NOT IN MY CROSSROADS

[inkindled]

WHO: Barrow, Derrica, Matthias
WHAT: the gang visits the spooky crossroads
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: the Crossroads
NOTES: part of the September

assignments.

"A team of Venatori were discovered in the Crossroads prior to the attack on the Temple in the Arbor Wilds, and the prospect of the enemy gaining greater access to the eluvian network opens up a host of dangerous possibilities. A Riftwatch team will be sent back into the Crossroads to try to discover where that group of Venatori entered from and prevent future use of that entrance....."

Comments

[thereneverwas]

Barrow scoffs, smirking a little. This fucking kid.

"Why don't we chuck you through it," he amiably replies, but falls silent when Derrica chimes in. He grimaces faintly, looking over the corpse again.
"Nothing unusual about that."

[inkindled]

"We can burn him, before we go."

Matthias pulls his hand out again and transfers his find to his other hand, so he can wipe the dirty one briskly on the front of the dead man's doublet. Two pieces of silver, a scrap of paper with a faint scrawl of writing on it, and that's all. Not all that exciting, even if the coin is nice.

"I'll give it a go, if we really want someone to. I'm not scared of it." A little nervous to be cut in half, perhaps, but if Barrow is going to make it sound a challenge, you bet Andraste's arse Matthias will take it. "Or I'll put my hand through it and we can see what happens. Here, why don't we put his hand through it?" He pats the corpse on the chest a bit. "He's not using it. And if it's off, he'll not complain. They're meant to connect to another eluvie, aren't they? So we've got to know where this one goes to."

[tender]

"His hand, if you please. Not yours." Derrica's voice is firm. "I don't want to try reassembling limbs in here."

It's a tricky, exhausting business. Derrica puts the bracelet on as she speaks, shakes her wrist lightly to see if it will fly off. It's pretty enough to keep, though no one has really discussed what they're doing with the loot.

[thereneverwas]

"I'm not bringing you back with only half your limbs," Barrow says pleasantly enough, eyeing Derrica and the bracelet but saying nothing on the matter, "either we bring you back whole or not at all."
He's probably joking. He pops a rolled cigarette in his mouth and lights it, looking back down at the boy. "...try the stiff's hand."

[inkindled]

"Okay okay," Matthias says, agreeable and cheerful, and grabs hold of the corpse's arm. "C'mon, Gareth, help us out--"

The surface of the eluvian looks very solid, but perhaps that's the trick of it. There's a particularly corpsey stiffness to the half-bloke, so twisting his arm about takes a bit of work, and a great deal of sickening snaps and sinewy sounds besides. But eventually, the hand is in the right place, and Matthias takes a breath, and pushes it forward--

THUNK, goes the flat dense sound of a very dead hand hitting very solid glass.

Matthias frowns. And tries again. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

"Hang on. There's meant to be like, a password, or something. Isn't there?"

THUNK, goes the hand again. Behind the frame of this eluvian, there are others visible, rising up like giant silent Chantry sisters, with their heads bowed and shoulders slumped. Among them--if any of them take a moment to lean to peer around this eluvian--they'll see the one they're probably actually looking for: a springy carpet of new-grown grass at its feet, instead of half a dead man, and the sign of footprints trod about it, a well-worn and telltale path.

Matthias is way too busy to see any of that. THUNK.