faderift | OPEN: Justinian Rifter Arrival

WHO: New rifters & helpful Inquisition volunteers
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas!
WHEN: Justinian 7
WHERE: On the outskirts of the Exalted Plains
NOTES: This log is slightly backdated, so it's safe to assume safe arrival at Skyhold and begin RPing there as soon as you're ready OOC. It is open to any characters who would have volunteered to go welcome the rifters, whose arrival sites can now be predicted, thank you Solas. Reaching this rift, as well as returning to Skyhold, will require passing carefully through the active and ongoing battlefront for the War of the Lions. Don't get stabbed.

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 cold dirt and long grass. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself lying flat on stone, squinting up into sunlight and a shifting, blinding green tear in reality.

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. There's a massive, monstrous horned giant stomping toward you, electricity crackling over its purple-gray skin, flanked by ghostly wisps of green light that rear back to hurl bursts of pure magic in your direction.

Your options for escape are limited. To one side, a river; to another, a rock formation too tall and steep to scale. But there's cover behind you in the form of a ruined home—burnt out, missing half of its walls, but still able to resist some damage—and, on the other side of the rift, people coming to help.

Threaded | Flat

For a moment, Leifang thinks she's fallen in the middle of a match. The cold impact and cloud of dust rising are familiar, even if her body has betrayed her lessons on how to fall. The remaining air in her lungs escape when she hits the ground on her side, and an aching hand immediately moves to console her ribs—but now her hand hurts, too.

Broken?

She thinks she's at the end of her dream and about to come to, even twitching like she's somewhere in-between... but she's still lying painfully on stone, and the bright light tearing her eyes and mind doesn't resemble anything she knows. It's uncomfortable, alarming, but she has to see and she has to stand up.

"Gah—!" Her hand resonates with great invasion, as if it has been torn open and her little muscles and bones scrambled. She holds it in a feeble attempt to ease it, but when she regains her vision, it becomes clear to her that she can't sit here for much longer.

Reclaiming a dirtied travel bag she recognizes to be hers, she scrambles to her feet and for a short moment just watches the towering monster, beast, demon approach. Despite the fear penetrating her cold to the core, Leifang even wonders if there is a chance that she could risk fighting it, what touching it could do. Because this is just a dream, isn't it?

But electricity is ever present in the air, and it feels so real, irritating her flesh and wiring her into movement anyway. Dream or not, the idea is resigned to be a stupid one. Her feet, inappropriately adorned in high heels to complement her red cheongsam, move even quicker at the threat of oncoming streams of green light. They narrowly miss her, but tingle her skin in close proximity, and she's scared of it.

But she isn't quite running. She can't stop looking. She continues to study while pacing back, decidedly towards shelter.

Others are approaching in her periphery. Tournament fighters? None she immediately recognizes—which makes sense, because this is a dream. Or it might not be. But she calls to them, anyone, "What's going on? What are these things?" and is surprised at the eloquence of her speech.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Cosima is muttering to herself as her adrenal glands helpfully make sure she didn't miss the giant-ass whatever it is stomping toward her. Thanks, hypothalamus, I hadn't noticed.

She gropes around until she can lay her hands on her glasses, lost in the impact. They're mercifully intact, and she scrambles to her feet, glancing around. Cosima is fairly certain she's not still dreaming, but she doesn't really have time to think about it now because the giant is still headed for her and the handful of other people who are also getting to their feet with varying degrees of urgency. (Her hand hurts, that's... worrying, but she doesn't think it's the biggest problem for now. So to speak.)

The electricity effect is interesting, but she's less inclined to try to observe it when it's being hurled her way. She takes off for the ruined home; it's not much cover, but better than nothing at all, and she figures at least a few of the others will do the same.

leifang - ota

Cosima - ota