Closed to [fortheloveoffalondin]

[adaaradaar]

The Exalted Plains were the worst. Fire and demons and soldiers everywhere, and they were being sent into some forgotten elven ruin after some forgotten elven artifact that maybe wasn't even here.

Ataashi huffed and waved a cobweb out of his face, then had to duck through a partially collapsed doorway so he didn't whack his forehead on the stone. Adisa was walking ahead of him, the crystal on her staff alight with enough magic to bathe the room she was stepping into in cool blue light. The rest of the band was checking out a different ruin, so it was just himself and his twin sister. Not that Adisa really needed his help, but he wanted to go with her anyways.

"Another dead end?" He asked, keeping on Adisa's heels. She flicked her staff and the ball of light that was the end of her staff brightened, illuminating the whole room more clearly.

"I don't think so," she said, walking the perimeter of the room. The corners were drifted up with debris, something that looked like a globe in one of them, and there were the remains of a table along one wall. She crouched and sifted through the mess. She stood after only a few moments, something glinting with the light from her staff held in her hand. "I think this is it."

Ataashi stepped forward to get a better look. It was a necklace with a small pendant on the end. It was warm to the touch, despite Adisa not having touched it. "Let's get out of here, then, and meet up with the others." As he turned, though, there was a scuffling from the direction they'd come from. Footsteps on the stone floors. If it were their men, they would have called out if they were coming down at all. This was somebody - or something - else. He drew the axe strapped to his back, holding it low across his body with both hands. He glanced to either side to check the space he had to move in.

Behind him, Adisa dimmed her light and moved closer in, one hand on his back, just below his neck, staff raised. She could sling lightning or fire in an instance, but if they were facing demons, it was better to know what kind first, instead of feeding fire directly into a rage demon.

Comments

[fortheloveoffalondin]

The back-slapping man-off that was happening to one side amused Salem, but he was more interested in Adisa at the moment. Not only was she a mage, she was talented, sensitive enough to feel the Veil getting, as Sera had put it, more 'veily'. Solas looked similarly impressed as he straightened up, nodding once, his tone clipped and formal. "Yes. We are attempting to prevent tears from forming here in the future. The fewer there are, the less danger there will be for others to occupy this place." He seemed less than thrilled about the latter notion.

Salem, in the meanwhile, had retrieved his hand, though the warmth around it lingered, making him smile a little wider. "Perhaps you should find your men then. They'll likely want to know that they won't have to keep searching for whatever it was."

[adaaradaar]

"I'm sure they scuffed around a few rocks in the first room they found and then gave up," she said with a grin and a shrug. Then she turned, and with a sharp bark of "Hey!", Ataashi and Bull both straightened up like children caught misbehaving.

She turned back to Salem and gestured towards the broken doorway, "After you, Inquisitor." Really, her men were more disciplined than that, but a few of them were prone to believing superstition.

Ataashi stayed back as the rest of the group headed back up the stairs, but finally went ahead of Bull. "Of all the places to run into you at," he said, looking back over his shoulder at Bull. "Some ruin in the Exalted Plains..."

[fortheloveoffalondin]

Salem snorted quietly as he headed back out into the sun. Bull had friends that were more his size and speed, that was good. The Vint was looking the siblings up and down with a mostly unimpressed quirk of his brow.

"Please, please just call me Salem. I don't think I've heard my name since the Inquisition was formed," he pointed out, then started back in the direction of the camp nearest to the ruins.

"With all due respect," Dorian started as he jogged to catch up with the Inquisitor, "do you really think it wise to be leading a new group of heathens back to our people?

"Relax, Dorian. If they have other ideas, I'm sure we'll be fine."

[adaaradaar]

"Neither of us have a death wish, Vint," Adisa said to Dorian. "But if you want to start a fight, I'd be glad to end you." She said it calmly, almost like it wasn't a threat.

"Adisa," Ataashi said quietly, ducking his head, and she snorted, looking at the wall as they headed up the stairs. When they emerged, Adisa immediately started walking in the direction of the ruin they'd left their men at, and Ataashi was left to hang back. "She doesn't get along that well with magisters. Me neither, to be honest, but you're Inquisition, so you can't be that bad."

[fortheloveoffalondin]

Salem was perfectly content to follow Adisa's lead, happy not to have it thrust upon him mat least for a little while. Dorian had a sour look on his face at Adisa's words but he chose not to dignify it with a response beyond 'Really.'

Salem was keeping his hands behind his back, though he was ready to pull up his notebook, bound with a belt at his hip, to record anything new that would be of relevance. "We may be massive now, but we can always use more connections to the outside world. All the better to be a presence to help out here. We've made efforts to protect the Dalish up north and the Orlesians westward. We've also been scouting further out in the hopes of finding some untapped resources that The Breach hadn't tainted." He continued on, explaining where he could without giving up what Leliana would likely call sensitive information what they were doing out here, and elsewhere. He didn't seem to mind having to jog almost to keep up with her stride.

[adaaradaar]

"Well, if you like Bull's company, mine should get along pretty much the same way. We work hard, we take our pay, we don't cause trouble. We're good at firepower. Do quite a lot of work fighting for nobles. They want a show of muscle, we're good at that. They want some actual muscle, we're good at that too. I'm the strongest mage in Southern Thedas, and my brother's pretty good with an axe." Adisa pulled out a folded piece of parchment from an inner tunic pocket and offered it out to Salem. "Here's our rates, by the day, or by the month. You pay me, I pay my men, I'd be glad to work out the particulars with your ambassador, Montilyet. Soon as we deliver this amulet to our patron, we can come to Skyhold or station ourselves wherever or with whichever company of yours you want."

Adisa's tone was firm, and businesslike. There was no overwelling of pride of boastfulness, just a sense that she was telling the truth. Even her claim that she was the strongest mage in southern Thedas seemed like she was stating it as simple fact, not some ruse to lure in a patron.

[fortheloveoffalondin]

He could absolutely see why Bull would choose to work with these guys. They didn't beat around the bush, they had good business sense, and they legitimately did look like they could kick every ass in Thedas if they had the right motivation. They were exactly what the Inquisition needed when it came to hiring on mercenaries. The commander of his forces might frown at him some more about bringing in more mercenaries, but he had once made the point to the man that it was a lot harder to scare mercenaries off a job if they were getting paid well, whereas there were a lot of very unsure, very untrained soldiers under the command of some rather unsure commanders (present company excluded, he had assured Cullen).

"Excellent. I can pass the information to our Ambassador as she'll be the one to set that up, and then I'll look forward to seeing you at Skyhold." He sounded extremely confident that they would take this up. It was hardly a longshot to think they would jump on this, given both the pay and the company.

[adaaradaar]

Adisa nodded. "That's fine to me." She turned back to Ataashi and made a hand signal at him. Ataashi nodded and grinned, then nudged Bull in the side.

"My men can stay outside in your main camp, but Ataashi and I will stay inside the walls, so if you need us to move out there's no need to seek us out."

They were coming up on another ruin, and there were a few men outside this one. Adisa sped up, outpacing Salem's shorter legs rather effortlessly. She gestured, "Pack up the camp, we're heading back to deliver this amulet, then we're heading out." The men nodded. One went down the steps into the ruin, and the others headed for the hill, where a string of healthy horses of no determinate origin were tied, grazing. Adisa crossed to a paint gelding, an obvious war horse and suitable to carry her tall, strong frame, and dug around in the saddlebags.

She pulled out a wooden box and transferred the amulet to it, then closed it and sealed the box with magic before replacing the box in the saddlebags. Another moment of digging around and Adisa came up with a sheaf of papers. "This is a more comprehensive breakdown of our rates and services. I'll send one of my men to Skyhold with it, he'll beat us there by a week or so, since we have to detour and play the game with our current patron." She offered them out, but didn't honestly expect Salem to take them - it was boring, lists of expected expenses, timelines, rules and exceptions to certain services. Not the stuff for the patron, but the patron's man or woman in charge of handling things like the actual hiring of mercenaries.

[fortheloveoffalondin]

Salem did take them, but he only gave them a cursory glance over before he handed them back. "Of course. If you'll send along a copy of this with him for Ambassador Montilyet I'm sure she could make much better sense of it than myself. She'll certainly be amenable to any new forces for the Inquisition. Personally, I just want to be able to go back and rest a while. This place is..." He grimaced a bit, looking back over his shoulder at the almost barren landscape around them. "If you can finish your business with your patron, best to do it quickly."

He reached his hand out to her once more to shake, looking over at where Bull was still talking Ataashi's ear off about nothing in particular. Good; Bull needed more actual friends.

[adaaradaar]

Adisa shook Salem's hand firmly with a nod. "As quick as we can," she said with a small grimace that meant 'quick' might not actually mean quick. Then she turned and called to Ataashi, "Come over here!"

He obeyed, breaking off from Bull with a small frown. "What is it?" He looked between her and Salem a bit warily, but took the papers she passed him.

"Take these to Skyhold for me." She smirked when Ataashi's face split into a wide grin.

"Alright," he said, rolling them into a ball and dropping them into a tube on the side of his own horse - a bay gelding, the same size as his sister's.

[fortheloveoffalondin]

When Salem realized that they would actually be taking Ataashi with them, he grinned once more, scooting over to the other large mercenary and offering his hand to shake. "It's a long ride, but I'm sure you'll be good company. Ataashi, right?" He was pretty sure he'd heard that right, when Bull had said it from the other side of the room.

Bull was busy saddling the massive workhorse he'd taken to riding when the Inquisitor brought him out to these places, chatting with Adisa with a fair amount more deference than he ever showed Salem.

[adaaradaar]

"Yes sir," Ataashi said with a smile, shaking Salem's hand - his grip was warm and dry and firm, and his thumb and forefinger touched around the narrowness of Salem's palm.

He looked over at Adisa and Bull, then returned his attention to the Inquisitor. He smiled. "Qunari are matriarchial. He's always going to listen to a strong female Qunari more than you, sorry." His smile widened into a grin. "Being her brother doesn't save me from it either. I'm the only male in my family, our mothers run the place at home."