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

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'."

[rathercommon]

Kitty's response is immediate. Her shoulders drop, and her spine straightens, and her lips press together, and her heavy eyebrows lower, and she looks directly at Myira, saying hotly -

"I'm not going to blubber or boo-hoo."

Still, despite her anger, the question of are you all right is sweet enough; so Kitty controls herself and swallows back the next, unkinder thing she was about to say - that the girl sounds like some country bumpkin, so of course she doesn't see anything wrong with this. In London, they got country folk coming in often enough - Kitty's pickpocketed her fair share of rural fools wandering around with their mouths agape and their grand-uncle's magic talisman tucked haphazardly into their bag. She and the other kids had always made the most ruthless fun of them, them with their wide-eyed astonishment and disoriented stumbling. But it turns out that being from the city doesn't actually make you wiser - it just makes you wiser about the city. Out here in the country, she's as disoriented as they ever were.

And anyway, this girl might sound like a bumpkin, but she certainly doesn't look one. Wrapped in those birds' feathers, she honestly looks half a demon herself. Like something out of a tale. As Kitty takes her in and the initial wave of anger fades, she leans away a bit, lips pressing together warily. And, warily, she blusters.

"And you don't know whether or not I'm used to it. Maybe I've got glowing green portals vomiting me up every second Sunday of the month."

[notacrow]

Myira's response to the hot response she's engendered is to grin fiercely, teeth shining in the firelight for a moment.

"Good. You do got some fire in there somewhere!" She seems overly pleased that her goading has gotten the result she wanted, but it's in her nature to be a bit smug and full of herself. When you consider you and your people the absolute experts on magic and spiritual dealings, it's quite easy to fool yourself into thinking that humans have nothing to offer you. Still, a little compassion doesn't hurt and Myira has always had a deeply buried soft spot. She adjusts her cloak a little, shifting the familiar, comfortable weight on her shoulders until she finds the right spot. Kitty's response to her attempts at reassurance earn a rough caw of laughter and another grin, a flash of brightness against copper skin.

"Mayhap you do at that! But you don't quite got the look o' someone who does, if you don't mind me sayin' so," Myira drawls in response. "Not sayin' I'm used to it either, mind. I figure if'n you came fallin' out of the hole in the damn sky we're all sittin' on the same branch."

[rathercommon]

Kitty purses her lips quite disapprovingly at the comment on her fire - it's her business just how much fire she's got, thanks very much, and also her business whether she wants to show it off to some stranger and definitely not some stranger's place to comment on it and definitely not some stranger's place to evaluate whether it's good or not - but she doesn't get overtly hostile. After all, the girl seems weird enough that Kitty's interest is engaged, alongside her wariness - even as she watches her carefully, she also doesn't necessarily want to drive her off.

"And what is the look of someone who falls out of holes, exactly?" Her voice is a little dry as she asks. "I'm not sure I'd be able to spot someone like that if I saw 'em."

[notacrow]

Don't be too hard on her, Kitty. Myira isn't used to humans.

"I dunno," she admits cheerfully. "But I was just assumin' they'd probably be glowing and green and what not. On th' other side of it, I came out of one of those and I ain't glowing or green neither so I'm probably not on the right track. This ain't the sort of magic I'm used to doin'."

Myira leans forward, resting in her chin in her hands and looking pensive. This whole situation is so bizarre and foreign to her. Still, better to act like you know what you're doing than to get pegged for some kind of easy mark or something.

"All I know is this don't look like any place near home. Not enough green for one thing. I don't like it."

[rathercommon]

Kitty, almost involuntarily, takes her eyes off the suspicious girl to look around them. No. It doesn't look anything like home. No buildings far as the eye can see, no cables bearing power from one place to the next, no roads, no villages, no people. Is there any place in all of the Empire that looks so bloody desolate? Even up in the Scottish moors, you can spot a manor house in the distance. Or, well, that's how she imagines it, anyway. Not like she's ever been to a moor, or honestly anywhere beyond London's suburbs.

Still, she brings her attention back to that earlier comment. "Do you do magic, then?" she asks, turning her face back to Myira. Her expression is more controlled, now, the suspicion shuttered behind a neutral expression.

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.

[rathercommon]

Poor Kitty gets Kitty's back stiffening, and her shoulders tensing, and her lips thinning. It's not that she's too proud to receive sympathy, exactly - quite the opposite, sometimes she wants it desperately - but when a stranger offers it to a stranger, usually what comes next is something along the lines of here, try this mystical oil, straight from Araby, it'll soothe your soul, just a quid for the first bottle. At best. Or as someone's rubbing your back, they're also slipping a hand into your purse. Or then they turn around and try to murder you, if they're a demon, 'cause Kitty's met more than one demon like that, making mocking sounds of sympathy before turning to attempted murder. Honorius was full of sweet words, for one, even as he was tearing them to pieces...

So sympathy from a stranger, that gets her wary. But, well...Kitty doesn't have any money with which to buy a healing-tonic-straight-from-Araby, and she doesn't have anything to steal, either. And as for murder, well, if it was going to happen, it ought to have happened already, right? So she forces herself to relax.

Even if that leer from the other side of the fire makes the girl look wicked. Ugh.

The proffered pastry helps, too. Slightly hesitantly, Kitty reaches out and pinches off a little bite. And, in the spirit of the pastry, she doesn't comment on the creepiness of the girl's expression, nor on the ominous nature of her sympathy, but instead just says, "Thank you." And: "And I'm not worried about it being bad."

[the_cleric]

"You're wel-come," Jester says, half in sing-song. "You can have the whole thing, if you really want. I was so hungry when I fell out of the rift, or whatever. I was basically starving. And now--"

She leans back a little so she can pat her belly, to show how not starving she is now. It's a quick movement, because she has to re-offer the rest of the pastry to Kitty.

"Anyways, I have like, three more in my bag. So it would be okay if you ate just this one. Are you really not worried about it being bad? What are you worried about, then?"

[rathercommon]

Kitty searches Jester's face a moment. Then, hesitantly - rather like a cat suspiciously accepting a bit of chicken from the hand, all tensed muscles and readiness to pull away at any sudden movement - she takes the pastry. The whole thing. Nibbling delicately, she turns her attention to the question, answering -

"Everything's bad." With a shrug, she adds, "And everything's good. Any time you're in any situation, it's going to be both things by turns." Then she takes a breath, and tilts her head at the space around them. "This place is just...creepy."

[the_cleric]

"Really? Nahhh." Jester turns to pull open the top of her haversack. She pulls out another pastry, identical to the one she's just given away, except it doesn't have any bites taken out of it yet. She takes a quick bite to remedy that situation before she elaborates. "This place? It is totally, totally not that creepy. Like, I have seen some creepy shit before. One time, I went into an abandoned mine, and there was a freaking cult of gnolls, or something, living in there, and they were sacrificing people to their god. That was a creepy place. This?"

She looks up at the night sky, with a happy sigh, and takes another bite of her pastry. How does she explain how great it is to be outside, and to be making friends in a new place, and to be learning all kinds of new things?

"This is pre-tty nice. Like, no one is being really mean, or sacrificing anybody. Well, probably there is some sacrificing. I have heard some stories. But I haven't seen any. And wait until you get to Kirkwall! Except... they do call our house the Gallows, but it is okay. I can give you some paint or something, if you want. What's creepy about it, do you think?"

[rathercommon]

Well - no, it's not, like, creepy in the traditional sense. That's true. Kitty's crawled her way in and out of musty old basements and abandoned attics. She's had to silence a scream when an enormous vicious rat got startled and started trying to escape up her leg. (Stan said it was a mouse, but it was definitely a rat, and it was definitely huge.) She's been through Gladstone's abandoned tomb, seen those boots lined up so neatly in a row...This isn't that kind of creepy. It's not human-sacrifice creepy. It's not even my-house-is-called-the-Gallows creepy. It's just -

"There's too much...space." She shakes her head together, unable to properly articulate it and what's wrong with it. "I feel nauseous."

(This claim is undermined slightly by the big bite she takes from the pastry.)

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!"

this can only spell good things for their relationship

[rathercommon]

Seeing magic spring into existence before her is very, very rarely a good thing. Every once in a while, a roar of fire or spear of ice comes from an elemental sphere hurled by one of the Resistance, every once in a while magic is a rescue rather than a threat, but that rescue is always preceded by a strident "Hoy!" or "Incoming!" or Stan's familiar grunt. No warning here, just a sheet of deadly spreading cold, and even if it's directed at the demon chasing her that doesn't mean it isn't going to be turned against her next.

So she doesn't duck. Rather, when that magic comes, she's already moving, lurching to the side as unpredictably as possible so that she won't be a sitting target for a demon's next attack. Unfortunately, unpredictable movements are grand for avoiding attacks when someone's trying to hit you, but it also sabotages the efforts of someone who is actively trying to not hit you: she manages to lurch right into the path of that second magical attack.

It hits her dead-on. Right in the center of the chest. She shrieks, a primal noise of pain and fear, as she falls backwards, magic spreading across her, hair flying wildly, limbs flailing.

(For what it's worth, she's not being actively dramatic. It does hurt in the moment. A lot. And it is bloody alarming, being on the receiving end of a magical bolt, even if you're pretty sure it's not going to take you out. Maybe a little bit of it is exaggerated, because a big dramatic death-scene is useful if you're planning to play dead after, but it bloody hurts, still, for the few seconds until the magic dissipates into nothing and fades from her system.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9fBQYE-S5o

[supersonic]

Oh, for pity's sake.

"Don't they teach listening skills in the Fade, or whatever impossible place it is you all come from, honestly," the string of complaints begins rattling out of the mage as he flat-out runs for her, and if Pietro's tone is sharp and unsteady as a tray of knives, well, it's only that he's just hit an unarmed teenage girl with enough magical energy to risk freezing a limb, and he's fairly certain he didn't hit her anywhere they can simply cut off.

"Please don't be dead," he breathes as he drops to his knees and skids across jagged rock to land beside her. "Or near death, even, because the last healing spell I tried didn't go exactly well, and Maker knows if Isaac even bothered to show up."

He reaches one hand out to check if she's breathing, the other rifling in his belt for a potion or a tonic or something.

[rathercommon]

She might as well be dead, still as she is. She makes sure to keep her breathing shallow and her eyes closed, just listening to his approach. He's muttering something, but she ignores it - no doubt it's just threats - and instead concentrates on his footsteps. And so -

So when he reaches towards her, she's ready. She's not completely unaffected by the magic - her chest is a little achey, and she thinks she might get a chest-cold or something later from it - but there's no physical damage visible. Hopefully, the oddness of that is enough to give him some warning, because when she springs into action, she's vicious. Her hand closes around the pen she's armed herself with, and she swings it upwards, driving the wicked-sharp tip towards his throat with a cry that's mostly fierce and only a little bit scared.

[supersonic]

So, not dead then.

Very much more not dead than Pietro had been expecting, in fact, and the instant rush of relief he feels at her first movement is— rather unfortunate for his reaction time. He yelps, reeling back, and barely manages to raise the midsection of his staff between them in time to avoid being skewered in the neck.

"Hey—" Rude. It is not the most elegant block, but it is a solid one, with a bit of a shove to it. "I am not here to fight you. Not even with— what is that, the world's bluntest knife?" What kind of weapon is that?? True to his word, however, the faintly glowing end of the staff gets no brighter. At least for now.

[rathercommon]

She's bringing the pen back to try again, all her instincts screaming at her that this is a magician or maybe a demon and you're going to die if you don't fight back right now and finish it quick - But the question about what is that is so incongruous that it penetrates through her haze of fear and aggression. Because, like - what does he mean, what is it? And so she's distracted enough that it throws her off her rhythm, and instead of stabbing again, she speaks.

"Rubbish, you're not here to fight," she snarls, though she doesn't sound quite as ferocious as is her usual wont. "You cast a spell right at me."

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..."

[rathercommon]

It's almost a bit strange, hearing the demon speaking like a normal person. She's heard demons using human voices before, of course, but they were never really like this. Never helpful. Even Bartimaeus, the demon with whom her conversation was the most normal and reasonable, was certainly more focused on amusing himself by being frustrating than he was on helping her.

So Kitty looks up (and up, and up) at the creature with his strange gray skin and his horrid horns, and she works to avoid pulling away from him in distrust. Instead, she says, her voice very polite, "How far is camp, then?"

[coiledscales]

Alacruun's head tilts to one side, considering her for a long moment. He's not entirely sure if she trusts him, but he knows he hasn't really trusted anyone since he arrived here, so that might just be her good sense talking. He offers her a shrug.

"Not far. We were waiting for this rift to happen, so we had to be camped nearby."

Can't be more than a mile or two, at most.

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.

[rathercommon]

It seems rather like something out of a Makepeace play, doesn't it? A young lady imperiled by demons. About to face doom. A handsome man with a (she has to note) really nice arse swooping in to save the day like some grand action hero. The only thing missing is a lengthy period in which people sing a song about the wickedness of something something something, thankfully, because she would not be able to stand a musical number, because musical theatre really is the worst.

Well, and also, in Makepeace's plays, the girls never got knives, either. They got stuck getting rescued or every once in a while standing towards the back of a group of magicians. So this is an improvement, she reflects as she hefts it, and checks the balance. Good.

The man parries the wraith's downward blow. While it's distracted, Kitty takes the opportunity; she drops down and, quick as a flash, slams the knife behind the creature's kneecap. It's a sickening feeling, feeling metal on bone, and it makes a sickening crunching sound as the knife cuts tendon. She grits her teeth, and yanks the knife free, and the creature sags as its leg is taken out of commission.

"Thanks," she pants, and swallows before saying - "Sorry, they'll keep - until we what?"

[mousquetaire]

While he threw the knife to her, he hadn't imagined she'd be so sharp with it as that. The wraith goes down quickly as a result, crumpling under its own weight and giving d'Artagnan an excellent target to sweep his sword free and plunge it through its chest. Given the nature of the beast, he has some doubts that will keep it down.

But it will at least give them a breather.

Pulling the sword free again, he turns to her and nods, impressed.

"That was vicious," he says, which in this tone and with this smile, can be nothing less than a compliment. He's breathing hard himself, and his uniform is spattered with the kind of gore he'd rather not think about. These creatures are disgusting.

The rift is not much better, honestly, given that it's spitting them out. A gloved hand points towards the green tear in the sky.

"The rift. It's the door they're coming through. You see your hand?" The one with the green shard, which happens to be the exact same colour as the thing in the sky. As it turns out, not a coincidence. "They react with the rifts. We near enough, and they'll close it. No more wraiths."

He pulls off his own glove while he's talking, and holds up his hand to show the matching shard embedded in it.

"The more of us that help, the better."