thearena | out of the ruins, out from the wreckage

Entry tags:

out of the ruins, out from the wreckage

Who| Éowyn and YOU (attn: Roland, Jack, and AU!Steve)
What| Fighting dragons and the crushing loneliness of the Arena
Where| Throughout the Arena
When| Week 4
Warnings/Notes| TBC

Her heart breaks when the fire reaches Meduseld. It's early in the week when it happens, and she wakes to the screaming of her horse and the acrid stink of smoke. Luckily, the fire started in the other end of the hall, and she manages to grab some of her supplies - her weapons, the shield that hung above the throne, and a couple of the tapestries she's been using as blankets - before fleeing. She cuts a dramatic figure as she gallops out of the burning hall, her hair loose and fluttering like a banner, her horse rearing and screaming as she struggles to keep him soothed.

By the time she flees, the dragon is gone, but she has seen first-hand the damage the beasts can do now. For the rest of the week, her priority is to find them where she can, and kill them before they can destroy the whole Arena. She won't allow it. She has people to protect. She has the advantage of her mount, and manages over the course of the week to roam most of the Arena, riding tall and ready.

When the blackout comes, it shocks her, and sends Brandybuck into a wild panic. She's at the edge of the desert at the time, and it takes her most of an hour to calm his headlong dash through the sands. The rest of the blackout, she spends in much the same way as the rest of the Arena; roaming the place, seeking her friends and the District children.

And when it passes, and she finds out they're gone? She cries. She isn't ashamed of it. She cries, and clings to Brandybuck, and then gets up and carries on.

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(ooc: is the crumbling city part of the arena ok? since she's headed away from Meduseld which is in the mountains, and that city area is close by, I figured they might meet thereish)

This is the first time he's been in this particular part of the arena, which is one reason he's staying near its edge. The city is large and dead and breaking down, and if this were not an arena he'd say it's been abandoned for a very long time. There are lots of places to hide in there, and as wary as Roland is trained to be, venturing too far from these cratered fields into the shadow of those great dead buildings is a risk. But he's got no goal here in this arena, no path to stick to. The only path here is the one which will keep him alive the longest. The one which will keep him interesting enough to revive after this arena's inevitable end. So he begins to venture in - and is glad he did when a great weight moves itself low through the skies above him. He can hear its path through the air, hear its wings, see the sun's light glinting off bright scales, and it may be an enemy but he is relatively sheltered, so he lets himself stop a moment and just stare up in wonder.

He shades his eyes with a hand and simply looks, and his guard is up as it ever is but he may not be quite so focused on his surroundings at this particular moment. Safety is his top priority, safety and not looking like a slewfoot apprentice by letting himself get snuck up on, but creatures of ancient legend earn themselves fairly high priority, too. If it ends up seeing him that level of attention it's earned from Roland will rise, but so long as nothing - and no one - grabs its attention, he should be alright.

It's not long that Bacopa's been gone, along with the rest of the surviving children. Without any real purpose he heads north through the remnants of the city, scavenging what he can before moving on.

This is for the best - even if he feels like something is missing.

The sound of hooves alerts him to the presence of another tribute. The horse stops, and he lurks nearby for a while. The woman is familiar, he determines. He's never spoken to her before, but he's seen her around the Tribute Center.

He saw her with Bacopa, he thinks.

It takes some time, but he approaches her, warily. He's more scraggly than ever, beard overgrown and one forearm bandaged with bits of cloth that have been clearly ripped from his own jumpsuit. His knife remains gripped in one hand, but he keeps a safe amount of distance between them (though she can always try to run him down with that horse).

"The children were taken from the Arena."

She might want to know.

Éowyn's eyes, too, are on the dragon. There's less wonder in her gaze, and more caution, not to mention a goodly amount of hate. If that wasn't the dragon that burned Meduseld, so what? It's of the same kith and kin, and it's safer to hate the dragons than their masters, right at the moment. I had my home, she thinks bitterly, some small part of home, and you took it from me. I owe you a debt, beast, aye, and I will see it repaid.

Brandybuck snorts, dragging her attention back to the world, and his nostrils flare as he paws the earth. She pats his neck absently, then looks up - and sees Roland's figure at the end of the street, distant still and unrecognisable. "Good lad," she murmurs, and nudges the horse into a trot, her hand on her sword as she draws nearer. One eye, though, she keeps on the sky, and the dragon wheeling above them. Pray it does not see us...

Éowyn's hand flies, instinctively, to her sword, but relaxes again as he speaks. She's quiet for a moment after that, her face unmoving, still and expressionless. If it weren't for the way the wind flutters at her clothes and hair, she might be taken for a statue.

"Alive?" she says at last. Her voice is so utterly neutral that it shows more emotion, somehow, than any tears could. Her hand tightens on the reins. "Safe? Are they safe?"

That noise is unmistakable. Hooves on stone.

Caught between another tribute and a dragon. Well, if he wanted to entertain the fine people back in the Capitol, he's got it. One way or the other.

The decision of where to go is made for him as the creature above makes a noise - not a roar, quite, something more leisurely. It doesn't sound like a threat, but an announcement. Here I am, that noise says, and as Roland hears it the creature lands on a nearby building. This building, one of those which seems to have stayed upright so far purely by luck, begins to topple, and brings a couple of the neighboring buildings with it. The only way out is toward that approaching figure.

He runs toward it. If it tries to fight, whoever it is, he thinks he'll go low, try to swing his shillelagh toward any vulnerable spot he can reach on the horse's legs. But if whoever that is doesn't attack him - well, wait and see if they do. He'll reassess.

Éowyn curses at that low, dangerous sound, and draws her sword with a whisper of steel, raising her shield. "Steady, Brandybuck," she murmurs, as the horse shifts fractiously. "Steady, sweetling. Don't fright, not now." As if her own heart weren't thudding a mile a minute all of a sudden, her blood running cold.

It's in that moment of still, terrified readiness that she sees Roland properly, and recognises him. An ally? A friend? She couldn't say for sure, not with all the time since their one short, brusque conversation. But he isn't a dragon, and she doubts, in the circumstances, that he'll seek a fight with her.

She meets his eyes, trying to communicate everything in a look - fight with me, take the advantage I give, help me - and then, gripping Brandybuck's flanks with her knees and leaving the reins to flap against his neck, she spurs the horse into a gallop, veering sideways past Roland, towards the dragon as it steps down from the toppling building. If Roland fights with her, good. If not, her chances may be poor, but she will not flee, not now. Even if all she can do is win him a few seconds to run, at least one of them will escape this place alive. If they both try to flee, they're doomed.

"Rohan!" she roars, and slams her sword on her shield, trying to draw the dragon's attention by making as much noise as possible. "Rohan and the Mark!"

Jack has been driven from place to place these past few weeks in the Arena, unable to linger too long in one place or another, but fortunately he wasn't caught in the massive forest fires that raged or the storm of explosions earlier in the week that whittled the city area down to mostly rubble.

The lightning that had struck the ground, too, had thankfully only been witnessed from afar.

He's on the outskirts of the city at present, wanting to see what survived (if anything) in regards to supplies before continuing on his way towards what he hopes to be the direction of the water. He's busy rummaging around in the skeletal ruins of a store when the noisy thud of hoofbeats reaches him, and Jack moves to catch sight of a horse and its rider atop it -- Eowyn. Of course.

He gives a sharp whistle to gain her attention, cheered to see she'd survived the flames and chaos.

And Roland gets the message. Alright. Though, after that first conversation, he's only glimpsed her around the tribute tower and never had reason to speak, he remembers well enough the woman's spirit. How ready she was to fight. Time to see if there's anything in her to back it up - there's plenty confidence there, at least.

Confidence is all she needs, for now. While she bangs her shield and sounds her battle cry Roland turns and makes to move around behind the creature. The only way to do this is over one of the buildings, a smaller one that only took a couple seconds to fall, and he knows that by the time he gets there it may have moved but at least this'll give him some height. He plants his foot on the edge of a window and begins to heft himself up, a part of his mind taking a moment to be very glad of that decision to have put on those mechanical fingers.

The woman - what was her name? Eowyn? Well, she'll have to fend for herself for the moment. And Roland will have to trust that she's good enough at being distracting that he won't killed, all vulnerable scaling this wall as he is. What Roland's going to do once he gets up there is another matter entirely, one he hasn't thought on at all. For now, getting there is the important part. He'll figure the rest out.

Éowyn goes on shouting, the same words over and over again - Rohan and the Mark! Eorlingas! The point isn't to say anything, only to keep the noise up - not only to draw the dragon's attention, but to cover the pounding of her own heart and the terror that threatens to grip her. It is no mightier than the black beast of the Nazgul, she tells herself, and leans almost sideways in the saddle to draw Brandybuck into a tight wheel, feeling the heat scorch her as the tarmac bubbles briefly where she was a moment ago. No more fierce than the forces of Mordor. Her eyes flicker up to Roland, making his hazardous climb, and she takes a deep breath. At least he hasn't fled straight out. He means to fight. That counts for something.

"And you, sweetling?" she murmurs to Brandybuck. "Will you fight with us?" That's the real question. If he spooks and bolts, she'll be left without a mount, and be so much charcoal.

It's a question she means to answer, and waste no time. Veering sharply left, she leans low in the saddle and urges the horse on, straight towards the dragon. Right up to the moment where she comes to an arms-reach of the beast and swings her blade hard against its scales, she expects Brandybuck to turn and bolt. But he doesn't, not even when the dragon roars from the shallow cut and swipes at her, its claw-tip catching her shield and almost knocking her from her seat.

Éowyn turns, her hand flying to her sword and then dropping away again just as quickly, and urges Brandybuck into a trot towards him. She doesn't smile, too tired to make herself appear cheerful, but she does give him a little nod as she draws nearer.

"You live," she observes, looking down at him. "I had feared, in all the madness, that I would have no way of knowing if my friends perished. It is good to know that you, at least, are yet among us."

Eowyn has a horse. Why didn't she get a horse? Why does she never get horses? Why does the Inquisitor get to have a pick of a dozen or more mounts, and she has to slog around all of Thedas on her feet? And now even Eowyn gets a horse. Figures. Just figures.

Not that Tabris holds it against her, of course.

She spots Eowyn easily enough--With that horse, she cuts a clear figure on the backdrop of the arena. Luckily for Tabris, and Eowyn can decide just how lucky it is for her, the elf has never had a problem getting attention a day in her life. A large rock is located, scaled, and her hands go around her mouth, just in case that bellowing voice needed any help screeching loud enough for the entire arena to hear.

"DID YOU SEE THOSE DRAGONS? THIS ARENA IS THE TIGHTEST SHIT EVER."

Okay, it's not the tightest shit ever, because the children getting caught in this crossfire is awful, it's horrible and Tabris has done her best to help the kids when she stumbles across them, but with the darkspawn ever near, she couldn't really take them in like she had wanted when she first heard about them. She's already been jumped a few times, and she'll kiss Snow full on the mouth before she lets those darkspawn touch the children. However, these are not things that Tabris wants to holler at Eowyn in a public setting like the arena.

This building isn't so large, and he's moving quickly as he can. On the way he sees a metal pipe bent out from the wall, and with a little help from his shillelagh he breaks it the rest of the way off, shoves both the weapons in his purse, and finishes the climb. She's in a bad way now, he can see it from here, and there's no time to think - but that is ever the time when Roland does his best work.

So Roland doesn't stop to think about what he does next. He only does it. He runs. Runs all the way across, bends knees that, thank the gods, aren't weak with old age just yet because he'll need all the strength he can manage to make the leap, lands running, takes a hold of the first thing he can grab, which happens to be a wing. The skin on it is leathery, free of scales, and he can see veins through it. There is no way a wing like this should be able to lift such a creature but that thought does not even begin to enter Roland's head, because the wings in front of him are fascinating for a completely different reason.

They're vulnerable.

He brings the pipe out from his purse, lifts it, drives its more jagged end straight downward and leans into it. The tough skin of that wing isn't completely cut through, but Roland would be very surprised if the dragon didn't feel it.

There's a spreading numbness in her shield arm, the scarred muscle straining to defend against the same kind of blow that broke it in the first place. With an effort of will, she keeps her shield up, but it's trembling, suddenly heavier than she can hold. She grits her teeth, regaining her balance in the saddle: the dragon roars as Roland stabs it, and her horse screams back, a disquietingly human sound raw with near-panic.

"Steady," she says, and then again, almost shouting herself to be heard over the chaos. "Steady, Brandybuck! Hold fast!" She thinks of dismounting - it might actually be safer, with a horse so near to bolting. But with her off his back, the horse will flee for sure, and she's too stubborn and too attached to her mount to let that happen. So she does her best to soothe him - her best isn't much - and then, as he shifts fractiously under her and the dragon wheels its head around to snap at the assailant clinging to its wing, she spurs him forwards again. She doesn't shout any more: she's done her part in distracting the beast, and plans to change tactics now the dragon's attention is divided again. Low in the saddle, forcing her arm up to rest her shield over her shoulders, she rides in underneath the dragon and drives her sword under the scales of its belly.

The blood that gushes out as she struggles to draw her sword back is hot enough to scald; it splashes off her shield but catches her in the leg and Brandybuck in the flank as she spurs him into a gallop again.

Éowyn tightens her jaw and wheels her horse around, coming towards the elf at a full gallop and reining in about five feet away.

"Are you mad?" she demands, staring down (a long way down) at Tabris. "Those dragons would eat you or turn you to charcoal every bit as gladly as many of our compatriots would see you dead. Why do you not simply light a beacon fire to tell your location, and die that way instead?"

But for all her irritation, she's glad to see Tabris. In fact, even as she berates her, she's dismounting, and almost as soon as she's finished, she pulls the smaller woman into a tight embrace. "It lifts my heart to see you, even so. Have you fared well?"

"Aye, thus far."

Jack looks equally as drained, lifting a hand to touch lightly at the horse's flank if the beast doesn't shy away. He doesn't verbalize the rest of what he's thinking, however -- that in the last two Arenas, whether through fate or bad luck or due to the Gamemakers' vile machinations, the fourth week had always roughly been where death would come to find him. He'd rather not think on that too long.

"I'd wondered if you were caught in the dragon's fire, meself."

There's a part of his mind which marvels at the size of that head, even as it turns itself to try and snap its teeth over him. The ones in the old tales were said to have been up to the size of a house, and this one is at least that.

Luckily that part of Roland is content to sit quietly and marvel while the rest of him carries on with the important business of surviving. He rolls away, and can practically feel the noise of the dragon's teeth cracking against one another as that great jaw closes on empty air. If he tried to stand he'd fall immediately, so instead he catches onto its opposite wing and he's started to try and tear at it too but the dragon throws back its head and the noise, the noise then is even greater now than before and his ears ring with the force of it. His companion must have done something, but he doesn't get to see what; the dragon moves forward, gives a little jump as if to take off. It even begins to make it away from these two little gnats who've wrecked such damage on it, but of course, it isn't even a second before it starts to fall.

There's no seeing what's going on beneath the great beast, but he has to assume Eowyn is directly in its path. "Move!" He yells it as loud as he can, which is considerably - if the woman hears it, knows to stay far enough from claws and teeth that will likely be snatching at anything they can once this creature lands, she might be alright. As for Roland, taking the risk of falling off now is the worst thing he could do. He can't do anything for Eowyn just yet. He holds on.

"Hey. Hey! I've fought dragons before. I fought one with a cult! I mean--" She puffs her cheeks out, but returns the hug just as tightly, trying to still look like a cross adult (and not like a pouting child). "--Okay, you're right, but that's only because I don't have my armor or my axe. They had everyone else's own personal weapons!." That whole not pouting thing is going poorly.

She pulls away from Eowyn, to inspect the other woman for any sign of harm that might've befallen her in the arena. Tabris, for her own part, has managed to gather a collection of scraps and cuts, but nothing major. Pretty good, considering the amount of fights she's been picking. "I'm doing fine, about as fine as you can do here, at least. It's been...a change. I haven't been with my group that I usually stay with in the arena. I was pretty hesitant to stay with anyone, really. The darkspawn that were in the city, ah. They're the monsters I told you about. I can feel where they are, but they can do the same to me--Didn't need to be bringing home extra guests, you know?"

She says it flippantly, though it's more of a mixed bag than she lets on. If she'd been there, maybe Bayard wouldn't have died. He's always survived with her, right up to the end. Had she hurt him more than helped by leaving...? After a few moments, she voices one admittance she's willing to make. "It's been...not as bad as I thought. The group usually holes up in a safe place, only moves when it gets too dangerous. Makes me stir crazy. What about you? You've got a horse! Did you seriously just tame some wild horse they had running around? Are you even real, or are you secretly some ancient elven princess?"

I AM moving! she nearly shouts back, bullishly irritated by being told something so obvious, but she bites it off quickly and, letting her shield drop a little now, ducks low in the saddle and urges the horse on. Not that he needs much urging. He gallops flat-out, his head low and his ears back, and she gives him his head, although she snatches up the reins with her shield arm to guide him a little better.

The dragon lands heavily behind her, and its lashing tail catches her hard. Both of them suffer for it: her sword flashes up, biting deep enough that the end of the tail flies off, severed clean through, but the force of the blow knocks her out of the saddle.

She rolls as she lands, agony spiking through her ribs and arm, and curses low in her throat, the sound lost under the dragon's agonised roar. Brandybuck rears, his eyes rolling and foam flecking his jowls as he screams in panic.

"Oh, no. No, no, no... hold fast, damn you, hold fast!" Stumbling, her vision swimming from the impact, Éowyn drops her sword and staggers towards the horse, her hands outspread. "Here, boy. Here, sweetling. Don't leave me." Then, up to Roland, her eyes still on the horse, "My back! Watch my back!"

"Almost, but by some good fortune, the flames caught in the north end of the hall, while I slept in the south." She grimaces, sliding out of the saddle as Brandybuck whickers and noses at Jack's hair. "Though I hope never to see such a sight again. It hurt, to see so dear a place reduced to ash and soot, even if only in facsimile."

Éowyn laughs. "I am no elf," she says, then, with a hint of a smirk, "But the horsemanship of the elves is rivalled only by my people. We are the Horse-Lords of the Riddermark, and there is no finer cavalry than the Riders of Rohan." She looks weary, and far from well - she's clearly taken a battering, with an ugly bruise purpling on one arm and scratches, bruises, and mild burns everywhere - but she has no obvious major hurts. Even the rat bite on her neck, from the first week of the Arena, is mostly healed, although it looks swollen and ugly.

"This is Brandybuck," she says after a moment, clicking her tongue and drawing his head around so he can nose at Tabris. "He was only half-wild to begin with, and still is, for I did not tame him. I browbeat him, and then I befriended him. And he has saved my life time and again." She strokes the horse's nose affectionately, pressing her cheek against his neck. "Some part of me yet hopes he will survive this place, even if I do not. Yet I know that is a hollow hope."

At this angle now he can see a little, enough to tell that she's far too attached to that horse. A man who lets his focus stray too much from his enemy for the sake of a tool - a valuable tool, but only that, certainly not a pet - is soon apt to be a dead one. But in the heat of battle is no time to say so, even if he could, even if she were his to say it to. All he can do now is let her make her own mistakes, and try to make sure she's alive after to learn from them. He shifts his grip on the wing under him, pulling and shoving himself forward, crawling up the back of the beast in a leap which turns into a low, crawling run. He's yelling as she had but the yell is wordless, because the days in which he might yell For the White! For Gilead! are very long gone from him. This isn't for the white, anyway, even if Gilead were around to need protecting from such a beast.

Just what it is for - for glory, for feeding the greed of the spoiled children even now watching, for the hope that he'll live after this arena, live for a little while longer - barely enter his mind, because of course now is not the time. Once the dragon turns its head toward the noise of Roland he drives the pipe toward it, toward the scale-free skin at the corners of its mouth. He stabs into the dragon's face and the great head swings and he holds the hell on.

This had damn well better be worth it, Eowyn.

Éowyn doesn't look at him, trusting him to do his part. She's managed to get close enough to Brandybuck again that the horse can smell her, that she can snag the reins in one hand and reach back to retrieve her sword. Her ribs still hurt like hell, her breath whistling and wheezing unpleasantly against the pain. But she hauls herself back into the saddle, and sets her jaw against the ache and dizziness, and then she's riding again, bringing Brandybuck around to canter in a large loop to face the dragon head-on again. Only then does she catch sight of Roland again, and by that time she's raised her sword (her shield arm hangs limp by her side, the strength gone from it) and is in full tilt towards the dragon, her eyes narrowed as she chooses a spot on the underside of its throat. If she can just get the sword in, under its scales...

The blade skitters over the scales, and for a moment she's afraid she's failed. Then there's give, and the soft shower of hot blood. The sword sticks more strongly this time, and and she lets it, then throws her whole body weight against it until the scale it's jammed under groans and snaps. There's smooth skin underneath, and she stabs it again, standing up in the saddle to sink the blade in up to the hilt.

"Die, rot you! Die!"

His gaze follows her hand to the sword and he goes tense again, ready for a fight. When the questions come, he pauses before nodding. Slowly. He recognizes her expression, accepts her concern as truthful enough.

"Yes. I think they will be safe." As much as anyone is safe in this world, but for the moment they remain outside the Capitol's grasp. He trusts that much from seeing Peggy and speaking with her.

An awkward pause follows where he eyes her horse (he could eat a horse right about now).

She breathes a deep sigh of relief, sagging a little where she sits. "I only pray you are right. I could not bear to see another of their names join the too-long list." She hesitates for a moment, then urges her horse a couple of steps closer, sliding out of the saddle to offer her hand. "They are glad tidings you bring, if you are right. In any case, better than silence. Yet I do not know the messenger."

Roland swings his legs up and holds himself out of the way while she stabs the creature. It swings its head, and Roland's grip starts to slip just a little from the pipe. It swings it again and Roland tightens his fingers, uses the motion to swing himself up onto its face, catching himself with one hand gripping the edge of what turns out to be the dragon's nostril. He hears one of those roars, feels the creature take one step, another, feels its head start to lower.

With a long, low moan, it collapses onto its side. Roland rolls away before it hits the ground, picks himself up, and takes stock. He's alright. Bruised, but nothing worth noting. The woman, though- "Eowyn," he calls, and feels the dragon's breath against his ankles as he walks in front of its face. He stops, looks at it.

It's not dead yet. Blood still runs from its wounds, making what might end up looking like a small lake right between him and where he thinks Eowyn might be. He doesn't look for her, though, because that would mean looking away from the dragon. Can't tell if it's actually seeing him but it seems to be, looking right toward Roland and blinking its huge, golden eyes. A part of him's listening for his companion and for any noises from her horse, but for now most of him only watches the blood run out of it, lets the dragon's gaze seem to lock with his, and doesn't look away.

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out of the ruins, out from the wreckage

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( edge of the desert/crumbing city? - post blackout )

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Before the blackout

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I should probably have said this is still during the blackout sjdfskdjf

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