[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

[muckspout]

Edgard rolls his eyes at the Templar comment.

"Back out into the firey destruction? I think not."

Edgard scoots himself backward and gathers his flailing limbs underneath him to a seated position. He is mostly under the table now. He pats his belt recalling that, yes, he does have a knife. He had forgotten in the mayhem. Pulling out his knife, he asks his table companion's back as she looks out,

"Do you really think knives are going to do much damage?"

[doneisdone]

"Not so much the knife as the one who wields it," Teren grunts to Edgard, pointedly giving Kostos the stinkeye. "You think magic's a good idea, calling them spirits in when we've already got more spirits than we bloody asked for?"

[muckspout]

Edgard puts his hand to his brow wondering at his choice to dive under this particular table.

“Do I have this correct? You,” He gestures to Teren, “think you can take down the beast by giving it the equivalent of mosquito bites. And you,” He gestures to Kostos, “want to add fuel to the fire.”

“Can I suggest we wait for this to pass? This table seems pretty solid.” Edgard knocks twice on the underside of the table, their ceiling.

[exequy]

Kostos—never one not to be amused when someone insults someone other than him—smirks a little at mosquito bites, despite the circumstances, before his expression goes impatient and his attention returns to the wisps. He does not have time to explain to them how wrong they are.

(And it's going to bug him that he doesn't. But still, legitimately no time.)

"No," he says, to the suggestion, and points one of the wisps to Edgard. "Guard him."

Two wisps, not one, try to follow the instruction and drift toward Edgard. Kostos puts his hand in the way to scoop one back.

"Not you."

[muckspout]

Edgard sees the lights before him and starts back hitting his head hard on the table-ceiling. He grits his teeth squinting at the impact, but still holds his knife pointing outward in front of his chest.

“That is to guard me? No, thank you, monsieur. I-“ he points upward and puffs out his cheeks.

“Table! Knife!” Edgard waves his knife lightly. “I’m fine!”

Rubble hits the table like rainfall and a still smoldering bit hits Edgard’s right ankle that didn’t quite make it under the table. Edgard flinches and folds his leg into him knocking into one of his table companions. By instinct, he covers his head, groaning in annoyance.

[doneisdone]

A glint in Teren's eye suggests Edgard has said exactly the wrong thing; it only grows brighter when he calls Kostos 'monsieur'.

Oh, so it's going to be like that, is it.

"I don't take orders from the likes of you," she snaps to the pair of them, and slinks out to commence Prompt # II.

[muckspout]

Edgard watches Teren leap away noticing her eyes on him. Edgard scrunches his brow, he is genuinely flummoxed.

“Was it something I said? What did I do?”

[exequy]

"It is not you," Kostos says. "She is insane."

Whether or not he's actually serious—and he is, for the record, at least 80% serious, maybe 95%—he sounds like he means it entirely.

He has five wisps now, aside from the one that's hovering obediently near Edgard, humming with quiet intensity and lighting up the underside of the table with their blue-white glow. Kostos jabs a finger at the one assigned to Edgard.

"That is a spirit. If you are in danger, it will create a barrier to protect you. Just one. And then it will die–" to the extent a spirit ever does "—so do not fucking waste it on something stupid."

[muckspout]

Edgard is starting to wonder just how hard he hit his head. He is certain he told this man he wanted nothing to do with these things, but apparently it was not understood. Had he switched to Orlesian without realizing? But no, he had answered him about the woman. (The answer had not reassured him in the slightest)

Edgard gazes at the light humming next to him then speaks to Kostos, a hard line in his voice,

“I will protect myself. Get it off!”

Edgard wedges himself back against a table leg and his left foot against another, shrinking away from the wisps and peering out from under the table. He shakes his head, breathing heavily, wondering which catastrophe to choose.

[exequy]

He does consider it. Genuinely. Forcing magic, helpful or otherwise, onto people who don't want it isn't something he would usually prefer to do. And it's none of his business if Edgard wants to die.

But then there's another roar of flame, shouting, crashing, and he says, "No."

A very clever and eloquent parting line, there, before he rolls out from under the table, taking the other five wisps along with him. The one instructed to guard Edgard stays behind, bobbing helpfully near his shoulder, pleased to have a job and a friend.

[muckspout]

"What do you mean, no?" He shouts after Kostos, but the man has left. If Edgard were alone, that would suit him fine, but instead he has this spooky light to contend with. Edgard is fearful to agitate anything magic, but swipes at it with his knife all the same. Nothing really happens and he didn't expect it to.

The man said it would protect him, but he doesn't know this man. He hears screams in his head from his past that he'll never unhear and wonders what the cost is. Edgard scoots as far away as possible from the wisp and stays still. Better hide out for now.