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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.”
Edited (dont look at me) Date: 2021-10-26 11:40 pm (UTC)
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."
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.
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.
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.
Instead, he turns his head, clucks his tongue for Thot, before answering, "You've gone beyond me," because Silas has. Because Ellis will not unspool his recollection of what happened in the desert for Silas. He would regret it. Ellis knows that.
But after a pause, recognizing that he has fallen short, "I can guess. But you can guess too, and likely more accurately."
Pakpakpak pak pak, Thot comes when called, the hustle to her bustle slowed before contact to stop shy of sinking sickle talons into the cartilage of Ellis’ knee. She extends one foot out instead, blindly requesting a boost. Her ears are pinned flat.
She isn’t looking at him.
Silas is quiet, an echo of something familiar in the lines of his face drawn bleak against the bone. His scrutiny has drifted off target by a matter of degrees.
He could be guessing.
The noise he makes upon returning to himself sounds like acceptance. Agreement. Acquiescence. One of those things or all of them. He is reminded, abruptly, of the bowl in his hands, and hitches to his feet to reach in wordless request for the bowl Ellis still has as well.
The bowl is yielded, freeing his hands to reach down to Thot.
Whose pinned ears have not gone unnoticed.
But still, Ellis makes a low, coaxing noise for her as he lifts Thot's feathery little body off the cavern floor. If she is tense, it is only an echo of what Ellis feels. Often, he has the sense that every bit of information he passes to Silas will be something he comes to regret sooner or later.
There's no other way around it, at this point. It's no real comfort, but it's true.
"Do you want to talk of something else?"
They've the rest of the way back to turn this topic over and over between them. If Silas wants a respite, there's no reason to avoid it.
There are his daggers to collect, also -- the remaining haunches pried off to cool on a flat rock.
“I’ll see to the dishes first.”
Silas is eminently reasonable -- surely there’s no need to restart conversation just before he’s due to step outside. There is plenty of clean snow out there with which to scrub away any residue. He stops for his gloves and hat along the way.
Thot turns her head one-hundred and eighty degrees to watch him go, feathery stockings let to hang loose through Ellis’ fingers. There’s nothing rigid about her, clawed feet easily bunched up or left to dangle, the tucked felt flaps of her ears easy to fold one way or the other.
One which Ellis spends gathering and repacking the last of his equipment into his pack. Thot remains pinned over his thigh, benefiting from the slow drag of Ellis' fingers and the soft burr of his voice as he murmurs softly to her. It's low enough not to carry, and it tapers off as Silas returns.
"Alright?"
As in, there's nothing outside this cave that's going to wake them in the middle of the night.
But Thot would fuss, surely, if he was in danger, and she spends the span being handled without so much as a peep of complaint (or much other sound, for that matter). Her feathers stay as they’re ruffled up by the passage of his fingertips.
When Silas does return -- “Alright,” -- it’s to swap the bowls and their spoons for the remaining rabbit so that he might bind it up in a cloth before he sets to rolling his bedding out.
There are the fastens of his cloak to see to after that, his coat and his breastplate.
For as long as she’s there, Thot will watch one stage progress to the next from Ellis’ thigh like a broken furby.
Watching Silas' preparations, it occurs to Ellis that he might go through similar motions himself. But the only concession to that thought is one hand lifting to the laces cinching his cloak round his shoulders, tugging at the knot as he speaks.
"We can sleep, if you wish."
If Silas is finished talking, and has no appetite for Ellis dredging up a fable to fill the quiet.
“Yes, I think that would be for the best,” Silas says, with a particular kind of confidence. He does wish.
The breastplate is set across the back of his pack, the coat and cloak can serve as extra cover with a blanket he’s already fished out and dropped aside. He gives Ellis his back while he sorts through the rest, some clear thought dedicated to sleeping in his boots
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2021-10-04 04:54 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2021-10-24 04:00 am (UTC)"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."
no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 03:32 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 04:37 am (UTC)"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.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-25 05:11 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 03:06 am (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2021-10-26 07:55 pm (UTC)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.
Date: 2021-10-31 05:18 am (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2021-11-01 08:56 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 01:43 am (UTC)"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.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 02:36 am (UTC)And privacy.
“What do they use it to do?” This mysterious they of this deep roads.
His bowl hangs empty in his hands.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 02:53 am (UTC)Is not what Ellis says.
Instead, he turns his head, clucks his tongue for Thot, before answering, "You've gone beyond me," because Silas has. Because Ellis will not unspool his recollection of what happened in the desert for Silas. He would regret it. Ellis knows that.
But after a pause, recognizing that he has fallen short, "I can guess. But you can guess too, and likely more accurately."
no subject
Date: 2021-11-02 05:23 am (UTC)She isn’t looking at him.
Silas is quiet, an echo of something familiar in the lines of his face drawn bleak against the bone. His scrutiny has drifted off target by a matter of degrees.
He could be guessing.
The noise he makes upon returning to himself sounds like acceptance. Agreement. Acquiescence. One of those things or all of them. He is reminded, abruptly, of the bowl in his hands, and hitches to his feet to reach in wordless request for the bowl Ellis still has as well.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-06 11:57 pm (UTC)Whose pinned ears have not gone unnoticed.
But still, Ellis makes a low, coaxing noise for her as he lifts Thot's feathery little body off the cavern floor. If she is tense, it is only an echo of what Ellis feels. Often, he has the sense that every bit of information he passes to Silas will be something he comes to regret sooner or later.
There's no other way around it, at this point. It's no real comfort, but it's true.
"Do you want to talk of something else?"
They've the rest of the way back to turn this topic over and over between them. If Silas wants a respite, there's no reason to avoid it.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 02:43 am (UTC)“I’ll see to the dishes first.”
Silas is eminently reasonable -- surely there’s no need to restart conversation just before he’s due to step outside. There is plenty of clean snow out there with which to scrub away any residue. He stops for his gloves and hat along the way.
Thot turns her head one-hundred and eighty degrees to watch him go, feathery stockings let to hang loose through Ellis’ fingers. There’s nothing rigid about her, clawed feet easily bunched up or left to dangle, the tucked felt flaps of her ears easy to fold one way or the other.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 04:21 am (UTC)One which Ellis spends gathering and repacking the last of his equipment into his pack. Thot remains pinned over his thigh, benefiting from the slow drag of Ellis' fingers and the soft burr of his voice as he murmurs softly to her. It's low enough not to carry, and it tapers off as Silas returns.
"Alright?"
As in, there's nothing outside this cave that's going to wake them in the middle of the night.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 05:04 am (UTC)But Thot would fuss, surely, if he was in danger, and she spends the span being handled without so much as a peep of complaint (or much other sound, for that matter). Her feathers stay as they’re ruffled up by the passage of his fingertips.
When Silas does return -- “Alright,” -- it’s to swap the bowls and their spoons for the remaining rabbit so that he might bind it up in a cloth before he sets to rolling his bedding out.
There are the fastens of his cloak to see to after that, his coat and his breastplate.
For as long as she’s there, Thot will watch one stage progress to the next from Ellis’ thigh like a broken furby.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 05:13 am (UTC)Watching Silas' preparations, it occurs to Ellis that he might go through similar motions himself. But the only concession to that thought is one hand lifting to the laces cinching his cloak round his shoulders, tugging at the knot as he speaks.
"We can sleep, if you wish."
If Silas is finished talking, and has no appetite for Ellis dredging up a fable to fill the quiet.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 05:36 am (UTC)The breastplate is set across the back of his pack, the coat and cloak can serve as extra cover with a blanket he’s already fished out and dropped aside. He gives Ellis his back while he sorts through the rest, some clear thought dedicated to sleeping in his boots
and so on.
Good talk.