RIFTER ARRIVAL: Justinian 9:44

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their rescuers.
WHAT: Welcome to Thedas.
WHEN: Justinian 12, 9:44
WHERE: East of the Hundred Pillars and Perivantium.
NOTES: This is the arrival log for all new rifters, open also to current characters who would participate in their recovery. New players can also assume everyone survives and arrives back in Kirkwall within a couple of days, but please note there will be a brief quarantine period when they won't be permitted to leave the Gallows, to get them up to speed while ensuring they're not diseased or otherwise going to kill anyone, before they're set loose on the city.

You were asleep—whether deeply or fitfully, falling unconscious for the last time in a pool of blood or just resting your eyes for a moment—and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, bathed in the light of a flare of too-bright, greenish light you will find yourself hitting mossy cobblestones with an unforgiving smack. You're alive, and you're fine, except for the narrow splinter of light that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Above you, hanging suspended in the air, is a shifting, crystalline tear in reality. It's the same color as the mark on your hand.

Beyond it, the sky is a clear and black, with stars that won't show until the rift's blinding light has been extinguished but two moons visible now. One hangs above you, beyond the rift. Another is lower in the sky, cut by the jagged line of mountains on the distant horizon. There's nothing in between to obscure the view or to block the steady, warm wind from the east, which isn't howling or whistling over the flat expanse of land so much as gently humming. Not gentle: the ground beneath you, which is more rock than sand. Further to the east there are dunes; here, the land has been stripped by the wind. It is nonetheless indisputably desert, with low, shrubby foliage and the earth beneath the rocks cracked and sun-baked.

But this isn't really the time for sightseeing.

You aren't alone here. There are other people on the ground around you—humans, or at least humanoid—with matching green marks, and an assortment of junk that might be familiar or might be very much not. Beyond them, forming a crescent ring around one edge of the rift's light, are a dozen wraiths, each capable of shifting between elements and hurling blasts of damaging magic. There's also a swarm of large buglike creatures determined to eat your teeth and three ghouls in suits chasing one rifter in particular.

All of these things would probably like to kill you. But you're not alone. In the dark beyond the rift's light, a group of armed and armored people swiftly descend on the scene. Many are wearing a symbol that looks a bit like a hairy eyeball being pierced through by a sword, and at least a couple of them seem to know what they're doing. Almost like they've been waiting for you. In fact, exactly like they've been waiting for you.

---

AFTERWARDS, it's only a short hike to an Inquisition camp in the greenery where the landscape begins its shift into plains, where everyone can patch up any wounds, have something to eat, and ask what in the void is going on here. But don't wander off. In the dark beyond the campfires there are other hazards: prowling wildlife, scavenging bands of darkspawn, unfamiliar lands and no map to guide you if you don't already know where you're going.

Comments

Myira (OC) | Rifter/New Arrival

[notacrow]

( Strange dreams and strange awakenings )

Myira never falls in her dreams. It just doesn't happen. She is as at home in the sky as anywhere else in the world and the idea of being afraid of something like falling when she can just stretch her wings out to catch a passing breeze is laughable to her. At least it is normally. This time feels different. She is tumbling, nothing but open air beneath her and at first there is no panic or worry, just the instinctive spreading of limbs and the expectation of lift. When it doesn't come, that's when the worry sets in--mostly about the flying part. She flails her limbs for a moment, trying to gain some sort of purchase, and then the ground rushes up at Myira faster than she expected.

The landing drives the wind out of her and she has to wheeze and cough and try to catch her breath for a moment as she scrabbles around on all fours, trying to get a feel for what's happening. Where am I and where are my wings duel in her mind for importance before she realizes that she still has her cloak of feathers draped around her shoulders, which relieves that tension. Pushing herself to her feet to try and get a look at the world around her doesn't have the same effect. The pain she can ignore for the moment, even with the bone-deep ache that seems to rip up one arm. It's the sickly green glow of the rift above her and the unfamiliar landscape that shocks her. She knows every tree and hill within miles of her home and none of this looks like it. Besides that, Myira knows for a fact that her home has only a singular moon.

That's all the time she has to gawk at the world around her though, because almost immediately there seems to be creatures descending on her--sickly green wraiths and buzzing little fairies and neither of those are fun. Myira isn't a fighter--never has been, even if she can get angry and besides she has no weapons. Her first instinct is to take her proper form but before she can start the magic she has to duck an oncoming fairy and make a run for it as a blast of magic also manages to get too close for comfort.

"Gerroff--! Hey, get this thing away from me--!" She yells at the sudden arrivals who seem to be on her side. Not that she trusts them yet, but hey. If they're fighting the stuff that wants her delicious teeth or to just plain zap her with magic, she's not going to ignore that. Ducking, dodging, and running, she tries to weave through the chaotic melee and find someone who she can take refuge behind until the fight is over.


( Who even likes hiking? )

Finally, when all the fighting and running and yelling is done, Myira joins the others in heading back to camp. Most of the trip back she spends in her raven body, not wanting to walk around in bare feet. Or at all. So on the way to camp, a random person might end up with a raven perched on their shoulder making unhappy noises. Those unhappy noises just so happen to include speech. Myira makes grumpy sounds as she preens under a wing.

"What's with this night travel, eh? Do I look like an owl? Do I?"


( Camping is just another word for suffering )

Back at camp, Myira seems to be back in her human form again. It's an odd experience. She sits at one of the fires. The girl is wrapped only in a long black cloak of feathers that seems to be her only garment. On top of that, she eats ravenously. As soon as she's given food, she begins to eat it with her bare hands, shoveling down as fast as possible as if it might be taken from her if she's not careful. If anyone wearing that weird eyeball symbol gets close enough, she picks them out for special attention.

"Hey! You! Where are we an' what's goin' on? I nearly got turned into a snack earlier-!" She's loud, indignant, but not much else except perhaps excited by everything that's happened to her in the short amount of time she's arrived. Anyone not wearing the Inquisition's symbol gets treated to the same questions, though perhaps with a bit less vitriol.

b!

[shri]

A raven.

A raven was speaking to her.

Somehow, it made as much sense as anything else did, at this point, and she could be no wary of it when she was already weary of everything that comes too close to her. Sat on her shoulder like it deserved it, pretty as the night sky. "Take pity on those that walk, and cannot fly."

But even so, the adjustment comes easy, she shifts her veil, letting it settle over, not under, the little beast. Giving some shelter if the night truly did send the - him, her? - into a slumber.

Re: b!

[notacrow]

"Well, if'n I fly I won't be able to see an' I'll lose the lot of you in the dark..." Her voice comes back again, a rough, grating thing that still carries the touch of femininity and the drawling rural sound of the West Counties.

"And I do pity those that can't, don't you mind that non--" The bird cuts herself off. There comes a muffled sound of disapproval for a moment as cloth surrounds Myira. A shifting of weight and the raven manages to free herself a little better and find a comfortable spot underneath the drape of cloth. It feels better like that. A little separation from the sky makes her anxious but it is cloth, easily scattered if she needs it. Her wings splay a bit and then settle. Myira doesn't want to whack her companion in the side of the head, after all.

"...That's nice," she admits after a long moment. "I never seen cloth this bright a'fore. All the humans in the village had duller stuff in greens and browns and sometimes blue. Never anythin' like this."

who even likes hiking (me!)

[the_cleric]

"Oh," Jester says, "my goooooosh..."

Squeals is maybe a better word for it. Jester squeals, the way any girl would squeal when she is faced with a cute talking bird on a basically midnight walk back to a cozy campsite. Especially when the talking bird perches on her shoulder. What girl could resist that?

Girl is not actually the first impression that Jester gives off. Seven feet tall--muscled like a body-builder--grey--horned--well, she looks like a qunari. But a qunari in a cute blue dress and a little white pinafore with pink trim. Plus a well-made belt with pouches and a wicked-looking sickle. Her cloak is blue, too, and there's a patch in the shape of the Inquisition's eye sewn neatly to the front of it. The sparkles that decorate the eye? Those are all Jester's doing.

And right now, she's staring, enraptured, at her own shoulder, where the talking bird has landed.

"Wow," she says, "wow wow wow! You do not look like an owl, no way. You are a beautiful, beautiful crow or something. And you can talk! This is amazing!"

THIS POST CLEARED MY PORES AND WATERED MY CROPS

[notacrow]

Myira isn't exactly used to weird non-human looking creatures and/or people but she's not the kind of girl to let herself be flustered by a little thing like horns or gray skin. She preens under one wing and adjusts herself a little to make sure her perch is comfortable--and then Jester calls her a crow.

"Oi! First of all I ain't a crow! I'm a raven!" Myira grumbles under her breath and spreads her wings for a moment, as if that proves what she's saying somehow.

"And of course I can talk! Why wouldn't I be able to talk?"

b;

[inagutterson]

Yngvi isn't one of the walkers, not anymore. No, now he has a stupendously oversized horse from an Orlesian at the tourney, him perched atop comfortably. Gaspard (the horse, a big majestic absolute unit needs a name like that) flicks an ear.

Surprisingly, he doesn't jump too much at a talking bird. Enough time with the Avvar and you shrug it off if the feathers are black.

"There's a fare," because he only does freebies for a few folks, talking birds don't count. "Ain't like you need to be awake for it, could do a spot of roosting, he's got a big enough arse. Reckon we all just fancy making decent time for once."

Re: b;

[notacrow]

Myira takes the opportunity to flit down from Yngvi's shoulder to the horn of the saddle. She balances there precariously and without a care in the world as she sways with the motion of the horses plodding clop.

"A what? And I'm thinkin' on it. I'd fly it m'self but I dunno where we're goin' an' I'd lose all of ya in the dark. Skies above, what a night it's been..." She trails away into a grumpy mutter.

"You gotta good horse, though. The ones I seen afore were all poor little farm nags for the most part, always workin'."

Kitty Jones (The Bartimaeus Series) | Rifter + new arrival

[rathercommon]

a. Arrival
Kitty thinks to herself, soon as her knees hit the ground, that this must be a new part of the dream she was in. And then she takes a moment to marvel and be impressed with herself, that her dreaming is so lucid that she can recognize when something isn't reality. And what a wretched one she was in, too: trapped in an office, secretary to all the demons and monsters the Empire had to offer, chased and harassed by wicked creatures, creatures that grated out in a wretched voice -

"Miss Jones..."

Kitty twists around to look over her shoulder. It's just a dream, and she's lucid in this dream (right?) so there's no reason to be afraid. And yet even so, she can't help the paroxysm of terror at the monsters lurching towards her. She can't help her fear at the way the one in the lead - a skeleton in a fine business suit, flesh hanging off him and eyes rolling - exhales a foul stench as he says, "Miss Jones, do put the tea on, we'll need you to work late tonight, I suppose a pretty girl like you has a boyfriend so let the poor disappointed chap know you'll be spending your evening with the handsomest men in all of England - "

It's a dream. She knows that. So she should be able to just will these horrible things to turn into vapor - right? Or make them just turn around and leave, or...But they keep coming. They keep coming, and they're joined by these horrible buzzing little creatures and glowing ghosts that she feels in her heart she would never dream up because they're like nothing she's ever seen, and her knees hurt and it doesn't make sense that her knees hurt still in a dream because aches are supposed to disappear as soon as you stop concentrating on them and she feels the real horrible certainty, right then, that she's going to die.

So maybe it's a dream, but Kitty Jones is not going to sit back and get slaughtered regardless of whether she's awake or not. Her hand falls on a fountain-pen with a wicked sharp point, and she snatches it up - finds another, snatches it up too, wielding them like daggers - kicks off her high-heeled shoes, and tenses to spring at the ghoul in the lead and slam the pens into his eyes...

When suddenly, it seems, people who are far more qualified to murder these things than she is show up.


b. Aftermath
Well, things are safe, it seems. Or at least the monsters are dead: that doesn't actually translate to safe, but it does translate to being able to pretend that you're all right and safe and good. So things are in a condition where she can fool her brain into thinking nothing bad will ever happen again so that she can suppress the terror and get on with the business of tending to what's in front of her.

And what's in front of her is...a mess. It appears that it's not just monsters that chased her out of the glowing green void; she's also been chased by an entire secretarial pool's worth of office supplies. Typewriters, sticky notes, fountain pens, stacks of paper, a dozen carafes of coffee and the cups to go with lie scattered across the ground behind her - some of them smashed and trampled in the fighting, but the vast majority intact. Kitty prods at one particularly shiny model of typewriter with a hose-clad foot, then looks over at someone near her and offers -

"I'll trade you this for a proper pair of shoes."

Since it seems she'll be walking a ways, and the high heels she arrived in will not do for that.


c. camp
The shock's faded enough that she can do more than react to her immediate surroundings. Now she's in a state where she can react to her extended surroundings. They've made their way to the camp, and they're huddled around the fire, and someone's put a shriveled piece of what must be meat or something into her hand, and Kitty knows that she should be asking questions but all she wants to do is bury herself under a blanket and hide from what's around her. Not the demons and whatnot - she knows demons and whatnot - but the brightness of the moon (moons) and the multitude of the stars. She wants to plug up her ears to block out the impossible, nauseating quiet. There's the noise of birds and night-bugs, she supposes, which is all right, but there's something incredibly wrong about the absence of engines and horse-hooves and electric buzzing, the lack of voices muffled through thin tenement walls, the songs of drunks and the tick of the radiator. Things smell wrong, things feel wrong, and the sky is so bloody big she feels like she's about to fall out into space.

"Ugh." Kitty hunches down, and buries her face in her hands, and takes a moment to count silently to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Okay, a hundred. As soon as she hits a hundred, she's going to sit up and deal with the world. Until then, she can spend a moment hiding her face, pretending that hiding will make it all go away.

c

[notacrow]

Myira isn't exactly the most sensitive person. She's kind of crass and sharp at the edges and lacks a certain sympathy for a lot of people. But seeing Kitty hunched over with her head in her hands makes something twinge inside of her chest. So she edges around the fire and finally sits next to the other woman, perching awkwardly a short ways away from her.

"...Hoi." She speaks with a broad accent, suggestive of the West Counties and rural life, though with a weird lilt to it that makes it impossible to place exactly.

"Are you gonna be alright?" Myira is asking after someone else (a human someone else, too) but then she's already seeming to recover herself. When (if) Kitty looks up at her new neighbor, it's a wild-haired girl with pitch black hair and dark skin wrapped in cloak made of black raven's feathers and not much else. She stares openly at Kitty with wide eyes, almost blatant in her study.

"I know this is all a bit o' magic that we ain't used to but no need to go blubbin' and boo-hooin'."

c

[the_cleric]

"Oh, yeah," Jester says, from the other side of the fire. "Man. I know that feeling."

Which might surprise some people. Still waters run deep, right? Waters that chatter and draw dicks, waters that fight with spiritual lollipops and eat pastries all day, waters that hug their friends and buy presents for people and hold hands with cute orphans--well, they can run just as deep. Probably. What the heck does Jester know about water, anyways?

She's munching on a pastry right now, in fact, one that she had pulled out of her pocket. It's a little stale, but the berry filling is still very good. In the spirit of friendship, and with a little rustle of pastry-paper and her own cloak, unfolding a little, Jester holds the pastry out toward poor Kitty.

"Poor Kitty," she says, and somehow manages to sound genuine about it. Not as if she is patronizing her at all, because she is not. "I bet everyone will say this to you, but you can trust me, okay? Because I am a Rifter too, and I am also very, very wise. So, here is what I want to say: it is not so bad."

Probably the firelight makes her face look a little scary, underlit like it is. Jester doesn't think about that at all. She smiles instead.

a. ...about that magic resistance

[supersonic]

The muted thock of wood hitting stone is the only warning, before the warm summer air that had been twisting across the rock around them turns to bitter, blistering cold.

Pietro hasn't been out to fetch Rifters before. He's spoken to a few of them; enough to gather they probably aren't demons, or if they are, perhaps there's more to demons than he'd previously been aware. There'd been enough rifts in Orlais over the last few years that this isn't his first time watching wraiths pour out of the sky, either. Even the shambling corpse in the well-tailored jacket isn't the strangest thing. That honor goes to the hunk of metal that crashes to the ground in his path — not ore, mind you, but man-made, dream-made, a mess of impossibly thin metal tines and small round buttons once neatly aligned inside a now thoroughly dented box.

If asked, that mystifying contraption is the excuse he'll give for why, when the corpse closes in on the much-more-alive girl he'd been running toward, he's only barely within range. Blasted— There isn't time to get between them. Instead, he drops the butt of his staff to the ground and wills the creature to stop.

Ice springs from the earth in sheer planes, up through fine wool trousers and turned collar to knock a hunk of rotten neck skin (yeesh) loose into the breeze, before swallowing the skeleton up altogether within a solid, glassy wall.

–And not just the skeleton. One body successfully encased, the crystalline spears jut merrily onward toward the next nearest source of warmth.

"For the love of—" Pietro swings his staff round to send a flash of shimmering blue after, to intercept or, well, hopefully not also hit her. "Duck!"

b

[coiledscales]

Considering that Adalia has decided to go gallavanting off to Skyhold, Alacruun's needed something to do with himself. He supposes picking up new rifters isn't a bad idea, although it does put him in slightly mortal peril. On the other hand, he gets a look at the newcomers before almost anyone else and a chance to see a bit more of the world in a more controlled setting. Semi-controlled. He's been doing his best to stay at the back and occasionally zap a demon when it gets too close and now, in the aftermath, he's picking his way through the refuse of a dozen worlds.

Most of it seems fundamentally useless to him. He gives a metal contraption a tap with his foot and then glances up as Kitty speaks to him. Considering he's a qunari, maybe "glances down" would be a better expression.

"I'm afraid I don't have any shoes on hand, but I believe we've a supply back at camp."

He shrugs his broad shoulders, staff tilted casually to one side.

"I'm certainly not going to go digging through the pile..."

a

[mousquetaire]

Having been here for several months, d'Artagnan has now reached the point where he no longer disbelieves at the nonsense that comes out of rifts. Demons, enormous insects, now actual ghost-like wraiths. Incredible.

But mostly, they're just very annoying.

They're the enemy in his way, attacking innocent people who aren't, for the most part, ready to defend themselves, and he doesn't care what else they are. He's also gotten used to leaving his pistol strapped to his belt, though he certainly doesn't leave it behind. It remains undrawn, and he cuts through the demons with his sword and knife, moving fast, and focusing on the people who've fallen.

People like the screaming girl. He fights his way to her, and by the time he arrives, she's already holding two quills like they're daggers. His sword goes directly through the chest of the one in front of her, and he pulls it back still impaled. He kicks the wraith off the blade and lands beside Kitty, eyeing the quills with uncertainty.

"Mademoiselle. Take this."

He pulls a spare knife, Inquisition issue, from his belt, and holds it out to her.

"Stay close, they'll keep coming until we close the rift."

There's a sentence that probably doesn't mean much to her. He doesn't care; there'll be time to explain after he makes sure no one's dying. Seeing the wraith lunge at them again, he raises his sword to catch its arm mid-swing.

rani lakshmi bai | rifter & new arrival

[shri]

i. (arrival)
Where was a shotgun when she needed it? Is the first, clear thought, when the haze of the strange circumstances begins to dawn her - from dream to hard ground.

It is not strange that she dreams of being younger, though the youth is hardly the point for someone who does not age outwardly. It is home she dreams of gladly. A place that she never leaves, not in her mind, she is of Jhansi, and it is of her - and for once, it is not it in smoke, in ash. It is the happiness she'd once had. Standing with her husband, presenting to him - his son, and to their people, an heir at long last. A boy that was all her own and a duty fulfilled.

The raucous joy spilt out into the streets from the courtiers in the durbar hall, as the cry goes up, shouting so loud that the room near shook with it. A moment, when everything is clear with the shouts and outcry of happiness. For a moment, there is them: there are his arms overlapping her as they both cradled their child. A love that is as soft as her little boy's breathing. The little boy in her arms, grips to his father's finger. She should have seen when the flames guttered in the oil lamps. Behind the incense, she should have smelt the taste of seared flesh. She should have seen the Knight, dressed like a crow in all black, standing in the crowd of attendants, that had no smile on his ancient face when around him people danced. But how could someone so happy see the suffering that might come? That there might be a hard fall waiting for them.

Jhansi had been a place of all her pride, once, with nothing else to taint it. A smiling angel that bestowed protection with an easy embrace.

But it is swallowed up, engulfed in flames, as surely as the dream succumbs to reality. But if not for the ripped green sky, she might not have thought herself so far from home when she falls out of her dream back into a reality that, unlike the dream, is utterly incomprehensibly strange.

She dares not break her fall with her arms, no - the wrapped clean white cotton and silver lace of a child's blankets is still in her hands. Held in close to her chest, it has not caught to her yet, that there is no boy in her arms. In the dream, but out of it. After all, she still wears the clothes of that day. Why should the boy go too? A secondary realisation that is strange, she has not worn these garments for years? The chanderi silks at least weren't heavy - but as many layers of them as there were they offered no protection. They stood out orange and red, glittering with the gold from every embroidered inch of them. In them, she fell clattering like a temple bell, chiming loudly with the sound of her gold jewellery clattering with her. From toe rings to the long ornamentation that fell down the rope of her hair under her veils. The white flowers that were pinned to the top of the braid falling loose and scattering white petals about her. Rings to bangles to the earrings and chains that hung off her, not a bit of her unadorned, not even her skin, stained in intricate patterns of mehndi designs, swirls and dots and arcing lines, even red circles painted on the centre of her palms.

And it means that landing is messy, these clothes were for a Queen's ceremony, not soldier's combat. She was not Shiva, appearing beautiful as he destroyed, no, she was rather more limited in such things - and she uncurls on the ground from where she had protectively rolled to protect her bundle of blankets to catch the sight of seas of sand and her heart beats confused - home, still? that could not be possible - shifting, uncurling against the ground, to get the knife she had landed on from her side as she rolled, first onto her knees, and realise that she's barefooted, as - what were those green things? No Half-breed took such a form. Not even Hastings at his worst commanded that kind of power. They had more in common with the demons that Lord Ram himself had fought, and the little ones -

Look almost like the little creatures in English children's books, until it bites her. She swats at it immediately. But when it doesn't work, the solid gold bangles will do, smashing it across the head with it as she tries to figure out where to even go to escape their teeth. Stepping away and caught, it's not like she has a hope of being subtle in all of this, not when each step chimed with the sound of her anklets and bangles. But she certainly does not miss. Does not move slowly - she might wear as much gold as a bloody treasury, but she had her fame as a fighter, not from her diamonds. That there is no hesitation to each strike, no slowness as she turns fast on her heel, her footwork not pausing to let herself fall. ( Even if there are concessions made, letting her second dupatta fall off her arms and down her body, leaving her whole midsection exposed but her arms free to move, it wasn't elegant, but it would do. )

The rest is desperation, clutching the bundle of blankets to her with on hand, the other to her short khanjar blade and the rest the instincts of the years and years of battle that lets her duck to whatever cover could be afforded, to get her back covered and her blade up, shielding with a for arm laced with scars from just this. Cutting at anything that got to close. At least until she hears the crack of the air being ripped apart by magic and she see's the fireball coming directly her way - and she shoves to push herself out of the way, looking for anything to cover herself. Wanting desperately for the shields of the shoulders that she see's coming like a lover wished for a kiss.

Maybe one of them had a shotgun, or so wishful thinking hoped as she swung around again to do her best to slash at the twisted human shadow, like it might do something to smoke. To her mind, she knows she can last better than most, even one handed, but she knows she can't last - help, please.

ii. ( aftermath )
It's only after it's over, that she finally lets the creeping revelation stemmed by the chaos come to her. Bleeding from a dozen bites, the burns that singed her, as much of a mess as any other. There are tears in her skirts, smeared with grime and blood, everything askew, but she doesn't go to fix herself up - rather she walks to the edge of the assembly to deal with - what matters most. Firs to draw the long piece of orange material over her head, her face. A need to veil herself not from modesty, but privacy to look down.

The bundle of blankets in her hands. She can do this, she can. She has done it twice now. Once more out of memory should be no great wound, merely, a practised action. She holds one end, tightly, fiercely, before she lets the rest fall free, unravelling from her held point, out and out and out, to...

Nothing. There was nothing there. Just empty weight. A piece of material that reaches her feet and pools there. Caught in that warm breeze that - it isn't right, but it is so much closer than England could ever be that it hurts to feel. She takes a breath, then another. A disinclination to even know how to grieve and be still, after all, she hadn't when it had first happened. Why now? The habits were already ingrained. So she pinches the material between fingers to find a straight edge. Smooth it out and begin to fold it in halves until it is nothing but a narrow piece that she tucks into her skirt's waistband ( to part with it, would have been sacrilege ). Then goes about righting the rest of it. Re-draping and reorganising herself a sight more assembled since practically was beyond hope presently. The jewellery put back where it should be and her fingers smoothing her hair.

Needs the excuse to just take quiet, deep breathes as privately as she can.

iii. ( camp )
She doesn't have a hope of sleeping, exposed amongst strangers like this. When she can hear animals clawing in the near darkness, fighting and crying out. When there are soldiers she does not know, walking the perimeters. Nothing here has told her that Lycans do not exist, after all. For it seems everything else did. Not least of all the strange ache that was in her palm.

That - and it seemed everyone could tell someone of rank when they wore a treasury's worth of jewellery on their body. Though for the time being, the veil stays down over her face. Just thick enough to obscure her face even if it didn't hide her completely. They had been respectful, of course. But she didn't fancy taking it off and thus making it easier for a thief to steal away when a wealth she might need to do some of her own trading. Nor fend them off when she had been sleeping. So exhausted or not, she sits by the fireside, stiffly in posture. Regal as the jewels implied, the knife at her hip hopefully a deterrent as she took the time instead of resting to begin to clean the wounds left over. Healing them openly with a sip of the blackwater would attract too much attention when she was not sure of her company. So more mundane uses would do.

She'd forgotten how miserable that could be, as Lakshmi began to dab away the blood with a clean cloth and water mixed with something they insisted would help. A nasty bite from the foul little-winged things. It sat just at the curve of her side that she had to curl herself to begin to dab at it. Holding the skin stiff to begin to wipe at it. Hissing to herself when it caused a sharp sting of pain from it. Felt it now, when she hadn't in the exhilaration of fighting. Would it match the hideous mess above her heart when it healed? Time would tell, whenever they had privacy, she did her best to keep the miserable noises to herself, too old to tolerate them, and go about cleaning up.

i!

[rathercommon]

Kitty has only ever fought beside other members of the Resistance. The Resistance, they never took blows for each other. No need to, after all - they all had that same immunity, that same resilience, and it's not like they were often being menaced with knives and cudgels and all that. And, well...Well, it just wasn't that sort of group, was it? At the end of the day, though she hadn't realized it at the time, self-sacrifice simply wasn't their way of operating. They weren't noble and compassionate and heroic - just greedy and misguided. So why would something like taking a blow for someone else be trained into them?

No, Kitty doesn't have any instinct to shield others. She especially doesn't have an instinct to shield someone with fancy clothes and a king's ransom worth of gold on her, not when wealth came from exploiting others and making your profits off others' backs. But the thing about being a human, a free woman, is that she doesn't have to rely on instincts, nor on commands; she can observe, and decide. And so as a fireball arcs towards the fine lady, she decides. She doesn't know if she'll come through all right, if the magic's too strong for her resilience or if it'll burn the flesh from her bones - but there's no question that it'll burn up the fine lady, right into a crisp, and the arithmetic of maybe-one-life versus definitely-one-life is one even Jakob would have been able to solve if Miss Hempstead had put it to him during class.

As she steps into the path of the fireball, she really hopes she doesn't die, because she does not want her last thoughts to be about maths.

She doesn't die. The fireball catches her on the back, and scorches through her jacket and part of her shirt and hits her skin and stops scorching. Kitty stumbles forward with the concussive force of it, but doesn't fall; and then she regains her balance, and whirls, and hurls one of the pens she's armed herself with in the direction of the attack - where it does nothing, just passes harmlessly through the demon that seems to be made, impossibly, of mist and nothing more.

She curses, and curses again when the demon turns its attention towards her. As it gathers itself for another magical attack, Kitty calls out to the fine lady, "Get to cover!"

[motherfucking_ghost]

"Hey-"

Church is not a terribly good person to interrupt a private moment. Not because he's disrespectful (but sometimes he is), but because he tends not to recognize it when he sees it. In the dwindling aftermath, what he sees is someone new, who won't understand this place, not really, wandering off from the group. And more than that, she's hurt. Or she might be hurt. Sometimes it's hard to tell where the blood comes from until adrenaline fades away.

He doesn't touch. The last thing he needs is to become like that one Templar that got jumped by Helena, surprise someone who can trust nothing of her surroundings. (Well, and Helena's a little crazy in the coconut, but still.)

Softer: "Hey. You okay? You should probably get seen to."

iii.

[swordproof]

Six takes it upon herself to stand guard most nights, if only because she thinks that she needs a little bit less sleep than other people. She's trained for a very long time to keep herself able and fit, and standing guard was one of the jobs that was given to each of her mercenary group in time. She expects that many of these new Rifters are going to be confused and on edge, especially with the swarming of the new people from the Inquisition proper; it's a lot to get used to.

She spots someone looking tense and frustrated as she sits by the fire. It makes Six frown, just a little, and compassion steals her just a little as she pushes herself away from her spot before she moves over and hovers nearby. Maybe she doesn't look like the most pleasant of person with her sword on her back and her armour settled around her, but she doesn't think she looks terribly threatening either - at least, she's trying not to look threatening.

"Do you need any assistance?"

iii

[coiledscales]

This woman sits and carries herself like nobility. He's met his share over the years, although he's typically though of them as being mostly talk. Then again, some of them were warriors or iron-hard rulers in their own right. Nothing compared to a dragon, of course, but a scant few had impressed him. This woman seems more like the latter than the former, but he won't really be able to tell until he speaks to her and gauges more of who and what she is. The qunari settles down across the fire from her, looming large in the shadows thrown by the flickering firelight. His eyes glint with an expression of interest and he tilts his head forward in a polite nod.

"I hope that the demons didn't harm you too badly. Are you well?"

He doesn't really care, but opening with a statement of concern tended to rpoduce positive results.

i

[earthbones]

Eager to be out of Kirkwall, to be doing something not sitting around idly so away Brónach goes with her bow that fires straight and true. Draw, fire, release one fluid motion simple as breathing from half a lifetime ago. The demon isn't looking at her until the bone arrow sinks into whatever makes up the flesh of these Fade creatures, then it howls, shrieks, and it turns as she tucks her bow closer so she can roll out of the strike.

"Your hand," spat out as the next arrow is drawn, as she moves to flank. "Point it at the rift."

An elf with pointed ears and green glowing sharper on the hand clutching the bow, leathers made for practicality but weapons hooked and jagged that glow a wicked red. She fires again as another creature comes for her, teeth gritted, feral animal snarl rattling out of her chest.

i

[the_cleric]

It's not a shotgun blast, but: a well-timed arc of light, like a lightning bolt or a shimmering arrow, crackles past and strikes the creepy ghost right in the center of its creepy ghost chest.

The sound that the creepy ghost makes is unholy, if you want to use a word like that lightly. Scary is another choice. Muffled fingernails on a chalkboard, weirdly too-quiet for the gaping maw that opens like some horrible version of a mouth. The bolt sizzles in and disappears in the wraith's chest.

And Jester goes bounding after it, charging like a bull. A qunari, seven feet tall and light blueish-grey, her horns adorned with ribbons and baubles. Under her blue cloak, she's wearing a cute dress and a pinafore and petticoats, light pink and ruffled. Smudged in dirt, she flashes a big grin at the lady, as she darts past her.

"Hey, you are really pretty!"

A quick compliment, before she throws her hand dramatically up in the air, a true magical girl. Her spiritual weapon--in its usual form, a giant pink lollipop--arcs down to smack the wraith in the face.

iii

[mousquetaire]

It's been a long day, and there's extensive travel ahead of them. D'Artagnan is weary enough to be craving sleep, but he's taken the first watch instead. There's a horse by his side, and despite being a trained stallion, it seems jittery about the animals they can hear. He has his hand on its neck, soothing it, and every so often a 'Shh' can be heard from his direction. It's only by chance that he looks up when Rani is treating her wounds, and at once he sits straighter. He reacts to a royal bearing, even if he's unware of the person who holds it.

"My Lady, you're hurt. Please let me fetch a healer for you. We have a long journey ahead of us."

At the same time, he comes closer, trying to get a better look at the mark she's dealing with.

"We've travel ahead of us. You'll need to be strong."

ii.

[divineshadow]

Among all the parade of strange creatures to confront the Priest this side of the void, Rani has borne the most watching. She wears a hive's ransom in precious metal (strangely above the skin and not in it), placing her in a breeding caste; smaller than the soldiers come marching on the rift, fine-featured and feathered about the head, by looks she should be male--yet, she fights. Fights, and well, for all the self-imposed handicap of the bundle clutched tight in one arm.

So: A queen.

Or near as one might be had in this place, though she owns no web of loyalty the Priest can see. A queen displaced, then; a queen without hive or home. Not djur--the Priest would sense it, if it were so--and so the Priest feels no urge to wade through battle to her side to defend her; should she survive on her own, she will be distinct enough to find after.

And so she is, separating herself as she does from the rest of the milling crowd. The Priest spares a moment to accept a shirt held out by an Inquisition soldier, neither looking at nor thanking the man before donning it and pacing after Rani.

The language of human posture and expression and what they say of underlying emotion are yet opaque to the Priest, especially without pheromones as a guide. But the veiling bespeaks a need for privacy that crosses boundaries of culture and species; the Priest stands at a distance of yards, eyes averted to study the desert, until Rani has put her appearance at last to rights. Then the Priest approaches, swift and wordless, to kneel abased at the woman's feet with face pressed to the sand--six feet and four inches of hairless, half-clothed androgyne, still and patient despite the wounds the posture pulls at.

(One presents oneself so to a queen whose hive is in order, that she might tread one's neck and assert her sovereignty in her own space. Not, perhaps, the most apt gesture here, but there is no extant protocol for treating with an alien queen on a foreign world. It is not something that has ever happened, and so one improvises. Structure must be built where none exists.)

The Priest | rifter & new arrival

[divineshadow]

i. from the void.

"Go before the Divine Shadow with anger in your hearts. Go with rage against the beasts and the alfar and the dying stars. Go furious at Them for the spirits They have let slip into the maws of the enemy. Take care that it does not lead you into heresy: They give us only what we are due.

"But always go with anger and holy terror of Those who woke us. They will not hear you otherwise."

So Bone-Ash Eidolon had instructed them in their novitiate; so the Priest in overflowing zeal had always tred Their altars in a fine state of fury at the world. So that ire burned incandescent a moment ago as the Priest dove into the void, stripped to the skin, Servant’s blood-stained fang clutched in one talon as weapon and offering.

Black is the void, black and silent the altar of the Priest's gods, darkness pregnant with the inscrutable Mind waiting there--

But empty of words or guidance. I did as You asked! the Priest shouts into the silence. I killed the sneaking change-skinned beast who sought to defy You! (And killed half myself with it, is not said; it is of no interest to Them.)

Echoes of old visions long known to the Priests flutter at the corners of thought: The alfar torn from their star-voyaging ships and slain; the first queen to be bent and broken for heresy; beasts of heart-chilling size and ugliness wiping the last hive from Rymning; fertile worlds of alien beauty alive with the renascent faithful djur. Reminders to stir a Priest’s piety--but no new guidance.

The Priest snarls frustration, thrusts the tooth high overhead (though the void owns no direction either) as if threatening heaven. Tell me! Say who Servant’s perfidy concealed! Send me forth to find and slay them!

Something wakes to the shouting; something stirs the currents of the void. The Priest feels it draw near and screws up courage to face it--then it is past, the wake of its passage oversetting the djur as a whale would a minnow. Unaccountably, the Priest is falling--

And tumbles to the ground with a breath-stealing impact, night-adapted eyes made blind by a fervid green glow. Shouts of soldiers echo all round; something high-pitched snarls nearby. Something else digs teeth and sharp-jointed fingers into the Priest's hand that clutches the tooth. Instinct says the attacker intends theft.

That cannot be allowed. Snake-strike quick, the Priest reaches crossbody to snatch the would-be thief in a crushing hold. (It aches abominably to do so, pain radiating all the way up the arm. Wounded? No time to check.) The fairy squirms and shrieks and bites to no avail; the Priest climbs to standing, considers the creature with clearing eyes--then bites its head neatly from its shoulders. Deliberately the Priest spits the skull aside, deliberately shakes fountaining ichor over the nearest Inquisition soldiers. "Hear me and bless these with Your might!" comes the stentorian roar.

The headless fairy is a disappointing reservoir, offering blood enough for a single blessing and no more. More will be needed even if--especially if--the battle is already joined unblessed. The Priest discards the sad little corpse and bites deep into the side of one hand. Blood wells from the toothmarks, sufficient to stain clothing and impart divine virtue as the Priest touches one new ally and then the next.

It makes a strange image, even for a thing from a rift: A bald androgyne, naked as an infant, slipping through the dance of battle to badge blood on each of the fighters.

ii. camp.

a. This new body, the Priest thinks, is a nuisance and an embarrassment. Thin-skinned, thin-blooded, dull of senses and lacking even proper teeth, it's a long way for a djur to fall; the passing resemblance to the alfar is insult compounded on top of injury.

It would be folly to reject anything freely offered by those who know this world better, and so the Priest has not, accumulating a small pile of foodstuffs and medical supplies. Medical attention is more lacking with so many wounded, but the Priest is no stranger to self-administered field medicine and so presses lips and tongue to a shallow slice bisecting one intricate trueblack tattoo. No telltale fizzing antiseptic sting follows; the Priest wrinkles lips back from teeth in an expression of disgust. Another mark against this form. The bites--including the self-inflicted one--will have to be bled clean.

The Priest's eyes drop briefly to Servant's tooth where it gleams black and large as life in its makeshift holster of torn cloth beneath the borrowed shirt. No--that carries resonance best left unheard, emotions left unresolved; better something else. Many present have fine edged weapons suitable to the task. That thought in mind, the Priest looks up, scanning those nearest. There--someone not engaged in other business, or at least nothing apparently important.

"You," the person in question indicated with a jerk of the chin, "bring your weapon here."

b. This world has living stars.

That more than any disdain for shelter keeps the Priest outside all that night, lying where the best view might be had of the wheeling infinity overhead. Worlds without number, the Divine Shadow had promised the djur; and yet, trapped in the wreckage of a dying universe, the djur imagination had trouble encompassing the idea of even one other world, one other sun beyond theirs.

But here are suns beyond counting burning stately in the dark--here are worlds without number spinning around them. Heaven exists beyond the encroaching dark; the fulfillment of that promise leaves the Priest breathless with wonder. Now all that remained was to broach the void and lead the other djur to claim their prize. Eager contemplation--of the idea, of the stars--keeps the Priest awake through the night, yellow eyes wide and watchful.

Not an easy watch to stand after a night of pitched combat, even for one accustomed to long tiring days; by dawn’s advent, the Priest’s begun to flag and drowse. Yet a gradual paling of the sky to the east—the first sleepy song of waking birds—and the Priest snaps wholly awake in anticipation of some danger to come. Stands, taut as a bowstring with wary anticipation, as the first shining limb of the sun crests the horizon.

Never has the Priest seen a sunrise, yet reason supplies that is what this must be above so verdant a world; long training graven into instinct offers an appropriate marker for the event. The Priest draws breath and gives voice to a dragonish bellow, sliding thence into words in a tongue-tearing language with uneasy harmonics.

It is...music, after a fashion, a sort of song, but it's no pretty hymn of thanksgiving for light and warmth. There is bitterness beneath the snarling alien invocation, and grief: You leave us in the dark; you are too weak to take us with you in your dying. Not the most fitting greeting for a living sun: but the bones of ritual offer structure in a chaotic new world.

And the hymn’s words need not apply only to a star--thus the particular and personal zeal the Priest puts into waking this corner of the camp with grating orisons.

ii. a.

[utulien_aure]

The figure the Priest has beckoned to is tall, as Thedosians judge matters, and his long dark braids obscure all but the point of the sword he is cleaning. But perhaps this is for the best, for the blade is not the only thing that the mane of hair block: the figure has pointed ears, and eyes too bright to be normal.

"Your pardon?" Fingon asks this demanding stranger, a wary look passing over his face. "Were you speaking to me?"

II b or not II b

[misdirection_hex]

Back in his Circle days, Vandelin had always been infamously difficult to wake. Shouting, shaking, alarms, music--all in vain, regardless of when his classes started or what important tasks he had set for him.

The war had called an unceremonious end to that little quirk. One doesn't have the luxury of sleeping soundly when there are rogue templars, rival mages and crudely-armed civilians alike stalking the forests and calling for one's blood. And even with Inquisition-provided camping gear and better-equipped guards to ensure safety, he's never gotten the hang of sleeping decently outside.

This makes it all the more imperative, in his view, that he be left in peace to get what sleep he can manage under the circumstances. One irritable and sovereign-sized eye creaks open at the Priest's cacophony, and he squints at the sunrise in an attempt to gauge what time it is. Too fucking early for this, is the conclusion.

He ventures out of his tent, hair wild as ruffled turkey feathers and jaw set with a distinct lack of amusement. "Listen, friend," he says, "far be it from me to disrupt your...native customs, but we all need rest if we're to make it back to Kirkwall safe and sound."