[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

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.

[indissection]

Her immediate reaction is, of course, to fight back against the person grabbing her - she's been in enough scrapes to recognise that she must do something, even if she doesn't have much strength to her. When she recognises who it is, however, Sidony calms a fraction, letting him pull her away from the rubble and the flames and the general disaster that has become of the world around them.

Nothing of this is something she is prepared for. Broken bones, torn muscles, cuts and wounds and scrapes? She can manage those with enough practical experience to carry her through. This sort of magical disaster is nothing, and the panic is obvious as she reaches out to grip at Bastian's hand, wishing there was something more she could do.

"Where can we go?" she asks, frantic and uncertain, gripping her bag so tightly that her fingers are turning white against the ash and smoke.