Firstfall Rifter Arrival

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers
WHAT: Weird people fall out of a rift with demons! Again! But this time there are trees.
WHEN: Firstall 8
WHERE: A ruined fortress in the wooded region between Redcliffe and Haven.
NOTES: This log is OPEN to new rifters and to anyone who might have volunteered or been ordered to go retrieve them. Rifters: the log is intentionally backdated to allow you to also jump straight into RPing in Skyhold. It's safe to assume everyone lives.

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.

In this world, you wake with a jolt when you hit earth and stone, dropped from above by a flaring, crystalline green rip in reality that hangs overhead. Beyond it the sky is dark, but the light from the rift is bright enough to illuminate the stone walls around you--a fortress, once, now a ruin, walls crumbling and beginning to surrender to the trees and vines from the surrounding forest. The air is cold enough to sting, but it's yet to snow here, and with the walls and trees sheltering against wind it isn't so bad. At another time, in other circumstances, it might be peaceful.

No chance of that now. The brief period of quiet after you fall is shattered by a hoarse shriek. Three hoarse shrieks. Three tall, spindly creatures with gasping mouths and too many eye sockets advance on you and the people lying around you, and beyond them, six flickering, ghostly wraiths begin to throw bursts of green magic that saps anyone hit of energy and strength. And there's a narrow splinter of light in the same sickly green as whatever brought you here, now glowing out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions.

But you're not alone. There's that. You've arrived with company. Scattered around on the ground with you are weapons--maybe one of them is yours--and it won't be long before more people arrive, armed and armored and not at all surprised to see you. Just a little late to get here. (Delayed by highwaymen, you know how it is.)

Comments

[kartereo]

"--Fuck!"

It wasn't an elegant opening or response to waking up with a face-full of earth in one's face. It also wasn't a smart thing, as the curse was muffled into the dirt and said dirt ended up in Waver's mouth. He coughed and spat as he picked himself up from the ground, desperate to dust off every inch of him. His stomach was covered in dirt, as were his trousers, and given that Waver had no idea where he was, he at least wanted to look presentable.

After the dirt was gone, Waver took a long, sobering breath to try and get a gauge of the stituation. Or, at least, that was the plan Waver had in mind until the first hoarse shriek pierced his ears. No swears came out of his mouth when he saw the source, he only tried to recognize it.

Too many eyes. Bursts of green light. Something burned into his hand like a command seal but felt far more bone deep than a command seal ever did. He didn't have a point of reference, and that, that was as sobering as it was terrifying. There was no Gray around to do the fighting either, to look after his physically unfit ass and make sure he didn't get killed. Waver knew that too, knew it as he tried to pick up a gnarly looking longsword. He could barely lift it, and so he began to try and find something else. Anything else.

"Shit," he said finally, realizing that he wasn't going to be able to fight, period. He needed a barrier. Hell, he had a barrier, but he knew better than to be selfish. There were other people around. "If anyone's not capable of fighting, please get towards me!"

[anacardiaceae]

Pamelia is not the only one on the scene but she is up front, rushing to place herself between the rift and the demons that have spilled forth. Whether or not people are already fighting against the horrors she throws up shields of light that envelope a few of those closest to her.

Dressed in heavy robes with wild red hair and a petite stature, she takes absolutely no time to throw a heavy glass vial towards several of the demons. The glass shatters on impact, engulfing the area around one of them.

She reaches for the nearest person.

"Come on! We're here to help!"

[areou]

[ clarisse should probably be used to shit like this happening to her. the labyrinth did fuck all whatever it wanted, dropping people halfway across the world by taking a wrong turn down a hallway. it feels a lot like that, almost, except she knows that it isn't. this place is distinctly unfamiliar, and even if she wanted to blame it on the labyrinth, annabeth and percy were supposed to have destroyed it. besides, the last she remembers -- ]

[ well, she doesn't want to remember what she last remembers. she's not about to forget it, either, but thinking about silena right now isn't going to do her much good. thinking about that ... dream, or whatever it was, isn't going to do her any better. she's used to having weird dreams, too, as most demigods do, but this was just as different as the place she's in now. definitely not manhattan. probably not earth, unless she did manage to get that fight with kronos and he sent her here (god of time and all). but that's doubtful, she thinks. she would remember that. she would have died trying to wipe his smug face from the earth. ]

[ at least there's one thing that's familiar -- the crackle of maimer, in tact, even though it shouldn't be. but, then, there's an unfamiliar weight on her wrists, and she almost thinks it's a dream come true, until she realizes silena is nowhere to be seen. she doesn't have time to think how cruel of a joke this is before something nearly hits her right in the chest -- bright green light she barely manages to dodge, cursing under her breath as she rolls over her shoulder to grab for maimer. her sword must be around here somewhere, too. ]

[ she hardly registers the cold (is it the weather or an aftereffect of battling a hyperborean giant and losing?) or the pain in her left hand -- she's fought through worse, and, frankly, it's the adrenaline that really gets her going, the absolute rage that she's here alone, when she can still feel the phantom touch of silena's soft hands slipping jewelry over her wrists. think of me, her voice echoes in clarisse's head, and clarisse charges forward, caring little for the dangers she might be diving straight into. a fight is a fight, and she intends to conquer it. ]

[ whoever might be around to offer their assistance, she blatantly ignores, frequently shouting "out of the way!" she can handle herself. or so she thinks. ]

[martyric]

( for a moment the falling, the jolt, the trees and stone and green flares above her head all take a back seat to the simple and thrilling realisation - the crushing realisation - that there is no longer water in her lungs. her first breath actually occurs somewhere between the rift and the ground, but it isn't until she has a face full of dirt and hands planted firmly on solid ground that she actually notices the alarm bells going off in her head, her chest heaving in a desperate attempt to regain more air.

she'd been a goner. she was dead- and now she wasn't.

thankfully life is just a little too complicated to focus on that little detail right about now.

there's another detail that probably should take her attention ( the shrieks going on above her head, mostly ) but for some reason the thing that grabs elena is her damn dress. it's like something out of gone with the wind -- actually it's exactly like she just stepped out of gone with the wind, it's scarlett o'hara's iconic dress. for a hot minute all she can focus on is that stupid outfit. and then she remembers the ache in her hand, the green glow from above, the chaos around her, the fact that she was drowning literally a minute ago.

any person would be well within their right to melt down, but elena would rather not die any time soon, so instead she clumsily picks up a weapon off of the floor that very much does not belong to her. she's used weapons before, but nothing like this. it's heavy and she's in no shape to be swinging it around, but that's the situation that she's in right now. )

What the hell are they?

( elena directs the question to no one in particular, whoever is listening honestly, because seriously - she's dealt with a lot, but this is a totally new ballpark. )

[cuanifrinn]

It was all relative, where Lancer had been, where he was going, and his varying states of awareness. His memories of the previous Holy Grail War were remarkably fresh -- he saved the girl, he killed his master, he laid out a little weasel, and he committed suicide by command -- not necessarily in that order. What he was distinctly aware of was the simple fact that he died, he remembered the metallic smell of his own blood and the crepitation of flames as his rune magic burned the Castle of Einzbern to the ground.

With those memories of where and when tucked away within the abstract spaces of his mind, Lancer focused on the present state. It was a long way down the rabbit hole until he was finally deep-sixed out of the rift. This was not a summoning and this was not a War, not his War, maybe a different kind of war, but instinctively he knew the Holy Grail had nothing to do with it. Two things struck him instantaneously: a strange sense of lacking was the first and the second was just how close he was to the ground. There was nothing he could do about the former, but the latter had his agility instincts kicking in.

Instead of landing on his face he managed to roll into a less devastating crouch. Underneath him was an unassuming red spear with some rather nasty barbs. His first instinct was to grab that before levering himself onto his feet so that he could take in his surroundings. He had only a moment to assess himself, his surroundings, the awakening ache in the palm of his hand, and the fact that he wasn't alone, before the real fun kicked in reminding him of that strange sense of lacking in the most exhilarating of ways.

One of those spindly creatures took a swipe at him, not only did it knock him back a few paces, he felt wet heat that he knew was blood blossoming on his cheek and rolling down his jaw. There was no indication of pain if he felt it, simply an odd, manic desire to retaliate that oozed through his expression. Knowing that an injury like this shouldn't so much as tickled let alone damage him was curious and exciting -- what else was he susceptible to in this strange place?

"If this is the welcome mat, I'm anxious to see what the party is like," and before the beastly thing could take another swipe at him, Lancer struck first, taking out a few of the spindly creature's spindly fingers with a return swing from the red, barbed spear.