faderift | [OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

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.'

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She waits for him to speak and huffs a little when he's finished.

"We aren't nothing either," she says, with a little of her regular tartness, "We do what we can. That's all any of us can do. But this man," And she reaches for the letter now, rolling it out again and frowning, "Somebody made some big promises to this man, I think."

Her briskness helps a little. Unconsciously, Salvio straightens his shoulders by a few half centimetres.

"I reviewed the records," he tells her, because he has no one else to tell, and because he trusts her. Or else he thinks that he does, as much as he trusts anyone. "Just--a cursory review, between tasks. I have recommended a fuller review for 'Felix'. If Riftwatch has written to him, it will be in our records."

And then what? That is the question.

"I do not see why anyone would make their way here unless they were--expecting something. I think we were... not it."

"I was in the dining hall when he showed up. He was plenty clear that we'd failed whatever expectations he'd had of us before..." She trails off. They're sitting in the middle of what happened right after 'before'. She drifts a little then something kicks in her mind that pulls her back. She looks up at him, frowning, "You said you checked the records? You didn't find anything?"

Which was actually unsettling, considering the impeccable quality of his record keeping.

Salvio flaps a hand, trying to strike some balance between reassuring and pay no mind to me, or at least not too close a mind.

"It was a cursory review. I, we, that is, Base Operations--we are working on reordering some of the records, transferring some of the older records to the, um, archival storage, but-- Well, no. I did not find anything. It is entirely possible that something was overlooked. Or if he interpreted some general message wrongly, or--if some general message were written, um, perhaps too strongly. There are many possibilities. And the waste is... senseless."

He glances away, down the charred path marked on the floor of the hall. The tables and benches have been left aside, leaving space for the sweeping and the washing. It will take work. At least there is work.

"I speak not only of our property. But of--the waste of life. Personal opinion, of course."

"There should have been something..." She's frowning into the middle distance, thinking. The correspondence had clearly been ongoing, there should have been some kind of sign recently. The last brings her focus back to him, even as it casts the Deep Roads over her. The corner of her mouth twists ups a little, a bitter little smile.

"Spend enough time trying to haul Dusters off death's door and after a while, every death feels like a waste. Suppose it's good to know I'm not the only one feelin' that for once."

The corners of Salvio's mouth upturn just slightly, making a brief sort of smile in response. It is grim and full of commiseration instead of humor, but he does mean it.

"Well. Your work and mine are quite--different. Empathy has a place in your work. Not to say that it does not, in mine, of course there is a time for it, in the work of Base Operations, but-- ah," and he pushes a hand over his face, with a little sigh, "but this is--pointless. Um. You-- We were discussing the letter?"

"Suppose." She lets him redirect, both because she's not especially suited for talk of compassion (no room for that in Dust Town, hard to think there's room in her for it) and because it's bothering her:

"This letter's too recent and it's not the first one that's been sent," she says, pushing it towards him so it sits between them, "Be one thing if it was from years ago, but even with the archives in disarray, you should've been able to find something pretty quick if they were goin' through official channels."

He's the one that pushed for the topic change, but when she pushes the letter back toward him, Salvio does not take it up again. He looks down at it on the blackened table with the apprehension of a man facing down a snake.

"Ah," he says. "Well. Perhaps. I-- did make the search in haste. Without much care. I will look again. As I said, we-- we are reorganizing, and so things are not so easy to find as they might otherwise be. I would hate to-- to speculate. Before that. Not that you are," but you sound like you might be, please do not be, and Salvio swallows, hard, "but, just. That. Yes."

"No, I'm speculating," she says, relenting and grabbing the letter to fold it up again. "Sorry, salrocka. Having a puzzle to think over makes being here a bit easier, but you're right. Better to wait and see what's on file."

Damn. Salvio raises his hand to push his fingers against his eyes, to break his eye contact with his fixed stare at the place where the letter was.

"I understand your meaning, Sister. But I will confess, I... I hope that there is no puzzle. That the blame is--easy to assign."

"Yeah, that would be nice." It's not going to be. This sort of thing never is. But there's not point putting more stress on Salvio's shoulders than there already is. Sawbones' sighs and rubs the back of her neck where the muscles are sore.

"I'm going to bring tea around. Want a cup?"

Salvio rubs a thumb against the charred tabletop. They were in good condition before. Now what are they? He was in the courtyard when the abomination carved its path here, but he can still imagine it. And to think that there is more to that sad story, that there is something else here--

"Yes," he says, cutting himself off. "Please. If it will not--be a trouble, of course."

[OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

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