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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?
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[ Her hands come up to grip at Lakshmi's wrists. She's terrified, plainly terrified, shaking and pale in the darkness, but in spite of that, she goes on - ]
You haven't got resilience. I have. I can - survive its magic. You'll die right away.
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[ She holds fast, holds steady. Grips her hard enough to almost hurt and tips her forehead against Kitty's takes a deep breath. If she shakes, it's hidden, but there is the lie, so too is she terrified. So too does she feel the shake all the way down her limbs. ]
I have lost so many children. Do not let me have to do it again with you.
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What do you mean you can't die? Everyone can die.
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[ She swallows, blinking the memories that have no time and place here when the desperation mounted. Her gaze breaking only to look and make sure the spirit doesn't come closer to them. ]
Don't ask me that question right now, I will explain it to you once we get out of here. Just trust me.
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Come on. We can both go. Come on.
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Do you know what I find most frustrating about you English? You never believe anyone else of their own ability until there is no other choice. I am a warrior, and very, very, hard to kill.
[ She grabs the back of Kitty's jacket and hauls her with a strength that isn't possible for someone her size, perhaps not necessary, but she makes sure that Kitty can't mistake the strength in these limbs. ]
I can get you time to escape, even if I cannot kill it. Then I can live long enough to escape as well. So you are going to go first. You are going to keep running, you are to remember 'the Queen of Jhansi told me to run as fast as I can or she will never forgive me for getting killed because I looked back.' Then when you have made it to that door, find something to bar it with. Wait until I jump through and slam it shut behind me. Understood?
[ It's stupid, there is every single chance all her bravado counts as nothing, and she will die. But she has to make sure Kitty escapes this room. Has too. It was not worth the rest of her life if she did not. If this was how it was done? So well be it, she would see it done and she would see it done gladly for her mistakes. So she talks like there will be no mistakes, that it will go exactly as it is meant too. That nothing awful will happen. ]
no subject
[ Kitty is brave. She is brave. But at the end of the day, she's also practical. And so as much as she wants to stay, she can't. She left Mr Pennyfeather behind, in that dark tomb, and she left Anne, and Anne had asked for her help, and Mr Pennyfeather too, and she'd left them. So she won't stay behind now, either. Not when it'll be the both of them who die if she does.
Her tears are flowing freely now; she uses the heel of her hand to smear them away. But she turns. And she goes, running off into the dark, hoping desperately she finds the door.
There's a harsh scraping laughter. Attracted, perhaps, by the sound of Kitty's footsteps, the demon leaps forward. And he's a terrible, frightening thing - a skeleton dressed in what is recognizably the suit of an English statesman, wearing the golden death-mask of William Gladstone. He bears a sword in his right hand. He doesn't attack yet, instead cocking his head at Lakshmi curiously. "You're not one of my little mice," he says. Then, cheerfully - "But you can die too." ]
no subject
But there is a sense of purpose, of a want to be something better than just that - that Kitty - damn her, her mistakes had led Kitty to follow her into this place. Her foolishness and half-dreamt up hope might get her killed and -
( Mother Kali, remover of obstacles, help me, now. )
- the sword splits apart in her hands in the image of a demon reflected back at it. That sense of something made to strike down demons, an image held clear as prayer in her head that fills her up with an absolute purpose that she has two - then four - then six - hands. Each holding a weapon to itself, shield, sword, trident, spear, bows. They are mirages, projections only of the words she murmurs in her head. She who killed demons and delighted in Her own Bliss. That she manages - ] - Oh, please shut up.
[ Because with the light rippling in her hands that feels like her blades, feels like a belly full of anger, she stepped, once, then against and takes up momentum, to launch herself up in a jump with that odd too-fast step- too-slow blink. That weaves her body and brings every single one of those blades crashing down onto his blade when it moves to block her. A strength not of a man's - nothing to match a true demon, but enough she hopes to realise it needs to keep it's attention right here. ]
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So it lets out a scream of frustration. And it bounds backwards, bones clicking and clanking and grinding against each other - and it raises its hand, and lets loose a vicious blast of pure magic. ]
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It doesn't catch all of it, and it doesn't stop it from sending her flying. Sent skidding over the ground, her back hitting it and bouncing the once. Like being backhanded by a Lycan for the sheer force of it, and at least it didn't cut her in the process. But she's left scrambling to get her feet under her again. Bones, bones meant stabbing wouldn't be any use. Bones meant slashing to see if force could do something to it.
She manages to get the blade up in time before it jumps to land on her. Aiming this time for its throat, to slash wide. ] Wretched beast. [ She spits it out, making sure it was focused here, focused at her. ]