therookery | sending crystal

Entry tags:

sending crystal

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Morrigan
RECIPIENT: All
WHAT: Hey s'up we found Mythal
WHEN: This month at some point (I don't want to leave out the kidnapped folks)
WHERE: Kirkwall; Morrigan is out by Sundermount if you feel like pestering her in person
NOTES: Report linking all important previous parts

As some of you are aware, I have spent some considerable time and effort in search of my mother, her whereabouts, what she might be doing. There are those of you who have joined me in this.

My mother has been found. And I have discovered the truth of the legends at long last: no demon, no spirit, but Mythal.

[Not easily said, the most uncomfortable Morrigan had ever sounded over the sending crystal and the pause is as much for her to collect herself as it is for the news to sink in.]

All evidence on my search - the report sits with Elven Artifacts have you a wish to read it - pointed to something old. And she has confirmed it. Myself and those with me when we found her at the Altar of Mythal had no reason to doubt her.

Have you questions, I will answer them. Mind your tongues. She took my son to bring me to her.

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[ There's an audible squawk of- distress? surprise? something -from Merrill. ]

She- I helped- I met- she said- she took-

What?

[Merrill who was, of course, a central part of the Tale of the Champion that Morrigan did bother to unravel, who is a friend, who Morrigan would have asked to be a part of this had she been here for any of it is given time.

(Morrigan might tell her it was Carver who gave her a piece to slot in place.)]

Which part troubles you most?

[All of it, she imagines. But what she means: where do you wish to start?]

Erm.

[ There are so many parts, so many pieces, that Merrill can't even begin. ]

Yes?

[ And then, as if in a stupor: ]

She said I was a credit to the People.

And where has she been all this time? Flemeth's legends began since the Towers Age and 'twas Mythal who came to her in that tale, not a demon.

[None of this she says to be unkind but to say what has happened. That this is who exists.

Geldauran and his claim held up in the light of Mythal makes it all very interesting.]

Did she help any of you? Think very carefully as to why you might have been a credit to them.

Help- who? The Dalish? Myself and Hawke and the rest of us?

[ There's a pause and then, in a quiet voice: ]

Keeper Marethari taught me how to do the ritual that made Asha'bellanar appear. It was to repay a debt.

The Dalish. How long my mother has lived with Mythal a part of herself, how little she has ever done.

[Although the argument could be made: did she help Hawke, did she help Merrill, did she help any of them? Or was it merely in service to herself, to her own ends?

When she looks at Kieran who won't look at her all the way right now, she wonders.]

Did you ever ask what caused her to find herself in the position where she owed a debt to Flemeth? Terms to suit herself, I would imagine knowing her as I do.

[ This is nothing that Merrill had ever wanted to speak of, nothing she certainly had ever expected to speak of to any who were not Dalish. She adjusts her crystal, makes sure that only Morrigan's can hear what she has to say. ]

The clan was attacked by the Avvar while she was the First. Her husband was killed, the Keeper badly wounded, and so Marethari led them away and down into the lowlands of Ferelden. She met Asha'bellanar there, and- well.

[ She swallows. ]

The Avvar were killed by Sylvans shortly after. In exchange... future help. The ritual I performed.

Justice. Vengeance. I wonder if Marethari would have asked my mother had she known who she was truly asking? [It's...well it's said a little more gently for she knows that Merrill lost her clan. They're gone. They won't be coming back, and that other clans will know of it--

But all the same to go to her, to answer death with more death, that has every air of her mother. And so--]

The Dalish call her that, but the Chasind call my mother Mother of Vengeance, did you know that? The Chasind came from the Alamarri once, who split and formed the Avvar too, and so I wonder...who remembers what of the oldest days. Of how slight the difference between justice and vengeance are? That is what Flemeth wants. Vengeance for Mythal. Perhaps any days of when Mythal was goddess of justice are gone long ago now, or they have been misremembered.

[Tell her, she urges in the quiet urgency of her voice, what do you remember. You remember more than most. You have a quicker mind, you were willing to be ostracised in your search.]

When... when I met her.

[ Merrill starts, stops. It feels so strange to speak of this. Is she dreaming? She isn't, she knows, but she almost wishes. ]

She asked if I knew her by any other name. I said no. But if she thought I might... maybe Marethari did know.

Still. They said Mythal was justice, but that she would smite your enemies, would leave them agonized. Kinder than Elgar'nan, but still a dragon. She had fought Falon'Din, fought Andruil... maybe when compared to Elgar'nan, it was justice, but now it seems more like vengeance.

[ A pause. ]

I- is Kieran okay? I'm so sorry, I should have asked that first.

[When does a mage simply dream? (Kieran's dreams-- well he dreams. No more, he'd said, wistful almost, but he said he still dreamt, but there's no fever sweat to him, no thrashing, no sheets tangled in a heap come morning.

She won't be relieved for that, it twists something too deeply in her.)]

Perhaps she wondered then, you know, when you performed your ritual I had not yet found the truth of her prolonging her life as I understood it then? She had not-- well she died, I suppose. They very much did kill some dragon. I wonder what else she might have known to look upon any of you.

[How discomforting a notion.]

How far from one another are justice and vengeance in the end? When does one become the other? What is just in the face of retribution? [She sighs, she's talking in circles as if this might help her. But because this is Merrill, because they've spoken of other things…] In the Tirashan I found a thing written by Geldauran. Of the Forgotten Ones. And I question what gods are, if indeed Creators were gods at all the way it was written.

[Her silence hangs, ripens, but she was asked of Kieran.]

He's upset, as you might imagine. Never have they met, and to learn all he did upon meeting her, to be taken-- there are questions he wishes to ask me but will not for his sullenness, a silence he wields as a weapon. But he speaks. No harm has come to him.

I- oh. What- what did it say? Do you still have it?

[ She wants to know, wants to see. It is of her people, or close enough; it is of the time when her people were at the highest, and that means Merrill has to know. Even if she doesn't like what it says, she has to know. ]

Do you think he might talk to me? I'd be willing to try, or to at least spend time with him. I'm glad he's not hurt.

I have it, a copy is with Elven Artifacts now but a moment--

[It takes longer than a moment because there are things Morrigan has tucked away to be kept as safe as she can keep them out by Sundermount, in the shadow of her worst fears that have borne fruit.

Words she had dared only to read - and it had been daring, to read them aloud in the Tirashan as the screams of a dying woman echoed, sacrificed to nameless ones by those in Vallaslin red as the blood spilling out of her - once before come from her again. Not halting but with a wariness. A weight. The first time spoken aloud since Mythal.]

There are no gods. There is only the subject and the object, the actor and the acted upon. Those with will to earn dominance over others gain title not by nature but by deed.

I am Geldauran, and I refuse those who would exert will upon me. Let Andruil's bow crack, let June's fire grow cold. Let them build temples and lure the faithful with promises. Their pride will consume them, and I, forgotten, will claim power of my own, apart from them until I strike in mastery.

[A pause to allow Merrill to digest that, then:] You see why I question if they were ever gods at all?

[Gods might be built afte all. The Magisters of Tevinter very much prayed to their Old God dragons.]

If he won't speak to Alistair or Gwenaëlle, he'll be less inclined to speak to someone he knows not at all.

Edited 2018-09-13 22:25 (UTC)

Oh, I wouldn't interrogate him or anything. Wouldn't even bring it up, just- maybe he'll bring it up to someone who he doesn't think will judge him, since they don't know him.

[ The words, though. Merrill is quiet for a time as she thinks, reviewing the words over and over in her head. ]

'Those who would exert will upon me'. That's an interesting phrase. I mean, Geldauran doesn't exactly sound like a nice person either, what with the whole 'strike in mastery' thing...

But still. That doesn't mean there's not truth in it.

Now is...unwise. He needs time.

[She needs time. They need time. And for all the good intentions Merrill might have, Merrill is too close to this in ways that have Morrigan uncomfortable.]

Is that not what a god might do? Or a thing taken for a god if there are none, a thing one fashions into a god by its might, by raising that thing up to such heights for there is little else that might be done upon looking at it. If Geldauran was betrayed by Fen'Harel same as the rest…

[Well, Geldauran has as much reason to be biding their time depending when it was written. What did happen then?]

Of course.

[ Morrigan is his mother, after all. Merrill will not push past that. ]

Oh, yes. It doesn't make them nice people, though.

I wonder... where they might be. If Mythal is here... what of the others?

We did not ask. [Not an apology but to confirm that Morrigan won't be the one to come to for answers on that front.] I would imagine if she was something of that nature, if she came to Flemeth as she did, then there would have been violence. You have seen the Crossroads as I have. The doorways sealed shut. Perhaps there was a great violence. Elgar'nan for one was said to have been possessed of a temper only she could calm.

[Coupe speaking of archdemons though, Morrigan counting numbers. There are unwelcome thoughts.

Merrill's eluvian was blighted once.]

[ Her swallow is audible, nervous. ]

It would make sense. Perhaps there was more than one great violence, even. The stories we do have... Many of them speak of things like one of the gods lashing out.

Even Andruil and her love, was that not a tale with violence twisted into it? Thorns in the thicket?

Ghilan'nain, you mean? She was attacked by a hunter who had killed one of Andruil's favored beings, but the hunter could not kill her. Andruil sent her hares to chew her free from the ropes the hunter bound her in. But Ghilan'nain was still wounded and the hunter had also blinded her, and so Andruil turned her into the first halla.

[ Which... is a much more disturbing story, if one assumes that none of them were gods. ]

[There are darker things Morrigan had heard or read (sometimes lines blur, it's been more than ten years, and her mind isn't quite so centred in this moment) but it isn't the time. Merrill is perhaps the shape of a friend when time allows them to reconnect more, and certainly an ally, someone to trust, with opinions and knowledge far beyond the pale of others.

She won't push in the face of this, she wouldn't wish to be pushed herself, she'd snap as a caged wolf.]

My mother was the one to teach shapeshifting to me, I had always believed it had far more in common with Dalish magic than anything the Circle ever banned. 'Twould seem I was correct on that count.

[ It's the main problem, really: there's few to no written records from the time of Arlathan. Oral histories and stories change with the telling over the years, differ even between the clans. Merrill knows that she doesn't know, not truly. ]

Oh, yes. I suppose most in the Circle would think wanting to change your shape was somehow an affront to the Maker or something.

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