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]

No part of Bundlekhand was ever this green, she notes, the shifting earth below her, enough to make her feel sea sick even if they were on land. Wrong, wrong, this is wrong, something is wrong. Gwalior was a rocky outcrop on the edge of the Thar desert. So empty that the fires of warning could be seen for many miles away.

"They can." She barks, turning on her heel. "We must hurry - if this is - this does not end - " Frantic notes as she keeps her hand on Wren's back, to keep her down, to show her the way she must move. This is not like fighting a dragon. Small, low, be as small of a target to hit and always put something between them and those red-clothed and twisting black and dog-faced soldiers.

A push, to get Wren the rest of the way to a large enough boulder. But she does not follow, not truly. Rather, she climbs up it, to stand on top of it. If her soldiers were going to cover them then they would need the orders, the push on, she remembered - so well, how her legs shook, the sword in her hand as her hand lifted, to raise it up, how they churned around her the details right but wrong, - I was on a horse, not on a rock. No, Sarangi was dead. It was the black stallion that - Tatya was still half drunk, wasn't he?, she lifted her face, her voice, the cry of it boomed so loud out of her she felt like it might rip her throat to blood with the effort, but it was the only way to be heard in the din, "My soldiers! These beasts infest our land, they wish to feast on the heart of Hindustan! Make them choke on it! Jai Bhavani! Jai Shivaji!"

The cavalry shakes the ground as it charges, the echo back loud and clear from the resounding strength of her memories as they twist over themselves, Har Har Mahadev!. Stones flying, the screams of men rising and falling as they sweep past the stone that stood like an island, and in dreams, perhaps this would be a majestic sight, the saffron flag splits the blue sky with the streak of wanted victory.

But those twisting red-jacketed beasts have no intention of laying it down, their guns lift, pointed, the bayonets stuck from the end and with it it: the gunfire rips apart the air. Rips apart men. They die instanty, heads that rip open at the back in a splatter of gore and blood as the bullets exit, falling off their horses as they slumb in death. Horses that scream at the noise, rearing and throw their riders to be trampled underneath them.

It does not sto, it never stops, round after round of doomed rider runs out, volley after volley of gunfire like clockwork, echoes out, and the bodies pile. Their white robes staining with blood and dirt.