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

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!"

[shri]

It rebels against everything she has ever fought for: to let a child shield her. For what - her sheer inability to navigate her own skirts? To balance the fear of her child in her arms to let someone else's stand in front of her. She cannot bear it, but in that moment, it isn't her choice and the half torn cry of "No!" barely makes it out of her mouth before the fireball hits the girl. Shatters against her like the tide to the shoreline.

Lakshmi surges up, feet hard and heavy against the ground - blast this not having shoes, at this moment. But she doesn't feel the hard stones below her feet, nor does the weight of her skirts and gold seem to bother her as she doesn't do what the girl says directly. No, she isn't leaving her there, she could not. Until she realises - she isn't hurt. Her clothes are burned, the smoke curls off of her but -

This wasn't the time to stop and stare. This wasn't the time to be utterly amazed. That could come later. So she shakes away the order, they've got to have a better idea than that. Especially when she sees the attack go straight through the thing like nothing. So she grabs her by the arm, and yanks her towards the cover as well. The ordered shout over her shoulder - "Can you do that again?"

[rathercommon]

Kitty, for just a moment, thinks of staying behind to hold the thing off. And then she decides: no. No, she would prefer not to. She's brave, but running seems like a really, really good idea. So she follows.

As she does, her own bare feet slapping the ground, wincing as twigs and rocks bite into the soles of her feet, she pants -

"Yeah, it's - it's something I do."

[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."

[shri]

She turns when the voice speaks to her - though he face is hidden behind her veils she gives little away. At least until she is facing him, and there is the baby's blankets held unravelled in her hands. Smatterings of her blood and burns in them.

Empty, there is nothing quite like this emptiness. Her own body feels hollow. A shell that might crack - perhaps best he does not touch. Not for the hurt she might do him. But because it might betray her too him. Egg shell thin, she'd simply crumble in.

Acknowledgement, brief that she looked at him, but gone afterwards as she flicks the material out. Unravelling the bundle.

"I have had worse, I will again." It certainly seems to be true. There are scars that cannot be mistaken to those who have seen them. There is a bullet wound, long healed in a mess of puckered shiny skin. Lines of scratches older than her present wounds. Teeth marks, claw wounds. At odds with the gold and henna. A thin veneer of grandeur.

She doesn't linger on it, she just keeps working. Smoothing the material out in her hands.

[motherfucking_ghost]

It takes a long while to connect the swaddled blankets, folded and carried in such a fashion as she had in battle, to what the empty and unraveled remains means. To what it must have meant. He's rarely been around babies. Here, in Thedas, has been his first encounter with children at all, and Kirkwall has babies more than Skyhold ever did. But not in combat. And the only baby he'd seen back home had been decidedly alien.

"No doubt about that, but we're gonna be moving out somewhere safer once everyone's caught their breath, and it's not gonna do anyone any good to go bleeding all over everything, y'know."

Scars don't bother him. They're common enough even back home, much less here with far different medical help. But at least a bullet wound means she's familiar with guns, and he's always thankful for that. Church awkwardly shoves his hands in his pockets for a lack of anything better to do with them, sword shifting on his belt.

"This sort of thing happens pretty regularly. The rifts opening up and people falling out of them. People tend to freak out." More than she's doing. Which...he's noticing now, more than the blood. Shock, maybe? Unless she's used to hopping planes of reality? Maybe she's...

Ah, there's a lightbulb just dimly starting to flicker above his head. Go on, what's two plus two?

"Are you..." It's repetitive, given what he approached her with, but now it just seems more pertinent. "...okay, though?" Whether it's just honest confirmation he's looking for or whether he's asking an altogether different question--that's for her to interpret.

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?"

[shri]

This knight is different, to the one she had left sleeping in a bed in the depths of the Thames' river slums. To the ones that hunted her. The ones she warred with until the streets of London ran thick with smoke and blood.

But it is a knight nonetheless if she knows anything of the images she saw in English palaces and houses and chapels. Enough to make her back go stiff, in pride rather than fear. A refusal to back down from anything, no matter how and when it occured. They had never turned their hands to her, not in service, not until -

Galahad would be well. Tesla and Devi could see to him if she could not.

Because maybe she wasn't the most pleasant either. Silks and blood, gold and scars. She didn't know how to run from the fight with the green ghosts and the little blasted teethed things. Her veil showed no more than the lower part of her face freely, her eyes just barely seen through as she held the edge of her veil between her first two fingers and thumb.

Then slowly - she nods. Bowing her head solemnly, a woman of position out of sorts to being exposed. Or more exactly, she had fought so long, and was so alone for so much of it... it is strange to simply have it offered and accept it. "There is a bite, I cannot reach it."

[swordproof]

The image of a stiff, carefully managed posture is one that Six recognises. She holds onto it herself more often than not, stoic and careful and managing her outward appearance to give the image of strength and stability. She had never allowed that to falter in public, only allowing herself to be weaker and more fragile when she was alone or trapped away elsewhere with Adalia - and even now it's difficult, even in front of her sister. Strength was all she had when everything else was stripped away.

It helps, at least, that deep down Six knows she has a good heart. Sarenrae would not have come to her otherwise, would not have allowed her to be blessed with the gift of her strength, for her to transform from a soldier to a Paladin under her touch. Her devotion would not be repaid if she was cruel or filled with judgement; it is a good thing that she is kind, because Six can imagine the kind of monster she would be if she was anything but.

Shaking her head, Six offers a small smile, a barely-there lift of her mouth.

"Would you allow me to look at it?" She doesn't think she looks particularly threatening, but sometimes Six is incredibly unaware of herself; that she is tall, above six feet, with muscles and weapons that would make some people weep to carry. She still pictures herself the small, sad girl struggling to carry her first weapon, finding it difficult to lift the metal with her own bare hands.

"Or I can find you a healer."

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.

[shri]

She tenses almost immediately at the sight of him. Only one thing stands so much taller than a man - and they only have one action or thought.

But she is ill-equipped to fight. Even if she wasn't bleeding, the lengthy embroidered lengha had caused her enough problems to want to go leaping up immediately again in the blasted thing. Let alone when there clearly was some relative safety in the camp.

So she takes a breath, she eases her shoulders back and she takes stock of the question as it comes to her. "Well enough. I am sure they could have done much more."

[coiledscales]

"They're nasty pieces of work. I've had to fight them once or twice, although I... try to avoid that. I'd rather not end up dead," Alacruun shrugs casually. He doesn't see an issue with putting voice to his doubts about fighting for the cause. It isn't his cause and as far as he's concerned, this is temporary.

"We'll be out of here soon enough, though. The city isn't terrible and the accommodations are much more comfortable..."

If he's noticed the way she tensed at his approach, he hasn't commented or given any sign of it. At least not yet.

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.

[shri]

If Lakshmi were a different woman, the question that might immediately follow is something what the hell are you talking about?

But Lakshmi is an immortal rebel queen who is responsible for far too much public destruction and fighting with immortal knights about werewolves of all things. So her response isn't to question someone who seems to know what they are talking about - after all, there was a green glowing mark on her hand. Ruler she might be but she didn't have the pride that cared about it when someone clearly knew what they were talking about.

So she looked at her hand, looked at the green mark that was glowing, ebbing, crackling with a power that wasn't natural to her at least. Just point it - ?

Alright, and she threw her hand up pointing her hand at the rift. Palm up and open. Shocking when the light poured out of it. Filling the air connecting with the same green hole in the air. What devilry was this? Every nerve burned, strange and consuming all the way up her arm, but it hardly hurt at all.

[earthbones]

Tree-sap young as all of her people are still for what Talos did to them, Brónach can summon a grin as whatever it is between anchor and rift (ignores the research, watches the researchers, the surveys, how far they pick into them for the sign it goes too deep) seems to stun. A moment of time bought.

Right as the little thing - eyeless and pale as Falmer in the fetid dark of all the dwarven ruins, any other festering stinking pits they've made for themselves, winged as some of the chaurus patrolling launches right at her boot - to have her stomach rolling. The reminder. Unwelcome. Unwelcome, unwanted, lurched back to camp beneath the bare bones of a dragon's empty ribs with hide stretched tight about them to keep the wind at bay, Shadowmere stood sentinel in sparse mountain grass--

Fingers slack on the arrow, she drops it right as this pale, nightmarish thing comes within a hair's breadth of her boot. Then it stops. Chitters. Launches itself at the arrow as she jerks back and stares as it devours it while she draws the next, fires through the small body.

"Don't let those bite you," sensible advice for all things ever encountered but anything that crunches up an arrow (antler, that one, antler and shinbone), "I think it'll eat through you. We close that rift, this stops, it'll take longer with two." Her own hand is up now that the thing is dealt with, a familiar jangling shock all the way to her back teeth that sends a roaring into her ears. Then the pulsing stops, and the green is a wraith, arms, a head, a suggestion of ribs. Whatever these tiny monsters are.

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.

[shri]

That... had to be the strangest, most ridiculous thing she had ever seen. Which... was a feat in its own right, she supposed. She'd seen - thought she had seen - some truly incredible things in her own years. But a great, horned woman doing that... apparently in her defence.

Her mouth opened, shut - thank you, she supposed she meant to say? - and watched her go bouncing off. Was this how people felt watching her? Perhaps. But even then she still fought by conventional means. Guns and swords.

Wasn't really time to go stuck staring, all the same. She has greater issues to attend with, namely that there were still these green wisps to contend with. Nothing as dramatic as the girl could do, but she could distract the next one for the woman to do her next... whatever that was. So she barks what was nothing less than a war cry. Loud and deep, she might look poorly suited for a battlefield, but she knows it better than being off it certainly. Enough to know how to pitch her voice to cut through the cacophony of sounds and get the ghost's attention on her.

[the_cleric]

The wraith opens its ugly mouth to give a guttural cry of pain--or maybe anger, it is really really hard to tell from a wraith. Jester winds up her spiritual weapon for another strike.

"Don't be such a baby, don't be such an asshole," she starts to reprimand--but she's much closer to the wraith now, and gets a better look at its weird face. And the way that its jelly-eyes are focused behind her, back on the pretty lady, who has just called the ghost's attention back to her.

"Heyyyy, wait," Jester starts--but the ghost whmpfs past her, with a blast of cold gross air, reaching one of its wavery hands toward the lady. "Aww, man! Lady!"

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."

[shri]

If she knew nothing else about him, how he treated his horse was more than enough for her to be endeared to him. But then - she loved nothing so much as she loved those creatures. She took little pride in most of the accolades that people prescribed her. The one she had always loved was the one that praised her horses.

But that, like these skirts, belong to a different life, a different time. "I am, you need not bother yourself on that account." She looks down again, at herself, at the mess of blood and golden threads, sighing heavily. "But if you could lend your hands to help me clean some of this away..."

[mousquetaire]

He's dubious about how strong she is, given the amount of blood. Still, the best way to find out is to take her up on that request, which honestly, he would have done anyway. He nods, and comes to crouch beside her.

"Yes, of course. Whatever you need," he says, drawing his waterskin from his supplies. He offers it to her.

"These clothes are very fine. I doubt we'll find such quality where we're going, I'm sorry to say."

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.)

[shri]

A heavy objection might fall from her - if she were not clothed such. If her position, her title, were not worn so heavily about her. Declaring her before she even spoke. As they were meant to, as Gangadhar would always tug her to dress for her position. A fondness for them, to dream of them, came from her love of the memories, not from a love of display.

But once she has set it all to rights, to stride confidently as she such since there was no choice right at this moment. The long swatched of a baby's swaddling clothes, now neatly folded and tucked to her waist. She is ready to go about presenting herself to her wound be rescuers - but is stopped rather from getting much further.

By the man - woman? - that bowed before her. More than bowed, down on his knees in front of her. Head to the floor, and she hovers. Her hands paused in the gesture holding the edge of her veil. She knows the protocol, if not the person. Another time, a lifetime ago, in fact, this would not have been strange, even if she never liked it. It came with the title, it came with the responsibility, her husband had told her when she protested it. It's that alone that keeps her from rejecting it outright. They are not at fault for correct reading the gilded material for what it said of the owner.

But that does not stop her being wary. She has more enemies than friends, these days. "Rise." Is the sharp decree. "Who are you that you pay me such obeisance?"

[divineshadow]

It is truly no surprise that an alien would not return the gesture as offered; would, in fact, reject it in a way that sets the Priest's spine crawling. So had an apostate queen once refused the courtesy that would have let her kill the Priest outright and spare her own life--but this woman is not djur, and cannot know their ways, and so there is no significance whatever in the broken ritual.

Bid rise, the Priest straightens but remains kneeling. A queen should be taller--a queen should have one craning one's neck to regard her in full, and doing so eases a little of the jangling discomfort produced by the entire situation. (Too many pieces and none of them fit together as they ought; like restoring the carapaces of soldiers discarded in a beast-midden, crushed and mingled together past repairing.) "A Priest of the djur, who must recognize a queen if not obey her. This one greets you, o devouring Mother, and offers aid against your hive's foes."

Devouring Mother. Something like a smile tugs at the corners of the Priest's mouth, something a human would call irony. Another piece out of place; this little queen is not much equipped for devouring anything, if her teeth are as blunt as the Priest's now are.