faderift | OPEN ↠ HEART LIKE ICE

OPEN ↠ HEART LIKE ICE

WHO: New Rifters & Inquisition Members
WHAT: A journey south to make new friends and kick some ass
WHEN: Drakonis 15-25
WHERE: Sunless Lands
NOTES: Violence and language assumed. Warn for anyting else. OOC post.

The Sunless Lands are not, in fact, sunless. This time of year there can be as many as eight hours of daylight, some of it blinding where it reflects off of snow and ice that stretches from the southern edge of the Kocari Wilds as far as anyone can see, broken only occasionally by rocky masses of land jutting out of the snow cover or barren tundra peeking out in patches where constant, unforgiving wind has pushed it aside. You'll be traversing this span primarily on foot—there are sleighs, too, pulled by hardy dogs, but they're carrying essential supplies rather than spare people. The only way to get a ride is to successfully feign passing out.

Beyond the dogs, the area isn't devoid of native wildlife: white fennecs hunt rodents underground, and a herd of excessively fluffy wild druffalo is seeking out whatever vegetation it can find. But hunting down a meal or two early and preserving rations for further south would not be a bad idea, because the further south the team travels, the more inhospitable the terrain grows, and the less life can be seen. And sometimes not much of anything can be seen, when clouds roll by and burst with snow thick enough to halt progress entirely for hours.

The nights are cloudy as often as clear, but when they are clear the sky is split by green and purple ribbons of light.

I. THE RESCUE

Two days' journey south, the monotonously icy horizon is broken by something new: smoke rising in interrupted puffs, an intentional signal. Someone is out there. Chances are, it's the rifters, with or without their first group of intended rescuers. But there's no way to be sure. And approaching with caution is wise either way. Rifters have strange powers (and strange personalities), and they've been out here for days now, dealing with demons and Maker knows what else on their own. For all anyone knows, they could be the reason for the rescue team's disappearance. Orders are to approach carefully.

Then, once contact has been made and initial concerns have been allayed, make sure those poor people have something to eat, and try to figure out where their original rescuers disappeared to.

II. THE STORM

After the rifters are recovered, there's still the matter of the red lyrium mine to address. Another two days' journey south will put the group within good range of the mine: not so close as to be seen, but close enough to be able to get there in a couple of hours as needed.

Halfway there, however, in the middle of the day, progress comes to an abrupt half when the darkest clouds yet gather suddenly on the horizon and barrel down on the group, bringing with them a glut of snow that reduces visibility to only a few feet and wind that roars so loudly you have to shout to be heard. Magic can help some with heat, but the storm shows little sign of quickly abating and with hours of deadly cold conditions to deal with, digging in and getting cozy for a few hours might be the most feasible solution for everyone.

III. THE VILLAGE

Shortly before the point everyone is aiming for—one marked by an enormous stone carving of an owl, several times taller than a man, that's inexplicably been left by the ancients in the center of the tundra—something else appears not far to the west. On closer inspection, it turns out to be a circle of low-sitting animal-skin tents pressed down into the snow to protect them from wind, rocky fire pits, and abandoned sleighs. Overall, it's a cross between camp and village indicative of a nomadic group that's staying a while but not forever.

It's empty now, with a coating of snow on most of the structures that indicates it's been at least a few days since anyone was here. Closer inspection reveals personal belongings inside the tents, including toys and clothing belonging to children—and, in many tents, chunks of red lyrium in the center or beneath the skins that form the beds, each piece emanating heat. They probably thought it was safer than fire.

Wherever they went, they don't come back while the Inquisition is there. But the activity does get noticed. A few hours after arrival, enormous white bears apparently moving in a pack come within a hundred yards of the camp and pace at a distance, watching the interlopers with wary interest. Some of them are wearing collars or harnesses decorated in the same style as the tents. For enough food, they may come closer, and they'll turn out to be abnormally tame.

IV. THE BATTLE

The red lyrium mine that Corypheus' followers built when their operations were crippled in Emprise du Lion is nestled in an icy canyon, with massive scaffolding built up the sides of the cliff and too many cages to count, though few of them hold living prisoners anymore. It's a massive operation, but one that's been crippled by its distance from civilization. It's sparsely guarded compared to its size, and other than the cliffs, it has minimal natural protection. The enemy has magic-silencing Templars, enormous behemoths, and a chained white-furred giant, but they are clearly not prepared to be attacked.

Ahead of the onslaught, traps are set and any surviving prisoners are evacuated under cover of darkness. Everyone else sent to fight either creeps down shortly before dawn, rappelling quietly to avoid notice in the dark, or waits at the top for the first surprise strike to provide enough distraction for them to descend more openly. If anyone has been particularly nice to the bears (see above) then it is entirely possible they'll allow themselves to be ridden into battle.

Once their presence is known, their orders are pretty simple. Destroy it all. Leave no one behind and nothing worth returning for.

Fire is a good strategy. Red lyrium doesn't do well in heat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

VILLAGE.
After making a most wonderful first impression, Helena has been kept largely in shackles, sometimes under supervision of her sister, but sometimes not. She does not seem terribly perturbed by the situation. There is food, water, warmer clothes.

one.
It's possible to happen upon her when she is still largely bloody, and dressed in a blood smeared, ichor stained wedding dress with alarming slashes in it, blonde mass of hair made stringy in sections with dried blood. The blood on her hands, though, is fresher, and she smiles if people look at her for too long.

two.
Or perhaps its when she has been cleaned up a little, still wearing a green parker with fur around the hood, but at least wearing clothes that are fresh and no longer reeking like—

well, like someone who was covered in blood and unable to wash for over five days.

She is ripping into meat with her teeth, holding the bone with both hands, and looks up at whoever strays too close. "Get own food. This is mine."

WILDCARD.

Iorveth lets out a dry, half-amused snort at Helena's territorial food habits, continuing to pace up close to her and plop down opposite her, a hand digging into one of the leather pouches at his hip to dig out a few berries instead.

"Not interested." He tells her, head tilting as he adds - "And what would you have done if I was? Launch into another fight and end up left behind in this icy hell?"

Girl, your self-preservation skills need some serious work on the dealing with people side of it. When its Iorveth tell you your people skills suck, you know you got problems. His voice lowers, enough that the passing others won't overhear. "Behave until they take us somewhere survivable. Then slaughter however many you want."

"Yes," she replies, simply. "I am good at surviving."

She has a sort of alarming resilience. Helena is gnawing on the meat, stripping is away from the bone with her teeth. Very carefully tucked away into the seam of her pants is another piece of bone, and she has some of the fat from the meat tucked away in the cuff the shirt she has been given. Useful tools for later.

Helena considers his words. "I do not think my sestra will be happy with slaughters."

Those aren't answers that make him feel any more confident in Helena's ability to get through this journey alive. There is, thankfully, the matter of her sister, and the inseparable nature of them. If self-preservation isn't as concerning as it ought to be...

"You may be good at surviving, but she won't be. Not here."

He doubts even Helena would really stay alive in this tundra. Hardly any animal life, the things that came from the portal with them, along with the camp, were all that saved the group of rifters from having to resort to cannibalism, really. Even if Helena is tough, and willing to do anything to live, Sarah seems softer. Normal.

And there Iorveth goes, hitting the nail on the head. Helena tenses, visibly, craning her neck to look at him, holding herself at unnatural seeming angles. Her eyes are wide, innocent and horrified and searching, all in the same moment.

"You think I put my sestra in danger."

Accusing, assessing.

"I don't think you mean to." He starts, because he's not trying to piss her off. Clearly Helena cares pretty much solely about her sister and her safety here, that isn't under question. What is is the matter of incident and reaction. They don't know the level of patience these people have, and given his experience with groups like these in the past, they're altruistic only as far as it doesn't harm their organization and their goals. "But it will be an unfortunate consequence if you piss these people off anymore."

Why keep dragging a dangerous hostage along in an already hostile environment? Not knowing about the value the Inquisition has for Rifters yet, Iorveth would expect them to simply ditch the girl if she's costing them too much. After all, it's what he'd do, were it him and some stranger he'd picked up on the road.

"I doubt she's any more willing to leave you behind than you are her." Meaning, if Helena is booted from the party, Sarah likely will go with her, whether Helena wishes it or not.

Helena's expression twists unhappily at that, and she looks away. Sarah had promised the chains would only be temporary, that they'd figure some way out, but Sarah could not control everything, and Helena was the escape artist of the two of them. Still, even when they had not been so close as they are now, Sarah came to rescue her.

(The thought casually glosses over some of the more terrible things they've done to each other in their short acquaintance, but all sisters fought. Theirs were just a little more... intense.)

"So I should be behaving to keep Sarah safe." She grits her teeth together, shoulders hunching a little mutinously, like a child who has realised that there is now no possible escape from doing the dishes.

Abruptly, "everyone is too ready to trustings the strangers in their big group."

"There's a difference between trusting and using." Iorveth tells her, voice still low so as not to be overheard. The elf could count the people he truly trusts on a single hand, but there's plenty he associates with for their uses. They don't live in a vacuum.

"We need them to navigate us out of this terrain. Once we hit forestland, or anything less deadly than this place, we can go wherever we like."

Iorveth, for his part, intends to at least follow them to this Inquisition they're talking about, as that's been their only clue of what's going on here and what to do about it. He needs more information before he starts telling people to fuck right off into hell.

But Helena is by no means bound to do the same. All she need do is insure her and Sarah live through the end of this arctic zone.

Her eyes narrow a little as she thinks that over, eyeing Iorveth down critically. The words make sense. Of course, she has been used many times, used and not trusted, used and not valued. It is different with Sarah, now.

"Should I trust your words?"

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aenseidhe - 2018-03-26 03:03 (UTC) - Expand

Okay. Okay. This is fine. She's fine. Sometimes they get people who aren't perfectly fine in the head, which is fine! They can work with this. Probably. Right? Right.

"Talk about a Red Wedding, huh?" Leonard Church, everybody.

Slowly craning her neck to look his way, head held at an uncomfortable angle, Helena watches him silently for long moments.

“Wedding was not red. Blood came later.”

"Not a Game of Thrones fan, got it." It occurs to him that he maybe shouldn't be around someone bound up, cuz they're bound for a reason. But that's never stopped him before. "You make a habit of slicing people up?"

"When they threaten my sestra, yes."

That was an extremely liberal interpretation of why she attacked the Coupe woman, but it had been people in uniforms, an army coming to take Sarah and the others, and Helena reacted in the way that was most natural to her. Strangers could do terrible things; better to take them down before they could do it to you.

And then there was the element of what she would do to the clones when she had still believed them to be abominations, but that was... past. It was in past. We all have a light in us, Sarah had said.

Although her hair is blonde and falls in wild, messy waves, and she speaks with a thick Slavic accent, it's possible to notice how much she might look like another rifter, one with glasses and a great love of science.

"Do you?"

Oh, he'll probably notice eventually. Church is one of the smartest guys in Blood Gulch, but rest assured, that is a very low bar. He doesn't recognize it right away, but it might worry at him the more he speaks to her.

"Only my enemies. And only cuz I've got a sword instead of a gun." Thank god he'd stopped trying to bring a crossbow into battle when he could almost never hit a target to save anyone's lives. "Wouldn't call it a habit. What's a sestra?" How do Russian.

"Sestra is sister. My twin is here, also."

Sarah is here, somewhere. Helena does not begrudge her needing to go and do other things, figure out this place.

She tilts her head to the side. "Are you like us? From another place?"

"Oh. Is your twin...extremely protective, too?" He imagines that must be the case. Unless you're the Dakota twins. Then you backstab your brother by leaving him in a position to be killed.

"Yeah, I'm a Rifter. 's what we're called, cuz we fall out of a rift. So, um, depending on the level of technology you were used to before, this place is gonna be some wicked culture shock."

"Much protect." Many hurts, too. She wonders if that is what being twins means, constantly struggling and constantly needing one another. "Sarah is pure light. She lights way. I am light too, but I blind."

She makes a little motion with her hands, a twisting of her thumbs into imaginary eyes.

"I am not easily being shocked." With a flat sort of affect, the rasp of her voice dragged out.

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motherfucking_ghost - 2018-03-20 23:55 (UTC) - Expand

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motherfucking_ghost - 2018-03-24 12:39 (UTC) - Expand

Rey has passed by the woman in shackles a few times, her eyes drifting to her each time she does. She can feel the difference between this woman and Cosima in the Force, but all the same, they must be related. Eventually Rey approaches her with a bucket of water and sponge, as well as a towel. No one else seemed to be lining up to make the woman a little less alarming to look at, and Rey isn't afraid of her.

All the same her large white mabari, Padawan is by her side, her intelligent eyes fixed on the blonde as Rey approaches.

"I thought you might like some help cleaning up."

She does not have her knife to hand, and the eyes of the dog are sharp. Helena's way is to be prepared to fight, to assess the approaching pair and think through the ways that she'd incapacitate them both.

And then the girl speaks, and Helena stares at her, silent, for long moments as she considers the words. The pause is a suspicious one, eyes a little narrowed. "Why?"

Clearly she looks fabulous.

"Blood isn't the most pleasant thing to be covered in. It tends to stick, and when it dries it sort of itches." She speaks from experience, when she'd been younger there had been a lot of fights she'd come away from bloody. When she was older, there were times when the blood wasn't hers.

She moves a little closer, setting the bucket down. She can sense that the girl is poised to strike, looking for a reason. Rey has been that girl, and she's careful not to move in a threatening way.

"My name is Rey. I came from a rift, too."

"Yes, many itch." It gets something of a smile out of her, like a shared commonality, though it flickers out of sight quickly.

"Rey." She tilts her head, watching her intently. "I am Helena. How long ago you fall out of sky?"

Rey returns the smile, before carefully bending down to withdraw a sponge from the water, squeezing out the excess.

"A year and a half ago," she replies, straightening and holding the sponge out to Helena. She can either take it from Rey, or she'll help her, she's not going to press either method. "You look a little like a friend of mine who has been around a little longer than I have. Do you know anyone named Cosima?"

Slowly, she reaches out to take the sponge, waiting for some surprise blow to accompany it. Kindness followed by brutality is familiar, and when the blow does not come, she just holds the sponge for a second before cautiously starting to wash down her face.

Cosima. The name is not one she knows. There are many names of sheep - not sheep now, other clones, other sisters - that she does not know. Still, hearing that there is another here who looks like her (the false original, the false light) is unsettling. What are they to one another? Are they still her prey? Or do they become family?

"Yes," she lies. "And Sarah. She was arriving with me."

Stepping back as much to give Helena room to feel comfortable as to make sure that any sudden movements can be accounted for, Rey smiles at the other woman's response, not sensing the lie in her words.

"I'm sure Cosima will be happy to have family here. That's... sort of unusual, people having family come through the rifts." With the exception of Thranduil's family, she's struggling to think of anyone else who had their family at any point. It's not something she can hope for, she knows. Still, she is genuinely glad that her friend will have this piece of home, now.

"We are unusual family," Helena replies, with a shrug, and after a moment of delay, attempts to tack on a smile. It's a bit awkward, but that's Helena's whole vibe. Underneath the terrifying and alarming layer, there is the awkward layer. There's more beyond that, too, but for now the awkwardness might be useful.

Whether or not Cosima will be happy to see, she thinks is more complicated. Probably no.

"Are you from world like this one, Rey?"