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

[elegiaque]

“What the fuck kind of nonsense question is that.”

Gwenaëlle's irritation is a simmering, physical thing; there is no part of this experience that she wouldn't gladly trade for just about any other, and now some spirit—whatever's been screwing with them? something opportunistic?—is choosing this moment to be entirely unhelpful.

It is infuriating, if no more than she'd expect, if she had had a moment to breathe long enough to expect anything.

[strangel]

Helena watches, her hands lightly touching the ground as she stays crouched on the floor, crawling along like a spider, a cat, a shadow that watches.

"Home can only be with family."

[chainlightning]

The grip on her staff tightens, knuckles white.

"Don't," she warns, though she doesn't elaborate. This could very well be the spirit who is drawing off Lakshmi, and Merrill watches it with wariness born of years of being hunted.

[rathercommon]

"Hold on," Kitty says, looking at the spirit with both curiosity and wariness. She'd been taught, growing up, that demons were to be hated and feared. But that hadn't really been the truth back there; so do they truly need to fear this creature? Maybe it will help them. Maybe they just need to trust it.

So she steps forward and says, politely as she can, "I think most of us would like to get back to Thedas, please. To Kirkwall, so we can rejoin the Inquisition and see our friends again. Could you help us with that?" And then, because a little flattery never seemed to go amiss where demons were concerned - "Oh, powerful and...wise spirit?"

[dirth]

Solas immediately moves forward to stand near the front of the group, his staff in his hand and his gaze forward. He recognises the nature of a Spirit, but he cannot know without questioning and examination what kind of Spirit it is, not if he isn't in Dreams. If he was not physically here... Things are a little more complicated with your body here and he knows that as well as anyone might be able to. If this ends up being a demon in disguise, something of the Desire string...

"Be careful," he warns the others. His eyes turn sharply to Kitty and he breathes out gently.

[esquive]

Shifting anxiously there at the party's edge, Marcoulf cranes his head to get a look at the thing with its winnowing robes. But he doesn't dare move closer. Let Solas do it. Or even let even Kitty poke and prod it. Instead he shifts toward Merrill, a hand flitting out to absently touch her elbow--

There's no question to accompany it. 'What is it,' doesn't really do anyone much good when the answer is Who cares, it probably wants to suck the marrow from your bones.

[shri]

"But is the Inquisition where your heart wants? It isn't all your homes, is it? I thought that - as you entered. All you wanted was home. But how... how you saw such different things. How you made each other see such things when you pushed."

How it voices catches, somewhere between being felt and heard, that way stone rumbles and trembles inside the bone when earth crashes into itself. Those sightless eyes of light turning between them all. "Is your home... there." A breath in, a sigh out, the hiss of something between those inky teeth. "Or is your home, somewhere here? In the rubble?"

The robes play outside of its body. Playing easily around ankles and wrists as she moves. Touching down like willow branches. "Such suffering the Inquisition brings, is that truly where you wish to be?"

[strangel]

Helena's gaze flickers between the two elves, one with marks tattooed onto her face, patterns and art, the other without. Both carry the staves they use for magics here. Don't, says one, be careful, the other.

If she were feeling difficults, she might be claiming they said don't be careful and going on her way to wherever her impulses lead her. But they had not been so happy, this team, when she tried to stop Queen Lady from violence with an arrow, and Sarah kept telling her to be careful.

So what does she do, then?

Another look, and she steps closer, straightening up, at least relatively speaking. She walks upright, head tilting to the side enough that it throws her shoulder the opposite direction and her spine holds her up with a slight twist, starting to close the distance between her and the other lady, choosing a path to keep her as much from the reach of the others as possible. "My sisters are with Inquisition. If I am not going back to them, this place will be burning. Not just rubble."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle doesn't acknowledge the spirit, directly, but regards Helena for a moment with a thoughtful air, her hands on her bow—

a little uptick of the eyebrow, a suggestive lift of her weapon. Does Helena think this might not just go a little faster if they lose the smalltalk and kill it. On the other hand, it might not, but it sounds like a demon that can't stop speaking nonsense, and how any of that is supposed to be useful to them in getting the hell out of the Fade is a mystery to her.

[rathercommon]

"Let's not threaten it," Kitty mutters to Helena. Honestly, the last thing they need is for it to go mad and try to murder them. So.

She takes a breath, and pushes her hair from her face. "Our first priority is just getting out of here. Can you help us with that?"

[limier]

"Family," A smile flutters from Gwen's bow, to Kitty's question (Is that her will? Always something else beneath that one) — settles at last upon Helena. "Yes."

Satisfaction in that; if there's determination to be found in the others' defiance, it's of a different flavour. Less palatable, too like to shift her tongue. She turns to wave Helena on the path.

The rest may follow if they choose. This one is enough.

"We'll protect your sisters." Certainty in that. She ghosts lower to brush dirt, her steps realer now, lent new weight. With interest: "They aren't safe."

With or without Helena. She hasn't said they're leaving.

[strangel]

Kitty and the others are almost immediately forgotten. "Sarah and Cosima are not safe?"

That is all she needs to hear. Without so much as a glance back to the others, Helena has her bow in hand, and is running down the path. "Take me to them."

[chainlightning]

"No-"

But Helena is already running down the path. Merrill curses in a mix of Elven and Sindarin, something colorful that likely only Solas understands. It's tempting to cast something, to try and stop Helena and the spirit (Desire, Merrill thinks; she is tempting, asking them what they want) - but she doesn't want to start a fight no one is ready for.

Still, she's starting to think she may not have much choice.

"This isn't safe!"

[elegiaque]

How many shard-bearers do they have. There's hers, there's Helena's—which is extremely fucking useful, attached to someone running half-cocked after a manipulative spirit, thank you, very much, someone wasn't listening when Kitty specified their top priority—there's Kitty's, Iorveth's, Lakshmi (much good she's already done). How many did it take to open a rift in Skyhold?

Just one. And she's dead now, but nevermind that, that's probably fine, the point is helpful spirits don't play separate the weak from the pack and maybe they don't need her (it) at all. Maybe they just tear a hole in this place and hope they don't stumble out into the middle of Minrathous—

Maker, she wishes she'd asked Galadriel how she imagined going about that.

“Solas,” urgently, under her breath, “Solas, what would happen if we made a rift?”

[dirth]

None of this is going the way that Solas had wanted it to and he can feel the tension flooding him, making him frustrated and on edge. He trusts spirits - to an extent, of course - but this seems a little too dangerous for him to trust. His frown marks his face and he steps forward, moving closer to the rest of the party, intense and sure.

None of this is good, and he glowers, just a little, almost protective. Defensive.

"If we open a rift we should emerge somewhere near to where we fell. If we have enough power to open it." He's not entirely sure about that, especially with Helena rushing away, with everything that's happened to this party. He doesn't quite have that trust.