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

[esquive]

She is all bright and snarling, animal sharp and here in the Fade it's easy to see her as twice as wild, a peeling and jagged woman with teeth all sharp and eyes huge in her pale face. Marcoulf's grip on her persists despite the vice of her fingers on his own wrist.

Is he a coward? Over this? Absolutely.

"We're not meant to be here." Every color on that battlefield is a familiar one. He's a little wild eyed too, all bowstring taut. He pulls on her again.

[strangel]

"Why not?"

She watches, intently, jerks forward with the pull, but not begin walking. "I remember you from tourney. We are both fighters."

This is a battlefield. Maybe they are not meant to be here, but this is where they are, in this sickly world.

[esquive]

"Because we don't belong here. Not in this way." In the flesh, he means, but the arrangements of those words doesn't come to him even as he tugs at her. This is all wrong - uneasy and revolting - and whatever shapes lie beyond that gate may be made for them but it doesn't mean it's true or right or that they ought to stick their hand into it.

"That's bait," he says, more certain of it than anything. "Let's be on our way and about our business." Engaging spirits and demons and whatever else lives in the Fade can only be ruinous. Never mind that there in the field, he recognizes the arrangement of certain plate armor. Or he knows that horse. Or he has heard that trumpet call both in life and in memory. It tugs at him, fish hook sharp, but let it.

[strangel]

"I do not belong in your world, but that is where I have been." People say she does not belong in her world, either. Monster. Demon woman.

Bait, though. That she understands easily enough, does not make her want to protest for the sake of it, for the purpose of finding bruises and pressing down on them to elicit a reaction. "Yes. We can keep wandering through demon lands. That is much better idea."

[esquive]

There are no doubt any number of people - here with them, even - who might take that as it's meant: a snipping challenge, all lip curls and the sharp edge of teeth. Marcoulf though: "I'm glad you're seeing sense."

He's no good at arguments, just feels certain there's no joy for going that way through this mess. He shoots her a fixed look and then, unhesitating, begins to move from the gate along the wall.