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

turkish delight: the gang vs bushes and mirrors

[inkindled]

There's only three of them, but the way still feels narrow. A cold and peculiarly damp wind slaps at the back of the neck, tugs at the hem of cloaks and dogs at their heels. And there's a smell, on the air, if you stop to catch it.

The steadiest sound, apart from breath, is the crunch of glass underfoot. Silvery shards of mirror like quicksilver spilled on the ground make a path before them. There hasn't been glass all this way. The swathe seems concentrated here, as if someone ran through a mirror-maze smashing everything in sight. Most of the shards are small, and dangerous in that way, but every now and then, there's a shard that's dagger-long and just as wicked. They all reflect the torchlight as their team pass over it, glittering and winking--but out of the corner of the eye, the light looks different. Indoors, somehow. Like firelight from a hearth might look. There's no way to say how anyone would know that, the difference between torchlight and firelight, but it is different. Isn't it?

That's what Matthias is thinking, at least. He keeps finding himself looking down, no matter what he does to fix his eyes on the way ahead. Before long, his gaze has strayed down again, watching the pieces of the mirror as they walk over them.

"Hey," he says, breaking the silence. "Is there--something funny about these?"

He kicks at a large bit of shard with the toe of his boot. It flips over, revealing its back to be just as reflective as its front, and there's-- definitely something there, a face, a woman with a long nose, thin cheeks, and Matthias looks about so quickly he nearly has his had off, but there's no one. Nothing. All the hair on the back of his neck is standing on end and his staff is in his hand and there's no one there.

"There's something funny about these," he says, firmly.

one cut corpse: the dead body

[inkindled]

The eluvian stands like an archway, tall and shimmering and flawless. Except, you know, for the smear of blood and gore at the base. And the corpse at its feet.

Well, half a corpse, really. Matthias crouches beside it with a grimace. The body is fresh enough that it smells only a little. Not as bad as a six-day-old battlefield, only the faintest hint of bloat in the face below the half-mask, and the heavy sweetish scent of rot has just begun to settle in.

"Posh boy wasn't fast enough," he says. Keeping his nose plugged from the inside, it sounds as if he has a headcold. He leans in to look at the face, examining the lips and the skin and the eyes, which are still open behind the mask. The slackness of death has stiffened up his expression, peeled back his mouth from his teeth and cast his expression in a bizarre grin. "Or else something went wrong. Anyone ever actually seen one one of these things before? The-- eluvie, not the dead body. Seen those."

seven years of baddest luck: destroying the eluvian

[inkindled]

How do you break a mirror? Easy:

"Throw a rock at it," Matthias says, with his mouth full.

He's started eating, which is not really surprising. As his companions will now have learned, he eats pretty much whenever he has the chance. He's eating handfuls of berries, which he'd picked along the way here, and gnawing at a salted sausage that's leaving his hand greasy. He has the table manners of a mildly tame animal, so it's not exactly a pretty sight. But there's half a corpse still about, so, it's not as if they're dining in splendor.

He swallows his bite and wipes his mouth on his shirt-sleeve, leaving behind a smear of mashed berry. "Or I could knock it apart myself, but I think it'd be loads more fun if we threw rocks at it until it fell to bits. Satisfying, like."