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

It's like the old saying goes: when your enemy is a fire-spouting demon, take to high ground.

Alright, he doesn't know any sayings about fire-spouting demons, but he has a feeling Ky Tung would know an old Chinese tract or two to quote just to be an ass. But when he'd made it to the courtyard, a little burned from his first narrow miss with the abomination, climbing directly up the grotesque statuary midway up to the ramparts had seemed like a perfectly reasonable tactic. Does he know what he's going to do from up here, besides catch his breath? Absolutely not. Time for some yes, and --

Yes, and that's Byerly running down there, isn't it, trailing the molten abomination behind him. Miles grimaces, every muscle already uncomfortably taut in the niche in the wall he's wedged himself into, and finds a loose piece of masonry wobbling uncomfortably under his leg. He's been avoiding Byerly like the plague since the party, but it's not like Miles wants him to die. Still breathing hard, he manages to pry loose the brick underneath and hefts it in his hand. He reckons it'll go pretty far.

He swings himself up into a crouch, one sweating hand grasping the edge of the stone wall around him. Still breathing hard, he squints down, makes a mental calculation, and hurls the rock.

His intent had been just to hit the other side of the courtyard and attract the thing's attention long enough for Byerly to get away. But in classic fashion, Miles's aim struck just a little too true -- he managed to hit the thing square on the head. Well, he has its attention, alright, and now it's moving toward where the rock came from, which unfortunately still puts Byerly on an intercept course between them. Hm. This is...the opposite of what he wanted.

"Oh, shit," Miles breathes, trying to decide whether he should be scrambling up or down. His footing slips and he starts to slide out of the niche -- right, down it is, just have to figure out a way past the abomination. Preferably for Byerly also. Miles makes a wild waving motion at Byerly as he starts to climb down the wall, frantically mouthing run, now, run!

Ah, Maker preserve him. If By made a real effort, he could duck and roll out of the path and to safety. He can sense from minute changes in the demon's stride that it's not chasing him any longer; the lengthening of the step, the tenor of the roar, shows that instead it's focused on the little man ahead of him. And so By could take advantage of that. Let the demon have the fellow, use the distraction to beat an escape. What would the harm be? A Rifter is but a dream; to allow a Rifter to be torn to pieces is no more wicked than waking a friend from a midday nap.

But he keeps running. Maker.

He manages to gain a little ground by the time he draws level with Miles. And so it gives him enough time to turn, draw his belt-knife; he hefts it, and throws, and the motion is capable and accurate enough that the knife would sink deep into the creature's eye if it didn't end up incinerated before it got there. So, so much for that.

"Go," he pants, intercepting Miles as he hits the ground and giving him a hearty shove in the other direction, "go, go - "

What the hell! Miles was one hundred percent counting Byerly's cowardly nature to point him in the other direction, and here he is, turning right around and trying to save Miles when Miles is trying to save him? Not like being heroic is a contest or anything (it is) but way to one-up him, Byerly! Miles absolutely has bigger things to worry about, but there is a small part of him that is quietly seething over it.

"That's my line," he wheezes, though he doesn't hesitate to keep moving forward. He hopes fervently that Byerly can keep up, because he won't have time to distract the thing again. "Since when do you play the hero?"

"Since when," Byerly pants, "did you have any notions about my heroism - " But the quipping is slowing him down, damn it all; his wind is not that strong, even with the constant up-and-down of the many stairs to his office, and so he saves his damned breath.

"Here - " There's a little alcove off to the side of the courtyard. Likely too small for Byerly, but Miles can fit. "Go there - "

Oh, no. Absolutely not. He is under no circumstances going to allow even the possibility of Byerly dying heroically to save him. Unfortunately for Byerly, Miles can talk and run.

"You find a place to hide. I'm faster than you," Miles points out, and keeps on running. "Which was the whole point, by the way, of distracting it. The odds of outrunning it were looking kind of thin."

What's fucking annoying is how easily Miles seems to be able to just - chat while running. Isn't he supposed to be a bloody physical wreck? Shouldn't Byerly be able to run circles around the little monster? But his breath is sobbing raggedly in his chest, and Miles is running capably and lightly. Son of a bitch.

"Then - run away," he puffs. "If you can outrun - me."

A bolt of fire roars over their heads.

Maybe Byerly just has a death wish, and Miles ought to leave him to it. But no, that would leave Byerly with the last word, which he cannot abide (and the idea of dead Byerly doesn't really thrill him that much either). Besides, aren't daring rescues his specialty? He grins around a mouthful of gritted teeth as another hail of smoldering bricks comes down overhead.

"Sure thing," he says, and immediately checks Byerly with his shoulder before running off in the opposite direction, grabbing a very hot piece of brick and hurling it at the raging abomination. He's running away, yes, he's just taking the abomination with him. Exit strategy? Uhhhhhhhhhh working on it.

Leave him to die, urges Byerly's sensible inner voice, leave him to die, leave him to die. But instead, Byerly stops running - there's a taste in the back of his throat, something salty and thick, stirred up by the agonizing exertion - and then finds a stone of his own. And he casts it in the abomination's direction, trying to direct its attention his way.

Then, thank the Maker, someone less fucking useless steps in: from behind, there's a vast explosion of magic, one of their resident mages taking the creature's attention and drawing it to a real threat. The abomination wheels around, looking for its thornier prey.

[OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

1 time to cause and/or solve problems

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only miles would get mad about byerly stealing his thunder when they are both in mortal peril

this is the only reason byerly is being heroic

he fucking knows it too

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