faderift | [OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

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[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

WHO: Kit + OPEN; starters for Cade and Benedict
WHAT: Just a catchall kind of post for early September.
WHEN: Throughout early September; sometime after Benedict is removed from solitary.
WHERE: Halfway between Lowtown and Darktown; around the Gallows, generally;
NOTES: None yet, will update as needed.

It's not quite mending broken fences with the people he's most recently pushed away, but Kit has taken some concrete steps towards getting his shit carefully pieced back together after the end of a particularly turbulent previous month.

I. A HOVEL SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LOWTOWN AND DARKTOWN

This is his home turf now:

It's a ramshackle sort of hole in the wall just off one of the too-beaten footpaths leading from Lowtown down, down into the dark; but in the morning, there's still a sliver of light that comes through the window, and that's enough for Kit.

Sharing lodgings with some other Inquisition personnel, while ostensibly the safer option, just doesn't suit him right now. And besides, one can hardly call his existence here lonely. Just about every evening when he comes home, he's got to escort the same blear-eyed drunk out of his dining area; "c'mon, Chuck, we did this yesterday--your place is just down the street a way's, need me to walk you there?" Etc. (Who even knows how the guy keeps getting in.)

Whoever used to make use of this hovel left some of their belongings behind; at present, Kit is setting out old crates of random junk near the street. Already, some of the stuff is being picked through by street kids and other urchins.

II. THE GALLOWS DUNGEON (BENEDICT)

Word reaches him via some avenue that the Tevinter kid has (finally) been removed from solitary confinement and placed in a new prison cell--this one far removed from the magister's. Kit isn't sure how much interaction those two are allowed anymore, and decides that it isn't his mess to sort out or clean up.

The guards don't give him any trouble when he arrives at the dungeons and states the purpose of his visit, but give him straightforward directions on how to reach Benedict's cell. Down the stairs he goes, a freshly lit cigarette tucked into one corner of his mouth, and he wanders down the corridor of cells--some empty, some sporting the odd occupant--until he finds Benedict.

Kit stops just outside the bars and looks in at him appraisingly. "Hey," he says--it's a pretty straight-forward greeting, all things considered.

III. AROUND THE GALLOWS

Whether or not the Scouting Division has staked its claim on specific hours for the purposes of training exercises, Kit has set aside time in the very early morning for taking certain members of the division (i.e., anyone Beleth Ashara has sent his way) through some remedial work. To him, the exercises are fairly basic: fighting stances; weapons and armour maintenance; how best to engage an opponent in close-range combat when one doesn't have the training in close-quarters combat. He'll save reconnaissance and other skills for a time after he's sure his current gaggle of students know enough to keep themselves alive in combat.

Once the training session is over and his students have dispersed, Kit takes a smoke break by the dingy ferry that shuttles Inquisition personnel back and forth between the Gallows and Kirkwall, then heads up to wherever the Other Powers research offices are situated.

[OOC: Please feel free to interact with Kit at any point during this series of events! Want to be part of the remedial training session? Go for it. Want to ambush him for conversation in the mess hall? Ambush away! This would also be an excellent opportunity for him to interact with anyone else who is part of the Other Powers special project.]

IV. LOWTOWN (CADE)

Whomever previously squatted in the hovel Kit has recently begun renting left behind a few belongings that seem too valuable to just toss out like garbage. He gave first dibs to the homeless and the urchins that haunt the roads and alleys near his new place; however, after a handful of days, there are some plates and other bits of crockery left behind that he's got no use for, and evidently no one else in Darktown does, either. Kit won't get much money selling them, but he knows of a place somewhere in Lowtown that will take donations for the poor--or at least, they did so when he was last in Kirkwall, after the Blight.

So that's where he is now, milling around in Lowtown after dropping off his donations (along with what little money he's got left that he can spare). He's ambling away from the front door of the shop when he spots the back of a familiar blonde head, accompanied by some drooping, hunched shoulders that belong to someone who looks so generally defeated by life that Kit finds he recognizes the fellow instantaneously.

He cuts his way neatly through the middling crowd to catch up to him. "Cade, right?" he starts, coming into his line of sight, and offers him an easy-going grin. "How's it going with you, salroka?"

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The sword rose further from its box and, with with a beckoning gesture from the Medicine Seller, flew obediently into his waiting hand. Surely this is what had set the scales off earlier when he'd been roaming around. There was certainly something trapped in that pot.

"There is a seal," he explained to the children, kneeling down and gesturing to what might have easily been mistaken for an ornamental pattern, but was some sort of glyph. There was also a prominent crack through it.

"Who lived here before...?" He looked expectantly to the dwarf, hoping he had something resembling an answer.

"What's in it?" one of the urchins asks warily, still keeping his distance. The other one looks as though her curiosity is warring with her self-preservation instinct, because every few steps she edges closer, she seems to come back to herself and scurry away again.

"Who lived here before...?" the strange elf asks Kit, and that question directed at him drags his attention away from the bizarre sword to the elf's face. He stares at him for a moment, slack-jawed, then chafes a hand against the back of his neck, shrugging.

"Couldn't tell you," he says, but continues to give his unexpected guest a wide berth; he's clearly more than he seems to be, and whether or not that includes a friend or ally remains to be seen. He approaches the children to stand nearer to them, prepared to step in and defend them in the event something truly horrific comes out of that pot. "You trying to tell me I moved into a haunted house?" he asks at last, and though he's trying for levity, he looks rather genuinely Creeped Out by this development. (That sodding landlord's asking price was way too low; should've been a red flag.)

"I am not sure," the Medicine Seller replied. He wasn't well versed in Thedas's demon types. If this were an urn, it was likely some manner of ash wraith, but he couldn't be certain. "It wants out."

As if on cue, the pot wobbled. From his sleeve, a folded bit of paper rolled into his palm, unfurled and promptly pasted itself over the crack in the pot. Strange black writing appeared on the charm, and promptly changed into an eye-pattern. The pot was still once again.

"Be quiet for a little while," he chided it, before returning his full attention to Kit.

"The scales have only pointed to this so far," he explained. "Though I would be remiss not to ask if you've noticed anything unusual."

"It wants out."

"Well tough sodding luck for it," Kit replies, his eyes fixed on that pot--urn--whatever piece of crockery with growing unease. Remembering the two children, he shoots them both a firm look. "Don't you two nugs have anywhere better to be?"

"No," one of them answers dumbly, but once Kit starts to turn towards them, they both high-tail it up the street and out of sight. Kit feels a momentary pang of guilt for frightening them--they're just children--but better they be afraid of him than witness something horrible coming out of that pot.

As for the rest--had he noticed anything unusual? Kit frowns, wracking his brain for any details about his new dwelling he might have missed. He slowly shakes his head, but already is examining the inside of his home with increasing foreboding. "I'm no expert in this shit, salroka," he mumbles; a bit forward to refer to the fellow as such, but they were, at least for a time, travel companions in the Korcari Wilds, and therefore not complete strangers. "But if you wanna come in and take a look, be my guest."

"Thank you," the Medicine Seller said, once the children were gone. He knew that to get at whatever was lurking in the pot, he'd have to open it sooner or later. If the children weren't involved, then that would be an unnecessary risk to their lives. And he never was one to let someone die needlessly.

When Kit offered him a look around, the Medicine Seller nodded.

"If it would not be an inconvenience," he said slowly. "There may be other such things."

Besides, he liked nosing into other people's homes.

"There may be other such things."

"Oh. Great." Certainly explains why the turnover rate in this particular hovel was so damn high; he'd just assumed it was the burglars.

He leads the Medicine Seller in through the front door of his shack; it's almost literally a hole in the wall composed of a small living area on ground level, and a sleeping area up a rickety ladder positioned in the corner. There's almost nothing of any real value left in the place, either having been picked over by scavengers before Kit moved in, or having been dumped on the street by Kit himself in an effort to get rid of stuff he just doesn't need.

To give them a little light, Kit lights the lamp on an ancient-looking wooden table next to a wood-burning stove, then folds his arms over his chest and watches the Medicine Seller at work. He's low-key having the panic attack to end all panic attacks (magic shit is weird even when it isn't potentially haunting his house), but he's pretty chill about it.

"So, uh," he starts, an attempt at making small talk while this weird as hell encounter goes down. "That business down in the Korcari Wilds was something else, don't you think?"

The Medicine Seller removed his sandals at the door, and peered around the gloom of the hovel curiously. He was always interested to see how others lived, but it seemed Kit had hardly made himself at home yet.

He didn't ask why he didn't stay in the much cleaner and safer quarters provided to the Inquisition. The answer in that regard was almost universal.

"It was a curious venture. A shame she only came away with more questions."

He'd have liked to have met Flemeth, if only to confirm a hypothesis he'd been nursing at the back of his mind.

He cast Kit a sidelong glance.

"You seem ill at ease."

In retrospect, bringing up the Korcari Wilds in his present mental state was not the wisest choice he's ever made. For his part, Kit would just as soon never run across Flemeth in person, especially after the cryptic words they'd all received from the Chasind shaman. He grimaces and tries not to think on them.

"You seem ill at ease."

"What? Oh, no," Kit begins, quickly waving off the Medicine Seller's concern with an idle hand gesture. "No, I'm fine. Just, you know. ...Is there anything else--" anything else possessed, "--in this place?"

As if to answer Kit's question, the set of scales he carried gently tipped in the direction of... a wall.

The Medicine Seller seemed hardly surprised by this. Rather, he opted to go investigate.

Or rather, to stand in front of it and stare curiously at a patch of stone and mortar that seemed a tad bit newer than the rest of the building.

"Tell me," he said calmly, his eyes not leaving the spot, "are you strong enough to break this down...?"

Kit blinks. "...what--the wall?"

He'd noticed the tipping of those scales; he's been on the surface long enough to have witnessed many different brands of magic (enough to dislike them all almost uniformly), but that's one of the strangest manifestations of it he's ever seen. Very reluctantly, he moves to stand beside the Medicine Seller and grimaces uneasily at the uneven surface of the stone section of the wall.

"...I'll get my axe," he says heavily, and turns to find it where he leaves it propped up against the other side of the hovel.

He's got a bad feeling about this.

There was a crunch as Kit and his axe made short work of the soft mortar. As bits of stone crumbled to the floor, a desiccated hand slipped out of the new hole, bits of leathery flesh still clinging to the bony fingers. It was still, motionless, though the positioning of its fingers looked as though it was pointing to something just beyond their line of sight.

Outside, there was a loud crack that sounded very much like a pot shattering. There were also several screams and the general cacophony of people fleeing for their lives from an Ash Wraith that had just unfurled from a dusty old urn.

"Oh dear," said the Medicine Seller, "I had quite forgotten about the pot."

"Well, shit."

Kit doesn't jump back when the desiccated bones clatter to the floor of his hovel, though he does step to the side and chafe a hand across his bald head. "I knew the rent here was too sodding low--" That's when the pot breaks, the ash wraith roils into sight beyond the threshold of his hovel, and the streets are suddenly filled with the sound of terrified screams and something that could be the growl of a hellhound, if hell existed and had hounds in it.

"Oh dear, I had quite forgotten about the pot."

"Yeah, I think you pissed it off," Kit snaps at him, baffled, then turns quickly to snatch up his other axe from where it remains against the wall. "Tell me you can fight," he adds, already en route to the door.

"I have some experience," he said in that vague tone he always adopted when he didn't want to admit to not being completely useless, in case anyone ever expected him to do actual work heaven forbid.

"On the bright side, when this is done you could sell at a profit."

One of the children must have come back for the pot, as the Ash Wraith was now bearing down on the urchin.

The Medicine Seller didn't even hesitate. He sent the paper charms flying with one swift gesture and they attached themselves to the creatures writhing body, inhibiting much of its mobility.

"On the bright side, when this is done you could sell at a profit."

A short laugh, half-genuine and half-terrified, and then, "Yeah, 'cause it's definitely a sellers' market around here," he retorts, not stopping as he barges through the doorway and towards the wraith.

The sudden flurry of paper charms whizzing past his head and slapping themselves onto the monster causes him to glance back at the Medicine Seller once in some confused admiration--all right, the guy can fight--but the moment is over in a heartbeat. Axes out, Kit lunches forward and embeds the business end of both weapons deep into what passes for the wraith's back, hard muscles in his arms bulging with tension as he hauls it back from the screaming urchins.

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[OPEN] A new world hangs outside the window

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