katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

It's satisfying, climbing up high enough to where Monster can trade labourious flapping for spreading her wings and resting in the sky. In the star-speckled night, without the baking heat rising up off the craggy desert, gliding is more frequently interrupted with kicks of wings against the air to maintain itself, but there are pockets of time and strong enough currents to ride that there are long stretches of peace.

Sort of. The whistle of air, buffeting cold across armor, particularly chilled where still-drying salve paints his neck. It feels chaotic, and no amount of solidly secured harness or practice can quite rid one of the impulse to over-work oneself in service of staying in the saddle, all the instinctive, minor adjustments and flexes of muscle, tipping away from where the griffon angles in reflex.

Still. This is among the work he is gladdest to do, even if it feels a little foolish now to be scanning the swiftly darkening terrain below in hopes of catching sight of something. Tilted forwards, grasping on reins and feathers, straining to see any glimmer of light in enormous shadows.

Checks, too, what he can barely make of Flint's position in the sky. Although he trusts Monster and Buggie both to find each other in the dark, with the kinds of screeches that split heads when standing right next to them but are well designed to be heard over endless sky, with a keen sense of smell and keener sight, the prospect of letting enough darkness cloak between them that they lose each other is still trepidatious.

But also inevitable. Night thickens, and a few more minutes later, that's what happens. Rather than steer Monster closer in hopes of regaining visual, he directs her into an even broader circle. Might as well.

Not long after, Flint's crystal will glow.

"Anything?"

—is barely audible in the hiss of the wind even with the faintly glowing stone pressed to the ear and cupped there. The reply is equally ragged, wind blown and muffled both as Flint shifts the rock from against his ear to pocketed at the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing." And some deeper darkness on the horizon suggests a wisp of passing cloud cover is soon to make their hunt from this elevation more difficult besides. "Eyes on what looks to be a plateau escarpment. South by West, the Voyager to your"—checking himself from the jargon that comes most naturally—"Right shoulder. Make for its base. I'll join you shortly."

"Alright,"

is the short answer, maybe half-lost over the method of communications, but the tone signals comprehension, compliance.

Not clear enough to transmit annoyance, if it was present. Unlikely. Even before that first time they found themselves trapped on muddy hillside, Marcus was not so given to complaint over the kinds of inconveniences that occur over the course of a mission. Here, whatever chafing he feels over having set out for a purpose and then failing to accomplish that is more or less soothed by the knowledge that as soon as rest is available to him, it won't matter much where it is.

Or so he can say to himself, up here, rather than down there, attempting to find some comfortable spot. He gives one last sweep over the endless craggy shapes and long empty stretches of the Anderfels. Say what you will about the experience of being gravity-bound, it's pretty from the sky.

He wheels Monster around. His impulse is to let her give a call-and-response cry, but resists on the off-chance a nearby cluster of Venatori desire an excuse to come hunting. He can feel her pull forwards with a surge of enthusiasm, as keen to rest as her rider. He imagines she is putting on good form specifically, lest he have her repeat a maneuver as though they were training.

The descent is a controlled spiral down, wary of accidentally slamming into rocky protrusions invisible in the dark. Big wings flap, dust lifting into a cloud around him, feeling the semi-gentle impact of her four feet on the hard ground through his bones. First back, he is slow and lazy to undo his harnesses, and is careful to slip out of saddle onto the ground.

"We've landed," he reports, turning a look up at the sky. Placing a hand on Monster's beak before she can start to pluck at the shiny temptation of bracer buckles.

The sky is a brightly spangled skirt of velvet, gleaming black and empty above the escarpment's red caprock. Maybe their wingmates are coming from some other direction obscured by the slab of the plateau overhead. Or—

A minute later, two, the crystal glows blue. Flint sounds measurably less windswept as he says, "Noted. Lay the same sigil if you can—something unlikely to travel far. I'm having a last look."

They must be perched somewhere at the plateau's head, that spyglass of Flint's at work now that he's been afforded the luxury of solid ground underfoot.

A few moments later, perhaps it will be visible from Flint's station: something like gentle reddish firelight, the intricate runic scrolling muddied into a broad ring marked on the black landscape. More visible from above than anyone landbound, and faint enough to need looking for.

Down here, his feet on the ground, Marcus sets aside his staff, and fishes through the saddlebags until he can dig out the stiffly cured strips of meat that has Monster immediately whipping her head around at the scent of their emergence. The clicking sound he makes is a formality as she readily snaps at the air as he throws her a few, one after the other. He suspects they'll make their camp, but doesn't go about freeing her from her equipment just yet.

Maybe Flint will see something. Maybe they will need to reposition. He doesn't want to scrabble around to correct himself in the event of either of these things. Still, he starts an idle process of drawing soot out from Monster's feathers, a magical tug of the element he is best attuned to as well as the more ordinary brushing of fingers through stiff quills and down.

Glancing up, now and then, stemming the small flicker of anxiety for distance. Senses keyed around them, trusting Monster will give alert to anything in need of worrying over.

A further stretch of minutes is eventually punctuated by the brief, "Finishing here," though he must not descend to join Marcus directly. For there is some further interval of time, during which the griffon on the ground in Marcus' care evidently feels no need to share his small measure of anxiety, and when eventually the second grey griffon comes spiraling lazily down out of the sky above them she arrives from a different direction than one might have assumed having first been circled around and landed at various points in the surrounding valley to be certain that the low glow of Marcus' rune work would likely go undetected by anyone coming up into the foothills.

But here, finally, the heavy crunch of small stones and the rattle of scrub brush as Buggie touches down beyond the margins of the glowing ring. Astride her, Flint slowly unclips himself from the saddle and mutters some demand to the animal that she's the animal grumbling and slowly kneeling to aid his dismount.

"We'll make camp and try again by daylight. No fire."

Marcus draws a wandered step nearer as Flint lands, a level of formal attentiveness of the same instinct that has kept him in his armor and Monster in her bridle. Any loosening of that tension at the news they're done for the evening (if anyone can be done while camping out in enemy territory, where hierarchy will click briskly back into place at any sign of complication) is invisible, at first, Marcus nodding acceptance at this decision.

But he isn't waiting to be told anything else as he turns to move back to where Monster is preening, seeing about loosening some of the straps on her so that she can rest more comfortably.

"These will only maintain themselves for an hour at a time, at most," he says, with a tip of his head to the warming runes on the ground. "I can keep them during my watch."

There are better glyph-focused mages out there that Flint can partner with next time, surely.

He'll keep it in mind.

Things being what they are, he makes do with stripping the saddle bags from behind his saddle and slinging them across his shoulder. Loosening Buggie's cinch and harness buckles, a hand short of warding off the griffon as she twists her neck and head around. Wrapping her heavy chin against his hip in an effort to nibble at the lacing of the forward saddlebag.

"I've some suspicion we can do without if it comes down to it," says the man currently making to extract himself from the hook of Buggie's feathered neck, shoving her off with a rough hand at the base of her heavy beak.

He passes Marcus a sidelong look across the tufts of Buggie's ear feathers.

Following suit in offloading the saddlebags, Marcus glances back to take measure of that remark—and cuts loose a breath of a laugh for the serpentine reach of Buggie's neck trying to herd Flint in closer.

"She's cuddly," he notes. "Is it that you spoil her?"

Having had her wings stroked through already, Monster is less desperate for attention—both immediately and as a rule—and, once she can sense Marcus has offloaded her as much as seems wise, she nibbles once at an errant bootlace then moves to a warm line of runic glow, settling down on it with a mild amount of put-upon drama. One big paw raking at more of the runes as if she could gather more of them to her.

"I told the stablemaster that every mount I have is always after a feeding," Marcus explains as he collects back his waterskin. Testing it with his fingers. It's gotten colder with the night time flight, so he spares it magic augmentation as he undoes the cap. "And he diagnosed me of doing it too often."

A last ditch effort to go nibbling after the flap of the nearer saddlebag is met with another forceful hand pushing her away, and so the slate colored griffon sighs. Makes due with—Flint catches her by the headstall before she can nip at his coat and forces her round, bullying her in the direction of joining her sibling.

"She bites," he explains, steering the heavy animal round and clicking at her in an an effort to encourage her to lay down alongside Monster. "But we've discovered my fingers are more useful to her while they're still on my hand."

Presumably '—and occasionally not petting her can be perfectly acceptable' is the next lesson on the docket.

With some encouragement, Buggie flops down perpendicular to Monster. Given her head, she makes to extend her beak out and nibble at the nearest recently smoothed feather. This, Flint takes no exception to. They can bother one another all they like so long as they do it in some approximation of quiet. Instead, he moves toward toward the opposite side of the low glowing ring and there dumps the saddlebags en route to rolling a medium sized slab of stone over on which he might take a seat.

No fire. Earth flecked with shale and fine little stones. Weather clear and chill for its purity. They're likely to share this first watch; he can't imagine being comfortable enough to sleep right at this moment.

Monster stays perfectly still as Buggie approaches, but doesn't disguise the way she tracks her with an open golden eye. Defensive, preemptively, of the warm spot she's claimed, but when approach amounts to no more than a nibble, she lifts her head, twitches that wing away before relaxing. The sound of what parses, to Marcus' ear, as a friendly croak from Monster rather than a warning has him leaving them to it as he moves towards where Flint is settling.

The dropping of saddlebags is loose in gesture, familiar. In his hand is the copper glint of cigarette case, rescued from his pocket, as he makes some doubtful evaluation of this use of a stone before he goes and tries to brush smooth a patch of ground with the edge of his boot. Doubts the efficacy of this too.

"Smart," he remarks. Wry.

Flint's answering huff is low, expressed without actually looking at him as dredges the saddlebags across the bend of his knee and begins to search the one side. Is it smart, or did he make more trouble for himself than it was worth?

"Softhearted," he suggests instead, and manages to keep a straight face during it. Though there's something to it; if he'd been sensible, he would have checked the griffon with a little slap or a tug on her line rather than ostensibly rewarding her for every little transgression.

He finds what he's looking for at the bottom of the saddlebag. Twisting free, and a small batter cup and a slab of a few hard biscuits is produced. The former, Flint blows some debris out of before offering it to Marcus in a clear request that he lend him a splash of water.

"Did your family not keep a dog that you remember? Before."

Once he's raked himself a spot in the sandy earth, Marcus settles. Angled so that he has a good view of the darkness past Flint's shoulder, and Flint his. Softhearted gets no argument, save for a fine and subtle twist at the corner of his mouth. Maybe that's it.

He leans, tips a helping of water into the cup.

Draws back, taking a sip for himself in place of a quick answer. A shake of his head as he swallows, sets the skin aside, thumbs open the cigarette case. "I don't think so," he says, drawing free a cigarette. In no rush, idling it between his knuckles. "Full enough house already."

He looks back to the two shapes of the griffons just nearby, where Buggie's tail idly lashes across the sandy ground. A rustling protest slightly further back where a paw is planted on a beak and lazily pushed aside.

"You?"

"Too few hours in the day to be minding a dog," he says, breaking off one of the biscuits and pushing it inside the small cup. Given some time in that measure of water, it might remember it had once been something other than the texture of sawdust glued into shape. "Though we'd a cat on every ship I've ever been on."

And a monkey, and sea turtle (before it'd been eaten), and a bird who'd sometimes screamed in the middle of the night for no reason that could be figured. There's nothing a crew loves more than the novelty of an animal aboard.

Setting his boots forward, he places their soles directly on top of that soft glow of the runic ring. Feels the warmth come ebbing through them. Were the dark about them less dark, and the threat of roaming Venatori less like a prickle at the back of the neck, and the food less crumbly, he might almost consider the arrangement comfortable. He's sat on less flat rocks.

After a moment, the biscuit is fished free of its bath.

The grunt from Marcus implies some amount of agreement—likely there was always a mouser in the kitchens, and it's more likely he could name them now rather than say with certainty if his family, before, ever had a dog. A thing contemplated but not said out loud, summoning a small flame between his fingers and dipping the end of his cigarette into it.

A fine white trail of smoke lifts, more delicate than the great gusts of black clouds that mark his presence on a battlefield, but just as sharp to the nose.

"Were you on ships as far back as that?"

(That smell in the air tempts some prickle of the senses; it had lingered for a long time in the bed linens of that apartment adjacent to the division offices.)

Despite soaking in the water, the biscuit is slow to separate into two pieces between the hand.

"By twelve," he says, catching crumbles across his thigh. It's a throwaway remark, as if this is the simplest question ever put to him or as if the answer is very easy to supply. These are distant, uncomplicated truths and he is more concerned with the mechanics of chewing through the soggy biscuit than eschewing this line of inquiry he'd started. "Which is typical, unless you've the money to false muster straight into the wardroom."

The smoke is good for discouraging an appetite, supposedly, and there is nothing about soggy biscuits that stir his hunger, but Marcus finds himself watching Flint's hands anyway. Maybe for their task, or maybe it's just a good place to rest his focus at this angle, sitting in the sand. He is just near the warming runes, settled on the inside of the circle, the air prickled warm where, a few feet away, it's sharply cold.

A pause implies either a silent wandering off the topic or a contemplation—it can truly go either way—but shows his hand as he asks, "Did you want to be?"

Less a contemplation and more an imagining, of that world at that age.

Flint's answer is, at first, a low hum of acknowledgement. The answer is more complicated though, and less readily to hand—not because he's reticent to give it, but because he must consider and decide on the correct answer. Because:

"I can only assume my answer would have been reliant on the events of the day when you'd put the question to me." Twelve year old boys being, notoriously, somewhat difficult and changeable with their opinions on most things much less the trajectory of their professional careers.

Had he been happy always in the service? No, certainly not. To say nothing of the complications that has dogged the latter half of his commission, those first years had been difficult and often bitter, homesick and lonely. But they'd also been remarkably free, even if the boy who had gone from that seaside village had cried when he'd left it.

"I'd some understanding that I should be proud of it, and mostly was."

(Is, maybe. Though that's stranger to contemplate.)

This first part gains a sharpening in Marcus' expression—less objection or annoyance, but something skeptical, as if he might accuse Flint of evading the question. Ever subtle by a matter of instinct, and disperses when Flint has more to add.

Accepts it, rotating cigarette in fingers, focus dropping down to the boots Flint has resting on the glowing runes. He can move his own just a little, and touch the toe of it into the outside arc near the heel.

He does so, when he says, "You owe me a story of the Imperial navy," as he leans back, weight resting on a hand. Potentially a loose interpretation of that exchange.

So loose that it takes him a moment to recall exactly when he might have promised such a foolish thing. Recalling the circumstances—in which he is firmly certain he'd come out being owed something as well, if they're counting—prompts his brow to lift by a few degrees.

"Ah." Is that so?

He takes a bite from a soggy biscuit quarters. Chews slowly. Doesn't withdraw his heel.

"You wanted to know why I'd left."

Marcus settles his foot there, a conscious nudge of contact turned negligent as he brings his cigarette up again to breathe from while Flint eats. Comfortable and confident in his interpretation of events, meeting eyebrow lift with a faint tip of his head. That is so.

Salve has dried chalkily on the side of his neck. Gotten in time that he no longer itches, at least for tonight.

"Mm," he says, a rumbled sound.

"Mm," he rumbles right back, a tinge of mocking humor in it and eyebrows still at that elevated altitude. A conversation made up of grunts and single syllables. Isn't this riveting?

He finishes the quarter. While he studies Marcus, he wipes his fingers at the knee of his trousers and washes the too dense biscuit down with a sip from what night chilled water remains in the little tin cup.

"What do you know of the Tevinter soporati?" he asks.

Mockery is taken well enough, a crinkle of humour reflected back somewhere more at his eyes than mouth. No move to amend or add to it. He stands by monosyllabic grunt.

The next question demands more, though, Marcus pausing over it. "They're those without magic, in Tevinter," he offers. "But not of the slaves. Commoners, merchants, military."

It's a sight more than he knew not just before Riftwatch, but before the rebels had almost crossed that northern border with promises of a homeland. He'd learned a little, then.

Yes, something like that, suggests the tip of Flint's temple. He drops his eye from Marcus to the biscuit; takes to turning it into smaller pieces between his fingers in lieu of devouring it.

"Above them the Laetan, and below the freemen and slaves. The Imperium at sea is much the same as it is otherwise. A soporati might reasonably aspire to be a petty officer aboard, but if he's in the wardroom then it's likely because he has indentured himself to a commissioned mage. But let's say that by some miracle, he has the good fortune to obtain his letter of passage when he's eleven or twelve."

Entirely hypothetically, of course, is punctuated with a brief and sidelong glance.

"Then he need only survive two years to earn his temporary rank. From there, if he wishes to be a Lieutenant, he requires a commanding officer willing to submit him to a board and the head with which to pass their examination. Unlikely as those circumstances are, these are measurable requirements and therefore perfectly attainable should someone find himself in such a position regardless of where he might come from or who he might be otherwise."

The pause as Flint works his way through a bite of another soggy biscuit corner implies a However—

There is a breath in from Marcus that might betray the early kindling of impatience as Flint launches into an explanation that sounds, first, broader than a single man's story, but it doesn't resolve into words. Listens anyway, dropping his gaze aside almost in time as Flint, dispersing ember and ash from the end of his cigarette onto sandy, before returning focus to Flint's face.

Entirely hypothetically, he tries to imagine a younger James Flint in uniform, attending to examinations. Maybe it is just as easily imagined as himself in robes, awaiting written verdict as to whether he'd be named Enchanter.

There is a however implied. He is expectantly silent for the other side of it.

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