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Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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."

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.

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.

"What?"

She still has small scrapes that burn, but she's by no means too bad off to go with. Merrill follows after Marcoulf and Anders, grip on her staff white-knuckled. It doesn't escape her that they still don't know where Galadriel is, or that things were just- very, very bad.

Whatever else there is, though, they need to know. Merrill is getting rather tired of not having any answers.

He leads them only a few paces from the ragged edge of the pilgrims in the corridor, his hold still secure on Anders' arm as if he's forgotten it's there it all. Had this conversation happened yesterday or even just an hour ago before the chaos in the chamber beyond, its wording might have been different - more hesitating, limping and uncertain. As it is:

"Galadriel is in the basement. I found her there last night when you, Anders, and the others were fixed by whatever magic is there."

"What?!"

Louder, this time, and Merrill is about to shove past Marcoulf and Anders both when she realizes she has no idea how to get to the basement. She's nearly vibrating, though.

"I need to go to her- please, I have to."

Apparently Anders is the latest in stuffed animals, because Merrill has grabbed his hand unthinkingly, squeezing.

He makes a gesture with his spare hand that's likely meant to be moderating, but is all sharpness - lopsided and keyed up and as much to dismiss the confused sounds from the pilgrims in the rest of the corridor as it is could possibly be about quieting Merrill.

"She was put there. By someone. And when I left the cellar and came to look for help, someone struck me as I was talking with Sister Luca and the Revered Mother."

Moderating it is, despite the sharpness; Merrill sighs but forces herself to calm down, to shove her emotions away for the moment. It doesn't make her grip Anders' hand any less tightly, but at least she's not shouting.

"Did you see who it was? Are you okay?"

It's whispered now, still slightly frantic; it's new energy now, concern for Marcoulf's well-being.

"No," he snaps, dog bite sharp. It could be an answer to either question, but he doesn't linger on clarifying for her.

"Someone should fetch Galadriel and someone else should make ready to treat her. She had a wound. And-- and someone should discuss this with the Provost and with Warden von Skraedder. These people should be away from here."

He doesn't take to this easily - too many questions, not enough clear direction has his nerves all frayed. The sounds from the wounded and terrified in the hall are frenetic and misery inducing. He releases Anders's arm, a forced kind of gentleness.

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.

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.

At Teren's warning, Myr gives way unthinking with a step to his right; after only a day of seeing again the habits of sightlessness are still on him.

And then he, too, stops--because she did--and lifts his eyes to regard her from under the sodden curtain of his bangs.

He should probably say something. He's just not entirely sure what. "Warden," he finally settles on; that's safe enough.

Teren hasn't actually seen him clearly with his new eyes, and is still deeply unsettled by the whole situation. How does one even react to a miracle such as this, which was clearly brought on not by Andraste but by... something else, something horrible?

"All right?" she asks vaguely, trying not to probe.

Myr makes a noise that's definitely not a laugh but might be mistaken for one--if the miserable freezing drizzle of the rain were any louder than it is.

"No." He's not ever been good at lying but he is good at little social part-truths when he's got the will for it. Now is not one of those times. "You?"

Teren is an amazing liar, but sometimes there's no point in it. She hesitates after Myr asks, her face hard and inscrutable, then sighs through her nose.
"No."

That gets another noise out of Myr, a resigned huff of breath. "Everything's gone to shit," he opines; gestures back behind him toward the rubble with a bleeding hand. "There are people dying under there."

And nothing in his power any more to do about it. He drops his hand.

"Not wounded?"

Teren nods to his observation, then shakes her head to the question. "Got out in time," she mutters, but follows his gaze back to the rubble.
"The cycle had to break."

“Maker be thanked,” Myr breathes—heartsore reflex but earnest all the same. Just...not with much vigor behind it; that’s all bled out of him, pressed flat beneath grief like fallen stone.

Though there’s something left lively enough to bubble up to an indrawn breath like a sob at her next; it’s true beyond refuting or disbelieving and hurts all the more for it. Myr masters himself in his next breath, shoving away that urge to scream or cry or dig fruitlessly at the rubble for hours more. “Not like this. If they’d only listened—if I’d been faster—“

If, if, if.

"You weren't," Teren cuts in, not cruelly, but not with any particular gentleness either. "And they didn't." She pauses to lean against the wall, arms folded, gaze shifting toward the adjacent hallway as a wraith glides past. She shudders and sneers, giving a little shake of her head.

After a moment, Teren's curiosity gets the better of her. Again, not unkindly, but also without any real consideration for painful emotions: "was it worth it?"

Whatever she'd meant by it, however the words were put, it's got the desired effect: Myr snaps out of it with a sharp shake of his head. "No," he agrees like a sigh. No, and there's no taking any of that back.

Her question--or the wraith, though he doesn't look at it (doesn't need to, to follow it through the Fade by the trail of cold it leaves)--hauls him up short. "I don't know," he says at last, honest as ever. "Andraste forgive me, I don't."

He pauses a beat and finally remembers to look at her when he's talking, eyes flashing catlike in the gloom. "But I've got to act like it was or it's wasted."

The sudden eyes where there weren't any before is unnerving, but, weirdly, that's far from the most unnerving thing about this awful place.

"You haven't got to act any sort of way," Teren replies gruffly, folding her arms, "don't know what answer I was hoping to hear, but I reckon not knowing is one of the better ones."

Don't I? I'm a mage, Myr might say at any other time, the good Chantry boy defending all he's long believed.

But that's casuistry and he hasn't the heart for it. (Reasoned argument didn't keep these people safe. No one listened to him. No one believed and now--)

He breathes out in a sound that's not a laugh but might be kin to it. "How anyone could be certain either way after that," he says dully, "I don't know either. Maker, certainty's what got them killed."

"Exactly," Teren replies with a brisk nod and a little shrug. "Some people can't be helped. Won't be. All we can do is our job, and be on our way." Oceans rise, empires fall, and sometimes dumb assholes get crushed by their own ceiling.

They are, Myr knows, talking about quite different people here. He ought to explain--or bristle defensive--

And pick another fight that would come to nothing in the end. "Right." Back to flat acknowledgment. "It's the ones they'd hurt along the way I worry most about."

Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

The Abbey on the White Cliff

The Main Hall

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Ceremony Aftermath

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

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