elvis(h)

Sharidan "Elvis(h)" Lavellan, a private Inquisitor darp sideblog

[dirtshrines]

[elatedwarcry]

banalvhen:

She wishes he would not look at her that way.

She avoids his gaze, turning her attention to the heavy curtains swaying subtly in the breeze from the open balcony, but she feels him looking at her all the same. The weight of it is nearly tangible, like a presence at her shoulder, pressing close, pushing for more.

Or perhaps that’s her own imagination, supplying her with even more reasons to feel discomfited by his presence. She knows she shouldn’t. She knows she should be simply grateful he’s alive. Some part of her is, but the rest of her is suddenly, painfully aware she is no longer alone with her grief, and that she is responsible for someone else’s, too, and she doesn’t know what to do for him.

“Of course I sent scouts,” she mutters, and for the first time a trace of her own frustration and uncertainty betrays itself in her voice. “They reported no survivors. Clearly, they were wrong.”

She leans back against the couch, running a hand through her hair nervously. The thought plagues her again: could I have done more? With more time, could the scouts have found him, or anyone else still living? The Duke had practically chased them from Wycome, though. Could the Inquisition have fought him harder for the right to stay, and search for survivors? 

What could she have done? Set the scouts to the macabre task of sifting through the burned remains, counting the bones just to be certain?

Whose fault was it, if any of her own people who still lived would not trust the scouts under her command enough to reveal themselves?

“What would you have me do? Until an hour ago, you were a dead man. I had no reason to believe otherwise. If there’s even the slightest chance there are others still alive, how can I not look?” She finally brings herself to fix him with a steady look. “Unless you’re telling me there’s no point?”

Sharidan holds her gaze.

He doesn’t do it because it’s easy, or because he has to prove a point, and not even in an act of defiance. There’s, rather, a sort of deep wonder behind the sudden apathy of his eyes, an apathy not borne of lack of feeling, but of stunned pain. There’s only so much a mind can bear, even if it’s just recollections.

His wonder is only at Rhiall placing the decision back in his lap, like she gave him food and alcohol. 

What would he have her do? He didn’t come with a plan, he came to seek refuge, some rest, physical, spiritual. Now he’s come, knowing that the ghosts were waiting for him again, and would be hiding in every word exchanged with her --- in fact, he’s carried the ghosts with him, thinking that she wouldn’t know what had happened; that he’d have to bring the news.

Sharidan opens his mouth, to say that she shouldn’t be asking him this, she shouldn’t ask him to cover this grave for them both. But he closes it after barely letting air out, and swallows, finally looking away. The flames in the hearth transfix him.

He was huntsmaster, until not too long ago, he thinks --- he covered plenty of graves.

When he speaks he does it without spark and with little energy; in fact, he does it with a sort of defeat in him, that nonetheless doesn’t make his voice shake. « Send two, three scouts. If anyone survived, they were smart enough to ford the smaller rivers and not return on their tracks. Then pass a bridge farther west... go south from there. North there’s just the Minanter, they wouldn’t have a way or reason to cross it. » He gestures, somewhat helplessly. His monotone deflates into half a sigh. « If anyone is still around, they’ll probably be there. Otherwise... no. » He clenches his jaw slightly. « No, there is no point. »

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

Wendell Berry, from “The Peace of Wild Things,” wr. c. 1968 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[elatedwarcry]

banalvhen:

She follows his gaze to the tattered rags left behind by the demon, her mouth twisting into a grimace. She’s met many a spirit she didn’t care for, but these in particular, she hates. Despair demons. Callous predators, hunting and feeding upon the vulnerable. Solas would insist that to call it a demon would be oversimplifying, but in this case, she thinks the term fits. 

Plus, the teeth.

She turns away from the demon’s remains, shaking her head, waving a hand for him to follow as she strides away from the battlefield. The nearest Inquisition camp is still a distance’s walk, but she thinks they’ve all had enough for one day. 

“That one, we call Despair. It feeds on pain, suffering, grief—” Here she winces, mouth forming a tight line, “—and it is by far one of the Fade’s most efficient killers. Rage burns, Pride crushes, but Despair will steal your will to fight back and survive. It lives in the alienages, the prisons, the soldiers’ camps. The longer we’re at this, the more of its kind we see.”

She’s recovered enough sensation in her left hand she can feel her nails curl tightly into her palm. She can tell herself it’s just coincidence, but she knows what her own dreams have looked like of late. A thing like that would have reason enough to turns its attention on him the same way when present in the flesh.

She draws up short, mouth open to say something, and then shuts it again. She studies him for a long moment. “Are—” The words snag, like a bird in a thicket of brambles. She’s not Deshanna; doesn’t know how to be. “Are you alright? And I don’t mean just….” she trails off, gesturing bodily at herself. “Did it target you?”

Despair. Feeding on pain, suffering, and grief. Sharidan is not surprised; he takes it, in fact, as a matter of fact, as a truth. 

His armoured hands grab the long handle of the maul and, with an effort of muscle, rotate it upside down, carefully balancing it on his shoulder pad. He follows Rhiall away from the unnatural chill left behind by the ice the demons produced and emanated, not so much like magic, rather as parts of themselves. Despair, stealing the will to fight back --- a monstrous thing that jumps around the field and forces you to follow, hoping to reach it again --- it would undo the strength of the most dedicated fighter.

Sharidan nods to himself. « ...Fitting. »

He halts only when she does and there’s a second there in which he almost doesn’t understand. Maybe because it takes her a second too, before she can say what she actually means, a sentence that sounds pulled out from her mouth like an arrow head from the side of a deer. It almost feels like an exertion and, in a way, it’s an effort he appreciates.

« It whispered to me », he admits. « Don’t ask me what, I couldn’t tell you. It was just a hiss. » A hiss, a feeling. Staring into the gap of its toothy mouth was entirely like being sucked in by those whispers, at least until the cold came: that punched him out of the shocked trance like throwing himself naked in a frozen stream. « I am alright, I’ll get accustomed to it. » 

He takes in a deep breath and walks ahead, then releases it, surpassing her. « Your soldiers, how do they... what kind of support do they have for this kind of thing? They’ll have their own dead to think of, I believe. » 

That, and other kinds of despair.

[elatedwarcry]

banalvhen:

“Only the ones who’ve never been face to face with a howling vortex of demons before,” she remarks, letting her anchor hand fall limp for the moment. “—Which is most of them, at first. The scouts have learned how to look them in the teeth and shoot by now, but they were no different than you when they started.”

The magic still hums across the skin of her palm like needles, but she feels the presence of it more than the sensation. The hand itself remains numb. She’s long since unlearned the urge to reach for it and check if it’s still there, but she finds herself looking for distraction all the same. She raises the hand she can still move properly, waving it in front of his face.

“Hand up, take a look. Does it still feel like you, or like it belongs to somebody else?” She flexes her fingers. Frowns. Tilts her head to the side and lets her shoulders drop.

She hesitates. It is…easy to be hard, she finds, and hard to be soft, these days. But they have all lived this nightmare for longer than he has. It’s not so easy for him to brush it off.

“The rifts, the demons, they can make you feel…outside of yourself,” she says, more gently this time. “If it’s too much, or if you find you can’t sleep, I have an herbal concoction that’ll help. You won’t sleep as well, but you’ll sleep.”

Sharidan considers pointing out that, either way, lack of sleep will do bad things to someone’s aim and strength of arm. He doesn’t, of course. There’s no point.

His eyes are caught by her hand, and follow it like he’d follow the jolting of a bumblebee. Soon enough, he lifts his own from the handle of the maul, still resting with its heavy head by his feet; he stares at the gauntlet, then hooks the maul’s handle with his elbow and uses his other hand to pull it off.

There’s a little scar on the left side of his palm, an old scar. He got it as a young man, making his own arrows, cutting a stick into the shape, and then cutting himself in the process. The hand, yes, is his own, and that scar reminds him of that truth. 

So he looks up at Rhiall, pulling his gauntlet on again, stretching his fingers into it and spreading them wide. Her offer for a concoction, the change in tone --- Sharidan regrets that she never got the chance to take that role among her people, where she should have.

« I’ll take the herbs », he says, taking a deep breath. « Not sleeping well... I already know the feeling. » Then he looks away, staring at a soldier who pokes an odd bundle of rags left behind by the Fade demons. As if to say that, yes, it actually was there, real, existing. 

« What was the hooded one? I mean specifically. »

[elatedwarcry]

istimaethoriel:

@elatedwarcry liked for a starter !!

“So,” she sighs as she settles next to him, fingers hovering just above his ribcage—not touching, not yet, but close enough to cast out probing slivers of magic, test the way the Veil moves around the bones. She has thin hopes she doesn’t sound as tired as she feels. “Tell me the truth. How does it feel? For your sake, don’t spare me the details. I’ve already accepted that there are…limitations to what I’ve been able to do for you, under the circumstances.”

« Well. » His voice sounds especially gravelly, harsh. Sharidan would love to clear his throat, but he doesn’t find it so advisable. He takes air in quickly and releases it without ever filling his lungs. « Now, less like something’s poking my innards. » He says it entirely without humour, though the sentence lends itself to it. « Breathing too deeply still hurts. Nothing like when I tried moving, but it hurts, continuously. » A pause and an empty swallow; he turns his head to Deshanna with matching tiredness. « As long as I can eventually recover, I can deal with limitations. »

[elatedwarcry]

‘ get some rest. i’ll take the next watch. ’

Sharidan’s head jerked to the side. A sound, but it was only Rhiall.

There was a foolproof way to tell a soldier who hadn’t yet left their village to travel to another from one who had: make unexpected noises; see how quickly they move. There was also a way to tell how often a soldier had been outside of their village: check how high they jump.

He closed his eyes at her approach, then opened them again to the panorama of the lake. Quiet, glittering with ice under the moon’s sheen --- and the high trees around the water, and around their shelter, the mantle of Tapio and Mielikki.

Slowly, Sharidan lay down in a sort of grateful surrender, back on the ground, hands clasped over his stomach. The fur of his hood framed the sky and the dark shape of Rhiall’s face.

« I’ll be here », he answered, willing to sleep exactly on the spot. Then he breathed in the brisk night air and puffed it out of his mouth in a little white cloud. His hand reached his waist, unsheathing his machete; he turned on the side, bent his blade-wielding arm under his head and made a pillow out of it.

« ---The area is clear? »

[duino-elegies]

The church of Raron is where Rainer Maria Rilke was buried.

[elatedwarcry]

@banalvhen

“Then don’t.”

She steps back as the last flickering lights of the rift vanish and the mark on her hand begins to fade, shrugging her shoulder in the hopes the feeling returns to her arm a little faster. She reminds herself that he is not accustomed to the howling chaos surrounding the rifts, or the the violence of the Fade’s more dangerous denizens.

Facing a demon in the Fade for the first time is terrifying for anyone. Facing five at once, in the flesh? A nightmarish introduction.

She shrugs and turns to face him, realizing as she does that the sight of her covered in black demon ichor likely offers no comfort. But hunting game was his realm; this is hers. It is what it is. There aren’t many ways to sugarcoat it.

“You can afford to miss a night’s sleep, and you will likely miss many. Sometimes the dreams are worse than the exhaustion.”

Sharidan looks at her from head to toe: the black gore on her is the same that is on him. He was never squeamish, he’s skinned and eviscerated his fair share of prey (and he’s seen friends and family die in images that might well be burned onto his eyes) --- but this is something else. Something that feels other than real, and though the rift is closed, the memory of it remains in the air. It itches in his nose.

He takes a deep breath, rolls the maul off his shoulder with a controlled arch and lets it land on the ground. He leans against the pole just slightly, a slight form of support. The air above them, empty of the green lights of the rifts. The hollow face of a hooded demon --- it was so close in front of him --- whispering.

« Is that the advice you give to all your people? », Sharidan asks, his voice level, maybe a little tired, maybe betraying the aftermath of the shock. He shakes his head, breathing out and glancing askance towards Rhiall. « I’m surprised no one died from misfired arrows because scouts couldn’t keep their eyes open. »

[jessicaroux]

Antlers and horns, for my 2018 calendar. Just sending it off to the printers today, so it’ll be available for order really soon!

[elatedwarcry]

banalvhen:

Fucking shem, indeed, she starts to say, but hesitates, finding the word strangely foreign on the tip of her tongue. She frowns. Of course it would be, though—she’s hardly used it in over a year now. Not so easy to, when she lives in a castle surrounded by them, where they’re her soldiers, her courtiers, her advisors.

She narrows her eyes at the fireplace.

“Fucking shem,” she agrees, spitting it into the flames, and finds it liberating. Here, in private, in the company of someone who understands the sentiment at the heart of it, she can say what she wants without fear of retribution.

She’s quiet for a long moment after that, mulling over the questions she could ask, or if she really wants to ask them. She never expected to be having this conversation with anyone, and to be confronted with it now leaves her at something of a loss. She has but one question, the one that’s trailed her like a ghost since she received the letter about Wycome.

Do you, truly, blame me?

She’s asked it of herself a hundred times, and now some part of her would ask it of him.

But it dies on the tip of her tongue, cut down by her fear of the answer. She shakes her head and looks away from him, shoulders rising and falling with the weight of a deep breath.

“—If you survived, could anyone else have? Have I overlooked something? Should I send agents to search again?”

Bodies all burned in a mass grave. They couldn’t identify any of them except vaguely, by the size of the bones. Deshanna always knew how to disappear in the forests, but that’s a vain hope, and she knows it as soon as she thinks it.

Sharidan broke the bread with his hands and began eating it in small pieces, slowly, making it last as long as he could. 

Like a spear thrown to pierce the thick side of a boar, his mind was thrown back of several weeks, frantically and reluctantly going through the events of the fateful day. Flashes of it flaring through his thoughts, brief images and longer sequences of action, memories that were only partially visual; some of them were sounds (steel and ironbark clashing, cries, the pounding of his own heart), some as raw as a bruise, as a pungent smell. 

He ate his bread very slowly.

He thought --- no, rationally speaking, the chances are extremely low. All the warriors and hunters, they were mostly with him. They had faced the people of Wycome first, trying to protect the rest of the clan, and when holding them back had become too difficult, when it had become clear that they were surrounded, when the city’s soldiers had... broken in, eventually--- they each had attempted to protect their close family and friends. 

Realistically, they all died there. If they fled, they must have been lucky, or among the most skilled --- and Sharidan considered himself skilled, but lucky too. If they had carried any wounded, they must not have carried them for long, not while the area was stalked by the shem. 

Realistically, the answer was no.

But perhaps he was only too jaded for hope. He’d accepted it, the loss, or had attempted to. Hope was a thing that clogged the throat far too easily.

Acceptance now sank in his stomach like something too heavy, a heaviness that he didn’t have the strength to place in Rhiall’s hands instead.

With difficulty, he swallowed. « Maybe », he answered, uncertain whether he should believe in his own words. « I don’t think you overlooked--- anything. But maybe someone else managed it. Maybe someone had the... common sense of seeking shelter elsewhere. You could spare an agent or two. » He paused and, suddenly, set down what remained of the bread to grab the bottle of brandy again and take a long sip from it, letting it warm his face up like the hearth warmed his feet. « They were more needed before than they are now. But... maybe. Maybe so. » 

His gaze had lost focus. He returned it now to her, slightly forlorn. « ...Haven’t you already sent some of your scouts? »

[wilwheaton]

In this decayed hole among the mountains In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. (via wilwheaton)

[elatedwarcry]

banalvhen:

It’s not your fault, she wants to say, but the words stick, aching, in her throat. Who, then? Corypheus? The people of Wycome? The Inquisition? Or does the blame rest on shoulders she does not dare name? She has spent every idle moment she has trying not to think about what happened, and now here it is, sitting on her couch, forcing itself to the forefront of her awareness. She finds herself at a loss to confront it.

“Fuck,” she mutters under her breath, so soft as to be nearly unheard.

One thing at a time.

She still has a plate of food, untouched, left by one of the servants before she stormed off downstairs—a wedge of Beaufort cheese, a couple of green apples, and a single slice of bread not quite stale yet. She thinks it would probably be improper to offer her own food to any other guest, but there’s something comforting about the notion that he won’t care. For the clan, food was food. You didn’t let it go to waste over small proprieties.

She picks up the plate and frowns. After a moment’s consideration, she disappears into the back room, re-emerging with a bottle of the strongest Antivan brandy she knows won’t completely offend his sensibilities.

She drops onto the couch next to him, setting the plate down at his side and offering, insistently, the brandy as well.

She owes him an explanation, at the very least. “They put poisoned lyrium in the wells in Wycome. It…agitated the people drinking it. Made them sick. We tried to find a way to fix it without bloodshed, but enemies of the Inquisition killed our agent and then pinned the blame for the whole ordeal on the elves. That is when they marched on the clan.”

She swallows hard. Her fingers curl into a fist in her lap and squeeze. “It happened too suddenly. Even our agents were caught off guard. You did the best you could, given the circumstances—as far as I know, you’re the only one left. Had you not run when you did, perhaps you wouldn’t be.”

And you, some small part of her concerned with details wants to add, but she finds she’s reluctant to include herself in that number. As if it wouldn’t be right, somehow.

He found himself staring into the flames, relishing how they warmed the soles of his feet, until Rhiall came back with food and alcohol. Under other circumstances, he might not have accepted the brandy, but now he came to see it as half a blessing and took a sip that heated up his throat, without bothering to ask for a glass. He barely felt like himself, anyway.

Picking up the cheese, he chewed it slowly. Its creamy taste felt almost traitorous for how much his mouth enjoyed it even while his mind was numbed by much bleaker thoughts. Thoughts that were memories, though ruminated on over and over like food in the stomach of a halla.

He glanced towards her only when she began talking. Explaining. Sharidan nodded faintly as though he understood, but he only understood the theory of it, not the reasons, those reasons that justified this much inhumanity. Not how, poisoned lyrium or not, an entire city could collectively believe that a clan of elves likely ten times smaller than the population of Wycome should ever desire to poison their wells and then camp right outside of it, not quite at an arrow’s shot of distance but nearly so, and with their children and their elder.

« Fucking shem. » A whisper, but a vibrant one, surging from his chest, a word used like an insult that he would have otherwise rarely, if ever, used.

Then he dragged a hand down his face and let go of a shaky breath, returning to the food, slowly biting away pieces of cheese. He saw the tension in her hands, but could do nothing to soothe it.

« I don’t know if I did the best I could. I know that I did enough to stay alive, that I fell back when I saw no other options. Simply staying alive was not--- », he clenched his jaw, « exactly my role in the clan. I have a lot of maybe’s to think about, maybe I should have, maybe they wouldn’t have, maybe you could have. »

Sharidan put down the crust of the cheese, drank from the bottle again, and turned to the bread. « If you want to ask things, I’ll try to answer. But please. Don’t ask me for detailed accounts. »

[elatedwarcry]

@servesorlais

       He encountered Sharidan again in the streets of Val Royeaux, just around the corner from the central folly of the Belle Marché.  ❝ Inquisitor ❞  was the surprised greeting, measured by his own question over whether or not he’d been immediately recognisable … or memorable, really. There had been dozens of chevaliers around Skyhold by the time Michel left to take up his new position in the capital, and he’d never considered himself close enough to the Herald to gauge whether he was favoured among them. It … seemed doubtful, if he gave it thought.

      In any case, Sharidan had not known him in Skyhold as a man masked like one of the new emperor’s personal retinue, formally attired and golden plumed. It would have been gauche to remove the mask and remind him, else Michel would have done so. At least he had written to convey his thanks  —  that felt like a necessary precursor to this greeting, somehow.

      They’d drawn a few curious gazes already, surreptitiously given over shoulders and from pairs leaning over balconies; it might have been the greeting, Inquisitor, if Sharidan had not already called attention to himself by virtue of being the only Dalish that would be openly walking these streets.

      There was a second’s hesitation before Michel gave in to the greeting he’d felt was appropriate. A hand, palm upturned, offered to Sharidan, before he took to a knee.

      It would have killed him once to be kneeling before an elf, figuratively and perhaps literally as well if enough suspicions were raised about his reasons for doing it. There hadn’t been elves elevated to the status Sharidan had claimed for himself, however, exalted in the eyes of the faithful and a proven tactician and politician beyond that.

      No shame in reminding him, then, and all the eyes of Val Royeaux that had flickered this way in curiosity, that Michel remained his servant.

      His lips found their way, briefly and lightly, to Sharidan’s gloved hand, careful not to linger there more than they would be welcomed; from under the new mask, a glance that lacked some of the heavy concern that had weighed on him the last time they’d spoken, not that he expected it would be noticed.  ❝ … I am glad to see you again, my friend. ❞

Though with different clothes and half of his face covered by a mask, the voice and shape of chin and mouth were both recognisable. In fact, Michel’s mask and clothing were also recognisable. Sharidan wouldn’t forget Gaspard’s mask any time soon and the gold and green of his attire was enough of a clue --- Josephine’s lessons and reminders regarding this type of detail were beginning to bear some fruit.

She’d said that he couldn’t possibly attend the peace talks without being able to recognise at least the big names without introductions; and, once in Halamshiral, Sharidan had been grateful for her insistence.

She had then suggested a visit to Val Royeaux, now that the business at Adamant could be, more or less, called solved. Go, and let yourself be seen, let yourself be approached. Josephine wanted him to notice the changes since the first time he’d set foot in the capital of Orlais, and notice them he did. 

Yes, people still stared. His clothes were, according to his tailors, the most au courant attire for a city stroll, but they didn’t let him forget about his vallaslin or his ears. Sharidan felt almost thankful for the large embroidery of the Inquisition’s eye-and-sword paraded over his chest.

And now he felt almost thankful that it should be Michel to greet him first in the market square.

He noticed the hesitation, the second of silence --- but overlooked it the moment his hand was politely requested, taken, and kissed by the chevalier on his knees. It pulled at Sharidan’s lips, making him smile faintly but without effort.

Within the walls of Skyhold, it wouldn’t have had the same impact. Within the fortress, people answered to him, some even prayed to him. Here, where both authority and reputation depended from too many subtle factors for him to feel like he could grip them with a gauntleted, green-glowing hand, the show felt like something else entirely. 

It was an acknowledgement of that authority, as ugly as it was admitting that such an acknowledgement was needed at all.

But the looks from other men and women, hiding from the sun under colonnades and peering down from the terraces, those warmed up his face and settled in his stomach like something comfortable. He found satisfaction in this sudden awareness, and in the sight of the kiss, and smiled further, almost amused by the lack of title and by the choice of friend.

« Nice to meet you again, Ser Michel. »

And whether friend was sincere or a claim of familiarity to gain public points in their Grand Game, the peculiar exhilaration of the display didn’t make Sharidan particularly care yet.

The hand returned at his side when Michel stood up. « I came to take a look at the shops on my way west. Maybe drink something too. You seem to be... faring well. »

[andantegrazioso-deactivated2018]

Lakeview Cemetery | Bonnie Mitchell

[veilpierced]

👊 FOR ELVIS

She supposes it’s her own damn fault for not seeing it coming.

On any ordinary day, she’d be practicing daggers with Fenesvir. On this particular morning, though, Fenesvir is out with Deshanna trying to negotiate a trade for salt with the nearby village, and so it falls to Sharidan to take the role of her sparring partner.

They trade blows for at least half an hour, metal rasping against metal and throwing sparks under the morning sun, but like Fenesvir, Sharidan is more than a match for her by virtue of experience with the weapon. Some part of her is grateful it’s only sparring. She gets the impression he’s only toying with her, lazily parrying every sweep of her own dagger and surging right back—if he really wanted to hurt her, he could do it easily. Nothing less from the master of the hunt.

It’s mostly dumb luck that at some point, she manages to disarm him, catching his dagger in the hook of her own and casting it aside into the reeds.

She starts to laugh, but she doesn’t get the chance to carry through. Without missing a beat, he hauls back and punches her square in the teeth hard enough that she doubles over from the shock and drops her own dagger.

Well then.

Her fingers come away red with blood from her split lip. Sharidan seems unperturbed; he waits for her to stand up again, idly massaging the skin over his knuckles.

“The wolf is never truly disarmed. He always has his teeth, his claws, his wits,” he states matter-of-factly. When she glances up at him, he shrugs his shoulders. “You’re either dangerous without a weapon, or you’re not dangerous at all. If you want to stay alive, you learn to fight like the wolf.”

@elatedwarcry​

[just-art5]

Eduard Leonhardi - Smugglers Beneath an Old Oak as the Moon Rises, 1897 (detail)