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

[esquive]

With a final tug, Marcoulf knots the last corner on one of the maked-do litters. It's infuriating knowing that in another portion of the abbey that there are scattered building supplies they could be turning to this effort instead, but the time wasted and the hideous risk involved isn't worth the trouble. Fine. This will do. They only have so many hands capable of carrying the sick anyway; it does them no good to outstrip those--

Maker, he is ready to be rid of this terrible place.

He avoids meeting the eye of any of the expectant ill and instead cuts his way toward the infirmary's heavy doors. His hands are fretting, one absently rubbing at his wrist and then turning to work at some tension in the back of his hand.

"We should be away now," he says to anyone upright near the doorway as he peers out. The rain is cutting and frigid cold. The trip would be dangerous even without the threat of wraiths' pursuit. "I'll bring up the rear. See what can be done about waylaying anything after us."

This is going to go badly. He feels it in his marrow.

[faithlikeaseed]

"I'll join you, if I might," Myr remarks from his spot by the lintel. "Don't know I'll be much use in the van, not having seen the path."

He's a mirror to Marcoulf, hand working over hand as he stares out at the rain, though there's deeper purpose to the gesture than burning off restless energy: Potential spellwork warps the Fade, yet unrealized but for the least glimmer of light as he sorts through patterns in his head to see what might serve to keep the damp and the chill from the worst of the wounded.

Rain's a problem he's solved before, but not in so little time as this, in such urgent haste, without barriers.

Abruptly he folds his hands together, dispersing the nascent spell. "Give me a moment and I'll be along. I've an idea." Though why that idea requires disappearing back to where they've made the litters and spending precious time filling his pockets with as many bits and scraps of discarded bedframe as he can grab in one pass--

Well. It'll come clear shortly enough and it's not long before he's back with the rest of them with his odd acquisitions.

[esquive]

The company is, Marcoulf thinks, unpleasant. Away from this place there may be no bother to it, but standing here at the edge of the rain in the cold of this cursed place something in Myr's face - his eyes, maybe - makes his skin crawl. He doesn't care to think about it long enough to set his finger on exactly why it bothers him anyway (a demon gave you those eyes), and there are more pressing matters to attend to like seeing that the sick and injured on their cots are ready to go out into the weather; that the people ready to dredge their litters along are as fit as they can be; sorting out some arrangement of play defense--

Maker, it'll be a miracle if they get any distance at all.

Fretting aside though, there's nothing much left to be done. In minutes, the population of the infirmary are making their way out into the rain and the dark. Marcoulf lingers in the doorway for as long as seems reasonable, attention turned toward the rest of the abbey rather than the direction they're all meant to be moving in. As Myr comes up alongside again, Marcoulf shifts his hand to his sword and looks to him.

"Ready?"

[faithlikeaseed]

"Ready."

Myr touches hand to the hilt of his spirit blade--brief instinct, quickly quelled by the knowledge the wraiths would be on top of them the instant he drew it--then takes his staff down from off his back. To hold loose, one-handed, as he removes a chip of wood from his pocket and impresses some fragment of magic on it and tosses it behind him.

Breadcrumbs. But not to find their way back--to be snuffed out if a wraith passes too near, and scream the alarm before the monsters are on them.

"What odds," he murmurs as they set out into the gloom and the cold, "d'you give us?"

[esquive]

Marcoulf doesn't hesitate. Myr speaks the word and he is cutting out into the rain after the slow moving caravan of the abbey's sick and injured. Even at their quickest over the relatively flat, open ground immediately surrounding the abbey, it's a maddeningly sedate pace. The pouring rain will have soaked them utterly before they even make the tree line.

"Either the wraiths will have us or the path down the cliff face will." In this weather, one is nearly as likely as the other.

[faithlikeaseed]

It squares with Myr’s estimate: Whatever hope they’ve got is in Andraste’s hands.

“When they come,” the wraiths, because they will, “I’ll draw them off as long as I can.”

He’d pull their attention anyway when he joined the battle in full; best to make use of it against their awful odds. Accordingly his attention is on the terrain around them, considering lines of escape and how far the wraiths might be led. Likely not far enough—because nothing since getting to this place has gone the way it should—but damned if he won’t try.

Even restricted to the pace of the litters there are those in the grim little procession who can’t keep up; a tottering pilgrim goes down in the mud before them, and Myr breathes out on anxious sigh as he closes to offer her a hand up.

[esquive]

"If you can lead them, I can follow and see what can be done through flanking them." Not far, not for long - it would be a waste of their efforts to leave the trailing end of their charge so unprotected -, but if they're lucky he might cause enough damage to slow their pursuit of Myr. To do-- something.

(It all feels a little useless, doesn't it? What do two men do against things like that?)

"They might also prefer to stay close to this place. It might-- it might be possible to lead them about the abbey grounds while the rest make their way. If their attention can be held."

It feels like throwing rocks at a giant, doesn't it?

[faithlikeaseed]

(Not ever give up, for whatever that matters in the end.)

"I suspect it can be, so long as I can keep a barrier up," Myr says, once he's set the pilgrim on her way. Once she's out of easy earshot of this grim discussion--though given the company the pilgrims kept at the abbey and how fearlessly they'd stood up to the wraiths to protect the Inquisition in their midst, perhaps they deserve to be part of it.

Which reminds: "They didn't attack the pilgrims in the hall until their attention was drawn." And how angry he still is at Solas and Anders for that, but that's anger better turned to productive ends--like fury at the situation. "I don't know we can hope for the same here but these people may not realize their own danger at first."

It's only adding even more trouble to their current list of woes. At least this one might be quickly rectified--if the abbeyfolk listen.

[laurenande]

The group moves slowly in the dark and the rain with Luca leading them from the front. They head through the trees and into the cover of the woods but they turn off where Myr and Marcoulf and Merrill had not. They follow the path north, toward the cliffs and the trail down them to the docks below. For a time all that they can hear is the sound of driving rain--then there is a distant explosion and a wash of sensation moves through the air like a shockwave.

It is not a pleasant feeling, but it is not the same utter, pervasive cold that had haunted them before.

The people of the Abbey, to their credit, move quickly (as they can) and with purpose but, as they near the cliff edge they slow terribly. The path ahead is a narrow one, built of boards and crossbeams driven deep into the chalk of the cliffs. It can fit maybe two abreast if they need little space to sway and the angle they travel down at is treacherous in the rain.

A second explosion resounds soon after and the trees around them groan with it...but their groaning persists once it is done. They groan far longer than they should and, in the distance, long thin shapes appear, dangling from the branches. They drop down, not unlike snakes, and hang, lifeless from the limbs.

What has caused this is a mystery but it seems the distant trees are growing nooses and, surely, that cannot be a positive change.

[faithlikeaseed]

The trees are growing nooses.

The trees are growing nooses, something--two somethings--exploded behind them, and their little caravan is strung out along the cliff face and all the more vulnerable for it.

"Maker preserve us." Myr's grip tightens on his staff; he turns back from whence they came--the abbey, the terrible forest--and stares through the rain. "It's started."

Which means there's precious little time for gawping. He moves away from the trailhead at a jog, back along the inchworm-slow line of pilgrims and begins drawing paralysis from the Fade into a glyph.