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?

 

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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.

[elegiaque]

Her fingers curl in the ash-filthy blankets and behind her, Emeric says, “Darling?” with a mouthful of bemused, easy charm, warm as whiskey in the belly. She panics and the little Gwenaëlle screams and he reaches for her, of course he does, “Steady, steady,” as if he's ever been.

Gwenaëlle flattens her hands and breathes out hard through her nose like she's a dragon that might clear this whole room, level this whole palace if she sets her shoulders just so.

None of this is how it happened. None of this is real. Her sisters did not burn in cribs. Her parents never—fucking Lakshmi was never one of them, never there. The Fade warps around them, winnowing into the cracks to lever their hearts open, and hers is a whole chasm never healed. This isn't real.

She opens her mouth—to tell someone else to close hers—and then,

doesn't. She rubs at her temple. Breathes in again.

Coupe wasn't in here. She will look somewhere else.

[shri]

It's only that she finally registers Gwen beyond her clothes that she finally sees the danger, the next step in what is about to happen. That, she finally realises where she knows this man from, knows these loose clothes from. That must mean the child in her hands -

"Stop, don't go out the door!"

It isn't an order, it's desperate, peaked with a fear that she never let dare reach her voice if it not for what she knew was coming. The child is desperately wrapped in her arms. Wriggling, churning, screaming and screaming and screaming. Getting stronger and stronger -

The doors slam shut, before it gets much further. But underneath them, light flickers, like a fire burns. The place still cool, but the play of fire becomes brilliant, licking in through the windows with tongues of flame. Like it meant to burn everything down. Of this room that was was home, and not home at all.

- And the child keeps screaming.

[elegiaque]

The overwhelming feeling here is, more than anything, irritation. First Lakshmi strands them all in the Fade, and now she's trapped Gwenaëlle in whatever hallucination this is; not real is different, she suspects, to not dangerous. If she dies here because Lakshmi just believed really hard that she could, she's going to come back as a spirit, possess her and run her face repeatedly into a wall.

But that's later. Right now, she runs her hands down without looking; everything where she expects it. Bow, arrows, sword. Knives. Sturdy armor. As long as she doesn't look, she thinks, she knows what she has.

If this is Lakshmi's history, knocking her out might do the trick, but with the memory of how great trying anything similar went for her not long ago still turning her stomach she discards the idea quickly and frowns.


...window it is.

[shri]

The warning is all that comes, as the little girl - remember that first girl, Lakshmi? Remember what it took from you? Remember what you took from yourself? You will never get it back - squirms, squalls, her screaming louder and louder as Lakshmi is barely able to hold her.

Then she can't at all, as one long, clawed arm swipes out from within the blankets. It strikes Lakshmi with a force enough to knock her back, the bundle dropping out of her hands onto the ground, she trips, falls on the edge of her skirt. Lands hard and scrambles in the frantic nature of knowing just what comes next. As one beastly arm follows another, crawling and tearing blankets to shreds. Until it finally reveals itself in full.

The pureblood stands easily over the height of even a tall man. It's bulking, hulking form all tight muscles and thick grey hair. Its breath is rotting flesh, its claws tacky with blood. It's a voice rumbles thickly in mockery, deeper and ugly. "Stupid Bitch, did you really think you'd be able to stop us?." It starts to laugh, it's great shoulders rising and falling over it. "Listen to your people squeal! We will be full on their blood tonight, and you will know all their deaths before the end."

The screaming begins to pour in and isn't the battle cries of proud defence. It's the sickly pitch of fear beyond belief of horror that is being inflicted and cannot be escaped from, the off notes that can only be flesh being ripped apart, until it's so loud, the room is filled with it, until the blood oozes from between the stones of the floor, pooling in the cracks. When it finally grabs Lakshmi, it's hand grabs her whole face. Picking her up easily in one hand. Even as she tries to claw at its arms, tries to get free, all her fine clothes, fine jewels, jingling and clattering as she tries to swing and kick.

It turns, enjoying playing with its food, and it's then that it catches sight of Gwen, "More of you?" Its head lifts up, sniffing the air richly. "Another human. Would you be better before, or after I taste Queen?"

[elegiaque]

The demon—for whatever Lakshmi is seeing, that's what it must be—prompts a redoubled effort to escape, Gwenaëlle's anchor-hand coming up behind her and flaring to life with her shield while she struggles with the window latch and then abandons it entirely, reversing the hilt of her sword to smash it off.

Fuck this.

[shri]

It starts to laugh and tosses Lakshmi - like a sack of potatoes. Slamming into the ground with an almighty crash of her jewellery like broken bells, rolling useless onto her side as the pain lanced through her. Spitting up a mouthful of blood for it - broken something surely. Desperately trying to draw her way across the floor towards - something.

Not that the Lycan cares, stops, or even looks back as it drops down on all fours and clears the space of the room in two full strides of its twisted body. To slam hard into Gwenaelle's side. Rushing her to knock her away from the window and looking to pounce and drag her down. Under it, so it can sink hugely, gaping jaws into soft flesh. The stink of it even worse up close, Lakshmi knew, it was repulsive, sickening. That dog slobber not lessened simply because it was a man in another form. That wet, long tongue that sticks out to lick at her face with another barking laugh.

"Just a little taste, two-legger, of your pretty, pretty face. Promise not to take more than one. Leave you something special for your beloved to look on." Wheezing, chuckling, playing with its food and enjoying it.

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.

[strangel]

In Helena's ears, the words have a strange twang. She will speak for herself and explain herself in the eyes of God. That isn't what is said, but somehow Tomas rings in this man's voice, and for a moment she looks terrified.

"She is my friend." Uncomfortably and uncertainly, gaze dropping as she starts to press herself back against the wall, hitting a heavy curtain of opaque plastic. Is Lakshmi her friend? Or is she queen who will smite her? Will Tomas allow her to have a friend, a distraction from their mission?

He does not look like Tomas, but his jowls seem a little softer than a moment ago, hair slightly curlier, and Helena is waiting to be struck.

[shri]

There is a heavy moment. As she looks between them. Because the memory is clear there, as well. That not so long ago, Helena had shot her. Not killed her.

"Am I?"

She lets it sit heavily, her face flatly removed. Cold. Here she is not the woman that laughs readily as she teases. She has no play in her. There is the face of a ruler. It measures, and it measures hard, even with the infinite care it rocks the girl in her arms. A want to say more. Did you not decide that a moment ago? Should I not take that to your intentions towards me? But Helena doesn't look... right.

No, she looks downright terrified, and as much as she wants to say good and how dare you to presume something like that after pulling a weapon on me. She does not, her hand touches her husband's knuckles. The words not English but translated. "She is new to my durgavasi. No one shoots a bow as well as her. I know her honour to be great."

And with that same hard, flat-eyed look, she jerks her head. Her eyes pointed where Helena was to come and stand with a flick of her gaze. Nearer to the window at the corner of the room. Within reach but blocked by Lakshmi's own body.

[strangel]

Helena's gaze is watchful, flickering between the two. Queen Lady's gaze is cold, flat. It is a gaze she has seen many times. It is worse, in some ways, than disgust and fear. Both of those could feed into each other, and then Helena gained the upper hand. Coldness, that was an absence. It was the Mother, the stench of bleach. It was Tomas, after he offered kindness.

She moves to where she is ordered with her back facing the wall, and her body at uncomfortable angles, gaze moving between the rulers. Rulers were cruel. Women were cruel and fickle. Men were monsters.

"Honour?" He replies, and there is something different in his voice. "She is just like the others." He spits. "Demon."

The words are rich with disgust, and Helena freezes.

[shri]

It makes her freeze as well. The utter surety that something was wrong. Gangadhar would never speak to her this way. He would never speak of others this way. Cradling the child to her breast, she gently takes the reproach into her tone. "No, my love. I know her heart to be good. Even if she seems strange to us."

She moves slowly, carefully, between them. Her steps light, the anklets chiming with each movement. Subtle, slow movements and nothing in her face falters. No flicker of change, still proud and strong.

[strangel]

His expression has twisted. Here stands not the kind, gentle man of Queen Lady's memories. His clothes, now, are all black. A button down shirt done up to the collar. His skin is looser, softer, falling in creases that seem all the more severe with the shifting light of the room.

"Step away from that monster. She'll corrupt the child you hold." Gangadhar is changing. His face warps, his hair seems curlier and more run through with grey, and the words come out in English. "Don't believe her lies."

Tomas shoves Lakshmi aside, reaching to grasp Helena by her hair and drag her forward.

[shri]

He never liked black. The thought is clear in the wrongness of what was in front of her. Her husband never dressed starkly. Only beautifully, elegantly. She blinks, shocked, unable to tell what it was that was happening to her husband.

"Stop!" The cry is worth as much as that, clutching the baby in her hands. Her son wakes up, with a startled noise at her shout, crying with it almost immediately. The sound beats loud on her head. Caught between the woman she is to protect, and the child in her arms. "That is my lady! Do not dare touch her, beast!"

She snaps forward, balancing the boy in her arm, to snatch him by the arm and wrench him with her impossible strength, throwing him backwards. "Helena! Run!"

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."

[limier]

This isn't Gwailor. No: A field, years ago. A village outside the Dales —

Grass blooms and withers beneath them. Fades back into sand; a dream. A dream. She knows how this one ends, ought to. But this isn't that dream alone.

Another bolt of thunder. She stumbles up after Lakshmi, pursuit without direction (there's none of it in Lakshmi's shocked stance).

"The men," Her men. Red cloth, red as her own beneath steel. What are they doing with those staves? "They will cover us,"

There's a smaller shadow upon the horizon now, illuminated by crackling light. Small as a child.

[shri]

No part of Bundlekhand was ever this green, she notes, the shifting earth below her, enough to make her feel sea sick even if they were on land. Wrong, wrong, this is wrong, something is wrong. Gwalior was a rocky outcrop on the edge of the Thar desert. So empty that the fires of warning could be seen for many miles away.

"They can." She barks, turning on her heel. "We must hurry - if this is - this does not end - " Frantic notes as she keeps her hand on Wren's back, to keep her down, to show her the way she must move. This is not like fighting a dragon. Small, low, be as small of a target to hit and always put something between them and those red-clothed and twisting black and dog-faced soldiers.

A push, to get Wren the rest of the way to a large enough boulder. But she does not follow, not truly. Rather, she climbs up it, to stand on top of it. If her soldiers were going to cover them then they would need the orders, the push on, she remembered - so well, how her legs shook, the sword in her hand as her hand lifted, to raise it up, how they churned around her the details right but wrong, - I was on a horse, not on a rock. No, Sarangi was dead. It was the black stallion that - Tatya was still half drunk, wasn't he?, she lifted her face, her voice, the cry of it boomed so loud out of her she felt like it might rip her throat to blood with the effort, but it was the only way to be heard in the din, "My soldiers! These beasts infest our land, they wish to feast on the heart of Hindustan! Make them choke on it! Jai Bhavani! Jai Shivaji!"

The cavalry shakes the ground as it charges, the echo back loud and clear from the resounding strength of her memories as they twist over themselves, Har Har Mahadev!. Stones flying, the screams of men rising and falling as they sweep past the stone that stood like an island, and in dreams, perhaps this would be a majestic sight, the saffron flag splits the blue sky with the streak of wanted victory.

But those twisting red-jacketed beasts have no intention of laying it down, their guns lift, pointed, the bayonets stuck from the end and with it it: the gunfire rips apart the air. Rips apart men. They die instanty, heads that rip open at the back in a splatter of gore and blood as the bullets exit, falling off their horses as they slumb in death. Horses that scream at the noise, rearing and throw their riders to be trampled underneath them.

It does not sto, it never stops, round after round of doomed rider runs out, volley after volley of gunfire like clockwork, echoes out, and the bodies pile. Their white robes staining with blood and dirt.

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.

[dirth]

Solas knows the face of a person lost in their own thoughts and memories - it is not the first time he has witnessed it. It settles around him awkwardly and for a moment he isn't sure what to do with himself; it seems dangerous to attempt her to break her out of it. It seems dangerous to challenge this, especially when they're trapped in the Fade with physical bodies before them.

"There is nothing we can do here," Solas says, voice low and careful. "There are spirits and demons wandering this place. We cannot simply stay here and wait for the battle to be quiet."

[shri]

The chaos of it all whips around them. The volley of gunfire is broken up - when something far worse splits the air.

Canons, canons like thunder. The horses scream, men shout - and the carnage is instant, bodies are ripped apart, cut in half. Limbs are strewn about. Death, death without meaning, or warning. Skill, heritage, power, it means nothing in this place. Good warriors die next to untried fools, in the same wash of blood.

There is nothing to be saved. She blinks, - that sting of shock she barely understood at the time. As she looks around, about her. "They are my people, how can I walk away from them?" The grief too raw, too much herself, too often forgotten. She does not turn back, she never turns back, either to face her regrets or her victories. That way only lay ruin. "I should have died with them. I should be with them. Why did this place bring me here?"

She only, only wanted to return home. To finish what she had sworn herself to.