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

[shri]

She goes down like a air ship into a building. Which is to say, hard, with a certain inevitably, and manages to clip herself uneven on the descent. A knee skewed underneath her in the effort of avoiding a chair.

Her head bounces with a crack on the floor. Disorientated and dizzy, eyes swimming and winded from the landing that was sloppy for all she made sure not to hit anything but the ground. It's one second, breathing shallow and fast, before her eyes snap open, narrowed up at him.

"Finally," and she grabs that foot. Hold her down will her. Her leg snaps up around his other leg to yank and twists with her whole grip to roll her body side ways with leverage, lifting with her core. Pulling his center of gravity out from underneath him.

Care to join her down here, Rutyer?

[bouchonne]

Of course, Lakshmi's parading and boasting about being a warrior comes with one disadvantage; he expects violence from her. That's the thing about wearing your identity openly: people know who you are and what you can do. So he goes down, but he does so in a fashion far more controlled than she did; he rolls, protects his head, and doesn't crack his skull any worse than he already had.

And soon as he's on the ground (because Byerly is quite used to grappling horizontally - quite literally - because he trained himself to win a fight in bed, because so many of his assignments end dangerously in bed), he brings up his knee, aiming for where her gut is likely to be.

[shri]

He's - good. He's better quite frankly than she expected and that is at her own point her own stupid mistake. She should know better than to judge any book by its cover, not even the man that says his prayers at night.

But there is no moon to turn this fight into something else. There is just her, him, and the knee coming for her stomach. Shit. Shit.

So she takes the blow, but with its own price. Because she's - used to fighting in pain, used to fighting to the point of losing, used to fighting people, things, bigger than her. Because this close that is shockingly apparent. Used to being on that wires edge that there isn't much to hide this way. Raw and hungry and deep as mirrors behind her eyes, she takes the hit with the snap of catching his leg. To yank him close -

And get one hand around his throat and if she can't get his throat, scrambling for his jacket to make sure he can't squirm out of reach to get that range. Come here, she's got an elbow with his name on it.

[bouchonne]

He, of course, would never squirm away from a lady's hands on his throat. (Compounded by the fact that she is good - he knows she's good, of course; he's watched; but she's very good - and so he'd be very challenged to squirm away.) So her hands find him; his chin tilts up -

And at the same time, his elbow comes up. He pushes the point of it (and it is pointy) into the hollow of her own neck. He doesn't have the leverage she does, but it is enough to cut off her airflow.

[shri]

It's all mutual assured destruction because she has what she wants and he is giving it back just the same the way she had asked and she wants to mock and jab and dig. Is this as good for you as it is for me?

But that, at this point would require breath to form words, or thoughts to make the sentence where she doesn't have much but liquid quick reaction. Self defeating quite likely but she is good at burning herself that way. Finding her pyre and leaping into it in the hopes that this time, death will finally be quick enough.

So she takes her leverage, madness for not forcing him away and all, to jam her knee up between his legs. Not to knee him hard, but to get the angle she wants to flip him under her. To crawl over him so he can't use his height, even if it means she can't breath properly and her head is spinning from the slow cut off.

Any second now, she's going to choke so hard she'll throw up, is the more reasonable solution, but here's hoping he gave out first. (or threw another punch to get her off.)