[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

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.)

[unshut]

The fear in her face says more than the words do, though no accent could hide the meaning of that last word. It drains the warmth from the room. It closes like a hand around a throat.

Fitcher is on her feet and moving before she fully realizes it. "The table. Bring it here," she orders, so sharp and brisk that it cuts through the timbre of panic which rises in the girls about it with their flour and dough sticky hands.

There is a bucket beside the broad open cooking hearth; Fitcher snatches it up and dumps it unceremoniously over the fire, which has likely burned in some form for longer than any of them have been here in the Gallows. The alcove is nearly a full three paces wide and four feet deep. She flings the bucket aside, and snatches up her skirts to use as make-do insulation against the heat so she might fetch the pot which had hung over the fire from its hook.

"Quickly now. Quickly."

[untiltheyarent]

Other members of the kitchen staff have to be the ones moving the table, though Fifi helps, grasping a corner of it and pushing it to help it along. As everyone, including herself, follows Fitcher's direction, she also snatches up a fireplace poker and comes to stand huddled next to the woman, her eyes intent and jaw set.

Fifi has never entered combat in her life, but she is certainly prepared to, should worst come to worst.

[unshut]

How long do they have? Either very little time or all of it in the world; who can guess what an abomination will do?

"Turn it over. No, legs away from the hearth—"

With a clatter of upended cookware and a rain of chopped vegetables and spilled floor, the heavy work table it turned on its side.

"Everyone in to the fireplace now except for you"—to one of the muscular baker girls—"and you." To Fifi, even as everyone about them is beginning to hurry into the hearth alcove. "We'll push the table up against it. Leave a gap at the end for us to slip inside after it."

The sounds from the other room are getting louder. So a very short amount of time, then.

[untiltheyarent]

Though not entirely certain why she was excluded, Fifi remains, holding out the poker as though she knows what to do with it, as the others file in behind the table. She glances furtively to the baker girl, and then back to Fitcher, awaiting her word.

this, but— maybe just continue with our brand new baby boy?

[unshut]

"On my count," Fitcher declares, setting her hands and shoulder against one of the heavy table's legs. "Three, two, and heave. Lively now. "

The table makes such an awful scraping noise as it slides over stone. Together they narrow the gap between its edge and the edge of the hearth until—

"In you go, my darling."

The space it just narrow enough for the broad shouldered girl assisting them to squeeze. She is bigger than the two of them.

To Fifi, who must have been among the most petite among their strange party, Fitcher says: "Twice more, exactly like that. One, two, three—" It's harder to induce the table to move any farther with just the two of them, but they don't have far to take it.

after - lmk if this needs any tweaking

[overharrowed]

Julius is somewhat the worse for wear, though not in any immediate danger from the looks of him; the cut along his forehead has stopped bleeding, and while he's favoring one leg slightly, he's not keeping weight off the other entirely.

"A visitor," he says, tired but steady enough. He's slightly distracted, with the air of a man performing an absent head count, but he doesn't try to disengage from her question. "With a grievance. No one I recognized, but someone else might, we'll need to start asking around once everyone hurt is seen to." It's not entirely clear he's focused on who is asking, his mind occupied in generating personal and organizational to-do lists as the fight's adrenaline continues to push him forward.

10/10

[unshut]

A visitor.

Her short pause is for surveying the destruction - upturned tables and scattered benches, upturned and scattered people. Scorched marks and burst window panes and the smell of ash.

She touches Julius' elbow.

"Sit for a moment. Let me see your leg."

[overharrowed]

"It's nothing urgent," he says, but he does move to sit on a nearby (upright) bench. "I took an ax to it at Ghislain, I thought it was well healed, but I suppose I haven't been jumping off a lot of tables since then."

Sitting still isn't a step he relishes, but he suspects arguing with her would take longer than just letting her look.

[unshut]

A fair assessment. She is matter of fact about kneeling down in her sooty clothes and hitching up the edge of his robes to get a look at the limb in question. She'll have to peel herself up off the ground after - standing is sometimes disagreeable these days -, but no matter.

"An axe at Ghislain? I had no idea you were such a war hero, Enchanter," somehow manages to be the simulacrum of light, though she is undeniably distracted. "I suspect our healers will want anyone badly injured shifted out of here. I'll see about finding a group slightly more fit for carrying than either of us."

[overharrowed]

"If by 'hero' you mean 'successfully didn't die in a battle despite the enemy's best attempt,' then I was a hero long before Ghislain." It's only as light as hers was.

"I saw Sawbones early on; if she made it out relatively in one piece I suspect she has similar ideas about organizing. I was going to look for anyone who'd landed somewhere out of the way to point help in their direction." Before she'd ungraciously made him sit down.

[unshut]

Most war heroes, she suspects, are cut of a similar cloth. But these are conversations for different times.

"I'll see who might be collected from the ferry slip to help then. If they haven't come running up in this direction already." Satisfied with her examination, she withdraws her hands from him. "I might recommend propping it up somewhere the moment you're able. And I know of an excellent salve if the joint proves bothersome tomorrow."

For a moment, Fitcher lingers there on the hall's floor rather than scratching directly back onto her feet. She lets her eye travel around them, sooty hand absently touching at her hairline and leaving a dark track.

"What a mess."

[overharrowed]

He runs a hand back through his hair, which doesn't significantly neaten it.

"I haven't heard anything like a reliable count of the casualties yet," he says, muted. "I expect it will take a bit of time to determine who isn't accounted for. If he went through anyone in a less spectacular fashion before he got in here." Julius suspects not; no one would have tried to bar him in the middle of the day, (seemingly) calm and on his own. But the man had clearly been agitated before everything went to hell, and it's not outside the realm of possibility he might have taken a smaller, pettier revenge on someone if the opportunity arose.

aftermath;

[wythersake]

They pass by the stairs.

Near an hour's gone since the fires were put out, and Isaac looks well. Half a sleeve torn off, edges singed, and improbably well. He's too late for the wounded, late to show his face at all; by the time he does, bandages have been wound. Burns already salved. And the body quite well rifled through.

He pauses for the sight of Fitcher, halfway up a step still dusted with ash.

"He called the name Livia," It's something to search, before the rest circle down. His chin tips, steps down to offer Fitcher an arm. "Rather, it sounded one."

If there were ever a time for a clerk to shine —

[unshut]

Livia.

Fitcher takes his arm, and finds she is grateful for it despite what steadiness there is in her hand.

"The papers he had with him. I suspect that's how he came so far." They are all used to unfamiliar faces, but it's hardly as if the Gallows is without its guard. "Between the the two, there may be something to be found in the records."

She winds her arm to link their elbows.

"There's a flask in my desk," is an invitation.

[wythersake]

"Ever prepared."

- Is agreement. Was anyone prepared for this? Historically absurd: The Gallows in its vigilance. Will measures tighten? What would the Inquisition have done?

Best to get ahead of it.

"We'd a Livia the year past," He starts up again, keeps in pace. "But I think that most unlikely."

That Livia was Tevene, that Livia is likely dead. A common name, admission only that his ears may have betrayed him. Lydia, Rivia; a shrug of the brow. He trusts he needn't spell it out.

"You got a look at the pages?"

[unshut]

"In no great detail."

Which is a problem presently sticking like a point between the ribs, waiting to dig into something delicate should she move into rather than away from it. But standing still does little good.

"What was clear from them is that someone made promises they didn't keep. My question," she says as they ascend the stairs. "Is whether they couldn't keep it or didn't care to."

AFTERMATH - much later

[nonvenomous]

Rarely one to engage in communal dining, Richard had paused in passing, poised in the doorway to watch from a distance as raised voices escalated into grabbing and pulling. A brute in plate armor had shouldered in past him and he’d hardly moved.

It took the first burst of flame for him to vanish like a spooked cat.

Many hours later, having crawled out from whatever crevice he’d flattened himself into, he’s prying in a dark wing of the library, tilting an illustrated volume open to the light of his lamp. He could be healing, or counseling, or tending to the dead. Instead he’s in the process of assembling a small collection of literature on a nearby table.

The artwork is grotesque -- an abomination with flesh and spirit twisted by corruption, boiling from the inside out. Skeletal remains roil at its feet. Dick leans in close to better see, nose nearly at the ppaer, tension bit in stiff at the scruff of his neck.

This is why Thedosians don’t trust mages.

[unshut]

"Some light reading before bed?"

She sounds exactly as she always does. And as she settles there, perching at the edge of his collection, Fitcher looks as she always does. There has been time to wash her face and comb her hair, to scrape the soot from under her nails, and to change into something that hasn't recently seen the inside of a fireplace. If there is any sign of the day's events, perhaps it is that she's here.

Fitcher has little interest in books.

[nonvenomous]

A hissed breath is her answer, sucked in sharp through Dick’s teeth as he jolts and fumbles the book in his hands. He catches it as quickly as he dropped it, never in any real danger of knocking the lamp over, or even losing his place, but there is a prickle of accusation brittle in the look he rounds back onto her. Unappreciative.

“It settles my thoughts,” he tells her, fully composed upon his first exhale, if a little arch.

He’s clean also, unscathed and orderly, apart from the uneven tuck of his jacket at his collar, and the huff and puff at his breast, heart rate still brisk with adrenaline.

“Frankly I’m surprised I haven’t had more competition.”

[unshut]

Under different circumstances, she might derive some pleasure out of startling him so thoroughly. As it is, she tactfully makes no mention of it and instead picks the book from the top of his collection and brings it across her knee so she might flip through it as they speak.

"I suspect you'd might if you try again tomorrow. Today"—she tips her head back and forth, a wobbling so-so gesture—"Today I should think most haven't gotten this far yet."

Hints of illuminated edges and the occasional macabre illustration flicker by under her hands. She glances surreptitiously in his direction.

"But you're well? Otherwise."

[nonvenomous]

Richard nods offhand at a still-rattled disconnect, reassurance distracted by the ask at all. Nearly one year on, people in Thedas are still more polite than the ones he’s accustomed to.

“I’ve engaged shades and demons on assignment but have so far avoided anything that spews flame.” He marks his place with a loose scrap of paper, and closes his book, no shame in the truth: “I kept my distance.”

It would be nice for him to ask the same in return; he chases her glance with one of his own. No obvious sign of injury.

“How are you feeling?”

[unshut]

"Me? Fit as the Ambassador's fiddle. I can't say that I strayed very close either." Why, there had been the width of a whole work tabletop between her and it as the abomination had forced its way through the Gallows kitchens and they'd all trembled in their hiding places.

(The trouble with this business, the work she is most familiar with, is that frequency does little to diminish the mortal fear of a mage turned monster.)

"But," —is such a strange, delicate thing. She pauses at the middle of the book on some page without illustration, considers its contents, and then changes her trajectory. "Tell me, Richard. Is there no similar thing in the place that you came from?"

[nonvenomous]

Does the ambassador have a fiddle?

???

He hesitates, but only for the colloquialism.

“No.” A definitive no. “Magic users are commonplace but not inordinately susceptible to corruption. They study in universities.” They’re held in high regard. Richard stops himself short of singing their praises, but there’s an unease to the muddle of his brows as he considers her and where to go from there, with this book of fresh nightmares in hand.

“Warlocks sometimes cut deals with fiendish entities from the lower planes, but even they have something to gain from stability. Unless you’re referring strictly to monstrosities, in which case there are fire elementals, salamanders, hellhounds and the like.”

He slides his book neatly onto the top of the stack beside her, rift shard sickly green in the butt of his thumb.