Simple Gifts [Closed] - Part 2

[laurenande]

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.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

For the first time in years he has the opportunity to look on the work of his magic and see how he's made a tangible improvement for someone, and that is heartening. It's only a small thing, but even a small light drives the darkness back.

This, he realizes anew, is also a miracle to those who haven't the luxury of a Circle-trained healer to tend them. He frowns at the handprint before looking up to find her eyes with his own--tries, and doesn't quite manage, to muster a smile for her sake. "Gladly," he replies to her thanks. "And I'm sorry, too. You--all of you stumbled into something deeper and wilder than you knew," than even a mage could know, "and we haven't been much help for it."

He gives her hand a gentle squeeze but does not let go. Not until she does. "What can I do from here?"

[laurenande]

"From here?" Luca repeats and looks at him with confusion. There is a moment before she knows how to respond and she looks across the room as she tries to conjure an answer.

"I don't know that there is anything," Luca answers and takes a deep breath. She regains her faculties gradually, as the pain and panic subside, but she is still terribly forlorn and holding Myr's hand is the only comfort she has taken since Alvar's passing. She does not look eager to relinquish it.

"I would tell you anything I can, but I don't know how much it will help. I have read the books in the library, I bound most of them, but they are mostly letters."

[faithlikeaseed]

It's a double comfort; Circle mages aren't much for touch where it can be be seen, but Myr's gotten used to the idea it can be used to lend strength when words are lacking. See, I am here and will give what I can. Warmth, in all this cold.

"Then it might not have anything I don't already know," he replies, once she's worked through their lack of options. At least--lack of apparent ones. "We--found Revered Mother Odetta in the woods, beyond the garden; she spoke of--what Alvar took from you, I think. The relic from the rift."

Breath in, breath out. "I think," slowly, "I know what should be done. I don't know how it will be. And I only hope we can do it without causing any more harm."

[laurenande]

"Odetta?" she repeats and look surprised. "She was the first. There is mention of her in the books, but nothing from her--I know she found it before the others. She used the gifts first and lived longest of any of them--of us, even Alvar."

She doesn't want to ask what he plans to do, what his goal is, but she needs to know eventually. It is her duty as Reverend Mother, if nothing else.

"What will you try?"

[faithlikeaseed]

So, and so. They hadn't known she was out there. Little surprise, given all that followed her, and the disintegration of the abbey's chain of succession as the relic burned them away. He tips his chin down, still worrying his lip with his teeth as he thinks through this.

Though maybe it doesn't matter so much now for what it reveals so much as what he might use from it to try and convince the rest of the Inquisition team the abbeyfolk can still be worked with. Should still be worked with.

And what they'll be working on-- He breathes out heavily as she asks the question. "See that we get it back from Alvar--somehow, I don't know--and take it away somewhere safe it can't be used."

He lifts his head to look her in the eyes. "I believe as you do it's the Maker's will it came here. And you've done everything you could to glorify Him with it. But it--they deserve to return to His arms," and his voice breaks a little on this, "and it isn't letting them." And it will do the same to you, he doesn't say, knowing the shape of her fear and how she struggles forward anyway, bound to her duty as to a millstone and drowning for it.

(How much of that is the relic pulling at them? What a barbed gift. But this is the same Maker who stood aside and let them burn His Bride to see if mankind had truly changed. Hadn't they, here?)

"And I fear what will become of all of you if--it's only growing stronger. Using you up more quickly." To say nothing of the fact he knows of a surety now the Inquisition won't let them be, won't let this continue, but then for all his other arguments with them--that much he can agree on.

[laurenande]

Luca has to look away as he speaks. Her terror shames her and he is not wrong--she has tried, she has failed, and they deserve reprieve. That she will be glad to see it gone, before it can kill her, is as shameful as her inability to wield it. She is unfit for her position and everything about this makes that apparent.

She is also unwilling to argue otherwise, because it means her life is spent.

"Be careful," she warns and there is a bit of a stutter there, a pause. There is an admission caught on her tongue that she cannot make and so, instead, she says: "They would not listen to me...but they listen to her. Still they are listening. The Reverend Mothers will not aid you....I do not wish to see them cut you down."

[faithlikeaseed]

His fingers tighten on hers as she looks away; how well he can infer what caused that. (And understands too, now, bitterly: It had been his lot to endure with what he'd done to himself, and at the last, given an out--he couldn't. Alvar had given her life freely for it; others had died because the only way Myr could be here was with the Inquisition, and so few of them understood what they saw.)

"Take heart, Your Reverence," it's not an easy endearment the way sister would be, but it seems right at the moment, "the stars are still shining; His Light remains. We'll make it through."

Blessed Andraste whose shield covers fools, Maker in Your Glory, let me be right.

"I'll not be. We've seen them, now; we know what they are. We'll do better in our second engagement." A pause as he considers her, considers her fear and her shame and how that must eat away at an otherwise brave heart. "And they may listen to her--but the abbeyfolk listen to you, don't they?

"Can you move them out of here? As many as can be moved--get them down to the docks, away from the wraiths. If Alvar would--" He pauses, lifts his head and looks around them; more than looks, lets his sense of the Fade unfurl like a net for any trace of chill, any indication something watches and listens. Then, softly: "--if she'd be possessive of them as well, perhaps not all at once. But get them out safe."

It will be hard going in the storm and the cold. But better they brave that than the wraiths' indiscriminate swords.

[laurenande]

His encouragements are well received, she cannot help but cling to them, and if nothing else the Inquisition are more willing, more fit to deal with this than she could ever hope to be. There is one last bit of hesitance in her, and she withdraws her hand from his as she stands.

"I will do what I can...but..." she fights with herself a moment and retrieves something from the desk. It is a copy of the letter sent to the Inquisition. It is not noteworthy, it lists the donation, invites them here, expresses an admiration of their work, of the rifters by name. It is innocuous...to a fault, in fact. The lack of mention it makes, of miracles, of their beliefs, of the state of the Abbey is careful and intentional. It says nothing and asks for much.

"Alvar was the one who wrote and saw this sent. I do not know if that has meaning, if she wanted help in her decline...but I do not think that is so. She wanted you here. She wanted it badly enough to send any money we might've kept, might've used."

She hands him the letter and retrieves her hands, steps back on reflex, for fear or reprisal.

"I believe she--she tried to kill your friend."

[faithlikeaseed]

On fire as he is with sudden conviction--despair put aside, replaced with mad hope; they can do this, they will--there's a trace of impatience in how he takes the letter and this last hesitation. But he's used to bridling that kind of impatience no matter how urgent it seems to act on it; he can listen to what else she has to say. He can take the letter and--struggle to read it, his eyes still not used to the shape of letters but his pride keeping him mute as he works to unknot the lines and loops of it.

What he can get is enough to arouse his concern; he'd heard it read before, but it's another thing again to see it now that he knows the abbey and all this leaves out. To see the rifters' names (he shapes the unfamiliar ones beneath his breath) spelled out.

It wakes an awful sense of foreboding in his heart; he had resisted all along the idea that anything sinister was happening here beyond the infestation with dark powers that had come uninvited, had believed the abbeyfolk as he found them--

"I believe she--she tried to kill your friend."

He crumples the letter in his hand, looks up at her sharply, expression between shock and betrayal. Galadriel who had gone missing; who'd had a foreboding of this place from the start. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, stops--starts again once he's shaken off the first awful spasm of you were wrong, wrong, wrong about all of it--

"Was she the only one who knew of the plan?" Alvar. Gentle Alvar, who had lasted the longest but Odetta. Who had treated him kindly and died to return his eyes to him.

Who wanted the relic back and for her own inscrutable reason invited one of their rifters into the jaws of a trap.

There's something almost pleading in how he looks at Luca, naked and betrayed as his innate trust wars against this new piece of information. Tell him something that lets him hold on to the goodness he's found here. Let it not all be tainted with murder and distrust, as the Wardens had said.

[laurenande]

Luca does not recoil further but it is a near thing. She hears the sudden shock and betrayal in his voice, the noise of his starting and stopping, and had to gird herself. She stands taller, mostly from habit, and listens to his question.

"If there is one, only she knows the extent of it. She was always clever, but the gift made her...hungry, desperate at times." Luca tells him and looks down. "She told me that your friend...that she was here to destroy the gift and strip back the life of those who had been given it anew."

She is standing closer than she would like, but he deserves the truth. He has been the closest to this, had been given a gift himself, and he deserves his anger, if he feels it.

"I saw the broken glass...the broken chair...but I did not see the blood until she had gone. She told me that she had...turned her away. Sent her off. I believed her and for that I am sorry. I am so sorry."

[faithlikeaseed]

It is so much what he'd been wanting to hear that he accepts it without considering too deeply. Because it isn't in him to distrust on things his heart knows so truly; it takes much more evidence than this to shatter his faith beyond repairing.

Though it's been so awful a few days that the right blow at the right point might do it.

But Luca's explanation suffices; it sits ill with what little he'd known of Alvar--but Luca had known her longer, had been closer to her, and from the sound of it the relic--the gift--twisted things about people. Made them hungry in ways they weren't inclined to before.

He looks down at the crumpled letter again and unfolds it before setting it on her desk. She kept their letters. "If she truly feared that," soft and sad, "I can see why she'd kill to protect it."

He'd already made his own foolish decisions to save these people and he doesn't have a relic pulling at him. "It isn't mine to forgive--I wasn't the one hurt for us not knowing," he says to her apologies, gently enough. "But I believe you'd not have wished our friend harm." He knows too well what it is to maintain his silence because someone he obeyed gave him a reason to do so in the face of his own qualms.

It does not do to dwell on that, though, not when there's so much to be done and Alvar's vengeful spirit might be lurking anywhere. He shakes his head slowly to dispel the last of his awful shock. "I'll tell them, though. I'll--see what I can do," they've already spoken of the Inquisition's distrust, to her frustration and upset; no need to reprise it, "to convince them she acted alone. And I'll turn them onto the cause of all of this so--we can put it an end to it."

An end to the miracles. Probably an end to the abbey itself and its gentle, cheerful life. But as long as its people survived--or most of them--it was some kind of victory.

He swallows hard and looks up, looks her in the eye and manages something like a smile. Even if he's got no brave words to go with it, he can do that.