The peace that formerly reigned in Terra Nova has eroded, now little more than a memory. War ravages the continent. Disputes divide kingdoms; ideals divide families. The quest for power consumes absolutely and indiscriminately. None are immune to its allure.
Who will rise and who will fall? Only time—and ambition—will tell.
UPDATES
05.26.2023
2 month character creation hold for all existing members begins 6/5/2023. Ended 8/5/2023.
10.29.2023
Change in how times flows. Was 4 IC seasons, now only 2 IC seasons per 1 OOC year.
5 whole years of Heir Apparent goodness! When I started the site, I knew I was hunkering down for the long haul, but I never could have predicted the numerous twists and turns this roleplay site has seen. Hundreds of plots, characters, and members have come and gone, all leaving marks on the site. I am so very thankful for those who have invested. Because you keep coming back, keep getting on, and keep writing, Heir Apparent has the legacy it does today. Three cheers to us!
By the end of the second day after the ball, Warren's head was spinning. Reassigning the soldiers into new units, dealing with concerns, fielding questions about what had happened at the ball, and of course dealing with outrage from his own family and the guilt that had set upon him from telling Wilson Barr's family of what had happened to him. It all left him with dark bags under his eyes and and an on-going headache.
Only one of the badly injured soldiers had been Warren's, and he was on the way to see the young man now. He and Berengar Stormcrest had been working together for a while now, not only in their military work but outside of it as well. Although they had no personal relationship, Ber was one of his soldiers and it was his duty to check on him. The words she had shared with Regan the night of the ball remained unknown to Warren. He knew that some kind of exchange been had, but the specifics had been lost in translation.
So he left his office with the intention of heading to the infirmary, only to run into Stormcrest shortly there after, also in the area of the military officials offices. "Mr. Stormcrest," he said, approaching the young man. "I was just on my way to see you. You seem to be doing better."
So talking with the Captain Commander was absolutely far more intimidating than Ber had ever imagined it would be. He had no idea how Zevran could have genuinely enjoyed talking with him, and he thought that he would have to ask him if he was sure they’d talked to the same man the next— Right. Well. As he walked down the hall, away from the guard standing outside Usher’s office door, he let out a long, shaky breath and distracted himself from the hollow hurt in his chest by finally wiping his sweaty hand on his pants. At any rate, as far as Ber was concerned, avoiding Hadrian Usher’s attention for the foreseeable future sounded like a very good idea.
If he was honest, avoiding all attention for the foreseeable future sounded like a very good idea. All he wanted to do was find some place quiet and alone to try to sort out his thoughts as both the Captain Commander’s words and their implications echoed in his head.
But it was not to be. Warren Woodwick was the second-to-last person he wanted to see right now - that position had been soundly usurped by the man whose office he had just exited. The understanding that Woodwick had decided to actively seek him out was never a welcome one, but after the meeting he’d just had, that another officer wanted to speak with him had a particular coil of dread pooling in his gut. Alas, it wasn’t like Ber could ignore the newly promoted captain any more than he could the captain commander. After taking a breath to collect himself, the soldier turned to face Woodwick and nodded. “Yes, sir,” He said. “I am.” In a manner of speaking.
Last Edit: Mar 29, 2023 17:55:20 GMT -5 by Deleted
Warren had expected to drop by, see how the kid was doing, and be on his way. The healers in the infirmary rarely liked people hanging around - all they did was get in the way. Instead, Berengar was up and walking, and though he didn't look one hundred percent, the fact that he was out of the infirmary at all was telling.
"Good, then walk with me. I'm on the way to the mess hall for dinner." His stomach was growling, reminding him that he had also hardly eaten in the last two days because he'd been so busy. He wasn't sure if Ber had eaten lately or not, but he wouldn't have been surprised if he hadn't. It was hard to force oneself to eat while in terrible pain, but then again he didn't know how long the soldier had been up and about.
If there was anything someone could say about Warren Woodwick, it was not that he was good at being comforting. He didn't know what to say to make someone feel better. He only knew how to tell them the truth of what he had lived. So instead, he opted for questions. "I was told you had a concussion, and that your arm was very badly injured. Do they believe you'll regain full mobility? Are there any lingering side-effects?"
Better was all relative, Ber thought as Woodwick issued his order-disguised-as-a-request. Better did not mean good. It did not mean he was in the mood for food - or remotely hungry, for that matter, despite having slept through most of the past couple days - especially if his present company was going to join him. Even without the the captain’s presence, nothing about the noise and crowds of the mess hall during dinner sounded appealing, but he wasn’t feeling particularly up for any sort of debate over the matter either. So Ber fell into step beside the taller man as they turned down the hall and tried to shove aside the thoughts of his meeting with the captain commander in favor of mentally preparing for this new ordeal.
When Woodwick asked after his head and arm, Ber glanced to the side and nodded to confirm the truth of those statements. A concussion, a severely injured arm, and all of the other damage associated with being hurled across the room like a spare bit of clothing. ”A dislocated shoulder,” He elaborated, remembering the nauseating pain of having the joint popped back into place. “They can’t say for sure, but they’re hopeful everything will heal fine.” Ber clung to that hope as well. He couldn’t very easily be a soldier with a permanently damaged arm, and as the captain commander had reminded him, he very much needed to be a soldier. As for side effects? Lifting his good shoulder in a slight shrug, Ber added, “It just hurts. They want me to start doing some exercises with it tomorrow.” So he supposed he would find out then if there were any lingering side effects.
After a couple days spent picking up fragments of the story from multiple people, Ber had questions of his own about the ball, and in the past, Woodwick had usually been willing to entertain his inquiries, seldom though they were. He had heard from someone that one of the other people seriously injured was Regan, but she was notably absent from the infirmary. The implication of her absence worried him, though he didn’t know quite where he stood with her now - assuming she was even still alive. If the rumors were to be believed and Ber did believe them, then Woodwick would probably be the person who would know what had happened to her. But he was also keenly aware that he had shouted at Regan, and if the rumors were true, Woodwick would probably have some negative feelings about that. If the rumors weren’t true, Woodwick would still probably have some negative feelings about that.
Ber was keen to avoid a second dressing down within the hour for the same offense.
Instead, he asked a different question, one he’d asked Abbott and hadn’t received a helpful answer for. “I heard they caught the witch who turned Wulfbrand.” At some point, he had realized that Octavius was the soldier with whom he’d cleaned up shit that one night. He looked up at Woodwick. “Who was it?”
Last Edit: Mar 29, 2023 17:55:43 GMT -5 by Deleted
Warren had a lot of confidence in the military's healers, but he knew that there were some injuries that simply could not be entirely healed. Regan had come back well enough, but the King had taken her to Arynn Frey and they were far more advanced in many ways. A dislocated shoulder was a small price to pay given what could have happened to the young soldier, had the wolf not had so many other targets to focus on.
"I would focus on those exercises, and do them exactly as instructed. You'll get there, it's only a matter of time." Other than Ber, Regan, and Wilson Barr, the only person Warren could think of that had been injured had been Octavius Wulfbrand himself. Warren didn't know the soldier well. He was paired, and had been under Bex's guidance. Was that why she had chosen him? Had it been random, or him specifically, and if specific, why? Bex's death took with it a lot of answers. Answers that would have been helpful, might have alleviated some of the pressure on Hadrian and the rest of those in charge, including Warren himself. But if they had kept her alive, would she had told them any of that anyway?
They were both quiet for a while as they walked, arriving just to the entrance of the mess hall as Ber brought up Wulfbrand and followed up his statement with a question. Warren knew the commander had been trying to keep it somewhat close to the chest, but he also knew he could trust the young man before him with the answer. Most had figured it out by proxy anyway, thanks to the former Lieutenant's absence and likely word spreading from those others who might have been in the room, but Ber had been in the infirmary for all that time.
So he paused by the entrance, stepping aside as two other soldiers walked by, nodding to him. He nodded back, waiting for them to pass, and sighed quietly. "Bex Brekker is the witch who turned Octavius Wulfbrand. And she tried to kill the rest of us, too, once all the paired witches were gathered in the throne room." Turning, he led the soldier into the mess hall. It had been loud, filled with tons of on-going conversations. Much of it hushed when he walked in, the soldiers dipping their heads and focusing instead on their food. A few others by the other end of the room got up, disposed of their leftovers, and took their leave.
It was nice to know that some things would never change.
As they moved toward the line of people waiting for food, Warren returned his glance to Ber. "Did you know her at all?"
Brekker? Brow furrowed, Ber stared at Woodwick for a moment in disbelief, not because he expected the captain to lie to him but rather because he wouldn’t have expected the culprit to be that particular witch. Hadn’t she just received a promotion, too? If the lapse in – judgement, control, whatever – wasn’t bewildering enough, he couldn’t figure out why she would throw all that away and try to kill the very same people she fought beside. And Brekker had been a lieutenant, an officer who trained other witches to turn men into werewolves. Who else might she have inspired? The thought followed Ber as he trailed after Woodwick, entering the mess hall for the first time since the ball.
While the captain walked through the doorway without issue, the soldier faltered as he looked out over the sea of faces. Everyone had glanced over to see Woodwick, which meant they also saw the wounded soldier standing in his shadow, uncomfortable with the attention focused in his general direction. As heads bowed and conversations resumed, the mess hall was still louder than any place he had been since his injuries, and the noise had his low-grade headache protesting. Most importantly, however, it was the most crowded place he’d visited as well. When his head started healing, so too had his memory, and he remembered now the moment in which the werewolf turned to him. A hollow chill traveled down his spine as eyes flicked from soldier to soldier. Nearly all of the men looked young enough, and how many of the witches had been under Brekker’s command?
Swallowing, Ber forced himself to step into the mess hall and catch up to Woodwick while his mind, unbidden, began doing the arithmetic that his body hadn’t been awake for. Though he kept the as much of the room as he could in his peripherals, Ber didn’t need to look to know that all of them were packed close enough together that it would be nothing less than disastrous if someone decided to unleash a werewolf again. He remembered the press of bodies around him, the resistance and inability to flee, as he had tried to back away from the werewolf at the ball and knew that history would only repeat itself here. No one in the immediate vicinity of a werewolf could move fast enough to avoid its claws and teeth. No one by the door could move fast enough to avoid the stampede. He couldn’t help it. He glanced around the mess hall again as he wiped his sweaty hand on his pants.
Woodwick’s voice caught his attention, and caught up as he was in hypotheticals, it took Ber a moment to remember who they’d been talking about. Glancing up at the captain, he cleared his throat and lifted his good shoulder in a shrug. “We talked a couple of times, sir,” He said, eyes falling away from Woodwick to scan the room once more. Once they reached the line, he would position himself casually with his back to the wall. “She was…” Well, Brekker had been exactly like every other officer, including the one standing beside him: serious and not very fun to talk to. But Ber couldn’t exactly say that. Instead, he opted for a “I wouldn’t have expected her to do that, I guess.” But then, he supposed, no one had, or else they wouldn’t have been here right now.
After a moment, he tore his gaze away from a random pair of witches seated nearby to ask Woodwick a question that he dreaded the answer to. “Um, they also said someone was killed.” He hadn’t seen Regan in the infirmary. If she had been seriously injured, she wouldn’t have left by now, unless… “Who was that?”
With the way Ber was reacting, Warren thought that maybe he had known Brekker a little better than having only spoken to her a couple of times. He seemed to have taken the news badly, but perhaps Warren was reading into it wrong. Ber kept looking around the room, and for a moment Warren followed his eyes. The boy had only just gotten out of the infirmary. Maybe he was overwhelmed. Maybe he was just nervous. Experiencing the kind of thing he had gone through would make anyone a little paranoid. A little more hyper-vigilant. Especially when it had happened right in your own house. The castle was home to everyone in the military.
"None of us expected it to be her," Warren added, still thinking about the woman as he moved through the line and got a tray to put his food on.
Then Ber mentioned the boy who was killed, and Warren's train of thought switched from Bex to Lord and Lady Barr. Before he could answer, Warren came up next in line and began to tell the soldiers on staff duty what he wanted from the short list of options. A couple of bowls were handed to him, along with a cup of water, and with his food he moved back into the sitting area and scanned the tables for an opening. Somewhere to the left, at the end, a few soldiers had just left. The seats were empty, and no one seemed to be moving for them. Whether or not Ber grabbed something to eat, that was where Warren would lead him.
Settling into the very last seat of the table, he took a drink of water and dipped his spoon into his bowl of porridge. "A boy named Wilson Barr. He was from a lesser noble family. I'm not sure you would have interacted with him. He came in when the call was put out for fresh recruits."
Last Edit: Apr 12, 2023 20:47:05 GMT -5 by Deleted
Luckily, the line moved fast enough. While Woodwick loaded up his tray with whatever food caught his fancy, Ber decided on a whim to grab his own. He still didn’t feel particularly hungry, but he thought that he ought to get something out of having to wait in line and be subjected to the captain’s unfortunate company. Scanning the options for something he could easily eat one handed, he settled on a bowl of stew and some water. With the tray balanced somewhat awkwardly in both hands, Ber followed Woodwick to seats at the end of a table. He sat down across from the captain, and in an attempt to distract himself from the keen awareness of the soldiers at the other tables behind him, he stirred his stew.
When Woodwick finally offered an answer to a question he’d nearly forgotten asking, Ber looked up at the captain and belatedly realized that he wasn’t entirely sure what to say in response to the announcement of someone’s death. “Oh.” There was no great swell of grief; he didn’t recognize the name, nor could he picture the face that went with it. Rather, his initial thought was that the ball was probably not how Wilson Barr had expected his military career to come to a premature end, but that seemed rather insensitive to say. Instead, he just nodded his understanding and tried not to look too relieved that Woodwick hadn’t said Regan’s name. That meant she was still alive. And short of asking outright about her, which he was not about to do, ‘alive somewhere’ was probably as good as Ber was going to get.
As he awkwardly spooned some soup into his mouth, eating with his non-dominant hand, the soldier considered whether he had any other pressing questions. Brekker had been the witch to cast the curse. Barr had been the soldier who died. Zevran was, well, physically unharmed at least. Regan was recovering somewhere. Duncan hadn’t been there, and neither had Temperance or Thom. When another name struck him, Ber glanced over at Woodwick thoughtfully, but he seemed normal enough. If Evie had been injured, that probably wouldn’t have been the case. With a quiet sigh, the soldier let the information settle and decided that he was rather tired of discussing and thinking about the events of a few nights ago.
Unfortunately, it appeared to be the only thing on peoples’ minds. There was certainly nothing else he could think of discussing with the man seated across from him. Well, he decided, if Woodwick wanted to talk, he could make conversation; Ber was content to eat his soup in silence.
The silence, however, did little to distract him from the tension slowly crawling along his shoulders. People passing by the table looked like shadows in his peripherals, and he found his gaze flicking to the side more often than not. Likewise, the prickling sensation of eyes on the back of his neck had him turning to glance over his shoulder to see no one looking in their direction. In the quiet of the infirmary, he hadn’t realized he’d become quite so jumpy, but with this first foray back into the crowded halls of the military wing, it became painfully clear. And he hated it.
For a while Warren sat across from Ber and ate quietly. He watched the young man, saw the way his eyes flickered from one side to the other, the way he turned to address the stares of the soldiers who were likely surprised to see him alive at all. Warren let that feeling and the associated thoughts ruminate within Ber for some time. He polished the porridge off almost to the bottom, poured the remainder over the bowl of rice he'd gotten, and took a couple of bites of that before downing it with a few swallows of water and wiping his hands on a napkin.
"That will settle eventually," he said, hands moving to rest in his lap. "It will be bad again, after the war. But eventually it settles into your awareness. It becomes natural and less exhausting. It may not feel like it right now, but it will benefit you when the time comes for you to fight. Which reminds me."
Once more he was thinking back to their discussion with Zevran. It had taken place some time before the gala events, but his own inability to make the pair understand what he spoke of had been ringing in his mind throughout the season. If they didn't know, most of the soldiers didn't know. But Ber now had first hand knowledge. "I'm sure it's the last thing you'd like to think about, Mr. Stormcrest, but what happened at the ball isn't much different from what it will be like on the battlefield. You were knocked out fairly quickly, but the tight quarters barely allowed you to move or think before something happened, isn't that right?"
This time it was Warren who shrugs. He took no pleasure in relating the events to their previous discussion, but it was a good time to point it out. While it was all still fresh in his mind. "The only difference from what is it come and what happened at the ball is that instead of all of those people fleeing and clearing out the space, people will be surging forward against the front lines. The best thing you can do for yourself is find control in the chaos."
When Woodwick began talking, Ber realized that he had made a strategic blunder in letting the captain control the conversation topic. He had forgotten that the other man liked to impart life advice across the table. The soldier simply wanted to eat his dinner and leave, not be on the receiving end of a life lesson, and he hadn’t even really wanted to eat in the first place. An automatic defensiveness that urged him to insist he had no idea what Woodwick was talking about - because despite the tension along his shoulders and the sweatiness of his palms and the paranoia creeping up along his spine, Ber was fine and there was nothing that needed to eventually settle - rose to meet the captain’s observations, and he looked up, ready to do just that.
But something, maybe in the other man’s tone or his expression, had the argument dying in his throat and the hostility subsiding. Woodwick hadn’t been asking; he’d been telling. While Ber thought he could bluff his way past Abbott and Terach, he had, unfortunately, worked closely with the man seated across from him long enough that Woodwick would likely recognize the bullshit. So instead, Ber let out a breath, fiddled with the spoon in his now-empty bowl of soup, and reluctantly listened. The captain spoke with the certainty of experience, which had the soldier’s thoughts splitting into opposite directions: there was relief that someone understood what Ber couldn’t put to words, but why did that someone have to be Woodwick?
At any rate, the man was correct that the events of the ball, a war torn battlefield, and any similarity between the two were the last things that Ber wanted to think about. Dark eyes rose from the spoon in his bowl to glance at Woodwick as he gave the slightest nod in response to the question, apprehension about the upcoming war settling in the pit of his stomach for the first time. With the memory of trying and failing to flee resting on the forefront of his mind, Ber shifted and wiped his free hand on his pants, flexing his fingers against his thigh under the table.
“How?” The question escaped, not quite desperate or hopeless, but certainly troubled. “There was no room and no time to do anything.” It had been over before it began.
How. That was the question, wasn't it? How do you fight against chaos? How do you keep it from consuming you when it's all around you?
Unlike his father, Warren had always had a need for control. Maybe that was why he had succeeded in being promoted, where his father had only reached the rank of drill instructor up until his retirement. Being the middle child, stuck between two witch sisters, control was something he'd often lacked. He felt even less in control when his wife took her own life. He'd stewed in that feeling of helplessness for two years before he found himself in Cambria, fighting men with twice his strength. That was where he regained some measure of control. And he'd been fighting to keep it ever since.
"A lot of people drive themselves mad trying to control the things around them. The only thing you can control is yourself. You're more likely to make better decisions, to think more clearly, more quickly, to be able to adapt, when you are in full control of yourself. Which comes from training. From discipline. From admitting to ones weaknesses and working on them." His eyes remained on Ber, looking more casually than analytically at him. "People die on crowded battlefields because they're overwhelmed. Because they get lost. Because they panic. Because they lose focus and make dumb mistakes. All of that stems from a lack of control of oneself."
Though he didn’t know it, Woodwick’s answer reminded Ber of the unpleasant meeting he had just had with the captain commander. Both men had spoken of gaining and maintaining control over oneself as the ultimate answer as to why Nevermere and her soldiers succeeded where others did not. According to Usher, making order out of chaos allowed the kingdom to flourish. According to Woodwick, doing the same but on a small scale - maintaining control over oneself in the midst of chaos - allowed soldiers to survive on the battlefield. Instilled in them from the beginning of their mandatory six, the overarching concept was a familiar one.
Still, Ber couldn’t help but think that the world was trying to make a point to him about self-control and his apparent dearth.
Somewhere inside him, a tiny piece of his heart argued that he had discipline and self control but that somewhere along the way, his priorities had changed - or perhaps merely revealed themselves. But then, that was a problem, too, wasn’t it. I suggest you reexamine your loyalties, Private Stormcrest. For I have very little patience for those who bite the hand that feeds them. Ber ran a hand over his face and used the self-control he debatably had to refrain from turning around to address the sensation of eyes on the back of his neck.
“But if an enemy is right next to you—“ Or, potentially, all around you, just lying in wait like a snake in the grass. How many paired witches were in the mess hall right now? “And they’re too fast for you to react…” Caught completely by surprise. Too close to give him any time to think. Even with training, he didn’t see how any amount of discipline could help him do the impossible.
Warren wanted to give Ber an answer. Something that would settle his mind, make him feel better or more assured of his strengths. Tearing people down for no good reason had never been the best way to teach them. Shoving their mistakes in their faces didn't drive them to do better, only to dwell on what they had done wrong. But there was no fool-proof way for Ber to achieve what he was looking for. Nothing you could do in life would prepare you for everything that happened. If anyone knew that, it was Warren Woodwick.
He did pull his eyes upward, tilting his head around to look behind Ber and meet the eyes of those whose stares were clearly bothering him. The soldiers averted their gazes, but it would only last for so long. "I heard that you got into an argument with Ms. Lassiter at the ball. I've always known you to be respectful, so I felt that was quite unlike you, so I asked around. It's my understanding that you'd had quite a few glasses of wine that night. Is that correct?"
The sources of this information were not those who had been closest to Ber, but others that had just seen him. So the truth could be somewhere in between, or completely differently. His question was not one of accusation, his statements clearly not made in judgement, or anger. "Had you not had so much to drink, do you feel you would have still had the argument? We cannot know if Brekker forcibly changed Mr. Wulfbrand for any specific reason, but he was near you because the argument drew his attention."
He went back to his porridge covered rice and took another couple of bites. When he finished, he shrugged. "There's no answer to all of it. Some people do everything right and still die out there, some people do nothing right and live." He could think of a few of those still floating around in the military. People that some were surprised to see in the caravans back from Cambria. "But you'll have a better chance, at least, if you train that hyper-awareness that you're dealing with right now."
For all of Ber’s implicit efforts to keep the conversation away from Regan - if only by refusing to bring her up - Woodwick, like the utter pain in the ass he was, already knew. As the captain turned the conversation toward the altercation that had just earned the soldier his first meeting with the captain commander, the younger man stiffened slightly. Already worn down from the aforementioned experience and on edge from simply sitting in the mess hall, he silently braced himself for another discussion about that entire affair.
Woodwick, however, seemed to have something else on his mind - or he had an oddly roundabout way of unnecessarily establishing that Ber’s decision to yell at Regan was indeed the soldier’s fault. But the man’s tone reminded him more of when he had spoken with Zevran than when he had pulled Ber out of the ocean: for some reason, Woodwick was after information.
By now, the young man had learned that the easiest way to get him off Ber’s case was to just give it to him. So he did.
“Yes, sir,” He confirmed. “I had a few glasses of the wine.” It wasn’t like Woodwick needed that knowledge to reprimand him for stepping out of line anyway. The second question had him pausing for a moment. Apart from acknowledging that he was in the wrong for addressing Regan the way he had, Ber hadn’t spent much time thinking about what had happened. He did not regret standing up for Zevran, but he wasn’t particularly proud of the way he’d gone about doing so - namely by insulting his other friend, or maybe former friend.
Whether he would have still had the argument… The righteous, protective anger that would still have risen on Zevran’s behalf had a way of blinding him to reason, but without the alcohol in his system, perhaps he would have done a better job keeping ahold of his temper. Certainly, he would have questioned the order, but maybe that interaction wouldn’t have escalated to the argument it became - and he definitely wouldn’t have said much of what he’d spat at Regan. Taking into consideration his conversation with the captain commander, Ber decided that full honesty, particularly with regards to Zevran, was not in his best interest.
“No, sir,” He answered evenly. “I don’t think it would have happened—” like that “—had I not had so much to drink.” A pause in which he choked back the observation that Zevran, too, had drunk a fair bit and that Ber had never seen him angry like that before. He knew the other man had always been painfully aware of what was at stake should he misbehave. “Never had wine before, sir,” Ber offered the flimsy defense instead, merely alluding to Zevran rather than bringing him up outright. “I don’t think anyone expected it to be quite so strong.” After all, they were young men who regularly went to the tavern and downed whiskey and beer. But they were commoners, too. No doubt the wine of nobility was a far higher quality than what men at their social standing would consume.
Woodwick went back to his food, and Ber took a sip of his water, pausing again when the captain brought up the coiling apprehension that the soldier was apparently doing a poor job of hiding. Hyper-awareness, the other man called it, and once again, he spoke as if he knew about it. In the relatively short time since he’d stepped into the mess hall, Ber had resolved to simply push through whatever this hyper-awareness was and hope it went away with time. Even if he couldn’t stop himself from peering around suspiciously in the interim. But Woodwick referenced training it, making it useful for a battlefield, and Ber— well, he wanted to fight in Dresmond, but he also wanted to survive Dresmond. “How do you train it?”
As Warren had expected, Ber had drank more wine that night than usual. At least, it must have been more than normal, given how he had acted. He couldn't pretend to know what Ber did in his free time, but as he'd said before, generally the soldier before him was responsible. Of course, no one would have gone into the party expecting something like that to happen. A lot of people probably planned on drinking more than their fair share, and things might not have gone quite as badly as they had if Brekker hadn't turned one of their own against them. Maybe a fight would have broken out, but that could be easily dealt with.
As for the other confirmation, Warren nodded his head. Whether or not Regan and Ber knew each other well, or only as well as the day in the training field, mattered little. She was Huntsman of the King, and if Ber would show respect and discipline in his dealings with Warren, he would have certainly done so with Regan. So this occasion had been an outlier. "As I expected," he said. "Wine is deceptively strong because it has a sweeter taste than ale. It's easier to drink, faster to go down. A man should know what kinds of liquors he can and cannot hold, and the amounts, and if he cannot hold them at all, he should not drink them at all." His father had told him the same thing, after the first time Warren had been caught drunk as a child. When one knows their self, they do not invite such trouble upon themself.
As far as how strong the wine was, Warren wouldn't comment. Hadrian had shut down the investigation into it's possible pollution, but he couldn't get the idea out of his head after Kasper had brought the thought to him.
"Well," he could reply to Ber's question, though. It was complicated, and hard to explain, that much was true. But he'd do his best. "You force yourself to think logically and reasonably about what you can see and what you feel. It's not an easy thing to do at first. It's best to stick with what you know. What do you know?" He asked Ber. "That everyone in the room is looking at you. Why? Because you were attacked at the ball by one of our own wolves, and survived. Those are facts." He pushed the bowl away from him again, taking a drink. "So how does it make you feel? Uncomfortable, nervous, anxious? Or do you feel like you're in danger? Do you feel threatened by them, or just aware?" Warren looked around, his eyes running over the crowd. "Did you immediately notice the amount of soldiers in here that carry the curse? Or the witches who might know how to trigger it?"