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

[rathercommon]

But -

[ 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." ]

[shri]

[ Lakshmi stands, and she feels herself ripple to it - it isn't that she believes herself wholly a righteous being as she goes to protect someone who cannot fight such things their way, she has killed too unforgivingly for that. Too much innocent blood that has wedged itself far under her nails, to pretend holiness, virtue, when surely she has lived too long in the mud.

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. ]

[rathercommon]

[ The demon is stronger than her, and faster than her, even with all her strength and power. But the demon is also caught off-guard by her: it's not expecting a human to be like this. Isn't expecting her strength or skill. The real Honorius probably could have adapted to her abilities easily - the real Honorius was sharply clever, under his madness - but this isn't the real Honorius; this is a shadow summoned by Kitty's memory. It's more simplistic, less creative, less complex in its thinking.

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. ]

[shri]

[ It's like running into a brick wall. It's going to take damn near everything to keep it from hitting her with all strength. Not more than that second to pull her shield up. Snapping it up, curling her body small behind it.

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. ]