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

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.

Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

The Abbey on the White Cliff

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