[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

[windyvoice]

"Hey! Ask before touching," she says, dancing away from him slightly. Which is dumb because she knows he's one of the medics, she's seen him around, but she's wound up and fidgety, "If I sit down now, I'm gonna lose it and right now?" She points emphatically to her bucket helmet, "Coping. What the fuck is an abomination?"

[keenly]

"Look at me." He holds his hands up in front of him so she can see where they are. "And breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. It'll feel incredibly stupid, but humor me.
Please?"

[windyvoice]

She squints at him, crossing her arms in front of her. Which is actually a terrible fucking idea because ow, but fuck it. "Dude, I've had a panic attack before, that's not where I'm at on the vector scale of grounding techniques right now. What. Is. An. Abomination."

[keenly]

There's a squint as he knows what most of those words are, but the combination of them leaves a few questions. Panic attack is self-explanatory, at least.

"A mage possessed by a demon. It's dead now and can't hurt anyone again."

[windyvoice]

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

"So that thing was a person." Fuuuck. "That fucking sucks. Why did they get possessed?"

[keenly]

"Usually, either they're tricked into it, or they wanted it. Demons want into this world, and they can usually only get here through possession. Mages have a connection to the Fade, and we can hear demons trying to tempt us. We have a lot of training to keep that from happening, but sometimes, people are desperate or careless. They want to hurt more than they want to live, or they think it could never happen to them."

[windyvoice]

Honestly, that just raises more questions for her, but the adrenaline is finally starting to ebb and she's feeling more drained than punchy.

"Okay. Okay." It's not okay, not even a little bit, but she can't do anything about that. At least this isn't a new feeling. Jenny Lou lets out a long sigh, letting her arms go loose and flopping down on the ground to sit. "Ya know what's real fucked up? I wanna a cigarette, even after inhaling all that smoke."

[keenly]

"I'll see if I can find you one as soon as I'm done. Can I take a look at those burns now?"

[windyvoice]

"Yeah, all right." She's more pliable now that the fight's gone out of her for the moment. "Hey, what's you're name?"

[keenly]

"Colin. Yours?" He looks from the burns to her face as he speaks, though he looks straight back at the burns afterward.

[windyvoice]

"Jenny Lou." Her burns are a patchwork. The worst on her arms and hands, one on her neck and shoulder that her hair caught the worst of.

[keenly]

His magic starts working at the first syllable she speaks. Or it's not strictly his magic, but the magic of a spirit, a blue glow channeled from the Fade through his hands.

"Where are you from, Jenny Lou?"

[windyvoice]

"That feels weird," she says, watching the magic work. Weird weird weird, also question: "Nowhere you've heard of. I'm a Rifer."

She holds up the hand with the riftshard, fingers wiggling to make the green light dance.

[keenly]

"I know." A glancing smile turns up to her before he continues his work. "And yet I asked."

[windyvoice]

She sticks her tongue out at him. It's that kind of day.

"I wasn't from anywhere to start with. My mom was a singer and we traveled a lot."