[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

[unshut]

"In these clothes? Absolutely not. This is a silk shirt."

No it's not, but it is very well tailored.

[nonvenomous]

“And what kind of friend would I be if I held that against you?”

He looks. It is very well-tailored.

"Do you use someone in Kirkwall?"

[unshut]

Breezily, she replies, "I will give you her name."

She won't even ask for a favor in exchange, though she'd extorted one out of Messere Vorkosigan for the same.

"When you go home and tender your resignation, do you suppose you'll be obligated to save that world too?"

[nonvenomous]

“Thank you,” says Richard, who has dragged his arm down to fish absently for his flask again, only to divert to his satchel instead. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Seriously.

He pulls a slender journal from beneath the flap of his bag, and scratches in a quick note to self with a chalk pencil. If she happens to peep the name to him while he’s already writing, well -- all the better.

“In the most literal sense of the word,” is his answer, meanwhile, on the subject of obligation.

[unshut]

"No rest for the wicked, or so I've heard," she says from amidst the gentle curl of fingers against her cheek. Then adds, "Madame Moresina Alder in Canoshaw Alley. Tell her I sent you and she may give me a discount."

See? Look at how agreeable she is when the request is a reasonable one.

[nonvenomous]

With pause enough for a (wicked, as charged) glance over in aside, Richard scrawls on, tidy print with a dotted i and an underlined Canoshaw.

His next look, less put on, holds on Fitcher seated in the gallery as a complete portrait for a beat. He was going to say something. He draws in an odd breath instead, caught shivery in the middle, and turns to flop the book shut and tuck it away.

“I owe you a favor,” he decides on his own, once he’s tipped his head back to the wall.

He should probably go.

[unshut]

"Do you?"

She is unflinching under observation—used to being looked at to the point that it would be difficult to register any study as particular.

"I can't imagine what for."

[nonvenomous]

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a good tailor in an unfamiliar plane of existence?”

He furrows his brow, fuzzy lines carved in harsh around a pull at the corners of his mouth. Pls.

An offhand flick sees the latch of his satchel flipped shut.

"I'm glad you decided to join me."

[unshut]

"That follows. I'm excellent company."

Fitcher mugs back at him fron against the palm of her hand, all eyebrows. Then that too settles, smoothing out comfortably under the veil made up of the smoke, and the warm evening air, and the decent company shared in some quiet place. There is such a pleasant honesty in certain acerbic types of conversation.

She should go before she gets too comfortable.

"But thank you. My nerves are quite soothed." Her eyeline slides toward his stack of books, then back again. "You shouldn't read those before bed, you know. They'll give you nightmares."

[nonvenomous]

Richard will stand.

He can do it under his own power. His own power, and the wall’s power, one hand flattened spidery wide to the side, and then across the top, buoyed by a deep breath and a chill breeze that’s started to pick at the jut of his ears and the flutter of the (less fashionable) shirt under his jacket.

He picks up one book before a wave of static takes him, and he reels upright into an uneasy chuckle, the book planted atop the wall while he waits for it to pass.

“I doubt I’ll be doing much reading,” he reassures her, and gives the one book a pat. He looks down to the next book, and she can watch a grown man consider in real time leaving books out in a random gallery overnight because he isn’t sure bending over to pick them up is worth it anymore. His satchel is still down there too. RIP.

[unshut]

Not to worry; what are companions for if not to pick up the slack in instances such as this one?

"No, I don't think I will either."

Untangling herself from... herself in a pleasant stretch of limbs, Fitcher passes the remaining books one at a time so he can add them to his pile. The satchel is handed up last, after which her hand remains expectantly extended. Help an old woman up off the ground, won't you Richard?

[nonvenomous]

It is quite literally the least he can do, once he has -- by their powers combined (he says “Thank you,” ) -- reassembled the stack, and hitched the strap of his satchel onto his shoulder. His right hand is warm in closing around hers to draw her up, keeping with certain myths correlating the temperature of one’s extremities with their base nature.

He is sneaky enough to pass plausible deniability muster for a normal human in the way he brushes his thumb over her wrist when he does it.

[unshut]

Fitcher's hand is long - broad palm, long fingers; a tradewoman's tools -, and her grip is sturdy, though for a moment she steadies herself off his elbow until being upright seems more natural and the buzz under her skin finds some sense of equilibrium.

Then, with an appreciative pat to the forearm, she dividing herself from him. Her limbs can be trusted well enough to do as ordered.

"Remind me, would you? What your answer was when I asked whether you were well."

She remembers. But it doesn't hurt to reaffirm the thing, now does it?

[nonvenomous]

Dick endures steadying and patting with all the absent amenability of a mule standing by while it’s hitched to a plow, as solid as he’s required to be, with a sly glance down to check in when she lingers at his elbow, and again when she steps away. Whatever he might have been turning over in his mind is interrupted by a pop quiz. There’s a pinch at his brow, milder than the usual muddle, and more honest for it.

He probably didn’t answer.

“That I was well,” he says, timely, in spite of red eyes and a mild processing delay.

“Just tired.”