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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

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.

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.

Teren seems ready to stab something. Granted, that's the mood Teren is almost always in, but she feels like she's about to snap and for that reason he's deliberately staying behind her. There's no one to heal him if she suddenly stabs his spine or throat.

Not like he's feeling all that better. The sisters are making such a show of being holy and good and helpful despite the environment saying something else is going on, and he doesn't know how people can just... accept it. Then again, so many have been brought up to trust in the chantry, to put their complete faith in it. It would take a miracle to break them free, and his side has always been short on those.

It's with this cheerful thought he nods to her, shifting his grip on his staff. As quietly as possible, he finishes coming down to take up position on the other side of the door there. He holds up a hand with an inquiring look, trying to find out if she wants light or if they want to just wade in.

The water in the basement has risen since Anders was last here, it is cold and moves more roughly. As they cross the threshold into the basement it is like stepping through a window, a transition without barrier but markedly wrong. The whispering is distant and slower and, this time, none of it is understandable by either of them.

The hallway stretches onward ahead of them, plunging into the darkness ahead, the trickle of water greets them. To the right there is a door, up ahead in the distance, there is a door to the left.

Well, she sure hates this!

At Anders' gesture, Teren nods: they need the light, and there's clearly no one down here. Or... at least not right here, not that that thought's reassuring at all. How will they move silently through water? Teren makes a valiant effort, no doubt aided by early years spent at a lakeside hunting for freshwater clams, but some sloshing is inevitable.
Gripping Anders' shoulder with one hand, she gestures toward the nearer door with the blade of her dagger.

Slosh, slosh, slosh. It's a good thing he's used to failing at any sort of stealth attempts, really.

"We might as well just talk," he mumbles as he heads for the indicated door. "Even the dead would know we're here."

He pauses, waiting for her to get into position before he flings open the door and summons a fireball to be at the ready.

They travel down the hallway for several long minutes, crossing a distance that should not be contained beneath an Abbey the size of this one. The water is loud and if their attempts at sneaking or their failure to do so has been noticed, it has no effect on the whispering that comes from the walls, nor the distant sound of water trickling in. The door to the right is open and, as they approach, the wood of the door, above the water, has marks burned into. They are not writing, but the singes of an errant spell.

Inside the room it is silent, but for the dripping of water in the corners. The room itself is pitch dark and looms past the threshold of the door. If they enter they will be confronted with a vast space and suffocating silence.

Teren is trying not to think too hard about the spatial problems in this place: she doesn't understand them, and therefore refuses to acknowledge their existence. The room yields nothing but awful, oppressive silence, no conspirators, so she beckons Anders on and sloshes down the hall toward the farther doorway.
Trying to will it closer to her by being more stubborn than the weird magic in the room is taxing, but Teren is sure she's giving it a run for its money.

For his part, he's trying to ask mental questions constantly. Demons are tricky, and even if this isn't one messing with them he needs to be prepared. The basement is far too large. It can't possibly really be here, like this, but at least he can still see Teren.

Almost, almost Anders tosses up a wisp help to light the way, but he catches himself just in time. Instead he holds his hand up and lets the light of an otherwise-useless orb of Creation magic do the job. No fire to draw things, no spirit to draw things.

"Have I ever mentioned how much I love dark enclosed places?" he mutters. Anything here has already heard them coming, but as he mutters he traces the marks of magic with his free hand. Was this from his previous time down here, or something else?

He reaches the far door and leans against it after what seems like far too much sloshing. Teren gets a nod. He's ready.

The doorway opens slowly and with much effort and the water it pushes aside is lower than the room beyond it. They are drawn into the room, swept forward and released from the confines of the hall into a great, dark space. The room beyond the threshold is expansive beyond reason and, in the center of it, a great mound of earth rises up from the water. In the pitch dark, there is a soft sound, a watery whispering that hovers in the far reaches of the darkness.

Anders's light moves over the water with them--the ceiling here is broken and seems to stretch far and away. It is alarming, the shift of space and the sudden slowness of the water around them, but it is not malevolent.

It's fortunate they're the only ones here, because Teren absolutely spends several seconds looking like a wet cat trying to escape a bathtub as she claws at the door while they're swept inside. But now they're here, and there's a... thing, and... it's... this is definitely too big to be under the abbey at the level to which they descended.
That's not nice to think about.

"Shit," she hisses, eloquent as always, and grips Anders' upper arm, her hand like a claw.

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 basement before him is cold and quiet, but for the distant rush of whispering and the trickle of water somewhere in the depths of the darkness. The water is nearly chest high as he steps down into it and, for just a moment, the world seems to stretch out before him. The hall is longer than it first appeared, but only just, like viewing it through the surface of the water to find the shape is different on the other side.

The whispering becomes clearer as he steps across the threshold--it is conversation. Banal and varied, in a voice he doesn't know but in a language he has learned. It is speaking Sindarin and the accent is not terribly dissimilar from Galadriel's own.

It is akin to putting on an old robe and feeling the fabric settle about one's shoulders. The nostalgia is bittersweet, perhaps in the intensity of the barrier he feels Melian's presence once more, the comforts of childhood, even in the midst of such deep water.

Wherever he goes, whatever he does, everything always comes back to this, to the flecks of Arda and his own history buried even in Thedas.

But as much as this is about that, it is more about Solas, and bringing his love home.

He switches to Sindarin, assuming Solas will follow suit, head tilted to better catch the whispers.

"Anything more?"

He thinks, perhaps, that he knows the origin of the lilt in that accent.

"I think," Solas says, voice soft. "That we might be closer than we had thought."

The whispering is something he can feel almost like a cold touch against his skin - and he refuses to ignore it. When he had tried to trace her dreams he had been so unsuccessful that it had left him bitter and angry, but now... Now he has a chance, a hope, and there will be nothing that will keep him from Galadriel. If he can find her and save her from whatever has befallen her then he would be content with himself.

Turning his head back, looking at his friend, he nods, switching languages, as unaccustomed to it as he might be.

"I can hear the whispers. It is like the dreams again." Frowning, he takes another step, the shape moving, different. "We cannot stop." And he continues.

The hall head has four doors, two across from two and all of them dark. From the farthest left, the sound of water dripping and trickling, from the other three there is a deathly silence. As they move ahead through the water, the whispering is but a distant thing, until they near the end of the hall. Another voice joins as they near the two farthest doors. It is soft and familiar--Galadriel.

The room to the left is pitchdark save for the faint glow of the woman in the corner. There is a large chair in the room and she is seated in it. She is positioned in the way that people are when they are thrown down rather than elect to sit for themselves. She is still, statuesque in her rigidity, and the water comes nearly to her neck. Her face is frozen in a grimace and, beneath the water, she is curled forward, her hands clutching at her stomach and the blade embedded there.

His reaction as soon as he sees her is to move forward, to press through and open the door. Water floods out and cools his feet but he barely reacts, wading through it as it thins out from the room, leaving more space for Galadriel herself. It means that Solas, ignorant of whatever Thranduil might be doing behind him, can rush forward, dragging his heels as the water tries to hold him back.

After days of searching for her, of trying to find her, of glimpsing into dreams and finding no sign of her, to have her before him... It is a gift indeed, and one he does not intend to ignore or not take advantage of. Nothing stands between them now and when Solas reaches for her, the curled form and the obvious wound, nothing will stop him from helping her. The walls could crumble and he would shoulder the weight.

"Galadriel," Solas' voice is soft as his hand lifts to reach for her, laying gentle and flat against her cheek. He turns her towards him and glances down at the blade in her stomach - he doesn't dare take it out in case it is doing something to keep her blood from pooling out, but his discomfort is obvious, prickling at him. Leaning forward, he rests his head against hers, forehead touching, wanting to keep as close to her as possible.

Pain floods him. He does not want her to feel this, to suffer so, but he does not know what to do. Without using too much of his magic... This wound might be beyond what he can do for her. He is scared to know that she might be so mortal, that he might lose her. His eyes close and he breaches out, his fingers pushing hair from her face, his hand going to her shoulder, urging her to sit straight, to see if she can speak.

"Ma vhenan, speak. Please."

Where Marcoulf could not have begun to budge her, the moment Solas touches her the art over the room breaks apart. The distant whispers come to a hard halt, the movement of the water and the shadows become more normal, plain, and time takes normal hold over Galadriel again. She gasps sharply her hand still clutched around the hilt of the dagger, and her eyes dart to Solas in the darkness.

He is so very near, his forehead against her own--she is shocked to find him there, to find either of them here, and there is a moment where she is without words. He urges her to sit straight and she does, almost unthinking and it shifts the knife. Her first words are not romantic, she can only hope that Thranduil had not taught him how to curse in Sindarin.

She grimaces once she regains her sense of space, of self, and lets her eyes close.

"Melda nin where are we?"

The smell of blood tints the water already and the cold of the abbey begins to seep in, in earnest.

There's a moment where Solas doesn't quite recognise what is happening, why the magic has been undone; it is as if time itself has split apart and begun again, as if the pause in the moment is over, and he takes a deep breath as he glances down at her. No, he does not quite recognise the swearing, the cursing, but he understands the intent of them. All the better, he thinks, for it disguises what he had said in his concern and his desperation.

Let her forget it, for now. Another time, a better place.

"Nowhere important. For now... We must find a way to move you." His fingers brush against her skin, the curve of her cheekbone, gentle and sure, comforting himself as much as he is trying to comfort her. She is damp, the blood is beginning, and she will get cold. Slowly, he takes the cloak from his own shoulders, the one she had given him that he had refused to part with, and places it around her.

"I cannot heal you, but we must move you." He frowns, leaning down, looking at the wound. He needs bandages, he thinks, something to press into it, something to stem the blood flow - and he thinks that's where the knife must be doing work, that or the magic. Breathing out, he reaches, brushing his fingers over hers with all the tenderness he can muster.

His touch is welcome, if jarring. Her nearest memory is not of this place, nor of this time, but if Solas is present then she cannot be in too dire a strait. The knife in her hurts but she has kept the blade near enough to keep it from worsening. It was a fool's errand, that, and she laments it.

"I know not how badly this wound will bleed," Galadriel warns him as his fingers ghost over hers. Her own hold the grip with a white-knuckled urgency...but she begins to release it as he moves in close. She can think of no one she trusts more to aid her.

More softly: "I stumbled when it was turned on me--something in the wine--I may trip if I attempt to wade through this place."

Thranduil stands in the doorway, she notices him only as she leans. The gleam of him on the water's surface. She is embarrassed, then, and it is a strange feeling. She turns her face back to Solas and her fingers shift enough to allow him to grip the hilt of the blade.

"We must go quickly, this place is very dangerous."

"I do not know what happened. I have been searching for you, but -" But it doesn't matter. He is here now, and he will take care of her. Thranduil is there to offer aid, should they need it, but Solas has enough experience when it comes to battle and war that he can manage a stab wound, even a stomach one, but these are not the best circumstances. There is better, he thinks, and if he could get her to the infirmary, to proper bandages, all the better.

He's not sure of his welcome there anymore, but that is not an issue. Not when she is before him.

"I will find a means of stemming it. I will take care of you." At least there is trust there, and Solas can see it - she does not reject him nor does she turn from him, demanding that Thranduil, her kin, come for her. Her faith fuels him and he nods, shifting a little and leaning to tear at the fabric of his shirt where the ends hand down.

"The dagger first, then I will bandage it as best I can. After that we can move you." His fingers join hers over the hilt, nudge hers away, take it, readying her. "Are you prepared? It will hurt, and I will have to hurt you more to stop the bleeding for as long as I can." He turns, eyes shifting, looking back at Thranduil, asking for aid but not being sure of what to do.

He can try and stop the bleeding, as much as he can, but... The risk of magic is too high and this place will not do anything to help prevent infection or disease.

Edited 2018-10-02 21:08 (UTC)

He has kept his eyes cast to the ground for the duration, listening to the whispers rather than the far louder conversation between lovers. It is too intimate a moment for him to witness, and yet. Here he is, caught in the perfect stillness so often ascribed to Lothlorien, to Galadriel herself.

When she moves, when he smells copper in the water, he looks up, and steps forward, the water rippling outward as he does.

"Carry her. Our pride," he says to Galadriel, "is meaningless. We will play at dignity again when we are above ground."

He will need to run for Anders. He trusts the healer little, but who else do they have?

"She has it," Thranduil confirms, as Solas lifts her. "I saw her put it on, after the mortal who had used it spent her life on it."

"It is not wholly spent," Galadriel warns with a grimace as she looks back to Solas. Her expression is softer then and a little apologetic, but whatever words well up in her, this is not the place for them.

"With you here, I know that I will survive this; I forgive whatever you will do," she says softly to him and sits straighter, rises up a bit to make the exit cleaner. That dagger is very sharp, it would not do to cut herself again with its removal.

"We must go now, I do not know what this new mortal will command of them. If she can."

Whatever is being discussed is not as important as her life, not as far as Solas is concerned. He is set on moving her and as she shifts he presses the makeshift bandages against her wound, enough that it should stem some of the bleeding, at least for a moment. The dagger then comes free and Solas moves, handing it to Thranduil to take - it is a clue of who had harmed her if nothing else.

His focus is on the woman before him, barely able to tear his eyes from her.

"I will carry you, as best I can," he's sure of his strength, but it would be somewhat awkward all the same, no matter how gentle he is. Her hurts will be a burden to bear, and he makes adjustments for it even as he leans down to settle his arms under her legs gently. "Lean on me, vhenan."

A whisper.

Galadriel braces but she cannot keep herself entirely silent as the dagger comes free. She curls around the wound, her own hand replacing his to press the bandages to her side. It hurts terribly but she does not scream or shout--his arm goes beneath her legs and she does as he instructs into the quiet space between them.

He has so rarely called her by anything that is not her name. She wishes to ask after it but he shifts her and she gasps again, this time against his neck, as pain lances through her side. The water is tall enough yet that it takes some of the burden of her from Solas, but Solas is also quite deceptively strong.

Her free hand grips his shirt as they move. The familiar beige knit is ruined, both by blood and by tearing, she would find it a pity if she could focus.

The Abbey on the White Cliff

The Southern Transept

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