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.'

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1. In the Chaos

Well, if ever she needed an excuse to eat in the library... But she doesn't. She's here and the room very nearly explodes with heat and the smell is not the same as the lava rivers, but the chaos and the noise is the Darkspawn ambush that had cut through what had been the rare peaceful moment and-

At some point, she is swept off her feet and she struggles to regain it, groping for stones and bodies that aren't there-

2. After the Aftermath

She calls half a dozen people by the names of Legionaires who, if they hadn't died in front of her, were most likely dead now, but her hand is steady as she helps put out the last of the fires and tends to the injured. She's calm, capable and brusque as ever.

And then, she sits on the floor in a corner of the wrecked dining hall, back against the wall and staring up at the scorched circle in the ceiling. It's more comforting than the empty sky with it's floating celestials at the moment. She's a sickly pale and her hands shake.

"Well," she says to no one in particular, "That's a blasted mess to deal with."

I.

Does this recall one of the most frightening times of Colin's life? Yes. But this time, there's only one abomination, and Colin is no longer a child. The spike of adrenaline has him running toward the monster, coupled with an anger that this thing has dared to threaten his new family.

Anyone needing healing is seen to promptly. Otherwise, he is following the abomination as it goes, blocking any pathways back into the mess or further into the Gallows with a force field. Any time someone fighting the abomination gets hurt, the force field drops for the space of a healing spell.

II.

The end of the action sees Colin dropping his force fields and swaying, odd little giggles erupting from him. He is at once elated and drained, and has a dopey grin as he goes about making sure anyone he missed the first time gets healing, though he pulls himself together enough to look more somber when making sure anyone looking shaken has someone to talk to.

Edited 2020-08-01 17:09 (UTC)

"First one's always the worst," Colin agrees, dropping to sit by Sawbones. "Are you hurt?"

Edited 2020-08-01 17:11 (UTC)

"Skirts got a bit singed," she says, not bothering to conjure up Colin's name, since she had absolutely called him "Browdie" for the better part of ten minutes, "That's all. Startled me more than anything."

'Startled' is perhaps a mild term for how worn out and hollow eyed she looks.

1. The fight

Byerly is a little bit more capable in a fight than you'd expect, given his general air of uselessness and his spindly frame. He knows his way around a crossbow, and can handle a knife, and even does all right in a fist-fight. He survived Ghislain.

But Tevinter foot-soldiers are quite different from an abomination. This is not a fight By is equipped for or prepared for. He'd been on his way to the dining hall for a bit of lunch, and been confronted with the terrifying sight of an abomination churning its way towards him.

His coward's soul prevails, fortunately. He barely has time to take it in before he's turning on his heel and running. But the motion catches the abomination's eye, and so it gives chase.

(By wonders who it is. Colin? Leander? Matthias? One of the other mages, more outwardly self-controlled, but inside as dangerous as any of the others? What a pathetic thing it is, to be killed by your comrades.)

2. Afterwards

Byerly can be found, afterwards, amongst the rubble. He's clutching his side, and his face is smeared with soot, and he's burned down his arm - no injury is life-threatening, but they're certainly unpleasant. And Byerly's expression is exhausted, eyes fixed in a stare focused on nothing in particular.

Trailing after him was Benedict, who'd come to join him (or at least eat at the same time) rather than staying alone in Byerly's office. He's just behind him when Byerly turns tail, and, still unable to create magic of his own, and reeling from the sounds of carnage from within, Benedict is forced to agree that it seems like the thing to do.

They're not too far when something else occurs to him, and he stops dead, putting out the hand with the shard behind him. Perhaps it listens to intention, or perhaps he has some skill with it after all: but a barrier is created between them and the abomination, flames buffeting against the thin green veneer as Benedict stands there in total shock that it actually worked.

a. Fight Club

Jenny Lou had been stealing some of the rare fruit out of the kitchen (and about to get her ass handed to her by a wayward swing of the cook), when she hears the blast. Aaaand she's an idiot. So she runs towards it, yelling at the kitchen staff to get the hell out, cus some shit is going down.

Teenage bravado doesn't carry her very far before she finds the thing. The giant fucking flame monster.

"Oh shit-!" She whistles, loud and long (on the off chance that anyone hadn't notice the fuck off huge flame monster slorping down the hall) and a blast of wind funnels down the hall, shoving people through doorways out of the monster's path. "Shitshitshitshit-!"

And Jenny Lou is still fucking stupid, she keeps running towards the thing.

b. Med Club

Jenny Lou is on her feet in the aftermath. So that's something. She's covered in splotchy burns and her hair is a few inches shorter on one side and that big flame monster had definitely been a person and now he was dead.

But... ya know. She's still on her feet. And holding a bucket of water. Don't remember where the fuck that came from. There weren't any fires around her that needed putting out, she upended the whole thing over her head and settled the bucket onto her head like an oversized wooden hat.

"Ooooooooookay," she says, feeling moderately more better, and then immediately going to the first person she can find: "Hey. What the literal fucking shit was that."

i. Poesia's One (1) Bad Day

Poesia had been in the dining hall at the time. In fact, she had been one of the people reaching to help the funny little man down from the table when things had gone very suddenly sideways. She'd jumped back to avoid the flames and then sprung forward again when the shape had resolved itself into a creature.

She had gotten back handed for her trouble, sent flying head first into a wall, where she had not been able to struggle upright soon enough to join in the fight. She had finally been found and revived with elfroot, with naught to show for her effort but a ringing headache and a burn across her face.

The burn will heal. It is highly debatable if her pride will ever recover.

And now, for her penance, she's playing the shepherd dog, dutifully nudging shocky looking individuals towards healers with bright and sweet encouragements of "Come along now, dear, you mustn't stay sitting so." Anyone a bit too shocky or deemed too resistant will simply be plucked off they're feet and removed from whatever pile of rubble they'd collapsed on.

Colin appears beside him, calmly going about his job. He doesn't touch Byerly just yet, only looks at him with no fuss, hands outstretched.

"May I see that side of yours?" He'll heal the arm as well, but he'd like to know all of what he's dealing with.

She hasn't gone to see him since returning to Orlais, which isn't particularly odd (she's no more bound to him than he to her), but he'd been on her mind all the same. This is not the charming conversation she'd hoped for.

Poesia kneels in front of Byerly, with as much concern as something like her can feel for another who is not her Beloved. "Goodness, dearest, you look a fright," she says, earnest for someone with a burn across the front of her face and traces of blood at her hairline still, "Can you hear me?"

That is something one asks sometimes, usually when their insides have migrated to the outside, but she suppose it would do in a pinch here as well.

DURING.

It takes a few precious moments for the chaos in the dining hall to translate back into the Gallows' kitchens over the sound of dishware and chattering and someone scraping the burned bits off the bottom of a copper pot. Toward the back of the long kitchen, a cheerful gossiping session over flour being kneaded - slapped down repeatedly onto the wooden counter block - is interrupted not by the sounds of the nonsense in the other room itself but by Jenny Lou's emphatic shouting.

Fitcher, sitting on a stool at the edge of the works space (who is emphatically not doing work, but absolutely is here for the kitchen gossip while she eats her breakfast) looks up.

"That sounded dramatic."

AFTERMATH.

She's streaked with grit - not from the work of the abomination, but from the expansive stone kitchen hearth she and a dozen servants had taken shelter in as the abomination had made its way through to the courtyard. There's hardly in point in wiping her sooty hand off on her sooty skirt, but she's doing it anyway as she makes her way back along the path the abomination had taken through from the dining hall.

"Who was it?" is the first question she asks when she finds someone who seems in good enough shape to be worth asking.

He doesn't think she thought his name was Browdie. He suspects she thought he was someone else. And considering her background, it wouldn't be surprising. He leans in to speak in a conspiratorial tone.

"I could roll you some elfroot to smoke. Just between the two of us."

Jenny Lou hasn't gone far before Fifi barrels into the kitchen, white-faced and mindless of how the contents of her rag basket are spilling over the floor in a trail behind her.

"Il faut se cacher!" she gasps, "Abomination!" (Pronounced in hissing Orlesian, of course-- abominah-syon.)

She snorts at him, but doesn't say no. "Go on then." And she watches him, "You're holding up well."

I. ladies who lunch

"Making a bloody scene," Teren grumbles over her plate, and turns her back to the meltdown occurring behind her.
Her mind has wandered off to mission thoughts and logistical details when, after a minute or so, she realizes the room has grown hotter and the sounds behind her have changed. Looking over her shoulder, her left eye grows nearly as large as it was before the day it was scarred.
Diving under the table, blades out, she takes a moment to strategize.

II. MAYHEM

Finally seeing an opening, Teren slips low and darting as a hunting jackal, hands like a hawk's talons with their brandished knives that quickly find purchase in the backs of whatever passes for the creature's legs. She's fought abominations before, and knows to keep out of blasting range as best as one can; there's only so much one can do against a mage gone wrong, but at the very least she can hope to slow it down while the other mages clean up their mess.
It swipes at her as she cuts its legs to ribbons, sliding across the floor attached to it by one blade or another.

A shrug as he takes dry leaves and a bit of paper from his gear. "It's not my first abomination," he says. "Not even my second. And I'm counting by event, not by numbers of abominations. How upset do you get about darkspawn?"

It's an oversimplification, but he's feeling fine, so he doesn't want to question it too much. He finishes the joint and hands it to her before conjuring a spark to light it for her.

"Everybody should get upset about darkspawn," Sawbones says. It's grim, but there's no heat to it, more the weight of the Deep Roads settled heavy on her. She takes the joint and leans into the spark, lighting it and taking a heavy drag.

"I get your point, though," she concedes when she finally lets the heavy smoke blow out of her mouth.

"You do know what I mean," he says with a squint. "By the time an abomination is made, someone has already died. Usually one of my friends. But I have a lot of practice at not losing it until it's safe. And in this case, it was just the one death. It can wait until tonight, when the nightmares, you know."

Another shrug.

"How are you feeling?"

"An abomination," Colin says calmly, gently touching an unburned patch of her wrist and gesturing for her to sit down. "I'll tell you all about it if you have a seat and let me take a look at those burns."

"Hey! Ask before touching," she says, dancing away from him slightly. Which is dumb because she knows he's one of the medics, she's seen him around, but she's wound up and fidgety, "If I sit down now, I'm gonna lose it and right now?" She points emphatically to her bucket helmet, "Coping. What the fuck is an abomination?"

She's quiet for a while, takes another drag from the joint and then offers it to him. Might as well share. "Yeah. Yeah, it was like that with the Taint. When it took someone, they were dead. Wasn't fuck all you could do about it."

Her hands are a little steadier now, but she's still got a far away look to her. Sawbones sighs, letting her head drop and rubbing her forehead, "Felt like I was back in the Roads. Not sure I ain't still."

"Look at me." He holds his hands up in front of him so she can see where they are. "And breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. It'll feel incredibly stupid, but humor me.
Please?"

Colin takes a drag of the joint himself.

"Try something for me," he says, smoke puffing out as he speaks. "Take this."

He pulls a scrap of burlap from one pocket and passes it to her.

"Rub that between your hands, breathe slowly, and tell yourself it's 9:46. Pay attention to the texture."

She squints at him, crossing her arms in front of her. Which is actually a terrible fucking idea because ow, but fuck it. "Dude, I've had a panic attack before, that's not where I'm at on the vector scale of grounding techniques right now. What. Is. An. Abomination."

She gives him a look, clearly not comprehending where this is going (they don't have mental health in Dust Town, Colin), but she does as he asks. She takes the burlap and rubs it between her hands, letting her fingers catch the texture. She breathes. She tells herself it's 9:46.

After a moment, she asks, "Is it 9:46?"

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[OPEN] FROM RIFTWATCH WITH LOVE: PART ONE

Sister Sara Sawbones | ota

Colin | open

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Byerly Rutyer, open

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Jenny Lou | Open

Poesia | Open

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fitcher | open

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