faderift | OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

WHO: Everybody present for the effort to draw out the Nightmare.
WHAT: Oh no.
WHEN: 28-30 Bloomingtide
WHERE: THE FADE as it exists, approximately, in an incomprehensible nongeographical way, alongside the Western Approach.
NOTES: You can only participate in this plot if you signed up in advance. (Not really, this is a joke.) For driveby GM taunting or to have the debris of personal nightmares appear in the Fade sign up here. Check here for notes on crystal functionality, which will not be normal. (GIF source.)

The plan is simple enough, on paper.

Lord Livius Erimond, locked in Skyhold's dungeon since his capture, finally cracks when he learns that the Grey Wardens have moved on and no one is coming to negotiate for his release. There's no mind-control driving the sacrifices, he says, only fear. Corypheus has an arrangement with a demon to amplify it and extend the reach of the song that's driving the Wardens to desperation. Handle it, and maybe they'll see that they're being manipulated.

In practice, it's a little fuzzier. Some guesswork. Some optimism. Approximating the demon's location takes time and effort from the Fade-fluent. There's a rift nearby, but it's small, nondescript. Making it bigger, drawing attention and drawing the demon out onto solid ground where it can be fought, calls for every anchor shard on hand, mages and Templars to assist, archers and swordsmen at the ready. The Herald did it before, at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It's feasible. Just wiggle your fingers, and--

--and the sky opens up wide, then wider, too wide, green light flooding out like water finally cresting over a bank, and the ground beneath your feet turns from sand to stone. In some places it becomes vertical. In others it stops existing at all. The rift sprawls and spiders out with almost sentient aim, encompassing everyone it can reach. It takes two seconds, maybe three.

Then it closes.

I. THE NIGHTMARE

The good news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly. The bad news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly.

So if you find a second to to wonder where you are, there are two possible answers. The first is the raw Fade, where few have trod since the ancient magisters entered the Golden City and began the Blight. The City is Black now and it hangs in the distance, always on the horizon, always visible, but never within reach. The light is sickly green and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, creating shadows from any and all directions. What direction is up and what direction is sideways is open for debate anyway. The ground--if it can be called that when it is only sometimes below you--is dark and rough, all crags and cliffs and spires. It's wet, too, with puddles and stagnant streams wound through the rock.

The second possible answer to the question of where, and the one that might warrant even more attention than the first, is right on top of a damn demon.

The Nightmare is massive, as large as a small fort. It has a dozen legs and at least twice as many eyes; a warm, civilly sinister voice that knows your deepest and darkest fears; and a seemingly endless supply of minions. Terror demons spring out of the ground around you with creaking screams. Fearlings take the shape of your simpler phobias: here a spider, there a snake, or roaring flames, a lyrium-encrusted Templar. Fighting through the flood of demons and bringing down the Nightmare will take every sword, every staff, and several hours. Pick a leg.

And when it's over--when the Nightmare is dead and only straggling Fearlings and occasional Terrors present an immediate threat--try to figure out what's next.

II. SEARCHING

Attempts to tear a new hole in the Veil from the inside will produce no results. But those sensitive to the Fade may be able to feel something--not quite like a draft guiding you out of a cave, but there's no closer analogy in the common tongue. A faint whiff of reality, somewhere in the distance, straight away from the distant Black City. There's no sunrise or sunset, and an hour can feel like a day or feel like a minute, but time is passing, and the walk is long by any measure.

While it's in your best interest to stay with the rest of the Inquisition's forces, this region of the Fade is a twisty, treacherous thing that seems to actively conspire to separate and mislead its visitors. More Fearlings slither out of crevices to menace anyone who lingers alone or tries to sleep. There's a marshy expanse that does its best to trap feet, and a field of memorial stones with the names of visitors etched into their surfaces, each with a cause of death marked below. Everywhere you step the ground is littered with evidence of terrible dreams, worked into the landscape like they were there first and it has grown up around them. There are skeletons in the stone, rock formations that twist into the shape of gallows, lost toys underfoot, an entire home tucked down a winding path, achingly empty.

III. ESCAPE

The Nightmare is dead, but its absence creates new reasons to fear. It begins slowly, things crumbling: the edge of a stair giving way unexpectedly, a towering hunk of rock a ways off collapsing upward into the open air and reforming there. The path rearranges as it's walked and takes wanderers in different directions, leaving them to fight their ways back to the main group. It was the concentration of fear and willpower embodied in the Nightmare that held this domain of the Fade intact, and without it, there's a power vacuum to fill. The spirits drawn here are drawn by lingering fear, and warped by it.

The forms they take may not be those you're familiar with from outside the Fade--less deformed, more malleable, more insidious, the things you most or least want to see. Those who long for safety may find a gentle Desire demon willing to offer it. Those whose fears stem from insecurities may hear the whispers of lurking Envy, mimicking their voices from its hiding place, cautiously testing for a foothold. If fear only pisses you off, be prepared to face your Rage. And if you refuse to be afraid--if you have this under control, if you know you'll be all right--a smiling embodiment of Pride may appear to praise your prowess and ask you to put those skills to other uses.

Whatever form your demons take, they are distractions from the larger issue: this part of the Fade is collapsing, unstable, and not meant for creatures like you to survive in. As important as it is to face your fears, it may in the end be more important to run from them. Regroup, keep moving, take head counts. There's a rift ahead, small enough to slip through one at a time, out into the desert, with its bright sun and relatively solid ground--and however long it feels like you've been walking, days or weeks, Adamant Fortress is visible across the sand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Her bow clatters from her hands when the demon collapses inward, as the ruined mess of rags lies there, and she feels sick with the memory of Peter's remains so similarly heaped in snow. There had been more blood, then, but she can smell her own so strongly that it feels like she has a copper penny resting on the back of her tongue.

Breathe deeply feels more like Adelaide is asking her to attempt an Olympic hundred metre dash in heels; she suspects it shows on her face.

Okay, she means to say, but all she actually gives is a slow nod and her fingers twisting into the cloth of Adelaide's robes, and an entirely different set of words. "You don't have to do this."

Her search for other wolves lead her to Thedas, instead of home. Her search for Emma has lead her to more dead ends than she thought were possible in a matter of weeks. More steadily, with a smile that comes from practice with smiling when you don't feel like you can, "You don't have to, Adelaide."

So focused on easing the ice from her flesh, on helping Ruby sit against her own gravestone (and while refusing to think of the possible irony in dying above a grave marker with your name) Adelaide doesn't quite parse the meaning. Compassion is a song, pressed tight against her back, those glowing blue hands curled around hers as they apply pressure to torn flesh and blood. Weary as she is, tense as she is, needing the soothing the gesture would offer Adelaide hums under her breath in harmony with a melody only she can hear-

But in the Fade perhaps Ruby can as well, the warm, easy swell of Compassion's voice promising relief from the pain. That is what they can mend, that is what they are meant to mend. The deeper, blacker aching hole, the loss, the loneliness snaps through them both like a crossbow's bolt.

"I do." She snaps. Harsh where Ruby is attempting to be kind, furious with her resignation. "This is my purpose. What good is my magic if I let you die? What is the point of me if I let you bleed out?"

Funny story, Ruby's been shot by a crossbow bolt. Not really fun, but her Granny had good aim, so at least it hadn't been lethal. Just silver-tipped and agonising.

Her eyes shut for a second, mouth still caught in a smile. She's used to dealing with anger. A lot of people have been angry with her. Usually for pretty good reasons, too.

"What's mine if you don't?" But she sighs, regrets the action as it makes her abdomen tense and jar at the remaining glass. "And I'm sure there's plenty of people who'd benefit from you saving it. Peter was right. I should've died and not him."

That's not what the demon said, but, you know.

"FIND one. If you cannot then I shall think of one for you and I do not give a single fuck if you like it or not." A benefit to having done this work for so long, so well, and so often? Adelaide can very well snap and glare and yell at Ruby while the spell works, while blood stills and the wound begins to close little by little. It is deep and the pain is great but she will not, under any circumstances, leave Ruby like this.

It does not matter if she hates her afterward.

Eyes burning bright, glowing with Compassion's power, she snarls. "You do not make amends for past wrongs by giving up and dying, Ruby. That is laziness. That is cowardice. You make amends, you atone by living. Maybe you should have died- but you didn't. You lived, you are here now, and you will continue to live because here you have a chance to be more than whatever monster you might wish to make of yourself back home!"

Edited 2016-06-01 06:26 (UTC)

The glow in her eyes and the-- the vicious kind of caring in her tone are uncomfortable. The tone feels like it could fall close to Regina's maliciousness and her scorn, the strangeness of this smacks of the powerful witches and wizards back home, though she's never had them stitching her flesh back together before.

All magic comes with a price, though, and she wonders what the cost of this will be even if she knows Adelaide hasn't stolen her name or asked for her memories or her first born child.

"I didn't choose this." Very quiet, very cold, the kind of cold that comes when you are trying to keep your voice from shaking and it drops low with the effort. She isn't sure if its the pain or some kind of anger welling up in her. Maybe it's not what Adelaide meant, but in this very second she doesn't really care. "I didn't make myself this."

It feels very pointless when she says it, and yet there it is.

"Neither did I." She was born with this. That is how the world works- mages are born and none of them have any say. They grow, they manifest, they are hidden or taken to Circles and taught that they are monsters. That they are dangerous. That they are one bad dream from killing everyone they love if they are not careful. She may not have gutted a hunting party- yet.

She may not have become something that violent, that monstrous-

Yet.

If there is no hope for Ruby to be anything else- what hope is there for her? Perhaps it is selfish, this intense denial, this mending. She finds she does not care. Compassion flares behind her and her fingers twist in the wound, a second spell sending a soothing chill throughout the injury. Taking that pain, swallowing it lie sour wine. "But this is what we are."

Maybe that's the real difference, then. She's startled for a second, but it only really shows in the way her eyebrows raise a little, before they settle back into something softer. Something more understanding, really. The difference between magic here and magic at home was that it wasn't something you could embrace or deny. Regina had chosen her magic, she thought, if she understood Snow's words and the implications of the past thirty years properly. Rumpelstiltskin has chosen to become the Dark One, and so had Emma.

She's half a moment from saying something when Adelaide's fingers pry into the injury and she winces, head tilting back as she bares her teeth and she clenches her hands into fists that close around Adelaide's robes rather than her shoulder or her arm because Wolves have a devastating kind of strength. Ruby's forcing herself to breathe, and when Compassion steps in with something soothing she finds the exhale comes easier - minutely, but hey. She'll take it.

All magic comes with a cost, and she has to wonder just how big the costs are for Adelaide. Any mage, really, but for Adelaide when she reaches into people and pulls them back together. Without too much hesitation, Ruby loosens her grip at Adelaide's shoulder, anchoring her thumb against Adelaide's jaw, rest her hand so that her fingers splay against her cheek.

"Your magic is like nothing I've ever seen before." Which is true. Equally true, and couple with a breath of laughter, "you will not become a monster. Probably because you're too stubborn." (That last part is an afterthought, but there you are.) "What you are saves people. You care about people--" her breath catches with pain, but she's going to keep going. "That's the root of this, right? You care. That's important."

And it's not a double standard 1. because she says so 2. because the root of Ruby's strength likes to eat people.

If she could will someone into understanding, if she had the power to make someone want to live, Adelaide would cast that spell now. But the bending of a mind is only done through blood magic and that is a line she cannot cross. So she scowls. She snarls. She heals Ruby anyway out of some manner of aching, bitter spite and refuses to think what it might say of her that she refuses this woman's choice to perhaps not live in so strange a world any longer.

Later logic will dictate that it was despair that crawled inside and struck a wound deeper than she could heal and it is that she railed against. But that is later. Now there is blood and a pain she leeches away with a thought, eyes flicking from Ruby's face back to the wound.

A little like stitching and a lot like shaping clay her will twists her magic and her magic pulses through the wound. There will be no scar. Nothing to mark this moment save their memories of the exchange. A thrum of pride cuts through Compassion at that- this is their purpose. This is what they do, what they've trained and researched and worked for, and they are very, very good at what they do. Ruby's hands clench and the worn muslin of Adelaide's robes tear, a minor detail that will bother her later. Stitches pop at the seams, the light fabric stresses and gives and there might be some bizarre symbolism in that giving way while Ruby's flesh knits itself together. Adelaide will think on that later. For now there is the work, her hands light, her focus narrowed. Slowly she withdraws her fingers from Ruby's flesh. As cold as the ice had been her skin was warm albeit sticky with blood as she rests her palm on the torn skin to focus on its mending.

The brush of Ruby's hand is startling in its intimacy- one that startles her to stillness, doelike. Eyes wide and jaw tense under that hand she waits. For a blow. For a point to be made. For her to say something. As close as they are Ruby likely could feel the faint trembling that wracks Adelaide's body. Exhausted and afraid and far out of her depth, but she forces her way forward none the less. Her voice loses some of it's irritated chill as she mutters. "You are asking me to not. And I can't."

Ruby's guessed the secret under the work, under her clipped dismissal of pleasantries with her patients, under her vexed insistence that people be more careful in the field. She has lost so many through inaction and sworn never again. LeBlancs keep their word. "I can't, Ruby."

Later she'll feel bad about tearing the robes. Later she'll feel bad about putting Adelaide in this position, and asking her to just let her die, and she's not sure where that fits on a scale with shackling a friend in a library and leaving them there as you go to hand yourself over to a mob lead by a king that wants to see you torn to pieces. She hadn't known how to make that up, and she won't know how to make this up, and she'll think that there truly isn't anything she can't screw up, from odd acquaintances that aren't exactly a friend yet right through to her efforts to die, or to simply-- not live.

She can buy replacement robes. She can't ask Adelaide to forget.

The proximity and the pain have her hyperaware, senses sharpened on the whetstone of searing and soothing in alternation. Adelaide doesn't feel unsteady, exactly. That doesn't seem the right word for it. She feels like a bowstring pulled tight by exhausted arms; able to loose an arrow and hit a mark, fly true, but fighting all the harder to do it. (Part of her is aware of the wet fabric of her shirt, torn open, parts of it sticking to her skin from smeared blood, other parts tranlucent and clinging from the melted ice. They must look like a sight, she realises, without much concern.)

She is silent, and she doesn't move her hand from Adelaide's jaw as she watches her intently, studying and searching, green eyes focused even as the pupils are blown with pain and her breath feels a little unsteady.

"I won't ask again." That's a promise, at least. She can't make promises about her own fate right now, but she can make a promise about that. And she can press her opposite hand over Adelaide's as her magic keeps piecing her back together. "You can do this. You can get through this." Certain, the kind of certainty and steadiness and hope that Ruby reserves for other people.

The Fade. The magic. Everything, really. She can get through everything.

"I wouldn't listen if you did." It isn't a promise so much as a statement of fact. To deny Compassion their purpose was to court tainting them. There was no telling where that line was, how often was too often- besides. There is a contract to keep. That will be the excuse she throws up over and over at any that make their demands. Why care. Why try. Why break her back for people not even of this world-

It is because they are not of this world that she tries so hard for them. They are not meant to die here.

Ruby is not meant to die here.

The wound closes under Adelaide's hand without much fanfare, the glow slowly fades from her eyes leaving only the usual weary, winter's blue. The skin below bruised a dark purple, her hair matted to her forehead and nape from sweat and a little of her own blood long since dried, the usual precisely pinned mass a loose snarl and tangle of braids hastily knotted in place to hold until she had time to actually fix it. None of them expected this. But the only way out is through. For a moment she closes her eyes to shut out that piercing scrutiny, far too intense for her to bear. She softens, she sags, bowing forward in an exhausted curve now that the danger was past. Forehead almost resting against Ruby's she sighs. "So will you. I need a new research assistant."

As she said. She would find a purpose for Ruby if she liked it or not. It isn't, probably, the wisest course, or the kindest, or the most just. But it is the one thing she can think of to say that might stick with Ruby long enough to see her out of this place in one piece. "If you've no caring for your life, fine. But you cannot throw it away until I am done with you."

Her eyes open, infinitely weary, but certain all the same. Determined. "And I am not yet done."

Stubborn, just like she said. Stubborn people are a recurring theme in Ruby's life, apparently.
"A... research assistant."

As if she's tasting the words for the first time, testing them and trying to work out how they're meant to sound rolling off her tongue. Research assistant. For a moment she remembers her brief tenure as Sherriff's deputy slash lackey slash coffee girl, but she doesn't tense up. She misses Storybrooke and everyone from home, and sometimes she misses just being Ruby without the memories of Red.

"Hang on." First thing first, Ruby shifts her leg so that she can hook it around and behind Adelaide's a means to keep her close before some inevitable shift away can occur.
Ruby's own shirt is already a mess. With barely any effort she tears a clean piece away, no blood and grime, resting it on her thigh as she unstoppers a waterskin and splashes it over it. Hand still bloodied, but moving with care, she bunches it up and holds it up, slowly. She's sitting on her own grave, leaning against a woman that cared enough to pull her flesh back together despite knowing what she is, and she has literally nothing to offer except easing a little discomfort. The water isn't especially cold, but its cool enough as Ruby starts to wipe some of the dried blood and sweat and dirt from Adelaide's brow and temple.

Actually answering any of that is hard - words stick in her throat, clawed and vicious as the rest of her and impossible to dislodge. Words like thank you and I won't let you down and you probably could use a better assistant, actually. "So does that mean I have to call you boss now, or--?"

Another of those smiles, the ones that appear no matter how unhappy she is and are impressively convincing for the few seconds before they fade away, coupled with a slight quirk of her brow. Smiles cover all manner of sins, really.

Edited 2016-06-01 09:44 (UTC)

And with that, it seems, the worst of the despair has passed. For now. Until the next demon decides to jab them in the gut with a shard of ice- though it would likely be another of Ruby's. Pride has ever favored Adelaide. Even if she'd honestly prefer the simplicity of a Despair or Desire demon to contending with one of those bastards today. Or tomorrow. Or...ever again.

"Yes. A research assistant." Adelaide begins to pull away to find her feet and stand so they could move on before something else tried to kill them. Or just to tip backward and rest for awhile. But there is movement and the curl of a limb tangling in her robes and set around hers in another moment of startling intimacy that has her too shocked at the casual means in which it's offered to even complain. If anything she wastes the moment staring down at Ruby's leg like it would explain what it was doing there and as such, misses the gist of what Ruby is doing until there's fabric dabbing at her skin.

She's taken back to the conversation on cold compresses and bites back a laugh despite herself. She must remain composed, she's lost enough of it here. Then Ruby asks that and the damn breaks- Adelaide closes the distance to rest her forehead against Ruby's shoulder and laughs. It's helpless and bright, ragged and on the edge of hysteria, but it is laughter. When she recalls herself enough to answer she manages, with the wryest twist of her lips. "Boss will suffice."

Despair is the corruption of hope, and Ruby exists in a painful fluxuation between the two. The strongest hope and the most devastating despair, although it gets harder and harder to pull back from the edge, sometimes. Keeping busy helps. When you're working and you're around people, you can forget how alone you really are.

So maybe there are worse plans than being a research assistant and doing something helpful.

And if Adelaide was surprised and perplexed by the leg keeping her close, Ruby might have fallen off the headstone at the sound of Adelaide laughing. The sound gets a more sincere smile out of her, a breath of her own laughter that's silent and felt more than its heard, shoulders shaking with it just a little, and she cants her head so she can keep wiping down Adelaide's jaw, and nudges her very gently.

"You're not getting out of this that easily, I still need to do your neck." Although Adelaide leaning forward makes dragging the cloth down the back of her neck a little easier, so Ruby shifts focus, and the hand that had still been cradling Adelaide's cheek drops to rest at her back. "You sure? Because I think we could make it longer. Chief Captain Boss LeBlanc is pretty catchy."

Keeping busy to keep moving, to keep ahead of one's demons- it's the coping mechanism that Adelaide uses most often. It's why she does so much. If she throws herself into work and research and healing she has less time to stop and be overcome by all that's happened around her, to her.

It is impossible to forget what she's lost- but the work distracts her from grieving. It helps. Not much, but enough. Perhaps it will be enough for Ruby as well.

There is one final, token movement to try to slip away, more of a vague rolling of her shoulders as she considers standing but it comes and goes without any true effort put forth. This is not comfortable and it is not safe, but it is giving Ruby something to think about other than 'you don't have to'. Maker's breath, what does one say to such a thing? "You can get it fine from where you are."

She's too tired to move, she doesn't say, but she tries to tilt her head to give Ruby more room to work. "Chief Captain Boss- No, boss is enough. I am already Councilor LeBlanc and Lady LeBlanc and Enchanter LeBlanc. I do not need to be Chief Captain Boss LeBlanc as well."

How she manages to say any of that without losing it laughing again, she doesn't know. "You may pick one."

"Lady Enchanter Councilor Chief-Captain-Boss-- and I thought being Red and Ruby was a pain." She huffs out a breath, long-suffering, despite the fact that Adelaide did, in fact, tell her to choose just one and not attempt to cram them all into one ultra-mega-title.

She pulls the cloth back, freshens it up with a quick rinse-wring and re-dampening, before carefully resuming her task.

"What if I just go with Adelaide? Too presumptuous?" Somewhere betwen teasing and genuine, because it's not lost on her, the value of titles. Just because she'd always known a King and Queen as David and Snow didn't mean everyone worked the same way. Some people wore their titles like armour.

Ruby is rarely this close to people, and it's strange. Good, she thinks. Nice. Definitely a little strange, as she gently slides the cloth around Adelaide's neck and up the line of her throat.

"Not what I meant." But she isn't bothered. After the nightmare, after the despair demon- after nearly losing someone she'd taken upon herself to mind? A little laughter is well deserved if not required. If they can't have this, what's the point of surviving?

Adelaide hums faintly in the back of her throat, reaching up to brush her hair out of the way and bare the nape of her neck. With how her robe is torn the neck droops enough along her collar and shoulder to show the rough scarring of an Abomination's burn curving from the cap of her shoulder to the furrow of her spine. A reminder to be careful. To do better. "As long as you do not call me Addie, It is fine. Not presumptuous at all."

Ruby is neither mage nor student nor patient. There is nothing truly political at hand, here. Nowhere the other layers of authority and nobility would interfere with this oddly quiet moment.

Edited 2016-06-01 10:29 (UTC)

"I'm a little offended that you felt the need to tell me." No, she isn't, and she doesn't even have that melodramatic put-upon tone injected into it, but there's a teasing note of really, now that weaves through it. Addie, really. (Although if she were being totally honest, Ruby of the Curse might have. Ruby of the Curse would also have been a shaking sobbing mess upon entering the Fade, though. That part of her is still there, but tempered, and decidedly not going to call someone like Adelaide Addie.)

She feels tired. Honestly she suspects that she shouldn't, because of however Adelaide's magic works - it seems like, logically, she should feel up to taking on a long distance run, or something. Instead she's glad to be sitting, even if the seat leaves something to be desired, absent-mindedly brushing her thumb over the scar before the cloth follows. Some part of her recognises the disconnect between the lack of a scar on her abdomen versus what she can see on Adelaide's back, but her head isn't quite able to put it together. It seems wrong and she can't quite pin down the whys and hows, just that its troubling and its wrong. (Caring for others and not caring for yourself might be a root that she trips over later, frown at, and worry at in ways that may or may not involve being a huge pain in the ass, or just stewing about it.)

"And as long as you don't make any dog jokes or call me honey, I think we'll get along just fine." Lighter. Easier than asking about the scars and the whys and hows, which seems like an invasion. Touching it so impulsively probably was, too. She should probably apologise, but that just seems like it'll make it raw somehow, acknowledging it.

Something she might explain, later. Healing is one thing. Restoration, well, restores. It mends flesh and bone and stops bleeding. Rejuvenation is another spell entirely and at the moment both Adelaide and Compassion are a little scrapped for energy. Give it a moment or- she has two lyrium potions left. They sing at her belt, soft and sweet and tempting.

But she might need them more later. Something might happen- another demon, another spell, another injury...for the moment she leaves them be and lets herself drift in the casual contact that Ruby offers. Later she'll wonder why she allowed this. Later she'll question how proper it is considering her station, considering the rather vague arrangement they've just made- she'll wonder where she chose she had the right to lay claim to a woman's life. It must be some manner of madness or exhaustion or desperation to not lose another person-

Later. Much later. "Miel Loup."

She tests it, tastes it, and snorts a soft laugh, shaking her head. "Ruby, I think, is enough, yes?"

Edited 2016-06-02 04:27 (UTC)

"Red," she clarifies. "I, uh. Prefer Red." Not by a lot, not enough to fuss, but somehow given what has just transpired it seems appropriate. Still, she glances down and makes a slight face at herself, in case that was a dumb thing to say. Ruby is a name that the curse gave her, and while she likes it, while it fits— Red was a name she chose, before. Admittedly it was in part to aggravate a bully who tried to sling it as an insult, but whatever.

There are distinct sounds, other battles and demons and God only knows what else. Maybe not audible to all, she has a wolf's hearing, but concern flits over her expression. She still isn't sure she gets the rules, here.

"We should probably go." And, given the energy Adelaide just needed to use, she makes a quick decision on an appropriate tactic, for a given value of appropriate. "I'll give you a ride. You should conserve your strength."

"Ah. Red, then." Red and White. It prompts another faint huff of laughter as she finally pulls herself upright. Time to stand, time to move on, to try to find the way out. She pulls her staff from where she'd dropped it to support Ruby- Red. To support Red and props it against her shoulder, leaning heavily on the worn, polished, somehow pristine white wood to help her find her feet.

Or.

She would as soon as Red untangles their legs.

"What, are you going to carry me on your back?" Red is not that much taller than her- not enough to make carrying her in such a way at all efficient. "I can walk, just- give me a moment."

Or two, she has to frown at the way the neckline of her robe slips and tug it back into place from where it slides off her shoulder.

Leg untangling will happen. Should. Right now, actually, because she suddenly realises (and realises what she did, Jesus Red) and unhooks her leg from around Adelaide's thigh with an apology that reveals itself with an exhale.

First things first but not actually first but first for addressing that one problem - shhh - Red slips her cloak from her shoulders, red brocade rippling strangely in the light of the Fade that doesn't feel like real light, somehow, and holds it out in offering to Adelaide. "Sorry about the--" and a nod, awkard, to her shoulder. "I'll replace that."

And she will, stubbornly.

"That depends. Do you trust me? And how much do you want to avoid fighting more demons?" The tone very much suggests that Red is offering an out. But: "Not that watching you glow and stuff wasn't super badass, but it seems kind of... draining?"

Edited 2016-06-02 05:14 (UTC)

Legs, untangled. Standing, commence. The usual ache of overcasting and tapping too deeply into Compassion's power throbbed along the base of her skull- within an hour or so it'd make a very fine migraine. Which makes for difficulty casting in the future and a greater risk should they face another round of demons. Perhaps whatever Red has in mind would work well enough.

"I should have had Compassion take your pain straight away. I was- distracted." Terrified. "But if you insist."

To the replacing of the robe. To the cloak. She slips it on with care- it seemed important to Red and she'd rather not damage something that feels so fine, and finishes finding her feet. It is only slightly too long for her.

"If I am to be perfectly honest? Quite a bit- to both." The trusting and the not wanting to face demons. She lifts a hand and attempts to summon a wisp, eyes and palm glowing, wincing against the intensifying of the ache before she gives up on the venture entirely. "The term I most often use with my students is 'tapped out'."

It doesn't matter how her best friends are Queen and King of the Realm, how she spoke with another queen on a daily basis (even if it was just taking her coffee order) for thirty years or that she was on a High Council - Red will always be common as dirt. Later she'll be wincing about wrapping her leg around Lady Enchanter Councilor (Chief Captain Boss) LeBlanc. For now she is... also wincing, actually, but has better things to focus on.

"I'm an insistent person," she says, distracted as she inhales deeply, before retraining her focus on Adelaide. "Okay. Don't be afraid to grab on, and if you need to grab my attention, talk. I can understand but I can't really answer."

A beat, and she's taking a step back. "I won't hurt you. I mean it."

Which feels necessary to add, before her eyes glow that brilliant gold again. This time, instead of it fading away, Red drops forward. How the change happens is hard to say, just that in one moment she is a woman and in the next something monstrous, and it feels like a shadow or smoke or something is clearing away. The Wolf is huge, grey and black and watches Adelaide intently before dropping its head, like that could be an indication that she's still her. Still Red.

"I suppose a talking wolf would be too fantastic even for your world." As compared to Thedas with it's Fade, it's demons, it's dragons, it's magic and mages. Completely mundane and not at all fantastic, not even the slightest. Adelaide nods, pinching the bridge of her nose against the headache blooming and peers through her fingers at-

Smoke?

A crack of song- a rumbling that is almost sub-audible like a drumroll. A growl that is not a growl. Magic that is unfamiliar and yet similar enough to have a sound. She stares for a moment on account of never having witnessed a wolf so large in...ever. Tentatively she reaches out to rest a hand against its- her- shoulder. Red's shoulder. "You are..."

Beautiful, a part of her wants to say, but that would be horrifically inappropriate given Red's feelings on this part of herself. "Larger than I expected."

The Wolf grins as much as such a creature can, a dropping open of the mouth that is neither so haplessly friendly as a labrador, nor as alarming as it might be if she had bared her teeth.

Her senses are sharper now than they are as a human, and her head turns toward a sound - distant crackles of a storm that strikes at a demon's will, and she looks back to Adelaide. A bow of he head and a crouching down to make this easier for sore, worn out limbs, though the Wolf's entire form seems tightly coiled and ready to lunge.

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fleurdesel - 2016-06-02 07:19 (UTC) - Expand

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OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

cw for suicide ideation that I probably should have mentioned earlier aha

whoops!

i'm good at things

great many things

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