RIFTER ARRIVAL: Guardian 9:45

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters, rescuers, and anyone else
WHAT: New arrivals are collected and transported to Kirkwall
WHEN: Mid-Guardian, 9:45
WHERE: The hills north of Starkhaven
NOTES: This log contains prompts for the ARRIVAL and RECOVERY of new rifters, as well as the subsequent QUARANTINE period. All prompts are open to anyone.

Comments

[justice_is_blond]

That's new. He's never met a mage who could talk while shapeshifted before, and he's considering saying something along those lines, along with the lines of 'if djinni is a word for mage then I'm a friend' when suddenly he's being jumped. By a lion.

He really shouldn't have come. But instead of dwelling on that, Anders reacts, casting force magic to try to repel the other mage while surrounding himself in one of his barriers just in case it's not enough. Today is not the day he dies, and he's especially not going to be killed by a giant cat.

"I'm not your enemy! I'm here to help, for Andraste's sake!" He won't attack. Not yet. But the claws and teeth are not encouraging when he's rather fond of his limbs and blood.

[reshapes]

He's roughly a hair's breadth away from a satisfying splash under his claws when force of the-- it isn't a Flux or a Shield, but it's awfully similar to some combination of the two-- catches him mid-leap and sends the lion sprawling backward across the broken stone floor. He rolls tail over head, a briefly confused disarray of muscular limbs and mane and flashing teeth, and then he's upright again just in time to scramble out of the way of one of the spirits charging headlong into a fray of swords and shields.

"Hey! Just who's side are you on!?" he barks after it. A swift follow up examination of the spirit on the upper planes leaves him a little cold, though. There's enough going on there that's unfamiliar to the point that he can't quite say what he's looking at.

Between that, the myriad of pointy objects being swung around, and a magician tossing around unfamiliar magic? That's his cue. Time to cover his escape.

With a flick of the lion's paw, a crackling ball of green energy soars toward Anders. It implodes off his shield, spraying shrapnel of stone and dust in every direction. Someone screams. One of the weaker barely-tangible spirits about the Rift caught at the edge of the blast turns to filament and then evaporates. And the lion--

Well the lion is nowhere near where he'd planned on being. He's meant to be off the ground by now, making a beeline for that narrow patch of night sky above their heads. Where he actually is is firmly with all four paws still on the ground, a pair of malformed and crumbling stone wings sprouted clumsily from the lion's back. He gives them a good flap anyway. More curse words ensue.

[justice_is_blond]

The question takes him aback, until he realizes it hadn't been asked of him. It had been hurled at one of the demons. That's absolutely new, and about equally disconcerting as the explosion that goes off in front of him. Anders falls back more than a few steps, using the blade of his staff to catch and steady him. There's dust but somewhere in that dust is a mage who might be allies with demons and who has already definitely attacked at him twice. With teeth and claws one of the times, no less.

Once the dust settles, Anders has a fireball in his hand as he scans for the lion... and promptly finds him. Staring at the sky and swearing, flapping stone wings that aren't going to be useful for anything.

"Stand down," Anders says. To a lion. He feels ridiculous, as if people might be watching this and not facing off against the demons enjoying their visit to the living world. "This world is likely different from your own and confusing, but that's no call to attack me!" Not like there's no call to attack him, but the lion-mage doesn't need to know that.

"Now. Why would the demons side with you? Is that a school of magic where you're from?" It's not a question he really wants to ask. A mage shouldn't be judged by the sort of magic they used, just if they hurt or harmed people with it, but he knows that the answer could matter a great deal here.

[reshapes]

"Look," says the grounded lion, though the wings on its back are hardening and extending now and it's strange, isn't it? How heavy they seem. "I'd love to stay and chat, but this is all a little warm for my tastes. You understa--ack."

He ducks out from under being struck by a large slab of stone thrown by one of the massive spirits rampaging in the near vicinity. It snaps in half as it impacts with the ground, a sizable portion spinning away to rest at his feet. With an annoyed click of the tongue, Bartimaeus closes his paws around it. And then, with a beat of those stone wings and against all odds, he carries it into the air.

There's a bizarre and unwelcome rubber bandy quality to all of it. With each small change, with each expulsion of energy, he can feel himself being drawn strangely apart by the sickly green thing growing in the lion's paw. All the more reason to get out of here quickly.

He hocks the rock at Anders (or, really, whoever happens to be convenient) from a few dozen feet up for good measure though.

[justice_is_blond]

And now he's having rocks flung at him? There's really just one thing Anders has to do.

"If you fly off, that mark you've got will get worse and cause immense pain, probably to the point of killing you." It's shouted, because the asshole's up in the air, but at least his obligation is taken care of. Which means Anders is whirling his staff around and sending part of the rock right back at the jerk with force magic. Not all of it, it had shattered on impact and he's also not best at flinging large things. He's a healer, not a brawler, for crying out loud.

"Now land and stop fighting before the next thing I send up is a fireball!" He really doesn't want to have a full-on fight with a Rifter, especially when there are still demons around. Some smaller variant of anger is raging off to Anders' left, kicking up its own small firestorm, and Anders wishes for not the first or last time that he could have had a peaceful life.

[reshapes]

The winged lion veers sharply in mid-air, elegantly weaving out of the path of the returned stone with a haughty, "Pah! I'd like to see you try."

Which is followed immediately by an arrow whizzing between his tufted ears from one of the less patient, and evidently less trusting Inquisition members not currently being ravaged by the other spirits on the ground. The (let's face it, mostly anonymous and one hundred percent a plot device as conceived by a particularly lazy writer) archer knocks and looses a second arrow in rapid succession.

In response, the lion snaps off a second explosive Detonation down toward the figures scrabbling around in the ruin. This one's weaker than the first, but still floods the area with a burst of fire and heat and splintered stone.