faderift | [ CLOSED ] MISSION: THE STILL RUINS

Entry tags:

[ CLOSED ] MISSION: THE STILL RUINS

WHO: Adelaide, Galadriel, The Outsider, Korrin, Malcolm Reed
WHAT: Exploring The Still Ruins
WHEN: Bloomingtide 19
WHERE: The Still Ruins
NOTES: Demons, Research, Ancient Tevinters, Canon Typical Violence, Sass, etc.

The Courtyard is empty by the time they arrive. Stray crates and casks, abandoned weapons and books litter the ground. More recent signs of Venatori activity where recent is a relative enough term. Within, adjacent to the gate there's a table stacked with books, a note tucked into the pages of one left half open, exposed to the elements.

Morven,
Alexius has failed. The work here thus becomes all the more vital. Secure the site at all costs. The Elder One will not tolerate another mistake on our part.

-Servis

In the main chamber- Tevinter mages in antiquated robes are frozen, caught in combat with demons while a strange rift hovers in the center of the room. Stones that had tumbled from the rafters are locked in place, solid and unmoving even when pressed against- crackling light from the mage's fingers in defensive spells remain still. Littered about are notes, scraps of research and manuscripts on how this came to be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And of course the only thing that could make this unnerving, creepy place even better is for time to start flowing again. Right? In a way, the sudden explosion of noise and activity is actually preferable to that unnerving, tomb-like silence, but there are suddenly a lot of vints and demons to wade through. Remembering the main hall and its rift, she does her best to clear the path back to it, renewing Barrier as often as possible and blurring ahead to slice at any resistance in their path. This is not the time to hesitate.

Upon reaching the main hall and seeing her suspicions confirmed, Korrin scowls. Lovely. "Focus on the rift! I'll distract them." Very good at attracting attention, Korrin closes in to get the demons' attention with a Chain Lightning spell, then immediately closes in on strongest

The most important part is to fight the demons while the rift remains open. Hopefully the Tevinters won't attack those who are helping...although maybe having a qunari running around them isn't the best idea.

There are level differences everywhere but the space in itself isn't terribly big. Sword it is, then. While Korrin gains attention, he feels free to slide in behind any number of them to hack away.

"Will two be enough?" he wonders aloud, though now that it's chaos in here instead of silence, his voice may not carry as it did.

There's really nothing Korrin can do to disguise her race, even if she wanted to, so she'll just hope that the 'vints' will remain distracted. Maybe some of them will even possess enough common sense not to attack the woman clearly more interested in dealing with the demons, though she'll keep her expectations low. That way, she won't be disappointed when proven right.

"It'd better be! Not much choice, is there?" And just as a terror demon approaches, perhaps the one she kicked earlier, Korrin gets a small amount of satisfaction from summoning a boulder to send it flying. "Try to jump that you piece of shit--"

"We shall suffice," Galadriel called over the sudden din of battle.

Korrin had moved through the demons with a speed and ferocity that was bracing, a glittering barrier across her. At her back, more or less, the human warrior contends with another demon and the pair hold the path to the rift. The human mages, they who had been frozen in combat, continue their fight with barely more than a stray glance at their company and, for that, Galadriel is mildly grateful.

They did not need to face a tide of mortal enemies and demons all at once.

Though, as the revived mages fall back to the yard, away from the main-hall and the antechamber, their company is abruptly faced with the demons they failed to slay. Stone is crashing around them, the stale air suddenly moves with some whipping force, and the walls, it seems, delight in their new-found ability to reflect every tearing screech and bone-rattling scream these things wish to make.

With only two shard-bearers, closing the tear in the veil will prove challenging in and of itself.

"We cannot fight and seal the rift," Galadriel calls to the warriors as she drives her glaive through the body of a shade and, with a heave, rends it in half. "We must draw the demons away or slay them!"

"Seeker!" It is as much warning Malcolm will have before blue light flows and forms- a heroic aura and barrier bound together to grant him that much more power and speed in battle. One does not cast without calling but- they are all of them somewhat preoccupied. Another tumbling rock from the ceiling glances off the shield she's raised, offering Adelaide time enough to plant her staff and send lines of crackling ice around the field, driving demons away from the shard-bearers.

This is, after all, why she'd brought them.

Shades and terror demons skitter and lunge- Adelaide does what she is able to draw their focus and mind the backs of Korrin and Seeker Reed. Green bubbles at her feet and she scrambles aside, very nearly knocking into Malcolm as she rights herself before the Terror demon tore through to the surface. "I think we ought to focus on the demons, yes?"

Banter is fine when the battle is not so intense, but this most certainly counts as more than intense. So he bites back any smartarsed comment to the elf about what it looks like they're doing and keeps hacking away with the finesse he's honed over the years.

The casting fills him with renewed strength, a lightness to his step that allows him to dodge a shade and heft his sword through its humped back and into the back of its head before kicking it off.

Adelaide doesn't throw him off balance, sturdy and steady in his stance, but he does start. Bloody terrors. "Lady LeBlanc. I quite agree. Together?" Her retreat does well to warn him of the impending terror, and now they are ready for it when it pops up from the ground, screaming awful. He lunges.

"Watch the ceiling."

It is meant to be helpful, even if the Outsider almost sounds bored saying it. Chunks of stone crash around them, making the rest of the ruins shake and more gravel crumbles down to the ground. If they're lucky, they won't bring the entire thing down on their heads. Good luck, however, is uncommon enough in his world that the Outsider keeps an eye on the rubble, pushing with telekinetic force when he has to in order to get the rubble away from any of the mortals and, when he can, to squash a demon with it instead.

For all he's spoken of magic, he has a real sword of metal -- one that he uses as he steps out of something like a Fade Step and into the path of another demon, blocking its reaching limbs.

"Thanks!" That warning actually is somewhat helpful, as those chunks of stone narrowly miss Korrin. Granted, her barrier remains up, but by adjusting her position, she makes the crumbling ruins work for her rather than against her. More than one demon ends up crushed via careful maneuvering, and a spirit blade through the torso. But her own terror demon isn't one of them, and she knows what it's going to pull next.

Hoping to avoid another session of being flat on her back, the Vashoth mage blurs back in the direction of Adelaide and Malcom, hoping to drawn more demons to where their power is concentrated. "Over here, assholes!" Luring them closer, she conjures a fiery glyph and triggers it to explode. The rage demon trailing is left for Adelaide and her merciless ice magic.

Korrin's feint works, the explosion of magic searing across the veil and through the air, and as the shades before her fall into charred pieces, there are more than enough to take their place. The long-limbed terrors and the shuffling shapes of the despair demons are directed, cleanly, toward the mages and the templar. The other rifter stands near the trio, his sword holding off the limbs of a greater terror, but he is best used elsewhere.

It is a matter of steps before Galadriel is alongside him, the creature he is fighting hardly notes her until she drives her glaive between its limbs and lifts the polearm back, toward its body. Her swing catches it across the torso but it recoils, twisting away frantically, and she fails to kill it. She rends one of its arms from its body and, as the limb falls, it lets out an indignant, furious screech. The other arm lifts to swing at her, to claw at her weapon, but the boy with the black eyes is quick. He moves so swiftly she misses the action and drives his sword upward.

He swings the weapon in an arc so very utilitarian it nearly seems put-upon, and it is over in the blink of an eye as the steel cleaves the beast's head in twain.

The creatures collapse as mortal things do, as if they were made of bone and blood, but the heavy sound of their flesh hitting the floor is deceptive. Their decay is a messy affair, a torrent of shadow like rising ash and ichor that evaporates into the fade, and it begins almost immediately. Fortunately, they lack the time to truly appreciate the show and, before the beast is entirely fallen, she moves into the space it had occupied. She does not know this boy but she doesn't hesitate as she takes him by the elbow and ushers him on.

Unsurprisingly, they also lack the time for pleasantries.

"Quickly, to me, while the lot of them are distracted," Galadriel tells him and already she is moving toward the rift. "Have you been told how to use the shard? How to bend the veil?"

Being grabbed was not something on his radar. It isn't the first time, but it is the first time in four thousand years. The last time the Outsider was manhandled, he wasn't the Outsider -- he was the fifteen-year-old boy he appears to be, forced into a ritual that has made him what he is now.

More in shock than anything else, he lets the elf drag him, eyes wide before he realizes they're heading for the rift itself.

"I- yes. Once."

"Good," Galadriel replies almost automatically as they jog to the center of the wide antechamber. The rift hovered above them, dark and crystalline against the sky, wreathed in the crumbling vestiges of the ceiling. The demons are distracted, but there is no way to be certain how long they shall remain so; once they stand beneath the rift she releases his arm and extends her marked hand, palm facing upward.

"This will be difficult, for we are only two," she warns and her hand tenses into a fist. She is uncertain of much regarding this form of power, but her study of the Fade and of the Veil has given her some measure of control over the shard in her hand. Green light spills between her fingers, jagged and uneven against the nearly imperceptible light of Nenya. Neither her power nor her ring mesh easily with the mark, but they can be forced together if the need is great. She does so without hesitation.

"You must concentrate on drawing the veil through, pulling it atop itself, and collapsing the opening."

The instructions are no sooner spoken than heeded; the moment her sentence concludes, she throws her hand up and an arc of green light meets the tear above them.

The demons only have to be distracted for a short while, he hopes, but with the three of them, each powerful in their own sense, together and watching their backs, he's sure he can give the Rifters time to work it out. (Although he might have to point out later that next time, perhaps Adelaide should pay more attention to who she pulls in as a recruit for a mission of hers. The pale boy might not know what he's even doing.)

Malcolm puts his guard up against the terror demon, a few good hits in before, but now it flails its arms at him, and he weathers any hits he can't evade. When there is an opening, he rushes in and swings a wide upward arc, taking off the demon's head. There's no time to celebrate; before he can retreat a few steps back to the mages, one of the Tevinters is overtaken by a demonic figure, and Malcolm sprints into action, bodily pushing the demon back and hacking away in its surprise until it, too, becomes a fading pile. No sense in letting their temporary allies get slaughtered, after all.

Moving between the world of mortals and the world of dreams had been as easy as breathing, once. It isn't so, in this world. Still, there were portals to the Void in his world; more controlled than these actual tears, but things that could be opened and closed all the same.

His fingers find the shard as he closes his hand, teasing over it as Galadriel gives her instruction -- and then his hand, too, is out and open. It's like fighting with the ocean itself, but he stands steady, the unique song of the tear fighting against the rising crescendo of the shard power.

Too many limbs and not enough room to work- a lesser mage might become disoriented. But there is no margin of error, here, and Adelaide wields ice with a pinpoint precision- impaling the rage demon, repelling a despair demon with a wall before it can return the element in kind. That she cannot harm quite so well. "Rinot-"

It is all the warning Korrin is given before crackling bands of golden light skitter their way across the ground to her, locking in a circle and flaring bright about her feet. As the light fades- time slows around her, leavening her hastened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ CLOSED ] MISSION: THE STILL RUINS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject