Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

[laurenande]

WHO: Galadriel, Thranduil, Solas, Myrobalan, Merrill, Kitty, Lakshmi, Teren, Marcoulf, Jang, Obi-Wan, and Anders
WHAT: A trip to a perfectly normal Chantry in the middle of nowhere.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Island of Alamar, Ferelden.
NOTES: Current warnings, to be updated: Mild Gore

The Abbey on the White Cliff

Around noon on the fourth day, Brigette and the other sisters gather up the people of the Abbey. Everyone who can walk, who can stand, is urged to join them in the auditorium--the doors at the end of the main hall are thrown open and the people welcomed in. Today Reverend Mother Alvar will be enacting her final miracle and, in the grand tradition of this Abbey, the people are invited to behold and take joy in the sight of it. They are encouraged to be there for the end of the previous Reverend Mother's life, just as they are encouraged to welcome the new Reverend Mother, Luca, as she assumes her new position.

The auditorium is a wide, stepped chamber that drops downward into an open forum and stage. The roof is high and domed and was once constructed of the same grey stone as everything else on the island. It was caved in at some point, destroyed by a falling tree, but it has been patched over with wood and canvas. The extensive scaffolding speaks volumes of how much effort has gone into restoring this room, but all of it stands still and empty in preparation for the ceremony.

Above the center of the stage, in the very middle of the room, visible from all angles, there is a great green tear in the veil--a massive rift cleaves the room in two. It churns sluggishly, ebbing and twisting, muted under the weight of whatever pall hangs across this Abbey. Around the rift there is a golden arch--the wood is carved into flames and swords and papered over in hammered gold leaf. Behind the rift there is a triptych depicting scenes from the Chant and each is lovingly painted and framed in gold.

The room is filled with chaos, but not of the sort one would expect in the shadow of a rift. The people who meander in, the pilgrims who take up the seats near to the stage at the base of the steps, all of them are smiling, all of them are happy, some are weeping tears of joy or remorse, but all of them are entirely unsurprised by the rift's presence. They take no issue lingering near it. Praise is heaped upon the carpenters for their diligence in finishing the arch, songs are sung softly as everyone gathers, and eventually the room is prompted to recite from the Chant as Alvar comes to the center of the stage. She is frail and those who spoke with her earlier will see how she has aged--twenty years in a day, it seems--and she leans heavily on Luca until she moves apart to stand on her own.

Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls.
From these emerald waters doth life begin anew.
Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you.
In my arms lies Eternity.

When she speaks the Chant, for a moment, her voice sounds youthful again--no older than Luca's--but it is fleeting and before the end she is breathless and thin once more.

OOC:

Hey everyone, this is part 2! I will be posting an initial thread for this scene that will be a free for all, but feel free to start a thread beneath the Ceremony Header if you want. Below I will be reposting the updated areas and people links, same as the previous post.

New Top-levels are welcomed, as always, but if you have questions please hit me up.

This section will contain the rest of this plot, unless we skyrocket to too many tags for me to keep them straight.

Comments

The Abbey on the White Cliff

[laurenande]

The Abbey is a terribly small place, neither sprawling nor tall, and seems claustrophobic under the weight of the storm that rages against the white cliffs. It is packed with Pilgrims, a hundred strong, and a handful of staff and everywhere, in passing and at a distance, one can see the form of some great and terrible creature moving through the rooms, silent and frigid like a wraith. Those who live in the Abbey and those who have been here some time pay them no heed, but they are dangerous and unpredictable.

The trees beyond the abbey loom and sway dangerously in the wind and rain, but they provide shelter from the storm. Not the creatures, though--there is no shelter to be had from them.

The Main Hall

[laurenande]

The Main Hall is a long building, the sort in every Chantry across the whole of Thedas, and it opens into a wide room filled with pilgrims and unlit candles. The walls are lined with pews and columns and through that colonnade, in the shadows and the streaming light of the windows, dark figures travel the length of it. They linger outside the stone, beyond the walls or near them, and with them follows biting cold. The grey light fades as they pass, streaming to nothing as though shining through heavy waves, and they know no rest. Not truly.

There are no demons here, this place is safe, but the creatures that protect it are unknowable and twisted.

The Sisters and Brothers of the Abbey can be found in this hall, wandering two and fro, and every place of note is accessible from here. Only the Auditorium is shut to visitors, for the rift beyond the doors is too unstable to remain near to and the roof not yet repaired.

[rathercommon]

Kitty doesn't feel the cold. Not really. It's all awfully disconcerting, therefore, the way people huddle miserably with one another when all she wants for is a bit of a blanket. Takes her a while to figure it out - it's not that they're so much more sensitive; it's that it's a sort of magic, one that she's able to shrug off.

So it only seems fair. "Here," she says, shrugging off her heavy outer sweater and offering it to someone nearby. "Take it."

Ceremony Aftermath

[esquive]

In the scattered, confused aftermath of the ceremony, Marcoulf wades his way toward the nearest Inquisition member he can lay hands on. He's pale and uneasy, sharp angles gone more awkward and sharper still as his hand closes vice grip tight on a wrist or elbow.

"There's something else," he says. It's insistent. "We should discuss it."

'But not here,' among the ragged pilgrims and the battered sisters seems to be the slightly feverish, anxious implication. He flicks a glance toward whatever other members of their company are within earshot and jerks his head to indicate farther down the Main Hall. If there's such a thing as privacy in this place, it won't be found in the Main Hall right now, but even a few steps withdrawn would make him feel less vulnerable.

[justice_is_blond]

Anders looks at him as he's grabbed, expression tired and momentarily uncomprehending before he nods.

"All right. All right." There's little else to be done, the worst of the wounds are seen to and the rest he can either get to later or there's no hope for. Slowly he straightens up, and equally slowly he stumbles after Marcoulf.

immediately post-ceremony; itt: myr deals poorly with loss(.jpg)

[faithlikeaseed]

Myr doesn't properly register where the others have gone, once it's all over.

Despite knowing very well there wasn't time for it he'd pivoted on his heel the instant they were all out the door, ready to dash back in there one last time to save the stragglers. No plan on how other than getting to them--and that paltry thing shattered into dust when the wall came down to the sound of screaming. (One voice he recognizes. One voice who'd wanted the roof fixed before they used the auditorium again. Maker of All, who weaves signs into everything and composes the fears of our hearts.)

He doesn't know how long he remained behind staring at the pile of rubble where the door had been. He doesn't know if he registered the sounds of the storm outside, if others were there, if they tried to move him back (eventually, blandishments or not, he had gone). His memory doesn't hold it--doesn't have space, filled up with the absolute silent certainty of a collapsed wall, the sound of screaming, an imagined line of bodies in a courtyard the abbey doesn't have.

They might still be alive, he thinks. Naravelia had lived twelve days under the rock and scratched a line in the stone for every one of them. (It took two weeks to find her with her phylactery stolen.) They might still be alive takes him out into the storm with others he barely sees, barely recognizes, to see if the wall can be budged from outside. There is of course the rift to be worried about if they do; there might be the demon, but there surely are the dying who must be dug out, despite the risks, despite the weather.

He's out there well into the night, long after everyone else--everyone who can admit to themselves there isn't any hope--has gone in out of the storm. With bruised and bloodied hands he pries at the wreckage, even stoops to using his staff as a lever on a larger piece of it, and gets all of nowhere in the wet and the cold. There's too much of it; it's too heavy and too slick with rain and his fingers are numb and he can still hear them screaming but that doesn't mean they're still alive-- He kicks a tumbled block with a frustrated sob, hard enough to hurt, and sinks to a miserable huddle as the rain pours down.

If only he were a force mage. If only he'd thought to ask about what happened after. If only the Inquisition hadn't come at all, they'd still be alive. There might be some hope of saving them.

And though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing
Can break me except Your absence.

He sits there until the shivering's too profound to ignore, until all the warming glyphs he can scribe can't keep the chill from his core. It's after dawn above the clouds, he thinks. And: This would be a miserable, useless way to die. And: Your life's not your own after someone's laid down hers to purchase it.

And: Van would be furious if I froze to death.

I cannot see the path.
Perhaps there is only abyss.
Trembling, I step forward,
In darkness enveloped.

Shaking from cold, he climbs down from off what's left of the auditorium and makes his limping way back inside the abbey.

[doneisdone]

He's met by a fellow insomniac, whose nightly walks have only grown more fervid and restless as the world has collapsed. Outside the abbey is the only place Teren can really avoid the persistent wraiths, the sight of which make her want to vomit from terror and rage. What an awful place, a monstrous and repulsive stain on the Andrastian faith, and the only way to leave would be to hold a ferryman at knifepoint and abandon her companions, or to die out of spite.
She hasn't completely eliminated the second option, but the thought that her spirit might join the wraiths is enough to put Teren off it.

Seeing the small and pale shape of Myr, she automatically grumbles "on your left," so as not to startle him, then remembers. And stops, and turns to look at him, wary.

The Cloister

[laurenande]

The cloister has become the hub of activity in the Abbey, following the death of Reverend Mother Alvar. The wide covered plaza is full of life and conversation, all gathered around a fire pit and the wooden statue of Andraste. The storm rages above and the smell of brine and flowers permeates the air. It is chilly here, but it is not the deep and freezing cold of the main hall.

The sawhorses have been moved aside, replaced with beds and chairs. The tools have been stowed for now, however briefly, and the mood of those who linger in the dryness is upbeat and positive, despite the dismal setting.

Cloister Civillians

[laurenande]

The area is filled with activity, much as it had been when the Inquisition had arrived, although the prevailing mood of that bustle is now one of tension, uncertainty, and fear. The few remaining denizens of the abbey are quickly working to pack what few things they'll need to travel, making the decisions of those becoming refugees: what needful things do I take? What meaningful things do I leave behind?

Still they aid each other, thinking of their fellows as much as they think of themselves, smiling small furtive smiles, touching each other's shoulders, speaking low words of encouragement to those who become overwhelmed with everything that has happened—is happening now—and all, every so often, look to the members of the Inquisition for some small surety that they will be taken to safety by them.

Soon they will be ready.

LATE

[chainlightning]

Merrill may not be one of their faithful, but she is not willing to let the wraiths attack these people. They are good, kind people; some of them died to try and save them. She hopes, dearly, that more of them will not suffer the same fate.

She helps where she can with packing, with entertaining the children, with encouraging them to pack quickly. Her staff is held firmly in her hand and Merrill walks through them like- well, like the Keeper she never got to be. These people are her clan, today, and it's her job to fight for them, to keep them safe.

Dormitories

[laurenande]

The Inquisition is welcome with open arms to the Abbey, but not all welcomes are quite equal. Those who bare a rift mark are given a bit more kindness than those who do not. Rooms are cleared and opened to the marked, and while the beds are three to a space, they are still beds and they are made up with both sheets and blankets and adorned with a down pillow each. Those without marks are given cots, just as the rest of the pilgrims are, and their blankets are no less thick but their pillows are markedly thinner, if they are present at all.

The dormitories are east of the main hall, above the kitchens and the storehouses, overlooking trees and the cloister. The windows here have no glass but their shutters pull tight and the windows wear heavy, but short curtains that reach only past the window itself. There are a few niceties, mirrors and bookshelves that have not been moved in a century, but everything else has been moved or shuffled away to make room for those who come to the Abbey every day.

The Inquisition members are lucky, they are not sleeping in the Main Hall or the hallways that line the Abbey, but they are cramped and it is hardly a comfortable or quiet space. The kitchens below are loud, but there is fortunately no smoke rising from them to choke the windows or spoil the air.

The Infirmary Hall - CW: GORE

[laurenande]

The Infirmary Hall is dark and bitter cold.

The tang of death has not abated in the wake of Alvar's rein, if anything it has intensified. The wounds have reopened, both metaphorically and literally--there is struggle here, now, and the urgency of it bleeds into the walls. Estmond layers the bodies in the beds with blankets, he rushes in a panicked frenzy to keep them comfortable, but still they writhe. They have awoken, the sleeping patients in the hall, and the force that has kept them in stasis has weakened tremendously.

They are failing, they are dying now, and with some staggering speed. Their blood does not clot so easily, their pulses are not slowed and calmed, and they suffer the effects of this world around them as any man might. It is a terrible place to behold, now, because it is loud, it is painful, and nothing in this room is sedate any longer.

[dirth]

Whatever had been keeping the illnesses at bay has obviously abated, and Solas has no time to waste; he wants nothing more than to do whatever he can. If he helps these people then, perhaps, he can give himself time to think about where he might find Galadriel, where to even search for her. Dreams are clearly not an option, no matter how much he might wish to sink into the familiarity of the Fade, and he is beginning to feel as though he will have to search every inch of this place.

It is, of course, something he is entirely willing to do. For her, because of her, at her side. He would do it.

The room is loud and pained and dank and Solas moves among it, doing what he can to soothe the hurts of anyone nearby, to aid their pain and to help them relax. He bandages, he treats, he gets his hands dirty and covered in blood, but it brings him time away from the others to think, to consider, to find out what he must do next.

There must be something, he thinks, but his mind cannot grasp it.

[justice_is_blond]

He greets Estmond as he comes in, already pushing up his sleeves and grim. Solas' presence is a little bit of a surprise, but not an unwelcome one.

"Solas," he says quietly as he gets to work on one patient. There's something about the elf's stance that suggests he is preoccupied and Anders doesn't want to disturb him, but at the same time he doesn't want to seem to be ignoring him. ...Plus healing can be a lonely task. They're going to lose a lot of people here, now that whatever that was had happened.

After a few minutes he grabs one of the basins laying around and casts ice into it before melting the ice and bringing that over. There's never enough clean water for this task.

for anders.

[chainlightning]

Merrill has come down in the evening, worried as she is about frightening the patients. With Esmond gone and the extra strangeness in the wake of Alvar's death, the patients need sleep. Some of them may never wake up from it, but sleep is a relief from pain, and rest helps the body heal. Merrill can provide them with sleep, magically induced though it is.

Seeing Anders here is no surprise. She wonders if he will sleep, or if he'll keep a vigil in the infirmary. Merrill comes up beside him, making just enough noise to not startle him, but not enough that she'll disturb any of the others.

"Show me which ones need my help the most," she says, glancing over the injured, the sick.

[justice_is_blond]

He's commandeered a chair, stuck it against the wall, and there are a couple of shabby pillows and blankets turned into something that's not comfortable, but it's not uncomfortable either. It means that as patients pass he can at least make sure they're in less pain than otherwise.

Her request gets a blink, and then her meaning sinks in. Anders nods.

"These two especially," he says quietly as he gestures at the two beds closest to the door. All he's been able to do for them is ease the pain a little and it's not enough. It's not even close to enough. "A little rest would be a kindness. If they..."

He trails off, looking at them with heavy eyes. "I don't think they're able to say anything anymore. But if they try to speak, give them an ear. It'll be their last."

He's tired in a way that sleep isn't going to really do much for. But at least he's doing all he can.

Day 4, Very Late/Day 5, Very Early

[hello_there]

"Well," Obi-Wan replies, when they have a moment alone. He's tired, and his hand hurts, which is surreal enough considering it's the hand he doesn't have. He doesn't bother standing, for once abandoning dignity to sit at the edge of the bed, "If nothing else, we finally know what's happened here."

Only then does he look up and see— Ah. Hello there. He's as tired as he looks, thanks for asking.

"I've been to see Galadriel. It seems that everything here, was caused by an artifact from her world. It must have fallen through the rift, and now it's the source of all..." He waves his hand with a vague, sloppy gesture, to indicate the trouble of the past week as if it were a fly buzzing around his face, "...All of this."

Infirmary Hall Civillians

[laurenande]

Even with the immense number of the fatally wounded and ill that had near immediately died once the influence of the ring had disappeared, they'd run out of litters to carry the sick fairly early on. The Infirmary was meant to be a place of rest, not a buzzing hub of movement. Even so, new ones are made with bedframes pried apart and sheets tied taut, the fruits of clever industry driven by need and the near feverish desire to not lose any more than they already had.

It will be a long and vulnerable procession on the claustrophobic forest path to the cliffs, then down the winding way to the docks that have gone so long unused that they are both vague memory and best hope, and the faces of those who carry the ill and those sick and wounded who are yet well enough to be apprehensive turn worried gazes from their prone positions on those from the Inquisition who are accompanying them.

The Garden

[laurenande]

The garden is frozen and rotting in equal measure.

The perfect plants have receded and the laws of nature have fallen over them once more. Summer blooms are frozen and withered, wilted with the cold. Fruits are rotting in the damp and bugs have moved in to consume what they can. Half of the yard is a stinking bog within hours of Alvar's passing--the other half is white and burnt by cold, already freezing with the chill of the wraiths that wander through.

Nothing here is edible. Everything is lost.

The Offices and Library

[laurenande]

The light in the office has gone out.

It is dark and it is cold here, but there are few wraiths who wander these halls. The candle on the desk is dark and will not be lit, not for anyone or anything.

The books remain, silent and cold, unaffected by all but the damp. The trinkets and notes gather dust, the clothing in the room over moulders and the flesh in the closet therein begins to rot. This place is a proper tomb now and walking into it, the comfort the candlelight gave off is missing.

Blood seems to rise from the floorboards or, at the least, it is not so clean as it appeared when last the room was lit.

[dirth]

The library is as cold as the kitchens cellar had been and he can see the wraiths wandering here and there. Solas knows enough of the Fade to move quietly, to shift, to try and hide, to make sure that they don't see him as he slips into the library proper, letting the door close quietly behind him. He doesn't need any candlelight to see, he thinks; he's far too used to the darkness, to the strain on his eyes.

Nothing seems as though it is any more out of place than when he was dragged here by Thranduil and he frowns as he drinks it in, looking this way and that. It's uncomfortable, he thinks, and there's a soft sigh as he makes his way down to the racks of books, reaching out to touch the dusty edges of the shelves.

There is something amiss here, he thinks, shoeless and unsure of where he is treading.

The Southern Transept

[laurenande]

In the south transept, the door to the exterior of the building has been blocked off and boarded up. The light that filters in from the windows that line the building is muted here, as if blocked out by a great looming shadow. The trees are close to the building here, and the shadows they cast are long.

To the side of the doorway there are a set of stairs leading downward into darkness. They are easily missed, hidden in the dark corner of the building as they are. They seem unimportant but, if one listens, one can hear the dripping and sloshing of water from below. If one listens harder, they can hear a quiet whispering, but it is an evasive thing and lost as easily as it is found.

[doneisdone]

Teren hates magic fuckery. She hates demons and spirits and other such blasted things not staying in the Fade where they belong, she hates ghosts, she hates spells being flipped about all willy-nilly with no regard for the people they affect, and therefore her hatred of this place has become all-consuming. She is ready to throw down. She would punch a bunny if it looked at her wrong.

Which is why it's great and also perhaps a little ironic that Anders is descending with her. He's a mage, and not a bunny, and she's not about to punch him; it's like an inoculation, using a mage to counteract magic against which she'd be helpless. She probably hasn't thought it through to that extent, but the point is, shut up, she's made of knives.

Quivering with the effort to remain completely silent, she glances back at Anders before reaching the bottom of the stairs.

[dirth]

As soon as Solas had been given information as to where he could find Galadriel he gathered everything that he had with him; nothing else mattered. Knowing that someone had found her before he had, that someone had managed to find a way down before he had, and the urge to storm down with no preparation almost overcomes him. It's an intense, almost dangerous desire, the kind he hasn't felt for a period of time far longer he would be comfortable admitting.

At least he's not entirely alone this time.

The whispers are something he recognises. He had heard them in his dreams, hauntingly, and he does what he can to chase them, no matter what he might find.

Moving lower, he pauses, fingers brushing over the walls and tracing the shapes, frown set and sure. He's frustrated, he's angry, he's tense, and there's a straightness to his spine that he can feel all the way through his body. He has to find her, he thinks, and nothing is going to stand between himself and Galadriel, not now that he is on her trail.

Breathing out, he closes his eyes, summoning himself.

"Here."

The Kitchens

[laurenande]

The kitchens are frigid now, empty and humid in the cold and the rain, and every inch of them is stinking. The mass of meat and vegetables that rest here have begun to turn. They are no longer preserved and they change as the weather does. They are kept stable by the cold, but their bruises are deep and their skins are thin and easily worn through by the biting chill of the wraiths.

The fish begins to stink within hours, the milk grows a skin but does not yet curdle. The bodies in the basement are dried but for the oil and the rancid nature of that permeates the air of the kitchen.

The wraiths enter here only on occasion, traveling some unseen path that draws them through, so it is warmer than most places.