shok_ebasit_hissra: (lean)
[personal profile] shok_ebasit_hissra
Playing chess in the park with Nina had become a strange, regular ritual. The Bull liked rituals, though, and having somewhere to be once or twice a week help him set other parts of his life in order. He liked chess, too: it kept his mind active. Playing against Nina did that two-fold, as she tended to try to cheat in one way or another. He didn't blame her, but it kept him on his toes.

"Check," she said triumphantly, her green eyes bright.

Bull surveyed the board and moved his king to protect it. She moved a knight; he took it with his rook. Nina pouted.

"All out of horsemen," she sighed as she propped her head on her hand, elbow on the table. She made what seemed to be a reckless move with a bishop and Bull reacted with staid calm to defend his king.

"Checkmate!" Nina declared. Bull blinked and had to look at the board, wondering what he had missed. In her quick move withe bishop, she'd drawn his attention away from her queen. He surveyed the board, but she was right: there was nowhere to move his king that would be safe.

"You're getting better," he said as he sat back. Nina looked very pleased with herself. "Another game?"

"Sadly I have a few clients lined up for this afternoon," she said as she rose, smoothing out her coat. "Same time next week?"

"Of course." Bull rose with a quiet grunt. He wore a metal brace on his left leg, and the old pain bothered him more in the cold. He accepted a hug from Nina and kissed the top of her head. She was a kind girl.

As she left, Bull carefully sat back down, using the stone table for support. He stretched his bad leg out and started setting the board up again. He was wearing more clothes than he ever had in Thedas, mostly at Dorian's and Krem's insistence. Krem tailored everything for him. Today it was a long-sleeved v-neck sweater. He'd brought his coat with him, but for now it sat under him to protect him from the chilly stone bench.

Date: 2018-11-11 02:53 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony is only a half-decent chess player, but he has played plenty of it over the years, and he rather likes the game. There is a calm strategy involved that naturally appeals to him. it requires one, with mathematical precision, to read one’s opponent and anticipate his moves. The particularities of it—specific strategies, particular traditions—don’t interest him quite as much, but he enjoys the way the game itself stretches his mind. These days, he doesn’t have many opportunities to play, though he has taken up a game or two in the park since coming to Darrow.

The pair currently playing make for a strange sight: the man is horned, enormous, and silent, the girl chatty and relatively petite beside him. Anthony has seen the horned man before, of course, at the Halloween party less than a week before, and Guy had mentioned his conversation with him as well. It’s difficult not to be curious about someone who looks so very…unusual.

Once the girl leaves, Anthony decides to approach. “Interested in another game?"

Date: 2018-11-11 11:22 pm (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony isn’t entirely made of stone; calm, cool, and collected he may be, but one cannot ever entirely prepare for the experience of speaking to a man who looks like a medieval demon. His eyes flick upward. The horns are…impressive, to say the least.

“White,” says Anthony, who is practical enough to accept a slight advantage when offered to him.

Date: 2018-11-18 03:15 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony’s mouth curls up slightly at the corner. He already knows that those great horns are real, but he appreciates the logic of their owner’s statement. Wearing such a headdress if one was not built for it would cause all sorts of trouble.

He begins their game by moving his pawn. “It is generally considered impolite,” he says. “Though I imagine that doesn’t stop most people in your case."

Date: 2018-11-19 03:22 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (As we are so we see.)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“Charming.” Even in a city as full of strange creatures as Darrow, this horned man stands out. Anthony has to imagine that more than one person has run screaming from him; he is surprised that more have not tried holy water.

Speaking to him, though, is rather like speaking to any other man. Especially with a chessboard to focus on, Anthony finds his opponent’s strange looks easy to set aside.

“Anthony Blunt.” He makes his next move. “Anthony.” The man has chosen an interesting way to ask the question; Anthony echoes it back at him. “What should I call you?”

Guy had called him Tib, but Anthony has a feeling that is not his actual name.

Date: 2018-11-20 01:10 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Well, that certainly explains the nickname. Anthony can’t quite imagine referring to someone as ‘the Iron Bull,’ or even just ‘Bull.’

“It is an unusual choice.” He surveys the board for a moment and moves his bishop. “Do you not call each other anything at all where you come from?”

Date: 2018-11-20 04:15 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“How very utilitarian.” His statement is neither criticism nor praise—it is spoken merely as plain fact. Anthony finds himself equally mystified and intrigued by the world the Bull describes. When he can set aside how unbelievable it sounds (which is difficult) he can, somewhat, appreciate the cold logic that seems built into such a system.

“Why iron?” Usually Anthony would not ask so many questions, but his chess-playing companion seems quite willing to answer.

Date: 2018-11-22 03:02 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony smiles faintly. Like the society he came from, the man’s name carries a certain practicality that he can appreciate.

“Did your arrival in Darrow force you to invent a name for yourself?” he wonders.

Date: 2018-11-28 01:28 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Without contraries there is no progress)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Despite having encountered many people in Darrow who come from different worlds, Anthony has never discussed anyplace so foreign-sounding as the Bull’s home in such detail. Even Biffy and Lyall’s world, for all its magic, strikes him as less strange. And besides, The three men are far too English to ask each other prying questions.

The opportunity he has now before him is a fascinating one.

“What was your title?"

Date: 2018-11-28 02:10 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (My specter around me night and day.)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony remains silent for a little while as he studies the board and considers his next move, but the Bull’s answer brings a smile to his lips. “I take it these were not innocent illusions, then,” he says finally, moving one of his pieces.

Date: 2018-11-29 02:09 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony’s knows far too little about the Bull’s world to understand most of what he describes, but he does know what a spy is. He smiles faintly.

“Keeper of illusions,” he muses. “A rather elegant name for a messy business."

The Bull's last move has left Anthony in check. He studies the board for a long moment before moving his king away.

Date: 2018-12-02 03:28 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“Spoken like a spy,” Anthony quips. He doesn’t disagree with the Bull’s assessment of intelligence work, really—what he likes about it is just how neat it can be, in fact—but speaking dismissively of such things still comes as a knee-jerk reaction to him.

“Those in the south think poorly of you people?” he surmises.

Date: 2018-12-04 03:48 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“Plenty of what we do seems strange to me as well,” Anthony quips. As he considers his next move, he muses, “Though I would argue that the particularities of our strangeness are rather varied. The English are strange in a way very different from the Chinese.”

He chooses a bishop. “And both might be quite different from the humans you know."

Date: 2018-12-09 02:31 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
Anthony thinks about what the Bull has said for a moment, though he seems to be studying the board. “That is unusual,” he concedes, speaking without judgement. “I suppose there may be some isolated tribes who forswear family bonds, but I am no anthropologist.” He smiles for a brief moment and captures his opponents knight with one of his own.

“I am not certain our attachment to relations does us much good,” he concedes, quoting mildly, "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb"

Date: 2018-12-11 02:50 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“Well, presumably your people come before someone else’s people,” Anthony observes with a touch of a smile. He is being pedantic, yes, but not without reason. By the sound of it, the Qun remain loyal to their own people the same way that the virulently patriotic remain loyal to their nation.

“Converts?” he wonders aloud. “That makes you sound more like a religion than a race of people."

Date: 2018-12-15 11:40 pm (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Without contraries there is no progress)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“Then who are these converts?” Anthony asks. Perhaps it is really the fierceness of the Bull’s appearance, but he wonders if what the Bull calls converts are actually those his people have conquered. Anthony is an Englishman: he knows very well how empires expect their colonists to conform to a way of life while still treating them as something other.

Date: 2018-12-19 01:58 am (UTC)
flightfromennui: (Default)
From: [personal profile] flightfromennui
“But it is a better way of life for some,” Anthony says, thinking that he begins to understand. Radically different ways of life can offer much to some people, particularly those who are given very little by the rest of society. And the Qun, as strange as they sound, have a way of life whose rationality appeals to him.

He moves his knight. “Check."

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shok_ebasit_hissra: (Default)
the Iron Bull

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