Horseshoes, Hand grenades, and Gargoyles
Summery: Hally Lavellan has been hired to take on a clan of gargoyles on her own. Explosives and chaos ensue and the elven woman finds herself in a world of excitement.
Warnings: Violence, language
Tagging: @thearohandmaiden, @capricornrabies, @notreallybeccab, @meshlamando
It was late when I got the call from Keres’ guard, Sylvain I think his name was, requesting my assistance in an important matter. I was a little confused as to why the Blood Fae was requesting for my help exactly since, y’know, elves and Fae don’t like each other much, but I was getting paid, so I wasn’t about to turn him down.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, did you say you’d pay me to make weapons and go kill a clan of gargoyles? Fuck yes! I get to make things explode, this is the happiest day of my life!” I was grinning widely at the big guy’s words, absolutely excited to get paid to blow shit up. This was the dream! “When do you need me? Uh huh. Okay, I can be there in a week. No, no, it’ll only take me twenty minutes tops to make everything I need, it’s the ride there that’s gonna take that long. And, uh, convincing Rune that this is a good idea. My fee is six thousand gold to cover expenses on materials, travel, and on the offhand that I lose a limb doing this. Well, another limb anyway.” I rubbed my right arm, wincing at the thought of going through another loss of a limb. One prosthetic was more than enough, thank you.
“Brilliant! I’ll get to work and see ya in a week.” I ended the call and jumped to it, grabbing my sketchpad and began designing a grenade launcher and rocket launcher of my own design, turning on my music and cranking it loudly as I got to work, welding and hammering, singing along with the tunes excitedly. I was so into my work, I didn’t notice Rune at first until she was turning my music off, startling me.
“Lahalaan Lavellan, I have been yelling at you for the past twenty minutes. What are you doing?” Rune had her hands on her hips, glaring daggers at me and I winced a little bit, grinning awkwardly.
“I’m making a grenade launcher and rocket launcher. I just got a call from Keres’ guard about hiring me to make them and go kill a clan of gargoyles!” I didn’t falter under her glare, my baby sister not as intimidating as she thought she was.
“I-I’m sorry, you what?” She was staring at me like I’d grown a second head and I assumed she hadn’t heard what I told her.
“I was hired to make a grenade launcher and go kill gargoyles.” I was ecstatic over the idea, I had been dying for a little action, it had been so boring lately, so this was going to be a blast. So to speak.
“I… do you have a plan at least?” Rune wasn’t even shocked at this point, she just rolled with it. Guess she was too used to my shenanigans for anything to surprise her anymore, which was mildly disappointing. I needed to do better about keeping her on her toes clearly.
“Yes!” I grinned then stopped for a moment and frowned a bit. “No… Yes!” I had to cycle through a couple of thoughts for a moment before coming to a full decision, but I was almost certain that I had at least half a plan put together.
“This is either madness, or brilliance.” Rune was pinching the bridge of her nose at my response, her voice sounding tired and resigned.
“It’s remarkable how often those two traits coincide with each other.” I pointed out, much to her irritation clearly with that groan she let out before walking out of my workshop, grumbling in elven. I chuckled softly before turning my music back on and getting back to work on my project, wanting to get it all completed and ready to go.
One week later, Rune and I were riding up to the palace on our harts, the two of us looking up at the famed Scarlet Keep with wide eyes.
“Whoa. It’s so much bigger than I was expecting it to be,” I muttered in elvish to Rune, who nodded slowly, eyes the size of dinner plates as we got closer to the keep. Waiting outside for us was Keres, the Blood Fae queen grinning as we hopped off the harts and approached her, the Fae hugging us tightly.
“What are you two doing here? I wasn’t expecting to host you! Not that I’m unhappy to see you, of course, I’m glad you two are here.” Keres stepped back, puzzled now that our greetings were over and done with.
“We’re here to kill gargoyles!” I was beaming. “Well, okay, I’m here to kill gargoyles. She’s here to make sure I don’t blow myself up.” I pointed at Rune and Keres just stood there, head slightly tilted, and brow furrowed.
“I’m… sorry? I don’t recall asking you to come do that?” Keres was puzzled, trying to determine when she asked us to be gargoyle exterminators.
“You didn’t. I did,” Sylvain came walking out, dressed in that imposing ass armor of his that had Rune shifting closer to me, hiding a little bit from the intimidating Fae. “Got here just in time too. Do you have what you need?”
“Oh yeah,” I grinned motioning to the grenade launcher and rocket launcher plus the bag of ammo. “So, where’s our quarry? Oooh I sound like a bounty hunter when I say it like that.”
Rune rolled her eyes and shook her head, smacking me upside the head lightly, earning a scowl from me as I rubbed my noggin where she smacked me.
“You know, how’s Opal gonna feel about you being this stoked to kill gargoyles?” Rune inquired with a cocked eyebrow, bringing up our gargoyle friend in the Court of Stars. I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it again, thinking that over. What if this was her clan we were about to murderize?
“We don’t tell her about this…?” I ventured after a moment of awkward silence and Rune sighed heavily, rubbing her temples. The frustration was palpable and Keres snorted a little bit, muttering that this reminded her of her and Ajax a bit. “Anyway, let’s get moving! I wanna get going while there’s still daylight.” I pulled a map out of the bag I had with me and unfolded it so Sylvain could mark where we needed to go.
“We managed to take out quite a few of them, but I don’t know how many are left. There’s this old ruin they took over as their home, your best bet would be to start there.” Sylvain took my pen, marking the map and trail we needed to use.
“Brilliant. I’m expecting half of my payment upfront and the other half upon completion. You good with that?” I folded the map back up, handing it over to Rune, and accepted the small leather pouch he handed over, tossing it up in the air a few times, before palming it and sliding it into my bra. “Onword, Buttercup! There’s fuckery to spread!” I was cackling, scrambling up onto my hart’s back while Rune groaned.
“Only Varric gets to call me ‘Buttercup’, Hally.” She muttered darkly as we took off, waving at Sylvain and Keres. This was going to be intense and I was a little nervous; these were old elven ruins, who knows just how many gargoyles were there calling it home. I was almost a little nervous that I hadn’t made enough ammunition for this job, what if there were more gargoyles than originally planned on? I was getting too into my own head over this, I needed to pull myself together and focus on the job at hand. Just had to get through this and we’d be six thousand gold richer. Could use it to buy Rune a new bed since she and Spooks broke hers on accident, maybe stock up on some more supplies for the clan. This was going to be just fine.
“Was this part of the plan?!” Rune bellowed, hurling a fireball at a group of gargoyles hot on our heels as we raced through the elven ruins.
“No! No it was not!” I shouted back, turning long enough to hurl an explosive behind us, yelping as we got tossed forward from the blow back. We scrambled to our feet and took cover long enough for me to load up the grenade launcher and fire it off, wincing slightly from the kickback.
“You don’t even have a plan!” Rune realized quickly, hitting my arm angrily. I smacked her back, glaring at the pissed off mage and shook my head a little bit, trying to do some calculations in my head.
“I do too! Sort of!” I didn’t have shit but she didn’t need to know that. I was at least trying to come up with something, but thinking was a little hard when I was currently having to keep an eye out on my surroundings for fucking gargoyles. Now I got why Sylvain wanted this place cleared out, this clan was huge.
“Oh, brilliant, so you have half a plan?!” She conjured up a blizzard to slow them down and I crammed another grenade into the launcher, getting it set up for round two.
“Even better! I have a quarter of a plan!” No I fucking didn’t, I didn’t have shit. I was flying by the seat of my pants here and was winging this job.
“Brilliant! We’re gonna die!”
“There’s that Rune optimism I love! We’re not gonna die, it’s gonna be fine!” I lied through my teeth with a devilish grin. Had to keep my little sister reassured that we would be fine, that I was going to keep us safe. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got an idea! Rune, start running!” I grabbed the rocket launcher, getting it set up and fished out some smoke bombs I’d made, yanking the pins and hurling them over our cover while Rune sprinted towards the exit. I took aim at the roof of the ruins, took a deep breath and fired the rocket, tossing the weapon aside and hauling ass as fast as I could after Rune as the ruins came down around me, Rune thankfully outside.
I burst out of a cloud of smoke, dirt, and debris, coughing hard and collapsed to my knees, trying to catch my breath, and looked over my shoulder. There was no way any of them would have survived that, it took out the entire building, making it collapse in on itself.
“Sorry you can’t study that particular ruin, sis. Told you I had a plan.” I panted, taking her outstretched hand and getting to my feet. “Was it a good plan? No, no it wasn’t. But it worked!”
“You pulled that out of your ass right then and there, didn’t you? There was never any plan, you just went in without thinking. Well, okay, I say you weren’t thinking, but you definitely were thinking. Thinking about one thing: explosions. As per usual with your damaged brain.” She took her staff and hit me in the head with it, making me yelp.
“Why do you have to hit me?! That’s not gonna make me any smarter!”
“It might if I hit you hard enough!”
“Let’s just go collect the rest of my money please. I need a shower. And we have a week-long ride home. Hey, think Keres will let us stay at the palace tonight?” I asked and Rune just threw her hands into the air, stalking off without answering. “Rune? C’mon, what do you think?” I called after her retreating back, breaking into a jog to catch up with her, hoping that Keres would be cool and let us crash there for a night. Fighting gargoyles was a lot tougher than I’d originally thought and I wanted a shower and a nap.