[CLOSED] PLAYER PLOT: The Ashes Underneath His Nails

[amygdalae]

WHO: Jim Kirk, Hermione Granger, Adelaide Leblanc, Herian Amsel, Anders, Inessa Serra, Raylan Gibbs, Ciri
WHAT: The Inquisition sends a group of agents to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious disappearances.
WHEN: Kingsway 1st - 8th
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: Plotting post is here - feel free to post in there still for queries and concerns and further stuff where needed. Warnings for blood, violence, talks about death, experimentation horror, abomination-related stuff etc and eventual on-screen child death. ALSO no tag order - just respond when you feel like you should and I'll try to hit it back if it feels appropriate!!

QUICK JUMP LINKS TRAVELLING TO FROMAGE & FROMAGE GENERAL THREAD ROUTE INVESTIGATION SEEKRIT CAVE ENTRANCE INTO THE SEEKRIT CAVE CAVE INVESTIGATION - LEFT TEAM CAVE INVESTIGATION - RIGHT TEAM KID ABOMINATION THREAD BACK TO SKYHOLD

(—he remembers the chill of the frost and snow biting at bare skin, its usual pure white now tinged a horrid pink from the blood on his hands. He's far away from them now, the danger and the pain and everything else, but the blood will forever be on his hands no matter how much he tries to wash it away. His father had been right all along. He truly was a monster of the greatest kind.)

QUEST: THE ASHES UNDERNEATH HIS NAILS (PART I) The message had come swiftly, the letter itself hastily written with a shaky hand. The request itself was simple; a plea for help from a village at the outskirts of Emprise du Lion, whose people have been mysteriously disappearing over the last few weeks. Considering the ongoing civil unrest that's still transpiring in Orlais the Inquisition made its decision to send out a team of agents to look into this message and see exactly what was going on. The eight agents tasked with the mission were given enough time to prepare for the trip ahead. They would all meet up first at the Inquisition camp set within the Emprise and from there travel for about a day until they reached where their destination was - Fromage, a quaint little village that rested at the outskirts of the area. From that point on, it was up to the agents of the Inquisition to solve this ongoing mystery. The mission: to discover the truth behind these disappearances - and to stop it, if possible.

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[dashing]

She wishes, oh how she wishes, that it had not come to that. That Adelaide had been right, that any of the others had been right. Herian has her pride, she has some measure of arrogance, she feels the aggravation when those she disagrees with are right and she is wrong, but not in this. Never will the loss of life bring joy to her, or satisfaction.

Ciri is thrown, Adelaide calls to her, and Herian grits her teeth as she strikes to shove one blade into the demon’s chest, immediately bringing her second hand to her spirit blade so she can put all her strength into a swing to cleave its neck in two.

Maker, guide me—

And woven into the prayer and her will and the ferocity of the swing is the desperate hope that it will strike true, that the sword in the chest will have been a distraction, that she can keep anyone else here from coming to harm.

[circleprodigy]

The image of that child, with the glowing red cracks in his skin, is something that Inessa will never be able to forget to her dying day. No, it's no longer a child, not in any sense. There's nothing left of him now, just as there wasn't in the abominations lumbering down the halls of her tower, just as--

Focus.

Acting quickly, she calls upon her affinity for ice, causing a ring of it to sprout up from the ground to hold the abomination in place. It stops just short of the head, Inessa trying to give Herian her chance. Then she darts toward Ciri with Garahel, ready to guard and heal as need be.

[ichaer]

She isn't expecting for the demon to grab her sword but she grips her teeth, pushing through to try and push the sword further in. She ignores the pain of the fire licking at her hands from where she still grips the sword, unyielding and pushing all of her strength behind it.

What she doesn't expect is it's own strength and although she is thrown to the ground, one hand holds on to her sword with an iron grip. There was no chance she'd let this beast take her sword.

There's a flash from the other side of the table of something that Ciri cannot make out but it does not slow her down as she pulls the knife hidden in her boot and leaps back to her feet, aiming to sink it into one of the beast's eyes.

[amygdalae]

Inessa's ice sprouts first followed by Ander's cage, crawling over the child's ankles and legs, holding him in place. He growls and tries to flare out his flames, attempting to melt it, but that makes him distracted enough for Ciri to plunge her knife into his right eye.

The child screams, clearly not expecting that level of pain, and the pain makes him wilder than ever. He lunges blindly for Ciri, intent on exacting his revenge--

Then Heiran's sword comes down.

It does go through to his neck - but only about partway before the crystallization of his blood happens again and that, too, wraps around Herian's blade, keeping it there. The same happens with his eye as well, making it all a far more gruesome sight than ever. The child roars now, his anger and pain further fueling the demonic fires that burn within, and the lyrium around his injuries catch fire, melting the ice, before he lunges out to try and strike his closest opponent once more. The injuries mean he isn't as fast as before, and losing one eye means his aim is going to be rather off, but the child clearly doesn't care. All he wants to do is to burn and to hurt.

[justice_is_blond]

Anders feels sick. All the pain that the child has been through, and now there's more because of what had been done to him. The stuffed nug is finally stuffed into a pouch before he grasps his staff with both hands and wraps the blade and half the staff in a sharp-edged ice spike.

A moment later he's stepping forward and swinging, which puts him possibly in reach of the thing but at least the ice may counter the fire of rage and meet Herian's blade in the middle of the poor boy's neck.

[dashing]

Herian realises that her spirit blade is caught in the child’s neck— demon, not a child, it’s a demon —and tries, desperately, to force her weight behind it to keep cutting through, as if the crystals growing and warping around the blade and sealing what progress she had made makes it seem impossible. She grits her teeth and throws herself into it regardless, doing everything she can to take advantage of the haste Adelaide cast on her.

It should be clean, swift, merciful. It cannot be this. The flames and the look of something that was once a child with her blade in its throat makes her heart start to hammer faster, memories of the tower hooking into her lungs and her heart and seeming to pull downward, dragging with an impossible weight.

She keeps trying, teeth bared as flames of the demon's attacks start to lick over the front of her robes and biting into the skin of her abdomen, but she ignores them in favour of trying to make full use of the spell before it fades, forcing it through the rest of the flesh and swinging it back again, hacking relentlessly.

https://youtu.be/1IJ0k0SRYoA

[amygdalae]

The child is relentless, that much is certain. With Anders being the one who moves that's who the child aims for, an inhuman shriek still somehow coming out from its mouth despite the damage Herian already has done. He lunges towards Anders, free hand reaching for his robe, the flames licking, trying to burn everything that is within his reach.

His hands grab at Anders's robes the same moment his staff blade slides through the flames and meets its target on the other side of the child's neck. The child roars, the flames getting brighter, making both Herian's and Anders's robes catch fire. His grip on Anders's robe tightens, ready to tear it off and sear demonic fire straight into his flesh--

--then he stops, chokes, and gasps from Herian's continued strikes, and the pause is enough for Anders's own staff blade to sink through the rest of his neck, meeting Herian's blade at where it had been stopped.

Instantly everything stops. The fires on the child flicker once, twice and then die out abruptly. The child himself continues to try and clutch at Anders's robes with his last remaining strength, and in his one good eye his gaze becomes distant.

"Mama... papa... you're here."

With those last words the child lets out one last, final gasp of breath. His eye glazes over, and his entire form slackens as the child finally passes on. Cracks start to spiderweb across the crystals on his body, crackling loudly in the ensuring silence, and there's a brief pause after that before they splinter and fall apart, though before they land onto the ground they fragment further into dust that seemingly vanishes. With the wounds unsealed blood flows freely once more, and they drip slowly onto the ground from his many, many wounds.

[apostafuckyou]

Raylan's first thought was Inessa.

He'd taken a few steps back from the child once it had stopped coming for him, so it was only a few strides to get to his former student, grabbing her shoulder and trying to turn her. "Don't look," he said, doing his best to block her view with his body, too.

[universal_charm]

Damn. It's all he can think as the battle ends, swift and brutal. His logical mind said that what had transpired was a mercy, and a necessary thing. He was not so naive as to think that everyone could be saved; knew that the hard decisions had to be made and were more often than not forced.

Even so, his stomach turned at the sight of the broken child. But he would not look away. He could not. He needed to remember this sight, to remind himself how harsh this world was, and so that his child was not forgotten. It was selfish, most likely, but at least no one could judge him for what he did not voice.

Slowly he ran a hand through his hair, trying to push away in his inherent emotional reaction, summon the rational captain. It was over, but they were not yet done.

"I'll go find something to cover him," he said, remembering the covering on the wagon. They could move him with that, give him a tiny shard of compassion even though it was to late.

[fleurdesel]

Adelaide watches, because she can't not. She stares at the crumpling, dissolving child and wonders how much of this is what they knew would happen. How much was expected-

And if this boy was simply left for them to find on purpose.

Fires need putting out, wounds need tending. A wave of cool air for the fire, a moment's weariness and thick swallow against the migraine pounding at the base of her skull before she taps the ground and calls upon Compassion. Eyes and hands glowing a cool blue mist wafts along the party- easing aches, closing wounds. Her face is a blank mask. She cannot afford to lose her composure.

She'll never regain it otherwise. "Herian."

Gently. As gently as she can manage.

[ichaer]

The flames continue to lick at her hands, at her wrists and up the sleeve of her uniform. It hurts but she has to push it back now and focus, focus in putting her strength into burying the knife as deeply as it will go.

Everything gets hotter, brighter and Ciri shuts her eyes for one brief moment. It's in that moment that everything is suddenly over. The heat lingers where her body has been burned but it is no longer so hot. She opens her eyes just in time to watch everything turn to dust and watch as blood begins to pool on the floor.

Her grip slackens, pulling herself away from the body for an instance before she reaches out and pulls her knife from his face with a tired look before. People begin to speak but it's hard to focus so she heads to where Inessa stands with Raylan. All she can think of now was sleeping, she wanted to sleep so bad but all she can do is gingerly reach out for her friend's hand.

"I'm sorry, Nessa." It feels like the only thing she can say now.

[dashing]

Despite the pain from the burns, skin blistering and red, robes ragged and scorched, she stands as tall and steady as ever. Her spirit blade is gone, now, only the hilt remaining in her hand, as it drops back to her side. Even as the familiar cooling touch of healing magic sweeps over the wounds, she remains motionless.

"Councillor LeBlanc," she replies, tone very even. "We should burn the body, unless you have need of it for the Inquisition. There are the other bodies in the pit," Herian continues, a careful control stretching over each word and pulling taut, "that should also be given funeral rites. At the very least, they should be moved and given a proper pyre."

Only the briefest pause, and she looks between the others here. "There are a good many bodies to be moved, if there are any willing to lend me aid."

[universal_charm]

Kirk paused in the doorway, looking back to Herian and giving a stiff nod.

"I'll help," he said, not adding more in order to hide his own swirling emotions, hands clenched to hide the shaking.

A breath, a beat, a captain's control. "I saw coverings we can use to help move them."

And he stepped away, pretending he had control of a situation he did not, a chance to get away and take a breath not clogged by ash and blood.

[justice_is_blond]

He's burned and he doesn't care. Not when they go out, not when the pain eases. The child had suffered so much and they just couldn't help.

Anders is silent as he looks down at his singed staff. Distantly he hears Herian and he considers not helping. If she'd nit drawn... but there's no guarantee they child have saved the child even without people leaping to attack. The staff slowly goes onto his back and he moves to follow Kirk silently. There's still some pain from the burns but it seems only fair. He'd just helped kill a child. Needed to, yes. But he'd done it, and he's not sure he has the right to stop and tend to the rest of his wounds just yet.

[circleprodigy]

Inessa lets Raylan turn her, but it's already too late. That inhuman shriek, the flames, the child's final words...it's going to haunt her for the rest of her days. She tries to speak, to Raylan and Ciri when the latter joins them, when Garahel returns to their side, whining softly and in need of comfort himself. But the moment she opens her mouth, everything shuts down. She slips down to her knees, and gives in since her stomach can take no more, but she hasn't had anything in a while and all that happens in some dry heaving.

[ichaer]

The moment Inessa slips down to her knees, Ciri reacts. She kneels beside her, setting one of her still healing hands on her friend's back for support as her body racks from the dry heaves. She hates this but how could they know this was how it would all end? If possible, Ciri wishes this could have gone differently but they didn't have a choice.

"Come on, I'm not letting you stay in here." She says, taking Inessa's elbow to help her back up but honestly? Ciri isn't far from just carrying the other Warden out of here if needed.

[fleurdesel]

"...we have learned all that we can from him." Every horrific detail that none of them are going to easily forget. They may not have the whole of it? But they have some idea of what has happened here. What holes there are in the puzzle only serve to tangle tangle in Adelaide's gut.

Ambiguity in torment does not end well. "Tend to the boy and- I will join you in the morgue when you are ready."

Her eyes flick to the remainder of the party, Raylan, Inessa, Kirk. Remaining to watch the burning of what little is left? Will not help them. "We should go."