hallagold

[hallagold]

His autistic manner and extensive knowledge of poisons have captivated me.

[hallagold]

have you seen her?

now you have. ♡ (˘▽˘>ԅ( ˘⌣˘)

[hallagold]

[hallagold]

stop expecting me to be normal online when i have free will

are YOU crying at 12am that someone finally wrote tei.ago pegging on ao3, and it WASN'T ME?

[hallagold]

with a SWIFTNESS.

a SWIFTNESS.

[hallagold]

are YOU crying at 12am that someone finally wrote tei.ago pegging on ao3, and it WASN'T ME?

[hallagold]

They invented romance.

[hallagold]

teia and bolivar’s legendary one-sided beef boils down to this one classic post:

[hallagold]

short and not exhaustive list of enrichment activities that teia likes to do at talon meetings to keep things exciting:

• show up in the latest fashions (this has nothing to do with her being one of the only ones out of armor to flex that she isn’t scared of these bitches nor is it about having the girls out to distract people on purpose, why would you say that?)

• refuse to speak in any language but common antivan (why are you talking so much in the 1%’s language?)

• ask other talons “what do you mean by that” and follow up with “i still don’t get it” when they say objectively stupid or offensive things (no, but what do you mean that working women are acceptable collateral damage, bolivar? explain, she wants to know)

• talk to the men (who aren’t viago or lucanis) like this is their first day on the job and that their presence is a burden to the rest of the room (you couldn’t kill a newborn calf hogtied in broad daylight, house arainai, but tell us again about your plan to get the crows back into ferelden because of your gluttony for failure and punishment)

• start intentionally inflammatory rumors she knows aren’t true to hopefully incite some house wars for the houses she hates the most (they don’t deserve any of her energy to dismantle them personally)

• mumble “boring” just a little too loud any time someone she doesn’t like talks for too long (nobody cares that one of your grandmasters is marrying into a merchant prince’s house)

• walk aimlessly around the room (so the paranoid talons get the same rush of adrenaline as if they were being hunted for sport)

• greet a talon she doesn’t like with “i had a dream that you died. the psychic i spoke to about it seemed very concerned. so glad to see i was mistaken” (this talon is very superstitious)

• laugh inappropriately during conversations with other talons and when they ask what is funny, say “nothing. (talon of their enemy house) just said that you would say something like that.” (she walks away after)

• ask the scribe to repeat what bolivar said because the first time she couldn’t hear him over the gag of the crown’s left boot in his mouth (the reason changes to something sillier every time)

[hallagold]

i need to sit down and write the long piece i’ve been avoiding since i took up teia about her ascension to talon. i have a meme-y, silly outline for it that i wrote back in december, and that’s it.

so, of course you can read the meme-y, silly outline (if you want).

currently chewing on how it is teia ascends to talon both without dishonoring the relationship she has with the former talon but honoring that she became talon that young by sheer force of will and skill.

she is not the one to kill sal, which - if that’s the way it goes and that’s all, feels cheap to her accomplishments. she wouldn’t kill him though, so it has to be someone else.

i’m almost wondering if it should be a usurper. an old school crow. he doesn’t like how sal made a young girl off the streets his protégé and definitely doesn’t like that teia has a very unusual way of doing things (compassion, crows as saviors of the downtrodden over a powerhouse of antiva).

so he betrays sal to someone. maybe another talon, maybe just one of his many enemies. but then, he has to get rid of teia, who’s next in line. killing them both and assuming the position is suspicious. more tact is needed.

so, put the knife in her hand. a fake contract, same place that sal accepts one—opposite ends, carefully timed. they can’t cross paths … yet.

except usurper doesn’t account for teia cross-reffing information on the contract. someone was sloppy. signatures don’t look how they’re supposed to. who is this? she’s late, waiting for someone in her house to find a signature match.

usurper (and six cantori crows he’s roped onto his side of things) gets antsy. sal is also finding cracks where there shouldn’t be. sal is restrained. usurper will have to deal with teia later.

who’s finally there but in hiding. sloppy forgery, sloppy perimeter checks.

villain monologue!

long speech about how unqualified teia is and how she would bring this house to ruin with her softness and idealism which isn’t the crow way.

sal defends her and his choice, very directly. there is only one path forward for their house, and it’s her. the torch should be passed to the next generation.

FIGHT SCENE.

teia’s been taking stock of these crows, who have been covering their faces like cowards.

they are much bigger than her, all of them. physical advantage. she’s faster. she has to play it smart.

except, they are really about to fight a restrained man. one of them has a knife thrown straight through the neck (one talon)

this gives sal enough time to finish his bindings. getting him into them gave him a dislocated shoulder, though.

father / daughter back to back fighting.

but sal is out one arm. they get him in one of his achilles’ tendons and have two guys hold teia.

usurper monologue about compassion as a weakness. he gets a good stab in. naturally, teia knocks one of the guys holding her back with her head and, am sorry to report, rips a nice piece of the side of other’s throat out with her teeth as he was not wearing any throat armor. skill issue? spits it in his face.

their armors are hers now. both handled. (two talons, three talons)

she doesn’t get out of this confrontation unscathed but she manages to get the other three (four, five, six talons) backups down, so it’s usurper, her, and bleeding out sal.

he goes to stab sal again but just for fun he gets a knife thrown through his hand that pins him to a shoddy wooden patch job behind them. can’t have a free hand can we? so other is stabbed into an uncomfortable position near the first one. “stay there.”

she goes to sal. i wish i could tell you they got to say goodbye but when is life ever that fair?

so teia just sits and holds his head in her lap for a little while.

kalyani (bestie, sister) eventually turns up because she’s teia’s emergency contact and also never does what she’s told when she knows teia is doing something stupid.

the rest is history. maybe.

many people still think teia planned all of this, despite proof.

all of the crows involved with the usurper were people she knew and respected. so they’re left out for the crows to eat and their names are erased from all cantori records.

something something compassion surviving betrayal, something something compassion as a weapon; compassion as violent defiance

also there are seven betrayers + sal because eight talons get it guys!!!!! and sal is the last one … cinema

[hallagold]

i know i’ve said this before, but i will say it again because i love it …

teia gets viago on an elaborate skincare routine, has him keeping his curls fresh and immaculate (sleeping in a bonnet), takes him for mani/pedis, and buys him clothes she knows suit his style and body type.*

yes, he spoils her, but she spoils him, too. they’re gross. it’s cute.

*viago was already doing a lot of these things because he’s meticulous and clean, but she took them to another level.

[hallagold]

Teia and Viago

[hallagold]

to all of you who sent that meme … i love you. thank you for this opportunity to write teia dying in so many ways. what a gift

[hallagold]

send  “no, you don’t get to die”  for my injured muse to react to yours saying this while they’re bleeding. 

[hallagold]

teia’s duality on any given day —

teia, thinking, sighing wistfully: no one will ever know how funny viago actually is

teia, thinking, staring longingly out a window: no one will ever know how incredibly this man fucks

[hallagold]

The more time that passes without any response, the weaker her grasp on her composure becomes.  She does well under pressure, true, but this is Viago—her Viago.  He has always been the exception to the rule; and while her mind will not allow her to consider any alternative where he is not alive and within the realm of saving, she is not above this sinking feeling.  She often recalls that night, almost a decade ago now, that he lay dying from that adder bite.  Even then, he was brought back from the brink.

But not without her terror, her fleeting thought of a world (or the husk of it) where he no longer lives.

Stupid man and his foolish pride.  If he can survive a snake lurking among his finely pressed, overly starched shirts, he had better survive this, or she intends to rip open the fabric of the Fade itself with her bare hands to give him hell for it.

There is a point in time when she comes to the realization that he will not reply.  The understanding is subconscious, a testament to her resolve, as any conscious awareness of this would only serve as a distraction (an invisible clock ticking in the background).  She begins to focus on the areas where she can identify the signs of an active confrontation.

Blood splatter, viscera, and a wide range of footprints overlapping—she can tell by the pools of blood which encounters happened more recently.  Choke point to choke point, she moves, growing more exasperated by the minute.  Then, she finds something.

There is a pool of blood that is brighter than the rest around it with its sheen intact.  She leans down and manipulates the edge of the pool with one of her knives.  The way it sticks to her blade tells her that it is fresh.  Even considering Antiva’s humidity, which has blood drying more slowly, this is recent, and it is the beginning of a trail.

She dares to have hope.

Teia follows it without hesitation and ultimately winds up in an alleyway.  Her eyes dart around frantically, and she thinks that her heart physically stops when she sees the Crow mark in blood on the wall.

She would know the stylization of that mark with her eyes closed and only someone to guide her finger to trace it.

“Vi!”

This is the bolstering of her determination that she needed.  She is down the stairs of that cellar door in less than four impossible strides. 

Her legs then resist the urge to collapse beneath her when she sees him. “Thank the Maker,” she sounds so grateful that her voice wavers with the raw intensity of her emotion.  One blink, and she is at his side, touching him, assessing him, fighting back tears of joy that he is alive.

“Your side,” she says quickly. “Here?” It’s rhetorical, because she’s already cutting a long, thick strip of his cloak to wrap tightly around the wound several times over.  He can be pissed now, or later; she doesn’t care.  Teia doesn’t say a word until she is sure that the bleeding is controlled.  Still, her eyes are everywhere but his.

“Where else?” she asks, exclusively fixated on tending to every immediate danger to his life before she moves on to anything else. With a touch more agitation, she demands, “Where else, Viago?” 

THERE IS TOO MUCH BLOOD, Viago thinks as he stumbles down the alleyway. He presses his hand against the wall and it leaves a dark stain upon the stone; he curses, quietly, and then spends a precious few seconds turning it into a Crow mark. It will either spell his salvation or his doom, and at this point there is no use wishing for either. He must simply find a place to hide.

Further down the alley there is a cellar door—padlocked, of course, but a padlock was not an obstacle to a Crow. Viago grunts as his knees hit the ground. He has lost all his grace. It is pouring out of him from the gash in his side, the product of an Antaam's glaive. He'd dispatched the Antaam who had wounded him, but that was little comfort. Viago pulls the hand which had been pressed against his side, trying to contain some of the bleeding and only being marginally successful, away and fumbles for his lockpicks.

He drops them a few times, clumsy with fatigue and pain, but manages to get the cellar door opened. He knows he's left a trail for anyone with eyes to see, but he cannot worry about that now.

Viago half-falls, half-stumbles down the stairs to a long empty cellar with a dirt floor. There are large, empty kegs. A few crates. He hears some rodents skittering about and tries not to let it bother him. There are a few chairs littered about, most fallen over or upended. But he makes his way to one and slumps down.

Then he thinks of Teia.

The evening had started frantically, with barely controlled panic on the part of the Crows and their allies. A dragon attack, and a push by the Antaam for more territory in the city. Teia had gone off with Evita and her allies to drive away the dragon, and Viago had taken control of the efforts of their Crows to push back the Antaam. Everything had been going—if not well—as expected, when Viago had received word that one of his teams had run into trouble. Some civilians had needed to be evacuated, and some supplies had had to be moved to a more centrally-located safe house. He'd sent off some able Crows to take care of it, not too many but enough to guard and defend the Trevisans, but the Antaam had found them.

He should have sent someone else to take care of it, he was needed at the Diamond to coordinate their efforts. But he'd been so ... frustrated. He'd hated sitting back and letting others fight. He chafed against the restraints of leadership and, in a moment of foolish arrogance, had decided to go help those Crows himself.

They had fought off the Antaam with Viago's help, but still those final few enemies had proved troublesome. He'd led them off to give the Crows and civilians time to escape, and had managed to dispatch all of them. But at a cost.

He'd given Teia a rendezvous point. The flower stall where they'd bought each other countless bouquets. The Antaam who'd given him this wonderful skewering had run straight through it, splintering it into a thousand pieces.

She'd worry, of course she would worry, but he also hopes that she would follow his trail. Find him.

He feels dizzy. The blood loss is getting to him. He presses his hands into his side to try and keep pressure on the wound.

Viago isn't sure how long it has been—not long, presumably, since he's still alive—when he hears the faint whistle of a Crow signal. Teia.

He makes an attempt to answer, but he doesn't have the breath.

All that's left to do is wait, and hope she finds the trail of blood that will lead her straight to him.

[hallagold]

For whom are those heart eyes, Miss Cantori? 🥰