heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

With Wysteria and Tony both, it tends to be more productive to wait and listen while they work their way towards a particular point. If he has a sense of the destination ahead of time, well—

Ellis doesn't laugh, but the beginnings of a smile work across his face in the same moment his hand tightens around hers.

"I'm not so much at swimming in the ocean myself," he tells her, which may sound diplomatic but is not so much a kindness as one might imagine. "But I can manage alright in a pond, or a lake."

Which leads him, despite some consideration that the offer won't be well received, to continue—

"If you'd like to learn how, so it doesn't matter so much whether or not your feet can touch the bottom, I'd show you."

The matter of skirts is a whole other discussion, most likely.

And yet—

"Certainly," she declares, patting his hand with the mittened hand he hasn't captured quite so thoroughly. "That would be very agreeable. Particularly once the weather has turned. Kirkwall—indeed so much of the Marches, to say nothing of everywhere else—becomes so wretchedly hot in the summer. I imagine it's a relief to go swimming properly. To say nothing of the practicalities! At this rate, it can only be a matter of time before some business of the war sees fit to dump me into a great body of water and expect me to float. It is one of the only inconveniences remaining. I may as well be prepared for it."

She gives the shape of their hands together another robust pat for good measure.

"Actually. As we are on something near to the topic, this recalls to mind a small matter I have been meaning to discuss with you since we left Kirkwall."

So it is decided. Swimming lessons, agreed upon with a great deal less complaint than the archery lessons, for which Ellis is grateful. But there's not a point to trying to parse what qualifies as practical and what does not. He'll accept being humored on the archery and optimistic about the swimming.

And accept a turn in discussion, which doesn't dim the pleased smile on his face as he glances over to her.

"Aye?" he asks, inviting as he shifts slightly in his seat, lifting one boot to rest on the lip of the toe board. He is comfortable, his hand is warm between Wysteria's mittens, and he expects a question about Lake Calenhad or some such thing. It feels the natural progression in topic.

Here, though there is little enough room to do it, she shifts closer to him on the seat. It's meant to encouraging—a little bump from her shoulder and side and a squeeze from her hands to act as some small act of either gratitude or reassurance.

"I will not ask who taught you to drive." She knows better. She understands these to be painful little things that Ellis has made purposefully remote, and which he may only occassionally choose to dole out like a frugal man anxiously spending his last pennies.

However.

"I will only say that you do so like an especially aged grandfather might, and wonder if you mean to see us to our destination this season. Not that I find time objectionable with such fine company. Only that I've heard there are some cliff caves in the direction we're headed and I should like very much to make up some time with which to look at them before we're expected to return. I would be happy to take the reins, as it were, if you like."

The reward, perhaps undeserved, for the phrasing of the question draws a laugh out of him, bright and unchecked and punctuated with a tightening of his hand on hers.

His amusement is unchecked, even as he considers whether or not it's wise to stop off to poke about caves or to pass the reins to Wysteria, who Ellis has some cause to be suspicious of when it comes to driving.

However.

"You'll have to go easy on the horses," is not necessarily a no. Ellis straightens from his slight slouch, careful the movement does not take him far from the lines of connection between them. "Here."

Since Ellis assumes Wysteria can drive much in the way she can swim, the reins are passed over in the spirit of some instruction. The horses are sound. He trusts her.

He already regrets relinquishing his hold on her hands, but that's neither here nor there.

"Yes, yes. I will be the very spirit of thoughtfullness with regard to their comfort," she assures him, very pleased indeed by both his laughter and for getting her way. She is all eagerness about taking the reins as they're passed over.

"Now." She shortens the reins slightly in her hands until she is satisfied with her grip on them and shifts her seat on the bench beside him—jostling slightly forward toward its edge even as she remains tucked in neat to Ellis' side. "I am slightly out of practice, so you must forgive me and not be too critical of this first mile."

With a snap of the reins and a brisk, "Trot on!" (and when that is ignored, a series of encouraging clicks of the tongue and teeth) to the horses, she prods the pair of them up into an amiable little jog which sends the whole unsprung wagon clunking and clattering and slinging mud up from its prodigious wheels as it steps up a gear.

The road here is mostly straight, hewn out to follow the coast, and the horses know their work. It's hardly as if she's liable to race them around any hairpin corners.

Which is good as it seems that, despite a firm grasp on the terminology and the correctness of how she handles the reins and braces against the toe board, she might be perfectly willing to attempt it—laughing as she is even while trace bits of slung mud reach to flecking them where they sit.

Trading his hold on her hand for an arm slung across the back of the seat, thumb set against the back of her arm for the brief moment before the cart goes lurching forward.

There's only so fast a cart like this can go, which is potentially a blessing. Ellis had taken the time to secure the cargo very tightly, so the most damage being done is the mud spattering up. Wysteria might be mournful about it later, but in the moment it's simply a good, joyful thing to go reasonably fast in this little cart. Ellis' arm tightens around her, hand shifting to her shoulder so as not to impede her ability to maneuver the reins as needed. The concern about tipping the cart isn't wholly dispelled, even in as pleased as Ellis is in Wysteria's happiness.

As it turns out, his concerns are all entirely misplaced.

Not a single report nor the merchant himself had mentioned danger, though that didn't mean Ellis hadn't set his mace behind the seat, out of sight but well within arm's reach. But it means he'd given over the reins to Wysteria, and it means he isn't watching as closely for interlopers as he might have been if there'd been any mention—

Excuses.

Ellis has time to mark all of it for what it is when the trap springs.

It's an old trick. (Ellis knows it.) A man in the road, sprawled with some scattered belongings. The horses slow even before Wysteria pulls up, and in the time it takes Ellis to reach over, they're caught. One man at the horses' head, holding them, while his fellows come running, swords knocking against the wooden sides of the wagon, circling closer.

"Don't say anything," is the most useless thing in the world to say to Wysteria. But Ellis says it anyway as he straightens, drawing up taller in his seat and thinking of how quickly he can reach back for his mace and whether or not they can be moving before someone reaches in to pull Wysteria down.

Their leader is dirty-faced but tall, swaggering along behind his partners and thankfully towards Ellis.

"Good of you to come along," he greets them, elbow leaning against the edge of the cart. "We'd thought this day was going to be a waste of our time."

It's strange, isn't it? Given how often they go traipsing about across the countryside, down craggy cliff faces or poking about in dreadful cursed temples where they might face every assortment of demons pouring forth from a rift, there should be nothing at all about a ragtag assortment of men and women to frighten her. But from the moment the man in the road springs up to catch the horses by their headstalls, her thoughts go very quiet. As the rest of the band comes out of the trees, she is distantly aware of a tight feeling high in her chest as if her heart is making a bid for freedom by way of her throat.

(Later, much later, she will attempt to use this as justification for why she ought to be off the hook for archery lessons. Even if she'd had the bow with her, would it have done them any good?)

It's the sort of trepidation, well taught by an unfortunate level of experience with running afoul of enemy soldiers willing to take captives, which for a moment has her actually following instruction.

That there is a boot in her knife is a fact which registers blankly and only when once of the other bandits—a freckled, dark haired woman with an axe hooked cheerfully over her shoulder slithers up along the other side of the wagon with a genial, "Ta, love. Ooh, Danny"—must be for one od her fellows—"Look how well this one's shod."

Wysteria draws her feet back off the toe board, camel-colored and floral stamped boots with their blue ribbons tucked resolutely back among the fall of her skirts. She bristles.

Maybe, had the Ambassador sent along a member of Diplomacy with them, the possibility of negotiation wouldn't feel so...

Daunting?

No, that's not exactly what it is.

Negotiation comes easier to Ellis when he can consider it at a remove. And that was easier, when one of them weren't standing so close to Wysteria. So he is quiet, looking into that smug, grinning face and waiting until Step away from us or you'll regret it is not the nearest response to hand before he speaks.

"I'll give you the coin I have on me," Ellis says, less like a bargain and more like a warning. There's a reason he's Forces. His thumb wings the edge of Wysteria's shoulder blade as he speaks, contact breaking as his hand tips backwards on the seat slowly. "It's a good amount. Better than you'd fetch for the contents of the cart. And you can leave with it."

This is truthful. Ellis spends his money on next to nothing. What he'd brought in case set against what Byerly Rutyer had issued him comes to a decent sum.

A rattle comes from the back of the wagon, presumably fussing with the rusty latch. Ellis watches this man make a show of considering the offer, expression patient despite being painfully aware of the axe, the woman standing gleefully close to Wysteria.

Thunk.

That axe has shifted, its lowermost point hooked at the the very edge of the driver's box. The dark haired woman smiles sunnily up at the pair of them.

"It is a fair arrangement," Wysteria abruptly interjects. "Indeed, it is more than fair when we might not entertain this delay at all and instead go on our way directly. We are members of Riftwatch, serah. We are seeing to official business of the organization, and are backed by all of the outfit in Kirkwall."

She is all fierce and glaring, attention fixed on the ringleader as she yanks the mitten from her left hand. Palm extended, the sickly green glow of the anchor flashes bright there.

In all this time, Ellis has never quite been able to tell whether or not anyone cares very much about Riftwatch. Does the name inspire anything in particular?

Even now, Wysteria's invocation doesn't explain that to Ellis. It's fair to assume they rear back from the shard of unknown magic glaring out from her palm, more so than the name of an organization that sent out two of their number in a rickety cart more or less unattended. A crackle of energy dances across Wysteria's palm, and it startles the leader and his fellows backwards, and Ellis—

There are only seconds between the light scrape of metal on the wood of the wagon bed and the crack of bone. He has to swing up and over Wysteria, and that's what saves this woman in the end; Ellis can't follow his preference at this angle. Her axe drops to the ground as she reels back screaming over the wreck of her arm.

"Wysteria, do it."

Whatever her shard does. Ellis realizes in this moment he's never actually asked, and all the theoretical chatter he's absorbed between her and Tony hasn't given him a clear idea of what it would be. But it's intimidating enough, when he climbs up over the seat into the bed of the wagon, gorey mace in hand, to leave her a clear shot.

It all happens so quickly. One moment they are just sitting there so uneasily in the seat of the wagon with fear flicking in the faces of the bandits about them, and the next he is moving. The gruesome crack of the mace is like a thunderclap. A woman is screaming. Wysteria sees her own hand extended before her--

"Do?" Ellis is over the seat back. Wysteria, shrilly: "It doesn't do anything!"

She thrusts her hand out as if the motion might successfully activate it. Instead, it just induces the men and women on the ground to reverse their cringing. They move in, all sword points and grasping hands.

Well.

Dismay is shunted completely to the side. All the emotions, fear, panic, it's all tamped down into a box and booted out. There is a limited to what he is capable of doing, but what's the option now than to make coming anywhere near the wagon a mistake? (No armor, no magic, Wysteria with a boot knife and no protection besides what he can offer him and no way out but forward.)

The second demonstration: the fool rounding the corner of the carriage, catching Ellis' mace full in the face. Blood and bone splatter up in a grotesque arc as the momentum of the blow knocks them backwards into the mud. It stalls a few of them, slowing their charge, one diverting to their side with a wail. Ellis doesn't return to his seat but he does move back towards the front of the wagon, fast enough to make himself a deterrent.

"Snap the reins," Ellis advises sharply, because maybe the best thing to be done is to take advantage of the screaming and the horses' restless shuffling. Draft horses go at a reasonable pace, but more importantly, who is going to lay down in front of them to hold onto this cart?

The reins.

Where are the reins?

She lunges forward, scrabbling after where they've slipped down onto the floor of the driver's box. A splash of gore that's more than just blood paints one side of the splintered toe board, and one of the reins is slick with the stuff as she snatches them up and begins to flog wildly at the backs of the agreeable old draft horses. The pair of them, already uncertain with all this shouting business, start. The wagon lurches forward, a rough jerk that for just the barest moment threatens to unseat her. Wysteria leans forward to compensate, to lash the horses again and drive them on despite the man at their heads digging his heels in to the muddy road to keep them in place.

Which is when the bloodied but unmangled hand of the dark haired woman swims back up into Wysteria's periphery and latches onto a ruthless fistful of braided hair.

With an aborted yelp, she's ripped down from the wagon. The flurry of skirts and bawling commotion as she falls onto the snarling arms of the highwaywoman and they both collapse into a thrashing heap on the muddy roadside finally spooks the horses. Spurred into action, they leap forward with such resolve that it sends the man at their heads sprawling. The wagon goes.

There is a scenario where Ellis clambers down to grab the reins and stop the wagon.

However, that is a scenario where Wysteria was not the one pulled out of the cart onto the roadside.

The jolt forward very nearly takes Ellis off his feet. Sometime later he'll consider the lost seconds regaining his balance with disgust, but in the present he takes a running leap off the side of the cart to tackle the filthy-faced leader. Ellis is heavy. He's learned how to slam his body into opponents hard enough that they don't get up after. Maybe there should be some remorse about inflicting that on a human rather than a darkspawn, but—

Ellis reaches down to grab hold of the man by the front of his jacket, hefting his mace comfortably, threateningly in the other.

"Call them off."

The light tap of the gore-sticky mace to his cheek illustrates the rest of the choice: Or I will kill you.

Arguably, this is what he should have done first. He can only see the blur of Wysteria and that highwaywoman out of the corner of his eye, can't afford to turn further. Incapacitating one arm was hopefully enough to give Wysteria an advantage, or at least slow down the more experienced fighter for the moment.

Nine times out of ten, a swaggering attitude will have a way of collapsing once its owner finds himself in the position of keeping either it or his head. The ringleader in question, discombobulated by the impact and scrabbling in the mud where he's been ingloriously pinned, is apparently no exception. He goes briefly chalk white, struggles to find his voice as much as he does his bearings—

The blast of anchor energy is so explosive that it raises small hairs on the back of necks and arms and strips loose gravel and chunks of mud up off the roadside, flinging it like hail in every direction. The dark haired woman with her mangled arm is jettisoned up and back, blown clear across the roadway. Unbelievably, she lands on her feet with a short, decisive crack before collapsing there like a marionette with cut strings.

Across the way, the nauseating bright green of rift magic (or energy or fadeiation or whatever they have decided to call it today) remains flashing and twisting. It surges, pulsing threateningly hot, and somewhere in the tangle of it is Wysteria still on the ground. She's curled into a tight, uncomfortable shape—too obscured by the crackling magic field to be fully visible.

Under Ellis, the ringleader raises both hand in surrender. There's not much need to call the others off; they're already scrambling away.

Everything becomes simpler then: the ill-fated bandits flee, and the danger winnows down to the rift (is it a rift?) and to Wysteria.

Ellis steps over and away from the sputtering bandit, leaving him to scramble to his feet and flee. Whatever might have come of that interaction no longer matters. Ellis' temper is immediately chilled by the rending burst of energy coiling overhead.

Is this terrible-fortunate timing? Ellis only has Wysteria's assertion of her shard's capabilities, and no curiosity in the moment to question it any further as he draws as close as he dares, circling around and bringing himself low, crouching to try and look at her.

"Wysteria!" is a shout, steady in spite of Ellis' very real fear that she's hurt, or that he won't be able to get near enough to her to draw her out. (How far from them is Tony?) And he certainly cannot, will not leave her here on her own.

Bound up in that rigid shape at the center of the arcane field, visible in fits and starts between the bright flashing tongues of veilfire, Wysteria's face is twisted tight down into the crook of her elbow. Her left hand is twisted up as if of its own volition into a rictus claw shape and from the anchor slash in its palm pours that acid green arcane fire.

Somewhere in the middle of the barrier, Wysteria is aware of little more than the blinding, searing heat of it—all rancid green and flashing gold wound over and over about her, designed to be cutting fine. If there is sound, it has to first travel through the agonized roar in her ears and there be painstakingly reassembled into some shape which makes sense.

She raises her face toward the sound of her name. The dark but definitively Ellis-shaped figure roving beyond the arcane field is all she registers before, with a last frantic pulse from the anchor shard, the barrier collapses in on itself.

The surge of relief Ellis feels in response is staggering, makes his immediate scramble forward clumsier than it should be. There is blood on him, and that only occurs to him in the split second before he reaches for her, followed by the worry that she might prefer not to be touched so after what's happened. His hands curl in on themselves as he settles on his knees, close enough that there's no need to raise his voice to draw her attention.

"Wysteria," he says, softly, like a question. Asking permission.

His mace is set out of her sight line, but well within his reach. Has he ever used it on a human in her presence? The worry for that is stowed far off, something to consider after he's certain the splattering of mud on her isn't masking any injuries worse than bruising.

As the barrier has crumbled, so too had the raised angle of her face. It's buried clumsily back against the awkward angle of her arm now, left hand trembling where it's cinched close near her ear and the mud streak nape of her neck. She's breathing hard. There's blood splattered about about person, bright against the blue of her sleeves and dark in her hair, but so much of it seems—

Like it doesn't belong to her. There's a long scrape on her forearm, but thanks to the length of her (now shredded) sleeve it's only angry welted red rather than bleeding outright. Some artifact from being dredged down out of the wagon, more likely than not.

Eventually, she blindly extends her hand—the one still safely in its mitten—toward him.

"Have they gone?"

Once Ellis takes hold of her hand, he seems to have more reeled himself into towards her than anything else. Rather than ask Wysteria to move, he crowds closer, holding tight to her hand as he comes to be kneeling half over her, opposite hand very gentle at her shoulder.

"Yes, they've gone."

Blessedly they'd even dragged the poor bastard Ellis had laid out with his second blow. If they don't have a healer—

Well. Ellis doesn't regret it.

"What hurts?" is an old, borrowed question. It's asked very tenderly, though Ellis' face is still pinched with worry, relief giving way to concern and the shaky, breathless return of all the fear he'd stowed away in the course of the scuffle.

Everything is the ridiculous answer of a child with a skinned knee.

"It's nothing. I just—a moment. Just a moment to catch my breath."

Her left hand flexes and closes slowly, anchor slash glinting. Her right hand twists in his. Draws into a loose fist—a gentle, uneasy thing.

She jerks suddenly, twisting toward him—her face all starkly pale and alarm fixed plain in it. The rabbitting leap of her pulse spikes sharp and high.

"Are you well?" And. "The wagon. Where are the horses? That's not—" She stutters over it, shaking her anchor inflicted hand as if she's touched a hot stove. That's not meant to happen.

"I'm not hurt," he answers first, very firm over the words. "We're alright. The horses won't have gone far. We'll walk along the road and meet them, I expect."

And if not, the Ambassador will have to smooth it over. Ellis finds himself unable to invest any kind of concern in the whereabouts of that cargo. There's no pressure in the words. He's content to sit here on the roadside until she's steadied herself.

"You're alright," Ellis says, displaced hand returning to join their linked palms, finish cupping her mittened hand between his own even though he'd prefer to touch her face, coax her to let him see the scrape on her arm. "You did very well."

Though she shouldn't have had to. That consideration sticks in his head.

For a moment, her attention remains fractured between the half dozen available points—scattered and clearly baffled by the shock of the thing.

And then she sharpens, focus narrowing. Color floods hot back into her cheeks and she kicks to free herself from the tangle that her skirts have become so she can clumsily lever herself more toward something lying sitting upright rather than lying on the cold ground.

"Oh—gods damn it all!" Is all bitter frustration. For the state of her clothes and the road and the missing horses and wagon and how ridiculous the whole affair is. "You would think that if I must be here with this wretched thing in my hand that the least it might do would be to have the courtesy of behaving in a predictable fashion. It is very late indeed for it to have decided to do—to do anything at all. Oh if the wagon is gone I will be truly furious. I've a notebook there with the things I brought along."

It's the beginnings of a very fine rant, but before Wysteria can truly get her momentum going she's forced to pause. To catch her breath. To smooth down some wave of nausea and lightheadedness. With her rift handle folded in tight against her middle, she regards him all mud splattered and flecked with blood. And then there is the mace just there.

Her eye flickers toward it, then away. Wysteria's nod is as curt as it can be.

"Well done, Ellis. I think she might have had my head if not for that. You're certain? You're unharmed?"

Belatedly, Ellis is very relieved he hadn't lead with the instinctive question about her shard. He certainly doesn't take the moment to volunteer what a boon he finds this malfunction. A barrier to force out anything that might harm her? Ellis can't find it in him to resent this one aspect of the thing.

Something else might have been said: the horses aren't so ambitious that they'd have carried the cart off to parts unknown, her notebook will be salvaged, they'll likely only need go a little farther up the road—

But he follows the angle of her glance and the turn of her head, and says none of that at all.

"I can't say there won't be a bruise or two," he says slowly, eyes falling from her face to her hand in his own. As he speaks, he begins to pull her remaining mitten off. It's nonsensical. He wants to feel her skin, not wool. "But it's nothing to concern yourself with."

Practicality says: they'll stay the night in the village. There will be a bath, a chance to repair her sleeve, replace her mittens.

Instead, he says, "And I'm sorry."

The space after which is filled with complicated sentiment, none of which quite fit neatly into words. He had never wanted Wysteria to see such a thing. There is a difference between watching him take demons apart, and seeing what he can do to other living things. He'd risked her and he's sorry for it. Her mitten is closed into one hand, as his thumb runs across her bare palm.

"Let me see your arm, please?"

no subject

no subject

essential thread research: google show me "wagon parts"

thanks google

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject