nevegallus | (no subject)

“Do you feel that, Neve Gallus? The old magic. Our legacy. It returns.”

Aelia’s voice is full of awe and delight as blood rushes from her captives to her staff, vines as red as her hair empowering her ritual with every beat of their hearts.

“You aren’t the future, Aelia!” Neve shouts up at her. “You’re a murderer!”

“I am Minrathous,” Aelia counters, stirring her staff through the air like a witch at a cauldron. “Its dark truth and bright power. The city won’t miss you! Dock Town won’t—”

“No!” Neve barely lifts her hands in time to block the spell Aelia flings at her, at them, Rook standing beside her ready to jump in the moment Neve asks. The pale white-blue of Neve’s ice magic sprinkles purple light around them as Aelia’s blood magic dances against it. Neve struggles with the force of Aelia’s attack, but she needs to hold it off. She needs to.

“Dock Town has you,” Rook says from behind her, voice nearly stern with the conviction in it. “And they see it!”

Rook’s right. Halos, Cida Ciconia, Elek… they all know she’s here for Dock Town. Others, too, the people she’s helped in the past. By themselves, discrete situations are easy enough to take at face value. But link them with a thread, and a bigger picture starts to form: Neve, assuring the people of Dock Town that they aren’t alone, that she’s here for them, with them, and she always will be.

“They just want hope,” Neve says, “a chance!”

“When this is over, I will bring it to them!”

From Aelia, it sounds more like a threat than a promise. It fills Neve with an anger and an indignation that strengthens not just her magic, but her resolve. Aelia doesn’t deserve Dock Town. Maybe Neve doesn’t either, but she’ll damn well try.

“You won’t!” Neve snaps, throwing her arms down hard enough to send her icy barricade towards Aelia, breaking the rope of magic between them. She stares up at Aelia, standing on the platform in her cultist robes, and adds, “But I’ll give it a shot!”

“No!”

The ensuing fight is hard: Aelia summons a blood magic shield that Neve thinks might actually be blood. Halos’s blood. Cida’s blood. Her cultists flock to her, protect her, but with her friends at her back… well, Neve has never been much more than a cynic, but for the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, her friends bolster her, give her the same hope she wants to give Dock Town.

And when Aelia drops, Neve stands over her, a guardian against her lies.

“I would raise us all,” Aelia pants. “You—”

“I do what I can,” Neve says, firmer than she thinks she’s ever spoken. I do what I can. It’s the truest thing she could say about the city she loves. She turns to Rana, the one Templar she’s always felt she could count on. “Rana: Take Aelia. Make sure Dock Town sees it happen.”

Rana moves to obey, like Neve is her Knight-Captain and not some working class mage. Aelia draws a hidden blade — blood mages always have hidden blades — but Rana catches her wrist, yanks her arm down and twists until she drops the knife.

“You’ve tried to stop me before!” Aelia taunts, but this time, Neve isn’t phased.

“And if you escape, I’ll find you again,” Neve promises. “And every time I do, Minrathous will see someone standing against people like you.”

Maybe she shouldn’t be proud of herself, Neve thinks as she leads the others away from Aelia, back through Dock Town to the eluvian at the Shadow Dragons’ hideout. Maybe this is just setting herself up for more disappointment. Aelia’s right, after all: this isn’t the first time they’ve faced off. There’s a chance it won’t be the last. But in spite of that, and in spite of her own cynical nature, Neve can’t help but feel a little proud and a little relieved. Aelia’s off the streets, which means her captives are free. Hal can go back to his fish fry stand. Cida Ciconia can go back to singing at the Cobbled Swan. People can return to their families.

Neve did that. It’s a clean win, and she’d won it, for the people of Minrathous.

As she steps through the shimmering, liquid glass, she thinks I could get used to this.

So of course, when she steps out of the mirror on the other side, she isn’t in the Lighthouse. That would be too easy.

She steps onto a grey stone walk, like they’d gone back to Kal-Sharok — except this is no Deep Roads, and those are no Dwarves. She’s outside in a city, and she’s surrounded by humans. Just humans, at a glance, though by look alone they’re like nobody she’s ever seen. Their manner of dress isn’t Orlesian or Antivan or Rivaini. They aren’t Ferelden or Nevarran, and they certainly aren’t Tevinter. The buildings are too clean and tidy to be Dock Town, too crisply organized, but neither are they embellished enough to be anywhere else recognizable. Neve grabs her scepter, reassured by its weight and the chill from its focus.

Garish, gleaming carriages trundle by, coughing fumes in their wake. She doesn’t know what’s propelling them, but it fills the air with stink.

Where is she?

She turns suddenly, ready to lunge back through the eluvian, only…

“Venhedis,” Neve breathes.

The eluvian is gone. Rook is gone.

She’s alone.

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Norah can't quite repress a sigh. She should've anticipated that as the first, most obvious question; but to tell someone in the same proverbial breath that they've been whisked into a new dimension and that they can't leave feels like it ought to be a bit too much. Instead, the woman seems to take all that in stride; it remains to be seen how she'll take this next part.

"I'm afraid we can't leave," says Norah. "Trust me; I have tried. Very thoroughly. The city — or whatever force has brought us here — finds ways to keep us penned in, as it were. Beyond that, I wouldn't say it means us harm. At least, not explicitly. Whether it has a will at all is another unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable question."

She looks away, trying to recall the direction of the train station. "At this point, the best I can recommend is that you find your bearings. There are... accommodations provided, as well as some basic necessities. I can show you where to start."

She almost leaves it there, but the lack of introduction has begun to itch, and she can't stop herself: "And what should I call you?"

"Well, that's embarrassing," Neve admits with a wry smile. "I'm usually better at introductions than this. Neve Gallus, but you won't be too offended if I don't buy your story immediately, will you."

It's less a question, because she isn't asking for permission. Surely a Spirit of Knowledge must understand that humans need to learn things for themselves, the hard way or not, and besides that, Neve has business to attend to. She can't very well not try to get back to her friends because a Spirit she'd never met told her to trust it. Even if she were a trusting person — and she's not — that'd be a hard ask.

"I'd be a little surprised if you did," Norah concedes, though not without some weariness. The suspicion is understandable, of course; no one can just swallow the whole story immediately. But understanding that doesn't grant her any eagerness to weather the period of hand-holding that must follow. Sympathy can only carry her so far.

On the other hand, it is fortunate that 'suspicious' is the only real response Neve Gallus seems inclined to share so far. 'Distressed' would be equally understandable but far worse.

"I'm not sure what you'd consider proof, Ms Gallus," she says, "but I've recommended what I can. I cannot help you return from whence you came, much as I might like to. I can only show you where you might gather more clarity. It is up to you." She extends an arm vaguely toward where she thinks they might find the train station, as straightforward an invitation as she can offer.

Neve clasps her hands together, stopping herself from wringing them. Knowledge is right: more clarity is the only thing on offer here. Short of an eluvian or some other Fade tear she can jump through, the only thing she can do is trust what she's been told and find proof on her own time.

"Lead the way," she says. "Clarity's better than nothing and it'll probably end with me out of your hair. As for proof: if I'm honest I'm not sure what it'll look like, either. Could be I'll never believe I'm trapped here. Even if I've never known of a Spirit of Knowledge that would tell lies."

Norah only manages to take a few steps before Neve startles her into a stop, and she quite help turning and staring for a few moments.

"I'm... sorry?" she says. Spirit is new; it seems she hasn't done as good a job making herself look alive as she'd thought. But the title was given so casually it's as though Neve expected her to understand. As though she recognized something in Norah that made absolute sense to her. And that's... something. Intriguing, maybe, if she can get past the bewildering presumption of it. For now, all she can ask is a politely baffled, "What did you call me?"

Neve stops, too, looking at her quizzically. "Isn't that who you are, at the core of you? Sorry, do people not call spirits by their natures, here?" Another possibility presents itself as soon as she's asked: Norah may not want people to know she's a Spirit of Knowledge. On closer inspection, Neve sees the way she's drawn herself together, made herself more solid, and if it's for the sake of discretion Neve's lucky that she hasn't just outed the woman to everyone nearby. They both are.

She could blame being on the back foot for that rookie mistake, but that feels too easy. She'd slipped up, and that's that.

Norah blinks. At the core of you, she says, which is presumption on a scale she has never before encountered. Some people are easier than others with her being a ghost; she's never before met one who had such fixed preconceptions about it that she has an entire classification in mind. A taxonomy of ghosts; or 'spirits,' as it were.

It isn't an insult, exactly. More of an innocent mistake, of the sort most make when they arrive here, expecting things the work as they do from whence they've come. But Norah still takes a moment to recover herself, folding her hands and straightening her shoulders.

"People call me Norah, which is my name," she says a little stiffly. "I am a ghost. That might be the same as a spirit. I have never debated the philosophy of it. I would say that my 'nature' is more complex than a single idea, but perhaps I am too close to the subject." That's a joke, maybe, though she isn't really trying for a laugh. She sighs, softening, willing herself to lower her hackles. "Where I come from, I was something of an outlier." Less than she'd initially thought, but that is well beside the point. "In order to have an easier time adjusting here, you will need to accept that things are different from what you're used to. Perhaps very different. It is harder for some than others."

She suspects, based on what hints she's already gathered, that Neve may indeed have a harder time than she did. She ought to be kind; as kind as she can.

"You may think of me this way if it is easier for you," she says, managing a faint smile. "But I would like to be called Norah."

Neve clasps her hands in front of her as she listens, thumb rubbing over her knuckles. This isn't any worse than learning that the elven gods were actually ancient mages, or learning that they were spirits before that, or any of the other things she'd learned in the last weeks. It's just another way her worldview has been tipped on its edge.

That doesn't necessarily make it any easier. But according to Kno— Norah, that's only going to keep happening here, starting with spirits and, apparently, ghosts. Ghosts aren't real. But here Norah is, declaring that she is one, and Neve isn't in any position to correct her if they're not even from the same world.

"Alright," she says, like she's accepted it at once. Norah doesn't need to know any different. Sometimes it's easier to play a person's game if you follow their rules — and Neve doesn't know the rules enough to know how to break them yet. What will be easy enough, at least, is accepting Norah's name. It's not any different than Taash's pronouns or Dock Town's Compassion becoming Eulogy. "Norah it is. And... Sorry. For the misstep. I suppose it's natural to rely on what we know when we're somewhere unfamiliar, but not at the expense of someone else."

Still, ghosts... She may not get to decide what Norah calls herself, but ghosts are a little out of her purview. Ghosts belong in stories, not standing in front of her correcting her presumptions and warning her of the road ahead.