#thereluctantking

Memes, They're Around @thereluctantking-blog

Get to.

Get to?

She wants to cough up blood on him. If she were less.... dying, she actually might. But as it is, all she can do as he cradles her head against his thigh and presses his fingers over her wound.

He's trying to... save her? Keep her from dying?

There's not much he can do. The mages around them don't seem to have faces. The air is so full of magic it's hard for her to breathe. She can feel it in her skin, but far away.

The stars above are beautiful.

She doesn't even remember night falling. She doesn't remember the sunset. The last sunset. She would have liked to see one last sunset. Or maybe it was just hard to tell, with the fire, the smoke, the darkspawn.

There's still smoke.

So why can she see the stars? Are those stars?

Her vision grows blurry. Riordan said that she would die when the Archdemon fell. And this feels like dying. The slow dripping of her conscious pooling on the stone beneath her. It's making her ass itch.

Oh, that's just blood. So much blood.

You don't get to die.

It's a command from her King.

She tries to breathe in, and just tastes iron. Another failure.

She supposes he will be angry with her for this, too.

Tsee is Definitely Not Writing Alistair Again

"I— Well, I certainly think so?"

His voice rises at the end of the almost-statement to what Zevran and Morrigan might call a cowardly squeal. The cruel joke is, he almost wishes one of them were here to help make sense of this— Fade nonsense.

"Why don't you... um. Take off your shirt?" A question he would never ask any other human being with so little... context. "I'll look and see if you have it."

His cheeks burn. Surely it is not a sin to ask yourself to take off your clothes, especially for a...

...health concern.

Is it?

This makes her smile. 

     “Oh yes. If you’ll recall, I was so very lucky enough to listen to several of your very carefully guided lessons during your transition into manhood.”

The amusement falls from her face fairly quickly, though, and she shakes her head with just the slightest hint of apology. “I do not mistake you for a boy, Alistair. I am well aware, however, that what you are is the bloody King of Ferelden, and I simply cannot take you with me. Think of what Eamon would say if you were to die in the Deep Roads. Think of what he would do to me.”

                            “Besides that, Nathaniel Howe is my Warden-Constable now.                              Even if I were foolish enough to agree to such a thing, he never would.”

His legs burned from the strain he was putting on them. It felt as if his lungs were about to burst. But he kept going, he had to, stopping would get him killed. He had to keep going and find someplace safe, if such a place even existed. The young man ducked and jumped over branches, sometimes succeeding, but more often ending up with scratches and bruises on his face, arms, and legs. Each scratch was worth it, though, as the sounds of the creatures pursuing him died down. They were still too close for comfort.

Neil tried to vault over a large log and ended up tumbling. The tip of his foot caught on the log just right, and he felt something pull in his ankle. Trying not to cry out, Neil landed hard. He forced himself to get back up. He had to keep moving. Despite the pain in his ankle, Neil continued to hobble forward. Before too long, he came to a small clearing and nearly cried. Standing in front of him was a cottage. There were no lights on, and Neil prayed the place was abandoned. He limped up the steps and tested the door. Unlocked, thank goodness. The cottage was dark, but Neil managed to limp to the small living room. He flopped down to the floor and rummaged through his pack for bandages. 

She watches the workers put up the decorations, strings of miniature wooden pumpkins with candles fitted within that will be lit up every night on the night of All Soul’s Day. The strings will have to be draped over and wound around the rafters outside the armory with special care, for when the wind blows in Skyhold, it blows hard, and she fears that the precious little pumpkins will be damaged before the time comes for them to shine.

         Josephine is so rapt with concentration that she doesn’t hear the King of Ferelden approach until he is a mere few inches away. She jumps slightly. “Your Majesty!” Her lapse in composure is overcome quickly with a quick curtsy and a dip of her head. “Forgive me, I did not hear you approach.” Her gaze wanders over to the workers, who seem to be having a small tiff amongst themselves. She sighs and turns her attention back to Alistair with an apologetic smile. “What do you think, Your Majesty? It might be too early to ask, but---are the pumpkins imbuing you with the spirit of Harvestmere by any chance?”