00 » OOC: Memory Recovery: All Senses
[This memory is backdated to 22 June, noon.]
Rain lashed against her face. The hood covering her head kept it partly at bay, and the heavy wool of her robes sheathed her in warmth. Noise swelled and then hushed all around her: people shouting, dogs growling, armour rattling and shields banging as the war camp moved to readiness. A tent's side snapped and flapped in the rising storm wind behind her. The crumbling shapes of once-majestic ruins, now overrun by forest, loomed out of the darkness, nestling the camp in their stony shelter.
"The plan will work, Your Majesty," someone said, rust and conviction in his low voice. She heard the jangle of a man moving in full plate mail, but did not turn from tugging on the clasp of a leather pouch tied to her belt. (The presence of a king was a matter of course to her past self, then.)
"Of course it will," said a second voice, young, sonorous, and more than a little arrogant. "The Blight ends here."
A many-forked bolt of lightning struck across the bruise-coloured sky, illuminating the shape of a tower against the gloom. Done with the stubborn clasp--such a small thing, when all around her the thick anticipation of violence settled around the gathered force--she reached to her left, closed her hand around the wooden staff she'd known was leaning against the tent there, and raised her gaze.
Men and women, dogs and handlers, in tight rows braced for battle. Fires burned behind them in the darkness, orderly sources of light and heat. The dogs were enormous, hunched, and yet noble, with their coats painted in jagged designs echoed in the limned faces of their masters. She could see the young man in splendid, golden armour--the king--move past a row of archers with their bows still held at ease.
Waiting. Each and every one of them. Her, behind the archers and the warhounds, with nothing but an iron-shod staff of carved wood in her hands. Why was she even here? Yet she felt a calm in herself, a purpose that supported her.
The line of trees was dark as a nightmare. Every pair of eyes, from the still soldiers to the snarling, husking dogs, was trained on them through the rain.
Something was coming.
Mist seemed to creep across the forest floor and onto the more open ground before the ruins. A thrill, a tremor, snaked through the men and women. The dogs quieted.
Splitting the momentary silence, a tearing, inhuman cry carried across the battlefield to be. In the grey of the mist, dark, hulking shapes rose as if melting up from the ground itself.
"The Blight ends here." The king's words floated back to her as the host, arrows, swords, hounds, erupted into motion all around her.
[Memory taken and slightly rearranged from this Dragon Age: Origins cutscene just before the Battle of Ostagar.]
Rain lashed against her face. The hood covering her head kept it partly at bay, and the heavy wool of her robes sheathed her in warmth. Noise swelled and then hushed all around her: people shouting, dogs growling, armour rattling and shields banging as the war camp moved to readiness. A tent's side snapped and flapped in the rising storm wind behind her. The crumbling shapes of once-majestic ruins, now overrun by forest, loomed out of the darkness, nestling the camp in their stony shelter.
"The plan will work, Your Majesty," someone said, rust and conviction in his low voice. She heard the jangle of a man moving in full plate mail, but did not turn from tugging on the clasp of a leather pouch tied to her belt. (The presence of a king was a matter of course to her past self, then.)
"Of course it will," said a second voice, young, sonorous, and more than a little arrogant. "The Blight ends here."
A many-forked bolt of lightning struck across the bruise-coloured sky, illuminating the shape of a tower against the gloom. Done with the stubborn clasp--such a small thing, when all around her the thick anticipation of violence settled around the gathered force--she reached to her left, closed her hand around the wooden staff she'd known was leaning against the tent there, and raised her gaze.
Men and women, dogs and handlers, in tight rows braced for battle. Fires burned behind them in the darkness, orderly sources of light and heat. The dogs were enormous, hunched, and yet noble, with their coats painted in jagged designs echoed in the limned faces of their masters. She could see the young man in splendid, golden armour--the king--move past a row of archers with their bows still held at ease.
Waiting. Each and every one of them. Her, behind the archers and the warhounds, with nothing but an iron-shod staff of carved wood in her hands. Why was she even here? Yet she felt a calm in herself, a purpose that supported her.
The line of trees was dark as a nightmare. Every pair of eyes, from the still soldiers to the snarling, husking dogs, was trained on them through the rain.
Something was coming.
Mist seemed to creep across the forest floor and onto the more open ground before the ruins. A thrill, a tremor, snaked through the men and women. The dogs quieted.
Splitting the momentary silence, a tearing, inhuman cry carried across the battlefield to be. In the grey of the mist, dark, hulking shapes rose as if melting up from the ground itself.
"The Blight ends here." The king's words floated back to her as the host, arrows, swords, hounds, erupted into motion all around her.
[Memory taken and slightly rearranged from this Dragon Age: Origins cutscene just before the Battle of Ostagar.]