[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

[overharrowed]

"I think the triage process is still mostly on people, not the space," he agrees, taking the higher end. (It is possible he'll regret this later, but his grip is steady.) "No one told me to start cleaning, either, I just figured it would need to be done eventually and my first-aid is mainly of the 'patch them up long enough to get them to someone who knows what they're doing' variety."

[heorte]

Hefting the table, Ellis chuckles softly.

"That's about what I'm capable of, but I think between us you might get more mileage out of it."

Mages usually do. Ellis' hastily applied bandages don't compare with what he's seen mages do, even when healing is far from their expertise.

"Lift with your knees," is the warning Julius gets before Ellis lifts his end of the table. He does politely wait to see if Julius manages it before attempting to move it one way or another.

[overharrowed]

Julius does manage it, relatively smoothly, for all he is going to regret it later. (Once the hall is clean, he can rest his leg propped up in his office a few days. It will be fine.)

He lets conversation lapse as they carry the table over, out of the way, but once it's where Ellis wants it, he picks up again: "Honestly, any aid that keeps someone alive until they can get to someone more experienced is equally good. I'd never underestimate the importance of a well-timed bandage or pressure just because no magic was involved."

[heorte]

"Aye, that's true enough." Ellis leans a hand on the edge of the table, heaves in a breath. "And I suppose both methods came in handy today."

They were lucky no one had been killed, but Ellis doesn't say as much. It's the kind of observation that brings forth all the worst possibilities. They're likely all already aware.

"Did you recognize him?" is a thorny question as well, but to Ellis seems an easier topic of discussion in the middle of all this wreckage.

[overharrowed]

Julius shakes his head. "No, I'm fairly certain I'd never seen him before. I don't know the name 'Livia,' either. Have you heard anyone say anything?"

[heorte]

"No. Just that he wasn't one of ours."

But even that is a fraught turn of phrase. He wasn't a member of Riftwatch, but he was a mage. That meant something, Ellis can tell.

It would feel the same had it been a Warden, succumbing to the Calling in front of the entire company. Whether or not they were a member wouldn't change the sense of responsibility and dread Ellis would feel.

"Are you alright?"

[overharrowed]

A flash of a tired smile, brief. "Fine - nothing a day or two of rest won't take care of. I'm grateful I had my staff with me; I'd started to get out of the habit of carrying it everywhere within the Gallows proper, but I'd done a bit of training before the midday meal, and I didn't want to walk up all the stairs to put it away."

He doubted many mages would be walking around without, at least for the next few weeks.

"We'll see how the other shoe falls, but that's a problem for all of Riftwatch." Not only the mages. Or perhaps he's not as sure of it as he sounds, and is speaking it into truth.