Sparrow exhaled sharply through her nose, mussing up her fingers through thick snowy locks. She was on her way to the Alienage, seeking out Ithilian and Aurora. She'd included Rilien, as well. It seemed foolish to hide anything from him, though he didn't seem overly bothered that she hadn't immediately come to him in the first place, which was strangely relieving. She'd also told him about her run-in with Rapture on the Wounded Coast, and what had happened with Sophia and her fellow guardsmen. Tearfully, regretfully. In the means of sulking in the corner of their home, knees drawn up to her chest. Initially, she'd wanted to lie to him, tell him that nothing at all happened in the hills, but he'd had that look in his eyes. An all-knowing speculation full of patience, understanding and tolerance that always left Sparrow bewildered. She remembered, shamefully, how her fever-head ached and how her throat felt as if it'd been stuffed with cotton, hollow-framed and solemn once more. He did not question her foolishness, only sat quietly by her side.
Now, they were two riff-raff denizens who the Templars would gladly drag back down to the Circle if caught or found. Her, perhaps, more so for what she'd done. She would have been considered a runaway apostate, a malificarum, and demon. Already, she'd spotted freshly inked, crisp posters with her description plastered against wooden doorways. The Hanged Man's barkeep had tactfully ripped them down, offering her homage in the backrooms should she need somewhere to clear her head. Varric, too, was keeping his mouth shut when it came to her whereabouts, deftly sending inquisitors in the wrong direction. She was thankful, but her guilt was beginning to eat her up, gnawing at her insides like incessant rats. Her frequent bouts of silence betrayed her doubt. Each time she unfolded the letter, already fraying at the corners from fiddling with it so much, Sparrow remembered. Vivid snapshots of just how little control she'd had over herself, like smears on a glass frame.
Her ship was bound to be shipwrecked, smashed up against the rocks. It was a matter of time, she'd said. Rilien disagreed. He would not allow it. And Sparrow believed him wholeheartedly, bellying a reliance that she could not entirely understand or accept. But, if the time came, she refused to drown everyone with her. Pulling them to the depths would be the end of her. It was enough that she'd entirely ruined her relationship with Sophia. Dallying anywhere near the Viscount's quarters was out of the question. Redemption, in Sophia's eyes, would only come in the form of slinking into the Gallows, offering herself up for whatever punishment they'd hand down to her. Would her death be enough? Perhaps. Her freedom and life were important. She could not offer either, even as an apology to someone she considered her friend. She understood, best of all, that Sophia's reaction was justified. She understood that no amount of explaining would change her mind. Weaknesses were weaknesses. Those who did not entirely make sense of magic could never possibly sympathize.
She was not an apostate, nor a mage, nor born with anything she ever needed to hide.
Sparrow's fingers tangled for a moment before she dropped them back to her sides, busying themselves with her leather satchel. She wanted to make sure she had everything she needed. This was a hunt, in all technicalities. She'd been up early, pacing back and forth like a perturbed kittenābecause, she was terrified and angry and afraid of facing them again. Everything in her body screamed that she wanted to get this done and that it would have some positive effect on her life. It did not, however, stop her from rattling on to her companion, trying to will some of the Tranquil's unruffled calm into herself. It was impossible. Fearful crackles of adrenaline coursed down her spine, readying herself for something that was to come. Perhaps, today, or tomorrow, depending on if Ithilian could find them as easily as she believed he could. āWhat if they've heard word and left already?ā She seethed, arms crossed. āNo, no, they wouldn't.ā
Once they entered the Alienage, Sparrow pulled out the letter from her small space of her breastplate, reaching over the lip. She wore it, more often than not, in Kirkwallāfor who could recognize her if she was wearing an iron visor, plopped down to obscure her face? Her armour concealed her gender, as well. Though, with Kirkwall's blistering heat, it was difficult not to feel as if she were boiling up in a tin can, or an open soup-pot. She spotted Ithilian and Aurora across the way, and threw her arm out in a wide wave, letter held aloft. āYo-ho!ā The half-elf greeted, bumping Rilien's elbow with her own as if to get them moving along quicker. āI've good news, I hope. Er, rather. A better idea of their whereabouts.ā In long strides, Sparrow halted in front of Ithilian and dropped the letter in his lap, staring expectantly. It had their names written in it, but the locations were generalized. She was no good with riddles.
Rilien had watched her eat herself from the inside out for a number of days, but it had finally reached the point where heād simply appeared in front of her pacing form one evening and pointed to the sofa in their shared living space. Sheād sat, with great reluctance, and then heād sat beside her, close enough to brush her leg with his, because as much as he hated the feeling of freezing and drowning again when it was all over, she needed someone to feel with her, for her, and even his logic had informed him of this conclusion. He knew the storyāwhat about her life did he not know? He had contacts, ears to the ground, scruffy little children he paid handsomely to listen, beggars and thieves to sneak into shadowed corners and earn their keep doing less dangerous things than begging and thieving.
The thing had made an appearance on the Wounded Coast, and taken its first innocent (or relatively innocentāRilien was not fool enough to assign that adjective fully to anyone in this forsaken place) victim. In front of the Viscountās daughter, known to have sympathies in the general direction of the Chantry and the Templars. The eventual description, the story in its fullest form, had not, however, issued from her, but a guard who had been half-delirious at the time, and given only the vaguest, most confused of descriptions. Rilien used his network, and some of the members of Varricās, to further muddle the story, until some versions of the demon were twelve-foot-tall monstrosities with sickly green skin. Certainly not something anyone would find near Sparrow.
But theseāsubtle misdirections and delicately-spun liesāwere not what Sparrow had needed then, and she also did not need to know that he understood just as much of it as she did. Perhaps more. So instead, he listened wordlessly as she relayed the tale, and he felt. Predominant was a hot rage at the thing, though there was some irritation at Sparrow for using her magic in front of Sophia Dumar in the first place. He was alsoā¦ moved. Sympathy was not something heād often known before, but he couldnāt think to call it by any other name. Sitting there had also reminded him of how tired he was. The first stage of brewing the potion that he required to fix this had started about a week ago, and he was searching for the key ingredient in the meantime. There were a couple of potential sites near Kirkwall, but he needed to survey them from a closer location to discern if there was enough magic in any of them to potentially contain what he was looking for. The Tranquil was, to put it another way, not sleeping very much anymore.
Still, as he accompanied her to the Alienage, there was no tell of it save the soft bruising under his eyes, mostly covered with some alchemical concoction or another. The heat of summer drew near, but if the sun beating down on his white head bothered him at all, Rilien made no sign of it. He ignored the urge to twitch when her elbow knocked hisāshe had a tendency to forget what even such incidental things causedāand he did not quicken his footsteps visibly, but kept pace all the same, all the way to the great tree in the middle of the place.
He recognized both of the people beneath it, though he would not have expected either to be involved had Sparrow not told him that they were. He said nothing. He was here to kill whatever needed killing; the talking could be left to those more disposed to it.
Ithilian had been in the middle of his first conversation with Aurora in which he hadn't been actively trying to remove her from the Alienage. It was a rather frightening thing to witness, but at least it had been she who had approached him, while he'd sat playing the flute near the vhenadahl. Conversations with Amalia were still... a little tense, so he'd been giving her a good deal of space for the most part, but at the moment she was not present in the Alienage.
The conversation, mostly one-sided as it had been, was interrupted when Sparrow returned to the Alienage, this time with a folded paper in hand, and a Tranquil in tow. He hadn't expected her to disappear forever, certainly. As someone who fully understood the idea of vengeance, Ithilian knew just how powerful it could be. She would not simply stop because of difficulties, of course, not if these men had wronged her as she implied. He would have sought their deaths, certainly.
Ithilian glanced at the letter she'd plopped into his lap, before cracking it open, his eyes darting across the contents. "... A request for an unspecified shipment of six units, to be delivered to 'the seventh, below the west chain.' The exchange is to be this evening. Signed, Arcadius Kassim and Silian Raunthil." He knew the forest well enough, but that didn't sound a forest location. He shrugged, looking up at the pair, glancing once at Aurora. "Location sound familiar to any of you?"
She watched Ithilian expectantly, nearly echoing the same words under her breath. Her lips made to move, before clamping shut. Maker knew she'd read the damn thing into oblivion, memorizing every word under hazy lamplight, and pausing every time her eyes roved over their names. She whispered them like curses, willing death and justice and pain upon them. Silianand Arcadiusāthey could not give her innocence back. Their price would be death, in whatever way she could make worse. They did not deserve mercy, nor would she grant them quick deaths. She doubted that Ithilian would have anything to say to the idea of drawing out their deaths, but she did not think Aurora would think it right. She shrugged her shoulders, eyeing the sky as if to conjured up the location in her mind. The seventh, below the west chain? What the hell did that mean?
Aurora chewed her lip for a moment running the description through her mind. It was certainly cryptic, but unsurpising considering who it had signed it. However, she was quick one and thinking about it logically should reveal the answer. "No, but it sounds like it has to be somewhere in the city," She began. Certainly not in the forest as she was expecting to head first. The shipment though, the fact that something was being shipped meant something. "If a shipment is being delivered, then perhaps... The docks?" she asked. It'd be a lot easier to smuggle something out by boat than by cart. "The seventh pier maybe?" She offered. "Underneath the western boom chain," Rilien finished, "I know where that is."
"Then there's a meeting to be interrupted, and scum to be killed," Ithilian said. Really, he felt rather good about this now. Perhaps he was trying to live without needless hate now, with his eyes open, but this wasn't needless, and sinking blades into the flesh of the lowest of individuals was something that he had always found rewarding. Aurora turned her nose up, but said nothing. Killing still sat ill with her, but this was not her choice. Ithilian was right, in any case. They were scum, and if not dealt with would only continue to do what they did.
Bolstered by Rilien's composed presence, shadowing her movements like her thick-plated armour, Sparrow felt as if she could carry this thing out. She did not need her companion to say a word. Her nervousness ebbed and flowed in turbulent waves, retreating a little further each time. He, as well as her like-minded acquaintance and generous mage-friend, would help her see this through. Honestly, she couldn't say enough to thank them. Words could do no justice. Actions would prove just how much she was indebted to themāand should they refuse her future attempts to pay them back, Sparrow would stubbornly persist until they took back all of their rebuffs and reluctantly accepted whatever help she had in mind. Her dogged determination would win, in the end.
The lack of animosity between her temporary hunting-partners was welcome, indeed. Had there been anything between them, Sparrow might not have noticed, anyway. From her harried, and often blurry recollection, nothing bad had happened between Aurora and Rilien (though he probably wouldn't have told her if something had), and she wasn't exactly sure if Rilien and Ithilian had even spoken more than a few words to each other, if any at all. Either way, everyone seemed rather content, if not entirely nonplussed by the company they stood in. Sparrow was pleased. She offered Rilien a half-smile, smoothing her hands across her chest-plate. Hopefully, nothing would go wrong and they could be done with this quickly. Though, not too quickly. As much as she wanted to be relieved of the heaviness weighing on her shoulders, Sparrow wanted them to suffer as much as she had suffered. It was a selfish thing to want, and perhaps a little cruel. But, it was not a feeling she could readily dismiss.
Sparrow instinctively peered across the Alienage, through the great tree's foliage, in the vague hopes of spotting her once-friend. It might have been true that she hadn't sought her out for this particular mission, but she still wanted her to know that she was finally burying important parts of her past. That, finally, some of her hurts might be put to rest. And, finally, that she might be allowed to stop running. She would be allowed to rest, finally. The aching bitterness consumed her; it was an ugly, crushing feeling that she believed she shared with Ithilian. It swallowed every particle, deep down into her core. Painted things she'd once seen as beautiful into a horrifically abstract canvas, splattered with things she'd rather forget. She felt it was her right to hunt them down, and make them pay, dearly, for everything they'd done. Surely, she hadn't been the only one.
āThe docks,ā Sparrow repeated, clapping a fist into her palm. āMakes sense, if no one's spotted them anywhere else.ā Hiding like bilge rats, scampering over the wooden decks of a ship. It made her sick how they could have been so close to her, and her being completely unaware of their whereabouts. How long had they been drifting in and out of Kirkwall? How long had they been living in the same city? An involuntary shiver pebbled her spine and forearms, hidden beneath her sweltry iron plates. When Rilien conceded knowledge of the riddle-place in the letter, Sparrow turned towards him and nodded vigorously, wooden and jittery with something. Not quite excited and not quite terrified. āLead on, then. I can discuss some things on the way.ā
Namely, how they fought, how they weaselled around the battlefield. It was true that they might've changed, but she would always remember how they'd faced the band of Qunari. They were dirty fighters, and rather good. If not for the Qunari's numbers, and the mercenaries' genuine surprise, it might not have gone in her favour. āArcadius looks a tad like Lucien. You'll likely recognize him first. He uses a long blade, curved slightly and he's quick. And Silian, I've seen him use magic. Dirty magicāblood, I think. He could move corpses. Neither will fight fair, but it's to be expected. Scum fight like scum.ā She felt foolish for warning them, but they needed to be prepared either way.
Ithilian silently took in the warnings, and nodded. The mage would likely not be his business, if he could help it. He could shoot him down from afar, or sink blades into his flesh, but he knew not how to defend against magic other than to get the hell out of the way. Perhaps Aurora would be more willing to handle him. As for this Arcadius, Ithilian could cross blades with him, but if this was Sparrow's vengeance, undoubtedly Sparrow had something in mind. More importantly, it was her vengeance, and as such it should be her to claim it, if she truly desired to when the time came upon her. If she decided against it, he'd be more than happy to slice under their throats, but he knew nothing of these men other than what he'd been told. They would undoubtedly bring assistance, if they were not fools. Ithilian would be more than capable of handling these, when the fight came.
It seemedā¦ wrong, that a man like that should wear a face like Lucienās. Then again, Rilien was probably more nonplussed by something Rapture had told him once: that she was overlaying the face of a tormentor on his, trying to make Sparrow believe that he was one of them. He assumed it much be the blood mage, for attempting to force his structure to mimic that of his chevalier ally was quite like attempting to make a circle into a square. It didnāt matter, he told himself, they were going to die anyway. He was not overly concerned with who did what damage to which, but he would accept instruction, if Sparrow gave it. Even if part of him wanted to gut the one that was supposed to be a bit like him. Just to prove that it wasnāt. She had told him to lead on, so he did, padding up the Alienage steps on silent feet. Whatever awaited them, it would soon be theirs to deal with.