on that creep of stone keeping the monster rooted to the spot.

Not so close to catch him in the radial burst of heat, no, but the burst of flame is near enough to raise a hot spike of instinct alarm under the skin—an animal sort of not-flinch in the thud of the pulse that comes from all things without magic being so close in proximity to its more bombastic (literally) workings.

He'd turn his face away from a burst of Antivan fire splashing across a ship's rail too.

The sword is held as the wyvern twists off from it, gouging the cut deeper as the corpse looks to cringe uselessly from the gout of fire tearing through its interior. Sends the vestigial wing limp, a fleshy fan dragging across the uneven paving stones no longer fit to snap anyone across the face (or face height arcane barrier).

It affords him the opportunity to cut in close alongside, turning the cutlass blade to cleave bloodlessly down behind the wyvern's crown.

It buckles beneath the blow, blind eyes rolling wild in sockets and herky-jerky twitches rolling down serpentine spine. With fire eating through its ribcage and a leg pinned to the ground, which it resists enough to tear the flesh that hasn't yet turned to stone, all that's left is butchery.

And immediately, another, heartier screech maybe a block away. One can imagine these things crawling from the water, if news of the docks being under attack has merit, and flooding into Kirkwall like infesting snakes. Or perhaps there aren't so many as that, but it's impossible to know from the street.

That streaking pulse of fire dies. Stone cracks, begins to dissolve, transformed flesh returning to its previous state and claws prying back up from the cobblestone. Marcus letting up, carefully, trading in spending his energy on faith that Flint has it—in time for the sound of screams and panic further up the street to register. He looks, sees the spill of people running, sets about casting. Fiery runes decorating the stone at that juncture, and everyone too afraid of the thing behind them to take much notice of the queer light they scamper over.

When the dead thing in pursuit of them twitches and crawls into view, hissing gouts of venom and flaring its wings—fire, a thick column of flame erupts upwards from those runes, engulfing it. Renewed screams of those nearby are just as much in response to this shock of heat and light than the thing being immolated.

He is engaged enough with the task of incapacitating the first wyvern's jaws, and then crippling it's stringy foreleg with similar single mindedness that he almost misses the glittering sheen of the glowing runes before they're detonated in a gout of fire and sizzling flesh. Chaos burst down the street with it, running figures veering in confused directions as smoke comes heaving down the roadway before it seems to remember that it's lighter than air and begins to climb rapidly up over their heads.

The first wyvern is dead already and is insistent on continuing to be that way. But a lolling head and the last whack of Flint's heavy blade parts it's forelimb from the body at a joint just as the last of the transfigured flesh sheds its scale. The body lurches, ungainly and slow, dangerous due largely to its weight and the thrashing of its broad tail— but lingering here simply to hack the undead animal to pieces is as untenable as rending the scorched mess on the other street into disparate parts simply to see it progress fully arrested. They've more pressing matters to attend to, the blue crystals to hand illuminating with the rapid fire chatter indictive of real trouble and not just confusion pouring up through Kirkwall's lower warrens.

Fuck the street, he decides in the same moment that he reaches out, catches Marcus by the back of the shoulder and shoves him in the direction of the crooked building leaning out from this end of the street. From here, he can see the patterned shade stretched over a section of the roof—suggesting some access either through the building or along its back wall.

"Go. Meet your griffon there and rendezvous with the other riders. Get me a sense of what's happening while I see to the ground."

Across the way, the burned out husk of an undead wyvern writhes in place, fire eating through too much mass for proper mobility. Twitches, stills, smoke rising off of charred black flesh, flames continuing to nibble and lick at now unmoving parts.

Marcus is shoved by a step, stops, looks back at Flint. Where a clipped word of acknowledgment and an immediate departure would go, there's hesitation, a snag of something that hooks him in place. What scuffling had just transpired while Flint was busy hacking the monster behind him to further death hasn't been enough to dispel the abjurative magic clinging to him,

but it doesn't stay forever. Flint has been fighting alongside mages for long enough, by now, to have some sense of the spell's impermanence as well as roughly how many hits it can take, so Marcus doesn't say anything before reaching back across that distance to snare a grasp at the other man's arm, and imbue that casting once again with a pulse of power, the glimmer of light that clings to himself dimming, transferring.

It doesn't make it all feel more right that he should let go and make for that building, but Marcus does anyway, adding, "Tell me when you've made it to the docks," past his shoulder as he goes. Gathering his crystal back into hand.

Then Flint too is off, cutting sharply down a narrower side street where easy prey and the likelihood of finding a wyvern might be momentarily lessened. That gleam of protective magic goes with him, arcane light clung in a bright haze about his person.

Better for all involved that Marcus be airborne. For all that abandoning the street entirely would be a mistake, someone must have eyes on the scope of this thing. And a mage, particularly one without his staff, benefits most from a good vantage. Meanwhile, he can make do with scraping along Kirkwall's back streets and side alleys, winding his way rapidly down through Lowtown's mercantile squares and poor boroughs—following instinct, and his sense of direction, and the general way that the city collapses downwards toward the waterline to guide him more than any real recognition for the particular avenues themselves.

And then, a detour. Cutting not for the docks, but for the stockyards and auction houses and their associated cut rate public houses which cluster in the streets above it. On a good day—and this one has been fine up until very recently—there are a dozen of the Carta's lowest and half over that many hired swords to be found there.

A hasty process after what feels like a lengthy wait: getting into Monster's saddle and roping the harness about his waist, shingles clattering aside under talons as she launches up into the air, snowy wings powering higher. Once in the air, it's also hasty, seeking out one of the small pouches strapped to her saddle, procuring the vial of lyrium tucked within it and drinking it down.

Kirkwall is decently lit even at this hour, street lamps and windows shining brightness from within buildings, a full moon, but it's still no easy thing, attempting to make sense of the narrow clusters of streets, the stream of those people who haven't found a place to shelter. The crystals gleam with readiness to transmit the continuous back and forth between those in the sky, but eventually, a message directly to Flint will shuffle itself to the forefront when he takes a moment to check it—

"More are coming from the water," and Marcus sounds even enough that he may as well be on the ground rather than flying in wide spirals above a city under attack. "The Gallows-side docks are overrun with them, but the gates are down, now. They're still coming into Kirkwall. They've collapsed the western wall by the harbor."

There's time, up here, to think of why in between the other more immediately relevant questions, but it's about as evasive as trying to discern the strategic priorities of several nests worth of spirit-possessed dead wyverns.

The answer is slow in coming, though that's to be expected. Meanwhile, the Kirkwall Guard will have flooded into the streets of Hightown by now. Maybe they have begun their push down, even, while in the streets just above the docks are peppered with bursts of arcane light amand the sickly green flare of anchor magic at work. There are members of Riftwatch there in the fray, working their way steadily in the direction of the harbor.

When Marcus has the opportunity to answer it, what the message on the crystal says is—

Not for him, for starters, but rather some broad order: Flint has twenty swords with him. They are moving west for the ruined wall. Anyone on foot in Kirkwall is to make every effort to join them, but they are strictly not to take the low road directly along the water and between the harbormaster's warehouses. The wyverns are thick there.

Then, more pressing (though the message can be no more than a few minutes old): "Rowntree, see that the fire doesn't jump over into the city."

Which makes no sense at all until, seconds later, a gout of Antivan fire pours down the very thoroughfare in question—cutting a short brilliant vein along the harbor front, fueled by the bitter salt water and eager to make a meal of the dark shapes clambered from up out of it.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

puts thumb over timestamp