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( 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.
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. |
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"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.
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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?”
cw: suicide
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."
phones tags typos everywhere probably hgfdrtyg
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.”
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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."
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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."
cw: traumatic injury/gore ? idk how to cw this tbh
"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?"
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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."
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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!”
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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."
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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.
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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.
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But her attention isn't on him, and while he refuses to move away, he keeps quiet to let Saoirse make her own stand. The demon seems more focused on her anyway, and Saoirse doesn't need anyone to speak for her.
Oh but how wrong he turns out to be. He only notes the flame in her hand for a moment before it slams into him. A choked sound comes out unbidden before his brain realizes what just happened. His body spasms, trying to buck her off. Luckily his leather chest plate is taking the worst of it but already his chest is growing hot and painful from the heat seeping through. "Let go of me!" He tries thrashing and pushing her off, but her grip is too strong.
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Her staff has remained tightly clutched in her hand since they have arrived in this place but she has not bothered to raise it until now. The very essence of entropic magic seems to be seeping from her as she reacts, turning the staff over in her hands and aiming the blade for the charred empty socket in "Carys'" head without a pause of thought. All that mattered in the moment was protecting Prompto.
It is is why she does not hesitate to also reach out and attempt to wrestle the hand held against Prompto's sternum. If there is pain, it registers but she does not flinch away and holds her ground through gritted teeth. She doesn't have the brute strength, she knows but if her attack lands then perhaps it'll be enough to for the force of telekinetic energy as she casts mind blast to separate them all.
cw: body horror
Her other hand reaches out to grab the staff, and Carys turns to Saoirse in their struggle, both of them anchored by Prompto and the staff. She is about to speak when the telekinetic spell hits, and though it does not blast her back, it is enough to make her release Prompto. It is also enough to make her head snack backwards, hanging unnaturally, spine apparently snapped. For a moment the hand that gripped Prompto simply hangs in the air, and the one holding the staff remains holding, before the grip tightens, and Lupeo swings Carys' head back into place.
"Your time comes, Saoirse."