hadriel | one ❀ voice

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one ❀ voice

[There's no video, because it's too dark in the coffin to show anything anyway. Adam's voice is carefully steady, as if he's keeping himself under control through sheer power of will.]

I saw that Fear said our air supply will be refreshed. I don't know if that's true - I don't know if we can trust him - but I thought people ought to know anyway.

[Not that he necessarily believes anything any of the gods say, but - well. Who knows.]

Talking is a little less impersonal than text. It might help to hear a familiar voice, if any of your friends are buried. There also isn't much to do down here but panic, so if anyone wants to talk - I wouldn't mind.

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That it is.

[And he could tell stories of the Deep Roads here, but that is a big bucket of Not Fucking Helping Anything even thinking of it.]

Though one time I did have to defend a camp with only a hangover and a rock with just my smallclothes for armor. That was not a pleasant morning.

[That makes him smile, just a tiny bit, and it might be audible in his voice.]

I guess you must have succeeded, since you're still alive. Did things like that happen to you a lot?

Desperate times lead to desperate measures. Never trust purple berries, the hallucinations were bad enough without the headache after.

[There's a brief shudder there.]

I imagine it can seem like a lot once you've lived long enough and keep interesting enough company. First in the Orlesian army, then with the Inquisitor's army. You're not afraid of spiders, are you?

[He won't tell spider stories if Adam is, lord knows they've got enough to worry about.]

No.

[That sounds like the beginning to either a very entertaining or very frightening story. He sort of hopes it's the first one, though he'll listen regardless. Buried six feet under isn't the proper setting for scary stories - or maybe it's too proper.]

I should be taking notes, maybe. No purple berries.

Good.

[Rainier shifts in his coffin, his breathing careful and even as the only thing that gives away that he is really Not Okay with this situation either and is using this as much as a distraction as Adam is by listening.]

They get big in Thedas. Damn big. Saw one eat a horse once. We were clearing out a Keep in Crestwood out on the river, rain pouring down like there was no tomorrow, couldn't see more than ten feet in front of you if that. Anyway, we were looking for a passage that was supposed to cut through an impassable area and it looked like it might be under the Keep. Well, that seemed damn peachy. At least it would be dry down there.

First, it wasn't, there was a rudding pond under the damn keep. For another, the second we step off the ladder and down into it out of fucking nowhere comes one of the biggest ugly bastards I'd ever seen and I swear to Andraste we found out later that thing even had a name. Snowball. Who names a giant fucking spider Snowball? That's a name for a kitten or one of those tiny dogs nobles keep that yaps itself into a seizure if you're late on its dinner!

[He laughs, a quiet, tense thing, but still a laugh.]

Was it a pet? I guess the sort of person who would keep a giant spider as a pet is also the sort of person who might name it Snowball. Did you kill it?

[Because killing giants spiders does seem like the kind of thing Rainer would do.]

It didn't exactly give us a choice, trying to eat us. Dorian was baffled too. 'Can't we fight normal sized spiders' was his exact words, I think. The answer to that is no. Worst part is you almost always find the nugs running around where the giant spiders. Do you have nugs where you're from?

I don't think so.

[Unless they're something he'd recognize going by a different name.]

What do they look like?

They're about the size of a small cat. Hairless, long ears like a rabbit. Breed like them too. They'd be cute if they weren't so off-putting. They've got these little front paws but they're hands. Thumbs and everything. Use 'em just like hands.

Leliana, our spymaster, she thinks they're adorable. Keeps them as pets. The dwarves breed and eat them like pigs. Pretty sure everything bigger than them eats them though.

Adorable? Uh... they sound kind of horrifying.

[Hairless and with tiny hands basically sounds like something out of a nightmare.]

Do they taste good?

[Thank you, Adam. Like, he'd never disagree with Leliana about nugs, but the whole hands thing is questionable. So very questionable.]

They're alright. Not sure I buy the whole 'delicacy' thing the dwarves try to sell about 'em, but I've eaten worse. [A meal is a meal is a meal, which is really Rainier's stance on a lot of things.] So little meat on them if they weren't so easy to hunt they wouldn't even be worth it, really. I swear we killed more by accidentally stepping on them, they were so inclined to run underfoot.

I don't know if I'd be comfortable eating anything with hands.

[What else has hands? Monkeys, maybe? Adam is pretty sure he wouldn't want to eat a monkey.]

You have dwarves, too? I met someone else who said he was raised by dwarves. Or... something like that. They don't exist where I'm from.

No dwarves? [The way he sounds baffled about that - you've got the weird world, Adam. It's a difficult thing to imagine, a world without dwarves. Rainier isn't a man known for his imagination, either. Best he can imagine is a 'what if the deep roads were just sealed off during the first blight forever' kind of deal.] ... You've got elves and qunari though, right?

Um... no, we don't have any of those, either. There are stories about elves and dwarves, but I've never even heard of qunari. We just have humans and animals.

Qunari are ... big. Bigger than humans by a head or so. Mostly they seem to have gray skin but some're more metallic. Some in Ferelden and Orlais call them 'Oxmen' because they got these giant horns. One of the Inquisition is one of them, calls himself the Iron Bull. [There's a distinct warmth to Rainier's tone at his name. The man was fun.]

[Adam's sort of gotten used to discovering that things from fantasy movies are real on other worlds, but this? He's never heard of anything quite like it.]

They're people, though? I mean... they're sentient, they have culture and language and all that?

They sure do. Though I'm pretty sure the only words I know from it are curses or worse.

[Look, he doesn't know what Iron Bull is yelling when he's fighting a dragon, but he's pretty sure smart money is on it being dirty. Rainier gives a small grunt as he shifts to make sure his arm doesn't fall asleep.]

They're more or less isolationists, though. Have their own religion different from everything else in Thedas. The only country close to theirs is Tevinter. Pretty rare to see elsewhere. A lot of people are afraid of them, even though the ones outside of their country have more to fear from their kin than everyone else.

Huh. We have nothing like that. Your world sounds so... interesting.

[That's maybe not the right word, but it's close enough. Magic or not, it's so different from what Adam knows. He's not sure he'd want to go there, but hearing about it is certainly something.]

So does yours to me. Things like these phones being everyday use.

I guess that would seem pretty remarkable. It's not magic, though, just technology. Probably someone in your world will create something similar eventually.

It's possible. I imagine it'd be magical or a long way off from my lifetime when they do, though. Who knows, maybe someone will show up here from the far future of Thedas and all these things will be common place for them.

It could happen.

[He sighs, quiet.]

Thank you for speaking with me.

Of course. I'm sure we'll talk again before this whole thing is through.

Don't give up, Adam. Were going to get through this.

I'm not in the habit of giving up. You don't, either, all right?

I haven't yet, not about to consider starting.

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