OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

The casual brutality of it makes Nari suck a breath through her teeth. As does the skill with which it is achieved. She'd not seen him with sword and shield before, only admired the tranquil form of his archery. She'd known, of course, that he was a Templar, and that Templar were soldiers, but it's hard to reconcile the furtive skittish Cade she knows with soldier. With that kind of soldier.

Maybe it isn't him. He's far enough away that his edges blend. (No, it is.)

Almost without thinking, her feet are following him, the lines of her body cautious.

[onlyhymns]

More of the same follows, the spirit carving its way through combatants, but always with a very specific forward trajectory: he's trying to find Meredith, get to Meredith, perhaps protect Meredith?

The battle shifts, the mob of ghosts effortlessly flickering from here to the entrance hall of the mage tower. Nari will have to find him again, but there he is, just at the moment a spell knocks him back.

[nadasharillen]

Losing sight of him in the roiling melee here makes her as tense as the thought of losing sight of him in battle now does, even knowing with absolute certainty that he lives. That if he's injured he heals, that if he goes down he gets back up. All the same, she's scrambled up a stack of crates for a better vantage point from which to squint and scan the crowd with a soft focus.

There.

There's no need to dodge through the press of bodies, nor to try to evade the blades or blasts, but habit and instinct die hard. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Nari knows she looks absurd, slipping her way through the fight like a flickering fish through thick weeds, but she saves her embarrassment for later. She's only just found him again when he's knocked backwards through her, and she whirls to look to where he's landed.

[onlyhymns]

His helmet has come askew, and it topples off when he lifts his head, but he's far too occupied with what's happening to right it immediately.
An elf in important-looking mage robes stands toward the back of the room, arms raised: a miasma begins to from around him, comprised of glowing magic and some sort of fluid.

The now bare-headed specter gasps in sickened horror as he clutches at his side, viscous translucent liquid squeezing through his fingers in an unnatural pull towards the mage. It's happening to everyone in the room, dead or alive, all wounded: blood is leaving them, and forming something massive and terrible.

[nadasharillen]

Blood magic.

It's spoken of, enough. In whispers, largely, or loudly if it's to condemn. There's always a small ruckus at the Arlathvhen over whether or not it's something to be feared or simply properly respected. She'd always erred on the side of the latter, trusting the Keepers and their Firsts and Seconds to wield magic with the same gravity with which they led their Clans, but this—

This was horror. No personal sacrifice, but sacrifice of others. Mass sacrifice, to bring about some gargantuan grotesque creature from the Fade. Spirit. Demon. Something that makes the small hairs on the back of her neck rise with instinctive fear even through the intervening years.

This Anders had not mentioned.