faderift | OPEN: turn off the lights and I'll glow

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OPEN: turn off the lights and I'll glow

WHO: New rifters & characters in Emprise du Lion
WHAT: More people falling on ice than usual, this time with demons, templars, and bonus nighttime
WHEN: Guardian 23
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: This month, the arrival log is open to all.

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 onto freezing stone or ice that is twice as cold and just as hard. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself beneath a dark sky, a full moon straining to be seen through intermittent clouds, and a second moon low on the horizon. Its light reflects off snow to add an eerie ambient glow to the darkness, made stranger by the sickly green tint added by the fluttery menacing shape of the rift hanging in mid-air. Be careful getting up: you are at the edge of a cliff, what was once a waterfall now frozen solid in a massive curling sheet of icicles. The drop to the bottom is several stories, surely a deadly fall even without the huge humps and spikes of ice and snow that litter the ground where splash and spray were petrified.

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 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. Some are entirely different but perhaps more monstrous for it: men and women in heavy, gleaming armor, all of them with chunks of red crystal protruding out in a way you soon realize indicates it is actually growing out of their skin. Their eyes are a dull red, hollow and empty, and they attack with a single-minded determination.

Luckily, you are not on your own. Around you others are waking up, equally confused, with the same green lights flaring from their hands. There is stuff scattered about, like the contents of someone's life exploded through the rift with them: a picnic table and benches upended, metal camp furniture flung about, clothes and utensils, bits of wood and canvas and mattress littering the ground. Even better, you are not far from a path leading toward an Inquisition camp, and noise travels far in this terrain, echoing up canyons and off cliffsides, carried by the chill night wind. Help is on its way; just last until it arrives.

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Christine had never approached a rift before. She knew they were nearby, and that they had dropped rifters into this world not too long ago, but she couldn't close them and had no desire to face demons, so she'd just stayed away.

Unfortunately, her study into red lyrium meant she had to go where those spires of lyrium were twisting up from the ground, and that was actually closer to a rift than she had anticipated. The crackling sound followed by the sounds of bodies hitting ice caused Christine to turn towards the rift with wide eyes filled with alarm. She tucked her notes into her satchel and took her staff off her back, moving to a better position through the trees to see. A woman's body went flying back from a demon and hit a tree, and the mage healer took off after her without delay.

Arriving at Hermione's side, Christine held out a hand and a blue glyph appeared under both of them. She set the spell and a shade of blue washed over the women.

"There; that should keep us safe for a moment," she said quickly in an Orlesian accent, perhaps French to Hermione's ear. "Are you injured? I can heal you."

Still dazed, Hermione was just barely able to make out that there was some sort of magic at work, and that it was different from the sort she was used to. A woman was reaching a hand out to her, and she absently took it, shakily climbing to her feet as she looked around her.

Her back ached from its harsh contact with the tree, and her general backside wasn't feeling all that great, either, given the skid she'd taken across the ice. Still, she shook her head, her scant amount of injuries hardly registering when she took into account the much larger issues at hand.

"I'm-... I'll be fine. What's happening? I was sleeping, and...." And somehow she's suddenly warding off monsters on an icy cliff and speaking to what sounds like a French healer. That was a bit strange, even for her.

"There is much to explain and not enough time right now." Her gaze shifted quickly towards the rift, seeing people, demons, and... many objects strewn about the frozen river. "You see that green thing in the sky? You fell out of it, as did those demons. If you have any means of fighting, I could use the help, but if not, you must fall back to safety."

The rest of the story had to come later. The things those demons could do were numerous and deadly. Christine was a healer first, but when faced with demons, she would stand and fight to the best of her ability. The rifters hadn't asked to be dropped into this mess, and she would defend them if she could.

... she fell out of a Killing Curse? Then clearly, this was the most realistic dream she'd ever had in her life. Unless, of course, that thing wasn't a Killing Curse, but then that just raised more questions about what it was, and how had she gotten in it, and why she had a similar bolt of green lodged into her palm. As much as she understood the value of time when it came to these kinds of matters, Hermione had always found it difficult to proceed if she didn't have an idea of the full scope of her situation.

"I think I can fight, but... my wand." Bringing it up to her face, she frowned deeply as she noted the wiry dragon heartstring curling out from the end of it, looking particularly pathetic. She'd seen broken wands before, but never at the tip, fraying the core. "It's damaged. My magic isn't going to work the same way."

Christine's eyes darted back and she blinked in clear confusion. A wand? What was that? Well, it must be much like her staff, used to focus her magic.

"As long as you can control it enough to not injure any of those people, I say use it." Christine had done magic without a staff before, as all young mages have that moment where they first use magic without meaning to. It could be wild and unpredictable. It could be chaotic and destroy. And yet the first spell Christine ever accidentally cast was the one she'd used on Hermione and herself a moment ago: a barrier to protect them from harm. So Christine was willing to give Hermione the benefit of the doubt and believe she could do something with her magic that could help. It all depended on how her magic differed from Thedosian magic.

But time was short and the demons were many. Lifting her staff in the air, Christine cast Winter's Grasp on a rage demon moving towards someone on the ice. Now where had that terror demon gone? Oh no, if it was about to teleport up under their feet... they were going to have a bad time.

Hermione couldn't guarantee that she wouldn't hurt anyone, not with a broken wand. And wand-less magic was... difficult, to say the least. She'd been able to use it in the past, but it had required a great amount of focus, and given how many distractions she currently had....

But then she saw this woman raise an ornate stick of sorts, and by the time she realized it was her version of a wand, she followed the path from it to a large fiery mass that had been moving towards someone on the ice. Oh. A giant wand. And a demon covered in fire. She couldn't imagine anything stranger.

Except then there was a peculiar light under her feet, and she just barely had the good sense to realize that she should try and move away from it when something came leaping out of the very ground as effortlessly as though it had been jumping through air. She screamed, and something seemed to catch her leg as she lost her balance, and she was once again dazed on the ground for a moment, her brain trying to catch up with what had happened to her body. It wasn't until she saw that same screeching spindly creature looming over her that she pushed out with her hand, hoping desperately that the Levitation Spell she was flinging out wouldn't just end up complicating matters.

She was surprised to find that it worked a little too well, sending the creature flying up into the sky like a Rocket Charm rather than simply making it float gently. She couldn't hold it for long, as she could feel the magical energy quickly draining out of her in a way she never had before, but at least that meant it couldn't come at them from below again so long as she could keep it up, right?

Of course as soon as Christine realized that the terror demon was teleporting, it sprung up under their feet. Christine was knocked back, hitting the ground with all the air in her lungs releasing. She coughed and quickly rolled to her side, staff still in hand. Combat wasn't her specialty, so she had to wrack her brain for a debilitating spell to throw at the demon with the limited amount of mana she had left. Luckily for her, Hermione had a spell of her own, and the demon went flying practically out of sight.

"Maker!" she exclaimed as she hurried to her feet. "That works." And it gave her a moment to check their surroundings for more danger. The rage demon was being dealt with out on the ice, and a few wraiths were shooting their painful blasts of energy at people. Thankfully they were weak and Christine sent a Virulent Walking Bomb into one so when it died, the poison would infect the others.

"How much longer can you hold it?"

Magic shouldn't be draining out of her like this. She'd often described it as a kind of energy, but that didn't mean the batteries could die. So why did it definitely feel as though the batteries were dying a slow and painful death and she was going to end up with a giant demon crashing down on her at any moment??

She just barely realized that she was being spoken to, and she spared the briefest glance at the woman with the staff. "Not sure," she managed. She wanted to say that she'd never had to worry about anything like this before, that it was strange, and frightening, and ask if it was possible for magic to simply die away... but for the first time in a long time, this didn't seem like the moment for questions.

"It's going to fall," she announced in a strained voice. She might usually opt to re-route it, to get it to crash against another opponent and take care of two birds with one stone, but she didn't trust herself for anything more complicated than speech. And even that didn't seem like the best of ideas. "Can you-...?"

She was going to ask if she could do something to it when it came falling, but by then Hermione no longer felt the pull of magic, as though it had simply slipped through her fingers. It left her feeling empty and scared, but mostly, it left her with the feeling that she really should roll out of the way as quickly as she could before that demon ended up crashing down on her face.

Christine reached out an arm, intent on pushing Hermione back, but it looked like she knew what to do already, which left Christine to hold out her staff and release another powerful cold spell: Cone of Cold. Then she tried to hurry back, which resulted in her tripping over her hem and falling on her rear. Again.

Graceful.

But it was worth it to see the terror frozen solid and hitting the earth with such force that it shattered on impact. She blew out a breath of relief and moved to pull herself up again.

"All right?" she asked.

Whatever she might have been expecting, it certainly hadn't been to see the creature encased in ice and then shatter like glass. Alarmed, she let out a little cry as she threw her arms up over her face; she already had one shard embedded inside her to worry about, so she didn't need to have a shard of ice join in, too.

"I-... I think so," she murmured softly as she slowly climbed to her feet. Fighting on the ice wasn't exactly prudent, given how many pratfalls they'd taken already, but there were still others further in that clearly weren't given much of a choice insofar as being in the thick of it.

"Does this happen often? How do we stop it?"

"It does now." Christine glanced quickly at Hermione, not wanting to have to tell her this. But it was the only way.

"The shard in your hand can pull the rift closed somehow. It will hurt you, but it is the only way we know." As a healer, Christine hated to see people hurt. She hated that she could do nothing to stop the shard from reacting to the rift as it did. But the demons wouldn't stop pouring through. The rifters were needed.

She blinked at her, not quite understanding what she was talking about. After a moment, she looked down at her hand, still glowing with a strange sort of green ambiance that looked all too similar to the Killing Curse. It was already hurting, but she didn't know if it was just going to end up hurting more if she did... whatever it was that was being suggested. It couldn't hurt that much more than being attacked by demons until they wore her down, though.

"How does it close it? What do I do?"

"All I know is what I've heard from others like you, since I don't know what it feels like." She was speaking quickly now, not wanting to waste time. "You'll need some of the others to assist you, I think. It should feel like you can pull it closed." And that would shut the demons away on their side of the Fade.

Those directions were vague at best, causing Hermione to frown even more deeply. "All I feel from it is pain," she replied, hating not understanding how any of this worked. "I'm going to assume that feeling virtually anything from else is a good sign that it's doing whatever it is it's supposed to do. How does that happen and how close do I have to be to it?"

"Closer than this, I fear." She knows the shards react more violently the closer a person possessing one is to a rift. "We should gather others to help too. But... I honestly do not know how it is done. People have merely said it has felt like reaching through to grab hold of the rift from the inside, and yanking it closed."

Closer than this wasn't much of a response, but Hermione hadn't really expected much else. Of course she'd need to be closer, but that wasn't exactly this woman's fault. "Then I'll do the best that I can," she promised, looking towards the rift again. "Can you get enough people to try and cover me?"

"Yes, yes of course," she replied, bobbing her head. "I can see others now who are capable fighters." Korrin, Asher, Maxwell, the Iron Bull; just to name a few. "Come down this way. The way looks clear." At least there weren't any demons swarming across the ice where Christine was pointing. As for the wraiths, they tended to move quickly, floating out of the way of melee weapons to continue shooting out their debilitating effects.

Gripping her staff tight, Christine made her way down closer to the rift. She'd never been so close to one before, and it just felt wrong. The rifters didn't feel that way to her, even with the shards in them. But as a mage who felt a connection to the Fade, this truly felt like some kind of open wound that she was powerless to heal.

Hermione had no such connection to the Fade, at least not one that she was consciously aware of. She only saw the rift as something strange and powerful, no better than the Dark Arts, meaning that it would probably serve her to know about it so long as she didn't actually have to fiddle with it for very long.

As she got closer, the tingle and ache in her hand grew stronger, and she looked down to notice the way it brightened and crackled. She didn't like that something so dangerous had somehow attached itself to her hand - she needs that hand, even if she isn't left-handed - and she looked back up at the blonde woman again, frowning. "Do I have to say an incantation or do anything in particular?"

"No, nothing is said. Can you not feel a change, though? There should be some strange feeling -- as though you can reach out and grab the rift." Christine called to the others, and those who had been around awhile knew what to do. Amidst the demon fighting, they shouted to the other rifters to pull the rift shut. Of course, they looked as confused as anything at this instruction. They'd just landed here with some foreign object embedded into them and were assaulted by demons. And they were supposed to do what now?

Then one held up their hand and a stream of green light stretched from it to the rift. They let out a cry of pain and a native nearby cut down a demon before running over and helping to hold them up.

"There, now! Do it now!" Christine shouted, pointing at what the rifter was doing.

Hermione didn't understand abstract concepts. She needed instructions, definitive and concrete, or else she was at something of a loss if she was left to improvise.

Unless, of course, it was a matter of life or death. This? This seemed like it fell under that category.

Seeing the one person hold up their hand and then be in so much pain that they'd need help supporting it didn't really do much to strengthen Hermione's confidence. But if that was what needed to be done, then fine. It wasn't as though she'd never been in excruciating pain before.

Keeping the torture of almost a year ago in her mind as a reference, she raised her left hand, bracing it with her right. Her hand felt oddly drawn to the light, which was weird, because her hand shouldn't have any feelings independent of her body, but she just tamped down on any panic that threatened to rise. Instead, she fought to keep her eyes open in the bright green light, the crackling of the rift growing painfully loud around her as other people with similar shards began working together to close it.

Christine's heart was pounding so hard that it hurt, but she kept her eyes fixed on the rift, praying that this would work. The combined effort caused a long whining sound to come from the connection between hands and rift and suddenly the light cut off between the two. The rift, however, remained in the sky, twisting and contorting. Christine let out a shaky breath.

"The rifters who have done this before said they needed to do it several times to get it to take. Can you do it?"

When the light cut off, Hermione staggered back a few steps, breathing hard; this "rift" was still in the sky, and she was about to ask for another suggestion when the blonde woman called out to her. Looking back at her, she put on something of an incredulous expression before realizing that this needed to be done one way or the other. Besides, though it was a strange sensation, closing the rift was hardly the most painful thing she'd ever done.

So she took a breath and nodded, steeling herself before turning back to the strange mark in the sky. She was far too focused on her task to notice what anyone else was doing as she brought her own hand up again, narrowing her eyes as the light grew bright once more.

"Here; allow me to help?" Christine asked, before placing her hand over Hermione's. A small pulse of magic flowed into Hermione's body, and though it couldn't erase the pain of the shard completely, it would hopefully dull some of it and rejuvenate her at the same time.

As Hermione went for round two, Christine stayed close by, alert for more demons and anyone who might be hurt. People were shouting, instructing the rifters in their task, and some rifters were shouting back, wanting to know just what was going on. But this time a few stragglers who hadn't joined in last time were compelled or ordered to assist, and between all of them, the rift stretched, pulled and finally sealed itself shut with a sharp cracking sound echoing in the air.

Hermione gasped softly, if only because she wasn't used to strangers touching her, never mind touching her and feeling magic coming straight from their hands. Wandless magic wasn't used often where she was from, so it caught her a bit off-guard.

She was definitely one of the ones who wanted to shout and ask what exactly was happening and why was she being forced to play such a crucial role in something she obviously didn't understand. But she focused on her task, eyes squeezed shut as the rift grew brighter and the pain grew stronger despite the help from the young woman at her side. Before she knew what was happening, there was a sharp sound like very loud, distinct thunder in the air, and she was staggering a bit, her hand no longer connected to some giant hole in the sky. When she opened her eyes again and saw that she wasn't the only one there who seemed confused and startled, she turned to the blonde besides her and asked, "All right, what just happened, exactly?"

The atmosphere changed as soon as the rift closed and the last vestiges of green ozone dispersed. No more demons, no more shooting pain for the rifters, and plenty of questions that the natives only had a few answers to. Christine leaned on her staff a moment, softly exhaling a breath of relief.

"The rift is a wound in the sky. It leads directly to the Fade: a place we should only be able to access in dreams or in a trance. We are not physically capable of going here." Well, the Tevinter magisters of old had proven that was not so, and now the rifters as well. Christine needed to amend that.

"Or should not be. Some unknown force pulled you from your worlds, across the Fade, and to here, through these wounds in the sky. We do not know how to get you back through the other way. Not yet, at least." That seemed something only the Maker was capable of doing, yet wasn't it said He'd abandoned them?

OPEN: turn off the lights and I'll glow

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