Snippet #2066100

The shapeshifter was in a state of something remarkably similar to bliss. He was grinning darkly as he surveyed the crushed, ruined bodies of darkspawn, bandits, and these three massive creatures that had valiantly attempted to turn them into smears on the ground. It had been a brutal and bloody fight against a worthy enemy, surrounded by allies that, so far, seemed very much worth fighting alongside. Suicide couldn't remember the last time he'd enjoyed a day like this.

The woman who had armed herself with a spear seemed to have not fared so well, however, lying in a heap as she was. The healer quickly set to work on her. Suicide had a feeling she would pull through. She had seemed certain her Path would end here, but Suicide had not been so sure. She was a capable warrior. She had a purpose here. She would carry on. It was not her time yet.

Seeing as he was not in need of healing, Suicide began to search around the battlefield, eventually finding an intact staff still in the grip of the darkspawn emissary who had wielded it. It was a vicious and crude looking weapon, but made of a sturdy, if blackened, wood staff. One end was adorned with a lovely looking spiked ball that would serve as an excellent mace, while the other was fashioned with a crude, but sharp blade. He had never actually wielded a mage's staff before. The other mages he had encountered typically did, though. Perhaps he should try it. He ripped it from the darkspawn's grasp, feeling an electrical energy pulsing along its length. It would do.

"The Path led us to an excellent battle. We are better for it," the shapeshifter commented upon returning to the group. They soon left for the ship, Dekton choosing to remain in his human form, and walk with the others.

---

The seas did not daunt the shapeshifter, though he had scarcely experienced them before. There was little to fear from water when one could simply turn into a bird at a moment's notice, and put as much distance between themselves and the water as they wished. He had thought of spending the hours as a raven, at least for a while, but he remembered that he had done this already. The battles of the day had proven to Suicide that these people were indeed meant to accompany him along the Path, and as such, it demanded he speak with them about... various things. The actual fighting was only the half of it.

Making his way onto the deck, thumping the spiked end of his new staff into the deck as he walked, to the displeasure of the crew, Suicide peered over the side. The waters rushed below them, violent and beautiful. The occasional spray of water left him more or less glistening, though he did not mind. Nothing here was so cold as the Wilds had been.

He eventually turned away from the sea, to find a peculiar sight: the dwarf, Kerin, the berserker as she had been referred to, was... hugging the mast? Her arms and legs were wrapped around it as though she would perish should she let go. Suicide titled his head slightly at her, before taking a few steps towards her, and crossing his arms over his chest, attempting to understand. The Path took him to peculiar encounters, sometimes. Perhaps something would come of this that he could not yet see.

"What are you doing?" he asked with an entirely straight face, not seeming to find humor in Kerin's position, but rather appearing to simply want to undersand what he was looking at.

"Trying to make the boat stop swaying," Kerin answered in complete deadpan. "As you can tell, it's not working," She finished. The act of just speaking these words sent her stomach into knots which were jerked about by the waves slapping the hull of the boat. Her face turned green and she reached for her helmet beside her, which she then unceremoniously vomitted in. Finished expelling what little food she had eaten, she wiped her chin and set the helmet back down in close reach. She was bound to need it again soon. She hated the water.

She looked up to Suicide with weariness on her face. Despite the trip only starting, she was wishing it was over. Then she answered the why. "Have you seen a dwarf swim? Yeah.... Neither have I. We don't get many ponds down in the slums of Orzammar," she said in her typical blunt manner. "I don't see how you all can handle this rocking, and the water... But especially the rocking. Actually living out on the blasted sea?" She said, pointing at the pirates around them, "They must be insane."

"And they must think the dwarves insane," Suicide countered, "to live their lives without seeing the surface, let alone something like the sea." Suicide glanced around at the pirates as Kerin pointed vaguely towards them. "I cannot yet understand why one would live upon an empty expanse such as this, but if they find fulfillment in this life, then it is their Path, and they are right to follow it."

He shrugged. "Personally, I suspect I am not bothered because I can grow wings if I wish. The water holds no threat for one who can fly." The shapeshifter then decided to take another step forward, and take a seat, perhaps five feet from the dwarf, his darkspawn staff resting across his criss-crossed legs. "You fought well against the darkspawn and the others," he commented, changing the subject. "I expect we will encounter greater battles further along the Path. I will be glad to have such a warrior beside me in the bloodshed."

"Heh, thanks for that. Believe or not, I wasn't always this warrior," Kerin said, "I used to be quite the little duster. Scrounging around the heels of the higher castes for scraps to get through the day-to-day. Well. Used to. It turned out that life wasn't in my Path. My Path had a lot more blood in store for me... A lot more." She said in a hint of a wistful tone. It must have been the combination of the sea and rocking that made her talk like this.

Yet, there that word was again. The Path. Honestly, Kerin didn't fully understand the phrase that Suicide used. It was a curious thing, the way he spoke of it. She tilted her head and asked the inevitable question. "Hey, what is the Path anyway? You speak of it as if it's destiny. Fate," She said with a squint, trying to read the large man. As she asked her question her hand unconsciously went to the brand on her face. It had been a long time since she talked to anyone about fate. In fact, the last person she probably talked about it with was her brother...

Suicide had heard enough about the dwarven caste system to know that it disgusted him. They tried to determine the fates of their kind by birth. They were fools. Everyone had to find their fate for themselves. Those that submitted to such a system, and believed their fates were chosen for them, were truly blind to the Path. From what Kerin said, however, Suicide could be reasonably sure that she was not as blind as others of her kind.

"Forgive me if I make incorrect assumptions about your life," Suicide began, "but it sounds as though you follow your Path already. You see that the life your supposed betters deigned you fit for will not provide any meaning, and so you turn away from it. You seek something that gives you purpose, you make your actions have meaning. You seek out your Path. Your fate is not something that others can explain to you, but something that you must find. It is..."

He frowned slightly. The only other person he had spoken of this to was the Warden-Commander, and it was a difficult concept to put into words. "The Path is a feeling, more than anything else. A feeling that you are satisfied with your life and how you are living, enough so that should your death come upon you, you will not regret, you will not wonder what other roads you could have traveled. You are doing what you decide you are meant to do. We cannot know where the Path ends, should we find it. We can only know that when it does end, it will be our choice. We chose to follow the Path, and thus chose its end, a death that completes us."

He fell silent, holding Kerin's gaze for a moment, before looking down at the staff he'd acquired. Perhaps she would understand, perhaps she would not. He could sense that she was willing to search for the Path, but he could not tell if she was willing to accept it.

Suicide didn't even need to finish the statement. Kerin knew exactly what the man was talking about. She nodded along in understanding, she knew his words echoed her own heart. "Freedom. To decide for myself. To choose my own Path. I suppose I did know about the Path. This brand says I don't exist, that the Stone has forsaken me. We have a score of bodies behind us that tells a different story and hundreds more ahead of us that will come to the same end. True, I don't know where the Path leads... But I choose how to to travel it," she said in acknowledgement... Then her face turned green and she reached for her helmet once more.

When she sat her helmet down feeling a bit lighter she grunted. "I just bloody wish it didn't take me over the sodding sea. That was something I could do without," she complained. "You and I are not so different Suicide," she added, wiping her mouth. "Next time we're in a town-- If I survive that long-- I'll buy the first round, aye?" She said. As it stood, she doubted she could even hold a pint of liquor, much less enjoy it. She ventured a glance at the man once more. She wondered what kind of life would lead to the concieved notion of a path. Much like hers perhaps? Or was it similiar, but completely different as well. She didn't know anything about the Chasind people. Were they as free as the notion of the path led her to believe?

Such curious people, these surfacers. Though she found herself more kin to them than her own people.

"If the Path leads us there, then so it shall be," Suicide said with a hint of a smile. He was glad to have found someone of a similar mindset. Yet another sign that this was where he was meant to be.