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

[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."