crystal ||

[inkindled]

FORM: sending crystal
SENDER: Matthias, on behalf of team rescue
RECIPIENT: everyone. except the dead people :,(
NOTES: info here to help you mourn accordingly. this is forward dated to 5.24 so we can make the most of this tragedy.

This is Matthias. I'm with the team that went after the missing party. They were on an assignment, looking into these elven ruins at Baron Deshaies' estate, and they--

They're dead. [He doesn't sound sad, precisely. It's the calm of someone that's gotten used to this.] We confirmed it with an Inquisition contact. Their capture from Deshaies' was purposeful but their deaths, they were-- The whole thing was the work of these mercenaries. They had a Tevinter mage with them, he was there on an assignment of his own. Somewhere on the way back, our party tried an escape. That mage, he's dead now as well, from their attempt. So they must've come close. Not that it matters now. Sometimes it's a comfort, is all.

We've made our report to the Division Heads and we're coming back, to the Gallows. We've got some of their things, that were recovered. The bodies were burned. But we thought everyone ought to know, now. Instead of waiting.

[That's the script. Matthias hesitates, and in a break from what he'd prepared to say--speaking now with more conviction, speaking in half a rush, as if he might regret what he's going to say and so has to get it all out--]

Their names were Merrill, Kitty, Anders, Sorrell, Teren, Wysteria, Bastien, Gwenaëlle [a name he's practiced saying; he stumbles on just a little], Ilias, Kain, Darras, Iorveth, John Silver, Loki, Sidony, and Magni. Saying their names, it's important. There's nothing we can do to change it or bring them back, but--they ought not to be forgotten.

Comments

[inkindled]

Yeah, well, so've I. So've we all. Right now, before this--it's all over the place, losing people. Everyone's feeling it. You're not special so shut it.

We thought everyone deserved to know about their friends being murdered and then desecrated-- [which he says in sort of a Norrington voice, before switching back to his own again] --and that's the best that can be done.

[judgemewhole]

... I did apologize. Did you miss that bit or did you purposefully ignore it?

[wythersake]

I think we might all refocus, ser.

[ — is politer than what he'd like to say. matthias doesn't need him cutting in. but whatever, he's doing it. ]

wildly assumes they're within proximity

[inkindled]

[Sonofa

Off-crystal, Matthias hisses at Isaac--] I've got it, I've got it--

[He doesn't got it. And very tellingly, he has not responded to Norrington just yet.]

hella

[wythersake]

I know, [ a lie; a hand silencing his own crystal. ] Your friend, Merrill —

[ (de fontaine's dinnertime novelty, anders' definition of an ally; a passing face of perpetually improbable cheer) ]

What was she like? What did you like about her?

[inkindled]

[A flicker of something very much like betrayal passes over Matthias' face first, before he screws the look down into a scowl.]

Why?

[wythersake]

I didn't know her very well.

[ — and it's a diversion that might do for norrington, in time. for the moment, their immediate party is more pressing. ]

[inkindled]

[Oh. He turns his scowl down to his boots instead, directed inward.]

I mean, we'd only met, since I'd been here. She's nice, I s'ppose. She's a mage as well, Dalish though--and she has a griffon. I met it. Him. Or not has-- [And then he realizes that it is is really properly not has, and he grinds the toe of one of his boots against the ground.] It doesn't matter. Does it? 'Cause she's dead.

[wythersake]

You're not.

[ obviously. which can become its own problem, but if it were a particularly dire one, he doesn't imagine matthias would have made it this far. ]

If she'd been, [ a small gesture, the crystal ] Like that, you'd remember her differently.

[inkindled]

[Not dead, when everyone else is, and it always feels a little unfair to wake up the next morning and think that. Weigh yourself against the dead and think the wrong choice got made, somehow. Then put it away and move forward.

Matthias keeps his attention fixed on his boots, on the imprint that the toe is making in the dirt. He ignores the caged-up feeling that he has in his chest, which is eating at him like a corrosive acid, chewing him up and spreading that hot feeling in behind his eyes.]

What about you, then. [Defense as offense. He looks up all at once, forces himself to stare mutinously in Isaac's face. The grim set of his jaw tells a lot about what he's remembering and thinking.] Which one of 'em was your friend? What did you like about them?

[judgemewhole]

...Yes, of course, you're right. My apologies, again.

[He knows very well he's going to spend a lot of time doing this, so with a heavy sigh he continues.]

Are you a member of the party that went searching?