Letter to the Old Regiment

Captain Ironstar Eighth Regiment, Ebon Vanguard Foewatch Encampment

Sir -- 

I’m well aware that you and I parted badly, and I’m well aware that I’m about to bring up the subject that got me kicked from my regiment and busted back to the First and the city.  I don’t give a damn.

Did Daphne go back to the Vigil after her leave?  She told me after your tantrum that she was done with you and me, and heading right back to Trinity to rejoin her Vigil unit.  Did she go?

I’m sure you know full well that the First is heading right into the crash zone. If I need to be looking for your daughter, I will, gladly.  If I need to be looking for her and you don’t tell me so, then Dwayna protect you.

Gibbs

I’ll always take the blood-stained anything

The Dead Who Speak

Her body wasn’t warm, but neither was it empty.  He said as much to the dead woman’s father while the old man wrung his cap in his hands.  “We don’t know. We don’t know what happened,” he said, bewildered.  The lady of the house hadn’t even come downstairs, certainly not to meet the necromancer.

He’d left his uniform at the barracks, of course.  This wasn’t Vanguard business, this was mercy.  Finlay hadn’t been too pleased with the priest of Grenth in the city square calling him “brother.”  Finlay was no priest, and the priest was no him.  The details tugged at him, though:  a very young woman dead in her bed after illness, that was no strange thing.  The Vanguard hadn’t even been called for that.  But she’d been doing better, the father kept saying.  So much better than she’d been.

Finlay finally got the man’s remaining child to herd his father from the room. The living boy was too young to be called a man in full, but he guided the old man with a steady hand.  He’ll be a comfort, Finlay found himself thinking, and almost in the same breath wondered when he’d started thinking things that his own father would say.

By the time his focus returned to the dead girl, his power blazed in the intense green of his eyes.  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said to the spirit visible just to the left of the girl’s bed.  She looked down on herself with an unreadable expression. “Aren’t there enough dead Ascalonians who can’t go forward?” he asked her. “You don’t need to add another one to the pile.”

Her voice was no audible thing, and words barely formed themselves in the midst of so much sorrow.  Chances not taken, boys not kissed, children never born, never cherished.  Parents never guided into old age, friends never found. Dances, colors, places never seen.  What lovemaking might have been like. What beauty might have emerged from her long hours at her loom.

Names had power, and he spoke hers gently.  “Cara.”  The spirt twisted and saw him, solid and there, and the force of her regrets nearly rocked him backwards.  A brother she’d never see grow.  A mother who’d never recover, Cara knew it.  Her mother was sensitive.  She’d never come back from the loss. Finlay felt tears prickle in his own eyes.  Gods, his father was getting on, and time was a one-way path, and -- 

He raked his hand against the corner of the bed where a nail jutted from wood. The slick sudden pain of it drew him out of Cara’s anguish, grounded him again. Blood had power, his more than most, and he watched a slick, dark pool of it thread along the pale corpse’s swaddling.  He was no healer through blood; he took and he hurt, and that’s all he did.  But still, even he could sense something suddenly off near Cara’s abdomen and throat and mouth, a black miasma that crawled up her spirit’s arms and tethered her to this plane like rope.

Fuck.  Poison?  Bad food?  So much sorrow in her.  So much regret.  That someone loved would do this, someone she loved so much --

“Fuck,” he said aloud to go with the thought of seconds ago.  He raked his hands back through floppy curls and made his way out of the house with vague assurances of prayers to be made and procedures to be undertaken.  Damn and blast.  Time to find Keser.  The priest of Grenth’s little mercy errand seemed to be dark business after all.

14. Is there anything they are too optimistic about?

Everything?  I really wanted to make a necromancer who was happy in his skin and his life, someone who met death early on, tweaked its nose (without knowing what it cost to do so) and then decided to spend the rest of his life basking in the sheer bounty of experience.  He likes his duty in the Vanguard; he thinks it’s necessary and fine.  He loves food and drink and sex and travel, new vistas, new people.  Before he traipses off to the Underworld for good, he’ll have gathered in every possible emotion and experience. ))

He’d be the one laughing as Cat tried to staunch the blood from a missing arm, reveling strangely in the pain and the phantom limb.  “My arm went on without me, the bastard!” 

ZINNIA - Who was your best friend when you were six years old?

“What, you have to ask?  Though – ha, I don’t know that I had shades of better and best, back then.  We all looked up to you even then, Gods help us.  Happy? Now your ego won’t even fit through the barracks door.”

( @raine-rp )

The First Regiment

Every regiment’s got a character.  The Eighth was stern.  Out at Foewatch, ogres everywhere, a wooden palisade between us and whatever, sure. Ironstar’s a stern man, and the people who thrive in his command?  Stern men. Great hooting Grenth, I can’t believe I lasted as long as I did.

The First...it’s got a reputation.  I haven’t met the Captain yet, fine, fine. Transfers slam right back down to private, so I wouldn’t be trading ale and jokes with the Captain anyway.  I’ll get to know the little blonde Sergeant and the corporals under her before I ever see someone bristling with insignia.  And again, that’s fine.  Fine as can be.

Do I miss corporal?  Psssh.  I’ve been in twenty-four years, I should be higher than that.  But I like to shoot myself in the foot (And the cock, on occasion. Metaphorically.  It hurt to write that), and I’m a stupid asshole now and again, and I channel the dead and make the ground boil, which isn’t...look, I know I’ll never retire an officer.  If I live long enough to retire, I’ll be one lucky piece of Grenth-loving shit. 

But anyway.  The First.  Reckless, the sort of regiment that tosses orders up in the air and chooses to follow the ones that land face-down.  The drunk regiment, the regiment where everyone’s fucking everyone else.  On face value, I would be very happy in such company.  My people!

But you know what?  Foewatch is under near constant attack from this, that, and that other thing’s ugly brother.  And still, our medic isn’t kept hopping as much as the lady doctor here.  Our, bah.  Their.  And I’ve read over some situation reports, and the Eighth doesn’t get sent to the godsdamned Silverwastes and the like.  There’s either some bad luck or some bad politics up in those officer clouds, and if there’s one thing no soldier ever wants to see, it’s bad luck.

I miss Daphne, though she’d have killed me by now.  No man’s supposed to feel that good that often.  I miss my fucking cot, hard slab that it was.  A few of the other soldiers, I miss them too, though not as much or as many as I thought I would.  It’s a gift to find an old friend here -- Keser!  Grenth’s cold corpse, of all the people I’d ever thought to see.  

But the First’s an odd duck, and I don’t mind saying it.  And swimming in circles.  Maybe drunk.

Göndul by Lekso Tiger

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Mark Twain (via raine-rp)

Climbing onto the rooftops to play a game of tag.

Daring one another to play a prank on a passing, unknowing victim.

Sneaking into the tunnels of the mines when the miners were not looking.

Finlay reminded him of a simpler time, when the only concerns and fears they shared were of being caught in the act of doing something they should not. Of when they found adventure and excitement in the smallest of things like freeing the cows from the nearby farm to laugh and run, pretending they were being chased by Minotaurs.    

Thirty two years had passed since that time.

A lot had changed since then.

Transfer

( Because more people read over here, rather than Finlay’s own tumblr! )

Capt. Harlow,

With my compliments, receive this shipment of herbs from past Foewatch.  I understand from my healers that this whatever-bush isn’t found near Ebonhawke, so they’re graciously sharing with the rest of you in the city.  

The rest of the cargo is one necromantically-inclined corporal, Gibbs, who I’ve already had transferred out of Foewatch and into Ebonhawke, and it seems like you’re the lucky regiment to get him.  You enjoy.

That said, the Eighth and Foewatch owe you now, and I’ll remember it.  

Capt. Ironstar Eighth Regiment, Ebon Vanguard Foewatch Encampment

( finlaygibbs )

Regret.

A boy, not too far off from manhood, dies. The explosion knocks him from his feet, rips him from the girl he walks beside, and slams him against a far stone wall.  He crumples at its base.  When the priestesses and healers come, they feel for the beat of his heart, for the pumping of blood at his neck.  Nothing. Around him lie others, wounded, but alive.  The priestess of Grenth settles at his side when the other healers have moved on.  She grasps at air with both hands, as if tugging a billowing sheet back over its bed.  “Get back here,” she says, and her aged hands pat along the boy’s broken body until his spirit is once again settled.

His eyelids fly open; his eyes are green, brilliantly so, and the priestess cups his cheek with a hand.  “Welcome back,” she says.  “There is life around you.  Take what you need.”  The boy’s brows furrow.  She clucks her tongue against her teeth.  “Take. You know how.”  The life that draws into him surges past her from the wounded still being treated a dozen paces away.  “I’m losing this one!” calls a Vanguard doctor.  

“Tsk,” says the priestess, touching a fingertip to the boy’s slack lips.  “Too much.  You’ll learn moderation someday.  Sleep now.  Sleep.”  He does, all the way from Scion into Colossus, until cold winds rattle the windows of his tiny room.  When he wakes, his mother weeps, and he can only stare at the golden pulse of life overlaid on her image like a lacy web.  

A lifetime later, and in all the years in between, he wonders if he killed to live. He has since, in combat and out, but from that first time he can only remember the girl he walked beside, the auburn sheen of her hair, the hot frustrated wanting he had no idea how to express.  Her people buried her while he slept.  He’ll never know what truly killed her.

Mordred - Have you ever misjudged someone?

“Who hasn’t?” he asked after a few good puffs on his ornately carved pipe.  He blew a fine smoke ring and smiled smugly at the achievement.  “We’re all blind men stumbling around, careening off each other, flailing. If we see anything true about each other, it’s a miracle.”  He cupped the pipe in his palm as a sudden thought drew a few rough laughs from his throat.  “Battlefield philosophers are the worst, aren’t they?  I didn’t always go on so bloody long.”

“But aye, I figure so.  I’ve been left after harsh words.  I’ve been ignored after things I didn’t even know I did.  Blind men, flailing.  That’s what we all are.”

As the noblewoman spoke, Gibbs found himself moving her from one category to another, from “odd, privileged woman out on a lark,” to “fighter.”  Nobility gummed the works, made conversation harder, but she wasn’t dripping with haughtiness.  Perhaps she was one of the useful ones.  

“A Vigil man came by, back when.  I was on leave in the city, and he came to the tavern to recruit.”  He let out a frustrated huff of a noise even as they came to another miniature stream raging along old wagon ruts.  He hopped the small torrent, then offered his hand back to the woman, not that he thought she’d take it.  The Camerons’s dolyaks plunged right through, barely cognizant of such a small obstacle.

He continued once they were past the churning water.  “Group formed by a Charr, led by a Charr, right after the cease-fire?  Brand or no, dragons or no, he’d had have had better luck recruiting people for a jaunt to the Mists.  We laughed his ass out of there.”  He shakes his head.  “Still can’t imagine it.  Orr.  Or the Silverwastes, for that matter.”  He cast a searching look at Renault, eyes narrowing.  “You’re young, to look so hard.  Not that anyone seems soft these days.  After everything.”

Getting to Ebonhawke (II)

Any romantic interests?

He scruffs floppy curls back from his face.  “Romantic.  What a word.  No, no romantic interests.  Because Foewatch is such a destination, and soldiering in deep Ascalon such a delight.”  His dry laugh is followed by a boyish sort of shrug, despite the grey at his temples and the feathery lines at his eyes’ outer edges.  “I get a tumble when I need it, and …heh.  It’s Ascalon, miss.  Your pretty tales of romance belong in places that aren’t cracked dry with magic and fire and hate.”

He chuckles.  “That said.  Daphne godsdamm Ironstar.  Even if I never see the girl again…damn.  That’s a woman.”

It was such a woman thing to say, to apologize for her appearance while riding in the flood-cut plains, that he huffed a laugh before he could take into account her no-doubt considerable pride.  “No one cares what you look like out here,” he said with a wave of one dirty hand.  In case he had offended her, he added praise on the laugh’s other side:  “You keep the hounds well, the mount, the weapons.  Says more than a fair face.”

Before he could even finish the mollifying words, Sally stepped up to Lady Renault’s other side.  “I want a sword like that,” she announced.  Her chestnut hair was braided back, her rifle pointed toward the ground.  She was tall already for her age, but he had a feeling she’d end up taller still, a rangy huntress refined by kills and fire.  “When we stop, can I see it?  Ma and Grandma say I can’t bother you, but it’s not bothering if you say it’s all --”

“Leave her be,” came the cantankerous command from the Cameron patriarch up on his wagon seat.  Sally shot Lady Renault a look Gibbs couldn’t parse before dropping back.  

“Silverwastes,” he said once they walked alone again, ahead of the slow-moving beasts. “That’s a fair distance.”  He swallowed three separate idiotic statements he’d have tossed at women in taverns and market fairs before he settled on a respectful, “Pact?”

Getting to Ebonhawke (II)

They find a genie and are granted three wishes, what do they wish for, and why?

The first would involve Southsun beaches and some good bottles of wine and Daphne Ironstar (or whoever’s most recently in his thoughts, though she shows sign of lingering).  Second would be peace in Ascalon, a lasting sort of peace that didn’t feel like two shards of glass rubbing hard against each other.  Third, he might wish his own necromantic powers away, though it’d only occur to him in the moment as a request, and he’d likely regret it after.

(( What is the etiquette when these get super mega-long?  OKAY I am cutting the reblogs, but am putting a link to the first part of this interaction HERE.  Yeah! ))

“One woman and a couple of hounds riding through Ashford during flash floods alone?” he countered mildly while still at his drawings.  He couldn’t object much to the horse’s nosing, though he had to blur and redraw a jawline.  “The Camerons -”

The girl interjected, though her usual glares didn’t hold quite so much fire when aimed at the armed, horsed noblewoman.  “Usually go alone, Lady, and don’t get jumped on much.  We’ve got our rifles and such.”  The girl’s gaze crawled over the details of weapons and armor.  “Nice bow.  Nice sword.  And we’ll gladly take your company.  He’s got no say in it.  Long as you don’t mind the stops on the way.”

“The Camerons are self-sufficient,” he added drily after the interruption had run its course.  “I’m more like...cargo with a few skills.  A handier sort of crate.”  He held up one completed sketch.  “If I draw these well enough, someone at the Fourth is going to put faces to names, and then kin gets notified and arrest warrants canceled.”

He’d need a larger parchment to sketch the noblewoman, given mount and hounds.  Otherwise, the details of her face would get lost, and he wouldn’t want to miss the contrast of battered, cut features against an imperious stance. “Gods, you’ve been through something, haven’t you?”  He jammed the completed drawings back into his bag and slung it over shoulder and chest. “Let’s get moving.  Like you said.  Spilt blood draws attention.”

Getting to Ebonhawke (II)