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

[hello_there]

"Technically speaking, we attacked them," he replies, with the worn-down exasperation of someone who has had to say that phrase before, "Thranduil."

That name is, apparently, explanation enough. Some names are. He sighs heavily to express his opinion on the matter and pushes himself one-handed off the door-jamb, coming to pull a chair out and sit nearer by her side.

"There were casualties. Have you been told what happened? I wish I could say that we have the luxury of time to rest and recover..."

[laurenande]

"No, I was not told," Galadriel informs him as he draws near and sits. She looks a bit alarmed at Thranduil's name being used, the meaning is just vague enough to imply that he had been hurt--but she has seen him quite recently. So he attacked. She expects it was warranted but does not say as much.

"There is no luxury here, and there shall be less shortly--tell me the tale and we can move forward."

[hello_there]

"The abbey invited us all to attend a... ceremony, you might call it..."

Obi-Wan related shortly the events of the day in short, professional terms, as factual and free from emotion as he could make them, which was considerable. He spoke of the rift, the wraiths, the apparent suicidal disaffection of the crowd, how the fight had begun, and the fate of the Reverend Mothers, as he knew it. He mentioned the roof, Myr's eyes, the sickness that had taken the abbey afterward, and everything else of real significance— except himself.

"We know they can be killed," He said, at last, "But what matters more is what's creating all this. It has to stop."

[laurenande]

"You have killed one?" Galadriel asks, somewhat aghast. "It did not reform, it did not arise again to the call of the--Revered Mother?"

Her expression is horrified but hopeful, it is an odd combination and one that sits uneasily on her face. The account of the fight, of the miracles, and of the remaining plights of the Abbey do not seem to surprise her in the slightest an, perhaps, that is more telling than it ought to be.

"How?"

[hello_there]

Obi-Wan looks up at her, surprised, and hesitates yet further, when he sees her face. His frown deepens; ah, so she knew something about all this, or at least more than she ought...

...unless.

"You know what's happening here."

It isn't an answer to her question, except insofar as that it's a confirmation of the assumption that lies within it; that the wraith is dead enough, and that Obi-Wan had killed it. The curtain of weariness pulls back a little, and Obi-Wan looks out from under that veil with great disapproval, as if Galadriel were no older, nor wiser, than a child.

[laurenande]

It wasn't a question and Galadriel looks back at him, unmoved by the reprimand in his stance and expression. She draws herself up in bed and sits--it requires some great effort on her part, but she does so anyway. Once she is seated, she looks him dead in the eye.

"I do."

She doesn't explain, not unprompted, and instead asks:

"Have you checked to make certain it is dead? That is has not returned? They are not easily slain."

[hello_there]

"I find most things remain dead when cut into pieces and dissolved into plasma," Obi-Wan replied, much annoyed. Without thinking, he uncrossed his arms, and crossed them again the other way, then winced— It would be some time before every brush of pressure against his arm stopped giving him pain, he knew, "What's left of it is an increasingly dilute sheet of ice under what remains of the roof."

And it had left a scar on his boots, his good boots. Do you know what these cost? He doesn't have any money, Galadriel. He took a vow of poverty, Galadriel.

"Now. Tell me everything."

[laurenande]

That sounds like a you problem, Obi-wan.

Galadriel arches a brow at him and considers. He has been injured but, of course he has, if he has fought a wraith. She holds her hand out and waits for him to present it. He does not, not immediately, but her hand lingers.

"Did it stab you?" She asks, rather than answers. "If it did, be wary. The wounds wrought by wraiths are...I do not know if these are Morgul blades. If it burns, it shall remain burning for the rest of your life."

She is distracted then and looks back at the candles, the flames have stayed lit in here, but they struggle in the cold.

"They use a relic of staggering power and it consumes them. You have met the results."

[hello_there]

"That much I had surmised," He replies, no more harshly, if not much less; he'll take whatever cooperation he gets. But the hand, or the lack thereof, he holds a little closer to himself, "No, it didn't... stab. It's nothing to concern yourself with."

And does he believe that? Well, it's true. There's nothing to be done, and even if there were... She doesn't drop her hand, only holds it out, and waits. He waits too, staring it down as if it might strike, like a snake. But then he sighs; what does it matter, in the end? Slowly, he folds back the hem of his sleeve to reveal the damage. Anders has done an expert job of bandaging the stump of Obi-Wan's arm, but there's nothing that can truly disguise the fact that half his forearm is simply not there.

"I'm neither the only, nor the first Jedi, to lose a hand."

[laurenande]

She regards his hand, or the lack of it, and something flashes across her expression. Something in her exhaustion is both relieved and grieved to see this damage. She lowers her hand and lets him retract what remains of his arm. She had expected this and, if the expression that settles on her face is any indication, she expects the same to happen again very soon. She is resigned.

"Fortunate that it could not be poisoned then," she says and it rings hollow for both of them.

"Ask your questions, then. You have paid a steep enough price for the answers."

[hello_there]

"What is it we're looking for?" Obi-Wan tucks his arm back into his sleeve without comment. She knows exactly how flat the platitudes fall, and he can see it, "If it's an artifact after all, we need to destroy or recapture it as soon as possible— I presume it's something of your world?"

He presumes nothing of the sort, but at the this point a guess is as good as a fact. Galadriel is too resigned, too knowing, and even if it isn't hers precisely, it would be enough to say that it was here and so was she.

"I've been able to sense something here, the entire time, but it's been too much, too overwhelming. A general sense of location is better than nothing, if you know what to look for."

[laurenande]

"You will not be able to see it," she says and it is, of course, deeply unhelpful. "Unless you have worn it or they choose to show it, it appears as nothing."

It is not a piece of information she has given to others and, while she would prefer it remain unknown, he has been wounded for this quest. He does not even know the purpose of their visit, of why she has come, and he has lost a limb.

"The Reverend Mother carried it, her predecessor should have it...but she cannot wield it, else this place would still be protected, as it was when we arrived."

[hello_there]

Obi-Wan regards this statement with the disappointed air of someone who finds nothing to laud in the antics of a guilty teenager. If the consequences of her choices were so much harder than she had hoped, Galadriel was still responsible for them.

"Then what should I look for? What is it, unseen or otherwise?" And part of his annoyance was the exasperation that came with the way that magic could just cheat like that, as blatant and easy as breathing, in this place, "We can't simply shrug our shoulders and let an invisible, life-stealing artifact remain loose here. The risk is too high. Give me something I can work with."

[laurenande]

"Find the person wielding it, or wait and they shall find us," Galadriel snaps, something in her countenance cracking with an underlying hunger. She reins it in quickly, but the irritation remains.

"They will age, they will be weak, and they will be weary. We shall have to kill them to take it, regardless of how you search for the unseen. If they are very poorly matched, it will seem like a shining star gripped in their fist or borne around the neck."

She calms then, despite how blatantly she clings to that last piece of secrecy, the shape of her relic, the last shred of the pact she has lived by for many thousands of years.

"Pray the person holding it, this new Reverend Mother cannot master it, and pray the dead cannot wear it, else we shall be in a truly dire place."