gormlessthing

[gormlessthing]

There is, in the back of his mind, the cautious sensation of standing at the precipice of a ravine he hadn't previously realized was there. There's something old in Miriam's eyes - smarter than him in the way an oak is taller than the grass around it, an intelligence hewn by hurt over years and years and years. He'd have placed her at just over half his age, perhaps, if he were feeling uncharitable.

The dissonance is enough to give him pause, as he regards her coolly through that one blue eye.

It isn't that he is afraid, although he is aware now that she is full well capable of reducing him to a smoking shadow if he goes stumbling after her. It is, instead, that he cannot comprehend the pain that must have carved out that even, ancient gaze she turns back on him.

He thought he was hurt, lashed as he was in apostasy, haunted as he is by blood. It must merit a proverbial skinned knee relative to the weight on her shoulders, made the more obvious in this moment after a fight.

He understands that he cannot understand. That will have to be enough.

"Found a few under Thorolund's banner - and this is polite company, so I shan't answer that second question with any detail, if I can say," he returns, finally. "These days I work for myself - there were some differences in how I thought to approach witchfinding and how Thorolund approached the practice."

There's a beat, and then a guilty little grimace.

"The sword is now the last resort, instead of the first, to put it politely," he says.

There is no further retreat and one must assume that she believes him. Miriam's expression stays firm, a stone mask just shy of appearing inhuman in this light. There is a symmetry to her features, a grace to her stillness. Even when she at last seems to siphon some humor from his words, the cynic slant of her heart-shaped mouth seems have been etched onto her likeness since the dawn of time.

She studies the man before her. Evidently time has worn and torn him, and some manner of danger as well. A man who has served in many battles, she takes it. But, by his own admission, not a knight. What else is there to think of but a bounty hunter? His amicable disposition aside, she curses herself for the instinct to defend. Men talk, especially in their cups. The last thing she needs is for Gorm to spread the story to like-minded yet less restrained acquaintances.

"And have you found many witches, Witchfinder?" She asks, not as unkindly as her smile might suggest. "What do they do to them, in Thorolund?"

[gormlessthing]

In the sweet and solemn silence Of a church upon the hill, In the deep'ning blue of evening When the air is cool, and still, You'll find him there a-sleeping, There in the gentle dark, A church inside a church inside His hale and holy heart!

Say ay, our king is gentle! Say ay, our king is kind, Say ay, there goes our king Where'er graces we will find.

In the crushing, crashing clamor Of a bloody battlefield, In the deepn'ing red of evening, When the air is filled with steel, You'll find him there a-roaring, His sword a grieving arc, His eyes alive with wrath inside His hale and holy heart!

Say ay, our king is righteous, Say ay, our king is kind, Say ay, there goes our king Where'er vict'ry we will find!

-"A hymn for Good King Gelhast"

[gormlessthing]

some people are taking "doomed" to mean "dead". this is actually a misconception! you can be doomed even if you don't die! it's sometimes worse if you don't die!

[gormlessthing]

Gorm flinches at the mention of "him." There's a lot of strange and fearsome gods out there in the glittering dark, but the one Heysel follows is the dark, the absence between stars, the wound in the world. Discovering her faith had, so far, been the truest test of his commitment to the right way to do Witchfinding - no swords and no threats if someone wasn't doing outright harm.

But there is comfort in the quiet. He knew it. He had, in the dour days after his escape, chased it. He didn't know anyone more in need of quiet than Heysel, either.

"Breakfast it is," he sighs, shrugging on his own coat. It's a well-worn thing, not the high-collared, sturdy cloth of a proper Witchfinder coat, but rather something felt and sensible he'd picked up off of a street vendor some years ago. They'd had to let out the shoulders and waist quite a bit.

"This being Neverfell, they've got a nice place just up the way, past All Gods' Rest," Gorm says. "Supposed to be a tavern - Ales What Cure You, I think it's called - but they serve food. Sound alright to you?"

@yellowfingcr said: "And will dad let me pursue my arcane interests in peace?" Gorm sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, then gives Heysel a bleary stare through the one good eye.

"I don't know, Heysel, can you pursue your arcane interests without causing widespread and extremely costly property damage?" he mutters. "If so, sure, aye, to the very edges of the known universe with you and beyond. If not, please consider pursuing, I don't know, breakfast."

[gormlessthing]

@hawksblooded said: "... I'm still not calling you that, old man."

Gorm grins.

"That may be the most words in one sentence you've ever said to me, Miss Alizebeth," he says. "That's sentiment enough, I think."

[gormlessthing]

@saltuary said: Faramir is on his way! 🏃 The boy - man, Gorm corrected, as fresh-faced and eager and bright as he is - the man wears his heart on his sleeve, in little red slivers and fragments all up and down the gauntlet.

It's the telltale sign of the kind of fatherhood Gorm ascribes to the more distant and merciless gods: ever-demanding without ever acknowledging, understanding, or loving fully in return.

Poor poet, to have been treated thus. The elder would make a small, cosmic correction, then.

"You are doing well - that blow would have knocked a man off his feet," he says. "You are coming to understand - it is the momentum and weight of the sword that guides you, not you it. Leaning into its arcs can keep you moving - you picked that up naturally."

[gormlessthing]

@yellowfingcr said: "And will dad let me pursue my arcane interests in peace?" Gorm sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, then gives Heysel a bleary stare through the one good eye.

"I don't know, Heysel, can you pursue your arcane interests without causing widespread and extremely costly property damage?" he mutters. "If so, sure, aye, to the very edges of the known universe with you and beyond. If not, please consider pursuing, I don't know, breakfast."

[gormlessthing]

[ Gorm can be your dad for the day if anyone needs one. ]

[gormlessthing]

Felon, Reginald Dwayne Betts

[gormlessthing]

Do Not Bring Him Water, Caitlin Scarano

[gormlessthing]

to carry your grief on my back would be an honor by judas h.

[gormlessthing]

[ plotting call for the old man ]

[gormlessthing]

Swan Feast, Natalie Eilbert

[gormlessthing]

[ There won't be much in the way of NSFW material involving Gorm, given the man is demisexual on his best, most brazen days, but for what it's worth: he's a service top. ]

[gormlessthing]

In the sweet and solemn silence Of a church upon the hill, In the deep'ning blue of evening When the air is cool, and still, You'll find him there a-sleeping, There in the gentle dark, A church inside a church inside His hale and holy heart!

Say ay, our king is gentle! Say ay, our king is kind, Say ay, there goes our king Where'er graces we will find.

In the crushing, crashing clamor Of a bloody battlefield, In the deepn'ing red of evening, When the air is filled with steel, You'll find him there a-roaring, His sword a grieving arc, His eyes alive with wrath inside His hale and holy heart!

Say ay, our king is righteous, Say ay, our king is kind, Say ay, there goes our king Where'er vict'ry we will find!

-"A hymn for Good King Gelhast"

[gormlessthing]

"...odd crew, this latest. But I imagine we'll do alright." @sunmad @hawksblooded @fishermcn

[gormlessthing]

Gorm watches the way she steps back - the tension in the shoulders, the steel-eyed apprehension ahead of a perceived attack. She understands being hunted; she believes him to be a hunter. Indeed, old prejudices did give a hungry yawn in his ribcage, and anger older than that burst, brief and blooming, in the pit of his stomach.

But they fade quickly, subsumed by the quiet shame they ever existed in the first place, and he speaks to none of it.

"Quite the contrary - I imagine I would be well and gutted, had you not stepped in," he says. "That was a masterful bit of flame, I should say. Intensely controlled. You struck the creature itself and only the creature itself, and left me unscathed."

He sighs, and glances at the burning thing, then back at her.

"You've nothing to fear from me, pyromancer," he continues. "I have found Thorolund's ideals on heresy to be stifling and petty, and I am the more concerned with preserving the lives the gods gave us than I am policing them."

He goes to extend his hand, remembers she has burned her own, and instead bows his head politely.

"Gorm, the Witchfinder," he says. "At your service."

Her fingers curl into her palm. Chaos leaps and licks and melts into the ground again. The heat dances in her eyes, cries for its many sisters, for whatever lies in ashes in her soul to reignite and join it. But she stands firm, her pale robes stirring gently from the blast, and watches the creature cook inside the trap of its own singed flesh.

The second this danger was dealt with, she readied herself for the next. Miriam, flowering out of her clerical robes, draws back from the man nearby, waits for another blow. She's seen how pyromancers are dealt with in this day and age, and hers is no novice's fireplay. Though as she tenses, her marble pale face frozen in guarded anticipation, there comes no cry of heresy, no condemnation. Only the offer of aid.

Miriam of Carim folds her hands protectively, burn to burn. "It's nothing," she says, though with a gentleness that contradicts her rigid spine. "I've no use for soothing, and I'm no magician. Are you well, has it harmed you?"