freedom_is_grey | Dragonslaying with Hal, it's gonna be great

"As much as I may be." He'd hoped that a dragonslaying venture would feel less preposterous when the time came, but--no. No, Harry still doesn't especially feel that any of this is real. It's a dangerous feeling, when you're going into a fight, but his experience is that it's also a feeling that sorts itself out pretty quick. "How far do we travel?"

Oh, it will go away very quickly when they actually face the dragon. Ysa is fairly sure. And if not, she and Zev and Liranan will make sure he doesn't get himself killed over it. Lightly fried, maybe, but not killed. (She brought extra healing potions just in case.)

"Two to three hours up into the mountains, depending on how fast you can walk in your gear. Some people do better with horses, but I don't have any, and with dragonlings around we'd be just as likely to get thrown as to make it safely to the caverns."

She's already moving toward the front door as she speaks, Liranan waiting for Hal to get moving before he brings up the rear.

He makes a face--the face of an old campaigner who would prefer not to add a two or three hours' hike to the day's work, but who has done worse before. Yeah, yeah, fine, they can climb mountains.

(He hopes. Hal's been keeping in shape as best he can in Milliways, but there's really nothing like marching and riding and fighting to keep you fit for--well, for marching and riding and fighting. He'd damned well better not embarrass himself on this little project.)

Liranan gets a nod as Hal falls into line behind Ysalwen.

Ysa's got stamina potions, too. It'll be fine.

She leans them out into a sharply chilly morning, though one with no snow in the air nor frost on the ground. Up at the peaks it's a different story, as Hal can clearly see over the trees, should he choose to look.

But before then, they're in a building that's half-fallen down, walking through the only intact doorway -- and door -- in the place. Everything is charred.

"Welcome to Thedas. All of it doesn't look like this, certainly, but it's common enough to count as representative."

Ysalwen's mouth is twisted at one corner.

Hal would almost certainly get all testy at the suggestion of a stamina potion. He's only 35 or so, dammit! It hasn't been more than a couple of years since he conquered northern France! A mountain and a dragon are no problem.

Neither, for whatever it's worth, is a half-burnt falling-down building. You see a lot of places like that when you're off conquering a country, too. He nods, without much of a readable expression. "Whose work would this be?"

"This? This would be the work of the dragon, my new friend!"

An enthusiastic voice rings out from the shadows, and a figure in dark leather armor and cloak -- with vividly blond hair, brown skin, and stark black tattoos from temple to chin on the left side of his face -- steps out into the light.

"Such a handsome part of men you will have with you, my dearest love. However will you bear it?"

Ysalwen shakes her head, but does not bury her face in her hands. Liranan just yips cheerfully. He is very handsome and glad you noticed it, Zev!

"Hello, my heart. I'm so glad you were able to wait for me to get back. This is Hal. He'll be joining us in our dragon-slaying adventures today, just like I told you. Hal, this is Zevran, my husband and former assassin."

Harry's face goes a little less grim at the news this is a dragon's work, not a human army's. He's here to think about slaying fantastical monsters--not the everyday sort of monster he's had so much practice making and using.

And a real smile shapes as soon as they meet the new arrival. So this is the husband? He hadn't expected anything like this--but maybe he should have. "Well met, sir! I hope not to drag the party down with my inexperience. But under the correction of bragging--and blasphemy--I trust that what an English George may achieve, a Harry may at least attempt!"

"I know nothing about this English George," Zevran says cheerfully, picking up his own well-hidden pack and slipping it across his back. "But as you say!"

Ysalwen grins, quick and bright, turns to look at the sun's position and the direction of the path, and then starts walking.

"You'll learn quickly, Hal. Harry. It's a lot of -- oh, the amulet, Zev. You brought it?"

Zevran, who is now at Harry's side, holds out a small silver medallion that flickers a little, as if in the midst of a heat haze, waiting for the other man to take it.

"This one, my dove? Indeed I would not dream of forgetting a request from you, not even should an army be hammering at our gates."

"O, a famous dragon-slayer, and patron of my nation. I bear his emblem." Harry hoists his shield for a moment, freshly painted in white with a red cross. "His only fault, if I may mar a saint in jest, was not being born English: but we have taken him in and corrected the matter."

Sorry again about the blasphemy, St. George. But Harry figures he can get away with it: he'd painted the shield himself, humble and unfamiliar work done in private piety, covering over his own royal arms.

He eyes the amulet doubtfully, but takes it. "And this charms against flame?"

"It is one I wore of old," Zevran declaims, walking backward for a brief moment so he can look at Hal. "So it has been well-tested in battle. Also in bed! But it has been washed long since then."

In case Hal worried.

Ysalwen's cheeks are only a little pink, and she resolutely doesn't look at anyone.

"That almost sounds like why Fereldans like Andraste -- she was one of us. Well, one of the Avvar, but they were the first of us, so."

Just not anything like Ysa or Zevran, who are elves. Ah, well.

"Art in great danger of burning in bed?" He doesn't leer at Ysalwen. Kings don't leer. He just grins a knowing grin, with his eyebrows raised. And switches over easily to talking about saints: "Ah, unlike your native Andraste, George never set foot in England; but we English have a way of claiming what we like. What tales tell you of Andraste?"

Ysalwen's mouth twitches.

"There's something to be said for a judicious spark."

Zevran beams, one hand clasped to his heart. Ysalwen's entendre game is not very strong, but he appreciates every time she tries.

"As for Andraste -- she freed slaves and led a revolt against the magisters -- the mage rulers that are now limited only to Tevinter. They burned her, of course. But the Chant says that she was taken up by the Maker to be his bride. Given that she had a husband that betrayed her to the Tevene, I'm not sure whether that sounds like a pleasant fate. What do you think?"

Hey, Hal isn't even going to touch the other entendres surrounding burning. He just looks suitably solemn for a discussion of saintly sorts. "I can have no informed view on the matter, I'm afraid, knowing nor your Maker nor your Tevene..."

Zevran lets out a sharp bark of laughter, belying for a moment the laughing exterior he presents to the world.

"That is by far the best course of action for you, my friend. If only the rest of us were more inclined to hide our lights under bushels. But alas, we are too famous to avoid attention."

Woe.

Ysalwen snorts.

"Maybe someday I'll introduce you to a magister, Hal, if ever I find one that actually believes in polite discourse. So far, no luck."

Liranan wanders away a bit, like a scout that's checking out something that might be important, but may also be of little concern.

There's a sharp growl, a high-pitched squeak, and then he trots back to them with a tiny lizard-like creature held in his mouth.

"Deepstalkers. Damn it."

Harry eyes it with distaste. It's lizardy, but that head and mouth just seem wrong. "Do they come larger than that?"

"No, just more numerous. You might want to ready yourself."

Ysalwen shifts position, staff brought to bear as her attention focuses outward.

Liranan drops the deepstalker corpse, tilting his head back and letting for a bone-shaking howl.

Zevran has already faded into the shadows.

And that, of course, is when about twenty of the lizard-worm creatures swarm out of the ground and upon them.

It's not a familiar type of fighting(? hunting?) to Harry, and it takes him a little while to work out how much to use a blade and how much to rely on stomping and kicking. "'Tis sword-and-buckler work, tavern fighting," he calls ruefully to Ysalwen, not much expecting an answer. But it is, and he's stuck with a much too noble and proper shield.

Stomp? Kick? Slice? Disgusting little things.

Ysalwen is busily freezing them rank by rank, while Liranan follows that up by crashing through and smashing the frozen ones to bits.

Zevran, meanwhile, darts in and out of the shadows, cutting a swathe through them while they're distracted by everybody else.

It's annoying work, but swiftly over.

"Usually it's punching, in taverns. I'm not actually sure I want to touch deepstalkers with my bare hands," Ysalwen says, once things have calmed down a bit.

"Welcome to Thedas? Things like this happen . . . a lot."

"We drink at different taverns, then; in the Boar's Head there was ever some bold fellow with his hand on his sword." He casts a sidelong glance at Zevran, but Hal's pretty sure he isn't one to object to mild dick jokes in the presence of his wife.

He turns over one of the lizard corpses with his foot and grimaces. "Unwholesome beasts. Do they trouble your shepherds and plowmen, about their business?"

Zevran laughs, warm and amused.

"No, we are patrons of similar taverns, my friend. It is only that our company is so fearsome no one will try us with anything but bare fists."

Otherwise they'd die.

Ysalwen's eyebrows go up. Apparently she had no idea.

"Is that why? Huh. Oh, as for the deepstalkers, not really? Usually they're found underground, down in the Deep Roads. I wonder why they . . . I suppose the cave mouth is close. And if they got caught on the wrong side of the dragon they might have fled this way. And I don't feel any darkspawn, so it isn't that . . ."

Liranan lets out an irritated whuff, bumping into Ysalwen's side because it is time to be moving! Dragon fight! Tasty meat! Fire!

"Then we must thank them for the warning," he says drily. Really, though, it was good to have a little warm-up before tackling a dragon: he's feeling considerably more alert.

He's going to take a moment to make a slight adjustment to his helmet, and to give them a chance for instructions: "You are the veterans here, and I a novice: have you any last advice?"

"Be nimble!" Zevran encourages, cleaning blood off of his daggers prior to sheathing them. "Dragons like to pick stationary fighters up in their mouths and shake them. It is not very comfortable and I would not recommend it."

Ysalwen snorts.

"That's an understatement. But yes, keep moving, if you can manage. If you get overwhelmed, call Liranan's name out. He's quickest, and we're used to compensating for that kind of regroup. Oh. And. Um. Don't flinch if you're fully engulfed in my magic? It won't hurt you, I'm really good at that."

Zevran tugs her into his side for a moment, pressing a kiss to her hair, even as he grins at Hal.

"I would say the best, and I doubt very much that her apprentice would claim otherwise. And she would know, yes?"

Ysalwen indulges for a moment, then shrugs him off, cheeks pink.

"Oh, and before I forget. Potions. I'm hoping you won't need them, but just in case. Red is for stopping up wounds, yellow is if it goes long enough for you to get exhausted. I get lyrium, which is something completely different. Zev's got spares of the stamina draughts, if it comes to that."

She opens her pack, handing over three red-liquid-filled vials of increasing size and two fairly substantial vials of yellow liquid.

"As a terrier does with a rat? I thank you; I'll try not to be the rat."

He's...less sure what to say about the magic and the potions. It's not that he has any objection. So he takes them with a polite nod, and tucks them safely about him. But it's unfamiliar. Or maybe too familiar? "I knew a man would carry sack with him thus, where another might keep pistol and powder."

But this is magic, not alcohol. Or--something?

"We'll all try, and I think we'll most likely succeed."

Everyone here but Hal has before, at least.

Ysalwen takes a deep breath, shakes out her shoulders, and lifts her chin.

"All right, then. Shall we?"

And she strides off into the cavern, light springing up in a faint glow from the ataff she carries at her side. (It is more reliable than a torch).

Zevran is abruptly no longer anywhere visible, thanks to the shadows inside the cave. Liranan, meanwhile, lets Ysa take point, and flanks Hal so that the warriors of the group are neatly spaced and ready for attack from any angle.

Well, at the very worst he'll find out what happens if he dies on another world! It's the sort of humor that takes you smiling into a fight, and he's still smiling as they make their way into the cavern.

Hal's wondering, though, what they'll find. A dragon, obviously, but--does a dragon keep a clean lair? Or is it filled with refuse, droppings, gruesome scraps from old kills?

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