grey warden enjoyer

The metallic tang of the extract was strong, though not as sharp and fresh as it would be once he was done. Metal was a difficult scent to capture, and needed to be worn on the skin to achieve it's true notes. It was good that he had only wasted a few drops, and not the whole (very expensive) bottle. Throwing a clean cotton towel over the mess, he moves to his feet to find a set of tweezers.

Leaning against the single window— he hadn't wanted too much sun, the light could easily twist an extract from something pleasant to wholly unusable— he uses the glow of the lanterns down on the street to find the glint and gleam of the glass edge. It's simple work to remove the glass, and it is with the same slow and careful precision that he would use himself that a single drop of blood wells up from the cut, and begins to slide down the pad of his thumb.

He watches it with idle interest, and wonders if blood and steel would be something that he could offer to the Crows that chose to be more like peacocks, flashing their house brands and wearing their numerous knives and tools of the trade proudly on their belts. They were easily parted from their money with the lure of exclusive and experimental.

Blood and steel.

Blood and steel.

Blood and steel, that is what his senses were drowning in. He could taste the blood in his mouth, the sweet, sticky copper of it refreshed with each wet breath that he drew. He could feel the steel, run through his gut and ripping up his chest.

Unmercifully, his awareness widened.

His nose burned with the sharp, acrid scent of sweat. In his ears, the grunting effort of his killer mixed with his own labored breathing. He could not see beyond a blinding white nothingness, though the edges of his vision were slowly turning black, like how parchment set to a candle flame would slowly burn in toward the middle of itself.

Pain was something he knew, something he understood.

How could there be any understanding in this?

"Enough," he says out loud, slapping his palm flat against the wall. His thumb gives a protesting sting.

He is in Antiva. He is in his apartment, a modest set of rooms above an equally modest store front. Clawing at the latch of his window, he throws it open, desperate for air that isn't filled with scent of swords.

The streets of Treviso are in full bloom. The city rarely slept, and certainly not on a warm spring night like this one. Friends and lovers talked and sang while drinking wine, or coffee, or celebrating the end of winter with the last of their stores of limoncello. The lanterns and candles that lined the streets cast everything in gold. If he were a painter, instead of alchemist, the night market would most certainly be his muse. Folding his arms to lean on the sill of his window, he breathes it all in.

A small knot of revelers gather at his shop window below. He had carefully selected each bottle, pretty and delicate glass things that weren't suitable to actually hold perfume. They rested artfully on folded silks and amongst dried flowers and a scattered assortment of ephemera that had nothing at all to do with his work, but looked nice in the display.

By chance, or fate, one of the group glances up and sees him leaning out of his window. He cannot make out their face, in the playful shadows cast by the lanterns, but the wave they give is unmistakably cheerful, and it is enough to pull him away from the dregs of the unwanted memory. He waves back, and calls out to them that they should return tomorrow, at a respectable hour. They all laugh, and send up a chorus of promises to return as they drift away on the current of the night.

"Enough," he says again, after they are gone. And this time, it is true.

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