OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (PART I)

[faderifting]

WHO: Time Travelers & Future Kirkwall Residents
WHAT: Time travel, captures, escapes, explosions.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, Early Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:.This is the first plot log for False Gods, Great Demons, specifically for the time travel team and adjacent plot efforts. An open post for general Darkest Timeline adventures will be posted separately! A plotting post specifically for the escape from Kirkwall can be found here.

It's been over a year since the village of Haven was burned, ransacked, and buried beneath snow and ice--a year for the snow to melt and leave behind blackened, rotting wood for a new year's snow to fall over. The stone walls and Chantry stand, but the rest of the village is a jagged scar, and the path up the mountain to the Temple of Sacred Ashes still shows signs of the battle against the Breach: toppled carts, abandoned crates, a broken bridge.

Given the debris, obstacles, and lingering demon-infested tears in the Veil, it takes the better part of a day for even a well-armed team of trained fighters to make the trek from Haven to the Temple. Despite that, there's been a steady stream of pilgrims to Andraste's final resting place--and now the site of the Herald's death. More still wait on the road and outside the entrance to the Temple ruins, guarded now by Inquisition soldiers until the recent deaths within the walls have been investigated.

Save the wind and quiet crunch of bones being gnawed on, the Temple itself is silent. The molten-ash corpses that were once outside the walls, contorted from their final moments of agony, have been removed and given rites--but the icy dust beneath the band's boots is still partly bone and burned flesh, and patches of red lyrium still resist efforts at removal.

The bone-crunching comes from down the main staircase and around a corner. Five corpses are slumped around a campfire, dressed for warmer weather, preserved by the cold somewhat but withered and too decayed to have died within the week, let alone overnight while no one else was looking--and with one arm currently being chewed on by a bear while two others amble nearby.

Stopping them from eating the evidence is a good idea, probably. And perhaps as the effort to chase them away from the carrion gets underway, in the midst of the chaos and roaring, someone will notice one of the bandits splayed out across the icy stone floor. She's as withered as the rest of them, save one outstretched arm that's still fleshy-plump and pink where it falls outside some invisible line.

But if anyone does notice, it's too late. There's a flare of light that shifts quickly from rift-green to a blinding white, a white-noise roar and a gust of windy force that propels everyone forward to--

Exactly where they were, except a few yards to the left, and in the last two seconds the few stubborn scraps of red lyrium on the Temple walls have crawled and expanded to form whole walls of crystal. For a moment it's silent again, save the wind. The one of the bears--the only one carried along with the group--lets out a bewildered, irritable roar. Beyond the walls there's a shout, then another, then too many for it to be only the handful of Inquisition soldiers posted outside the Temple.

Seconds later, they're surrounded.

Comments

[arlathvhen]

Beleth leans against the wall, looking supremely bored with the entire affair. This time, it wasn't just a show of Venatori stoicism. If Aleron killed the guard, what did she care? It wasn't her fault, and it'd just make her job easier. But Cade getting involved is cause for hesitation, because he's one of the few people that she does care about. And Maker so help her, she's not losing him to some whack job ex-seeker.

She nods, and gestures. "Do what you have to," She confirms, then pauses. "If you must, just knock him upside the head. It doesn't make a different to me if he's conscious or not."

[lifeofendurance]

Aleron's eyes flit rapidly from Cade to Beleth to the other guard that he doesn't have in a restraining hold. He's weighing his options and trying to decide if he can use this to effect an escape. Four on one are not good odds when one is not screaming on the inside in agony, much less when hindered by the red burning one alive and haunting with a song that won't go away. Still, Cade is looking remarkably healthy and hale which means he's likely been on a steady feed of lyrium... and he can still set that on fire in a Templar's veins.

"You're wasting your time. I'll tell you nothing."

He means it. Aleron has endured beatings, torture, threats against those he loves, threats against himself. Nothing yet has coerced him into cracking. Too much more of the physical abuses will clearly finish him off, taking whatever knowledge he's hoarding to himself with him to the Maker's side. What he doesn't bother with is hiding the expression of scathing disappointment he feels at all of them colluding with the enemy. (Nevermind that colluding is why everyone else in this situation is in good health, moderately sane, and not in a cell... and he is clearly not.) There's rebuke mingled with pity being leveled at both Beleth and Cade.

But in the directive to release the guard? Aleron does so, by throwing the pinned guard into the wall, head first. He crumples to the ground, not dead, but the poor sod will have a brutal headache in the morning when he comes to. That leaves three to deal with.

The other guard starts to inch in with a hand out, "Just come along quiet-like and nobody has to get hurt." Ah well someone already has. "Nobody else." This fellow would really like his shift to be over and go home with all his parts intact. See, Seeker? No touchy. Open door. Walk right on out with the nice lady and trembly Templar.

[onlyhymns]

Healthy and hale is a bit of an overstatement when it comes to Cade's appearance, but it is true that he looks.... much... better than Aleron. He winces when he sees the state of the man, and then again when the second guard gets his head banged on the wall, but he makes no move to stop Aleron. Instead, he steps out of his way when he's allowed to walk out, and is ready at his back to take care of things if the Seeker should get ugly towards Beleth.

[arlathvhen]

Beleth, having been given no strange and dubious lyriums, red or otherwise, does look pretty healthy and hale. And sane. And bored, an expression she levies against Aleron, competing with his disapproval.

"I'm not interested in talking with you. I'm not here for interrogation. I'm a researcher." She tells him primly, taking a journal from one of her deep pockets, and flipping through it. Once Aleron is finished fooling around with the other guard, she steps toward the door, gesturing to the two men that are to follow her. "Honestly, Dalton, I would entirely prefer you to keep your mouth shut. It would make my job that much easier."

The implication, the show that she's making, is that Aleron is going to be repurposed into a lab rat for her. But, honestly--if he keeps his mouth shut while they're whisking him away to the relative safety of the other former prisoners, it really would make things easier. So. Win/win, all around.

She starts walking, with the clear expectation that Aleron and Cade will follow. She shows no fear of the Seeker--she doesn't fear anyone, as long as she has Cade with her. And Cade is always with her.

[lifeofendurance]

Not a damned bit of this makes sense to him. Then again, not much has made sense for Aleron in years. He doesn't like this. He doesn't trust it. The door is open and clearly they want him to go through it. But why? Something isn't right. He thinks. He's actually not sure at all. Wasn't there bad blood between these two? Or was that one of those feverish nightmares? He cannot honestly remember anymore and continues to struggle filtering fiction from fact.

But, there is no denying that is an open door and an opportunity to get out. Get out and go where? Not home. No. That could be a trap to lead others to his family. The song from the red lyrium and the building pain is making it impossible to concentrate or plan ahead. One thing at a time then. Get out the door.

Even that seems suspect, however, and he edges around the room like a cat trying to slip away from a predator. Slowly, sliding along the wall, with as much distance as he can place between himself and any one of the three. None of them are actually attempting to stop him leaving. They don't even have restraints that he can tell. Maker, what is happening here? This seems too easy. And that alone is sending all his warning bells screaming in his head.

Even so, he makes it out the door without being stopped.

[limier]

They’ll make it a few hallways before they turn a corner, to find they’re not alone.

Wren's preoccupied, struggling to rip her sword free of the neck that it’s wedged into. Nothing budges, trapped on some stubborn twist of bone. This could have been easier, but he was clever enough to want her helm lifted, to ask after her eyes.

She glances up at their approach, bare face crusted in blood and alarm. A flicker, before something grimmer settles into place.

"Traitors," She snarls. A coward and two blonde fuckin nerds dead men — though she doesn’t recognize the second. Prisoners without bonds? In solitary? "Stand aside and live."

It’s bluster. If she weren’t at disadvantage, she’d never bother to speak. It gives the enemy time, signals your weakness (lets you lay fingers on the knife at your back, the girl's no mage and maybe she can get it in an eye,)

[onlyhymns]

If it weren't for Beleth, and for that look in the strange woman's eyes, they might have passed peacefully. But Cade's temper is shorter than it ever was, and the moment he sees a weapon, a switch is flipped in his head and he paces quickly toward Wren, drawing his sword.

[arlathvhen]

Even if Beleth hadn't recognized her from the cells, it wouldn't be hard to figure out that Wren is probably one of the people that she's looking for. It is, actually, a good bit of luck, providing they don't kill each other. Which......isn't looking so lucky.

"Cade, Cade! Wait!" She grabs at his sword arm, though she doesn't go as far as getting between him and the woman. It wasn't common for them to have to deal with physical altercations, but she knows enough to keep her squishy and vulnerable body behind the guy with the plate armor. If Cade didn't listen, and stabbed her anyway...well. How would her compatriots know it was him, instead of any other Red Templar guard?

Aleron, maybe, but he wasn't exactly a credible witness.

"Cade, please. Let me talk to her." And she peeks around Cade, to look at Wren. "...I know this looks bad. Cade is just. Very. Excitable. And protective of me. But I think we should talk. I have a proposition for you, that should end in no one getting stabbed."

[lifeofendurance]

The non-credible witness in the group stands uselessly just looking at the others, eyes seeing but not understanding what lies before them. The pain is too much, the song too loud. He's far enough gone, retreated into the depths of his own mind to provide much more help or trouble than his continued mumbling of the chant. Probably for the best he's gone quite mad, because in his right mind, he'd probably subdue Beleth or take off running while Cade's distracted.

Instead, all he's managing to do at present is stand there like an oversized decoration.

"The loyal shield, broken to pieces, found only ash / Left to the wind and rain. And Havard wept / And took the ashes, still hot from the fire, and pressed them to his heart."

...that's particularly useful, right?

[limier]

Well, fuck. Here he comes.

Wren steps back, gives the sword a final wrench. No luck. She'll need to be close to do any good, and that means finding a way around his blade. Means letting him advance. Let his own motion give it away, and maybe there’s a chance,

(Fear is there, forced out distant, it’s someone else’s pulse that’s pounding in her ears.)

But Beleth’s hands are on him, as though he's some misbehaving pet, and — Excitable — Maker, let them kill me before I’m half so excited, And then Aleron’s chanting, and she knows how the rest goes:

His ears filled with the song of multitudes.

How… terribly appropriate. Very nearly funny. It’s enough to throw her, to force a tense pause.

"Speak quickly." If it’s a command, it's meant practically. Kirkwall's time is running short. Her hand curls around the hilt of the knife, just in case. "I am listening."