Post by Ashyla Lavellan on Jun 18, 2016 16:06:26 GMT -5
(Capture takes place before the Gala, camp discovery takes place a day or so after.)
The animals around here are acting skittish. There are traces of activity here, beyond the normal animal activity, and not from the humans that use the trade routes. There's definitely more human activity around here than normal for this time of year, she wrote, pausing to glance up at the stars. She was scouting alone in the Emerald Graves, which was minorly abnormal. Inquisition scouting parties had recently been in pairs. Her horse was tethered to a nearby tree, slightly away from the camp but close enough that she could reach it if she needed to. She'd never bothered to get a horse of her own, so she just borrowed one of the Inquision's many whenever she went scouting.
I'm beginning to suspect that mysterious note you found is more valid than we first thought. There may be slavers in the area. I'm going to keep on my guard, but I may have to reduce the frequency of my reports until-- Her head snapped up at the soft snap of a dry twig, her hand slowly drawing one of the daggers that she wore across her back. Emma, who had been dozing next to the red-headed elf, lifted her head, ears twitching in all directions as the wolf listened to the sounds around them.
A light tingle on her skin was Ashyla's only warning before a fireball shot through the camp. She jumped out of the way, her tent taking the brunt of the magical attack.
Great. Now I'm going to have to explain that one to Leliana, Ash managed to think before she grabbed her bow and fired an arrow in the direction the spell had come from. A pained yell and a thud told her she'd hit her mark, and just like that she was surrounded. Dark-skinned humans surrounded her, all of them bearing daggers. There were three that were further back from the circle, each holding a wooden staff in his hand. At least she had a few advantages over the humans. Elves had better night vision, and she knew how to navigate through woodland areas. She cast a quick glance around, then spun both daggers until she was able to get through them to a tree. She climbed up the tree and began raining arrows down on her attackers. This worked, for a while, but she soon found herself out of arrows. A few had missed their targets in the dark, ending up scattered around the camp. The fire had been put out by one of the mages, and after a while the silence drew Ashyla back to the ground.
She left a single line in the tree she'd climbed up with her dagger, then grabbed her flint rock with the intent to relight the fire. There was a muffled thud, followed by a whimper that could only come from Emma, and she glanced over in time to see her wolf out cold, after having been thrown into the tree trunk by another spell. She cried out in pain as something hard hit her in the back of the head, and she was unconscious before she hit the ground.
For cyrlan lavellan and Leliana
The camp is a disaster, with obvious signs of a fight. The tent is burned, with only a few scraps of singed fabric to show that it had ever been there. The fire has gone cold, and there are a number of arrows scattered about the camp, obviously fired from a vantage point. A single tree has a slash through the bark. Not ten feet away, the horse is still tethered to the tree, seeming entirely uninjured despite the fight that happened at the camp, though a bit nervous. The singed, partially-written report lies abandoned on the ground, just outside the ring of rocks that obviously were used to contain the fire. As you approach the destroyed camp, the wolf Emma approaches Cyrlan, trying to get you to follow her as she points out a scent trail she was able to pick up. She's limping as she walks, it's obvious she is injured. (If you chose to inspect, you will find that her right foreleg is fractured, and one rib is broken while a few others are fractured. She has a scraped spot on her back where she was thrown into the tree.)
