Anders (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unconfines) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lifeofpineapple2015-12-02 10:31 pm
unconfines) wrote in lifeofpineapple2015-12-02 10:31 pm
Entry tags:
and now my heart stumbles on things I don't know
Varric spins a story, because that's what he does.
He describes the chill of the Frostback Basin in elaborate (if not quite loving) detail, the tall tree forts in the mountains and the wide, glassy lake. He writes about the barbarians— the Avvar— and their feud: the Jaws of Hakkon and Stone-Bear Hold. He writes about their Augur, their apprentices, and their relationships with spirits.
There is a ritual, according to Varric.
Anders reads the letter through the cipher and then lays it back down again, because it doesn't just sound impossible, it is impossible. He spent nearly two decades learning it and a decade more living it: there is no way to separate a spirit from its host without killing one or both in the process. He thinks he's done enough to Justice in his lifetime without tempting that rule.
He lives with the choice as he made it, the same as all the others.
He sits. He rubs his hands over his face, and then he reads it again: the first and last paragraph, with his thumb smoothed into the creases of the vellum. Believe me, I think it sounds like crazy shit, too, Varric writes, But I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't think there was something to it.
It isn't that he doesn't want to take Varric at his word. He does. That's the problem.
"Well," he starts, then stops. He rolls his free hand into a loose fist when it registers that he's been drumming his fingers on the table, agitated. "It's not exactly the vacation I had in mind."
He describes the chill of the Frostback Basin in elaborate (if not quite loving) detail, the tall tree forts in the mountains and the wide, glassy lake. He writes about the barbarians— the Avvar— and their feud: the Jaws of Hakkon and Stone-Bear Hold. He writes about their Augur, their apprentices, and their relationships with spirits.
There is a ritual, according to Varric.
Anders reads the letter through the cipher and then lays it back down again, because it doesn't just sound impossible, it is impossible. He spent nearly two decades learning it and a decade more living it: there is no way to separate a spirit from its host without killing one or both in the process. He thinks he's done enough to Justice in his lifetime without tempting that rule.
He lives with the choice as he made it, the same as all the others.
He sits. He rubs his hands over his face, and then he reads it again: the first and last paragraph, with his thumb smoothed into the creases of the vellum. Believe me, I think it sounds like crazy shit, too, Varric writes, But I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't think there was something to it.
It isn't that he doesn't want to take Varric at his word. He does. That's the problem.
"Well," he starts, then stops. He rolls his free hand into a loose fist when it registers that he's been drumming his fingers on the table, agitated. "It's not exactly the vacation I had in mind."