Yeah... ummm. two laptop reformats, three moves, and now a new computer without anything better for typing than wordpad. my immense apologies for abandoning all of you this long. i know this is short, but i will try my best to get more up as soon as possible.
The dog kept whining under its breath, nudging every so often at the unresponsive bodies it guarded. Hawke and the elf were still breathing, he could see that from here, but every time he tried to get close enough to actually check on them, the dog's whining rose into a warning growl. Try as he might, Anders couldn't quite bring himself to either risk the mabari's fangs or do the sensible thing and leave the others here, not while they were still breathing. So he kept pacing, between the way deeper into the tunnels and the trail that led up into the tower, praying that no one else would find there way here.
"Come on, please wake up soon, one of you, either of you. Unconscious surrounded by many Templar corpses is a very bad place to be found." he muttered, stepping his way gingerly around the dead in question. And of course, Justice was unsettlingly quiet about the situation. There was a sense that they would be back, but no real answers or concept of when. They had been down here at least a couple hours, he knew that. Luck that no one had come looking for the missing Templars, luck and the fact that they had likely wanted enough time to have their plans finished and cleaned up before they were missed. Even in the Gallows, getting caught outright in this sort of mess led to Templars in serious trouble. Assuming anyone thought to check deep enough in the tunnels only the smugglers could easily navigate.
The dog kept whining, just loud enough to be heard over Anders' muttered complaints. "That's not going to help, mutt. And I would find this waiting much easier if you would just, for once, shut up" he hissed as his nerves frayed. The last few words came out louder than he had intended, and he winced at the volume. The dog fell into silence, staring up at him over the tangled bodies. The sudden quiet stretched on, only water dripping somewhere far echoing. A small cough broke the spell, as something moved behind the dog. Hawke was pulling herself up into a crouch, the elf rising to hover at her side. The mabari stepped between them, bracing to let them use him to pull themselves up.
He could hear the water dripping deeper in the tunnels, an echoing, strangely doubled sound. He could feel the cold stone underneath him, coarse fur against his leg where wolf lay, Lupa stirring against him, still wrapped in his leathers. "What? Back? Still hurts. Where?" He felt her flinch back, trying to gather herself. The blood splattered across the floor was well dried, so they had been gone for some time. Not, he realized with a glance up, long enough for the blond mage to have abandoned them, so he could check her over and they could get out of here.
"Out of here would be good. If those two are working together, things are very bad indeed." she glanced, worried, between Fenris and the healer, then started to lever herself to her feet. A coughing fit ensued, as she doubled over and leaned back against. "Okay, really really bad." He heard, even as the coughing continued. How someone could talk while coughing that much...
"I'm not talking. Wait. Fen... can you hear this?" She straightened, staring at him wide eyed. She wasn't talking. Half the things he had heard were responses to things he had thought. Can you hear what I'm thinking? How, what...Why?
Yes. don't know why, can't... she glanced down, saw the dead Templar inches from their feet, and an assortment of fractured images flitted thru his mind, tinged with fear and hurt and desperation. Can't control it... minute flickers of green swirled briefly in her eyes, as her thoughts tangled. Yours have bits of gold in them now, came a confused thought, tumbled with an image of his face, eyes swirled with color as her's.
The side effects the trickster mentioned. Never truly being apart again. He caught her as she stumbled to avoid stepping in a still tacky puddle of blood, a new set of memories flitting by as she leaned into him. "we should get out of here." He stated, looking up at the mage watching them with a mix of concern and curiosity.
Yes. "Very much yes to out of here, please," she rasped, voice still hoarse.
