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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

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 magic blast that unseats Myr has an unfortunate side effect, it stuns and knocks down the better number of the pilgrims in the auditorium. Those who had been begging, grasping at the robes of the wraiths, are thrown to the side. Their grip on the creatures is broken and, after a moment of pause, the creatures move freely again--the spell itself has not knocked any one of them down, and if it stunned them, it is impossible to say.

The spell rocks the stones in the ceiling, tilts the scaffolding, and throws the triptych and archway from its position around the rift. It tumbles over with a groan and then a loud bang as it strikes the far wall and send their new repairs down, collapsing the stonework into Jang's exit.

The wraiths seem focused now, intent on harming the Inquisition but--for better or worse--something else draws their focus. The rift jogs, splits and jumps as it widens. Bolts of green tear at the canvas tarps in the ceiling and set them aflame. They burn only a moment before they are put out and, when the rain starts falling in, freezing as it does, a huge multi-limbed creature draws itself out of the rift. It unfolds, grotesque and greenish with a twisted face and long, knife-like hands. A greater terror, and the howl it unleashes shakes the walls until they begin to crack apart.

It is then that the pilgrims begin to flee the room, but they do not abandon their guests easily. It is Brigette who takes Solas's arm and urges him toward the door, Estmond tries to move Thranduil, Morely and his elderly mother move after Teren--they will not leave these people to die and, unfortunately, are not easily shaken.

Jang is by the hole in the wall when the wave of force hits, slamming her backwards and into the wall, there is another cry as Luca slams into the wall, hard. She lands back on the floor, shaking her head as a trickle of blood appears on her hairline, dripping down her face onto the floor.

Jang shakes her head as she tries to recenter herself, but her focus is suddenly captured by the falling archway. Calling out and leaping forward she slams into Luca, the two of them rolling hard on the floor as the majestic archway crashes into the wall, blocking the hole.

Jang checks Luca for a moment and then stands up, wincing a bit, and moves next to Myr, drawing her rifle as the rift starts to widen and the massive demon comes crawling outwards. It does not fail to register that the doorway is on the other side of the room, and escape is now cut off, with a massive demon and a horde of wraiths blocking the way out.

"Myr...I'm open to suggestions."

Obi-Wan's cry under the crunch and squelch, the give where there should be none had been— He isn't sure he'll ever really be able to describe it. But then, the terrible redness, the moment when all the confusion around him turned to a singular focus...

He blinks, and finds himself on the ground, Anders dousing his... the stump of it, with blue. He listens, quite breathless, still staring at the consequences of his choice, and only looks up when Anders beckons him to go.

Ah.

"No," He replies, calm. Above them all the Rift is bulging obscenely, all the Abbey's debts coming home to roost, "We have to end this, one way or another. There won't be a second chance. Help me up."

But Anders is already doing so, isn't he? Obi-Wan glances down, holds out his hand, and the lightsaber comes into it from the floor, coming to him almost like a living thing, snap into the palm of his remaining hand. He ignites it. There's no time for pain now, nor for weakness, no fear, no chaos, no death. Only the Force, and the more than feet of barely-contained plasma, the living light of a star, held in his hand.

Edited 2018-09-27 04:33 (UTC)

...Well.

Shit.

That ruins Myr's plans.

He stiffens as the rift changes, twisting the Fade in a way that ties knots in his guts; his eyes, wide in the dim light, flash back the green rift-light like a cat's as the terror rudely births itself. (He's never seen one this side of the Fade but it's strangely familiar, easier to track than anything else for all he hasn't forgotten the knack. That's no blessing.)

Careful--achingly careful after that howl scythes through him, mindful he's in grabbing distance and not taking his eyes off the demon, Myr edges toward Jang and Luca. "We wait," his tone is firm for all it's quiet, and far braver than he feels, "and we get ready to run when they turn on the demon."

That thought in mind he begins to speak beneath his breath, hands working a pattern in the air, in the Fade behind it: And suddenly the steady tick of time seems slower for those near him, somehow, or they faster, as he completes the last gesture of haste.

Edited 2018-09-27 04:43 (UTC)

Oh. There. Basically on cue, the situation gets worse because it always gets worse. Parts of the roof are falling, the massive demon that's been waiting all this time is stepping out, people are down on the ground, and the man that's just lost a hand and an awful lot of blood is deciding to keep fighting.

"One day, somehow, not everything will go wrong," he mutters. Louder, "do it fast. We don't have time. The roof is literally breaking and will kill those still under it when it comes down."

As he scolds, he's grabbing people, hauling them up, and basically shoving them in the direction of the door. "If we're lucky, we can use the roof against the demon, but only if we get done fast and get out of here fast."

But because he's never lucky, Anders pauses in his people-grabbing to cast ice at the terror's feet, hoping to slow it down or trip it up or bloody well do something here.

Teren's efforts to usher people out is single-minded and frenzied, a strange one-person relay race wherein every time she gets to the door, she races back into the room to help speed along someone else. There's pushing on backs, dragging on arms, liberal amounts of cursing-- when Anders pauses for even the briefest second, he'll find clawlike fingers digging into his shoulders and forcibly turning him, thrusting him toward the door. "Move, you idiot, move," comes Teren's breathless command, her eyes scanning over the visible party members.

"Where are the others?"

Another demon - bigger, more horrible than those the wraiths had dealt with. Merrill is still wearing her armor of stone, and the earth itself rises up to stab and slash at demon and wraith alike. The normal humans and those of the Inquisition are left alone, the roots moving around them and, in some instances, try to get between a swipe of claws or the force of a blade.

"Go," Merrill urges, taking a quick glance at where everyone is. She can get there, can get out; the earth will work with her. It's the others she's worried about, not herself. A Paralyzing Prison tries to form around the demon to help Anders keep it in place.

Well. Shit.

Kitty had been avoiding that ceremony altogether - it had given her a bad feeling, and she had figured that someone ought to stay behind to keep watch over the boats that would be their escape route if something went ill - but the commotion had been too much to ignore once it had started. She's only lightly out of breath by the time she makes it to the hall - stares about with wild eyes - and then sees that horrible terrifying creature in the midst of everything and realizes that...yeah, she cannot do anything against that.

But she can, at least, help the people stuck there. Because the magic flying around, the wraiths, all of it - they don't do anything worse to her than raise the hair on her arms and the back of her neck. So she charges into the fray, ignoring everything except for someone who's tripped and fallen. She yanks them to their feet, then runs alongside them to the door, muttering words of encouragement.

The chaos that follows the arrival of the greater terror is not aided by the Inquisition's efforts. They shove and bat at the crowd, trying to push people that are trying to get them to freedom, that are their only bulwark against the blades of the wraiths. The crowd becomes more agitated as the Terror spawns, alarmed in a way they had not been before, and their requests are no longer polite urging. They take Teren and Anders bodily, sweeping them through the doors and into the hall, Marcoulf is forced back with them, lingering as he is in the doorway, and Kitty only manages to enter by dint of her timing.

The wraiths turn from the Inquisition as the pilgrims filter out of the room. Merrill's spell has little effect but to knock down the wraith nearest to its casting. The paralysis passes over the terror and is shrugged away as its parts the floor beneath it and sinks into the stone. The rift howls and the Wraiths watch the floor in silent unison until the demon emerges.

It does so directly beneath Thranduil and Solas, throwing them, Merrill, and Obi-wan to the ground. It has no reason to attack the wraiths directly and the living occupants of the room are so much more viable as targets. It brings its great clawed hand down and slashes at Kitty, striking the doors and the woman she has helped rise to her feet. She is cut down immediately and collapses to the ground in a heap. Its claw rakes Kitty across the side and sends splinters of wood across the floor around them as the door is torn free.

The effects of the haste spell are...strange. Everyone is moving slowly and the sound has a odd doppler effect. There are people being lifted through the air and dragged out of the room, but Jang, Myr and Luca are normally. "Nice move Myr. I think we need to do something stupid though."

The huge demon that is flowing out of the rift sinks down, almost comicaly slowly to their eyes, and the group can see the four people tossed to the ground as it emerges slowly from underneath them, and begins to attack. Jang takes a deep breath and brings up her rifle, aiming at the demon. "Myr, Luca, get ready to run if this doesn't work. Or if it does. Really, just run when you hear the shots, that thing is gonna be pissed at me."

She fires the shot, the shot ringing in the room, and she recocks her rifle, and fires again and again, shot after shot impacting the back of the demon, two hitting center mass, one shot hitting it in the arm. The thing shrieks and twists away, ichor spraying out from the impacts as it turns and slashes the people on the ground.

Between Teren and the crowd, Anders is pushed and pulled out of the chapel but he lingers just outside, casting a healing mist into the room and hoping it makes any sort of difference. The small boom, followed by more, don't encourage him in that aspect.

"We need to, to..." Something. Get more people out. Make room. The roof is absolutely coming down at any second and the demon has knocked down one of their number already. He can't wade through the crowd to help fight, and the backfiring of the barriers means that he can't even count on channeling Mercy right now.

"Merrill! The vines! Bring Kitty here, please!" He doesn't know what the Dalish call the spell that lets them travel underground, but he thinks they've fought alongside each other often enough that she'll pick up his meaning. Healing is his strength, and right now he needs to try to focus on that if they're going to get as many people through this as possible.

Teren is transported with both the ease and demeanor of a furious cat, fighting with every bony inch of her being but still not managing to resist. She finally wrests herself free when they're outside, diving for Kitty and all but scruffing her to drag her through the doors toward the rest of them with a shout of "OUT!"

At this point, she's willing to surrender most to their own idiocy. The rifters within, and Myr... there's nothing she or the others on this side of the door can do for them.
Her grip on the back of Kitty's shirt is like a hawk's with a mouse in its talons, and it seems she's quite forgotten she's holding her at all.

Slowing the world to a crawl has made things both worse and better for Myr's comprehension: More time to see and process what's before him but his sense of the Fade has gotten oddly disjoint from all of it. He spends a moment he can't spare gawping at the demon before it vanishes into the ground--then looks away with a sharp shake of his head.

Jang's plan is--

Exactly what he'd been thinking himself, except with their positions reversed and her with Luca while he tried to draw the demon's attention off their party. He snorts with thin humor and doesn't argue, but to say: "The ghosts'll be on it next. Worry about them."

Because this has happened before, if not in such disastrous detail, and the abbeyfolk came out of it alive. And that scares him to the core but it's something--he can't look at closely right now. Instead extends a hand toward Luca as Jang shoulders her rifle.

"Your Reverence, if you'll forgive me--"

He hadn't in his wildest imaginings thought working with the Inquisition might mean carrying a Revered Mother of the Chantry off a demon-torn battlefield: And yet here he is, hefting the poor girl over one shoulder (she's too light, how long ago had she been healed? How much did nearly dying take out of a person?) and getting her arms securely 'round him.

It's harder--much harder--to wrap the Fade around two people instead of one, and one of them not a mage; it makes the physical task of carrying her seem trivial by comparison. But adrenaline does wonders for magic as for muscular strength and Myr lunges for the door on a wave of mana, just enough out of phase with the waking world to pass through wraith and demon and abbeyfolk alike. It's one way to beat the crush into the vestibule--where he slides Luca off his shoulder gently as he can, practically at the Wardens' feet.

"She's wounded," is all he manages, out of breath from the profligate use of magic and already turning back to see how the fight's evolving.

The stone that had been covering her like armor shatters against the floor when she's thrown, littering the area with debris. She can hear Anders shouting, can hear the panic of the crowd, the shrieking of the demon, the movement of the wraiths. It all spins together in a cacophony as she lays there for a moment, stunned.

Picking herself up takes a moment; the stone absorbed most of the impact, but she's scraped up now as a result and the pain pierces through everything else.

"We need to go," she says again, more calmly this time; Teren has Kitty and Merrill can't take anyone with her using Stone's Throw anyway, but Anders will have no shortage of patients, this time. "These people are going to get themselves killed- we need to go."

Her vines are still trying to keep the roof up as well as act as defenses for them all, but Merrill's currently more occupied with trying to convince those still in the room to leave.

Obi-Wan, on the ground, is really quite annoyed. He lays a moment, stunned, then flips himself back onto his feet, as soon as the spots fade from his eyes. He's tired, and his arm is throbbing with a startling, distracting, white-hot pain, but there's no time for it. There's no time for anything of the sort.

The Wraith is distracted, turned away, towards the demon which had struck them all prone. It's the best chance he'll ever get.

The Lightsaber paints arcs of blue as he whirls it into stance, steps in and strikes upwards. Rime crawls up his arm from the cold of the Wraith's proximity, despite the heat of plasma-blade. He snarls with the pain of it, blue-grey and agonizing with the cold-burn. His blade sinks into the distracted Wraith, fire into ice, and the cold erupts from the wound in a cloud of burning, stinking, freezing mist. It chokes at his lungs, until he cries out with ice on his teeth, angles the cut upwards and out again with a cry, and leaps back...

...Not a moment too soon, as whatever frozen hell makes up the flesh of the Wraith is rent open and everything pours out like a torrent. It flows not like a wound but like a tear, a knife-wound in a waterskin, spurting under pressure. Not blood at all, but black, salten water that roils with hateful, impossible depths and which freezes as it touches the floor all around, so that the footing quickly becomes a mess of ice in ripples and strange whorls. It screams, a horrifying, shattering scream that crackles through the room like breaking glass.

Obi-Wan backs away hastily, wary of touching it, only to be forced to stand his ground, lashing out as the stricken Wraith bends towards him menacingly, bending with a horrible, unnatural twist like a tree about to fall on him. This time he is ready: its blade descends, a deadly arc of black metal, and again the lightsaber licks up in a thrumming arc of blue fire, lopping the end of the blade off, then striking again to take the hand that holds it on the backswing to levee another strike, meant not just to cut, but to cleave, to sever the Wraith in two. It hits the ground behind him with a splash, but he cannot turn to see what's become of it. Obi-Wan's blood is up, though he's too woozy with his own injury to sustain it, and he takes stance again.

Now, he thinks, It must be finished now.

The black water, blood of a creature born in ice, had merely been gushing, leeching the wraith of what it must think of as life. But the creature dies, and with its life goes all coherence; like a burst balloon what was once seemingly solid becomes a rush of icey sea-water that flows out and away from where it had stood, washing up Obi-Wan's ankles and boots, where it freezes.

"Ah, Kriff," He swears, finally, breathing hard, then lifts his head to call for help, "I'm trapped! I need help, here!"

Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

The Abbey on the White Cliff

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