faderift | ( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS

Entry tags:

( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS

WHO: Alistair, Herian, Myr, Nell, Prompto, Saoirse, Wren.
WHAT: ( Plot post ) Shady rumours concerning the Tranquil lead to a remote Circle in the Northern Anderfels. Its relative isolation from the rest of Thedas has prevented news from reaching the Inquisition sooner. Our crack team investigates.
WHEN: forward dated, around 21st-ish Cloudreach
WHERE: Salzklippe, the Anderfels.
NOTES: Content Warning for violence, murder, and other grim Dragon Age things. The grief demon threads in particular include themes of death, suicide, and gore. Please add additional warnings to subject lines where necessary.

— Making the approach (group thread)
— Into the catacombs (individual starters)
— Discovering the lake (group thread)
— Into the tower (individual starters)
— Bossfight (multiple group-ish)
— Later Stuff (individual starters)

FOR GROUP THREADS: in order to keep threads moving, I will be aiming to do a GM tag once every 24 hours. Don't worry about a strict tagging order, but please don't tag more than three times every 24 hours, just to make sure no one gets left behind.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The darkness is oppressive, and then it begins to bleed, as ink falling into water. First it expands and contorts, and then it is— gone. Diluted.

They stand in the Gallows. Not the Gallows of current days, but the Gallows of years past, and the sunlight breaking through the windows above dapples the floors and desk of the classroom. Lupeo looks the part of a gentle old woman, and yet entirely herself, wearing the face of a kindly Senior Enchanter.

Before them, at the desk, sit some of Saoirse's pupils. Some may have been amongst those who survived the Gallows, but most are not. She looks to Saoirse, as though curious. The scene is not a horror— yet. Not yet, not yet, oh but it could become so.

"You must have been an excellent teacher, Enchanter. The students are very fond of you."

She knows this scene before the faces of her pupils catch her eye. In the nearby window she spies one of the pieces she brought with her from Starkhaven, a small wind chime made from river glass, that sends splashes of color around the dull-colored room. Saoirse cannot even help the way she glances back to look beyond the group as if she expects a Templar to be standing guard near her classroom's door.

And the children... oh, Maker, her heart aches to see their faces. Faces she never expected to see again... faces she would never see again and she can't help the stiffness that falls over her form. She won't let this demon get the better of her, she won't it use her own memories to break and bury her in bad memories.

"I gave them all that I could despite our arrangements in the Gallows," she says tiredly. Yet the look she gives the faces is still warm but so very tired, carefully her fingers skim over the surface of a desk and her gaze flickers toward Lupeo. "But you will not win me over by showing me these reflections and twisting them in your favor."

"Twisting? Oh, no." You could almost imagine her setting a hand over her heart. "No, Saoirse. I don't want to twist them. I want to give you an opportunity."

On one of the children, a brand flickers into place across his forehead.

"Do you not mourn what happened to them?"

An opportunity it says. Of course, all demons have something they wish to offer in exchange for something more and for some piece of their world. Her gaze never falters, remaining still on Lupeo and unable to help but think-- at least she has not been shown some twisted image of her father.

"They will always remain close to my heart." She says, a hand clutching the locket around her next and calling on strength. "But... I cannot change what happened after the Circles fell nor can you."

"Can I not?" There is a note of quiet amusement in there. "What do you know of the power of spirits? There is a great deal we can do."

Isn't that why people are so afraid of them? Isn't that why mages have suffered so much, because other people are afraid of what they and spirits could achieve together, if only they were allowed? She does not speak those words, but the thoughts are invasive, things she is trying to press into Saoirse's mind without being so tactless as to say them aloud.

"Do not resign yourself to the world as it is. You will only see more tragedy."

The thoughts pressing against her mind cause her to shudder, shoulders hunched and anger visible.

"Do not think myself resigned to the world as it is," she says with an edge biting into her voice. Her eyes narrow and she clutches tighter to the locket. "I am determined to see it changed for the better but I shall do it with my own hand. I will not be played as a puppet nor leashed again... whether it be at the hand of a spirit or the hands of anyone else."

The scene ripples. It is not wholly unfamiliar, but it is not something yet come to pass. Saoirse no longer finds herself looking at Lupeó, but at herself. Identical in so many ways, though she wears Circle robes once more, and on her forehead lies the brand of Tranquility. She is Saoirse, but without so much of what makes her herself.

"But you will be leashed. They will aways find ways to leash, and there will always be those who abuse power."

It's an inconvenient moment to enter.

(Time is fluid here; there are, perhaps, no convenient ones —)

The room is a strange thing to a stranger, difficult to consider in any detail: Memory fills absent gaps, blurs geometry into so many unjointed wholes. Certainly, this is the Circle. The Gallows full of sun. A mind full of it.

This time, when she looks to the classroom door, there's a templar within it. Wren looms behind the copy. A shadow to the mirror Saoirse.

"Enchanter,"

It's sharp. Stepping to Lupeo, Wren reaches a hand to the demon's shoulder.

Edited 2018-04-07 04:49 (UTC)

The scene ripples and, for a moment, she feels lost within it. Her mind spins for a moment before she focuses on the new scene around and finds herself face to face with what seems to be a mirror. It takes another moment before she spies the oddities, the Circle robes and the Chantry sun burned across her forehead. There is no life to those dull blue eyes. There is, in truth, nothing.

She does not respond to Wren's voice, only raises a hand to stop her progress toward Lupeo. Saoirse presses forward instead to reach out, fingers slowly but delicately reaching out to touch the cheek of her mirror image with a saddened sound.

"I remember cold nights in the cells of the Gallows. Pondering, wondering when this fate would be my own," she says tiredly. "I lived in that fear, breathed it but no more. I will not fear the future like that again."

"I will not fear the future again," the other Saoirse echoes, though her affect is flat, without any trace of the spark that makes her Saoirse. "I lived in fear, but now I am without it." Without fear, or joy, or sorrow, or exultation. Without pain.

"People like her did this," she continues, with that same flatness, a slight tilt of her head in the templar's direction. "I cannot remember how it would feel, knowing that."

She doesn't sound puzzled, just faintly questioning.

"Yes... I have been hurt by Templars. I've been hurt by mages, humans and elves. Shall I shy away from the fear of pain once more and make myself Tranquil by denying myself my own feelings? Shall I spend my nights crying until one of you answer those mournful sounds?"

She shakes her head, sighing once more and looking at the creature wearing her face almost with a touch of sadness.

"I won't be that person again because I know I am loved. I am... I can fall in love and I survived true grief in the Gallows. You're but a shadow of that grief, of Meredith. I will not be that scared girl again."

Edited 2018-04-18 02:22 (UTC)

Prompto doesn't quite have the words for what is happening in front of him. Saoirse talks to a woman, unfamiliar to them both, though something in his sweetheart's voice tells him this isn't a friendly stranger, to say the least. And before he can think to act of fine the words, it all shifts and suddenly there's not one but two Saoirses. His eyes widen.

The brand on her head unnerves him.

He opens his mouth to speak, wills his feet to move. But before either does, she speaks again. Of fear and strength and falling in love-

Wait.

"Wha...?"

Surprise, guess who's behind you.

"You fell in love," the figure agrees, as the hems of her robes begin to glow, the yellow and orange and charred black of embers, wisps of smoke curling up through the air. She doesn't sound like Saoirse, though. She sounds a little rougher, raspier and Fereldan.

Her head it tilted a little to the right, one side of her face less well in view, as she laughs very softly. Her smile is as warm and inviting as the rest of her seems to be. There is a little smudge on her cheek, but her skin is almost glowing. "We fell in love, remember? My sunbeam and I. And I'd have done anything for you."

Carys' smile is torn between great happiness, and great sorrow. "But what happens when you love? I was never sure if it was your love for me that scared you, or what the world would be if I didn't do what needed to be done."

She's never liked surprises but, for a moment, Prompto's surprised sudden appearance is almost welcomed. A grounding presence back to the real world, back to where they should be and why they came here to the Anderfels. Her look is still a surprised one when she glances back to him over her shoulder, opening her mouth to speak his name but barely a syllable leaves her throat before―

Again, she has never liked surprises. That raspy, almost song-like voice takes her back with a sickening lurch of a surprise. Saoirse can't even bring herself to look and the smell of ash? Of smoke and charred wood? It's too much. Whatever ground she had is very quickly being pulled out from under her feet. She's that weak girl, starving in the woods after the Circle fell begging for anything: death, food, comfort.

"I know you would have," And, yes. Love too. "And that did scare me but I was never scared of you."

Because she was loved, in the end. Given everything that sad girl who cried herself to sleep in the Gallows' cells wished for but Carys is gone and whatever this is? She doesn't know but she knew how cruel the mortal one could already be. She can only shift and put herself solely in Carys' line of sight.

“Did it ever make you wonder? Just how much you were prepared to overlook for love?”

Carys shakes her head a little. “What your fear of solitude made you willing to cling to… Just how much you would ignore, for the sake of not being alone?”

Her voice cracks. “Do you miss me? Do you ache, as I have?”

"... No, I did not wonder. I did not think."

Her heart is racing, causing her hands to shake and the grip on her staff to tighten as she tries to keep her gaze forward on the woman before her. With a lingering glance behind her, she finds Prompto and looks to him shakily. It lasts but a moment before she looks back to Carys.

"All I cared about was you," she chokes out. Templars, mages, humans, elves. None of it mattered. None of that pain mattered because she had Carys. "Even as I washed the blood from your clothes, I only saw you. I would have probably overlooked it all."

For a moment she closes her eyes and reaches to touch her locket. "I shall always miss you but you are no longer in this world. I nearly joined you in death but..."

She's a coward. A coward.

"I cannot linger forever in the shadows of what is not here."

“Oh, my song.” Her sunshine, her warmth. Her voice is raw with the hurt of it (with the hurt Lupeo is weaving into it, breathing life into a dead woman’s form.)

She reaches to touch Saorise’s elbow, lightly. Her fingertips are blacked with smudges of ash and charcoal.

“I do not have to be a shadow, Saoirse. We could be together.” Stepping forward, she brings her hand to rest against Saoirse’s neck, thumb brushing over the skin. “Feel it. Remember how safe we felt together? How unafraid?”

How defiant, how capable. “You know it could be so. You know it’s worth it.”

Ah. For a moment, Prompto thought she had meant - but of course. Saoirse's got a few years on him, and she's a wonderful person. Of course she's had lovers in the past. But whatever complicated feelings he has about the subject get pushed to the side for the moment, as there's something much more dire and alarming brewing in front of them.

This isn't his past, his memory, but this woman - whatever this spirit is pretending to be - touches Saoirse, plies her with an offer that leaves Prompto's blood running cold, he moves. He's normally a gentle guy, but this? No. Not when she's suggesting what this spirit - this demon - is suggesting. He grabs "Carys's" hand and wrenches it away. "Stop." He almost pushes her back, but for now he's content to try and get in between her and Saoirse. "Whoever you were, you're dead. Don't drag her down with you."

The touch completely throws her off focus. Whatever words Saoirse had conjured to tell this reflection of her pain has faded and ripped away from her. She tries to step back but her body fails her and the shaking returns, her staff wavering in her hand.

All she can do is shake her head when fingers touch her throat, the smell of ash and charcoal almost overwhelming her. She's hyperventilating, trying to remember how to breathe but she can't calm herself down. Somewhere deep inside her she wants to cry out in tears or for help but she can't, she—

Prompto's sudden appearance once again shocks her but she's grateful. Her feet almost fail her as he moves between them and her hands weakly grasp at the back of his shirt, trying to remember how to breathe and not break down.

"I can't," she finally says. Her voice is already broken, half-weeping as she tightens her grip and chokes on a sound. "I can't."

Edited 2018-04-18 17:05 (UTC)

"Dead?" The word seems to echo in the chamber, as "Carys" turns to look dead on at Prompto, instead of at an angle. The side of her face previously concealed by shadows is disfigured by burns. Not scarred, but rather consumed by the flame, so she does not seem fully whole. Flecks of rising embers are in the empty socket of her eye, and the smoke that had been curling off her seems to intensify as she lets out a rattling cough.

"Dead?" She does not seem enraged, so much as lost. "Why did you let me die, Saoirse?"

Her hand evades Prompto's grip, or his hand seems to sink through hers, it's hard to say. She seeks, instead, to grab his throat. "Was it because of someone like him? Did he corrode your faith?"

She doesn't want to see her again like this. The images from that day are still raw wounds on her heart. Saoirse can remember that sickening scent as she buried what of Carys hadn't been rendered to ash, she can still remember the smell of wet earth as she laid in the dirt and sobbed in the rain.

Her movement is a reaction, one that she does not consider as she reaches out to grasp the spirit's "hand" and try to turn her focus away from Prompto with choked out words.

"I will not let you hurt him." Her voice is still struggling but her eyes narrow, shaking her head. "You made your choices and I let myself be swept away in your shadow, I hid there. You protected me from all of it, I let myself be blinded by the love and affection."

It's almost wistful in the way she speaks. "I'm not blind anymore. I won't stand by and let you hurt anyone ever again."

“You chose your blindness. You blinkered yourself while scrubbing the blood from your hands, but the stains remain.”

Saorise’s hands, whatever they touch, are wet, slippery with blood. She is not bleeding, but the blood does not stop.

“Every life I took is one you took. Every home burned, you burned. You can’t claim the high road when you made the path I walked smoother. You call yourself a Loyalist, so devout and righteous. You praise peace, and could not stand alongside your fellow mages even to defend their freedom. This one will bleed, as all the others bled, unless you can prove yourself worth!”

Everything has felt like it was hanging by a thread. Every moment in the presence of Carys (of this demon) has turned it tighter and tighter until Saoirse almost feels as if she is choking. She takes the hurled abuse, teeth clenched but if anything it helps her to focus more in the moment. As cruel as Carys was to others, she hid it so very well from her-- it was an unknown and if Saoirse thinks back she cannot remember once ever hearing her voice raised in anger toward her.

This isn't Carys. She's dead, dead and buried but even if this creature wears her face there is no doubting that the threat toward Prompto is enough to make her blood boil. It's enough to make that thread holding everything together snap.

Her grip tightens as the air fills with a spark of magic, her magic and electric energy begins to crackle around her.

"I made my choices and I shall live with them for the rest of my life. Carys thought to wash away blood with more blood but what sort of living is that? What future are we creating trapped in a cycle of violence like that?" Tears continue to well up in her eyes but there is no longer sadness there, no, now she feels anger replacing it. "I will help build something better for mages that is not a future of them fighting for their lives and living in fear! How is that any different from what we endured in the Circles?"

Once more her grip tightens, ignoring the blood and the sickness she feels. "I do not have to prove my worth to you nor anyone. I know who I am, I know my own worth! And I know you'll have wished never to have stepped foot across the Veil if you so much as touch him."

Prompto's painfully aware of the precarious spot he put himself in. It's rather alarming that his hand goes through "Carys's", and more still when she - it - reaches out for him, flame curling and smoke rising. He tries to wrench himself and Saoirse away from Carys, but that's a little easier said than done.

He wants to protect her from this. But maybe this isn't his battle to fight.

The things they speak of - well, Prompto's no genius but it doesn't take one to put two and two together. It's something to be spoken of later, when they're out of here and away from this. As worrisome as this information is, it doesn't change his opinion of Saoirse. It certainly doesn't make him want to get her out of here and away from this creature any less. Though given the crack of electricity in the air, Saoirse's about ready to throw down the gauntlet. Atta girl. "We just wanna get outta here. No one's gotta get hurt." A last ditch attempt at a peaceful end to this, though even Prompto, ever the optimist, has little faith it'll work. Enough so that even as he says that, one hand remains on Saoirse's arm while the other drifts to his back, fingers blindly grasping for his gun.

No one's gotta get hurt. With Carys' face, Lupeo smiles. "Hurt? Hurt is the very soul of grief."

A glance to Saoirse. "But our song is so conceited, she does not care if the hurts are her own. She cares only for the suffering of others, but she has not seen her oldest friend walking on coals for so long." Leaning a little closer to Saoirse, she murmurs, "your sister is ready to set herself ablaze. To burn as surely as I did, and you have been blind to that, as well."

Flame licks across the palm of her hand, but the skin does not redden, nor blister. "You will not miss this burning, though."

Her palm slams hard into Prompto's chest, holding the growing flame against his sternum, as her other hand grips the back of his head, fingers seizing his hair to prevent his escape, as the embers and flames of her hand are pressed harder.

( closed ) PLAYER PLOT: STILL WATERS

SAOIRSE

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cw: suicide

phones tags typos everywhere probably hgfdrtyg

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cw: traumatic injury/gore ? idk how to cw this tbh

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cw: body horror