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faderift2017-02-02 12:46 am
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OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (PART I)
WHO: Time Travelers & Future Kirkwall Residents
WHAT: Time travel, captures, escapes, explosions.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, Early Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:.This is the first plot log for False Gods, Great Demons, specifically for the time travel team and adjacent plot efforts. An open post for general Darkest Timeline adventures will be posted separately! A plotting post specifically for the escape from Kirkwall can be found here.
WHAT: Time travel, captures, escapes, explosions.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, Early Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:.This is the first plot log for False Gods, Great Demons, specifically for the time travel team and adjacent plot efforts. An open post for general Darkest Timeline adventures will be posted separately! A plotting post specifically for the escape from Kirkwall can be found here.

It's been over a year since the village of Haven was burned, ransacked, and buried beneath snow and ice--a year for the snow to melt and leave behind blackened, rotting wood for a new year's snow to fall over. The stone walls and Chantry stand, but the rest of the village is a jagged scar, and the path up the mountain to the Temple of Sacred Ashes still shows signs of the battle against the Breach: toppled carts, abandoned crates, a broken bridge.
Given the debris, obstacles, and lingering demon-infested tears in the Veil, it takes the better part of a day for even a well-armed team of trained fighters to make the trek from Haven to the Temple. Despite that, there's been a steady stream of pilgrims to Andraste's final resting place--and now the site of the Herald's death. More still wait on the road and outside the entrance to the Temple ruins, guarded now by Inquisition soldiers until the recent deaths within the walls have been investigated.
Save the wind and quiet crunch of bones being gnawed on, the Temple itself is silent. The molten-ash corpses that were once outside the walls, contorted from their final moments of agony, have been removed and given rites--but the icy dust beneath the band's boots is still partly bone and burned flesh, and patches of red lyrium still resist efforts at removal.
The bone-crunching comes from down the main staircase and around a corner. Five corpses are slumped around a campfire, dressed for warmer weather, preserved by the cold somewhat but withered and too decayed to have died within the week, let alone overnight while no one else was looking--and with one arm currently being chewed on by a bear while two others amble nearby.
Stopping them from eating the evidence is a good idea, probably. And perhaps as the effort to chase them away from the carrion gets underway, in the midst of the chaos and roaring, someone will notice one of the bandits splayed out across the icy stone floor. She's as withered as the rest of them, save one outstretched arm that's still fleshy-plump and pink where it falls outside some invisible line.
But if anyone does notice, it's too late. There's a flare of light that shifts quickly from rift-green to a blinding white, a white-noise roar and a gust of windy force that propels everyone forward to--
Exactly where they were, except a few yards to the left, and in the last two seconds the few stubborn scraps of red lyrium on the Temple walls have crawled and expanded to form whole walls of crystal. For a moment it's silent again, save the wind. The one of the bears--the only one carried along with the group--lets out a bewildered, irritable roar. Beyond the walls there's a shout, then another, then too many for it to be only the handful of Inquisition soldiers posted outside the Temple.
Seconds later, they're surrounded.
A Daring Rescue
"I'm here for the Seeker."
The guards ask her some basic questions, which she answers smoothly. After a moment of consultation with a sheft of papers, they nod, and one moves to Aleron's cell, unlocking the door. Beleth stands off to the side, and then stares icily at the guards and Cade, eyes narrowed.
"Well? Get him out, and hand him to my guard. I haven't got all day."
She's careful not to spend any time actually looking at Aleron. She's not sure she could keep her snide facade up if she did.
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At present though, he seems utterly unaware of any conversation or persons outside the unlocked door. Rather, he's pacing the space, reciting the Chant as dutifully and clearly as a newly affirmed brother. The man has seen better days. His nose was broken some three years ago and never set properly. Same for one cheekbone that had been bashed and cracked and left to knit together causing a misshapen cranny on the right side of his face. But those are cosmetic details to the rest. He's clearly been fed red lyrium, copious amounts. His eyes have already taken on the red tint one expects as exposure is prolonged in a typical subject, his veins angry and throbbing crimson through the skin.
Really no one knows how he'll respond from one day to the next. Some days he's eerily tranquil, ignoring everything. The next, he's suspicious and paranoid, violent and aggressive when approached. Almost all days he's rambling nonsense, having long since ceased making any semblance of sense or proving of use for extracting information. Still, some fools try.
Today would have been a calm day, if not for the one guard who steps in to take his arm and lead him out. "Alright, just this way."
It's a fool's move. In an instant, Aleron has grabbed the guard's hand, somehow pushed him away, and used that momentum to spin him around and pin both arms under the poor idiot's armpits where he cannot hit or escape without assistance.
There's no snarl or anger lacing the tone of his voice, just the same cold stoicism he's displayed his whole life. "You will not harm them, else I will rip you apart."
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"Let him go," he prompts, then quickly glances to Beleth as if seeking permission or affirmation.
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She nods, and gestures. "Do what you have to," She confirms, then pauses. "If you must, just knock him upside the head. It doesn't make a different to me if he's conscious or not."
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"You're wasting your time. I'll tell you nothing."
He means it. Aleron has endured beatings, torture, threats against those he loves, threats against himself. Nothing yet has coerced him into cracking. Too much more of the physical abuses will clearly finish him off, taking whatever knowledge he's hoarding to himself with him to the Maker's side. What he doesn't bother with is hiding the expression of scathing disappointment he feels at all of them colluding with the enemy. (Nevermind that colluding is why everyone else in this situation is in good health, moderately sane, and not in a cell... and he is clearly not.) There's rebuke mingled with pity being leveled at both Beleth and Cade.
But in the directive to release the guard? Aleron does so, by throwing the pinned guard into the wall, head first. He crumples to the ground, not dead, but the poor sod will have a brutal headache in the morning when he comes to. That leaves three to deal with.
The other guard starts to inch in with a hand out, "Just come along quiet-like and nobody has to get hurt." Ah well someone already has. "Nobody else." This fellow would really like his shift to be over and go home with all his parts intact. See, Seeker? No touchy. Open door. Walk right on out with the nice lady and trembly Templar.
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"I'm not interested in talking with you. I'm not here for interrogation. I'm a researcher." She tells him primly, taking a journal from one of her deep pockets, and flipping through it. Once Aleron is finished fooling around with the other guard, she steps toward the door, gesturing to the two men that are to follow her. "Honestly, Dalton, I would entirely prefer you to keep your mouth shut. It would make my job that much easier."
The implication, the show that she's making, is that Aleron is going to be repurposed into a lab rat for her. But, honestly--if he keeps his mouth shut while they're whisking him away to the relative safety of the other former prisoners, it really would make things easier. So. Win/win, all around.
She starts walking, with the clear expectation that Aleron and Cade will follow. She shows no fear of the Seeker--she doesn't fear anyone, as long as she has Cade with her. And Cade is always with her.
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But, there is no denying that is an open door and an opportunity to get out. Get out and go where? Not home. No. That could be a trap to lead others to his family. The song from the red lyrium and the building pain is making it impossible to concentrate or plan ahead. One thing at a time then. Get out the door.
Even that seems suspect, however, and he edges around the room like a cat trying to slip away from a predator. Slowly, sliding along the wall, with as much distance as he can place between himself and any one of the three. None of them are actually attempting to stop him leaving. They don't even have restraints that he can tell. Maker, what is happening here? This seems too easy. And that alone is sending all his warning bells screaming in his head.
Even so, he makes it out the door without being stopped.
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Wren's preoccupied, struggling to rip her sword free of the neck that it’s wedged into. Nothing budges, trapped on some stubborn twist of bone. This could have been easier, but he was clever enough to want her helm lifted, to ask after her eyes.
She glances up at their approach, bare face crusted in blood and alarm. A flicker, before something grimmer settles into place.
"Traitors," She snarls. A coward and two
blonde fuckin nerdsdead men — though she doesn’t recognize the second. Prisoners without bonds? In solitary? "Stand aside and live."It’s bluster. If she weren’t at disadvantage, she’d never bother to speak. It gives the enemy time, signals your weakness (lets you lay fingers on the knife at your back, the girl's no mage and maybe she can get it in an eye,)
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"Cade, Cade! Wait!" She grabs at his sword arm, though she doesn't go as far as getting between him and the woman. It wasn't common for them to have to deal with physical altercations, but she knows enough to keep her squishy and vulnerable body behind the guy with the plate armor. If Cade didn't listen, and stabbed her anyway...well. How would her compatriots know it was him, instead of any other Red Templar guard?
Aleron, maybe, but he wasn't exactly a credible witness.
"Cade, please. Let me talk to her." And she peeks around Cade, to look at Wren. "...I know this looks bad. Cade is just. Very. Excitable. And protective of me. But I think we should talk. I have a proposition for you, that should end in no one getting stabbed."
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Instead, all he's managing to do at present is stand there like an oversized decoration.
"The loyal shield, broken to pieces, found only ash / Left to the wind and rain. And Havard wept / And took the ashes, still hot from the fire, and pressed them to his heart."
...that's particularly useful, right?
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Wren steps back, gives the sword a final wrench. No luck. She'll need to be close to do any good, and that means finding a way around his blade. Means letting him advance. Let his own motion give it away, and maybe there’s a chance,
(Fear is there, forced out distant, it’s someone else’s pulse that’s pounding in her ears.)
But Beleth’s hands are on him, as though he's some misbehaving pet, and — Excitable — Maker, let them kill me before I’m half so excited, And then Aleron’s chanting, and she knows how the rest goes:
His ears filled with the song of multitudes.
How… terribly appropriate. Very nearly funny. It’s enough to throw her, to force a tense pause.
"Speak quickly." If it’s a command, it's meant practically. Kirkwall's time is running short. Her hand curls around the hilt of the knife, just in case. "I am listening."