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

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."

[shri]

More and more remarkable - Lakshmi nods, keeping her gaze moving from between her company and the wrath that was sure to attack again but mercy was it seemed to prefer it's range at present then closing in on them. Her hand stays on the girl's shoulder even so, just in case they need to move again.

"Can you keep doing it? Is there a limitation to it?"

[rathercommon]

"It's, I mean...probably." Kitty glances around at the fine lady, brows knitted a bit. "If the magic's too strong, I get knocked out. It's not like I'm immune to it, it's just...I'm tougher than most. But it's not like if I'm more tired it doesn't work or anything. So you should stay behind me as much as you can." Earnestly, she assures her, "I'll keep you from getting hurt. As best I can. I promise."

[shri]

Lakshmi nods - and then she finally takes her eyes off the enemy, dropping down to one knee in front of the girl. Her arms brace against her shoulders. Serious, orders that she gives without thinking but they come from having a plan rather than demand that she is listened too.

"There is a rock, to the northeast of us now. It will cover us better, and I think there are reinforcements are coming to fight either them or us that ought to give us some time regardless." It seems as likely as the more hopeful auction. "Do you know how to run when receiving fire? Have you dodge heavy ammunition before?"

[rathercommon]

"Heavy..." No. She's faced the werewolves' claws and jaws, and they were fearsome, but they were claws. That's different from being fired at. As for magical attacks - almost all her enemies have assumed that a single blow would take her out, like Mandrake and his little imp, like the demons guarding magicians' homes. Honorius had been vicious and relentless in his attacks, but that certainly wasn't anything like being under heavy attack. Just a single mad creature, unable to stop.

"I haven't," she admits. But she squares her shoulders, and declares, "But I'm quick. I'll manage."

Though it's such an odd question from the fine lady. Has she? She certainly doesn't look the type.

[shri]

She nods, waiting for the response. Eyes staying on her as she speaks to see if it might be too much. Battle-shock was common enough in soldiers the first time. Something to be watched, to make sure to direct. Makes her grip hard to ensure she was paying attention. If not too much - she didn't look green or new to being in a fight. Even if not this kind, exactly.

That was fair enough, Lakshmi hadn't fought ghosts before either.

"Keep your body low. The smaller you can make yourself, the harder you are to hit." Even if that didn't exactly apply. "But go straight to the rock. I will be right beside you."

[rathercommon]

"But - " But if Kitty gets hit, she'll be fine. It's better to be a big target, to attract the bulk of the attacks. Not that she's someone particularly self-sacrificing, not that she's hungry to get slaughtered for someone else - she's a lot of things, but a hero definitely isn't one of them - but it just makes sense. But...The fine lady seems so firm about it, so certain, that Kitty nods. And hopes she isn't making a mistake from being overawed by the lady's very excellent clothes.

"All right. Then - "

She takes a breath, braces herself, and then takes off running.

[shri]

And Lakshmi is there, right beside her. Even if she's a sight more obvious, in the flare of these ridiculous skirts. Which she catches the edge of and yanks it up in her hand holding the blade. Quick enough, out of the way, before another shot of magic explodes the rock in a shatter.

At least, she can be glad, after so long, there is an exactness to fighting, running, moving. A quietness to it, even, where all actions become the same in kind. To survive. To keep surviving. Her nails bite into her palm, her heel strikes the ground hard enough to hurt and jar her leg, her back protests the dropped low angle on old muscles. One long stride, one after another after another as she feels a splattering of debris - no shrapnel, good, small mercies, no grenades, just impossible magic - and the rock is there like a safe harbour. That she ducks and rolls hard, throw her weight onto her side to make it half a dive. To throw herself the last few feet so that her companion needn't worry about her. Determined rather than elegant, but who in the hell cared when they were fighting for their life?

Her back rams in hard into the rock to make sure nothing else was sticking out where it could get burned. Breathless, - and stranger than all, laughing. Exhilaration was a funny thing. "No burnt edges?"