[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

[cozen]

“Me, too.”

And he could also be helping. His head feels clear. But it’s clear the way it does when he’s in danger, in a fight, in pursuit. His focus is too narrow, and now restless, snagging on the odd fraying where Byerly’s shirt is burned, the way two splinters of wood have landed perfectly parallel to one another in the rubble, a scorch-mark so dark it could be a hole.

“I had started to wonder if people were not overreacting, you know, but—“

But when he looks Byerly in the face again, he smiles. It’s no great feat of bravery, just training so thorough it’s instinct. Or real instinct that fed into training. He couldn’t say.

“Will it hurt worse if you sit down with me? Only for a minute.”

[bouchonne]

Why would it hurt worse? If anything, Bastien's presence will defray the pain. Mitigate it. At least distract from it. And so By smiles back at him - a bit of sweat prickling on his forehead, but with few other signs of distress - and takes a seat.

"They said it was an outsider," he says, his voice a little faint but not too bad. "I'd thought it was one of ours, but apparently not."

[cozen]

“That’s... a little bit better than the worst it could be.”

Not good. Good would be no abomination at all. Worse would be one of their own. Worst would be—

“And it is good it did not happen on the docks. In the city.”

Some of the wood and rubble across the floor is still glowing red with embers. He bends his arm to hold Byerly’s, thumb to the inner side of his elbow. It isn’t all he’d like to do, but that’s why it’s all he does.

“The Viscount and the Guard Captain—“ Never mind the loss of life, if they had to row across the harbor while Kirkwall summoned its guardsmen and few lingering, likely-retired and lyrium-addled Templars. “—would be very cross.”