faderift | PRIDE BEFORE A FALL

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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Pushing aside a lingering queasiness, Gwenaëlle tugs restlessly at the end of her braid as she comes to stop beside Kitty, eyes narrowing with suspicion at the Fade, and the distant vision of the Black City. It's fascinating in a seductive way that she dislikes on principle, but the thought she'd lead with before wasn't irrelevant, for all that some people whose names start with G and L need to learn about deescalation—

(They won't.)

“There has to be a way out,” she says. “It's happened before, I think in the Western Approach. When rift research was still based in Skyhold. Unfortunately, no one who survived that is with us to tell us how the fuck they did it.”

She touches her crystal at her throat, thoughtfully, “Thranduil tried to send me messages, when it happened, but they were—distorted, I could hardly make him out.”

Kitty lets out a slow breath through her nose. Irrationally, there's a little pinch of annoyance in her, that they don't know this information - that make sure you call mum and dad if you're going to staying in the city overnight was included in their basic training but here's how you escape the Fade wasn't - but it's not like this is something that comes up a lot. Presumably.

"Well," Kitty says, and then fixes a firm smile on her face, "the most important thing is that it's possible. Particularly since I expect that this group is even cleverer and more determined than that group was." Then she goes for the crystal in her pocket. "But we ought to send some message, then, even if it won't be decipherable. Send some signal we're alive."

“Yes,” she agrees, frowning out at the Fade. Alive, but not safe, because they're in the Fade and nothing about that is safe. “I don't know where we'll emerge, but if it's anywhere near where we went in, it couldn't hurt for people to be looking for us. With more supplies.”

Make themselves useful.

"No kidding. I expect we'll be dreadfully hungry by the time we're out. And thirsty. Can we drink fade-water?" Kitty casts a curious glance out there. It seems like if dreams can make demons able to murder you, they ought to at least also make water you can drink.

“People aren't supposed to be in the Fade physically—before the Herald, it had never happened. In recorded history, at any rate. I don't know that it would be our wisest course of action to put something from the Fade inside our bodies.”

She considers Kitty for a moment, and then, quieter but seriously, “Especially not yours.”

Considering what they know about rifters—it isn't much, but it's enough to make Gwenaëlle concerned for their safety in particular, here. Some of them, anyway.

"Especially not mine?" Kitty casts an uncertain glance down at herself. Is it because she's too skinny? It's not like Gwen is any larger than she is - honestly, Kitty could probably endure a bit more poison than Gwen could, at the end of the day. "Why not mine?"

“With the plague that came, when all the rifters and lyrium-users got sick, one of the things that happened was that rifters were—over time—stripped back to their most basic, basest selves. They started...they lost cohesion. They became more like spirits.”

Gwenaëlle turns in a circle, gesturing widely: witness, the Fade, where spirits (and demons) (and rifters) come from.

“I happen to like you how you are, Kitty. I don't want to find out the hard way that we can't put you back together again if the Fade decides to unmake you from the inside out.”

Kitty's mouth opens, and then closes again. Under the uncanny light of the Fade, Kitty's color has been rather greenish - but it goes even greener now. Unmake you from the inside out. It's a thought more horrifying by far than death. She would sooner die a hundred times than have her mind taken from her, her will...

"Oh," she says, very faintly. A moment, and then she swallows. Right. No proof something like that would happen. You'll be okay. Another swallow, and a shaky breath - "Well, I'm not gonna let you and the others take all the risk."

“But let's not get ahead of ourselves on risks we might not need to take at all,” Gwenaëlle says, swiftly. “We're very clever and determined and we're going to get out of here. Intact, and before too long.”

That's just how it's going to have to be.

PRIDE BEFORE A FALL | Closed.

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