Bryn had made her way to the training yard with only a little trouble. She wasn't there seeking entertainment, but out of concern for her friend who was supposedly entering combat with another guest. This entire situation seemed outdated in extremes, and Bryn didn't like it at all.
She sat there in confusion as the panther was brought out, her brow furrowed in confusion. Did combat include wild animals? Bryn didn't exactly relish the idea of watching anyone kill a creature like that, especially as it was so close to her own alternate form.
As the light of day fades, Alex is made his way briskly to the Training Yard. He sees the pair already within the fenced confines, Nick still a panther and the then human Anna shifting quickly to tiger at some unspoken signal from the Headsman standing between them.
His hands tighten on the top of the fence, his entire form practically radiating tension as he ends up near where Bryn is perched.
"This isn't right," he growls low in his throat. There is little enough keeping him from vaulting the fence to interject himself on his friends' behalf.
Upon recognizing Alex, Bryn gets up from her seat to join him at the fence, using his presence as an excuse to get closer. It's hard to simply sit still and watch, though she silently denies that she wants a closer view.
"I agree," she replied quietly, swallowing as she risked a glance away from the scene in front of them to Alex. "I don't see how this proves anything at all..." It occurs to belatedly that she's not responding with proper shock and awe at Anna's transformation, and Bryn nervously continues.
"I...I didn't expect her to turn into a tiger like that. Have you ever seen anything like that before?" she asked. It still hasn't quite occurred to her that the panther in the ring is also a shapeshifter.
Alex's fists clench and unclench on the top of the fence, his concern for Nick mounting at the unbridled anger Anna shows. Nick, standing opposite the ominous figure, looked winded and a bit dazed at the entire event.
He welcomes Bryn at his side, although his attention is mostly on his friend within the fenced confines of the Training Yard. "It proves nothing," he growled softly, tongue moving over an incisor that is becoming a bit too sharp to be human. "She attacked him .. I don't know what the cause behind it was .. but this .. This joke is unfair .."
He stares at the unwieldy looking Headsman and shouts across the green, "She outweighs him nearly three to one! How is this even remotely fair?!"
As Bryn asks if he's seen anything like Anna's shifting before he nods, and by this point his own hands have claws where nails once were. "Yeah .. Yeah I have seen things like that before.."
Bryn has spent too much time in the wild to not notice a tooth as sharp as his. It's not something she can afford to ignore and still survive. That, combined with the knowledge that Alex has seen shapeshifters before makes her wonder...and makes her realize that that the panther in the ring is Nick. How blind could she have been not to realize this? It was bad enough when she thought it was simply a dangerous animal, but now?
"Oh god, what sort of place is this to...to enforce their rules in such a way," Bryn chokes out quietly, not wanting to be heard by too many people, but too floored by all of this to leave her words unsaid. "She's huge and he's...oh god she'll kill him."
Her hands grip the fence as if it were her lifeline. Bryn couldn't just let this happen.
"We have to stop this," she murmured quietly, already mentally preparing herself to shift just as soon as she climbed over the fence...
Alex is generally so much better about shifting in public, but dire times and all that. He refuses to sit back and let Nick get himself ripped to pieces all in the name of some kind of justice system.
Bryn sounds just as horrified by it as he is angry and he nods once as she murmurs aside at him. "You sure you're up for it .. I can't imagine he is going to be all that inviting," he gestures toward the Headsman
( ... )
It shocks her just a little bit less to see Alex shift as he throws himself up and over the fence. The gracefulness of his movements hold Bryn's attention for a bit, and she watches in awe as he changes his form from human to leopard.
Not wanting to be left behind or have Alex out there on his own against Anna and possibly the Headsman, Bryn quickly kicks her shoes off and starts to climbi over the fence. She can't shift in mid-air like him, and for that reason wants all her feet firmly on the ground before turning into a cougar.
He'd blame Justice for his being here. If the spirit were capable of being curious, that was likely why he'd found himself in the training yard. Otherwise, he didn't have a good excuse. He didn't want to watch this.
Their crimes demand justice -- But it wasn't their place to give it. Justice is always in the place of those with righteous hearts. Andraste's ashes...
So, to the training yard he went.
And for a moment, he simply stared. There weren't people fighting. There were... very large cats. Very large cats. They were larger than mabari, and, for a moment, Anders sort of wished the mages of Thedas had imbued felines with mabari strength, size and intelligence. Maybe they would look like these.
But his attention was horribly distracted. There was a woman trying to enter the ring. Fenced area. Whichever. Anders wasn't particularly strong, or fast, but dammit. He had leverage. He reached up to grab her arm, and yank the blonde off the fence.
One moment Bryn was about to hop over the fence, the next she was forcibly dragged from it. Bryn scrambled to keep her balance, too shocked to fight back. Her hand grasped at anything, and fingers clenched around the opening of Ander's coat as she tried to get her feet stable under her.
She looked up at the man with a gaping mouth and sputtered a moment before trying to pull her arm free.
"She's going to kill my friend in there. I have to help him stop it!" she exclaimed, gesturing to the already retreating Alex. "Please, just let me go!"
He had to stagger backward to keep his balance, but he tightened his grip on the woman's arm. She had one of the buckles of his coat in hand, anyway. If he pulled them both down, then so be it. His expression hardened.
"Let you go to be slaughtered by giant cats?" he asked her. "There are three massive felines and a man with an oversized axe. You're unarmed, and unarmored. Unless you're a mage, which I sincerely doubt -- "
He didn't feel anything magical off of her.
" -- you're going to get your entrails fed to you. And not even my magic can bring back the dead."
Bryn didn't see the same problem with her diving right in like Anders seemed to, right up until he got to the part about her not being a mage and being unarmed.
Oh god.
She had been about to shift into her other form in front of this crowd and...who knows what they did to shapeshifters here. Maybe they only employed this form of "justice" with people like her? Was this like some sort of sick underground dog fight?
All of the blood drained from her face and standing straight now, she tried to shake his grip free again. "But we can't just stand here and let this happen...it's wrong, they couldn't have agreed to this," she said, looking between the man and the ring.
He held onto her arm, his expression never changing. He couldn't let her run off and get her head ripped off. If the cats wanted to brawl, fine then. But he could do something to keep this woman from entering the fray.
It's wrong. They couldn't have agreed to this.
If a blue flash slipped over his eyes, it might have been her imagination.
But... no. They were animals. If this keep wanted to employ cock-fighting, or mabari-feline fighting, that was their choice. "Sure we can," he said. "It's called, stay behind the fence and not be ripped into bite-sized parts."
His tone softened a fraction. "I love a cat as much as the next person, but there isn't anything to be done."
"They're not just cats," Bryn protested, too outraged to have noticed the flash of blue, "they're people. Like you and me!"
Especially me, she thought to herself as she cast a worried look toward the ring again. Alex was blocked by the headsman with the axe, and Nick and the tiger were still behind it. Her friend was still alive but not for much longer.
Bryn kept pulling at her arm and tried to push Anders with the other but her emotional distress made her movements sloppy and easy to block. She was all urgency and too panicked to think through her reactions clearly.
"Please, you don't understand I can't just let them kill each other," she pleaded.
Maybe she cared more for the animals than he did. Which, considering he'd carried a kitten through the Deep Roads as a Warden, was saying something. They were companions, certainly, good friends, but people? Yes, this was barbaric, but to throw themselves into the fray was suicide.
... Did animals fall under Justice's purview?
He passed his free hand over his face, but kept his grip on her arm all the same. What truly would be an injustice was getting this woman killed for no purpose. He couldn't allow that -- they couldn't allow that.
"Look, I do understand," he told her. "One cat person to another, this is disgusting. But what can we do? If we go out there, we're dead. I'm a healer -- my spells aren't designed to attack."
At least, not without Justice and a fit of rage.
"I'm sorry. But I can't let you throw yourself out there."
Bryn became more hysterical. Why didn't he get it? She wasn't a cat person, she's a person and this whole debacle was just one big ugly mess.
"They're not just cats, they're human," she said, no longer pulling on her arm because it's just getting sore and hurts now, because she can sense he won't let her go. "People as in that tiger was a woman a moment ago, and the panther is a man named Nick."
She began to get a bit teary as she turned her head to look at what was happening in the ring. There was blood everywhere, and while it never bothered Bryn before to see that much, but it was different when she knew it was coming from people.
Bryn watched in horror as the tiger's jaws closed around Nick's throat, but that was all she could handle seeing. She turned her head away from the ring and closed her eyes tightly. She could have helped, could have distracted the Headsman long enough for Alex to get by to help, something, and now it was too late.
It didn't occur to him simply because the only shapeshifter he'd seen in Thedas had been the Witch of the Wilds -- or whatever the Dalish called her. Well, that, and the assorted abominations. But none of them had ever turned into cats. He'd heard of such magic, certainly, read about it during long days locked in the Circle, but hadn't seen it personally.
Which was probably why her words made him blink, rather than be dismissed outright.
"Human?" he echoed. His eyes flicked past her. To the carnage, and the watching figure. Something -- someone -- pulled up the memory of the Headsman's notice. He'd forgotten about it, put it aside because he'd been certain he'd found something magical to poke and prod at. But now...
For disturbing the peace...
Cold anger began to flood his veins, picked up as bright, blue motes of light across his skin. "This is the price we pay for disturbing their peace?" he asked, his voice suddenly thick with barely leashed emotion. "There is no justice in this farce... What crime has been
( ... )
She sat there in confusion as the panther was brought out, her brow furrowed in confusion. Did combat include wild animals? Bryn didn't exactly relish the idea of watching anyone kill a creature like that, especially as it was so close to her own alternate form.
Shoulders hunched, she sat and watched.
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His hands tighten on the top of the fence, his entire form practically radiating tension as he ends up near where Bryn is perched.
"This isn't right," he growls low in his throat. There is little enough keeping him from vaulting the fence to interject himself on his friends' behalf.
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"I agree," she replied quietly, swallowing as she risked a glance away from the scene in front of them to Alex. "I don't see how this proves anything at all..." It occurs to belatedly that she's not responding with proper shock and awe at Anna's transformation, and Bryn nervously continues.
"I...I didn't expect her to turn into a tiger like that. Have you ever seen anything like that before?" she asked. It still hasn't quite occurred to her that the panther in the ring is also a shapeshifter.
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He welcomes Bryn at his side, although his attention is mostly on his friend within the fenced confines of the Training Yard. "It proves nothing," he growled softly, tongue moving over an incisor that is becoming a bit too sharp to be human. "She attacked him .. I don't know what the cause behind it was .. but this .. This joke is unfair .."
He stares at the unwieldy looking Headsman and shouts across the green, "She outweighs him nearly three to one! How is this even remotely fair?!"
As Bryn asks if he's seen anything like Anna's shifting before he nods, and by this point his own hands have claws where nails once were. "Yeah .. Yeah I have seen things like that before.."
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"Oh god, what sort of place is this to...to enforce their rules in such a way," Bryn chokes out quietly, not wanting to be heard by too many people, but too floored by all of this to leave her words unsaid. "She's huge and he's...oh god she'll kill him."
Her hands grip the fence as if it were her lifeline. Bryn couldn't just let this happen.
"We have to stop this," she murmured quietly, already mentally preparing herself to shift just as soon as she climbed over the fence...
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Bryn sounds just as horrified by it as he is angry and he nods once as she murmurs aside at him. "You sure you're up for it .. I can't imagine he is going to be all that inviting," he gestures toward the Headsman ( ... )
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Not wanting to be left behind or have Alex out there on his own against Anna and possibly the Headsman, Bryn quickly kicks her shoes off and starts to climbi over the fence. She can't shift in mid-air like him, and for that reason wants all her feet firmly on the ground before turning into a cougar.
Bryn swings a leg over the fence...
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Their crimes demand justice -- But it wasn't their place to give it. Justice is always in the place of those with righteous hearts. Andraste's ashes...
So, to the training yard he went.
And for a moment, he simply stared. There weren't people fighting. There were... very large cats. Very large cats. They were larger than mabari, and, for a moment, Anders sort of wished the mages of Thedas had imbued felines with mabari strength, size and intelligence. Maybe they would look like these.
But his attention was horribly distracted. There was a woman trying to enter the ring. Fenced area. Whichever. Anders wasn't particularly strong, or fast, but dammit. He had leverage. He reached up to grab her arm, and yank the blonde off the fence.
"Maker's breath! What's the matter with you!"
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She looked up at the man with a gaping mouth and sputtered a moment before trying to pull her arm free.
"She's going to kill my friend in there. I have to help him stop it!" she exclaimed, gesturing to the already retreating Alex. "Please, just let me go!"
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"Let you go to be slaughtered by giant cats?" he asked her. "There are three massive felines and a man with an oversized axe. You're unarmed, and unarmored. Unless you're a mage, which I sincerely doubt -- "
He didn't feel anything magical off of her.
" -- you're going to get your entrails fed to you. And not even my magic can bring back the dead."
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Oh god.
She had been about to shift into her other form in front of this crowd and...who knows what they did to shapeshifters here. Maybe they only employed this form of "justice" with people like her? Was this like some sort of sick underground dog fight?
All of the blood drained from her face and standing straight now, she tried to shake his grip free again. "But we can't just stand here and let this happen...it's wrong, they couldn't have agreed to this," she said, looking between the man and the ring.
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It's wrong. They couldn't have agreed to this.
If a blue flash slipped over his eyes, it might have been her imagination.
But... no. They were animals. If this keep wanted to employ cock-fighting, or mabari-feline fighting, that was their choice. "Sure we can," he said. "It's called, stay behind the fence and not be ripped into bite-sized parts."
His tone softened a fraction. "I love a cat as much as the next person, but there isn't anything to be done."
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Especially me, she thought to herself as she cast a worried look toward the ring again. Alex was blocked by the headsman with the axe, and Nick and the tiger were still behind it. Her friend was still alive but not for much longer.
Bryn kept pulling at her arm and tried to push Anders with the other but her emotional distress made her movements sloppy and easy to block. She was all urgency and too panicked to think through her reactions clearly.
"Please, you don't understand I can't just let them kill each other," she pleaded.
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... Did animals fall under Justice's purview?
He passed his free hand over his face, but kept his grip on her arm all the same. What truly would be an injustice was getting this woman killed for no purpose. He couldn't allow that -- they couldn't allow that.
"Look, I do understand," he told her. "One cat person to another, this is disgusting. But what can we do? If we go out there, we're dead. I'm a healer -- my spells aren't designed to attack."
At least, not without Justice and a fit of rage.
"I'm sorry. But I can't let you throw yourself out there."
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"They're not just cats, they're human," she said, no longer pulling on her arm because it's just getting sore and hurts now, because she can sense he won't let her go. "People as in that tiger was a woman a moment ago, and the panther is a man named Nick."
She began to get a bit teary as she turned her head to look at what was happening in the ring. There was blood everywhere, and while it never bothered Bryn before to see that much, but it was different when she knew it was coming from people.
Bryn watched in horror as the tiger's jaws closed around Nick's throat, but that was all she could handle seeing. She turned her head away from the ring and closed her eyes tightly. She could have helped, could have distracted the Headsman long enough for Alex to get by to help, something, and now it was too late.
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Which was probably why her words made him blink, rather than be dismissed outright.
"Human?" he echoed. His eyes flicked past her. To the carnage, and the watching figure. Something -- someone -- pulled up the memory of the Headsman's notice. He'd forgotten about it, put it aside because he'd been certain he'd found something magical to poke and prod at. But now...
For disturbing the peace...
Cold anger began to flood his veins, picked up as bright, blue motes of light across his skin. "This is the price we pay for disturbing their peace?" he asked, his voice suddenly thick with barely leashed emotion. "There is no justice in this farce... What crime has been ( ... )
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