![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
PRIDE BEFORE A FALL | Closed.
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.
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?
Iorveth | OTA
[ 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 ??
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.
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.