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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

"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.

"You heard me. I know what that sound is, we need to get inside!" Drawing a bead on Alvar in the window, Jang begins to move quickly across the open area, heading towards the church. "That was Ghost Rock, a...thing from my world. It screams when it burns, you never forget the sound of it. And for the tree, it's a Hangin' Tree. Possessed tree that tries to grab people and hang em' high." She moves in the darkness to somewhere to get out of sight of Alvar.

"Where are we going anyway? The docks? Who knows how to shut this thing down?"

"Jang!" comes an angrier shout, mingled with creeping panic, as Teren recognizes the shape the ropes are taking. Her heart seizes unhappily and she stumbles away from the trees, clutching her arm and nearly falling over again, though losing her footing makes her cast her eyes upward to see Alvar staring down at them.
That's... profoundly not good.
"Take it off!" she snarls, "take the fucking thing off before you kill us both!" She too backs up to stand against the wall of the abbey, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the docks. "You're not going over there like this!"

The wind picks up as they argue and the trees stir violently, their new appendages drooping lower. They are far away but the sight is unnerving at best. Alvar vanishes from the window as they move from sight and, at once, it becomes chilled around them. The bite of cold is significant but not direct, the Wraiths are on the other side of the wall and while they cannot hear them, they can likely feel the movement of the temperature as they head toward the doors.

Solas has been searching for the ring alone since he left Galadriel's side, sure of her protection in the wake of the Inquisition rallying around her. He did not like to do it, did not like to slip away and leave her side, but he knew that he had to find the ring for her, had to make sure that he was able to do what he had promised for her. Trailing the wraiths was not so difficult, not when he knew spirits and demons as he did, but the chill and danger of the place was enough to shake him.

He'd been making his way across the abbey as best he could, knowing they would need to move to the docks eventually. He goes around the edge of the abbey, uncomfortable and bruised from the weather, but he breathes out a sharp noise all the same. It's the whip and wonder of the sound of shouts and snarls that draw him closer and his eyes narrow. Teren and Jang he recognises, but the shout moves him closer, grip on his staff sure. No spirit magic, yes, but the Rift magic... Fire... He could use that, if necessary.

"Take off the ring. Teren is correct." His voice is set, sure; stern. "I must return it to its owner."

"What? No it's fine! Lets get out of here first THEN worry about who's got the sparkly ring!"

Jang looks up at the now empty window, the steam from the hissing rocks curling around her boots like tendrils. No sign of Alvar, and she much preferred to have a location on that particular enemy. The other...things happening, deal with in five minutes. Can't fix it if you're dead after all...

If these magical things are happening because of who's wearing the ring, there's one clear solution. And Jang is being obstinate.

"Take it off," Teren hisses through her teeth, drawing a blade and advancing a couple steps to hold it menacingly-- she's nowhere in the vicinity of screwing around. "Hold it in your hand."

There's a crowd of civilians, pilgrims, injured, who don't need... whatever this is. Anxiously, Teren glances toward the wall, shuddering at the notion that she can actually feel the wraiths looking for them.

"NOW, Jang."

"Damn Teren! Is this really the time, we need to run! Are you really gonna stab me here?"

Jang takes a step back, looking from the knife to Teren. Something must be happening to people here, they want the ring, enough to attack people for it. She just needs to hold onto it for a bit longer, get it somewhere safe, away from everyone. Just need to hold onto it...

"Yes." Teren advances again, drawing her other large blade from behind her back, one at a warning throat-height for Jang.

"Last chance." She doesn't want the ring, despite feeling intrigued by it; it's simply clear to Teren that the longer it stays on a person, the more dangerous the world around them will be. She's already learned the hard way that touching it herself is a bad idea.

Their argument reaches a fever pitch as the cold of the wraiths vanishes. Solas is ignored, at least partially, as Jang withdraws and Teren advances. They are given a spare moment, standing in the wake of the building, before a shriek resounds around the wall, from the trees.

The sound is sharper near the ring.

It echoes against it, after a fashion, and the walls seem to scream as it does. They have only a few seconds before the wraiths descend.

"Shit! Come on, emergency exit!" Jang turns from Teren, risk assessment shifting to the wraiths and flicks a card towards the stone wall.

"Fire in the hole!" she shouts out as the card detonates, but with a lot more power than before. The wall crashes inwards, scattering a few rows of beds that were on the other side, but a large hole now present.

A lot of things happen at once, but one of those things is Jang ignoring Teren's warning. As she turns to blow the hole in the wall, Teren slashes out with the knife poised near Jang's throat, but is also thrown aside by the blast. She rolls a foot or so, and then lurches back to her feet, tearing after the rifter in a panic. She hates that noise, she hates all of this, and if Jang keeps the ring, she just knows they're even further up shit creek than before.

Solas is beginning to get angry, a frustrating thing born of his desire to bring this ring back to Galadriel. He knows from her the dangers of the ring, what it can do to people, and clearly Jang is already suffering the consequences of it. He has to get it back, has to make sure that it does not fall into the wrong hands, that it is only in his possession long enough for it to go to Galadriel.

"Jang! Stop!" Reaching out, he brings his staff around and summons his Pull of the Abyss, dragging her back by the strength of his magic alone. It should be enough to hold her in place as he moves forward, rushing after her with his eyes focussed entirely on the Rifter, fury starting to colour him.

"Remove the ring or you will perish! It will take you!"

The Pull of the Abyss grabs Jang handily, and it also manages to snare the debris from the wall and Teren. They had only seconds before the wraiths were upon them and those seconds are bitterly spent--the creatures appear around the corners of the walls, moving in near unison, with their blades drawn.

Solas is the easiest found--two move for him while the other two move toward the twisting rift spell and the people trapped inside it. They strike at Solas as he runs, missing narrowly and winding up to strike again and, all too soon, the three are surrounded with only the hole in the wall to provide an escape.

The Abbey on the White Cliff

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