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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

It is true, none in the Abbey has ever seen what Thranduil is doing and, at his cry, they turn to look upon him, curious and worried in a way they had not been until that moment. They see his hand and stare, blank and without understanding. The rift responds to Thranduil's mark, to the pull of it and, unfortunately, so too do the creatures.

Their heads swivel in unison, dark hoods facing and focused on the shape of the tall elf. The rest of their bodies jerk in kind, pulling them into alignment so they can move. The crowd panics, then, and several people rise from their seats--not to run, but to move and intercept. Already they are babbling assurances, words jittery with speed as they rush to the aid of the Inquisition.

Unfortunately, this is not all of the wraiths and the area around Thranduil floods with a terrible dark and brittle cold as another steps from the air before him.

On the stage, Luca panics. She scrambles past Myr and all but dives to Alvar's corpse. There is a moment's pause and she pulls something from her and puts it on herself, an almost imperceptible move in the chaos. As the wraiths begin to maifest around the Inquisition members, attention trained on Thranduil, she throws up a hand and shouts:

"Please! Stop, I beg you!" Her voice is desperate--it is less a command than begging, and it is not clear to whom she speaks. The wraiths slow in their advance but, if the strain that slides onto Luca's face is any indication, she cannot prevent their progress for long.

Solas moves immediately to Thranduil's side, no pause in his step as he draws his staff. A barrier is easy enough to cast, drawing it around himself and the members of the Inquisition with practiced movements, making sure they are protected as much as possible from the wraiths and any stray magic. The Rift needs to be closed, Solas knows that, and it pains him that it is his dear friend who is taking the first step; he can only hope the other Rifters might be swift to catch up and offer their own aid.

His eyes cast around, drinking in the others, alert and anxious as he tries to think of the best tactic for the scenario. He cannot aid with the Rifts, as much as he would like to be able to, so his focus needs to be on making sure the others are protected and taken care of. He must ensure their safety, as is his role; he is there to support, to defend, to attack if the wraiths begin to cause problems --

But Luca takes command and his eyes turn to her, lips twisting into a frown. Solas has not been happy the entire time they have been here and it seems likely that his unhappiness will continue.

"The Rift must be closed!" He shouts, mostly to the Inquisition members. "Quickly, before more come through!"

Obi-Wan's response is uncertain, his instinct at first to hold back, be patient, and survey, but Thranduil is closer and when Solas casts, he steps in line as well. Duty is clear, of course; they can have only one purpose here.

"I'm with you!" Obi-Wan replies at volume, both to Solas, who he barely knows, and to Thranduil who he has often trusted in the past. He raises his hand and the spark leaps as a bright and vivid green, so that he must grit his teeth against bone-ache and the sizzling heart of it, and press with all his trained will on the Rift, as he had the first time, knee-deep in the snow, and no more Rifters than these to help him, "Come on! Together!"

That had been a smaller Rift, of course. And newer. He can only hope— pray that they will be enough, and Luca's pleas be damned.

He doesn't know who the sister is pleading to stop... and he can't bring himself to care if it's them. The pilgrims are, of course, taken in. But the Inquisition will not be.

...or some of it won't be.

Anders moves from the back where he'd been lurking, watching with no little suspicion, and he spreads a healing mist around the Inquisition members nearby, Merrill, Solas, Thranduil, and Obi-Wan.

"I have you," he says with cold determination.

Neither has Myr seen the process of closing a rift--

--but he does know the shape a barrier makes in the Fade; he knows something like these creatures lurks in the abandoned dormitory in the woods; he knows what summoning spirits attracts. He leaps off the stage after Luca, drawing his staff down off his back without the faintest idea of what he'll do with it, only--

"Don't--!"

There is only the barest pause between Solas casting and Luca's scream. Her face twists in agony and she drops to her knees, clutching at her hand. The wraiths move freely, their attention drawn sharply to Solas, and then to the rifters that rise at his side. They draw their blades in unison, those who do not carry them dragging along the ground at their backs, and with a terrible series of shrieking cries, they attack.

A twisted greatsword falls in a heavy arc against the barrier Solas has pulled around them--it bounces away, clips against the wall and splinters of stone are broken off in the process. Unfortunately the onslaught of blows is not over with one. Two more wraiths strike in quick succession and their blows twist away as well. They swing with unnatural strength, enough to rend limbs from demons, to rip stone from the walls, and the fourth attack shatters the barrier into pieces. The sword comes down alongside Solas, deflected to a degree, and gouges a deep trail into the floor.

The wraith before Thranduil rises up, sword held aloft, but its motion is halted as one of the pilgrims at the Abbey moves between it and the elf. All around the room, the pilgrims are diving into the paths of the wraiths, grabbing at their cloaks and armor, begging them for reason and mercy. The pilgrims cry out, each wraith is called Reverend Mother, and each hesitates for a strange, jarring second as they are beseeched. They are distracted, but only just, and those who are not held back by the hands of the faithful move with a strange, jerking speed, lurching forward in bursts.

The walls have already begun to freeze with the cold of them all, and it is only getting colder as more appear.

Jang is not moving, watching the wraiths swarm, and the odd behavior of the lay people. They almost seemed excited to see them, but now...they're diving in front of the people with swords, trying to defend the wraiths with their bodies. The cry of Luca makes her move though, and she moves quickly, ducking through the crowd and trying to get close to her and Myr.

"Guys! Are you two ok? I heard a scream, what's wrong?"

His distress is false for only as long as it takes the Abbey's residents to get between the wraiths and the huddle of Inquisition members. It grows as they pull from the walls, the already unstable walls.

"The roof!" he shouts, to the one who came close, at least, hopeing they will grasp the matter and get out. He can mind those around him, but not all of the Abbey. Closing a rift does not take so much from him, does not leave him exhausted, but the doing, it is all-encompassing, and he must trust Solas to watch his back, as it were. Jang comes into the room and proceeds to wade into the middle of it, moving past the protective huddle of Inquisition members, and Thranduil curses, bitter, before yelling in her direction.

"Your shard, you fool!"

It had seemed... well, it hadn't seemed in hand at all before Teren had turned to walk away, but several feet from the door her conscience-- such that it is-- catches up with her. Her companions are shouting, and now some of the civilians seem to be as well. Walking away from that isn't an unknown solution to her, but it wouldn't bode well with the Inquisition.
That doesn't need to become her reputation.

With a heavy, long-suffering sigh, Teren turns to go back into the chamber, heaving both doors open as wide as they'll go and steeling herself for the monstrosities within. It's important that the doors be open, because the people have to leave.
"Come on," she shouts from the doorway to the nearest group of people, "save yourselves, for the love of Maferath."

The yell about the roof has him looking up and cursing. It's going to come down, there will be people caught in it, but at least he can slow things down. Anders casts at a pair of unoccupied spots in the chapel, raising pillars of pure earth up to support the ceiling in part. It's not pretty. It's not graceful. But it could buy them some time and that's what he's angling for.

A moment later it strikes him that he's basically wrecking a Chantry all over again, as he's destroying some of the pews with the pillars, but at least this time no one can actually blame him. Maybe.

"Get out, quickly!" he shouts, adding his voice to the mix and putting barriers up around the people furthest from the doors, backing toward the exit.

The barriers flare up around the pilgrims near the stage, around Myr, and around Luca and she pales as the magic goes up around her. The wraiths that had first arrived, had stepped up and slaughtered the pride demons, halt their stride and reel, twisting and turning their blank eyes onto the shapes of those who now had barriers.

The pilgrims turn wide eyes on them as the wraiths approach, their expressions strange and hovering at something near concern. When the first wraith draws back its blade and brings it down against the barrier--the magic crackles with the force of it. The second blow glances off and clips a bystander, digging deeply into her calf and sending her to the ground. She screams, other scream, and the third blow shatters the barrier--this wraith's blade does not glance.

It strikes true and cuts into the pilgrim's shoulder, stopping at the base of his ribs. Blood pours forth onto the stone floor and the body falls away as the wraith yanks its blade free--it twists to face the next barriered bystander and the man backs up, clamoring into the stands. The second wraith turns its attention to Myr and Luca, and Luca scrambles back in a panic.

"Oh shit... Myr! Grab her, Know when to fold em, follow me!" Jang stands and runs towards the wall, a hand of cards appearing in her grip as she runs towards the wall. She filings the cards forwards and with a loud crack they slam into the brickwork, punching a hole big enough to get through. "Come on! We gotta get out of here, they're seeking on us!"

Technically on the two of you, but now ain't the time to split hairs Jang thinks to herself as she climbs through, another hand of cards appearing in her fist as she waits for Myr and Luca. "Move!

The crowd's too thick, too confused--Myr'd need to knock pilgrims aside like ninepins to get through to the rest of the Inquisition and checks his run forthwith, furious and sick. "See to her," he calls to Jang--nearly snaps--as the rifter asks after them. "Something's burned her--"

He has lost the knack of seeing a whole scene like this for what it is; his attention skips to isolated incidents, flashes of color, a frozen gesture. It's distracting Revered Mother, one of the pilgrims near the stage calls the nearest of the wraiths, begging it--her--for clemency on behalf of the Inquisition. It is sad, Estmond had said--

And now he knows with brittle clarity whose faces those are. He ducks his head to look beneath the nearest hood just as Anders' barrier flickers up around him--and all the blood drains from his face. "You absolute fucking idiot," he breathes; doesn't even know which of the other mages he's damning with the words and quickly forgets it anyway as the wraiths turn on the nearest pilgrims.

He isn't fast enough to save them. No one could be, but that's slim consolation when a man collapses into so much meat mere yards from him. Jang is yelling for him--she's done something to the wall from the sound of it--but he doesn't hear, doesn't process, not with the wraiths advancing on them and more innocents in the line of that advance. He snaps out a hand toward the first wraith, the murderer, drawing repulsion out of the Fade in glyph-shape as fast as he ever has and dropping it between the wraith and her target.

Then to the second-- He steps firmly in her path, lifts his chin and locks eyes with--something--beneath the hood, jaw set against clamoring fear. (If he turns his back to run, he does not know when he will stop, and he cannot do that.) "Are you Faraday," he says to the creature, setting his stance and lifting his staff to receive its charge--but not attacking himself, not yet, "or Alvar, or Odetta?"

He isn't so daft to believe naming them might have power. But they had hesitated. Briefly.

Edited 2018-09-26 07:04 (UTC)

"Jang!" Thranduil shouts again. "Get back here and closed the damned Rift!"

The room was compromised enough between the scaffolding and the existent hole, and now there is a second, and Thranduil glances behind him, then to Myrobalan, and to Anders again.

"Drop the barrier, they do not understand."

All the while, his shard crackles and burns.

The wraith before Myr halts, the dead expression on its face shifting like smoke curling in the air. It shifts to anger then sorrow ina flickering instant. It holds a moment as that expression lingers, then it begins to ebb.

This is mother Faraday, or it was, some time ago.

The chaos is putting holes in the room and the rift is not being quiet. It churns and cracks. The wraith moving to Luca is not slow and Luca scrambles for Jang's exit. The wraiths before Thranduil are held back only by the crowd around him and, already, their dark hoods shift and they lurch forward.

"Everyone, the roof is unstable!" A loud voice calls, the pilgrims heed Merkle as he shouts to them all, but in their distraction the wraiths are free to attack. A sword slices the air above Thranduil and another comes down toward Obi-wan.

He equally doesn't understand all of what he's seeing, but Thranduil is his department head. With a nod, Anders drops the barriers and instead sends his magic upward, strengthening the two earthen pillars in order to hold the roof up a little longer. The creatures haven't attacked that yet, at least.

"Go," he echoes to the nearest pilgrims as they finally start to run, finally stop holding so hard to faith.

Anders himself takes a couple of steps back toward the door as well, but he's not out of it yet. He needs to keep the roof up as long as he can.

"No! NO!"

The wraiths are battering the barriers, the pilgrims are being injured, and the bloody fools won't run. Against her better judgment, Teren races from the door to the woman with the destroyed leg, hooking her own arms underneath the pilgrim's and moving to drag her away.
"Got a health potion for you if you'll just come this way, lovey," she mutters under her breath, eyeing the others and wondering how many people she'll be personally hauling out of the room. If there's even time for this one.

“No spirit magic!” Merrill screams. There’s so much going on, too much - and now the innocent have had their blood drawn. It’s instinct more than anything else that has her calling on her own version of Keeper magic. She vanishes into the earth and reappears in between the blade of a wraith and one of the pilgrims, using her staff to try and block the strikes. Stone from the earth below them crawls up, starting at bare feet and moving over Merrill’s limbs, her torso, up to her face. She will not move and let these people, Inquisition or otherwise, die.

Misunderstanding will not be the reason for another massacre. Not if she can stop it.

“If you remember what you were, leave your flock be!” Merrill shouts again, even as roots burst forth to grab at the wraiths. Some of them crawl up the stone Anders has brought forth to reinforce it, swiping at those wraiths that try to strike at them.

By the Creators, she’s going to need a lyrium potion after this.

Edited (Icon) 2018-09-26 12:07 (UTC)

The Force is like an arrow loosed from a bow, the tension that had been holding and holding and holding until some small part of Obi-Wan's mind almost forgot it is suddenly actionable. Every direction is a warning, the Rift, the shards, the roof, the wraiths. Some feeling, unidentified but easily followed turns his eyes up and he sees the blades raise in spectral hands, the parody of an old woman's grandmotherly gaze poised above it. The hand of generations, twisted to the dark, a killing blow in potentia.

He sees what's about to happen, to Thranduil, and also to Solas, who is standing near and would sooner die than step away. That is the option, of course; but he won't allow it.

"Move!" Obi-Wan shouts, but it's lost in the cacophony, and there isn't time. He drops his lightsaber, flings out his free hand, and pushes in the Force, hard.

There was a time when he could shift a dozen battle-droids like that, fueled by adrenaline and battle-fear. Two distracted elves, however tall, are nothing.

As if in response to Thranduil's mention, the Rift crackles. Snaps. Seeps dripping tendrils of sickly dark green. It comes to life with a sharp electrical retort and jagged bright lines strike out at the ground as it prepares to disgorge another cadre of the Fade's malevolent denizens.

The flare of it reaches high, and the ceiling emits an ominous groan; a deep counterpoint to the violent howl of wind above it. The vines and pillars thrown up in support of it tremble, a few small stones beginning to fall to the ground below.

And the wraith with its sword raised high over Obi-Wan swings its blade downwards in a vicious arc that is far too fast for the size and heft of the twisted weapon, digging into his upraised forearm with a force that is as much crush as it is cut. Those standing nearby can hear it: the viscerally sickening crunch of metal winning over bone that comes before the limb is severed, ripped from him more by the wraith's brutal strength than by the edge of its sword.

Edited (should probably CW that) 2018-09-26 21:40 (UTC)

The sound hangs in the air, even as the Rift hisses and spits. They’re going to be overrun soon. The pilgrims will be attacked by the demons, and the previous Revered Mothers might not do anything to stop it, engrossed as they are with the Rifters. Obi-Wan is going to need healing, the sooner the better, which will take Anders out of the fight. Merrill knows all of this.

As the severed limb hits the ground, she finds that much of her doesn’t want to care.

Telekinetic energy crashes away from Merrill like the waves outside in the harshest of storms. The Stunning Blast is tempered enough to not knock over everyone in the room, but only just.

For once, magic isn't the worst. Merrill's blast gives Teren and her burden an extra boost toward the door, and once they've arrived, Teren lets her drop to the floor while rapidly uncorking her health potion. She shoves it into the woman's hand and races back inside, clasping the arms of two different people with her talon-like hands and giving them a tug.
"Run, you idiots," she barks, pulling with all her strength.

Even as Merrill's blast hits him, everything gets very simple. They can't save everyone. They can't win this fight. All they can do is get out, and his job is clear and uncomplicated as blood spurts from the stump where Obi-Wan's hand used to be. He moves with unnatural calmness to the Jedi's side, mindblasting the wraith back before casting healing quickly, pouring the it in. There isn't a lot of time, and he likely cannot call on Mercy here to improve it.

"I think we all need to fall back." His voice is just as calm. "The roof is about to cave in and we've no chance of catching enough of it to survive the fall. Come, Obi-Wan."

There's another reason for the calm, beyond the clarity that a serious injury always brings - he needs to keep Obi-Wan from panicking or freaking out, despite how terrifying it likely is to be suddenly short a hand.

There--

There. A moment of contact, unmistakeable. They aren't what they once were but something remains in memory. "I'm sorry," Myr says to her; for what's become of her, or the danger they've put her flock in, or what he's about to do as he draws binding beneath her. Pray the Maker it holds long enough Jang and Luca can make good their escape; that it gives him time to--

--get knocked reeling by Merrill's spell, disoriented by the wave of force out of nowhere. Staggers a step and recovers himself on his staff, forced out of his focus on the wraith before him to consider the rest of the room. It's all so much visual confusion--bits and flashes of horror frozen by adrenaline and a mind no longer used to vision into grotesque scenes, there a wraith with blade uplifted and there Obi-Wan maimed--and he closes his eyes against it briefly.

(The changes in the rift are palpable in the Fade; he knows what that means. They don't have a chance at saving anyone if this fight becomes three-sided.) Eyes still closed he heads toward the nearest of the pilgrims, beckons them up across the stage; a hundred people will make no timely retreat through that single exit. "Back here! The wall's down! We need to go!"

Edited 2018-09-27 00:18 (UTC)

There's being late to the party and then there's waking up with a headache to split stone, searching side rooms for first a familiar face and then any face at all, and then finally following the distinctive strangled sound of screaming through the abbey, through it's main hall to its heavy double doors - open now - and finding--

This.

For a split second, Marcoulf stands dumbfounded in the chamber doorway. Then he dives down the stairs after Teren, blindly snatching at the first moon-eyed pilgrim his hands fall to and making as if to haul them back.

The Abbey on the White Cliff

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screw it were doin pb icons since i've got 'em aND EYES

EYES

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CW: gore

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