[ CLOSED ] MISSION: THE STILL RUINS

[fleurdesel]

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.

Comments

[laurenande]

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?"

[extramural]

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."

[laurenande]

"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.

[tactical_alert]

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.

[extramural]

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.

[fleurdesel]

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.