MOD EVENT ↠ CREEPY CRAWLERS

[faderifting]

WHO: Everybody
WHAT: Weird shit comes to Kirkwall Riftwatch earns its keep
WHEN: August 20-22
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post! Random creature generator! CW: creepy crawly animals and the combating thereof.

I. KIRKWALL

The first Fade-touched creatures are small—they must be—because the first signs that something has gone wrong aren't swarms of oversized pests stomping through the streets, but a half-day of unexplained fires in Lowtown and Darktown, splotches of mysterious ice on the walls despite the heat, and the sudden simultaneous electrocution deaths of two dock workers standing knee-deep in water.

Rumors that mages must be to blame don't have an opportunity to get louder than whispers, fortunately, before the first pack of double-sized, fire spitting nugs is startled out of hiding and runs through the city, squeaking wildly and singeing walls.

By nightfall, it's become an invasion: rats, nugs, bats, deepstalkers, some oversized, some aggressive, all exhibiting unusual abilities. The City Guard—already overworked due to the traditional rash of crimes that often accompanies a heatwave combined with the caffeine-related unrest—does its best, but by morning the pests have reached Hightown and begun scorching curtains and leaving trails of poison slime through gardens and the Provisional Viscount sends a formal request for aid to the Gallows. It has a seal and everything.

II. DARKER THAN DARKTOWN

The old mines that Kirkwall was built around and on top of are only heavily populated near the surface. Beneath Darktown's shanties and encampments, the mining shafts narrow into passages too cramped to easily live in, twisting away from any natural sources of light and down into the black rock until not even dwarven and elven eyes can discern anything in the dark. At first, it seems cooler underground, as one would expect. But the air stagnates and the humidity rises and at times it seems that the deeper one gets, the hotter it is.

The tunnels aren't entirely deserted. Signs of activity litter the paths, along with skeletons—some animal, but also some human, dwarven, or elven—and detritus, discarded rags and broken pottery, and a whole collection of dolls made of bundled twigs. The smugglers and reclusive Darktown denizens who travel this deep are difficult to come across in person, and prone to attacking first if cornered by anyone too clean and official-looking, but now and then they can be seen disappearing around corners or heard whispering from side passages.

Navigating the mining shafts is fairly straightforward, most of the time. Widening passages and upward inclines are the way out; narrowing passages and downward inclines are the way in. If fire and glow stones fail, sending crystals cast a faint light that's enough to keep anyone from being completely blind in the depths. But there are still passages that turn back on themselves, downward tunnels boarded over with bridges that have begun to rot, tunnels half-flooded with Maker-knows-what, steep drops—and the occasional stampede of Fade-touched creatures, more and more frequent closer to the rift.

Close enough, the jet-black stone walls begin to reflect green light, and then the tunnels open up into a wide open space full of damp, briney cool air. And demons.

III. THE RIFT

It's just a rift: the usual split of churning green, so bright in the dark that it's nearly blinding, hanging over standing water in the center of a wide-open chamber, patrolled by the usual demons.

But once they're dispensed with, and the rift closed, the chamber is something more unusual. The standing water is salty—coming in from the sea, at least in part, never deeper than the knees (or waist, maybe, on a dwarf) but populated with a few small fish, and the stone around it is covered with deep mushroom, ghoul's beard, and a few sprigs of rare felandaris. Beneath the overgrowth, there are signs of architecture, dwarven columns and crumbling statues of dragons in the Tevinter style.

Beneath the water, the floor is carved with a design not unlike a glyph, and also not unlike the pattern of Kirkwall's streets. The Veil is so thin that a sneeze could have torn it open.

Comments

[libratus]

"Why, so you can throw that at me next?" Holding his ground, narrowing the space with staff held tight in hand. "That isn't how this works. You do not get to shut the door in my face and expect me to leave mine—"

Open.

Only what comes out, as a swiftly widening eye catches over Isaac's left shoulder, is,

"Spider."

[wythersake]

Baffled. He searches for some similar Trade word —

"Arranged?"

Which is about when it leaps onto his back. The end of the staff flares high and bright until gravity tears it from his grasp, sends it bouncing along stone. He reaches up blindly, hands still smoking with heat, scrambling for purchase on its spiny legs. Another rock drops behind Ilias, seconds before the second spider does.

[libratus]

An arm extended after — Maker, hold still so he can— falls short when a set of furry pedipalps clamps round his own leg. Kicking at it, the turn and sweep of his staff after it is instinctual, toward the threat, away from Isaac (mmmostly) when the wave of feverish, gut-wrenching despair rushes out from him.

High, whistling shrieks cascade down the length of the ceiling. Not one or two. Dozens. More.

And that's only on one side of them. On the other, tiny claws chatter against stone in an answering rush.

Reaching to grab at clothes or spider— "We need to run."

[wythersake]

He's hauled up by his shirt collar, scorched spider kicking madly behind, and then they're running — stumbling, really, because the wash of alien emotion buckles his knees —

(The stages of fear: Reaction, acceptance, limp.)

His toes knock oak, snaps him out of it enough to stoop and grab for his staff, before shoving them both again along.

"Do you think?"

He manages, between straining breaths; still searching for ground to be pissed on, the path only slick with moss and Fade echo. The corner rounds sharp, ends at a door that can't have been there before. It isn't locked.

[libratus]

This time the apology on his lips comes out as muttered Nevarran cursing, but not for lack of sincerity (Sorry, he's sorry, shit--) so much as the current of spindly limbs rushing after their backs. Ilias's fingers grab and twist at the doorknob.

"Can you not," sparing a turn of the head, "for just five--"

Splat. Chilly viscera splays across them both like wet cheesecloth. Splat-splat, comes the chain reaction, as if the explosion itself, the telltale tightening of the Fade before detonation that Leander's ribs would know better than either of them, weren't sign enough. Only this time, it isn't coming from Ilias.

For the weightless space of a breath, a look crosses his face that hasn't since he'd passed glass phial from shaking hands. And then he's pushing Isaac through the opening door, slamming it closed hard at their backs as they tumble inside--

Well. It's not exactly what you'd call an exit.

"Fuck."

[wythersake]

Momentum carries him a slippery step beyond, arms pinwheeling to straighten, back already bumping against rock. It's not an exit. It's little more than a strange, stone closet.

It's also not exploding.

Gooey remains drip from arms, chin, and Isaac just — watches him. Watches his expression recover (slid somewhere outside, to some distant place). More than a breath passes. Another. It's too quiet outside.

Drip. Drip.

"I can't shut the door?"

What's the timer on that five minutes.

[libratus]

In that silent stretch of moments, his back stays to the door. Eyes up at the ceiling. (Line of sight. Just like him, they need a line of sight to cast. As long as the door is shut, they won't get it.) At his sides, fingers clench, release; clench, release, for lack of anything more solid to cling to. Spider bile squishes in his fists.

Of course it doesn't last.

"It isn't—" the door, or the light, or the heat, or the fucking exploding spiders, or Isaac's ability to handle any one of those things. The back of his skull meets door with a throaty, frustrated noise instead.

"I am allowed to want you alive, if nothing else."

If he is supposed to settle, somehow, for wanting nothing else.

[wythersake]

"That isn't what I meant."

Lame. What was it he meant? Doesn't matter; hand smearing dark ichor over dark fabric before finding his pocket, fishing loose a square of cloth within. He reaches for one of those fists, makes to pass the handkerchief into it —

Far too little to clean. A little, at least, to hold.

"What do you want, Ilias?"

[libratus]

Oh. The words sort themselves out too late, and now there's a cloth pressing to his palm (a hand, inevitably, behind it); fingers curl to pull it in. What does he want?

"I told you." More. All of him. Stupid, impossible things he hasn't the venom left now to pretend have changed. The truth will have to be barb enough.

"You cannot have it both ways, that is all I meant." Doors. Hearts. "You asked me to stop, and I am trying to do that."

[wythersake]

His hand shouldn't linger. It does: Thumb to knuckle.

"We both know that isn't working."

[libratus]

"It might, if you would just--" Stop. Only he isn't moving away, either. Not a muscle. Air pushes from his lungs instead.

"What do you want?"

[wythersake]

"Some idea what's happening?" Not — with this, the slimy warmth of skin; a faintly nauseating blend of incense and spider intestine. "Why do you have that phylactery, Ilias?"

[libratus]

"Why did I make it, or why did I keep it?"

Different questions. That he's clarifying that fact at all is-- a step. The slightest acquiescence.

"It was a demonstration of trust. A commitment, that we would always find one another."

"Now--" Two fingers shift, catch gentle on the underside of a thumb: a trade. "I suppose it is as much a safety net. You know, don't you, that he can be-- a danger."

[wythersake]

"I know he's made threats." This alone more answer than he expected — seems foolish, not to press that advantage — "I know you were frightened."

Not the same thing as dangerous; danger implies a reaction. It's a question, in itself. That hadn't been Ilias' face on some crawling, gory form. Those hadn't been Ilias' scars.

(One, one of them is,)

[libratus]

"Not of him." --Well. "Of facing him, yes. Of what he might do here, but not to me. He's never hurt me."

--is one perspective.

"It is simply important to me that he not hurt anyone else."