[OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

[unshut]

WHO: Everyone and anyone
WHAT: An abomination redecorates the Gallows.
WHEN: Early August
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Part One of FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE. Will include some violence, some general chaos, and some light murderin'.

There is a man in a worn traveling cloak. He is dark haired, with sharp features dominated by a dark horizontal scar near his hairline, and later someone will describe him as having been soft spoken when he asked for directions.

But something in the Gallows' dining hall, with its unreliable population for the midday meal, must catch under his skin; he's found his voice again by the time he steps up onto one of the benches.

"Is this all of you?"

Someone nearby tells him to get his boots off the furniture, so the man climbs higher onto the table and is louder the second time: "Is this really all you are? A few people in a tower on an island?"

Heads are coming up. As his voice rises, he produces an envelope from his pocket.

"Do you think this is funny? Playing at being something, and telling people you can make a difference to them? You were supposed to be helping, but you're all just sitting here! Don't touch me"—to someone encouraging him to get off the fucking table—"You were meant to be helping us. You promised you would, and I told her I believed you!"

Hands are reaching for him. No, really, get off the table. You can explain what's wrong once you're down; you're with friends— The man jerks his arm free, snarling, "Don't touch me! You're nothing!" A stronger hand finds him then and begins pulling him struggling down. With a wrenched cry of, "Livia!" the man slips from the table.

A column of fire pours upward out of him like molten heat from a crack in the earth. It bursts so high that it scorches a circle on the dining hall ceiling, and burns so suddenly hot that it sends those nearest to him recoiling backward as their clothes catch. The fire licks again in random directions, in chaotic fits and starts of light and heat, and the thing that rises up again in the mage's place isn't really a man at all.

The rage abomination will ravage its way through the dining hall and prodigious Gallows kitchens, then out into the courtyard beyond leaving considerable destruction in its wake until finally brought down by Leander. In the charred aftermath, the following can be recovered from among the mage's belongings: a leather corded bracelet with a green bead woven in it (too small for anything but the smallest wrist), a functioning phylactery, and a letter from "Riftwatch" which implies a history of correspondence and familiarly refers to the recipient by name, 'Felix.' An investigation of Riftwatch's files will reveal the log of having received a message from a similar Felix, No Lastname six months earlier. The message itself is nowhere to be found among the Gallows records.

The recovered letter assures Felix that all will be well, and includes instructions to wait in the woods above the crossroads of a small Wildervale village.

'Help will be on its way. Good luck, and safe travels.'

Comments

Sister Sara Sawbones | ota

[okayimin]

1. In the Chaos

Well, if ever she needed an excuse to eat in the library... But she doesn't. She's here and the room very nearly explodes with heat and the smell is not the same as the lava rivers, but the chaos and the noise is the Darkspawn ambush that had cut through what had been the rare peaceful moment and-

At some point, she is swept off her feet and she struggles to regain it, groping for stones and bodies that aren't there-

2. After the Aftermath

She calls half a dozen people by the names of Legionaires who, if they hadn't died in front of her, were most likely dead now, but her hand is steady as she helps put out the last of the fires and tends to the injured. She's calm, capable and brusque as ever.

And then, she sits on the floor in a corner of the wrecked dining hall, back against the wall and staring up at the scorched circle in the ceiling. It's more comforting than the empty sky with it's floating celestials at the moment. She's a sickly pale and her hands shake.

"Well," she says to no one in particular, "That's a blasted mess to deal with."

2

[keenly]

"First one's always the worst," Colin agrees, dropping to sit by Sawbones. "Are you hurt?"

[adjurator]

The table splinters, words gone up in smoke, and Alais freezes; then up, until there's a tiny body before her, under her —

Alais stoops, grabbing one grasping arm in hers, and dragging up. She's never been very strong, but the child (what's a child doing here?) isn't so heavy.

"Up," Get up. Choked over a slamming heart. The moment narrows around her: One step, the next. "Window."

Closer than the exits, full of fallen shelves and debris.

2

[heorte]

"Aye, it'll take some time to put it back together."

It looks like a battlefield. Ellis doesn't think saying that aloud is going to be comforting. How long has it been since his own hands shook like that in the wake of violence? When did that become something he was so accustomed to that it barely unsettled him.

But he sits anyway, hands her the cup he'd been carrying as he settles. It's water. He'd meant it for himself, but.

Colin | open

[keenly]

I.

Does this recall one of the most frightening times of Colin's life? Yes. But this time, there's only one abomination, and Colin is no longer a child. The spike of adrenaline has him running toward the monster, coupled with an anger that this thing has dared to threaten his new family.

Anyone needing healing is seen to promptly. Otherwise, he is following the abomination as it goes, blocking any pathways back into the mess or further into the Gallows with a force field. Any time someone fighting the abomination gets hurt, the force field drops for the space of a healing spell.

II.

The end of the action sees Colin dropping his force fields and swaying, odd little giggles erupting from him. He is at once elated and drained, and has a dopey grin as he goes about making sure anyone he missed the first time gets healing, though he pulls himself together enough to look more somber when making sure anyone looking shaken has someone to talk to.

I

[thereneverwas]

There are some things that Templars are made for, and one of them, which Ser Barrow currently understands to be the case, is dealing with abominations.

He's not about to run in and kill anything himself, of course, but there is at least one ability that can help make others' lives a little easier. So he grabs the nearest swingable thing-- in this case, a candelabra (thankfully not lit), and slogs out of the room he shares with Lazar.

As subtly as possible while still being very sore, he creeps toward the room housing most of the chaos, his breaths deep and focused.

Byerly Rutyer, open

[bouchonne]

1. The fight

Byerly is a little bit more capable in a fight than you'd expect, given his general air of uselessness and his spindly frame. He knows his way around a crossbow, and can handle a knife, and even does all right in a fist-fight. He survived Ghislain.

But Tevinter foot-soldiers are quite different from an abomination. This is not a fight By is equipped for or prepared for. He'd been on his way to the dining hall for a bit of lunch, and been confronted with the terrifying sight of an abomination churning its way towards him.

His coward's soul prevails, fortunately. He barely has time to take it in before he's turning on his heel and running. But the motion catches the abomination's eye, and so it gives chase.

(By wonders who it is. Colin? Leander? Matthias? One of the other mages, more outwardly self-controlled, but inside as dangerous as any of the others? What a pathetic thing it is, to be killed by your comrades.)


2. Afterwards

Byerly can be found, afterwards, amongst the rubble. He's clutching his side, and his face is smeared with soot, and he's burned down his arm - no injury is life-threatening, but they're certainly unpleasant. And Byerly's expression is exhausted, eyes fixed in a stare focused on nothing in particular.

1

[altusimperius]

Trailing after him was Benedict, who'd come to join him (or at least eat at the same time) rather than staying alone in Byerly's office. He's just behind him when Byerly turns tail, and, still unable to create magic of his own, and reeling from the sounds of carnage from within, Benedict is forced to agree that it seems like the thing to do.

They're not too far when something else occurs to him, and he stops dead, putting out the hand with the shard behind him. Perhaps it listens to intention, or perhaps he has some skill with it after all: but a barrier is created between them and the abomination, flames buffeting against the thin green veneer as Benedict stands there in total shock that it actually worked.

2

[keenly]

Colin appears beside him, calmly going about his job. He doesn't touch Byerly just yet, only looks at him with no fuss, hands outstretched.

"May I see that side of yours?" He'll heal the arm as well, but he'd like to know all of what he's dealing with.

Jenny Lou | Open

[windyvoice]

a. Fight Club

Jenny Lou had been stealing some of the rare fruit out of the kitchen (and about to get her ass handed to her by a wayward swing of the cook), when she hears the blast. Aaaand she's an idiot. So she runs towards it, yelling at the kitchen staff to get the hell out, cus some shit is going down.

Teenage bravado doesn't carry her very far before she finds the thing. The giant fucking flame monster.

"Oh shit-!" She whistles, loud and long (on the off chance that anyone hadn't notice the fuck off huge flame monster slorping down the hall) and a blast of wind funnels down the hall, shoving people through doorways out of the monster's path. "Shitshitshitshit-!"

And Jenny Lou is still fucking stupid, she keeps running towards the thing.

b. Med Club

Jenny Lou is on her feet in the aftermath. So that's something. She's covered in splotchy burns and her hair is a few inches shorter on one side and that big flame monster had definitely been a person and now he was dead.

But... ya know. She's still on her feet. And holding a bucket of water. Don't remember where the fuck that came from. There weren't any fires around her that needed putting out, she upended the whole thing over her head and settled the bucket onto her head like an oversized wooden hat.

"Ooooooooookay," she says, feeling moderately more better, and then immediately going to the first person she can find: "Hey. What the literal fucking shit was that."

b

[keenly]

"An abomination," Colin says calmly, gently touching an unburned patch of her wrist and gesturing for her to sit down. "I'll tell you all about it if you have a seat and let me take a look at those burns."

Poesia | Open

[bloodandsand]

i. Poesia's One (1) Bad Day

Poesia had been in the dining hall at the time. In fact, she had been one of the people reaching to help the funny little man down from the table when things had gone very suddenly sideways. She'd jumped back to avoid the flames and then sprung forward again when the shape had resolved itself into a creature.

She had gotten back handed for her trouble, sent flying head first into a wall, where she had not been able to struggle upright soon enough to join in the fight. She had finally been found and revived with elfroot, with naught to show for her effort but a ringing headache and a burn across her face.

The burn will heal. It is highly debatable if her pride will ever recover.

And now, for her penance, she's playing the shepherd dog, dutifully nudging shocky looking individuals towards healers with bright and sweet encouragements of "Come along now, dear, you mustn't stay sitting so." Anyone a bit too shocky or deemed too resistant will simply be plucked off they're feet and removed from whatever pile of rubble they'd collapsed on.

aftermath

[doneisdone]

It looks worse than it is. ...probably.

But in a room off the hall, under a broken table, lies a bony pile of black leather and blistered skin, her skinny ribcage puffing in and out as she keeps her breathing measured.

Shows how old she's gotten; back in her heyday, Teren used to get thrown like this all the time and get right back up to keep stabbing genlocks.

"Hello, pretty," she croaks fondly, recognizing that blonde head and, perhaps, finding it an irony that they should meet again this way, "haven't got a healing potion, have you?"

fitcher | open

[unshut]

DURING.

It takes a few precious moments for the chaos in the dining hall to translate back into the Gallows' kitchens over the sound of dishware and chattering and someone scraping the burned bits off the bottom of a copper pot. Toward the back of the long kitchen, a cheerful gossiping session over flour being kneaded - slapped down repeatedly onto the wooden counter block - is interrupted not by the sounds of the nonsense in the other room itself but by Jenny Lou's emphatic shouting.

Fitcher, sitting on a stool at the edge of the works space (who is emphatically not doing work, but absolutely is here for the kitchen gossip while she eats her breakfast) looks up.

"That sounded dramatic."

AFTERMATH.

She's streaked with grit - not from the work of the abomination, but from the expansive stone kitchen hearth she and a dozen servants had taken shelter in as the abomination had made its way through to the courtyard. There's hardly in point in wiping her sooty hand off on her sooty skirt, but she's doing it anyway as she makes her way back along the path the abomination had taken through from the dining hall.

"Who was it?" is the first question she asks when she finds someone who seems in good enough shape to be worth asking.

during

[untiltheyarent]

Jenny Lou hasn't gone far before Fifi barrels into the kitchen, white-faced and mindless of how the contents of her rag basket are spilling over the floor in a trail behind her.

"Il faut se cacher!" she gasps, "Abomination!" (Pronounced in hissing Orlesian, of course-- abominah-syon.)

[doneisdone]

I. ladies who lunch

"Making a bloody scene," Teren grumbles over her plate, and turns her back to the meltdown occurring behind her.
Her mind has wandered off to mission thoughts and logistical details when, after a minute or so, she realizes the room has grown hotter and the sounds behind her have changed. Looking over her shoulder, her left eye grows nearly as large as it was before the day it was scarred.
Diving under the table, blades out, she takes a moment to strategize.

II. MAYHEM

Finally seeing an opening, Teren slips low and darting as a hunting jackal, hands like a hawk's talons with their brandished knives that quickly find purchase in the backs of whatever passes for the creature's legs. She's fought abominations before, and knows to keep out of blasting range as best as one can; there's only so much one can do against a mage gone wrong, but at the very least she can hope to slow it down while the other mages clean up their mess.
It swipes at her as she cuts its legs to ribbons, sliding across the floor attached to it by one blade or another.

1. ladies who lunch

[muckspout]

Edgard does not have a direction or strategy in mind, away is the best he can come up with. As he's running, he sees some tables and tries to slow down, his boots screeching on the floor. Edgard isn't much of a hider (he's too big for one), but dives underneath the table headfirst like its a pond. There is someone there already brandishing a knife. The momentum he dove with causes him to slide toward her on his belly, only just missing the knife, but still collides.

He takes a breath. "Sorry." he grunts. "Was this your table? Nice knife."

marcus rowntree. ota.

[luaithre]

battle, diversion; ota.

There is no time to make any sense of the man's upset. Marcus, across the way, had risen to his feet after a few moments of observation, some social senses keying into the potential cues about what this could be about

and then everything happens very fast. His vision fills white as the room is abruptly full of fire, smoke, and screams. The hazy, summery dining hall has become a battlefield, adrenaline slamming into Marcus' senses hard enough that it's almost dizzying. He collects up his staff and drags it through the air, harnessing fire and smoke into a twisting tornado, away from people making a break for it, away from the kindling of wooden floors, tables, rafters.

He sees a figure running nearby, to or from, he's not sure, but he sees, too, the burst of flame about to erupt. He flings out a hand, bathing whoever it is in defensive magics that shield them from immolation, and then hitting the ground as well to duck from that blast of heat and smoke.

As the rampage goes on, it's clear that Marcus has little magic in his arsenal that's going to fell the thing made of the stuff he wields. Not without hurting many people from it. The best he can do, at first, is make chase, try to herd it with missiles of summoned rock and debris slamming into the monster's twisted flank, and tame the wildfires into something less.

loot the body; ota.

There's a silence that falls when a thing like this is over, but it's a silence over beating hearts and heavy breaths and the eventual groans of the injured. For Marcus, it's also the whine in his ears, slow to fade.

Standing at a distance when the Abomination is finally fallen, he then starts to move in closer, boots cracking blasted rock underfoot as he goes. He seems to have come out of this without serious injury, beyond little burns here and there of errant sparks, and soot has stained his clothes and streaked his face. His intention is heading towards the collapsed and charred form now dead on the floor of the courtyard.

Unless stopped, he will start the grisly process of trying to find out who this was, all movements matter of fact and silent.

and later; closed.

This all went down midday, in a scant few minutes of time.

It is hours later and close to evening when Marcus ascends the stairs of the Templar tower. His initial trajectory had been his room, but he finds himself moving for another familiar door. He has had time to clean up, but has chosen to only do that minimally; his hands and face are clean, and the worst of the encounter wiped away, but there are small black blooms of burns on his jacket, some crisp curling at a sleeve where fire had caught.

He places his hand on the handle, thinks better of it, and knocks.

loot the body

[okayimin]

Sawbones is brusque and all business, on her feet and moving without a single tremor to her. Her eyes are a bit glassy and time seems to have unstuck itself entierly. Does that some times, blasted inconvenience. Nevertheless, when she sees a familiar figure hunched over the charred remains, she goes to investigate.

"Oi, Hob, careful of you hands, yeah? Whatcha got?"

Julius | Open

[overharrowed]

During

For less than a moment, he has the hideous thought: At least it wasn't one of ours. It's not one he's proud of, and nothing he has time to linger over as chaos erupts in the dining hall. His staff is in his hand and he's already attempting to triage defense and offense. He settles on both sequentially, throwing barriers around allies who seem intent on attacking and then finding a place to direct his own attacks.

He favors raw magical power, now as always, but he's also mindful of his allies. He's no medic, but he can throw a hasty healing spell someone's way long enough to keep them breathing.

Immediately after

This part is somehow worse. But the adrenaline is pushing him along, looking for friends and colleagues to make sure they're upright. He's reacting more than acting, just after, but he's not badly hurt -- a blow to the leg that was injured at Ghislain hurts, but it's not affecting his mobility. Like so much else, he can deal with it later.

When someone reasonably unhurt passes, he'll ask: "Did you see him come in? Was he with anyone?"

Much later

Julius helps to clean the dining hall.

He doesn't have to, of course. It's not his area, and no one has ordered him to pitch in. But it would have felt wrong not to, under the circumstances. It is, perhaps, slightly incongruous to come across; Julius doesn't give the impression of a man used to scrubbing flagstones. All the same, he does it efficiently and without complaint, though he's not so grim as to forbid someone's approach.

much later;

[wythersake]

Isaac isn't cleaning.

Propped against a wall, smoking like a chimney, he's quite arguably making things worse. He catches Julius' eye and looks ready to leave —

Doesn't, drifts improbably closer.

"If you and I call a truce," It's not mild. It sounds like someone trying quite hard to be mild. Isaac reaches for a bucket. "May we elect to ignore that I started it?"

Matthias | ota

[inkindled]

1 - Chaos
Matthias is burned and he feels sick. He's chasing after the abomination, following its terrible path. His right leg feels soft and weird and one of his hands is in bad shape, burned and bubbly, and he keeps thinking he'll be sick, but he keeps going.

He had seen it happen. As good as front row, he'd gotten an eyeful, and the heat that had burst off of the man as he twisted and burned and changed, it had been close enough to singe Matthias' eyelashes, burn off the front bit of his fringe and bake his face like a flashfire sunburn. And then it had thrown him against the wall, and it was gone, ripping its way down the great hall,

It has to end. Someone has to do it. Or what happens? But he doesn't want it. Whatever happened, it isn't this man's fault, it isn't really, so Matthias follows after not so he can fight--you can't fight fire with fire, and fire is all that he has, he doesn't dare try to do a spirit blade, too weak--but so he can see. He has to see.

Gray under the soot and cheeks burnt pink from the heat, Matthias stumbles after the abomination. He is not paying any attention to anyone else. He'll walk right into people, he might help if there's danger, but he's transfixed, and every time someone goes to attack the abomination, his fingers move, even the fingers on his burned hand, flexing like he wants to help. Or like he wants to stop them.

2 - After.
It's stupid, but he doesn't want anyone to find him. Matthias finds a pile of rubble and crouches down behind it. A spike of pain shoots up his leg and he bites back a shout, shifts to sit instead, with the leg pushed out in front of him. His hand is well burned also, he'd reached for the abomination, like an idiot. The man had gone up like oilpaper, twisted down and then unfurled, roiling and raging. All the fire is standing out over the inside of Matthias' eyelids.

He feels boneless, suddenly, and very tired, and he can feel hot tears pushing their way out of his eyes, tracing lines through the soot smeared his face. He covers his mouth with his good hand. The smell off the other one is bad even from a distance.

He stays there. He doesn't help. He doesn't want to do anything or think, it would be better maybe if he burned up, too.

after

[esquive]

A shadow passes over the rubble, then away - a figure in motion passing. And then it returns, looping back around to follow the scant edge of shoe sighted just outside the edge of bits of stone.

A sheathed sword is set down on the cracked flagstones. It's followed accordingly by its owner, wan look emphasized by the stark smear of blood across one side of his face.

"Let me take a look at you."

Salvio Pizzicagnolo | ota

[assistente]

1 - Courtyard
Salvio is considering a butterfly when the wall behind him explodes.

The light of the sun is poorly filtered through the burst of rubble and flames. The butterfly--small, butter-yellow wings with an edging of brown, he cannot remember what it is called, its name is right on the tip of his tongue--flaps desperately. Salvio doesn't have the option. The heat off the abomination seethes; its footsteps burn away the grass of the courtyard, leave behind great black footprints, cracked and charred cobblestone.

As an image, it does not make sense. Not here, in this version of the Gallows. Salvio, acting automatically, does the first bit of magic anyone has probably seen him do: he raises a barrier. No small weak thing, it lifts from the ground, a shimmering wall--for him, but for anyone else on his side of the courtyard, too. It is wide enough to extend several feet to each side of him, and at its ends, the barrier curves toward the solid stone wall behind him, making a kind of cup around him, folding in anyone nearby.

The abomination roars as it drags its way out of the kitchens. The exit hole it leaves behind is smoking, while screams and shouts trail in its wake. Flames lick off of its back, streaming in the wind. Salvio holds his barrier; he keeps staring, his face milk-pale.

He does not leave the courtyard. The abomination tears through. Salvio only holds the barrier. He can't do anything else.

2 - Aftermath
The dining hall is in sad shape. The kitchens are sadder. Salvio-- his gray robes sooty, sweat on his brow, uninjured but tired, very tired--looks sad himself. He is helping to clean up. The real damage will take weeks to repair, but there are benches to be righted and stone to be scrubbed and assessments to be made.

The work helps. He ends the day in the dining hall, sitting on one of the benches that has been righted after the chaos. The site of implosion is very nearby, all ash and discarded things. Salvio is holding the letter that was found, which he has read three times over, and now begins again, a fourth time.

He sets it aside when he finishes, and pushes his fingers into his eyes. "Damn," he mumbles--and starts, if he senses anyone is around. "My-- My apologies."

2

[okayimin]

"Don't apologize," Sawbones says, hauling herself up to sit next to him. After Colin's help, she's a little more steady, her gaze not nearly as glassy and far away as it had been. "It's a damn pisser of a situation."

She glances at the letter, but doesn't reach for it. She's had her chance to read it and the words rattle around in her head. "Guess we don't cut the most impressive figure to a desperate man... Poor sod."

caius | ota

[sumptus]

[ one thread please ]

He can feel it in his teeth. A fork tapped to crystal goblet, only it's every fork tapped to every goblet, cracks spidering out through the biggest pane of glass ever made until the air itself splits open, molten red and pouring through in a pillar of fire.

Then it hurts. It doesn't matter that this isn't the first time; it had been this bad the first time, too, and maybe he'd learned to brace for it since then, to stand back from the rift and curl his hands into pale fists tucked close to his ribs until their guards had dispatched with the demons, but he wasn't braced for it this time. He can't think, can't see straight, just needs to get out--

Pans crash to the floor at his back-- metal spoons clatter on tile-- a cascade of onions, thumpthump thump, until his shoulder blades hit wood. A shelf. The pantry.

A dead end. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The heat out the doorway isn't the ovens.

welcome to the kitchen party

[untiltheyarent]

A thin hand reaches out to drag him behind the upturned table by whatever fistful of fabric she can grab, and although Fifi isn't very strong, hopefully she can at least encourage the man to propel himself the rest of the way into the hearth.

She holds a finger to her lips and hands him a fireplace implement. A smattering of servants are here too. And Fitcher!

Edgard | Open

[muckspout]

1. Boom

Edgard has been here only a couple days, but has been bored out of his mind. The tasks are boring, he’s learned next to nothing, the people—well, Edgard has mostly avoided the people.

Edgard sits with his meal in the courtyard after grabbing food in the kitchens, again people avoiding, leaning against a wall. The noise that erupts from inside is monstrous and strange tinged with the screams of people. He leaps up as the wall he was leaning against crumbles away. Edgard runs to the middle of the courtyard trying to avoid the rubble.

Edgard stands at attention armed with only his plate, now sans food. The fiery monster emerges and heads straight for another wall, not seeing Edgard. He stares at the creature with wide eyes for a moment before chucking the plate straight at it. It bounces off the side of it uselessly with a ping, smoldering.

“Putain.” he whispers and runs into the remnants of the kitchen. Well, it isn’t boring.



2. After


Edgard sits at a table which is technically in the dining hall, but most of the dining hall is now gone. He kicks at the ash on the floor. His hands are shaking just a bit and he presses them flat onto the table the wood smooth underneath them. He coughs and turns to a stranger passing by,

“Just another day, right?” He laughs a little too loudly.

2

[cozen]

Ashy, mussed, but only injured in ways that are more annoying than painful, Bastien is passing behind him with a chair, intent on setting it at one of the tables and pushing it neatly in. It will be a few more minutes at least before he's able to think of something more useful to do, in the wreckage, but his hands need something.

But, "Ah," he says when stopped, and even that syllable is accented enough to give away that they are countrymen. "No. I would say." The laugh makes him smile a little, though, more than it makes him concerned. "Unless it appeals, and we need the excitement to keep new recruits," such as this fellow, "in which case..."

There's no end to that sentence, really.

sidony venaras | open

[indissection]

CHAOS

Sidony has never been fond of mages and this is not helping her situation. Watching someone on the table, her eyes widening and her heart in her throat, feeling a flood of almost too many feelings - anger, frustration, jealousy and irritation. Don't touch me, you're nothing - it hits a little too close to home for her, the voice of her parents echoing in her mind before she forces herself to breathe out and focus on what needs to be done.

It goes crazy and Sidony is in the middle of it - or that's how it feels like. There's destruction everywhere and old wounds flare to life as she runs around trying to do what she can to help people - the heat is too much and she feels sick with it, as if there is smoke in her lungs, and again she thinks I should really learn how to fight -

Sidony grabs at anything she can to pull herself away from the fire, her eyes wide and panicked as she tugs at her things, gathering her surgeon's kit and breathing out a sharp, panicked noise, trying to keep herself calm despite the panic flaring inside of her and the knots that she feels twisting inside of her.

Fuck.

AFTERMATH

Sidony looks exhausted when it's all over, feeling uncertainty settling around her shoulders. Breathing out, she makes her way through the rubble and the danger, letting her eyes drink things in, almost entirely unaware of the marks on her skin - a burned hand, some scrapes against her jaw and neck, the burn of aches where her ribs had been broken months ago. It feels strange to be in the middle of anther disaster, as if her life hadn't been turned upside down enough by Riftwatch and the Inquisition.

Broken ribs, a burned arm, kidnapping on multiple occasions, presumed dead, and now this... It never ends.

Eventually she ignores her own aches and pains and moves around, checking in on people here and there, bending down to tend to wounds and ignoring the fact that she must look like a complete disaster. Her hair is a twisted mess, sticking to her face from soot and sweat and dirt, and she does not know what else to do.

Eventually, she settles down somewhere, stopping quietly and staring up at the sky and breathing in and out.

chaos.

[cozen]

The hand that grabs at Sidony is as well-mannered as a hand grabbing someone in the midst of fire and screams could be, wrapping around her elbow rather than her waist or hair or hand. But it's also firm. Bastien's pulling her, insistently, in case she had any plans to try to salvage more than that surgeon's kit before running.

Bastien's been caught in fires before. But two of them were fires he'd set himself, so they were at least expected, and none of them were flying unpredictably from a twisted monster of a man. He hasn't dragged her three whole steps before there's a burst of new flame in what had looked like a safe path.

"Shit," he hisses quietly, and lets go of Sidony to turn to face her instead, arms spread as if to usher her in another direction.

john silver.

[hornswoggle]

AFTERMATH | OTA.

John is not a dependable presence in the Gallows for the midday meal. He's just as likely to receive something courtesy of this stall owner or that tavern keep than he is to return to the Gallows. But John has been more often in the Gallows of late, less likely to interject himself into conversation.

When the shouting had begun, John had considered his proximity without much concern. There are others more capable of handling the disruption. John is meant for what comes after, assuming it falls to Diplomacy, or to his other purview.

Then—

It is not unfamiliar. Explosion, screaming, fire. People fleeing in all directions. His coat catches fire before a table catches him across the chest. (A blessing, maybe, preventing some kneejerk reaction that would have been too—) By the time John wrenches himself free the danger has migrated.

"What the fuck."

There is blood in his mouth. The slow awareness of injury, burns, bruises, are blooming into his consciousness as he gropes for his crutch to force himself upright.

Re: john silver.

[muckspout]

Edgard remained in his hiding spot, under a table, but the hiding spot is quite literally blown away and into a man.

After it passes, Edgard sees the man, bleeding at the mouth somehow still alive, trying to grab at something. He sees that its a crutch just out of reach. Edgard rushes over and hands it to him.

"You alright, monsieur? I saw that table get you." He huffs a little recognizing the stupidity of his statement. "I was under it, the table. But it wasn't me it was the--" Babbling, Edgard waves his hands in the air making a motion meant to be flames.

kill your darlings; closed to death squad

[sarcophage]

The abomination is still on the move. It left the dining hall in shambles, and now carves a trail of carnage along an arbitrary route, guided only by the need to fuel the screaming furnace of its own fury. Whatever's flammable has caught fire; whatever's not stone is destroyed. In at least one hallway the smoke is unbearably thick, with nowhere to go but up to the vaulted ceiling, the windows too low to vent the worst of it. And those unlucky servitors who couldn't flee its path, either cut off or too panicked to escape—there's only one destination for them, too.

It's monstrous, this tormented thing that was once a man, twisted and surging flesh, blisters bursting with boiling lymph, licks of flame and blazing eyes, the demon straining to press through. It is grotesque. Its every action, every movement, taxes the Veil. It is impossibly strong.

But it is not invincible.

Leander, smeared with ash up to his bare elbows, wearing his own blood, sweating with staff in hand, is locked in fierce focus. Of those nearby—correction: those of any use in this engagement—he sees Marcus first, calls to him,

"Outside, herd him this way— block that passage!"

[luaithre]

Swords drawn, shields coming down, the air pulsing with silencing energies to seal closed the space between here and the Veil. There are no Templars here -- at least, not organised, not armored and identified as operating thus -- but Marcus knows what they would be doing. How efficiently they would be doing it. Part of him almost expects them to materialise, to close in as a circle, to raise blades.

The rest of him is just reacting. Flashes of shielding magic pulse green and blue over moving bodies, both escaping and engaging. When Leander calls to him, he already has motes of Spirit light circling his shoulders, his staff, glancing bright off where firelight catches on skin, the whites of his eyes as he looks towards the source of the shout, sees the exit strategy, concurs.

He moves. Plumes of flame strike his shoulder and dispel into smoke against shimmering blue light, leaving him unharmed, unburned, as he leaps ahead of the Abomination, already dragging his staff through the air in the familiar casting motions that make the ground beneath his feet begin to shake.

When he stops, turns, jagged rock rises from the ground, produced from the Fade rather than the floor itself, raw grey and gleaming green, and he propels it towards the beast with a splayed hand. It shatters and knocks the Abomination backwards, away from its intended path, Marcus guarding the passage it had been sliding for.

closed.

[tender]

Would it have happened had he not been pulled from the table? Where had the breaking point been?

The questions had been drifting hazily through her mind blurred by pain as she got to her feet. By the time she manages to shift the table and rubble off, the chaos had passed through the kitchens, and further. The cacophony of fire and heat has given way to a shocked silence, and Derrica knows what's happened without walking out to see.

She takes a few, unsteady steps forward, drawn to see the final, grievous result before some similarly unsteady movement draws her gaze to Lukas. The trajectory of her steps realigns, and she catches hold of his elbows, as if to keep them both upright.

"Where are you hurt?" is the first thing, seemingly the easiest thing to say rather than ask did you see him? did you see what caused it?

closed 2 ellis

[pittance]

Later, he’ll think to the ferry, and how little he thought of it.

Heat bursts like something lanced. Vance drops, registers the distant clunk of metal.

Feels it first in his eyes. Tears vanish into the hungry air, and flesh threatens to follow; become a bubbling hive. His sleeves catch, his shirt: Shock that sends him diving before pain ever registers — down, down to beat them out, to cover his head and dodge the crack of a beam as something erupts into the hall beyond,

(His badge abandoned, shining slag-slick in its wake.)

Will pulls his feet under him, but it's instinct that finds the pommel at his side, dropped again with a wordless cry; the blade a blazing red. He staggers up in time only to stagger back,

Feels himself connect with something solid from behind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1jc2fPiuBQ

[heorte]

His first thought is that he's collided with Sister Sara. There is no one of that height who he saw upon his arrival to the hall that matches, but when he turns—

For a brief moment, he can't come up with a name. The shock of recognition in the midst of the adrenaline of an active threat leaves him with just the instant, immediate knowledge of you, I know you and you are not meant to be here before a gout of flame sizzles past them both, inches from Ellis.

"Get down," he says, half pushing Vance towards an upended table. His mace is god knows where, and could he even get close enough to that thing to land a blow without being melted down to nothing?

[overharrowed]

The hand on his shoulder does make Julius feel a bit less as if he's failed some obscure test he wasn't aware he was taking, but the result is more confusion than reassurance. For a man who usually has a ready command of social situations, he finds himself a bit genuinely unsure what just happened. It's a sensation that's not entirely foreign, in situations involving their guest.

He doesn't stand.

"I hope you find it," he says instead, meaning rest. "It's been a very long day." It sounds a bit inane even to Julius' own ears, but on the other hand ... it isn't untrue.