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for-the-ninth · 3 years ago

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It's Friday Egg! Prompt time! How about “You probably shouldn’t touch that.” “What harm could this trinket possibly do?”

FINALLY answering this one, it's been on my mind for a while and I just needed some inspo. Been thinking a lot about young Shielan, before she became Inquisitor, out adventuring with her best friend, Zevriel. @dadrunkwriting

***

“Where the fuck are we?” Zevriel’s amber rasp echoed off the dank, glistening walls of the cave. He lowered his hood and plucked a tiny glowstone from his pocket, rubbing it between his palms until it lit up. One held the stone and the other rested lazily in his pocket as he shuffled along the wall, scanning the stone for glyphs and old drawings.

Shielan answered him with a disinterested grunt, golden eyes narrowed to slits as she hunched over a jagged cluster of stones, mumbling to herself. “Obsidian, but brighter…awfully sharp, this bit. How strange…” She ran her fingertips across the tallest points of the cluster, pressing them into her flesh and pulling back to examine the resulting marks.

Zevriel looked over his shoulder and cocked one brow at her, a knowing half-smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. He lowered his voice to a lilting whisper. “Oh, Ripperrrrrrr…,” And when she did not answer: “My liege, my dearest comrade, my knight in shining leatherrrrrr…”

“Hm?” Shielan answered without looking up. She’d already moved on to a second cluster of rocks, which, as far as he could tell, was no different than the first, brows furrowed as she poked and prodded.

“Just so you know”—Zevriel’s half-smile turned to a grin as he leaned against a misshapen column of stone, one ankle crossed over the other—“my ears aren’t half as good as yours, but I could swear I hear a rock wraith shuffling about just down that way.” He gestured vaguely with one hand while the other plucked a cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it between his teeth. “Gnarly old fuckers, they are. Though I suppose it’s more likely to be a squatter, a disembodied spirit, or—ooh!—maybe it’s a little family of deepstalkers, and wouldn’t that be just a delightful little rendezvous?”

Shielan rifled through her crowded satchel, sending a cacophonous jangle of clinking glass bouncing off the stone, and pulled a leatherbound book from its depths. Zevriel winced at the sound, but she paid him no mind. Her fingers were already flipping through the pages, occasionally pausing to trace the outline of a drawing—presumably of rocks, though he couldn’t see clearly from his vantage point. She’d squint at the page, then squint at the rocks, then squint at the page again, as though waiting for something to be revealed.

Zevriel was, in part, a little envious of his friend’s stellar focus. While he flitted from place to place, searching for something to dazzle his senses, Shielan approached every inch of her environment with a curious eye and a hungry mind, like she were a blank slate ready to be carved up for posterity—and when something really got her attention, nothing and no one who could draw her away. He knew this because he’d tried (twice) and had both his ego and body bruised for it (twice). Her single-mindedness was at once remarkable, infuriating, and wholly endearing.

“Perhaps I should speak louder, so as to draw them near,” he said, hands searching his pockets for a light. “Might as well get the battle over with, you know?” He raised his voice only just, figuring he ought to tread lightly in case his jest came to fruition.

True to form, Shielan ignored him entirely. She’d pulled another book from her bag—the one that could seemingly hold an unending well’s worth of miscellaneous shit—and was silently scribbling away in it, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. Her gaze darted from the rock to the page, then back again, and after watching her for a few moments, Zevriel realized she was sketching the rock formation. He shook his head and sighed, both hands rummaging through any part of his outfit that’d ever been used as a pocket, cursing under his breath. “Andraste’s wet knickers—where did I put those fucking—”

Shielan snapped her fingers together and he looked up. She’d moved the pencil to her other hand and continued to draw as she extended a glowing thumb and forefinger in his direction. “I don’t know why you bother with matches when fire is readily available to you.”

“But that spell hurts my little fingers,” he whined, in a way he hoped would pluck her nerves.

“Huh,” she said flatly, “I would’ve thought your fingertips void of sensation considering how many times I’ve burned you.” A cheeky smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, despite her obvious effort to repress it.

“Indeed”—Zevriel sighed as he moseyed over to her, shoulders slumped—“you so regularly set me ablaze with your rapier wit, my dear Ripper. I worry I may never return to my former self.”

“Reflect on what an asinine reconnaissance mission that would be and get back to me.” Shielan tossed her sketchbook to the ground and rummaged through her bag, sending another piercing wave of clangs and clatters through the dank air. Her smile deepened as Zevriel moved closer to her—adorable, he thought, the way his proximity was the only thing impactful enough to poke holes in her resolve—and bent at the waist, resting his cigarette between her flaming fingers.

“Remind me, if you would”—he took a hefty drag and continued through a cloud of smoke—“how it is I came to be friends with someone who tears me down at every turn?”

“I don’t know about every turn,” Shielan replied, chuckling, “but I believe the answer you’re searching for is: ‘because no one else would take the job.’”

Zevriel’s grin turned to a scowl as he watched her face fall for a moment so short it would’ve been imperceptible if he hadn’t seen it coming. Her words may have been directed at him, but the sentiment wasn’t.

He crouched next to her, taking care to lean his head back as he blew clouds of smoke, so as not to provoke her ire. “I know you’re real focused on this little rock situation over here—”

“They’re stalagmites, fool.” She scratched her head, lips pursed. “At least, I think they are. It’s just…they’re so small, and not at all like—”

“Right, the mysterious miniature stalagmites are just titillating, I’m sure—”

“It’s as if you want me to stab you, Zev.”

“—but Keeper Istimaethoriel sent us looking for shit to sell. Somehow I doubt these will fetch a fair price in the markets of Hasmal.”

Shielan threw her head back and sighed, though it came out more as a raspy groan. “You never let me have any fun.”

“All things in moderation, dear Ripper.” Zev yanked her up off the ground and threw one arm around her, nudging her stubborn feet along as he strolled deeper into the cave.

“You forgot the glowstone,” she muttered.

“And you have fire hands,” he replied, grinning. It was too dark to see her face, but he knew her eyes couldn’t be far from rolling out of their sockets in exasperation.

She shrugged him off and spawned a flaming orb between her palms, then sent it floating up toward the cave’s ceiling, flexing and twisting her wrists until it loomed large enough to light the whole cave. Tiny sparks crackled and popped from its center, and with its glow came a slow, steady heat that soothed the damp darkness as it settled into their bones.

Zev stared up at the orb with wide eyes as he walked. “That spell never gets less impressive, you know.”

“Flattery is of no use to me,” Shielan said, arms folded stubbornly over her chest. He elected to ignore her grumpiness, opting instead to surge ahead of her sulking pace, eyes peeled for shiny objects the shem would be stupid enough to pay for.

They didn’t have to walk far before stumbling upon a forgotten cluster of odds and ends, arranged haphazardly around a bedroll and an old pair of boots that looked as though they might crumble to dust if touched. Zev crouched down and sorted through the pile, lips pursed around the pitiful remains of his cigarette as he scratched at a layer of rust on a piece of silver cutlery.

“Junk,” he muttered, and chucked it across the cave. It clinked against something that definitely wasn’t stone, and his ears perked up at the sound. By the time he’d gotten to his feet, Shielan was all but sprinting toward it.

She hunched over the object, obscuring his view. “It’s a locked chest. Rather small; it could fit in the palm of my hand.”

“Oh, you know those fuckers just love random little bullshit that fits in the palm of their filfthy rich hands,” Zev said as he scrambled toward her. He reached for the chest’s lid and Shielan threw her arm out, slamming it into his belly.

Zev clutched his stomach and groaned, but soldiered through the pain, slamming his shoulder into hers. “I wanna see!”

“Then look with your eyes,” she hissed. “It could’ve been sealed with an enchantment.”

“Exactly,” he wheezed, and threw up his hands. “And the only thing they love more than random little bullshit that fits in the palm of their filthy rich hands is enchanted random little—”

“For fuck’s sake, you can’t just go around touching whatever the fuck you want in a place like this!” Shielan threw her hands up in return, eyes wide with exasperation.

“Pffft.” Zev rolled his eyes as he zipped around her, scooping up the tiny chest before she could react. He held it in one hand, gesturing vaguely with it as he spoke. “I mean really, what harm could possibly come from simply touching a—”

The chest vibrated in his grasp, so violently that he yelped like a kicked dog and threw it across the cave. As soon as it landed, a piercing white light filled the cavern, accompanied by a sustained shriek that shook the walls.

“Mythal’s ass, Zev!” Shielan made a futile attempt to shield her eyes, peeking out from beneath her arm at intervals to see what lay behind the light.

“Well, this is certainly unexpected,” he shouted over the din. There was a boyish excitement in his voice that could’ve driven Shielan to murder.

“Is it really now?” The light dimmed, but the scream remained, only it came in staccato intervals that plucked Shielan’s nerves even more than before.

Zev bounced over to her with his daggers drawn, hopping from foot to foot and grinning like a fool. Loathe as she was to let go of an opportunity to chastise him, Shielan knew he had the right idea—whatever busted out of that chest was pissed. She flexed her fingers and started running through a catalogue of barriers and glyphs in her mind.

The absence of light revealed a collection of wisps in shades of blue and silver, some more translucent than others, writhing together in a formation unlike anything she’d seen before. They grew in size, and the staccato scream turned into a chorus of horrifying moans that reverberated through the cave at a piercing volume.

“It’s a mass of spirits,” Shielan shouted. “Whoever lived here must’ve bound them to the chest and died. They’ve been trapped for too long, and now they’re corrupted.”

“Fucking Nevarrans.” Zev sighed dramatically and shook his head. “You got a plan?”

“For this?” Shielan snorted. “Fuck no.”

#dadrunkwriting #my writing #inquisitor shielan lavellan #my ocs #dragon age inquisition #dragon age fanfic

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