faderift | OPEN: Kirkwail

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Distance. He'd had quite a bit of distance from the original event, and he feels guilty for how grateful he is for that. It isn't like one more mage could have made a difference here, but the shrill screams of apprentices combined with even worse noises echo in his ears.

Anders takes a shaky breath as he tries to calm himself down. Julius is right. He doesn't need to be drawing more spirits to the weak spots here in the Fade, no matter how despairing he feels at the moment. There's never any real protection or safety for them, and he fights that thought as they come across a trio of Templars clearly losing a battle against a blood mage.

"Would out be better? Instead of up?" Not just fresh air, but the possibility of a stronger veil is there. "The Gallows are wide, Kinloch Hold was tall." Even to his ears his voice sounds shaky; Anders has never been good at hiding his feelings when stressed.

"It can't hurt to try," Julius says, a bit stronger, contrarily, for Inessa and Anders' evident distress. They're both full-grown mages, Wardens besides, and he is not in charge... but it's always helped him to cope to need to perform competence for others, even if he's not consciously thinking of his reactions in those terms. "Let's see if we can get outside. If nothing else, we might be able to get a better idea of how widespread the effect is."

"Out...yes, please. If we go up, we might see--" She can't bring herself to speak about the Harrowing chamber and she has heard about what happened there, but her throat closes up at the thought of it. Besides, Garahel seems rather insistent about going down the stairs, not up.

"The Veil has always been thin around the entire Gallows, I think. But why here why now....?" And when will it stop?

See what? He looks at her and realizes he doesn't want to know how much worse it got. Off-balance from Karl all day and now watching other familiar faces die means he's reaching exhaustion quickly.

"It's always been thin around Kirkwall," he expands in a tired voice. "There were some writings about how many slaves died here, their blood and pain and suffering weakening it." Which suggests blood magic for a further weakening, but he's not going to voice that thought. They'll likely all have it and there isn't a point in pointing a finger at a mage before there's evidence. Mobs have killed many mages for far less than bringing ghosts around.

He begins the trek down, watching warily for more sources of screams to come out of the walls. Wearily, too. The mages who were struck down so many years ago are just as much victims as any others murdered, but he's not sure that many non-mages at all see it that way, and wonders if they ever will.

Anders hardly has to say the words blood magic under the circumstances; everything unfolding around them tilts Julius' thoughts that direction too, for all he's reluctant to jump to any sort of conclusions in most circumstances.

Instead of saying any of that, he says a bit thinly, "Yes, I can see why the Inquisition thought of it as an ideal place to set up an outpost." Or, at least, an ideal place to send the rifters and its more unruly mages. He keeps moving, following Anders and trying to resist the urge to linger over the images he's going to spend the next few months trying to forget anyway.

Inessa nods grimly at Anders explaining Kirkwall's past, having delved into such reading to prepare for their arrival in the city. Such reading had unsettled her even then, but it's taken new meaning now, faced with bloody and terrifying images from elsewhere overlapping. She'll never see the library the same way again, now, that's for certain. "The Gallows was haunted when we arrived, but we worked to cleanse it as much as we could. If all that effort has been wasted...."

She quickens her pace a little more, eager to put more distance between them and...that. Or at least the epicenter of it. Her own voice is quiet and bitter; that sense of calm is irrevocably shattered for the time being and she can't waste energy pretending otherwise. "There was another girl from one of my classes, who I had a friendly rivalry with sometimes. We were the youngest, and of similar talent. I'd like to think we would have become good friends, if she had been allowed to live. I don't think I can ever stop hating blood magic or the ones who wielded it there."

Too many familiar faces that she'd shared a room or meal with, or learned from, all reflected in that massacre. Garahel whines softly and she absently pats him; he's the reason she's not in full panic-mode now, but that doesn't mean she's anywhere near 'okay'.

Julian's statement gets a snort. Truly Kirkwall was the worst place to bring a bunch of people tied to veil tearing and use a lot of magic, but the Inquisition hadn't been welcome many other places and beggars can't be choosers. Inessa, though, gets a side-long look.

"I can't forgive people who hurt others with blood magic," he says slowly, "but it's... a school, and not all blood mages are like that." If she can't stop hating it, he doesn't know what hope there is for getting the Taint cure worked on further. He's got to tell the Grey Wardens the specifics sooner or later, at the very least, but if it endangers Merrill...

"I've known... a few. And most were awful people. But there have been two that weren't. Maybe part of it is that the only people who learn it have to already be fighting everything else? That they're less prone to..." He trails off as a scream echoes in the halls, one that sounds too hollow to be happening in the here and now but is filled with terror nonetheless. "This isn't the time. I'm sorry. We're nearly to the ground floor, at least."

Julius' expression thins a little, at Anders' effort to soften Inessa's condemnation of blood mages. He's right; it's not the time to get into an argument, not when all three of them are already upset and shaken.

"We may have to split up, if distance alone doesn't deter them. Too many of our horrors are shared, conceptually or otherwise." But he's not eager to be on his own again, and makes no move to peel off. Instead, he suggests, "Maybe some others have had the same idea to go outside. Comparing notes might lead us toward whatever triggered all of this."

OPEN: Kirkwail

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