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

[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.

[elegiaque]

The shield keeps it from connecting jaws to flesh, barely, and gives her enough space to brace herself, reverse her hand and throw it off her with a sudden bolt of fade energy—it's still between her and the door, and Lakshmi hardly seems useful on the floor.

For a lack of better options, still slamming her sword against the window, Gwenaëlle—

screams for Coupe. Anyone will do.

[chainlightning]

She does not want to go back into the nursery. Does not- but she hears the scream and it sounds real, at least in that it's an adult screaming for Coupe. It's Gwenaëlle, she realizes suddenly-

-and maybe Asher is with them even in the Fade, because Merrill slams into the room with strength more akin to an Avvar warrior than a Dalish mage. Ice is flung in sharp spikes at the werewolf-demon-thing, Merrill swinging her staff to follow through, to shove it in between its gaping maw and Lakshmi.

This is not the first werewolf that Merrill has ever met. They die like anything else.

[shri]

It howls in immediate pain, it's head thrown back. Teeth biting and gnashing at the air. The response is immediate, it turns on its heel, Gwenaelle forgot, as it runs towards Merill. It's long strides loping as beasts are want. Hitting the ground in a rhythm of clicking claws on stone floors. Rising up on its back legs to bring itself up to its full height to tower high over her, ready to bring itself back down, claws into her skull.

There isn't much finesse to how Lakshmi stands up again, crawling her way up off the floor. Bleeding from the gouges down her face, where its claws had sunk into her cheek. There isn't much finesse either, to how she rushes forward while it's distracted to stab her long-sword straight into the side of the beast. Into its soft belly, thrusting deep and hard into it.

But whatever the damage to the damn thing, it keeps on kicking. Twisting about in pain, arms flailing to strike whoever might be closer to it.

[elegiaque]

Pressed back to the window like an angry cat, Gwenaëlle is not—and has no intention of being—closer to it. The weight on her back is not a rifle, but a bow, and though she's far from being the most accomplished archer she is sufficiently confident when presented with the broad back of her target. If she misses, it won't hit Merrill, obscured from her by the thing's size, and if it hits Lakshmi, well, maybe she shouldn't have dragged everyone into the fade in the first place.

But it strikes the beast, somewhere in the back where she had been aiming for the knee. Close enough. She fires again, arrows trailing ice.

[chainlightning]

The werewolf is flailing, kicking; it's a monstrous thing, made for hunting and the kill. Merrill has no intention of letting any of them fall to it. Claws have gauged down into her scalp and jerked away suddenly as Lakshmi stabs it - the blood runs down her cheek, a familiar warm, wet sensation that can be dealt with later.

The beast is grounded, thanks to Lakshmi; it's hit again, thanks to Gwenaëlle. Merrill throws more ice at it, trying to pin it down in frozen liquid, trying to stop its flailing by literally freezing it.

[shri]

Pained and dying, it's body begins thrashing in the agony of it. Its death will not be a pretty thing. Hobbling with the wound to its back that Gwenaelle lands. Favouring its side and trapped in ice it does everything it can to break free. Arms flying about. But it's leg remain steadfastly caught in that ice. Trapped and so limited, unable to run any further.

Nothing clean to it. Lakshmi jumps forward, the sword in both hands. Screaming something hideous as she begins to chop down. Again and again and again, into its body. The blood splatters, until it half blinds her in the rage of it. As close as she comes to losing control over anything at all. It's body beginning to break under the onslaught. Until one arm begins to hang loose barely attached, organs spilling out of a belly wound.

Enough blood, that she doesn't begin to see when the beast starts to transform back, becoming smaller and smaller, form distorting. Claws that pop and break and snap to form back into hands. A spine that twists and writhes under the skin as it shrinks. Hair that falls out by wet clumps.

Lakshmi stumbles, over landing her blow when it's finally a human again. Only, not even so big. Smaller, finer, and the body that hits the ground isn't even full grown. Long black hair twists in the blood crumbled like a doll.

The girl couldn't be older than six when her body hits the floor.

[elegiaque]

By this point, Gwenaëlle is sick to her back teeth of Lakshmi, of the Fade, and of this fucking demon in particular. Whatever game it's playing with them, it's sick and there is nothing about this situation that doesn't thoroughly disgust her. Not least of all being her inability to leave certain ungrateful rifters to it—

It's with a jaundiced, furious gaze that she regards the form this demon would like her to imagine is a child, and she doesn't leave a great deal of time for anyone else to wail over the terribly slight form; when she draws her boot back, it catches the body in the gut, kicking it clear out of the way to slide hard against the far wall.

And that is what she thinks about that obscenity of hallucination.

“If we're all quite fucking done,” jerking the door open and not bothering to look back and see if, indeed, we are.

[chainlightning]

Well.

Merrill eyes the body with suspicion; it's still there, which she doesn't like the idea of. She adds more ice, trying to seal the thing to the floor and its new spot against the far wall; if this is a trick, if it isn't dead, she doesn't want it moving after them soon.

"Almost," she informs Gwen, almost absently. "But it's still got a form, so I'm going to make sure it doesn't follow."

[shri]

The blood streaks down her face - the sweat stinging in her eyes. Her fingers curl heavy on the handle of the blade. Silent, for once, utterly still in the horror of what she's done.

That child's face could not be carved more deeply, more truly, into her mind.

But as Merrill goes to move she - hard fingers to her sleeve, pulling elf woman back before she can take a step forward. "Follow her - she isn't a warrior." Her chin jerks after Gwen. Then just in case, Merrill feels like she must. "It bears the face of my own people. It is my duty, not yours."