PRIDE BEFORE A FALL | Closed.

[limier]

WHO: Lakshmi + Coupe, Kitty, Gwenaelle, Helena, Iorveth, Marcoulf, Merrill, Solas.
WHAT: Fade cannonball
WHEN: You can't make me date you
WHERE: The Free Marches
NOTES: OOC Post, Discussion plurk.

This is routine.

A rift, high above the ruins of the Hammer’s Edge Bridge. It cuts into the sky, green and pulsing as a wound to spit out spirits like misery. This is routine — but the position is precarious, so near to a cliff ledge. Watch your footing, a fall promises only sharp rocks and water below.

The task is straightforward: Close the tear, or provide a diversion for the Rifters doing so. Keep yourself alive, and keep your hand to the task, no matter how it aches. When respite comes, it’s a matter of seconds: The Rift stabilizes, and,

And Lakshmi breaks from the group. Moving fast (too considered for the pace, every demon dodged, never a misstep on the odd root or rock) as she sprints for the edge. Maybe you tried to grab her, stop her, stop someone else from grabbing her.

She launches herself legs out, flatly determined in her aim —

Maybe it’s only that like it or not, she’s going through that rift. Maybe it’s that there’s no good reason not to join her. Maybe it’s that everyone else is jumping too.

Routine, right?

 

Comments

THE PALACE | solo or group threads

[limier]

The path unfolds into a palace, many-roomed. Spirits gust shapeless through it in the imitation of courtiers. Thousands of years’ misremembering have toppled the shelves and mingled fashion; elven ruins and Chantric carvings mixing with flashes of your own home. Perhaps the pattern of the curtains, or the echo of an old friend. Rock and raw magic shift between glances.

NURSERY

The bedrooms and balconies twist with blackened stone. In one, toys scatter about furniture too small for a grown man. Soft giggles, snorts — is that a lullaby? Something lisps a lesson between brand new teeth. There are more noises from the centerpiece: a crib, sumptuous before it fell to Fade. The shadow of a nurse ghosts to and fro, her pattern undisturbed by intrusion.

What lies within? That’s up to you, isn’t it — when did you last think of children?

THE FIELD

The walls of the palace are broken only by a vast gate. Just beyond it, armies clash. There are eyes upon you here, and an endless, pitched battle: It has raged a thousand years, may continue a thousand more.

Are they only spirits? Or Darkspawn, Celene’s soldiers, your own family? The closer you draw, the more solid they become, determined by their nature only to fight. Drive them back, or flee. But don’t let yourself be caught within.

merrill | nursery, ota

[chainlightning]

This is no Dalish nursery; it's indoors, for starters. And yet Merrill thinks she can see toys that a small elf would play with; the twisted antlers of a halla, a small bow and arrow. The most likely explanation is that the Fade is twisting around to better suit her, to match with what she thinks, but perhaps Merrill is just seeing things.

It's the Fade, after all. They're all seeing things - it's just that those things see them, too.

She's frozen near the entrance, not really wanting to go inside but also not comfortable enough not to. They need to keep moving, she knows that.

She also knows that she doesn't really want to look in that crib, and that something seems to want her to.

[limier]

There's a hand at her elbow. Quietly:

"Warden," Is that right? No. No, she just... hangs about them. It'll do; can't put other name or title to the girl just now (it'll come back, they're all distracted, it always comes back). "There is nothing worth seeing."

Something catches beneath the gravel of her throat — it doesn't sound as though she means it.

[chainlightning]

If it weren't for the hand, Merrill wouldn't think she was the one being spoken to - or perhaps she would not have heard. One of the curtains in the room flickers and Merrill sees it as the crimson sail of an aravel in the breeze, eyes immediately darting to it- but no. No, she's being touched, spoken to, and Merrill drags her gaze away and to the Templar instead.

"Merrill," she corrects, ignoring the pang in her chest. Anders was a Warden. Bethany and Carver were Wardens. Hercules had been a Warden. She missed them, all of them - and was certain Anders would give her an earful when she got back - and the unintentional reminder stung a bit. "I- does it feel like it wants us to look?"

helena / ota (cw ref to childhood abuse/brainwashing/self harm.)

[strangel]

the nursery — cw: ref to childhood abuse/brainwashing/self harm.
Helena trails her fingers along the walls as she walks. Where her fingers trail, there are brief glimpses of childish drawings scrawled onto the walls. Women's bodies in blocky stick figures and triangular dresses, the heads a rough circle. Very rarely, the head is the base of a red question mark, before the drawing disappears again.

This is like convent, and very different, in same moment. She sees the dark shapes of a nun's habit, and Helena seems to go rigid, motions stiff and jerky as she moves through the room like a feral cat, hyperaware and waiting to strike.

The toys on the floor are naked, plastic dolls. Anatomically strangely proportioned, faces in eternal smiles and hair and eyes in different colours. They have been burned, slashed with blades, spat on, their hair styled in rough, messy styles. The room smells acrid and harsh. Helena's breathing quickens, as she moves around the edges of the room, and the scrape of metal against stone pulls her attention down, and she moves her foot back, to reveal a razor blade beneath her boot.

This carries much from her childhood, but she knows it is wrong.


the field.
Some of the fighters, they are wearing cowboy hats and boots. An exaggeration of what she saw on the Johanssen men and their followers, certainly, a little more wild west than fit the Proletheans. Cowboys and scientists on the battle field, and Helena is drawn to it. Wildness simmers in her, the need to fight, to punish them for taking from her, for hurting her family, and she draws her bow to loose an arrow into the throat of one of the fighters.

the field;

[esquive]

Beyond that gate in the wall, the palace's stone yard gives to muddy fields and confused fighting. A banner hacks at the air. A horse screams. In the sickly morning light shields and plate armor and pike ends and sky and distant hills all become one synonymous color. In the fray, a mud streaked boy in leathers lifts his axe and means to swing it down again. An arrow catches him in the throat, blooming red as summer poppies.

Marcoulf's hand closes on Helena's sleeve. "Come away," he says, tugging at her like a child might even as transfixed by the battle beyond the gate. "Before they see us here."

[strangel]

She whirls to Marcoulf, baring her teeth like a feral cat, and twisting her hand so that she is grasping his wrist as she anchors herself against the ground.

"Are you a coward?"

helena pt 2 | cw for self harm / blood / scarification / ref past abuse and murder

[strangel]

She found razors in the nursery, and the reminded her of when home was a dark room with a cage and refuse scattered around it. The location might change, but it had been a lesson in resilience. She could be strong wherever she was.

Helena sits on the floor, legs crossed, and turns one of the razors over in her hands. They reflect yellow green light of this place, which reminds her of poorly lit rooms and being shoved out into bright light. Tomas' voice, quiet and filled with false kindness, rings in her head. Go on, child. Destroy the demons.

At home, she was told demons crawled the earth. Filthy copies, corruptions of God's own creation. And now she is here, in the Fade, a home of demons and the place of first corruption, some are saying. Her sisters are not here, they are not here, they are not here and this is perhaps a shape of hell.

She peels off the cotton shirt she was wearing, stained with travel and battle, dirt and dust and demon ichor. On her bare skin are carved in marks, years of scars that spread in the shape of angelic wings. She failed Sarah and Cosima, and must repent. Had abandoned them. And for all the sestras that she has killed, beyond her knowing, for that she must repent as well. She shot the Queen Lady, horrified Kitty, and for that she must repent. (The girl, Grace, had called her a monster, and when she tried to suffocate Helena, had begged her to leave them alone.)

The razor digs in at her shoulder, and carves through her skin. A rasp of breath, relieved and agonising, before she reaches for the next cut, and blood rolls down her back.

Repent, and be cleansed. Repent, and the light will find you. (What was she now, if she was not the Light?)

lakshmi | nursery & field

[shri]

i. | nursery

It seems a sort of inevitably here when she finds the call of the nursery. For there had never been a place so happy as that when she had been sure she had fulfilled her duty to her people. The room is wrong, the toys under foot are gently nudged away with each step so she did not break them. The shadow of the nurse is also familiar. Until - until -

By the rule of this place, the shift is apparent, as she carefully leans over the crib's edge. Because she had no teaching that the realm of spirits ought to be a place only feared. For as sure as there were Asuras, there were Devas as well. A place of revelry, and contentment, of divine truth, realised in each and every being. That would be guarding her sons, her husband until she was ready to be with them once more. Maybe in this life, it would be happier, maybe she would be able to keep them both, just like this, just this -

He is so small, as she picks him up, the little boy that has a soft matt of dark hair on top of his head. Swaddled in rich clothes. How that changes upon her, the Inquisition uniform that flickers, fading away, her face loses some age, to where she could be no more than eighteen. To something closer to the day she arrived. Her long, long hair strung with gold and flowers, her clothes too rich to be anything other than to speak of rank and a special occasion. Her hands delicately painted with henna designs of lotus blooms, curling underneath the boy softly, an utter quiet that falls over her. All the pain that surely had been worth it, her boy, her boy. If there is wet that falls from her eyes, it is hidden by how she presses her face into his head, feeling the soft tickle of her son's breath on her cheek.

It breaks only for footsteps, of a ruckus booming laugh, like following the patterns of her own memories, a man - surely, a spirit too but it as well changed as she looks at it and sees what she expects to see. Tall, round-faced, a sight older than her, but if Lakshmi dresses richly, it is nothing at all compared to this man. Dress sumptuously, elegantly, a wealth that seemed completely natural. Her smile is blinding when she sees him, she couldn't be anything else but in love with him, there could be no mistake in it for how she reaches for him, her free hand lifting to draw him close, and how readily he in turns to step into it.

How easy it was for them to kiss each other, mindful of the child between them, laughing their happiness into each other's mouths. A privacy to this moment that should not be shared, his fingers settling to her shoulders, broad enough to make her seem slight. Her fingers sliding to cup his jaw, smoothing against his beard.

A cruel thing, to break, but the trick of it is the moment steps in, the flick of the shapes, she is real, and bright enough, but the beings she interacts with flicker as they are looked on too hard.

ii. | the field

She hasn't heard gunfire since she arrived here. Which is really what makes her look up - confused for a second, hopefully almost with a sound that shouldn't be particularly pleasant. But these people have yet to develop proper canon, let alone anything approaching an Enfield and she surely knows that sound. Knows it too damn well. Enough that the sword is in her hand before she's thought it through. Because to hear so many, that means only when thing.

The splash of red and white as she comes closer spills out - redcoats with their white stripes bark orders and yell out. Dressed in white Maratha cavalry rides into their lines of guns, hard. It breaks like white foam on a red sea, sending them scattering about. The scream of horses, the wails of death and pain. Men that are crawling over the desert floor. Desert? Desert. She snaps her head up - no, this cannot be such a place. Cannot be Gwalior and -

"What is happening?" Shocked, almost. "But these people do not have guns?" Mercifully she has the sense to not get caught in this. Pulling back firmly out of range. "How could it know such a thing?" At least until she realises she has company, realises that she can't escape the battle as long as it is here, and when she turns tail to get out of there ( where is Sarangi, is the question, followed by the immediate answer, she died long before this place ) right until she sees someone else - here -

"Get down!" Is the war cry of an order, bellowing out of her lungs before she tackles straight into them as the round of gunfire splits the air above them like thunder.

nursery.

[elegiaque]

The weight of a footstep in the door—not following Lakshmi, looking for someone else—and the world blurs, rights itself in a new shape, corset-laces pulling tight around Lakshmi's waist and it's a little girl in her arms, the burn of liquor behind the beard against her jaw. And Gwenaëlle, disoriented for a moment at the door, because her parents didn't kiss each other,

and fabric sloughs and loosens as swift as it had tightened, baring Lakshmi's legs, a man's shirt sliding on her shoulder, a heavy pendant around her neck.

None of it is real. Lakshmi's armor is still bloodied from Helena's arrow, and red blood stains the cheek of the solemn-eyed, fat-cheeked baby that Gwenaëlle used to be, a confusing overlap of what is and what isn't that echoes back into her gut as hard as Lakshmi's fist had been—

The smell of burning flesh rises in the air and Gwenaëlle, unthinking, goes to the other cribs

the baby in Lakshmi's arms begins to scream. The woman finds only ash.

[shri]

She is happy in that kiss, so much so that she does not think to look past it for that first moment. Her nose tickled by the scent of alcohol, not so much bothered by it, so far as her husband ever wanted for the finest things. Murmuring softly against his mouth with her eyes closed. "Ha, my Proud Vishnu, what's this? Have you started the festivities already?"

But it doesn't last very long, all her laughter, all her sweetness. Because something feels wrong, feels tight, drawn in and out of breath and she pulls back, alarmed - her hand bracing firmly to what she thinks is Gangadhar's chest. Eyes going wide as she balances the child in her arm. To watch it change on her body, the slip of clothes that fall away to a light shirt and this feels familiar, but not hers. "Rao?" Horrified, she looks up and that is not her husband but it had been and - . "My Love?"

The child begins screaming and fears grips her. Damodar had screamed, when the fever came. He had screamed and screamed and screamed. Until he couldn't anymore. Her blood spilling over the - little girl? Until - "Rao?" Desperate, she looks around. That is not Rao, no matter how he smiles just as devillish. "Kashi?! Kashi?!" Her voice rises, desperate, peaking with a terror that could only be a woman fearing for her a child.

In turn, Gwenaelle changes as surely as she had changed. Small mercy to that, Maratha women were proud of their practically, that the drape of the bright green saree gives her loose pants as it hangs and wraps around the body. A long-barrelled hard rifle slung over her shoulder.

nursery | cw for... creepy... cult stuff... i guess...

[strangel]

Helena sees the moment, and knows she should not be there. This is private, this is not for her, and she tries to sink away, stepping backwards. Instead of hitting an open doorway, her palms find the cold of stainless steel. It shocks her into turning, but the wall is stone.

“What is this?” she murmurs, very softly, casting a desperate look towards the Queen. Had she seen? Was she angry?

No. She was still there, with the tall man, as the light goes colder, darker. More blue, like the sun is setting. Helena moves for the doorway, realising the surprise had taken her off course, and might have made it out unnoticed if not for the clatter of pieces of metal underfoot. This is not for me to see.

[shri]

They spring apart like startled deer. Blinking wildly, Lakshmi cradles the child into her chest, and Gangadhar steps in front of her immediately. His hand resting on the sword on his hip because - it's one thing for Helena to have interrupted anyone at all in such a moment. It is quite another for -

"You step into my Rani's quarters without my permission, stranger?" Is the declaring, proud voice. It is not deep, or harsh, or even cruel. But it demands respect, it refuses anything less.

Behind him, Lakshmi blinks, off-center, confused, what is a European woman doing here in her private space? But - that is not a stranger, that is - Her mouth opening, and as she goes to speak, ( "-My Raji?" ). But he lifts a hand hovering cutting the words off, and perhaps the only person in the world that could make Lakshmi still in anything she meant to say.

"She will speak for herself." And with his hand hovering up, he waits for whatever Helena had to say.

ii

[limier]

"S-hh —"

The curse stutters out between teeth jarred on impact, the crunch of metal against stone (again). Instinct splays a gauntlet out to grip for Lakshmi's neck and roll, grappling for purchase.

Instinct's stupid. There's sand (sand?) ground in her joists as she pauses, catches herself before the strike. No — no, the startled thing beneath her hand is an ally, only steel and spine. Only flesh and lyrium. Only a dream,

Something cracks above her with the fury of a summer storm, and in a moment it becomes one. Lightning licks close enough to shiver electric across every hair, the stench of ozone splitting through the air. It tastes like her own breath; it tastes like dragonfire.

It tastes like pride.

"Lakshmi," She presses low, voice hoarse. Here and there, the dead now seem scorched, long arcs of burn split open onto black gore. "Where are we?"

[shri]

It hadn't rained, is that jarring thought. It was too early for the summer monsoon to split the air apart like that. Confused she looks around, and finds still, the Redcoats, reloading their long rifles. Their teeth biting into the powder pellets. The spilling black grains against their lips. Their distorted, twisted lips.

"Gwalior." She breathes, scrambling to get her knees underneath her where she's half perched over Wren because of a instinct just the same. To cover, to shield. This body is immaterial. This body is ready for death. This body should lay in this field -

- There is a shock not for the blood that is soaking into the sand, but as she pushes away, closer to near when they arrived. That listless confusion, fear, grief. Bubbling up as her lips shape words that don't go further. "Gwalior - we can't - you - leave, we must leave."

field

[dirth]

Solas has never heard gunfire before.

He does not recognise any of this, doesn't understand what is being shaped in front of him. He recognises it, of course, as something more dreamlike, as something borne of the mind and emotion than anything else, and he thinks he knows who might be to blame. This is all a complex, dangerous mess, and when he moves forward it's to seek out Lakshmi, to find where she is, to see if this situation can be at all calmed.

Dropping down, letting the thunder over him, turning his head to stare at her, watchful and waiting. He doesn't understand this, doesn't recognise it at all, and he breathes out sharply before he pushes himself up just a little, gripping his staff and resisting the urge to protect them with a barrier. He doesn't think it will help.

"We must move."

[shri]

She's lost to it, half mad with the grief of being back here - seeing it. Hearing the screams of the dying, the war cries of the desperate. Staring and staring and staring and she can fell the impending loss creeping up on her.

"We can't - these are my people. They will die." Her lips caked with dust, her voice hoarse from screaming out orders, words, she remembers. Gwalior raged for day in, day out. A siege in the heat so deep it blisters the skin. Somewhere, far up in the palace, her son is watching, she knows.

Kitty | The Field

[rathercommon]

[ One moment, it's an open field of battle. The next, it's closed and dark. There's a musty smell of confined spaces, of decay. There are obstacles - looming pillars, dangerous in the blackness - and there are others, out there. Calling out pitifully - please, help me, don't leave me. Spirits shuffling and helpless and frightened and lost.

And in their midst - in their midst is one who can see in the dark - one who laughs and whispers to himself. He'll move, and one of the others will cry out and then go suddenly, terribly silent. No one even fights. They just die.

Kitty, in the darkness, raises her hands to her mouth, eyes wide with horror. ]

[limier]

[ Everyone dies.

They usually do more than that: Shudder, struggle, strive. Dying is a process; time dilates about those seconds, blooms with the base instinct to survive. A life may gutter,

It seldom snuffs out clean. ]

Kitty, [ Where are they? Where, in more than the most obvious — this isn't anything like the stories she's heard. It's far too much like them. Hushed, intent: ] We need to go.

[shri]

[ The blade is in her hand before she even knows the truth of what lurks in the dark in front of them. Stepping forward, her hand at Kitty's shoulder that isn't to turn her back but to give - a sense of distance, there was someone there behind her. Coupled with that slow slide of metal from the sheath. ]

Kitty. [ Her voice low, under her breath. In the same wa, she knows how to pitch loud for battle, she pitches quiet for secrecy, now. ] What manner of beast is this?

[strangel]

( Helena growls low in her throat, as she steps between Kitty and the creature. She moves in a low crouch, bow in hand, and arrow already partway drawn as she starts to prowl forward, and glances at Kitty over her shoulder. )

Run now. Go to Iorveth and others.

Iorveth | OTA

[aenseidhe]

nursery; (cw: dead children, mutilation, grossness)

[ there are no aen seidhe nurseries like this place, not now, not during iorveth's lifetime. he, like every other elven child after humanity swarmed, was born in a dirt hovel, swaddled in rags and placed in a small, shoddy wooden crib that creaked with every movement. having little interest in seeing a human child tended after sweetly and carefully, iorveth nearly walks on, but something nags at him. pulls at the corner of his mind.

a sense of dread snakes through him, iorveth standing aside from a long moment, telling himself to just move on. there's nothing in the fade that will serve him but an exit from it. and still, be it the whispers of his native tongue that slip past his ears, the voices of those left behind - his mother, father, his comrades, the 53 of the vrihedd he couldn't save - , or something else entirely, his feet move him towards it.

fingers edging cautiously around the rim of the crib, iorveth sucks in a deep inhale, and peers inside.

before promptly slapping a hand over his mouth to keep himself from throwing up. charred corpses, so small and delicate, their features too seared to tell aen seidhe from human, mangled with mouths hanging open in wordless screams, but he hears them, raking through his mind, out of his memories, dragging razor wire behind them. just... give him a second. eye shut tight, he'll be crouched on the ground a step or so away, hand still firmly over his lips, trying to bite back the shudders, and push the memories of those bodies back into the deeper recesses of his mind. ]

the field; (cw: hella violence)

[[ ooc; i have all this gd gwent art that is gorgeous and perfect that i never use for anything, and finally all these people are in one spot, so you are getting visual aids for every single one of iorveth's (mostly) dead friends, congrats. and also a saskia video bc it's fucking hilarious i'm jussayin ]]

[ he never should've looked in the crib. the whispers, the screams, the flashes of ghosts at the corners of his vision haven't abated since, only built into every soul he recalls leaving behind in the last century, and by the time Iorveth steps foot on the field, they're everywhere.

it starts as just a ruined city, ghetto shacks smoldering in flames, nonhuman citizens scrambling madly as the human soldiers give chase, cutting down some, stringing some up by their throats or pulling them behind racing horses, dragging some off to do whatever other godawful sickness they feel they can use these people to fulfill. it's memories alone, no imagination. pogroms iorveth had ran through before, or fought through, depending on the time in his life. bodies tied to stakes with flames lit beneath them, screams like demons possessing them as their flesh melts, the wailing and pleading all bleeding together to a mind shattering cacophony. he's never forgotten the first time he'd heard it. the visions of horror swarm ever faster, more ruthless with every step he takes, and Iorveth keeps his eyes trained definitively ahead of himself, even as the ghosts of children run screaming for help. they aren't real, the fade is not the continent, and even if he were home, these people died a long, long time ago. there's nothing he can do for them.

it keeps him going through there, through the scoia'tael camps he passes next, even when they morph from that to Vrihedd uniforms, and he can hear the idiot songs Cedric used to drunkenly serenade them with, or the cheers when Isengrim beat Ciaran in yet another Gwent match. it pulls at him, Iorveth making the mistake of casting a glance their way, and the ache for better times drills into his core with a vengeance. a blink, and he's made it onto the actual battlefield, and he stills there, frozen as realization dawns. Brenna. The beginning of the end.

The Vrihedd have already rode into battle, and he spots Isengrim further out, dread falling like a shroud, swallowing up the last strand that had been anchoring Iorveth to reality. He bolts, blades pulled free, and Iorveth is a whirlwind of carnage as he cuts through the Northern Kingdoms forces, the very picture of elite Vrihedd commandos that made them such feared figures throughout the wars. he hardly pays mind to the humans, now, just trying to cut his way through to Isengrim. He doesn't know what's coming, the bloody fool. The second he can reach him, Iorveth's hand snatches out, gripping his arm. ] No, Isengrim, listen to me. You have to pull the back. You can't win — it'll be a bloodbath. Isengrim!

[ It's as if he'd said nothing at all, and his commander barks some orders - assemble your unit here, intercept forces there, 'today Dol Blathanna is free, Iorveth.' The fool. Faces of once friends brush past him, all bright eyes and fierce grins, certain in their victory. Toruviel, Vernossiel, Yaevinn, the poetic moron. What's worse than them are the officers, when his eyes find them. Those that will meet the Ravine of the Hydra only days later. They thunder by on horseback, and there's already deep, crimson gashes cut across their throats that none of them seem to notice. They're charging into massacre, and Iorveth's helpless to stop them.

At the end, what does it, is Saskia. She was never at the Battle of Brenna, Iorveth hadn't even met her yet, but there she stands besides, all fire and fury and noble glory ready to seize justice for a people so dismantled and devastated. Are those the gates of Vergen in the distance, behind them? He stands shock still, dumbfounded, until Saskia grips his arm, eyes bright and certain in their victory. ] Saskia, please, you can't be here. [ he pleads with her, desperate, and his chest aches seeing her ready to run towards the same doom as the Vrihedd. Saskia, who's ever been such a bright, saving light to a doomed and dark world, and he can't see her wasted away here, in this forsaken hell of a battlefield. She watches him, this woman who he'd put everything he had left behind, who he'd follow to the depths of hell and back, who he still would. she shakes her head, speaking: You swore you'd protect this dream with me, didn't you, Iorveth? How can you leave them now? How can you leave us?

He can't. It's the simple truth of it. It dismantles every piece of who he is to turn from them now. The ghost of the warrior queen of Vergen fades, and a dragon screeches through the sky above in her place. The last few faces that twist the knife in him appear in the fray - Eithné so far from Brokilion, Zoltan, even fucking Geralt he spots on the field, and there's no choice now, is there? Save to push through and hope this time will be different than the last thousand years. That some part of it will actually matter, or at least he died trying to see it through. Unfortunately for those traveling with him, that's going to make dragging him out of this hallucination of a battle incredibly difficult. Good luck with that. Or, you know, just leave him here, fighting a hopeless fight for eternity. Seems pretty much apt. ]

cw: bloody battle descriptions ??

[shri]

[ She isn't sure what place this is - for surely it is nothing she knows in detail. These are not her men, as the battle churns around her, these aren't the war cries she knows. These are the bullets, swords and men that had fought. Even the horses are not right, as she snags one by the reigns, it's rider struck down. Wasting no time in mounting it.

But the screaming is the same. The chaos is the same. The hopelessness is the same. She has never been on this battlefield before, but she has been on it a thousand times. Expects almost, that the damn leaders will be drunk, should she find them. To that, the outcome seems a surity, as it had those long days in the heat. She shouldn't enjoy it, as she goes forward, but there is a point there - like a cut on the roof of her mouth she presses against: she has never made sense to herself expect on battlefields. When her purpose is just one thing. Because she is not a diplomat, she is not a wife, or a mother, or even a daughter. She is one purpose, to drive forward to the edge of this field that should not be. She is the sword in her hand, she is the holy words in her lips that praise Goddess Kali, born of Mother Goddess Durga's brow, and she forgets everything else to that, as she had that day. That hopes, maybe as the words form, she will not be trapped in this battle as she was that day. She will not fall to the foolishness of those around her.

Enough that the air about her ripples, no longer stays, she no longer stays, because through our understanding, Manu, we find out divinity, our true purpose, and put all aside, and as she draws her sword, lifts up her shield, her arms spread out many-fold. Until there are four sets, all told, and each of the eight arms wields a weapon, sword, mace, trident, spear, bow and arrow, her hair flung half wild and free from below a great helm of gold. The war cry tears through her throat in a ease of familiarity. Har, Har, Mahadev! Her many arms strikeout, sending them flinging back. Cutting down spirits, whether they were for or against, this was not her battlefield, after all. No Redcoats or Maratha soldiers. But she moves to the patterns of carnage that are so gluttonously familiar. What it felt like to be on a battlefield for day after day. The unending thrall of it.

The pure white of her clothes, the heavy leather of her armour is blood-soaked and soon with the expectation of each blow as she reigns it down. In that haze, she almost doesn't recognise Ioverth. Blinking darkly lined eyes down at him like she might want to cut him down too, in front of her, every weapon poised to strike. But if she stops, it's only in the recognising of someone trapped as surely as she is, in this dreadful, unending battle when hope is long left. Her mouth opens, the delicate chain that runs from nose to ear, striking against her cheek as her head tilts.

The battle loud and cacophonous around them. ]

माझ्याबरोबर चल

[ Mājhyābarōbara cala. Come with me. The words don't come out in English, or Trade as they called it here, but deep and cutting out in Marathi, guttural in the back of her throat against the screams of the dying. But the nearest hand is offered with a sheer expectation. Her inner palm painted with one red dot, the back of her hand in a lotus, offering it to him, freely. ]

the field.

[elegiaque]

( there is no leaving him here. there is absolutely no leaving iorveth behind—they're not meant to leave anyone behind, for all that gwenaëlle has absolutely already tried to, but if nothing else works there's no give up in her, she's too stubborn, she could stand here and scream and pull on his arm for eternity or at least as long as it took to get them both killed.

hopefully, it doesn't come to that.

she strides more sure than she feels to his side, catching that, and— )

She isn't here, Iorveth.

( whoever that woman is (whoever that woman is to him, and she ignores the pang in her chest because it's small and selfish to care, and they all of them have history, her gaze wandering to the edges of the fade as if she expects to see—) she isn't here, she isn't real. gwenaëlle doesn't allow the formless thoughts of but how do rifters or would she be real if we took her through with us to become anything because they aren't anything, they don't get anything good out of this except, if they're lucky, their own hides.

she doesn't want to look at all of this, because it isn't real, but it will kill her just as real as anything else so she can't quite ignore it, even as she catches hold his arm. )

They can't be here, and they aren't. The Fade is playing with your mind, you have to come away.

marcoulf | nursery, ota

[esquive]

He's followed close at heel, down from the twisted and crumbling ruin and through the shifting elsewhere and now this place: the palace with its bizarre blended architecture, the details of it visceral and unspecific as a drawing with fingerprints left on it. When they find it, the ragged field with it's grotesque details of limping horses and mud heavy plate armor and the ragged shrieking of some child given a sword and dying now will be as a well-trod nightmare, Fade touched but tangled with some well known fear and neutered for it.

But the palace, with it's long not-anonymous corridors and ballrooms and balustrades, it's quiet side passages and waiting doorways, finds some grip on him. He finds himself lingering at cross paths, peering expectantly into the shadows or distracted by lit candles in rooms as they pass them. Eventually, they pass an open door and his periphery vision finds what he's been thinking of in the room beyond.

Marcoulf backtracks. The room is quiet and still, the crib empty. Whatever attendants the child there might have had have left with it. Light pours too through the too broad windows overlooking some painted estate field, lovely and beautiful behind glass as dust collects on the window ledge and drifts in the air of the forgotten room.

--But there is such a smell to the room - sweet summer grass and pipe smoke - that despite the quiet now, he can't shake the sensation of some recent habitation. He lingers in the doorway.

"Did you see a figure here?"

Which is ludicrous. They've seen them everywhere.