#alessia.01

Talking to Alessia after she returned from the whole Kossith debacle proved to be harder than she thought. The witch was slippery, and for a time, Valdís gave her some degree of peace. Ruthless to her enemies, she might be, but she wasn’t cruel to those who could be her allies. And so far, the witch had proved to be useful at the very least. So Valdís gave her time, and waited to ambush her until she had seemed to come out from her shell enough to go to the training rooms at a normal hour. 

There is a constant movement, that of the cart pulling them forward and towards their grim fates. If any hope had remained in Nuvi after her escape from the mines, if it had been strengthened through their journey through the mines, it did not matter. That hope is done, replaced only by overwhelming fear and grim realization. There are echoes of something dark on the Weave, and the more she understands the darkspawn, the less she believes they will make it out of this ordeal. Not without a sacrifice many of them will fear to make. Perhaps a quick death would be quicker, trying to fight likely useless, but— 

A quick glance around makes her wince once more. The mortals are so young. Many of them barely look more than a decade beyond maturity, and even if she doesn’t quite believe there is a way out, she doesn’t want to doom them. Nuvi has long made peace with death, her own misadventures a balancing act that one day could push her towards the edge, but she is older than all around her and there is a tragedy in that. A tragedy she wants to stop, even if she doesn’t quite know how. Even if she were at her strongest, she would not be enough to allow for an escape, and she is far from her strongest now. Broken and shattered, eight years removed from her blessings, she doesn’t know if she will be able to call the earth or the plants with the deft hand needed for any sort of plan to take route.

“I almost preferred the mines,” she mutters to herself, not bothering to lower her tone even if there is a stranger sitting close enough to her. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she sighs and closes her eyes. “At least the monsters guarding us there wore a human guise.”