The Bull just frowns into the distance. Knowing the darkspawn are close has him automatically cataloguing all the weak points in their new armour, all the ways he can fight a little differently to give blood spatter less of a chance to get in to them. It's good, he tells himself, that he's one of the ones the rest of them count on to wade into the thick of the fighting out in all the blood and guts, so the ones who can do their thing from a distance get a chance to do it. It's good that a part of him's thinking about ghouls, about the chance of the taint turning his mind that way - or, it can be a good thing, that little, persistent thought. It'll make him careful.
This feeling doesn't have to turn itself into a weakness. It can be useful. Help him do what needs to get done.
They're prepared for this, anyway. As close to it as they're going to get.
Focus. Darkspawn aren't close yet, and Dorian still needs distracting. "So," he murmurs, just for Dorian to hear. "This place you're thinking of. We're talking countries, right? So it's no country we've ever been to together, instead of some library or whorehouse or something you just really like."
Dorian is largely unconscious of it, but he adjusts his mask again. Ahead of them, Lieutenant Renn is telling a cautionary story about a soldier who had accidentally swallowed darkspawn blood – and Dorian is doing his absolute best to ignore the man.
His voice is a little louder in response – whether to force the brightness in his tone or to drown out Renn's story, it's difficult to say.
"I'm not sure any of that was a 'yes' or 'no' question, Bull." That imperiousness is back in his voice, though he lilts the words to take away the bite. He pauses, running through the Bull's comments again, before Dorian lands on an appropriate response. "As utterly charming as I've found Ferelden, yes, my mind strays to another country."
There's always one guy who just can't read the room. It isn't like he can shut Renn up without making the mood worse, though. Maybe normally the Bull would find a way, interrupt with something that sounded friendly, figure out how to distract him - but right now Dorian is who's in front of him, and with where the Bull's head's at it's better if he tries not to make waves. If Renn's little story is getting to anyone else they're going to have to deal with it themselves.
"Hey, some of it could have been yes or no if you're creative enough." Not that he has a lot of incentive to totally play by the rules here, if him not doing it right gives Dorian something more to think about. "It can't be Tevinter, right? Too obvious. Plus, there's not a lot of places there I actually know about. Orlais then, one of the bigger cities?"
"Bull," Dorian says, exasperated, like he's speaking with a very small child who refuses to stop putting foreign objects up his nose. "You're meant to ask yes or no questions."
He sighs, then, realizing that the Bull will simply continue to bend the rules. Dorian runs over the other man's comments again, head tipped back a little as he thinks. After some consideration, he holds up a hand and starts ticking off his answers on his fingers.
"No, it's not Tevinter. And no, it's not Orlais." He lifts two more fingers. "That's four questions down, so you know."
Dorian pauses, lips pressed together. Thedas is a large place, after all, and he wonders if he ought to provide a hint. It's only fair, he decides, considering the Bull had guided him on his slightly lewder round.
"It's a famous location I've yet to visit." After another considering pause, he adds, "I feel you would hate it in there."
"Huh." The Bull keeps walking, eyeing the distant darkspawn torches, focuses on the question and considers. It isn't just his options for what he wants to guess that he has to decide on, but his phrasing, too. Cassandra's making some comment to Renn, interrupting him, and about the time she finishes and Renn draws breath to keep going with that story of his the Bull goes on, his voice just a smidge louder than it was a moment ago. "So this place is famous for magic, the kind you expect people to know you're into. Otherwise you wanting to go wouldn't be a hint."
Not a question, so if Dorian wants to confirm that, technically it shouldn't add to the Bull's question count. "This place does the kind of magic you do that research on, then, something you'd want to go learn about? Instead of some kind that you're already good at?"
Perceptive, this one. Dorian casts the Bull another sidelong glance, eyes narrowed not with suspicion but with interest. He's known for some time how clever the Bull can be, but hearing the Bull reason the puzzle aloud is a little fascinating.
And more than that, Dorian is grateful that the Bull's voice is just loud enough that he can't quite hear the rest of Renn's lovely story.
"I excel at anything to which I apply myself," Dorian replies automatically. After a beat, he adds a little more sincerely, "But in this case, yes, I'll admit there's more to learn. That's five, I believe?"
"I've still got fifteen more, keep your smallclothes on." The irony of him saying that last part to Dorian makes the Bull feel like he should grin. He does, a little. The cloth over his face means he doesn't have to worry about whether he's made it big or convincing enough but he does let out an amused breath, nudges Dorian a little.
Anyway, puzzling out his next guess. He's getting close, he feels like. Probably won't need the whole fifteen. "Not a lot of places famous for doing enough magic that I'd be that put off. Not a lot that you'd admit you're not the best at, either. Or are you just in a generous mood?"
The irony isn't lost on Dorian, either, and he lets out a quiet, incredulous ha! in response. Mixed signals, Dorian might point out, but he'd prefer not to invite that sort of commentary. Not with their companions still within earshot.
Ahead of them, Evelyn is frowning at two diverging paths split by a tall stone protrusion – one following the contours of the cavern wall, the other acting as the edge of a cliff. She decides to lead them down the cliff side – no doubt with plans to loop back around to around to explore what she missed. Thorough, she is. Nice that at least one of them can find this entire trip fascinating.
"Do you not consider me a typically generous person?" he asks, his hand pressed against his sternum as he feigns offense. "Why, just the other day, I held a door open for someone, unprompted, and even allowed them to enter the room before me."
"Well shit, I stand corrected," he says, pleased. That laugh was quiet, but it sounded real. Feels good, like he accomplished a little something. "But saying you might not know everything about some magic crap, that's something else. Guess I'm going to have to get used to the idea of you being bad at something. Hard to imagine what, though. You got some kind of weak spot you're not telling me about?"
And if Dorian recognizes that as the bait it is, trying to get Dorian to tell him something about what branch of magic it he's talking about without spending one of his questions on it, that's fine. It isn't the most subtle bait he's ever laid. But then, it isn't really meant to be.
"In all fairness," he says, and there's no reluctance to his voice – only a simple statement of fact, "there is quite a bit we don't understand about magic. Do you remember what I said the other day, about the Inquisition tampering with mysterious forces? It's quite like that, but on a larger scale – one that encompasses every Circle of Magi in Thedas. We think we know what we're doing, but all we're really doing is stumbling around a dark library with a single lit candle."
Solas, for instance, gives off the air that he finds Dorian's knowledge of and skill with magic rather quaint, as though Dorian knows only enough to fill a thimble, compared to Solas. What an insufferable man.
"That being said, I would hesitate to call myself bad at anything. Less knowledgeable, perhaps, and eager to learn, but going so far as to say I'm bad at it? A few steps too far. So, no, I won't admit to a 'weak spot', as you've called it."
His smirk isn't visible, but the Bull can still probably see it in the way his eyebrow has quirked, can probably still hear it in the lilt of his voice. "That's six yes or no questions, by the way."
"Come on, that last one didn't count, that was just me asking about you," the Bull says, barely sounding sore at all about it even though he's technically protesting. "You're really going to tell me magic magic isn't half as in control as I want to think, say you don't really know what you're doing, and then take a point off of me on top of that? You play rough."
And maybe he's emboldened by the dark, or by the bare distance separating the two of them from the rest of their party. In either case, Dorian adds a little more quietly, to avoid being overheard, "I was under the impression that was your preference."
The Bull looks over at Dorian, the part of his eye that's visible through the carefully designed slat in the cloth a little wider. This is a really weird place to feel the kind of triumph that surges through him for a second, but weird or not, that's what's happening. It isn't like Dorian hasn't been giving him signals all along that he's into it, at least in theory, but all but saying that he's into it outright and openly - quiet, sure, but almost openly - that feels like something else.
Well, damn. Maybe he has more to look forward to once they get out of here than he thought.
"Guess that means we match then," he murmurs, voice warm with promise. "That's pretty convenient."
When the Bull answers, Dorian feels a warm flicker of something in his chest. Relief, perhaps, that the Bull hasn't decided to raise up his voice as he had earlier and make a show of it, drawing further attention to the two of them – the same way he had earlier in their game. At least Dorian won't have to hope for an excuse to disappear.
Dorian remains quiet for another beat, smiling to himself, feeling a strangely thrilling sense of satisfaction and pride. Silly of him – he's surely said and done lewder things back home in Tevinter. It's different in the south, knowing that admitting to some sort of attraction aloud would, at worst, lead him to only embarrassment, and little else.
His lips part to speak, except he hears a distant rumbling, like thunder.
"Brace yourselves!" Renn shouts, and he grabs hold of Valta's elbow, yanking her away from the cliff's edge, where she was admiring the ruins of the thaig. Cassandra does the same with Evelyn, the latter of whom looks back at Dorian and the Bull, her gaze darting upward and face going pale.
She shouts a warning, but Dorian's gaze has already followed hers, spotting the boulder plummetting toward the two of them. No time to grab his staff, and he shoulder-checks the Bull, pushing him toward the rest of the party. Dorian plants his feet into a wide stance, throws both of his arms out to his sides and swings them forward, hands forming into fists like he's physically yanking at the Veil. He shoves, and a green ripple of force surges from his arms to push the boulder away – just far enough to keep it from crushing the two of them.
The boulder slams into the path the two of them had just tread, and the stone starts to crack before giving way beneath the boulder's weight entirely.
Evelyn screams Dorian's name as the ground starts crumbling beneath his boots. He has a second to think a little bitterly, Maker's hairy balls, before he plummets.
Falling is an ugly, graceless thing, a distant part of him thinks, as he tumbles through the air, struggling to straighten himself out for some semblance of control. He manages to throw out his limbs, to make himself wide to keep from wildly spinning. It's only then he notices that the Bull has fallen with him, slightly above him, and he doesn't think, just reacts. He manages to flip himself around, and the rushing wind snatches away his mask. Dorian sweeps out his arm, covering the two of them with a flickering, haphazard barrier.
(this is good! let me know if you need more reaction or something from Bull at the end for Dorian to respond to.)
The Bull's no stranger to terrible shit happening without warning, and quickly. And it isn't like he's let his guard down once since that long, grim wait to lower themselves down into this place. But there's some shit there's just no preparing for. Shit like this:
A flash of anger that Dorian shoved him out of the way, instinctive. It's supposed to be the Bull who takes the hits for the rest of the team. Fear, before that anger has time to find its way to anything more practical. That feeling you get sometimes, unreality meeting inevitable fact; the ground can't be breaking apart undreneath him. He can't be falling. When it comes down to it, no one really believes their time is up. Not even when that swooping, clenching feeling that means that means the ground's going to hit him hard is saying differently. Disbelief again, appreciation; the unnatural glowing colour of Dorian's barrier coming more or less to life around them, Dorian not accepting that their time is up yet either and still fighting. An impact on his back. He wasn't that far away from the edge when when he fell, and the rock itself doesn't cut a straight line down; it turns him in midair, and for a dizzy, stretched out moment it gets pretty hard to tell where and when he's getting hit.
A flash of something familiar, right there at the end - the bright, spreading heat of pain to come spreading down his shin, and through his ankle.
The thing he realises after that is that it's dark. Pitch black. Wait, comes the response, the first coherent thought he's had time for in an age. In maybe thirty seconds. Get your night vision first. Then decide how dark it is.
Okay.
He might have yelled at some point, he realises, as his mind starts to piece through the last less-than-a-minute and all its different, jumbled impressions. But there's no need for that now. No room for it. Put it all on the shelf until that changes. He's alive, so he needs to assess.
First priority: seeing. He's still waiting for that. Next.
Pain is probably important. Tells him how capable he's going to be of facing whatever he's going to need to face. He sorts through it, learning what he can. The worst of it's familiar, at least, and any feelings about that, about what a healer will be able to do for a weight-bearing joint that's broken more than once before and healed a little worse each time, about what that could mean for him, about the dented, bent up brace under his fingers, none of that feeling matters right now.
Next. He rolls himself onto his knee, cautiously. Something like light might be coming through over to his left. He turns himself so his good eye can get a look at it. If that gets any brighter as he gets used to the dark, he might be able to tell if his head wrap, that whole thing the boss spent all that time figuring out how to secure on a qunari just so she could keep him safe, is still intact enough to put back together. He can feel pieces of it tangled around his horns.
When his head hits rock it hits hard. That's what happens when you try to stand expecting the ceiling to be somewhere else, and the angry, startled noise comes out of him a second before he's able to bite it back. He must have hit it hard enough to dislodge something. There's rubble moving nearby, somewhere.
Dorian's probably dead. Dorian might not be dead. The Bull isn't. Qunaris come a little tougher, usually, than humans do.
He's hunched over. He is still. He takes a slow, slow breath in through his nose and then he forces it out. He's too busy sorting through it all, locking himself down, compartmentalising; the rubble and that noise were all the sound he's going to make. It hasn't occurred to him to try and make anything else.
As they fall, Dorian is reasonably sure his short life is coming to a very violent end.
It's the easy assumption to make. He had, after all, dedicated a portion of his last moments of life to calculate how long one might take to plummet through the cavern they had found. He's a little sorry for that. There are a thousand different, better ways he could have spent that time.
The Bull is too far away, or else Dorian would have tried to pull them together, to shove every last bit of mana he has left to create one large shield for the both of them. The light of their barriers catches on something beneath them – illuminates the edges of architecture. More ruins.
It's not ideal, Dorian thinks, but at least it's better than an endless fall into blackness.
Later, he'll realize how lucky he is – that he's plummeting toward a hole in what was probably once a high ceiling, instead of splattering into stone. It gives him time to react, and he focuses, front-loading his barrier to better absorb the impact. He throws his arms out to the side, grabs the Veil again and shoves it forward. The surge of force provides some recoil, slowing his fall ever so slightly. In those last bare seconds, he curls up, guarding his head, and slams against the stone floor.
He can't be entirely sure, considering when he blinks his eyes open, it's nearly pitch black – but he thinks he must have blacked out. He can't tell if it was the impact or if something fell behind him that knocked him unconscious, but in either case, his head throbs which is— something. Someone might say it was good, that feeling any sort of pain means he's not dead, but at the current juncture, Dorian would find himself hard pressed to agree. For a few seconds, he lets himself lie there, dazed and aching, before a smaller, more rational part decides, That's quite enough of that. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, blinking into the darkness. Rocks and dirt fall away from him, and a bit of stone shifts beneath his hands. Oh, good, he thinks. What a nice thing to cushion my fall.
The hole in the ceiling admits the barest hint of light from the fissures at the surface. This might have been an office once, he thinks, squinting in the darkness. What would have been a doorway is almost entirely filled with large stones and other debris, and the idea of being trapped in this space nearly makes him panic until he realizes another wall has crumbled, leaving more than enough room for him to crawl into an adjoining space. Not exactly trapped, then, but only just.
Clumsily, he waves a hand, pulling a few wisps across the Veil, murmuring a soft incantation to bind them to him. They drift lazily around him like dust motes, their faint, pale green glow softly lighting the space. He forces himself to sit up, though it's not without a quiet groan and a hissed out, "Kaffas."
The next thing he notices is that faint smell, and his hand immediately covers his nose and mouth. Darkspawn have a distinctive stench. Decay and rot and something corrupted, something wrong. It's harder to notice when they fight the things on the surface, but here, where they spawn and swarm, it's far more noticeable. He immediately dismisses all but one wisp, and draws that final wisp closer to himself, curling his free hand over it and cupping it close to his sternum.
His face covering is gone. Of course it is. He has no face covering, and Renn was telling that delightful story about swallowing darkspawn blood, and oh, Dorian shouldn't flatter himself. He's more likely to be ripped apart than infected, but of course, of course Dorian would fall somewhere near a darkspawn settlement—
He jolts when he hears a distant noise. A thump. A choked-off grunt. The hiss and clatter of falling dirt and small rocks.
Dorian freezes, listening desperately, but when the sound doesn't evolve into the ugly growls or shrieks, he slowly gets to his feet.
"Bull?" It's as loud as he dares to speak, and he doesn't bother to to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. In the end, he admits he's not very loud at all. "Bull, please tell me that's you."
His head turns toward the noise. Not that looking does him any good. He can hear. He can definitely smell. But any light he's starting to get is just enough to tell him where the wall is that it's coming through.
That wall's a few inches from his left shoulder. The ceiling - for lack of a better word - is only a little bit farther above his head. He moves his head wrong, and his horns scrape against the stone. Dorian's alive.
Focus on it. Dorian's alive. One of them might make it through this.
He realises he's going to have to think of an answer.
A moment passes.
"Dorian." His voice is hard, heavy, a little rough around the edges. He isn't whispering but he's not loud. The smell's enough - for him, at least - to give him a rough idea of how far away that smell might be, and he can figure how loud a voice he can get away with without thinking about it. Probably for the best. Clear thinking might be in some short supply. Whatever he can do with instinct is probably going to have to be what the Bull leans on.
Think. Dorian's not dead. So what does Dorian need to hear from him right now? Figure it out. Say that. Then move to the right. Find out how far away the wall is in that direction, for better or for worse.
Relief surges through him, and he swallows down the slightly hysterical laugh that wants to bubble up from his chest. Good. Good, the Bull is alive. Of course he is, the more vain part of him wants to say. Dorian's Barriers are powerful things.
He casts around, looks first to the blocked doorway. With time and effort, he might be able to clear it, either physically or with his magic. Quietly, however, is another matter entirely.
"Yes, there's— a wall," he says, voice still pitched low. He realizes, a moment later, how completely counterintuitive that sounds, so he quietly adds, "There's a hole in it. I can slip through."
Shaking out his limbs, he takes stock of himself. His head still throbs in time with his heartbeat. Gingerly, his fingertips find a tender spot near his temple, something that promises to swell into an ugly goose egg later. Otherwise, he's— all right. Horribly sore, and bound to be coated in dark bruises later, but all right.
"I'll live," he says, the weight of all the layers of rock and air in this place pressing his voice down until it's flat, and reasons out why he'd answered that way a moment after he says it. No point in worrying Dorian. They don't need the distraction. He's got a hand laying on his leg, flat along the side like that's going to keep it all together. He lets go of it. Lots of rocks behind him; hard jagged lines against the gashes and scrapes over his back, then round, smoother pressure, separate shapes. Rubble, probably. Blocking off the way that he fell in. He forces himself to move over to the right, find out how much room he has that way, by moving like he's got space. Like he did when he tried to stand up all the way. It's a room, because it's got to be. There's space, because he isn't going to move without believing-
There's another thud, a little more rubble trickling down some place. Not a lot. Not very loud. His breaths echo in what space there is. He focuses on the sound.
Dorian needs something else. The Bull needs something else. He needs to know at least one of them is getting out of here. He needs to know that before he moves forward. The little beam of dim near-light isn't reflecting off of anything in front of him, so maybe there's nothing there to reflect off of. Might be his night vision just isn't enough to tell. Can't always count on a lot with only one eye on the job. He might be missing details.
If he's going to ask anything, he should do it before he tries again to move around. Feels like a good idea.
"You can get out, right?" He already asked that, sort of. Dorian already answered. Still feels important, so there must be something else to add.
Right. The essentials. What needs to get done. "Do it. Might get you out of here."
There's something about how the Bull speaks that sends ice down Dorian's spine.
Maybe it's their predicament. Maybe it's the stench of darkspawn – Qunari have more sensitive noses than humans, evidently, and surely the Bull smells the darkspawn stench far more acutely than Dorian can. Maybe it's the necessity of keeping his voice low, when the Bull typically seems to prefer something raucous.
I'll live isn't much of an answer. It's an acknowledgment, at best, which means the Bull is almost certainly hurt, and isn't bothering to hide it – not well, at least. Dorian stumbles toward the wall they seem to be sharing, tripping a little over fallen stone but keeping his footing. Concussion, he thinks. Poor balance. He'll be fine.
Examining the wall, Dorian finds himself cursing dwarven architecture. It's solid, sturdy, with only a few cracks at the top from when the ceiling had caved in what must have been ages ago. Maybe he can find a weak point, though. Maybe he can figure out a way to take apart enough of the wall to slip through.
"What about you?" There's urgency in his voice, though he struggles to stay quiet. "Are you able to get out?"
He has to look. There's no getting around it. No sense putting it off. The space is stable enough, just small; it will be stable even if he's trapped in here. It doesn't matter what he feels. That isn't helpful right now. He doesn't need it. What matters is what's actually here around him. What matters is figuring that out. Then he'll know how to deal with it. If he can deal with it.
Even if all this wasn't built as sturdy as everything else down here, knocking a wall down wouldn't be a good option. He doesn't know the layout of the place. Take out the wrong wall, and-
Doesn't matter. He slows his breathing down, even if there's no one close enough to hear it. Breaths slow, deliberate, filling up his chest.
He rolls onto his good leg again. That takes his horns far enough from the rock above that he could almost pretend there's real space, if he wasn't so aware of it, heavy and waiting above him there. He moves one hand on the ground. Crawls forward, does it again. One more time.
After a few more breaths, he realises he hasn't actually answered. Got to do that.
"Maybe." Probably lying would have been better. Better not to give Dorian space to worry about him. He'd have to make it convincing, if he did. Reaching for the words, the manner, that usually comes so easy is like wading through mud.
'Maybe' it is.
"Might not have time for me to look around." Try for something. Not a lie, just a hope, a goal. The tone isn't there, still trying to be flat but without the sharp edge to it it's more obvious what's underneath, a tone that's balanced on the bare edge of something else. "Go ahead. I'll just catch up."
The Bull is quiet for too long, and Dorian feels himself starting to tense. His gaze grows distant as he listens to the scrape and skitter of stone and dirt – movement, he thinks, as bare as it is. What an awful thing, he thinks, for the two of them to survive such a terrible fall, only for one of them to be stuck. That does seem to be how their luck works.
Still, Dorian refuses to accept that.
And he refuses to accept the Bull's answer, as well, scowling at the wall briefly. Anger and annoyance to cover up that icy curl of panic licking up the walls of his chest. There's sense in the suggestion of course – find a way out, so Dorian can return with help – but Dorian isn't always a fan of good sense. Especially not with that strange timbre in the Bull's voice – something Dorian can't quite identify and almost doesn't want to.
"And deprive you the joy of my company?" He forces himself to smile, knowing it'll be audible in his voice if he does. "Perish the thought."
Reluctantly, he releases the wisp, lets it drift upward to what remains of the ceiling. The soft glow illuminates cracks in the wall, tiny gaps fit only for a mouse to slip through – maybe that's why sound is carrying so easily between them. Dorian frowns before quietly drawing another wisp from the Fade, murmuring an incantation to bind it to the physical realm and to give it direction.
"I'm sending you a light, Bull. I'll thank you not to squash it."
And with that, he splays a hand, sends the new wisp through the small gaps in the wall to the Bull's side. It drifts lazily, casting about the same amount of light as a single candle flame in a soft green hue.
Rock washed in green light; a long, flat piece of what probably used to be the ceiling, resting on the rubble behind him, tilting upward. The way ahead of him, open.
Open.
The Bull lets out a slow breath. Seeing that should let out some of that tension strung through every inch of him. Maybe it does. The space around him has definition, now. The one eye he has left has something to take in now, something to remind it it's still whole. That's probably good. That's good.
He crawls forward a little more, tries to look up to see if the rubble above him opens up anywhere - not into open air or anything, or there would be more light, but but into something higher - and his horns thunk against the rock above.
He holds himself still. He breathes. He starts moving forward again. His leg is going to start hurting, probably sooner rather than later. For now it drags the green ground under him.
Dorian. Focus on that, instead of this. On what still needs to get done. "Make sure your way's open," he manages, voice a little more wilful now but not stronger, not that much changed from how it sounded before Dorian's light opened his little world up. "You can get out at the first sign of anything. First thing you hear."
He strains his ears, listening to the sounds filtering in from the Bull's side. It's difficult to tell, but Dorian gets the impression that it's movement, something with direction, rather than idle shifting like an animal in a cage.
Good. Good. All right. That's something he can work with.
This time, he doesn't argue – checking is better than simply leaving, obviously – and he limps his way to the opening in the wall. He cups the wisp against his chest again once it flits down to him, dimming the light, and with an abundance of caution, he peers out.
The opening spills out into a hallway – equally as decrepit as the room in which he finds himself – which is to say, there are openings in the ceiling, and a few walls are certainly in need of patching, but otherwise, nothing seems in immediate danger of collapsing. Superior dwarven workmanship, he thinks with a little irony.
The way to the Bull is blocked off by yet another wall, and Dorian curses under his breath, pushing away. He takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes and trying to ignore the stench of darkspawn. He can feel spirits pressing against the Veil, drawn here by their curiosity, and he realizes this settlement was likely overrun by darkspawn. He wonders how many died here to draw so much interest.
What a cheerful thing to think about.
"I don't have a way to you yet," he reports, calling back as loudly as he dares. That seems important to say – the yet. "But there's a hallway ahead of me. I'm— I can figure something out."
The Bull crawls. He watches his hands, the green shade all washed over them bizarre, not just in the normal way - just because it's unnatural, a spirit straight from the Fade here casting it - but because it's that and it's a gift, unnatural and freaky and he's grateful for it, all at once.
He braces himself. He risks looking up from his hands at the ceiling again. Still not great, but sloping up. Maybe if he stands, maybe if he isn't crawling on the floor like an animal, maybe this purposeless thing inside him will loosen up its senseless hold a little.
He overestimates, puts a tiny little hint of weight on his left leg instead of none, and cuts off his startled, pained noise just as straightens too far, horns hitting the rock above hard again. He leans against the left wall. His right shoulder doesn't brush the wall when he moves this way, almost feels like there's space over there if he doesn't look at it. His head, next to one of those cracks in the wall now, hangs and his breaths come heavy, deep, only a little fast.
"I hear you," he says, belatedly.
Another thought then, a second later. He has to ask. "That hallway. It leads away from here? Into another part of-" He pauses, and his words come back a little fainter. He should have finished the question all in one shot. Shouldn't have given himself an instant to imagine what it's actually going to be like, getting left here. "-of wherever the crap we are?"
Dorian's looking around. It's a good thing. Figuring how to get out. At least one of them should be able to get out.
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no subject
This feeling doesn't have to turn itself into a weakness. It can be useful. Help him do what needs to get done.
They're prepared for this, anyway. As close to it as they're going to get.
Focus. Darkspawn aren't close yet, and Dorian still needs distracting. "So," he murmurs, just for Dorian to hear. "This place you're thinking of. We're talking countries, right? So it's no country we've ever been to together, instead of some library or whorehouse or something you just really like."
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His voice is a little louder in response – whether to force the brightness in his tone or to drown out Renn's story, it's difficult to say.
"I'm not sure any of that was a 'yes' or 'no' question, Bull." That imperiousness is back in his voice, though he lilts the words to take away the bite. He pauses, running through the Bull's comments again, before Dorian lands on an appropriate response. "As utterly charming as I've found Ferelden, yes, my mind strays to another country."
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"Hey, some of it could have been yes or no if you're creative enough." Not that he has a lot of incentive to totally play by the rules here, if him not doing it right gives Dorian something more to think about. "It can't be Tevinter, right? Too obvious. Plus, there's not a lot of places there I actually know about. Orlais then, one of the bigger cities?"
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He sighs, then, realizing that the Bull will simply continue to bend the rules. Dorian runs over the other man's comments again, head tipped back a little as he thinks. After some consideration, he holds up a hand and starts ticking off his answers on his fingers.
"No, it's not Tevinter. And no, it's not Orlais." He lifts two more fingers. "That's four questions down, so you know."
Dorian pauses, lips pressed together. Thedas is a large place, after all, and he wonders if he ought to provide a hint. It's only fair, he decides, considering the Bull had guided him on his slightly lewder round.
"It's a famous location I've yet to visit." After another considering pause, he adds, "I feel you would hate it in there."
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Not a question, so if Dorian wants to confirm that, technically it shouldn't add to the Bull's question count. "This place does the kind of magic you do that research on, then, something you'd want to go learn about? Instead of some kind that you're already good at?"
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And more than that, Dorian is grateful that the Bull's voice is just loud enough that he can't quite hear the rest of Renn's lovely story.
"I excel at anything to which I apply myself," Dorian replies automatically. After a beat, he adds a little more sincerely, "But in this case, yes, I'll admit there's more to learn. That's five, I believe?"
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Anyway, puzzling out his next guess. He's getting close, he feels like. Probably won't need the whole fifteen. "Not a lot of places famous for doing enough magic that I'd be that put off. Not a lot that you'd admit you're not the best at, either. Or are you just in a generous mood?"
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Ahead of them, Evelyn is frowning at two diverging paths split by a tall stone protrusion – one following the contours of the cavern wall, the other acting as the edge of a cliff. She decides to lead them down the cliff side – no doubt with plans to loop back around to around to explore what she missed. Thorough, she is. Nice that at least one of them can find this entire trip fascinating.
"Do you not consider me a typically generous person?" he asks, his hand pressed against his sternum as he feigns offense. "Why, just the other day, I held a door open for someone, unprompted, and even allowed them to enter the room before me."
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And if Dorian recognizes that as the bait it is, trying to get Dorian to tell him something about what branch of magic it he's talking about without spending one of his questions on it, that's fine. It isn't the most subtle bait he's ever laid. But then, it isn't really meant to be.
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Solas, for instance, gives off the air that he finds Dorian's knowledge of and skill with magic rather quaint, as though Dorian knows only enough to fill a thimble, compared to Solas. What an insufferable man.
"That being said, I would hesitate to call myself bad at anything. Less knowledgeable, perhaps, and eager to learn, but going so far as to say I'm bad at it? A few steps too far. So, no, I won't admit to a 'weak spot', as you've called it."
His smirk isn't visible, but the Bull can still probably see it in the way his eyebrow has quirked, can probably still hear it in the lilt of his voice. "That's six yes or no questions, by the way."
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And maybe he's emboldened by the dark, or by the bare distance separating the two of them from the rest of their party. In either case, Dorian adds a little more quietly, to avoid being overheard, "I was under the impression that was your preference."
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Well, damn. Maybe he has more to look forward to once they get out of here than he thought.
"Guess that means we match then," he murmurs, voice warm with promise. "That's pretty convenient."
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When the Bull answers, Dorian feels a warm flicker of something in his chest. Relief, perhaps, that the Bull hasn't decided to raise up his voice as he had earlier and make a show of it, drawing further attention to the two of them – the same way he had earlier in their game. At least Dorian won't have to hope for an excuse to disappear.
Dorian remains quiet for another beat, smiling to himself, feeling a strangely thrilling sense of satisfaction and pride. Silly of him – he's surely said and done lewder things back home in Tevinter. It's different in the south, knowing that admitting to some sort of attraction aloud would, at worst, lead him to only embarrassment, and little else.
His lips part to speak, except he hears a distant rumbling, like thunder.
"Brace yourselves!" Renn shouts, and he grabs hold of Valta's elbow, yanking her away from the cliff's edge, where she was admiring the ruins of the thaig. Cassandra does the same with Evelyn, the latter of whom looks back at Dorian and the Bull, her gaze darting upward and face going pale.
She shouts a warning, but Dorian's gaze has already followed hers, spotting the boulder plummetting toward the two of them. No time to grab his staff, and he shoulder-checks the Bull, pushing him toward the rest of the party. Dorian plants his feet into a wide stance, throws both of his arms out to his sides and swings them forward, hands forming into fists like he's physically yanking at the Veil. He shoves, and a green ripple of force surges from his arms to push the boulder away – just far enough to keep it from crushing the two of them.
The boulder slams into the path the two of them had just tread, and the stone starts to crack before giving way beneath the boulder's weight entirely.
Evelyn screams Dorian's name as the ground starts crumbling beneath his boots. He has a second to think a little bitterly, Maker's hairy balls, before he plummets.
Falling is an ugly, graceless thing, a distant part of him thinks, as he tumbles through the air, struggling to straighten himself out for some semblance of control. He manages to throw out his limbs, to make himself wide to keep from wildly spinning. It's only then he notices that the Bull has fallen with him, slightly above him, and he doesn't think, just reacts. He manages to flip himself around, and the rushing wind snatches away his mask. Dorian sweeps out his arm, covering the two of them with a flickering, haphazard barrier.
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The Bull's no stranger to terrible shit happening without warning, and quickly. And it isn't like he's let his guard down once since that long, grim wait to lower themselves down into this place. But there's some shit there's just no preparing for. Shit like this:
A flash of anger that Dorian shoved him out of the way, instinctive. It's supposed to be the Bull who takes the hits for the rest of the team. Fear, before that anger has time to find its way to anything more practical. That feeling you get sometimes, unreality meeting inevitable fact; the ground can't be breaking apart undreneath him. He can't be falling. When it comes down to it, no one really believes their time is up. Not even when that swooping, clenching feeling that means that means the ground's going to hit him hard is saying differently. Disbelief again, appreciation; the unnatural glowing colour of Dorian's barrier coming more or less to life around them, Dorian not accepting that their time is up yet either and still fighting. An impact on his back. He wasn't that far away from the edge when when he fell, and the rock itself doesn't cut a straight line down; it turns him in midair, and for a dizzy, stretched out moment it gets pretty hard to tell where and when he's getting hit.
A flash of something familiar, right there at the end - the bright, spreading heat of pain to come spreading down his shin, and through his ankle.
The thing he realises after that is that it's dark. Pitch black. Wait, comes the response, the first coherent thought he's had time for in an age. In maybe thirty seconds. Get your night vision first. Then decide how dark it is.
Okay.
He might have yelled at some point, he realises, as his mind starts to piece through the last less-than-a-minute and all its different, jumbled impressions. But there's no need for that now. No room for it. Put it all on the shelf until that changes. He's alive, so he needs to assess.
First priority: seeing. He's still waiting for that. Next.
Pain is probably important. Tells him how capable he's going to be of facing whatever he's going to need to face. He sorts through it, learning what he can. The worst of it's familiar, at least, and any feelings about that, about what a healer will be able to do for a weight-bearing joint that's broken more than once before and healed a little worse each time, about what that could mean for him, about the dented, bent up brace under his fingers, none of that feeling matters right now.
Next. He rolls himself onto his knee, cautiously. Something like light might be coming through over to his left. He turns himself so his good eye can get a look at it. If that gets any brighter as he gets used to the dark, he might be able to tell if his head wrap, that whole thing the boss spent all that time figuring out how to secure on a qunari just so she could keep him safe, is still intact enough to put back together. He can feel pieces of it tangled around his horns.
When his head hits rock it hits hard. That's what happens when you try to stand expecting the ceiling to be somewhere else, and the angry, startled noise comes out of him a second before he's able to bite it back. He must have hit it hard enough to dislodge something. There's rubble moving nearby, somewhere.
Dorian's probably dead. Dorian might not be dead. The Bull isn't. Qunaris come a little tougher, usually, than humans do.
He's hunched over. He is still. He takes a slow, slow breath in through his nose and then he forces it out. He's too busy sorting through it all, locking himself down, compartmentalising; the rubble and that noise were all the sound he's going to make. It hasn't occurred to him to try and make anything else.
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It's the easy assumption to make. He had, after all, dedicated a portion of his last moments of life to calculate how long one might take to plummet through the cavern they had found. He's a little sorry for that. There are a thousand different, better ways he could have spent that time.
The Bull is too far away, or else Dorian would have tried to pull them together, to shove every last bit of mana he has left to create one large shield for the both of them. The light of their barriers catches on something beneath them – illuminates the edges of architecture. More ruins.
It's not ideal, Dorian thinks, but at least it's better than an endless fall into blackness.
Later, he'll realize how lucky he is – that he's plummeting toward a hole in what was probably once a high ceiling, instead of splattering into stone. It gives him time to react, and he focuses, front-loading his barrier to better absorb the impact. He throws his arms out to the side, grabs the Veil again and shoves it forward. The surge of force provides some recoil, slowing his fall ever so slightly. In those last bare seconds, he curls up, guarding his head, and slams against the stone floor.
He can't be entirely sure, considering when he blinks his eyes open, it's nearly pitch black – but he thinks he must have blacked out. He can't tell if it was the impact or if something fell behind him that knocked him unconscious, but in either case, his head throbs which is— something. Someone might say it was good, that feeling any sort of pain means he's not dead, but at the current juncture, Dorian would find himself hard pressed to agree. For a few seconds, he lets himself lie there, dazed and aching, before a smaller, more rational part decides, That's quite enough of that. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, blinking into the darkness. Rocks and dirt fall away from him, and a bit of stone shifts beneath his hands. Oh, good, he thinks. What a nice thing to cushion my fall.
The hole in the ceiling admits the barest hint of light from the fissures at the surface. This might have been an office once, he thinks, squinting in the darkness. What would have been a doorway is almost entirely filled with large stones and other debris, and the idea of being trapped in this space nearly makes him panic until he realizes another wall has crumbled, leaving more than enough room for him to crawl into an adjoining space. Not exactly trapped, then, but only just.
Clumsily, he waves a hand, pulling a few wisps across the Veil, murmuring a soft incantation to bind them to him. They drift lazily around him like dust motes, their faint, pale green glow softly lighting the space. He forces himself to sit up, though it's not without a quiet groan and a hissed out, "Kaffas."
The next thing he notices is that faint smell, and his hand immediately covers his nose and mouth. Darkspawn have a distinctive stench. Decay and rot and something corrupted, something wrong. It's harder to notice when they fight the things on the surface, but here, where they spawn and swarm, it's far more noticeable. He immediately dismisses all but one wisp, and draws that final wisp closer to himself, curling his free hand over it and cupping it close to his sternum.
His face covering is gone. Of course it is. He has no face covering, and Renn was telling that delightful story about swallowing darkspawn blood, and oh, Dorian shouldn't flatter himself. He's more likely to be ripped apart than infected, but of course, of course Dorian would fall somewhere near a darkspawn settlement—
He jolts when he hears a distant noise. A thump. A choked-off grunt. The hiss and clatter of falling dirt and small rocks.
Dorian freezes, listening desperately, but when the sound doesn't evolve into the ugly growls or shrieks, he slowly gets to his feet.
"Bull?" It's as loud as he dares to speak, and he doesn't bother to to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. In the end, he admits he's not very loud at all. "Bull, please tell me that's you."
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That wall's a few inches from his left shoulder. The ceiling - for lack of a better word - is only a little bit farther above his head. He moves his head wrong, and his horns scrape against the stone. Dorian's alive.
Focus on it. Dorian's alive. One of them might make it through this.
He realises he's going to have to think of an answer.
A moment passes.
"Dorian." His voice is hard, heavy, a little rough around the edges. He isn't whispering but he's not loud. The smell's enough - for him, at least - to give him a rough idea of how far away that smell might be, and he can figure how loud a voice he can get away with without thinking about it. Probably for the best. Clear thinking might be in some short supply. Whatever he can do with instinct is probably going to have to be what the Bull leans on.
Think. Dorian's not dead. So what does Dorian need to hear from him right now? Figure it out. Say that. Then move to the right. Find out how far away the wall is in that direction, for better or for worse.
Talk first.
"Sound close. You got a way out?"
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He casts around, looks first to the blocked doorway. With time and effort, he might be able to clear it, either physically or with his magic. Quietly, however, is another matter entirely.
"Yes, there's— a wall," he says, voice still pitched low. He realizes, a moment later, how completely counterintuitive that sounds, so he quietly adds, "There's a hole in it. I can slip through."
Shaking out his limbs, he takes stock of himself. His head still throbs in time with his heartbeat. Gingerly, his fingertips find a tender spot near his temple, something that promises to swell into an ugly goose egg later. Otherwise, he's— all right. Horribly sore, and bound to be coated in dark bruises later, but all right.
"Bull, are you hurt?"
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There's another thud, a little more rubble trickling down some place. Not a lot. Not very loud. His breaths echo in what space there is. He focuses on the sound.
Dorian needs something else. The Bull needs something else. He needs to know at least one of them is getting out of here. He needs to know that before he moves forward. The little beam of dim near-light isn't reflecting off of anything in front of him, so maybe there's nothing there to reflect off of. Might be his night vision just isn't enough to tell. Can't always count on a lot with only one eye on the job. He might be missing details.
If he's going to ask anything, he should do it before he tries again to move around. Feels like a good idea.
"You can get out, right?" He already asked that, sort of. Dorian already answered. Still feels important, so there must be something else to add.
Right. The essentials. What needs to get done. "Do it. Might get you out of here."
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Maybe it's their predicament. Maybe it's the stench of darkspawn – Qunari have more sensitive noses than humans, evidently, and surely the Bull smells the darkspawn stench far more acutely than Dorian can. Maybe it's the necessity of keeping his voice low, when the Bull typically seems to prefer something raucous.
I'll live isn't much of an answer. It's an acknowledgment, at best, which means the Bull is almost certainly hurt, and isn't bothering to hide it – not well, at least. Dorian stumbles toward the wall they seem to be sharing, tripping a little over fallen stone but keeping his footing. Concussion, he thinks. Poor balance. He'll be fine.
Examining the wall, Dorian finds himself cursing dwarven architecture. It's solid, sturdy, with only a few cracks at the top from when the ceiling had caved in what must have been ages ago. Maybe he can find a weak point, though. Maybe he can figure out a way to take apart enough of the wall to slip through.
"What about you?" There's urgency in his voice, though he struggles to stay quiet. "Are you able to get out?"
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He has to look. There's no getting around it. No sense putting it off. The space is stable enough, just small; it will be stable even if he's trapped in here. It doesn't matter what he feels. That isn't helpful right now. He doesn't need it. What matters is what's actually here around him. What matters is figuring that out. Then he'll know how to deal with it. If he can deal with it.
Even if all this wasn't built as sturdy as everything else down here, knocking a wall down wouldn't be a good option. He doesn't know the layout of the place. Take out the wrong wall, and-
Doesn't matter. He slows his breathing down, even if there's no one close enough to hear it. Breaths slow, deliberate, filling up his chest.
He rolls onto his good leg again. That takes his horns far enough from the rock above that he could almost pretend there's real space, if he wasn't so aware of it, heavy and waiting above him there. He moves one hand on the ground. Crawls forward, does it again. One more time.
After a few more breaths, he realises he hasn't actually answered. Got to do that.
"Maybe." Probably lying would have been better. Better not to give Dorian space to worry about him. He'd have to make it convincing, if he did. Reaching for the words, the manner, that usually comes so easy is like wading through mud.
'Maybe' it is.
"Might not have time for me to look around." Try for something. Not a lie, just a hope, a goal. The tone isn't there, still trying to be flat but without the sharp edge to it it's more obvious what's underneath, a tone that's balanced on the bare edge of something else. "Go ahead. I'll just catch up."
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Still, Dorian refuses to accept that.
And he refuses to accept the Bull's answer, as well, scowling at the wall briefly. Anger and annoyance to cover up that icy curl of panic licking up the walls of his chest. There's sense in the suggestion of course – find a way out, so Dorian can return with help – but Dorian isn't always a fan of good sense. Especially not with that strange timbre in the Bull's voice – something Dorian can't quite identify and almost doesn't want to.
"And deprive you the joy of my company?" He forces himself to smile, knowing it'll be audible in his voice if he does. "Perish the thought."
Reluctantly, he releases the wisp, lets it drift upward to what remains of the ceiling. The soft glow illuminates cracks in the wall, tiny gaps fit only for a mouse to slip through – maybe that's why sound is carrying so easily between them. Dorian frowns before quietly drawing another wisp from the Fade, murmuring an incantation to bind it to the physical realm and to give it direction.
"I'm sending you a light, Bull. I'll thank you not to squash it."
And with that, he splays a hand, sends the new wisp through the small gaps in the wall to the Bull's side. It drifts lazily, casting about the same amount of light as a single candle flame in a soft green hue.
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Open.
The Bull lets out a slow breath. Seeing that should let out some of that tension strung through every inch of him. Maybe it does. The space around him has definition, now. The one eye he has left has something to take in now, something to remind it it's still whole. That's probably good. That's good.
He crawls forward a little more, tries to look up to see if the rubble above him opens up anywhere - not into open air or anything, or there would be more light, but but into something higher - and his horns thunk against the rock above.
He holds himself still. He breathes. He starts moving forward again. His leg is going to start hurting, probably sooner rather than later. For now it drags the green ground under him.
Dorian. Focus on that, instead of this. On what still needs to get done. "Make sure your way's open," he manages, voice a little more wilful now but not stronger, not that much changed from how it sounded before Dorian's light opened his little world up. "You can get out at the first sign of anything. First thing you hear."
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Good. Good. All right. That's something he can work with.
This time, he doesn't argue – checking is better than simply leaving, obviously – and he limps his way to the opening in the wall. He cups the wisp against his chest again once it flits down to him, dimming the light, and with an abundance of caution, he peers out.
The opening spills out into a hallway – equally as decrepit as the room in which he finds himself – which is to say, there are openings in the ceiling, and a few walls are certainly in need of patching, but otherwise, nothing seems in immediate danger of collapsing. Superior dwarven workmanship, he thinks with a little irony.
The way to the Bull is blocked off by yet another wall, and Dorian curses under his breath, pushing away. He takes a deep breath, shutting his eyes and trying to ignore the stench of darkspawn. He can feel spirits pressing against the Veil, drawn here by their curiosity, and he realizes this settlement was likely overrun by darkspawn. He wonders how many died here to draw so much interest.
What a cheerful thing to think about.
"I don't have a way to you yet," he reports, calling back as loudly as he dares. That seems important to say – the yet. "But there's a hallway ahead of me. I'm— I can figure something out."
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He braces himself. He risks looking up from his hands at the ceiling again. Still not great, but sloping up. Maybe if he stands, maybe if he isn't crawling on the floor like an animal, maybe this purposeless thing inside him will loosen up its senseless hold a little.
He overestimates, puts a tiny little hint of weight on his left leg instead of none, and cuts off his startled, pained noise just as straightens too far, horns hitting the rock above hard again. He leans against the left wall. His right shoulder doesn't brush the wall when he moves this way, almost feels like there's space over there if he doesn't look at it. His head, next to one of those cracks in the wall now, hangs and his breaths come heavy, deep, only a little fast.
"I hear you," he says, belatedly.
Another thought then, a second later. He has to ask. "That hallway. It leads away from here? Into another part of-" He pauses, and his words come back a little fainter. He should have finished the question all in one shot. Shouldn't have given himself an instant to imagine what it's actually going to be like, getting left here. "-of wherever the crap we are?"
Dorian's looking around. It's a good thing. Figuring how to get out. At least one of them should be able to get out.
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