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

ota

[limier]

Her hand's come loose from Lakshmi's shoulder (the sprint of metal over earth, a shout: What the fuck are you doing —) somewhere between here and there, there and here. And here is,

"Maker."

Not quite. It's a rare thing to see Wren freeze; she's frozen now, head thrown back in open, stupid awe. Fumbling up, she grips for her sword against all rational impulse. Still feels better for it in hand. What's she going to do, fight the Fade?

Because this is the Fade. This can't be, but it is. The look she turns on the person nearest manages to imply, beneath horror, that this is all their fault.

[strangel]

Helena's lip is caught in a snarl, and looks up to the Coupe with a quick, feral motion. Her bow is on her back, and there is a knife in each hand.

"What is this?"

[limier]

Helena looks wild: A mass of tooth and curl set at spider's angle. Wren's knuckles tighten —

She blinks and it's gone again. For a moment, for now. Only Helena (is there such a thing?), crouched upon a roof. Only Helena, crouched upon a roof in the Fade.

An uncertain step over mismatched shingles; her knee shakes. This is a bad place to keep an open blade, too easy to take a spill. But like hell is she sheathing it just now, not with who knows what here. Not with who knows who. Because as she opens her mouth to speak, something of Helena's features again recede, eyes grown small and bright above the threat of a smile. Of a grimace.

Of all the ways that animals show their teeth.

"I know not," But she does. Hasn't managed to scrub the fear from her face. "The Rift — if we have entered —"

Wait.

"Did you follow us?"

[strangel]

"I followed leaders."

A shrug. This is what she was expected to do, she thought. Stay with Coupe and Queen Lady.
The light of the Fade lasts her hair in a strange light, and her skin looks almost grey. Her eyes, though, they are perhaps the most alarming, the green light catching the whites of her eyes as the sky seems to crackle and stones float.

She watches Coupe with quiet focus, eyes narrowing.

"Liar," she observes.

[limier]

Wren stares back. Not so defiant as it might be. Liar,

"No." She shakes her head — the first to break gaze. "I know not how this can be."

Can very well guess: A door swings in two directions. She sucks in a breath, extends her empty palm in peace (doesn't expect it to be taken; still a knife in the girl's own, and remembered talk of demons).

"Stay close to me. We are not safe here."

(No. No fucking clue how to broach that to this one.)

[strangel]

When Coupe looks away, Helena's eyes stay focused, studying her face. She watches the hand reaching to her, wary, before her gaze snaps back up to Coupe's. True to Coupe's prediction, she does not take the hand, but she does nod.

One knife is slipped away, the other held between her teeth, as she readies her bow. Then, the bow and a knife are in one hand, an arrow in the other.

"Do you watch my back, or do I watch yours?"

[limier]

"Watch your own. You will have need of it, the paths may conspire to separate us." A gesture to the crags below, the haze, the pillars that waver and mingle before them, not quite solid. "It may —"

It. As though the Fade itself were alive (is it not? questions for another time) to hear.

"— It may come to you in the shape of a land you know." Can't say. Not truly, not knowing how much of the place may prove different for their presence. Helena almost gleams against the strangeness of it. "It is not real."

But it is. Somehow, it's all terribly real.

[strangel]

Convenients, this needing to watch own back. Better though, for Helena. This is what she knows, is used to. She moves past Coupe, and to progress across the terrain. Not a stalk, but something is feral cat and hunting spider, how she almost seems to shape herself to the terrain and climb the sculpture of its strange shapes.

"If it is not real, then there are not needs for fear." With a sharp smile, that says she knows better, as her shard burns in her hand. "Nice for you, Commanders, to see a world you do not know. My country is very beautiful."

[limier]

She follows after, slower, every angle set at edge. It doesn't aid her progress, feet catching where they otherwise wouldn't, torn for inattention.

"Think on that beauty," For all it might mean. Helena's hinted at much else. "If you will."

[strangel]

Her head cants, curious. "Why?"

hover text for translation

[aenseidhe]

Iorveth had been right behind Lakshmi and Wren, not sure if it was the panic over Lakshmi, or the vague wonder what returning from the portals that spit them out would do, but either way, here he is, pushing himself up from the ground not but a couple yards from where Wren fell.

And then he sees what's around him. And then he does about the same thing Wren did.

"Eveigh Henn, eiw's ninnau."

Fucking pray, because what the actual living hell is this place? He's never been much a friend of mages, and the closest he'd gotten to something like this was wandering through the wraith war curse on Pontar Valley. This place is something else entirely, and he doesn't have a Witcher here to tell him how to deal with it.

He has a Templar, who looks just as lost as he does. And, noticeably, he has only the Templar, Iorveth's head snapping around as he picks himself up, scanning for the others. More so, scanning for Gwen. "Where'd Lakshmi fall? And the others?"

[limier]

"The others?" Half aghast. There shouldn’t be others — bad enough to be stranded for Lakshmi's foolishness, but to think that any would follow — "I lost hold."

A glance from the traitorous hand to Iorveth’s half-face, obscured by so much rotten meat. Or, no. No, only cloth, as ever. She blinks.

(Flies in your eyes. Flies in the socket,)

"We need stick close." Won’t that be fun. Heaves out a breath: "I cannot say how much our presence might alter."

Her eyes tear again to his cheek, involuntary. Skin crawls impossibly to watch.

[aenseidhe]

"I saw at least Gwenaelle following." Because he'd been keeping a hawk eye on her for this entire journey. Defiantly brave of a woman as she is, she's no warrior, no soldier. He wouldn't handle her with kid gloves and try to limit her, but he would, at the very least, keep a watchful eye on her in case she got in over her head.

This is probably well over her head. But here we are, regardless. "I can't say how many others."

His eyes pull back to Coupe after he's scanned the area, and Iorveth has to blink rapidly several times to wash away the visage of a blood-splattered Redanian soldier instead of simple Templar armor and this woman he hardly knows.

Iorveth gives her a curt nod, beginning to look for where they ought to search first.

"This place - it's the Fade, isn't it?" He's heard plenty enough description of it, and stories of both fear and wonder. They don't seem to match up exactly to the reality of it.