MOD PLOT ↠ BLAZING LIKE STAR-SHINE

[faderifting]

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition faces off against the armies of Corypheus
WHEN: Covers most of the day on 11.28 (forward-dated)
WHERE: The Fields of Ghislain, Orlais
NOTES: This is Post #1, covering the battle itself and the retreat. It contains top-levels for each of the teams and an open prompt for the retreat. The OOC post with more information/explanation is HERE. If you're not sure which team your character is on, there's a LIST. POST #2 covers the aftermath of the battle.

Scouts accurately report the enemy's movements: after a slight slow-down believed to indicate that word reached the of the Allies' sudden appearance in their path, they have elected to remain on-course, and arrive almost precisely when and where they were expected. By sunset the night before they are making camp just over the rise to the northeast, easily visible from the hill, and as night falls their fires can be seen winking along the horizon, a close-packed glow.

The mood in the camp is tense, openly jittery rather than the tightly-wound nerves of the past month, but with a sense almost of relief that after so much preparation and so many weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived. Some corners of the camp, particularly the greener recruits and the Antivan veterans, are raucous around their campfires, singing and drinking, playful brawls breaking out, but commanders are strict about the wine rations, and even those who choose to take the edge of this way make an early night of it. A scattered handful of men attempt to quietly slip away during the night, mostly Orlesian conscripts, but a few Inquisition agents as well. Some succeed, but others are caught and imprisoned--the Inquisition's few held to be returned to Skyhold where it can be determined if they are traitors or merely cowards, the Orlesians only as long as it takes to find a tree and an audience to watch them hang and spread the cautionary tale.

It is expected that the enemy, hoping to make up for its surprise at finding the Allies prepared for their arrival, will attempt to catch them off-guard by attacking before dawn instead of waiting, as is traditional, for first light. They are all roused from their beds to form up in the dim grey as quietly as possible, moving into formation in the wet grass, a heavy morning fog lingering on the field ahead. It's cool and raw, the air still. But the ground moves: the shudder and rumble of hooves striking earth, felt before it is heard. The Orlesians raise their pikes, the front line braces, and it begins.

---

TEAMS 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • RETREAT
Team members can break off into smaller groups within their top-level prompts—it doesn’t need to be one 13-character thread—and the retreat is an open free-for-all.

Comments

[lightningbugs]

Evrion shudders, gives another faint vocalization, and slumps forward with his head resting on Finch. No one sees his eyes begin to glow: it becomes visible when he jerks upright again, a sound emanating from him that's both retching and screaming, and the skin splits on his face and arms.
A strange fog begins to surround them, the Ansburg farm boys, coming seemingly directly from Evrion, who writhes and twists unnaturally as his limbs contort and lengthen.
A clawed hand thrusts itself at Flinch, fingers like knives piercing flesh and organs. The face that emerges from the young elf's is monstrous, cold, blank in its way, looking around in wild animal curiosity.
It's not Evrion. He's not here anymore.

[justnice]

Consciousness contracts.

The weight on his shoulder, the thump in his throat. The dim roar around them, ready to swallow this little scene — reminded, again, again: No. This is being small.

He's lost grip of the pike (something slick), unable to free his hands of Evrion as well. They have to leave him. They've got to leave now, and he knows it; gropes blindly for the back of his head. Lift it, just lift it and clear his throat and breathe,

"Okay," He says, and it's not, and he's not breathing. There's a noise, can't tell who's making it. No one hears you drown, "I,"

Evrion seizes. The first elbow splits his lip, sends him reeling. Finch staggers, dragged deeper into the churn of the field, still clinging for purchase to the shattered thing before him. There's no time for horror, and no base for recognition. Unreality asserts itself thick as black earth.

Then it's on him.

Finch screams — a stuck kid — screams, and swallows mud, chokes. Grapples uselessly at its arm, at his own loosed guts. Pointless. The hot, acid-stink of bowels: This is already done.

He just doesn't know it yet.

[faithlikeaseed]

He doesn't see Evrion change.

He doesn't need to see Evrion change: He will remember the feel of the terror demon tearing through Veil and flesh to claim an empty vessel--remember the screams in two voices, the sound of claws through flesh, the scent of blood and mud and rent organs.

Will remember. Right now all that registers as Myr turns back toward the gruesome scene is threat, is it's killed Evrion (never mind who it wears like a suit of ill-fitting clothes), is it's too close with Finch down and screaming. Whatever fear he should feel at an abomination appearing right on top of them flashes over into protective fury; he draws deep on his waning reserves to call fire from the Fade--

--forgets, for a fatal moment, he can see the demon perfectly well and doesn't need to touch it to guide the spell--

--and lashes out with fist and flashfire at its stolen face.

[dashing]

"No!"

A cry that tears from her throat, pointless. The boy they had tried to help was no longer himself, and the boy she did not know well enough but who had reminded her of so much from home is being eviscerated. (He needed to be rescued from a pink bird, she remembers, absently. What was he doing on a battlefield?)

Time feels too fast and too slow in the same moment. She cannot move quick enough to help Finch, but the tearing push of limb into torso seems to last forever.

Honour, please. Her magic feels tapped out, she is exhausted, but they need help, as she rips away from the abomination and slips in the mud as she tries to get to Finch. Help us. (She knows she cannot heal him, that that is not the nature of their bond even as she moves, and knows that even magic cannot heal all things.) Flame blooms in her hand and she snaps it towards the abomination, but the magic falls short. Burns into a shape, humanoid, and then flickering into something clearer. An elven man made of flame, who takes a step back to fire an arrow towards the abomination.

(Her skin is grey, her stomach churns, and she feels shaky as she tries to support Finch, standing at his back. Why did they bring him to battle? Some part of her had sworn she'd never see another student of hers die, even if she'd never realised exactly. He was one of her students. I should have thought to make him in the Gallows. She should have thought at all. She had not given him the time and attention he deserved, needed. Had any of them?)

"I've got you," she says, and it feels so meaningless.

[lightningbugs]

There's a limp form on the beast's claws, and it shakes it loose, forgetting about Finch as easily as though he were part of the scenery. It turns on Myr with a shrieking roar, stepping forward on one unnatural spindly leg as it makes a swipe for him.

[faithlikeaseed]

The new spirit's appearance prickles down Myr's back like a fire too close behind him; he doesn't look, too far into his overreach, but he recognizes it's there.

A moment's distraction, a moment's inattention to confirm it isn't hostile too. "Herian," over his shoulder, "run, I'll--"

Be right behind you, because he realizes the magnitude of what he's done right when those awful talons still wet with Finch's blood smash through his flickering barrier. Claws catch his outstretched arm, hook through flesh and scrape bone, and send him tumbling to the mud with an awful cry.