Lucien sighed heavily, slinging his scythe over his back and gripping his left shoulder in his right hand. That bruise was going to smart tomorrow, but there was little to be done about that. It was, he supposed, the proper price to pay for a moment of carelessness. That he still lapsed often enough for things like this to happen to him did not sit well with the perfectionistic ex-knight. There may come a time in the future when such an error in judgment could mean someone else’s life. If he were the only one who had to bear the burdens of his failures, than he would not dread their inevitability half as much.
Rotating the offending shoulder in its socket, he made his way from the hovel where the gang had been holed up. A woman staying at the Hanged Man had apparently decided he was exactly the thing to set on these street thugs, and he’d cleared out three different ratholes already, one belonging to the Sharpers, one to some unnamed association of smugglers, and this last, in Darktown. With the coin on offer, he’d have thought that they’d be able to find more people to take care of this sort of thing, but if they had, he’d not met them, and he might as well be alone in it. Ah well, a more lucrative livelihood for himself then, not that he required much.
They never did surrender peacefully, either. Dropping his arm, Lucien made his way up the cracked staircase, intent on heading home for a quiet evening, perhaps to finally write back to his father. He’d received the last communication a week ago, and the messenger falcon was clearly tired of being in his house. Not that he could blame it- the roosts at his family’s castle were much better equipped for the well-being of hunting and courier birds than a clean but small home around the corner from the Alienage.
Speaking of couriers, he spotted a man up ahead, moving with purpose. The package under his arm said delivery or something similar, and were it just about anyone else, Lucien would have paid him no more mind. It wasn’t anyone else, though, and he knew that bone-white coif anywhere, even if it was significantly shorter than he’d seen it last. Not even Orlais made many people that looked quite as unique as that particular elf.
“…Ril?” he asked speculatively, hastening his steps to approach the former bard and his own erstwhile companion. “Is that really you?” He’d had no idea where his comrade had gone after they parted ways in Denerim, and the idea that he’d somehow also wound up in Kirkwall was both fantastical and probably what Lucien should have expected. Chance had a funny way of playing with their lives like that. A smile cracked the Chevalier’s countenance, and he wondered if the Tranquil still remembered those days as acutely as he did.
Certainly, it must be so; he’d never known the man to forget any detail, no matter how trivial.
Rilien, having just returned from the docks with his last shipment of glassware in hand, was making haste back to his shop for further experimentation with some unusual substances he’d picked up in a journey to Sundermont (keeping well clear of the Dalish encampment, of course), when his steady pace was interrupted by the baritone notes of a familiar voice. The elf halted midstep, his head snapping in the appropriate direction. He knew exactly to whom that call belonged, and not just because nobody else addressed him as ‘Ril,’ either. What drew his brows together faintly was the fact that he was hearing Lucien Drakon speaking to him in Kirkwall.
But there he was, and apparently changed little in the three years since Rilien had last seen him. “Ser Lucien,” he intoned evenly, dipping his head. Upon rising, he tried to determine if the similarity was indeed universally so, and he decided upon further inspection that the man seemed less… angry than he had been then. Not that he’d ever been particularly enraged, but there was a certain bitterness that seemed to have fled him entirely, if Rilien’s limited observations were anything to go by. That stiffness to his posture, the hart glint behind the eyes, these things were mostly gone now. Of course, much of what he remembered still held, including the rough wooden haft of the peculiar weapon the Orlesian noble carried.
“I see you are still using the absurd farming implement to do a blade’s work.” That had been something Rilien never came to understand about the former Chevalier. He willingly sacrificed an advantage in battle for the sake of some abstract sense of honor to which it seemed none were capable of or willing to adhere save himself. In other words, he risked his life because he was too prideful to use his well-honed abilities to the fullest. It was illogical, and on occasion, produced in the Tranquil something akin to the feeling he got when Sparrow did something particularly foolhardy. Only at least he could make sense of Sparrow’s motives, for the most part.
The knight was by some odd turn inscrutable to logic alone, and it had always left the elf mildly flat-footed in his company. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking what he owed him, and Rilien always paid his debts in full. It helped that the youngest Drakon had no particular desire to call upon those debts, to restrict the freedom of the once-shackled Bard. Chained to a Circle, and then chained to a Bardmaster, but apparently never to be chained to the Chevalier who had freed him from the latter. It produced the closest thing to gratitude that the Tranquil had ever known, before or after his Rite.
It was ever-so-predictable, the response he recieved. Nothing more than a pause, a blink, and a name, given in return, only with less inflection. He had not, of course, expected to surpsise the Tranquil, but over a good year an a half of being in scarcely any other company, he had come to understand that Rilien was... different. Not just from other people, but from other Tranquil people. Occasionally, there was a little something, a tightening of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes, that gave him away. Surely, Lucien had always believed, a man with such a keen mind could not be entirely without judgment on those things which he observed. The elf had always been silent on the matter, save once, and that simple answer had been all Lucien needed.
The fact that after everything, he still adhered to the formality and addressed him as 'Ser' was as much a frustration now as it had been then, but unlike then, Lucien offered no comment. Trying to make Ril change his habits was much like trying to push water uphill- a futile endeavor and one whose result wasn't much worth the effort even if it was achieveable. Though there were many things upon which they disagreed, and Lucien wasn't quite sure that Rilien was the kind of soul to whom such banal words as 'good' and 'bad' even applied, he nevertheless could not fault what he was at his core, and wouldn't much want to change it. More than once, the voice of reason that seemed to be he ex-Bard's inherent state of being had saved not only his own life, but also many others. Lucien was not a pragmatist, but even he could see the value in that.
The jab (and he knew it to be more than a simple observation; what Rilien chose to say was often much more important than how it was delivered), had him shaking his head. Unchanged, indeed. He doubted that the weight of the world would change Ril. So very different were they in this. "So it is," he replied with a half-cocked grin. They'd spent some days bickering on this subject before Rilien seemed to decide that there really was no logical justification for it, and therefore no logical argument would change it. Even thinking of it brought a peculiar mood over the Chevalier, as though he were in some sense out there in the countryside once more, felling bandits and Darkspawn with equal fervor, the quick, illusory flicker of an elf beside him, uncaring of the carnage he caused. It had been disturbing, at first, but he'd come to see the reasons behind it.
"How is it that you wound up in Kirkwall, my friend?"
"The usual way," Rilien replied. "I took a boat." That was, he was sure, not the answer Lucien was looking for, but it was enough of one. His passage had been booked almost as soon as the two had last parted ways, and he'd caught a passenger vessel seeking to retireve some Fereldan refugees from Kirkwall. Most unusually, none had batted an eyelash at the presence of an Orleisian elf aboard the boat, but he suspected that this had something to do with the fact that he'd used the Drakon family seal to ensure his passage. Well, something close enough to the Drakon family seal anyway. He'd discovered that anything suitably ornate passed for "Orlesian" in Ferelden, and the same was more or less true of the Free Marches.
He was certain Lucien had a perhaps more interesting tale to tell, but this was hardly the place for the conversation. Standing in the middle of the street in Darktown was asking to be eavesdropped upon, if not outright attacked. Chances were good that most would take one good look at his companion and think better of it, but Rilien found it easier to just avoid taking the chance. "I am returning to my shop now, if you wish to speak indoors." It was not an invitation he would have extended to most people, but as he'd learned in the most dangerous of ways, Lucien Drakon was not 'most people.' He wasn't even 'most Chevaliers,' when it came to that.
The deadpan response, so completely without any joking inflection, drew a laugh from Lucien anyway. What he chose to say, indeed. He could almost, almost imagine the kind of person Rilien had been before the Chantry stole his soul, his fire. A right hellion, probably, bent on the witty metaphorical eviseration of people of lesser intellect, and probably a showman about it, if what remained of a fastidious, nearly-flashy taste in clothing was anything to go by. It would have been something to see, he was certain, and part of him was angry at the injustice of it all. He'd heard the (obviously abbreviated) version of the story, and it only served to further reinforce his notions that power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely. What the religious would think of that sentiment, he didn't really want to consider. He kept it to himself, for the most part, and kept the peace by doing so.
The Tranquil extended a most unexpected invitation, but Lucien just shook his head. "I'll not force you to entertain me, Ril. Just... don't be such a stranger. I live in Lowtown, if you're ever inclined to visit, and I suppose I'm normally at the Hanged Man if I'm not there or working. If you ever need anything, don't trouble yourself about debts or any of that nonsense." His insistence would not make it so, he knew, but... the thought of a personal friend of his living in a place like this did not sit well with him. Well, the thought of anyone living here was rather repulsive, but Rilien certainly didn't deserve it, and somehow, Lucien felt remiss for not having discovered this earlier.
Either way, he hoped that the Tranquil was making a living for himself without too much difficulty, and that he'd allow the former Chevalier to assist if anything too bad came up.
You didn't survive hell with a man to leave him cold. At least not if you had a shred of honor left in your soul.
"Very well," Rilien demurred, though he left it open to interpretation whether he was respondng to Lucien's polite refusal or his offer. It was better that way; if he was intentionally vague, he knew that the knight correctly interpret that as a reluctance to discuss the matter further. Because of his own prevailing sense of chivalry, he wouldn't press the point, either, which was precisely what the Tranquil preferred. It wasn't exactly impossible to successfully lie to Lucien, but the man had a perceptiveness about him that was not immediately evident from his appearance. As the Bard had been taught to lie, the Chevalier had been taught to detect the truth of things. That was hardly unusual in the region of their birth.
He watched for a few moments as the other man left, before shaking his head minutely and resuming his own walk. He spared but one last passing thought for the encounter before his mind was once again on his business. It was one he had with alarming frequency where the exiled nobleman was concerned: peculiar fellow.
The irony was not lost on him.
Lucien sighed through his nose and shook his head ruefully, alighting upon the stairs to Lowtown. It appeared that the Tranquil was as immovable as ever. Then again, there was something about that which could be considered quite admirable. No matter what he was faced with, Ril remained much the same. It was something Lucien strove for with far less perfection. Still, he wished the bloody bard would be willing to accept some help here and there. It wasn't like it would kill him.
Rotating the offending shoulder in its socket, he made his way from the hovel where the gang had been holed up. A woman staying at the Hanged Man had apparently decided he was exactly the thing to set on these street thugs, and he’d cleared out three different ratholes already, one belonging to the Sharpers, one to some unnamed association of smugglers, and this last, in Darktown. With the coin on offer, he’d have thought that they’d be able to find more people to take care of this sort of thing, but if they had, he’d not met them, and he might as well be alone in it. Ah well, a more lucrative livelihood for himself then, not that he required much.
They never did surrender peacefully, either. Dropping his arm, Lucien made his way up the cracked staircase, intent on heading home for a quiet evening, perhaps to finally write back to his father. He’d received the last communication a week ago, and the messenger falcon was clearly tired of being in his house. Not that he could blame it- the roosts at his family’s castle were much better equipped for the well-being of hunting and courier birds than a clean but small home around the corner from the Alienage.
Speaking of couriers, he spotted a man up ahead, moving with purpose. The package under his arm said delivery or something similar, and were it just about anyone else, Lucien would have paid him no more mind. It wasn’t anyone else, though, and he knew that bone-white coif anywhere, even if it was significantly shorter than he’d seen it last. Not even Orlais made many people that looked quite as unique as that particular elf.
“…Ril?” he asked speculatively, hastening his steps to approach the former bard and his own erstwhile companion. “Is that really you?” He’d had no idea where his comrade had gone after they parted ways in Denerim, and the idea that he’d somehow also wound up in Kirkwall was both fantastical and probably what Lucien should have expected. Chance had a funny way of playing with their lives like that. A smile cracked the Chevalier’s countenance, and he wondered if the Tranquil still remembered those days as acutely as he did.
Certainly, it must be so; he’d never known the man to forget any detail, no matter how trivial.
Rilien, having just returned from the docks with his last shipment of glassware in hand, was making haste back to his shop for further experimentation with some unusual substances he’d picked up in a journey to Sundermont (keeping well clear of the Dalish encampment, of course), when his steady pace was interrupted by the baritone notes of a familiar voice. The elf halted midstep, his head snapping in the appropriate direction. He knew exactly to whom that call belonged, and not just because nobody else addressed him as ‘Ril,’ either. What drew his brows together faintly was the fact that he was hearing Lucien Drakon speaking to him in Kirkwall.
But there he was, and apparently changed little in the three years since Rilien had last seen him. “Ser Lucien,” he intoned evenly, dipping his head. Upon rising, he tried to determine if the similarity was indeed universally so, and he decided upon further inspection that the man seemed less… angry than he had been then. Not that he’d ever been particularly enraged, but there was a certain bitterness that seemed to have fled him entirely, if Rilien’s limited observations were anything to go by. That stiffness to his posture, the hart glint behind the eyes, these things were mostly gone now. Of course, much of what he remembered still held, including the rough wooden haft of the peculiar weapon the Orlesian noble carried.
“I see you are still using the absurd farming implement to do a blade’s work.” That had been something Rilien never came to understand about the former Chevalier. He willingly sacrificed an advantage in battle for the sake of some abstract sense of honor to which it seemed none were capable of or willing to adhere save himself. In other words, he risked his life because he was too prideful to use his well-honed abilities to the fullest. It was illogical, and on occasion, produced in the Tranquil something akin to the feeling he got when Sparrow did something particularly foolhardy. Only at least he could make sense of Sparrow’s motives, for the most part.
The knight was by some odd turn inscrutable to logic alone, and it had always left the elf mildly flat-footed in his company. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking what he owed him, and Rilien always paid his debts in full. It helped that the youngest Drakon had no particular desire to call upon those debts, to restrict the freedom of the once-shackled Bard. Chained to a Circle, and then chained to a Bardmaster, but apparently never to be chained to the Chevalier who had freed him from the latter. It produced the closest thing to gratitude that the Tranquil had ever known, before or after his Rite.
It was ever-so-predictable, the response he recieved. Nothing more than a pause, a blink, and a name, given in return, only with less inflection. He had not, of course, expected to surpsise the Tranquil, but over a good year an a half of being in scarcely any other company, he had come to understand that Rilien was... different. Not just from other people, but from other Tranquil people. Occasionally, there was a little something, a tightening of the jaw, a narrowing of the eyes, that gave him away. Surely, Lucien had always believed, a man with such a keen mind could not be entirely without judgment on those things which he observed. The elf had always been silent on the matter, save once, and that simple answer had been all Lucien needed.
The fact that after everything, he still adhered to the formality and addressed him as 'Ser' was as much a frustration now as it had been then, but unlike then, Lucien offered no comment. Trying to make Ril change his habits was much like trying to push water uphill- a futile endeavor and one whose result wasn't much worth the effort even if it was achieveable. Though there were many things upon which they disagreed, and Lucien wasn't quite sure that Rilien was the kind of soul to whom such banal words as 'good' and 'bad' even applied, he nevertheless could not fault what he was at his core, and wouldn't much want to change it. More than once, the voice of reason that seemed to be he ex-Bard's inherent state of being had saved not only his own life, but also many others. Lucien was not a pragmatist, but even he could see the value in that.
The jab (and he knew it to be more than a simple observation; what Rilien chose to say was often much more important than how it was delivered), had him shaking his head. Unchanged, indeed. He doubted that the weight of the world would change Ril. So very different were they in this. "So it is," he replied with a half-cocked grin. They'd spent some days bickering on this subject before Rilien seemed to decide that there really was no logical justification for it, and therefore no logical argument would change it. Even thinking of it brought a peculiar mood over the Chevalier, as though he were in some sense out there in the countryside once more, felling bandits and Darkspawn with equal fervor, the quick, illusory flicker of an elf beside him, uncaring of the carnage he caused. It had been disturbing, at first, but he'd come to see the reasons behind it.
"How is it that you wound up in Kirkwall, my friend?"
"The usual way," Rilien replied. "I took a boat." That was, he was sure, not the answer Lucien was looking for, but it was enough of one. His passage had been booked almost as soon as the two had last parted ways, and he'd caught a passenger vessel seeking to retireve some Fereldan refugees from Kirkwall. Most unusually, none had batted an eyelash at the presence of an Orleisian elf aboard the boat, but he suspected that this had something to do with the fact that he'd used the Drakon family seal to ensure his passage. Well, something close enough to the Drakon family seal anyway. He'd discovered that anything suitably ornate passed for "Orlesian" in Ferelden, and the same was more or less true of the Free Marches.
He was certain Lucien had a perhaps more interesting tale to tell, but this was hardly the place for the conversation. Standing in the middle of the street in Darktown was asking to be eavesdropped upon, if not outright attacked. Chances were good that most would take one good look at his companion and think better of it, but Rilien found it easier to just avoid taking the chance. "I am returning to my shop now, if you wish to speak indoors." It was not an invitation he would have extended to most people, but as he'd learned in the most dangerous of ways, Lucien Drakon was not 'most people.' He wasn't even 'most Chevaliers,' when it came to that.
The deadpan response, so completely without any joking inflection, drew a laugh from Lucien anyway. What he chose to say, indeed. He could almost, almost imagine the kind of person Rilien had been before the Chantry stole his soul, his fire. A right hellion, probably, bent on the witty metaphorical eviseration of people of lesser intellect, and probably a showman about it, if what remained of a fastidious, nearly-flashy taste in clothing was anything to go by. It would have been something to see, he was certain, and part of him was angry at the injustice of it all. He'd heard the (obviously abbreviated) version of the story, and it only served to further reinforce his notions that power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely. What the religious would think of that sentiment, he didn't really want to consider. He kept it to himself, for the most part, and kept the peace by doing so.
The Tranquil extended a most unexpected invitation, but Lucien just shook his head. "I'll not force you to entertain me, Ril. Just... don't be such a stranger. I live in Lowtown, if you're ever inclined to visit, and I suppose I'm normally at the Hanged Man if I'm not there or working. If you ever need anything, don't trouble yourself about debts or any of that nonsense." His insistence would not make it so, he knew, but... the thought of a personal friend of his living in a place like this did not sit well with him. Well, the thought of anyone living here was rather repulsive, but Rilien certainly didn't deserve it, and somehow, Lucien felt remiss for not having discovered this earlier.
Either way, he hoped that the Tranquil was making a living for himself without too much difficulty, and that he'd allow the former Chevalier to assist if anything too bad came up.
You didn't survive hell with a man to leave him cold. At least not if you had a shred of honor left in your soul.
"Very well," Rilien demurred, though he left it open to interpretation whether he was respondng to Lucien's polite refusal or his offer. It was better that way; if he was intentionally vague, he knew that the knight correctly interpret that as a reluctance to discuss the matter further. Because of his own prevailing sense of chivalry, he wouldn't press the point, either, which was precisely what the Tranquil preferred. It wasn't exactly impossible to successfully lie to Lucien, but the man had a perceptiveness about him that was not immediately evident from his appearance. As the Bard had been taught to lie, the Chevalier had been taught to detect the truth of things. That was hardly unusual in the region of their birth.
He watched for a few moments as the other man left, before shaking his head minutely and resuming his own walk. He spared but one last passing thought for the encounter before his mind was once again on his business. It was one he had with alarming frequency where the exiled nobleman was concerned: peculiar fellow.
The irony was not lost on him.
Lucien sighed through his nose and shook his head ruefully, alighting upon the stairs to Lowtown. It appeared that the Tranquil was as immovable as ever. Then again, there was something about that which could be considered quite admirable. No matter what he was faced with, Ril remained much the same. It was something Lucien strove for with far less perfection. Still, he wished the bloody bard would be willing to accept some help here and there. It wasn't like it would kill him.