faderift | terror takes the sound before you make it

Entry tags:

terror takes the sound before you make it

WHO: New rifters & characters in the Fallow Mire
WHAT: More people falling into the bog than usual
WHEN: Firstall 21
WHERE: The Fallow Mire
NOTES: This rift will open just as the Inquisition manages to close another with the assistance of previously-arrived rifters, and reinforcements will be called in quickly, so everyone in the Mire is welcome.

You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

But there's no waking here, just a flare of green-white light and a jarring impact, a plunge into waist-deep water that smells sour and tastes worse. It's raining, dark, and you are not alone. Others splash into the murky water nearby, as bewildered as you, and those who have already found their footing in the muck are no less confused.

You are also not as you were: in the palm of your left hand there glows a narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Like the freezing water. Or the fact that you're being attacked by monsters--some tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all. Every splash into the water and every thrash thereafter brings wakened corpses rising out of the bog with their old weapons still in hand.

From dry land--near a small cluster of homes, one with firelight--there's a shout, then another, where Inquisition forces had just closed a larger rift and begun to regroup when the Veil split open again across the bog. A few arrows are loosed at the demons that look most likely to succeed in killing someone. Help is on its way; just last until it arrives.

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He stares at the mug of tea in his hands for a few moments. There's a weirdly numb disconnect starting up here now that he's had at least a short while to wind back down. The disconnect specifically here is, he knows people drink warm beverages and has memories of consuming vast quantities of coffee, but he also has come to the realization that he also has never consumed vast quantities of coffee or, in fact, consumed anything at all. Even if he thinks he has. Or feels like he has.

But. That's pansy shit, dwelling on it, and he blinks himself back to what seems to be, for the moment, reality. Or some version of it. He's not convinced yet. "Yeah, you could say that."

"One moment." She finishes wrapping a bandage around the poultice of the one soldier sitting down, recommends he sleep, and waves him off. To the man she'd given tea she motions to the recently vacated chair. "Sit. From a scale of 'I may have left the stove burning' to 'I see my parents mid coitus every time I close my eyes' what level of emotional distress are you experiencing?"

Welp. She already doesn't seem like the type of person whose orders you just ignore, even taking away the fact that she seems to be a nurse? Doctor? Something like that. And he makes a face at her examples. "Ew, what the fuck kind of crazy patients are you seeing lately?"

Asks the robot ghost.

"The sort that have seen men and women fall out of the sky, faced down a multitude of demons, and therefore may be emotionally distressed." She rests her elbows on her knees, leaning forward to peer into his eyes. They were a startling color but other than that? He seems weary, but well. "Demons are, typically, distressing."

"Demons. Right. Okay." Those are weird and, sure, kind of distressing. Other things that are distressing: waiting for the sweet bliss of permadeath and getting instead this crazy wacko bullshit. "Well, I kinda fell out of the sky, I guess, and wound up wherever this is with whatever's going on, and that's pretty distressing in all kinds of ways."

"So you have some manner of migraine and your hand aches, yes?" She flicks her fingers at his palm, remembering well how much it distressed the first set of Rifters she met. "That I might do something for, but I cannot cure it."

"Fucking aches like a bitch, yeah. You mean you can't get it out? Jesus, why doesn't pulling or cutting the damn thing out help? I'm not okay with a glowing impaled hand!"

"It is not impaled. It is simply not all here." That is the best way she can describe the strangeness that is the marks on the rifters. "Part of your hand is elsewhere, and this- this is part of the fade and the veil you carry with you. That is as far as we have gotten in our research but I can make it hurt less for a time."

"...I'm sorry, did you say part of my hand is just--just somewhere else?!" Of course it's fucked up and weird, but honestly, misapplied anger is his life, so. "What the fuck, so just a bit of skin is just flapping around god knows where while I've got some painful glowing space here? If I have to put something small in my hand, is it going to fall through into another fucking dimension or what??"

Church, always asking the hard-hitting questions.

"At my best guess, yes. Clearly it is not here." Otherwise it'd be as whole as his other hand. "Again, I do not know. We are attempting to learn as much of these as we can but this is still something of a recent phenomena. If you wish me to help you, let me see your hand."

"Do you have a needle or something you can poke through and see if it just drops through my hand or something? I'm kind of curious. And horrified. If I had a big dimensional pocket in my hand that'd be...useful? I guess?" Oh right he's supposed to hand over his hand. Right.

"...We have not quite tested that just yet. If you really want to try I'd recommend doing it on your own time." She curls her hands around his palm, fingers and eyes beginning to glow blue as she channels Compassion's power.

"Whoa!" He jerks his hand, and therefore Adelaide's hands. "The fuck are you doing, I thought maybe you'd just rub some ointment on it or, like, give me two pills and call you in the morning!"

"You have a magical shard of some sort that is both here and not embedded in your palm. And you want me to spread ointment on it and call it a day?" Is he hearing the words he is saying? "The cause of the pain is magical. Thus, the cure too shall be done with magic. Or are you allergic to that as well?"

"Oh my god I am so tired of this fucking bullshit magic bs! It's one thing to David Copperfield a statue on tv but god damn, with the glowing, and the demon portals, and the shooting ice from sticks, what, is this a case of stupid advanced technology we just choose to call magic?!" Apparently this is the hill he wants to die on/dig a hole into.

"You're seriously serious about magic. A pretty lady who doesn't take any shit, and we're going to talk magic."

"...We do not all need sticks to shoot ice." The glowing of her hands dims as she turns one palm over and for a moment, there is noting. Frost gathers on her skin and soon ice is forming a very fine, very small violin in the center of her palm. "Magic is magic. There is a science and an art to it, but this is not 'advanced technology'. It is magic. We are talking of magic because I am a mage, magic is what I happen to do. I do it slightly less when people complain about how it is done."

"Okay! I'm just saying, this is fucking weird! And I'd totally want to shoot fire from my hands if I could! Oh my god, do you think I could shoot fire from my hands? I would be unstoppable. Can I like...learn this crazy shit or..."

"Your excessive use of profanity and attire are 'weird'. The fact you've fallen through the ream of dreams without being a demon or spirit is 'weird'. Magic is not weird. And may the Maker have mercy on anyone foolish enough to try to teach you magic- one is either capable or they are not now stop gesturing and let me do my work." She's half tempted to paralyze him to get the work done.

"Okay! Jesus, lady, just do your health up potion magic bullshit and make everything stop." Yeah, that sounds right--wait no. "Hurting. Aching. Whatever." He can still gesture with his other hand!

"A potion would do fuck and all for your hand, Ser." Her fingers go tight around his hand, holding it still while the glow flares up yet again and a cool flow of magic pours into his skin.

"...Whoa." That...feels tingly. And cool. And weird? But also kind of like sticking an IV of something analgesic into him. Maybe. He wouldn't really know.

The glow pulses around the mark in his skin once more before it fades and Adelaide sits back, letting his hand drop free. "Does that help?"

"...Yeah." Presumably the dulled ache means it fucking works. He flexes his hand a few times, then reaches for his tea again. It's cooled to a more reasonable degree. "Um. Thanks."

"That will be five coppers." She turns her hand over, presenting him her palm and a lift of her eyebrows in the universal sign of 'well, it isn't going to fill itself with money now, is it'.

"Well then you can undo your magic mojo, woman," he says with what seems to be an actual grin, "cuz I have all of jack and shit on me but the clothes on my back. Which, I should add, aren't even mine. They were just there on this body when I fell through the sky portal. You guys should really close that shit, by the way, before more assholes of my caliber start falling through."

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