by my sword and by my shield

Tick with a  “✔️” if your muse has done it or it applies

[✔️] Consumed alcohol

[✔️ ] Been drunk and done something silly

[ ] Drove when drunk

[ ] Is an angry drunk

[✔️] Is a happy drunk

[ ] Smoked

[ ] Finished whatever they smoked

[ ] Snorted coke

[ ] Been high

[ ] Done something stupid when high

[✔️ ] Had sex

[ ] Had sex in public

[  ] Had an orgy

[✔️ ] Had a one night stand

[ ] Had sex on the job they were supposed to do

[✔️ ] Kissed someone

[ ] Kissed someone of the same sex

[✔️ ] Kissed in public

[✔️ ] Kissed someone with tongues

[ ] Played a kissing game past childhood

[✔️ ] Had a crush on someone

[ ] Had a crush on someone who’s related to someone they hate

[✔️ ] Had a on crush someone already taken

[ ] Had a crush when in a relationship

[ ] Had a crush and was an ass to them

[✔️ ] Gotten into a fight

[✔️ ] Used a weapon not part of the body

[✔️ ] Got away with being in a fight

[✔️ ] Got into a fight with someone of the same sex

[✔️ ] Fought and won unfairly

[✔️ ] Insulted someone

[✔️ ] Said a racist insult

[✔️ ] Used childish insults past childhood

[✔️ ] Used an insult in a different language

[✔️ ] Insulted someone without saying the actual the word

[ ] Drove a car over the speed limit

[ ] Got a ticket

[ ] Crashed the car

[ ] Parked badly and didn’t care

[✔️ ] Done a hit and run

[ ] Dared someone to do something stupid

[ ] Played truth or dare

[ ] Done a stupid dare

[ ] Done a dare shamelessly

[ ] Done a dare for the rest of the day/night

Tagged by: yoinked from @sophicpriestofmenphina

thebullofishgard:

elezenwildflower:

“Then we make this easier on ourselves and them,” Fleurelle says, expression dark. “Until such time as they’re mentally astute and physically recovered enough to be dealt with, we’ll look after them. And for now…” She sniffs delicately at the air and makes a face, then very slowly takes out her staff and casts repose on them both in quick succession, trusting Merle to guard her from any lashing out while she’s casting.

“For now,” she says again, once they’re out, “We keep them under and clean them up. They may not much like it, but they can complain about it once they’ve enough reason returned to them to let them put those complaints into words. Right now they need treated, and the only way to do that safely - for all of us - is to keep them asleep while we work.”

As for the actual work of cleaning them up… well, those healing students better able to keep quiet will be put to work there. It will be good for them, and as filthy as these two are, they’ll need multiple people scrubbing anyway. “We’ll need to station a guard, probably - do you think you can furnish a few of your students for that task?”

This should work, she thinks, with a little planning. But only time will tell if the two madmen can be restored to any semblance of sanity.

It doesn’t really even have time to react again when the one person takes out a stick of wood– something glows, and then darkness claims it. Whatever dreams it has are of flying, perhaps, of the wide open sky and an ancient knowledge it should not know. Some are darker, though, with the pall of humanity over them, cold and angry and violent, dreams of distant nobility, of a temper and thing that beasts don’t have.

He doesn’t remember them when he wakes, but when he wakes he’s clean – cleaner than he recalls ever being with his memories hazy and feral – and warm and with soft cloth covering his limbs, and so is his brother, and it’s…nice. Very confusing, but nice. 

Time passes, and he – he can remember, at least, that he’s a he and not just an it, that he’s a person too somehow, even if that’s all he can really hang onto with his mind still twisting in on itself in feverish sickness and in a delirium from whatever happened to him to put him in that cave (and his time in the cave itself). He can speak, but only in the rough and rasping tongue of dragons, and only in fragments, and he still snaps at those who come close – though only the men in armor. The women who take care of him are allowed, if only because he’s got enough sense now to know he’s ill and they are fixing it, or more importantly that his brother is ill, more ill than he is, and he needs help too. 

But at least he’s…recovering, albeit slowly. There may yet be hope that there’s a man in there, the man he was, somewhere beneath the bestial state he’s still clawing out of an ilm at a time.

Life is sickness and misery and he hates all of it. The desperation of starving, of having to fight to stay alive is gone, but he is ill, and knows he’s ill, and no matter what he does the people who aren’t his brother keep coming at him to poke at wounds and try to get him to drink something that tastes vile, and he’s not even allowed to bite them for it because the one time he tried he ended up falling asleep for ages and the glowing stick was waiting for him to try it again the next time.

He doesn’t like the glowing stick. He doesn’t like the strangers. And he really does not like how much he keeps coughing. He spends most of his time curled up in the nest he and his brother were given, and though he’s aware that there is… something beyond this, something before, it doesn’t seem different enough for him to spend much time wondering about it. 

Today he’s curled up with his brother, as usual, or more accurately draped over top of him, making grumbly noises that have no real meaning, because he isn’t feeling well and it’s making him angry, and the world needs to know that’s the case. Every so often, a stranger - usually one of the two from before, the ones who had brought the red thing - will look in on them, and he thinks that maybe that will happen again soon, so he lies on his brother and buries his face in blond hair and grumbles his complaint again, because really. He hates this, and he hates that he’s aware enough to hate it, and he hates this shelter and this stupid nest and did he mention he hates everything, brother? Because he does.

It isn’t hard to gather up the more closed-lipped Herald-trainees to help keep watch over their new guests. Merle has taken each of their measures, and they’re each sound folk, not like to run or tell who it is that’s being looked after beyond ‘very sick patients’. Merle herself takes turns at it, especially when it’s Fleurelle looking after them. Because they seem to respond less violently to women, and Haurchefant is probably one face they don’t need to see, even in their still-somewhat-feral mindsets. She isn’t risking it.

It is more than a little strange whenever she hears Dravanian out of Grinnaux’s mouth, recognizable to her as such only because Dravanian has that odd quality of being half-heard, half-something more.

thebullofishgard:

elezenwildflower:

“I’m afraid I’ve no idea,” the elezen healer says, peering at the captive ward members from over the top of Merle’s head. “But do stay close to me? Neither of them looks to be quite in his right mind, whatever else is going on, and if they try to fight in this state I fear they’re more likely to hurt themselves.” These men had been dead, she’s certain of it - though she herself had been in no shape to deal with them or Thordan, having worn herself nearly to the brink of death attempting to heal Haurchefant after the vault, Fleurelle knows what happened there.

That they’re here, now, and apparently physically and mentally altered alike… Well, she’s not been much fond of these two and their behavior since the day she first encountered them, but they’re here and alive and in need of aid if they’re to stay that way. “How long do you suppose they’d been in there?” She asks, edging forward but remaining well out of arm’s reach. “If all they’ve had to survive on is whatever they could catch, then…” She tsks under her breath and sighs. “Whatever else is going on, they’re certainly in no state for Ishgard to deal with them, their right or no.”

Watching them watch her, she looks to Merle again, then takes an apple from her bag and places it on the floor between them, blue eyes calculating. “They certainly seem mad, but there’s no way to tell if they’re lost to it permanently,” she murmurs, voice soft. Her words are directed at Merle, but the tone is coaxing, encouraging the two men as one might a frightened animal or small child, too young to fully grasp language. “Poor things - I’d not wish this on even them, I think. Better for their souls to be at rest than returned in this manner…”

The people that enter the room are more familiar strangers, and it hisses at them when they do– it will attack if they come close, protect him, protect its brother – its brother smells of sick more than it does, and it needs protecting. It knows it’s sick too, honestly, but it won’t– it won’t…it won’t trust any sort of stranger, not people with sharp things and loud voices, that brought them into the horrible brightness and the warmth that isn’t comforting because it’s so strange.

Eyes that barely have human intelligence in them peer out from beneath a tangled curtain of dirty blond hair, and skin that’s filthy and covered in wounds and flush with fever also happens to have patches of violet-black scales on them, on the biceps and thighs and sides. It hisses and tenses when one of them moves, but then eyes flicker down to the red thing on the floor. It glances at its brother, and then at the thing on the floor, and one of them has to investigate, it decides. It isn’t as sick as its brother, so it will. He shifts forward slightly, squinting in the brightness, and snatches the red thing from where it sits to retreat back to the corner they’ve both retreated to. 

It sniffs it, frowns, and the sluggish and dormant part of it that’s mortal whispers that it’s food, it’s edible, and it thinks– it does smell good. With a grunt it rips the thing in half, pressing half of it into its brother’s hands, and takes a bite out of its piece. It’s sweet and juicy, and it– mm. It devours it quickly and pays no mind to what it looks like, licking the juice off his hands. That tasted better than anything in the caves, it thinks. And it doesn’t seem like it was harmful…maybe those people don’t want to hurt them, not like the silver ones did.

The unhappy noise that leaves the pale-haired one’s throat when its brother moves forward has nothing even resembling reason in it - but the cry turns into a cough and then dies away entirely as something - food? food - is shoved its way, and despite not having as much of an appetite as on some level it knows it should, it eats as much and as fast as it can, the desperate edge of the starving in its motions. 

This one knows hunger, after all - knows it down to its bones, hunger and cold and never knowing when you’ll eat again. It’s one of the very few things that brushes against the now, touching it with echoes of other. Unexpected meal finished, it - he? maybe -  settles down again to shiver against his brother, another low rumble of warning leaving his throat as he watches for either of them to make the move that will let him attack and run, so that this awful state of being trapped will be put to an end at last.

Merle listens to Fleurelle, and watches the way the two former Ward members act. They...certainly don’t seem to be of a right mind. At all. Perhaps an after-effect of what Thordan had done? They didn’t seem to be tempered, so that was good...but...

thebullofishgard:

@elezenwildflower @lionessofuldah

Time meant nothing in the cave. The– the man? The dragon? The beast didn’t know how long it had been there, couldn’t count the days even if there were days to count in the endless shadows. Days didn’t matter, though; what mattered was food. Hunt, kill, eat, the spiny, gummy fish and the fat little moles and the gristle-and-bone hippogryphs. Defend itself against the bigger things that smelled of darkness and rotten eggs. Keep warm in the icy chill of the caverns, find fresh water to drink, stay close to its brother – its brother, the only other thing in here like it, slightly lighter than it and with a damaged eye but still its brother, it knew it better and with more certainty than it knew anything else.

All the food in the caves couldn’t fill their bellies, though, and it made them sick sometimes, and the cold froze them to the marrow if they didn’t huddle for warmth in their nest of ripped cloth and as much as they could forage for in this barren place. The water was good, at least, even if the food was bad, but it was hard to live on it all, especially with all their injuries from battle. But that’s what it had, that’s what they both had.

Until people – people? it felt as if it knew those people, knew the symbol on their armor – came in and there were sharp and pointy things and yelling and they fought back, clawing and biting at them wildly, but they were quickly overwhelmed, and it hissed and growled and roared at the people, snapping his fangs and pale purple eyes blazing with their slit pupils, and it tried so hard to get away with its brother–

But then they were dragged off into somewhere else, a lot of other somewheres, and it was warm, but there were so many strangers – familiar strangers – and it was scared and angry and…and it didn’t know what to do but hiss and snarl at whoever would come in.

Everything is too bright - after so long in the dark and the cold, the fact that there is warmth now should be comforting, but it isn’t. The bright hurts, there are too many not-brothers in this area - so many that all of the fighting with claws and teeth and desperate fear had done nothing - and all the pale-haired being can do is hide against its brother and rest, waiting for one last chance to try and fight, to flee and survive or be killed in turn.

Hunger, illness, and battle alike had combined to wreak their havoc on the pale-haired being, and mismatched eyes gleam against cheekbones dusted pink with a low fever. Still, there is a wild sort of intelligence in its gaze as it curls around its brother in a corner of the strange cave they have been brought to, occasionally risking painful squinting in the brightness if a noise indicates something is approaching.

No words come, but the only sort of words that come to mind anyway are simple ones, ones that have little meaning for the current situation - brother, of course, being foremost among them. Instead, a low growl rumbles from its throat nigh-constantly, thin frame tensed and ready for a fight that hasn’t yet come. What else can either of them do?

Merle was not expecting to ever deal with the Darkhold again. Nor was she expecting that they’d ask for her and Fleurelle. They’d asked for Kikuya as well, but...well, Kikuya was looking after things elsewhere, and she and Fleurelle could handle it themselves. And Haurchefant and the others had the fledgling Collegium well in hand for a day or two.