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[nonvenomous]

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[nonvenomous]

There is something about Richard Dickerson that naturally precludes this kind of curiosity in people. It’s part of what has made him so successful in the roles assigned him over the years.

His eyes are pale on Ellis across the fire, the eyes of a creature caught out in a dumpster by a flipped switch or a suddenly opened door. Not fearful, but not entirely certain how to proceed, either. Surely Ellis knows what he’s looking at. Why shouldn’t he go right back to cracking rotten chicken bones between his teeth.

“When I was very young,” he says, “I aspired to be a warlock of Dendar, the Night Serpent. As was common, among my people.

“A sort of chevalier mage,” seems like a necessary clarification, issued matter-of-fact after a pause for to consider a question he’d asked Ellis, once. I assume most children want to be chevaliers, he’d said. "They are popularly considered to be very evil."

[heorte]

Yes, Ellis can understand the idea of it when coupled with that descriptor. Maybe the Night Serpent, the magic, is all beyond him, but the idea of becoming a chevalier, that is easy for Ellis to understand.

"Are they evil?" is asked without any accusation behind it. Neutral.

[nonvenomous]

“Acolytes of Dendar work to restore the Yuan-ti empire to its former glory,” is an answer. “Their magics are fueled by ritual sacrifice. Dendar herself consumes nightmares and subsists on fear. It’s said that one day she will rise from her slumber to swallow the sun.” Plunging the world into eternal cold and darkness.

He tilts his brows, his pride for this retelling a void, sunk back into silence while he reflects.

“So," he finds Ellis again, focus restored with less life than before, "unfortunately."

They're pretty evil.

[heorte]

A few, disquieting elements in that recitation. Familiar, disquieting elements.

There's a pause, letting Richard's explanation settle. He stirs the contents of the pot, considering his next question, and deciding to ask it anyway.

"When did you stop wanting that?"

[nonvenomous]

“That’s a complex question.”

He’s sat himself up to say so, ankles drawn slowly in and folded under with some help from a reach and pull of one hand. He keeps his fingers curled under the ankle of his boot, buffering the bone for as long as he can stand it. The pinch of his knuckles between ankle and stone gives him something to focus on apart from the fire.

“I was found to be unfit for the honor as a youth and reassigned to less desirable work. My hope eventually waned. I was still young. Pre-university.

“My expatriation is a more recent development, although it’s not the first time I’ve failed to conform to expectations.”

[heorte]

There are parts of these sparse explanations that feel understandable, though by the same turn Ellis knows his grasp of what Richard is alluding to is lacking. There are pieces of this missing. Ellis isn't sure he has to right to pry after all of them.

A break in conversation while Ellis draws two metal bowls from his pack. He stretches to offer one to Richard as he presses, "Do you regret it? Not being able to pursue it?"

[nonvenomous]

“I resent it.”

He leans to meet him halfway without thinking, the offered bowl taken with his free hand. Glancing eye contact in the process rings honest. Whatever this is, it’s gnawed him to his core.

“We’re meant to have risen above emotion.”

A shadow at the cave entrance sees him turning, then -- Thot reappears in a silent rush of black feathers and the sick crack of a young rabbit’s skull hitting the stone under talons where she lands. It’s still twitching in her grasp, blood smearing uneven after half a hop and a dragging step closer to the fire, flippity flop.

Silas exchanges his bowl for a knife in his boot, already on his way up to his feet to see to it.

[heorte]

"Thank you," is for Thot, words warmed with fondness. It's easy to be fond of Thot, however complicated his relation to Richard (Silas) is at any given moment.

But there is some consideration after, watching the work of Silas' knife.

"You haven't," is not a question. Ellis saw Silas in the dream. And yes, it was a dream, but parts of it were very true.

His hands stretch back over the fire, bowl balanced on one thigh. The crooked fingers are tipped towards that warmth first, and a few beats before Ellis adds, "Do you aspire to regardless?"

Is that something tied to the position he'd hoped for, or was we for his people, family, whoever he left at home?

[nonvenomous]

At Ellis’ thanks, Thot highwater bobbles around the fire to him, blood-sticky claws paused mid-reach for his pant leg for her to groom her beak down into her mess -- polite enough to wash her feet, first. Behind her, Silas is making short work of the rabbit: hide reversed, guts twisted deftly away, bone cracked and meat quartered for roasting.

“It’s significantly more difficult to accomplish as a human,” he says in his matter-of-fact way, because it is.

Thot is just starting to reach again when a silent request sees her scarpering back across the cave to retrieve rabbit refuse. She’ll tangle her talons in and carry it out, far enough away to keep roving predators from pursuing hunger into their home for the night.

The steel of his misericorde, stripped from the back of his belt, is long and narrow enough to function as a skewer. He’s quiet for a little too long on the heel of that last question while he works.

“Do you have aspirations?”

[heorte]

"No," is an answer close to hand. It comes without any hesitation.

No, he doesn't have aspirations. Or not the kind Silas has outlined, the kind of thing that might shape a life one way or another. He's been shaped. The trajectory has been determined.

There is nothing else after that. Ellis seems more than content to watch Silas' handiwork with the knife with nothing but the sound of Thot's grooming to fill the quiet.

[nonvenomous]

Something they have in common.

That line of questioning effectively cut short, Silas doesn’t measure Ellis with another look until he leans to slant skewered rabbit up into the lick of the fire between them. Thot returns and resumes her grooming in short order, the fierce hook of her little beak needled through void black feathers and the sticky creases of her feet.

She nibbles clots of blood and pelt from the crooks of Silas’ knuckles as well; he leaves to scrub the rest off in the snow and returns and is quiet.

The rabbit was fat in spite of the cold. The savory crackle of it soon mingles with the scent of stew.

Things could be worse than they are.

[heorte]

For a time, Ellis seems content to let that be the end of conversation.

Their dinner cooks. Thot attends to her business. Ellis adds another log to the fire. It's chilly, but not as uncomfortable as it might be.

Finally, he clears his throat.

"You haven't said anything," he prompts. "About our findings."

A statement posed in a very neutral tone, in spite of Ellis' apprehension about engaging the topic directly.

[nonvenomous]

Silas arches a brow to himself as he reaches to turn the dagger. Yes, how curious.

There is stew to spoon into the bowl Ellis has given him while the rabbit drips flashes of oil into the fire. Nearly done. Careful not to spill. He tucks his ankles in criss cross, the bowl placed at his feet to free up his hands for a second dagger to work a haunch off the stake of the first, blackened tendon cracking as it goes, claws and all.

“Is there anything I could say you would be pleased to hear?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer.

“Without ‘Merrill’ or the means to experiment without risk of contaminating ourselves I assume we will need to plead our case to the Inquisition and hope they have Warden mages versed in blood magic to spare.”

coughs up a paltry tag forgive me

[heorte]

"We know mages," is Ellis' first, mild objection.

But it is a delicate thing regardless. Blood magic is no small matter. Ellis has had that illustrated for him very clearly once already.

"Is it so foreign to you, that you couldn't attempt it?"

[nonvenomous]

The lines around his eyes go a little tight, did you hear what I just said exasperation pent up grim at the back of jaw. The absence of Merrill is only part of the equation.

Ire twists into a persistent thread of dark humor as he redirects down into the bite of his spoon into rabbit, breaking hunks of meat away into his stew. The pak pak pak of Thot chasing a cave cricket nearby stutters into an uncertain pause, only for her to start back up again on her own.

“I could attempt it.”

arrives in full clown make up

[heorte]

By contrast, Silas' acquiescence loosens some of the tension in Ellis' face. Observation of Silas' irritation doesn't go unnoticed, but Ellis doesn't remark upon it. Instead, he turns his gaze down into the fire. Thot's activities fill the space between them while Ellis absently works the ache from the bent fingers of his left hand.

"I trust you with it."

A mistake, perhaps, given all else that lies between them. Thinking of it deepens the frown lingering around the edges of his face, though Ellis doesn't give any space for that misgiving to work its way free.

"Anyone we begged from the Inquisition is beholden to the Chantry, and anyone we begged from what's left of the Wardens is beholden to their Commander."

The problem becomes clear, surely: they can't risk the Gates becoming plain knowledge, and neither of those organizations are air tight.

"And Adrasteia won't abide blood magic."

[nonvenomous]

“I’m flattered.”

He is not flattered.

Maybe a little, dry and in private, so far as privacy exists in the confines of this cave and in the light of this cooking fire. As for the rest: everyone is beholden to someone or something, some cause or limit. He mulls on it while he eats -- the likelihood that any given Rifter would keep quiet if captured. Or plied.

“Teaching resources are difficult to come by.”

Books on blood magic are in short supply.

Surely Ellis knows that too.

[heorte]

A pull at the corner of Ellis' mouth, quiet amusement that doesn't linger and fades as they eat. It is gone entirely by the time Silas raises the point.

"Aye."

Yes, Ellis knows that. And he doesn't have anyone he might steer Silas towards. Who could they trust with it? It'd be a risk. Ellis can't ask him to gamble on the good graces and discretion of Riftwatch mages.

"When I return, we might see what Val de Foncé recalls of it. His name was in those records."

And Ellis has the sense he might be trusted. Or rather, he trusts Wysteria's judgement on it, and likes to think it might stretch to include the pair of them.

[nonvenomous]

I’m not sure we’re on speaking terms, Silas said recently of Val de Foncé. He starts to say it again, only to lose the will somewhere in a pluck at one brow and a swirl of broth over bones, still scraps of meat to pick away with the tip of his spoon. It doesn’t matter.

He nods.

It only makes sense that he should pin his fate to the good will of a claptrap Orlesian he slapped at a wedding once.

[heorte]

In fairness, Ellis is similarly apprehensive. Is he on speaking terms with Val de Foncé? Perhaps, if only by merit of having somehow avoiding direct contact with him and existing solely as a supporting character in Wysteria's letters for months.

But still, they might take whatever advantages are close at hand.

"Things might look different by then," is more to fill the silence than anything else. Ellis has not said very much about what he hopes to find, apart from the sense that there will be some useful bit of research tucked away that he might carry back, to allow those more suited to unravel.

Then, quieter, "I can tell you what I know. But I'm not a mage."

[nonvenomous]

“You might be dead.”

So that’s certainly one thing that could be different, between now and a month from now. However long it takes before he gets a pop-up notification from Thot that she’s been destroyed. Any lingering salt to his shade is directed down into the dregs of his stew -- reined short of angling for another argument.

He’s already made his objections clear.

“I’d like to know what you know.”

spews out huge tag forgive me.

[heorte]

Yes, he might be dead.

Ellis does not rebut this assessment. They would argue, and he does not want to argue more than they already have. The truce between them seems fragile to him. They have miles to go, and more beyond that, more work to be done together. So Ellis does not say I am not going to die, with quiet weariness. Instead, he tips the bowl in his hands, lifts it to his mouth to drain the broth before he straightens where he sits.

It delays his answer. This does not mean Ellis is stalling. He is gathering his thoughts. All the vocabulary around magic is foreign to him, what he has is what he knows in his body, the way such unbridled power raises the hairs on the back of his neck.

"I'm not a mage," is repetition, unnecessary. Richard knows what he is. "But sometimes you can feel it, when a mage is casting spells that are...big."

One hand makes a shape in the air, silently expansive. Ellis is thinking of the kinds of spells reserved for the Deep Roads, that light up the dark and kill dozens and dozens of darkspawn. Force magic that crunches and ice that freezes and fire that consumes everything in its path, all the kinds of spells that exhaust the person casting them.

"Or a barrier. I could feel those too. They had a taste to them, like metal at the back of your mouth."

Maybe Richard knows this. He has been in Thedas. He has traveled with mages.

"When they draw on blood, what you feel is different. It's closer," a beat, Ellis' jaw working around the description. "Like standing next to a fire instead of watching a storm move out at sea."

And here, something material: "Not always their blood. Not always a small amount. Someone else can bleed for them, so they can work the magic. Not how it is when they cast the usual way."

[nonvenomous]

Silas drains his bowl in late mirror, one hand lifted to scrub broth from the bristle brush of his mustache. From there he has bones to flip into the fire while Ellis percolates, sparing only one glance to see that he’s gathering his thoughts and not attempting to vanish himself away into the Fade.

There’s more mess to clean, uneaten meat to wrap for the morning, but he stills to listen when Ellis speaks. His expression is inscrutable. Neutral.

The tell is in his eyes, his curiosity for the world of black-market magic flinty sharp in the firelight.

“Does the blood have to be taken from a person?”

Thot patters on unconcerned along the cave wall.

[heorte]

Having been on the receiving end of Silas' attention more than once, Ellis is aware of it, how it becomes fixed. It becomes like the prick of a pin. Ellis considers that as much as he considers his answer, already aware that it will be disappointing.

"I don't know."

He has only ever seen blood magic performed from the opening of a palm or from what spills from a slashed throat. Would a slaughtered goat summon the same shift in the air?

"Goats don't travel well in the Deep Roads," is something of an explanation. All Ellis knows is what he's observed, and situationally, the opportunities have been limited.

[nonvenomous]

There is a curious dearth of disappointment in his acknowledgement -- a tip at his chin, a pause for thought, and the sense he thinks this may be something he can piece apart on his own. Given time.

And privacy.

“What do they use it to do?” This mysterious they of this deep roads.

His bowl hangs empty in his hands.