faderift | [OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

[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

A little pleased, a little miffed, Doki looks at the slender sliver of apple core. Then she decides that she's over it, and chucks it across the room, into a pile of ash that was once a tapestry or a table or a bench or something.

"New Edgard," she says, as she turns back. "Do you think that's the problem? We are all new. No one knows what is going on and no one is in charge."

Edgard looks at the destruction around them and back to the woman in front of him. He raises his eyebrows, grinning with juice and apple bits still flying.

"Believe it or not, I gathered that. At least, I'll fit in." He shrugs. "Not really one for following people in charge, anyway. But, it might be nice if things weren't constantly burning."

Edgard swallows the apple hunks with a loud gulp and nods towards the woman. "Thanks for the apple, I was starving."

Her eyes narrow, and she gives him a full once-over, lingering here and there.

"You look too big to be starving," she announces, once she has seen what she needs to see. "I can tell. But I understand. There are lots of apples if you look. There are lots of lots of things, if you look. And other people aren't always looking."

Get it?

This woman has Edgard's full attention now. He cocks an eyebrow.

"Well, nobody's looking all the time. Nice to meet someone who--picks apples." He half-grins. "Seen a few orchards in my day."

Edgard folds his arms over his chest, surveying this woman, and then laughs while shaking his head.

"Hell of a distraction we had just now, huh?"

A little smirk pricks up the corners of Doki's mouth. Should she be proposing this kind of thing hot on the heels of her last round of thievery? No. But then again--

"If you find yourself somewhere you're not supposed to be, you say you're helping. Apples rolled real far."

Edgard has a wide grin now. His arms sweep out from his chest, looks down to meet the woman's eyes, and nods. He's in.

"What kind of apples? I am always helpful."

Maybe it's a bad idea, but this is the sort of excitement he can get behind. It's a lot less scary and a little more in his wheelhouse than flaming monsters.

She clicks her tongue against her teeth. "They don't have much in the larders. I keep looking. But there is a little storeroom that has some steel in it. Weathered, all beaten. If it was moved, it would make room for new steel. Maybe that would be a kind of helping."

Edgard's entire body wilts. He's looking for fun, not heavy labor.

"Steel is heavy. Steel is not easy to hide. What would I want with steel?"

"New Edgard."

She gives him a Look, unimpressed.

"You sell the steel."

Edgard rolls his eyes and gives an exaggerated imitation of her Look. He may be New Edgard, but he's not Idiot Edgard.

"I know you sell the steel. But, I repeat: steel is heavy and not easy to hide."

Edgard is intrigued by this woman, maybe even likes her, but he's not going to be her cart horse.

Once he gives her the Look, Doki melts her Look off of her face, and mugs horribly instead. Boo, you whore.

"O-kay," she says, heavily, "so you are a weak baby and you do not want to work hard. There are feather pillows that might be hiding a bushel of apples. Is that better for you?"

"Much better."

Edgard gives her a wink. If she wants a rise out of him, she's going to have to try harder than that.

"Are the feather pillows comfy? Are they silk? And what kind of apples? Don't say steel."

Edgard points a finger at her, his mouth twitching, hiding a laugh.

Having started to open her mouth to reply, Doki clamps it shut into a frown.

"Who keeps steel under a pillow," she says scornfully, "that would be the worst place. The pillows, they are okay. No silk. We are in Riftwatch. They have no silk unless they had it before they came here and they brought it with them."

Edgard nods, looking away in thought and then snaps his eyes back on the woman.

“So what’s your plan?”

Doki scuffs the toe of her boot against the floor, tracing a mark in the dirt and ash that has drifted and collected there. She cocks her head, and draws another line, directly parallel to the first.

"My plan," she says, casually, "is that I am not bothered about pillows. I will go and look through all of the storerooms to see if I can find any apples that I like. Because everyone is very busy, and I am very small."

She shoots him a glance.

"And what is your plan, New Edgard?"

Edgard folds his arms and raises his eyebrows.

“My plan is your plan if you’ll have me. Except I’m not small and maybe a pillow or two.”

Don’t need to be small when things are burning.

That makes her laugh. Her teeth show--peasant teeth, not good--and her eyes crinkle at the corners.

"I have seen men that would make you look small. I have seen women that would make you look small. I am Avvar, and we have folk who come of bears, New Edgard, so I am only a little impressed with you. But you are bigger than me and I like you."

She turns on her heel and starts off down the hall, heading for the doors, away from the big scorched hole in the wall.

"More apples," she calls blithely over her shoulder, "come on, let us look."

Edgard, a little dazed and a lot impressed by that speech, watches her walk away for a moment before stumbling after her.

“I’ve met bears,” he offers a little out of breath. “Didn’t get along too well with them. You’re alright though.” He gives a crooked grin.

“You haven’t told me your name. Is that anywhere in your plan?”

"Yevdokiya an Waslyna O Bearhold," she says cheerfully, and grins up at him again. "Another bear. We will be getting along. So, I will let you call me Doki."

She is, as she had said, small, especially compare to tall New Edgard. Her confidence makes the memory of her larger, which is generally enough, and her quick pace makes her legs seem as if they must be longer than they actually are.

"I fed you and told you my name so you cannot betray me now. This is how it works. You understand?"

"Doki," He repeats, testing the sound of it. "I won't betray you."

He looks down at her his crooked grin broadening. Edgard knows what loyalty is and it suits him more often than it doesn't, but he also has paid the price for it more than once.

"So long as that arrangement goes both ways." He raises an eyebrow, his tone is teasing, but he means what he says.

She raises the eyebrow opposite the one he'd raised at her, as she shoulders open the door out of the main hall.

"You have to give me food first. Then the pact will be sealed. Until then, I can make no promises. But I will try to remember how much I like you until you give me food."

The passageway on the other side of the door is fairly narrow and has a gentle downward slope. There are no windows here, but sconces light the way, one every few feet.

"I will make that a priority."

Edgard hesitates a moment and takes a breath before entering the passageway. He wouldn't normally enter such a spooky place with someone he just met or even alone for that matter. Yet, he finds himself squeezing into it behind Doki, still smiling.

"Try not to get me stuck in here or-" He searches. "--eaten by something."

Doki shoots him a look over her shoulder, like please.

"You're not that big. If you get stuck, it will be your own fault. And there is nothing scary here--" Well, she squints, and has to add, "Nothing scary here anymore. Unless you are afraid of people who talk a lot."

Edgard laughs at that.

"If you mean you, no. Anyone else? Yes, potentially." As a rule, most of the time.

He continues to follow her down, down, every so often glancing back toward where they entered until its no longer visible.

"How far does this go?"

She makes a little face at him this time, ghoulish, all teeth. "You should be a little afraid of me. I am full of potential."

But she is satisfied whether or not he agrees, and turns back to keep leading the way.

"It does not go very far. We will be there soon. Do you not like caves, and things like caves?"

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