Entry tags:

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

That's the answer Teren hoped for. She doesn't quite smile, but gives a grim, determined look with a nod.
"We'll need to break the ice over the window," she says, pointing up at the thick layer coating the glass, "then break the window, and get inside." She keeps her voice low, just in case there are any stragglers, abbey folk who have evaded the chaos. "I don't know what we'll find. But we're getting it bloody out and taking it somewhere this stops." Dare she say: to the Inquisition? It only took her three years to start almost trusting them as an organization.

Flipping open a pouch on her belt, Teren brandishes a hefty chisel that she hands to Kitty, one no doubt used for... not... above-board things, but at least they still count as official business. This woman knows her way around a lock. "I'll give you a boost," she murmurs, bending to cup her hands such that they can be stepped into, "give it a go and tell me if we need firepower."

Kitty casts a curious glance at the chisel, and then at Teren, but, well - this isn't exactly the time to ask her about it. Nor the time to question the proposed course of action. There's so much going on here that any course of potential action is worth pursuing. So she tucks the firmly into her belt, steps lightly into Teren's hands (she's light, and her balance is impeccable) and uses the boost to find a solid footing on the wall.

She wasn't boasting: she goes up quickly, steadily, picking out hand-holds and foot-holds and rarely making a misstep. Within minutes, she's at window-level - and then, rather than using the chisel, she casts a glance around and then presses her hand to the window. As expected: the ice, formed of magic, yields before her resilience, leaving a steaming handprint that clears away the ice all the way down to the glass. Then a blow from the chisel and the glass shatters, leaving her able to carefully pull away chunks of ice until there's enough room for her to wriggle inside. A bit more chipping and pushing, and the window is clear; she leans over and calls down softly -

"Come on. I'll pull you up."

The shattering of glass resounds through the room beyond, bouncing strangely off of metal and stone alike. The darkness ahead of them is pitch and the air in here is cold, as cold as it was in the auditorium when all the wraiths had been assembled. There is a queer sort of stillness to this place, and, as their eyes adjust, they can see why it is so curious.

This room is filled with linens, hanging to dry out of the rain. All of them are frozen stiff as boards, sheened over in ice and spread through the room ahead like a fabric maze. Beyond them, there is a wide table, the sort for folding sheets, clear of everything save a single shiny silver bauble in the center. It appears to be a ring.

That's pretty impressive, and Teren finds herself admiring how quickly Kitty gets up there. Note to self: use that later.

Or now, as luck would have it. Teren isn't as good a free-climber, but she's decent enough, and follows most of the same hand and footholds required of her substantially taller frame before grasping Kitty's hand once close enough.
She barely needs the lift, mostly just the balance, before she's in the window as well, kicking aside some shards of glass and looking around with a look of almost smug relief. That wasn't so hard.

There is a moment or two of eerie peace as they standin the room, but before long there is a shout, not too distant but certainly muffled. It is the cry of a young woman and it is coming from a hallway beyond.

The choice is before the two, then, they can stay together on their task or divide and accomplish both. The noise of the breaking window had not drawn any attention, but the fuss being kicked up in the hall beyond certainly will, if it is not addressed.

It's a quick decision that needs to be made, and after Kitty rushes out to handle... whatever it is, Teren returns to the task at hand.
Slowly closing the door to the hallway again, she looks over her shoulder to the table and its single denizen: a ring, no doubt a magic one, and seemingly the center of all this fuss.
Stepping closer, she leans in to inspect it: then, tilting her head to make sure no one's coming, she extends a leather-gloved hand to pluck it from its resting place.

The ring is heavy in Teren's hand, heavier than anything so small ought to be. It almost has a pull to it, a gravity, and there is a strange heavy silence that falls over everything as she holds it between her gloved fingertips. The whispers, the rain, the wind howling off the ocean, even the shouts of the girl down the hallway, all of them drop away for a long moment.

But nothing replaces them.

A second passes, and another, and the ring almost seems to warm under her touch. It grows warmer, then hotter, and within an instant it is blindingly hot. The sensation is not filtered nor mitigated much by her gloves.

That kind of silence is as alarming as any scream, after all the time they've spent surrounded by constant buffeting noise. Teren's eyes go wide, her instincts screaming to get out-- this isn't natural, it's clearly magic-- but the strange warmth of the ring keeps her holding onto it.
At least... until it becomes too much. With a yelp, Teren steps back and tips her hand, dropping it on the floor.

The yelp echoing in the room is met by the sound of the door opening, as Jang enters the room, run out and pushing past the frozen hanging sheets and the iced-up vats, the copper sticks frozen in what normally would have been hot vats of water, stirring and washing clothes.

Jang moves carefully through the forest of frozen sheets until she sees Teren. "Oh, was that you? What are you doing in here?"

Edited 2018-10-19 01:25 (UTC)

She turns quickly, ready to fight, and sees Jang standing there instead of a wraith or... something worse?
"Nothing," Teren mutters, and, withdrawing two of the smaller blades from her boots and couching, touching the blades together inside the ring to lift it without touching it.
"Let's go."

The ring slips between the touching blades like water through a sieve. It hits the ground with a dull thud and does not bounce, does not jiggle or roll. It sits heavy on the floor and almost appears to be waiting.

The air in the room stirs at the sound of the ring hitting the ground. She hanging sheets do not move or flutter with it, but they do sway as a breeze cuts in from the open hallway door. Distantly, at the end of that hall, there are light footfalls that scrape strangely against the wood.

Jang watches her try to grab the ring and it fall to the ground. "Um...Is that the thing that's causing all this trouble?" She bends down and holds a hand over the ring. "Is it hot or something?"

"Try picking it up." Galadriel visibly hates the Wardens, maybe it's something to do with that. If not, then... maybe they're fucked. She casts a glance to the door from whence Jang appeared, listening.

"Ok...If this burns me, I'm gonna be pissed." Jang carefully reaches down and lifts up the ring between two fingers, waiting for it to flash redhot or something. But so far...nothing. It's just a ring. Piece of metal, nothing to write home about.

"Seems fine...what were you expecting to happen?"

Jang lifts the ring from the floor and there is a sense that washes over her, like being plunged underwater. The sounds of the space around them are muted, they fall away, and on the edges of her mind there is a whisper. It is background noise, almost static, and the language it speaks is not one she knows. There is a will to it, quiet and pervasive, but its desires are complex.

Holding it is a nerve wracking thing and, even after a few moments, it creates in Jang a sort of nervous energy, a drive. It is not an active thing, it does not wish her to move or to stay still, nor to use it or not use it--she wouldn't know how. But the longer she holds it, the more it begs to be used, the more energy it seems to kindle beneath her skin and behind her eyes.

"Oh...wow..." Jang plays the ring around in her hand, poking at it. "This...Damn, where in the hell did this thing COME from?"

She turns the shiny white ring around in her fingers, amazed at the craftsmanship of it. "No wonder Alvar wants this...This feels...well, it feels like I can do anything!"

It doesn't burn Jang, which is ideal-- it means they can get the ring out, and... wait. Teren doesn't like the way the girl is looking at it. Or what she's saying.

"Jang," she says in a careful, warning tone, glancing toward the window. "Let's go."

The warning tone is warranted--while this place cannot become markedly colder, already the air is freezing inside the laundry room, the sound of scraping steps draws nearer and, along with it, there is a ghostly susurrus. Spirits are approaching and, if one has paid the wraiths any mind, they will realize this does not sound like them.

The heavy steps that take shape in the dark distant corners of the room, those sound quite like the wraiths as two of them coalesce into being.

Outside, the rainwater has refrozen over the sill of the window and along the side of the building for many feet. It is scaleable but not easily. Unless they dive for the trees, it will require time.

"Shit, come on, we gotta go!" Jang moves towards the window, and looks down at the icy wall, and then back over to the trees. "Feel lucky? I think we gotta jump, come on!"

Then, to make sure she didn't lose it in the jump, she slips the ring on and jumps for the trees.

"We--" Teren stammers, and, looking back over her shoulder in horror, realizes she has to chance it. Jang is being insane, but she may actually have the right idea, since climbing down will take too much time.
Teren races to the window and plants her foot on the sill, but in the process of lifting the other one, she slips on the ice. It hamstrings her jump, and although she does manage to grab hold of a branch at the last second, it's not without an unfortunate wrenching of her arm and another shout of dismay.
Nothing is broken, probably, but that was painful. Keeping her eyes on Jang, Teren tries to maneuver as best she can.

Jang makes the tree with a crash into the branches. Teren follows suit and grabs ahold before she can truly start to plummet down. They are not so high up that a fall would kill them, but the wraiths that would descend upon their collapsed forms would certainly take care of that.

The trees are dripping wet and slippery, hard to hang on to and harder still to maneuver in. Unfortunately, as they hang in the foliage, something strange starts to happen.

The cold that is so pervasive in the Abbey does not start to fade, not exactly, but it ceases to increase. The cold tapers off and the rain picks up and carries an almost copper tang to it. The tree they are in shivers in the strong wind and groans, loudly and ominously, as it settles. But it doesn't settle.

The tree twists, just slightly, opposite the wind and something long and thin wraps itself around Jang's arm. Another drops down before Teren's eyes--they appear to be ropes but, unlike the tree or anything else around, they do not move in the wind, not at all. They seem to be stationary by choice.

Jang sees the ropes wrap around her wrist and freezes. She knows what this is, but...it's not from here.

"Oh no...No no no, something followed me...Don't touch the ropes! Get down, get down fast!" Jang flings a cards towards the rope, sliceing into it as her arm breaks free. She starts to scramble down the wet tree, the wraiths forgotten. "Get down! And we need to get away from the woods, I know what these are!"

As she clambers down, another sound reaches her ears, and this is one she knows very well. It's the sound of screaming, the sound like the dammed have been given voice. "And now we really are in trouble..."

Teren is inches from grabbing one of the ropes when Jang's cry gives her pause, and she's in no position-- hasn't enough knowledge-- to do anything but listen to the person who seems to know what she's talking about. They got the ring out, at least, now they just need to make it to the docks?

She makes her own awkward, aching, clambering descent, not stopping until she reaches the ground. "What," comes a sharp, nervous bark: how are they really in trouble now, moreso than they already were?

They make it from the tree without further incident but, as they reach the ground there is a rolling sense of wrongness to the air around them. The other tress seem to shift, dark lines dropping from them toward the ground. Ropes. Nooses. They stretch down from the pines like arms reaching for the ground.

Above them, there are a pair of shrieks as the wraiths reach the center of the room. The sounds ring out but some of their ethereal quality has been shifted away. Some of it resides in a low grade screaming, soft and distant, that issues forth from the rocks around them. They are steaming slightly in the rain, hissing and crying like heated coals that have had water dumped on them.

The nearer Jang draws to the trees or to any stones, the more pronounced the effect becomes.

Behind them, at the window, the ghostly face of Alvar appears. She looks down at them blankly, her face a light in the pitch of the room, and begins to smile.

The Abbey on the White Cliff

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject