faderift | CLOSED

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CLOSED

WHO: Barrow, Ellis, Richard, & Wysteria
WHAT: Ill-advised Rift tampering to summon a magical cat.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Beneath Darktown.
NOTES: Blood and probably gore, will update as it goes.

Deep beneath the bowels of Darktown:

Shades stalk through acid green-limned ruins towards the sound of combat, standing water strangely still around the ripples cast off by their lurching pursuit. Behind them, the veil pulses where it’s freshly slit, a half-submerged rift spilling Fadelight across the surface, filtering through the shadows of confused fish.

The water is only knee-high, but it’s everywhere, weighing at armor, dragging at feet.

A scream echoes through the chamber, rising shrill through the darkness, cycled into rounds by the stone ceiling carved out far overhead.

Raised up some ten feet, seated crisscross on the platform of a crumbling statue, Richard Dickerson pauses in his incantation to watch the skeletal shape of a terror demon unfolding itself slick from the water before him. His left hand is still amidst a snarl of inky black smoke, palm turned up to the dagger in his right, the incense in his brazier alight with green embers. Near eye to eye with the demon at this height, he flashes the point of the blade swift across his life line and squeezes his fist.

Blood dribbles and hisses into the brazier.

The incense bursts into green flame.

YOLO.

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Something is—not wrong exactly for, having made a stubborn habit out of saving all her cynicism for social ambitions rather than scientific ones, Wysteria Poppell would never jump to such a conclusion under these circumstances. Different then.

Something is different and it has been since first they reached this place with its worn thin Veil. She had felt it like a breath on the back of her neck, or the pins and needles prickle of a limb coming awake, and had thought to herself Why, it must only be in anticipation of the work. And for a time, as Mister Dickerson had worked his spell and they'd loitered about at the fringe of the weakened Veil, she'd allowed herself to be convinced of the fact. For there is something like a dim and distant glow in the weaving of his work, lingering like a semi transparent fog at the edge of her vision when the chamber had still be relatively quiet. And the opening of the rift had only intensified the effect, not diminished it.

Her head hurts, is a very distant thought amidst the shriek of demons spilling from the re-opened rift, and the slosh of water, and the sounds of combat, and the bright pulse of magecraft, and the acid green crackle of the Fade. Or something hurts anyway. She had stopped trying to take notes because of it which makes her uniquely prepared to—

THWACK! The arrow bolt slams into the terror demon, punching through its ribcage. Her close proximity, place a mere few feet below on a more crumbly section of the statue's base as a sort of last line of defense, makes up for her otherwise stunning lack of aim.

Let it be known that Barrow does not want to be here, does not want to help Dick get his stupid cat or have anything to do with this, and yet. Call it his weakness for women requesting his help or some deeply buried sense of duty, but Wysteria has strongarmed him into showing up, and here he is.

He's mostly been standing and ruminating, calf-deep in disgusting water with his hammer poised for combat, but his attention wanders toward Dick as the incantation proceeds, and he catches that aspect of it right as it happens.

"Fucking blood magic, Dickerson, really?" Barrow calls, exasperated.

Splitting his attention between Richard on the platform, Wysteria at the base, and the demons clawing through the Rift is not such an easy thing.

Inevitably, Ellis has drifted to the space in front of the statue. The water at his calves is muddy with ichor and viscera from the first arrived demon, unfortunate enough to be met with the business end of Ellis' mace. All of this is business as usual, and anxiety only prickles at the edges of his thoughts when he thinks of Richard atop the crumbling statue, Wysteria below him.

It turns out the business of experimenting with rifts is less unsettling when done above ground, with plenty of space for people to retreat in the event things go wrong.

Instead, Ellis beelines for the shrieking terror demon before it can entertain retribution, or garner further interest in Richard. Two thudding cracks of his mace and unnatural thrashing of overlong limbs keeps the thing from pursuing it's upward momentum even as water splatters upwards with each frantic, labored movement as the demon tries to find it's feet.

"Stay on task," Ellis calls back immediately, voice sharp in spite of exertion. The rift above them crackles and pulses, the water around them blackening and sizzling in turn as further visitors queue up to make an entrance. His attention leaves Barrow, eyes flicking back up to find Wysteria, reassure himself she's still secure on her perch.

The demon claws its own breast, splintering the bolt buried between its ribs with a rotten, whistling shriek. Wysteria fills its field of vision, Fade light glinting in a dozen eyes buried like barnacles in its face, mandibles rattling outstretched as it coils and

has one lil katydid knee shattered out from beneath it by the crush of Ellis’ mace.

It flounders to find him in its talons, black water boiling into foam around thrashing bone until it phases out in a flash of light. The water it left behind sloshes empty in its wake. A beat later, a fresh pulse of motion surges into a wave through Ellis’ feet, demon breath hot on the back of his neck as it surges up, hobbled, directly behind him.

A shade lurches at Barrow out of the gloom, the first of many groping for purchase as they begin to converge on the statue. Two, three, five. More of them than he has fingers free to count on.

Also: Dick cuts him a look that’s all venom from on high, even as something cat-like eels wet and misshapen out of the fire and into his arms.

The wet shape slithering out of the fire draws her attention like a beacon and for a moment, Wysteria's freckled face is bright with a sort of glee that is fully at odds with the gloom of the cavern and the very real issue of the number of demons and minor spirits being rapidly disgorged from the torn open rift below them.

"Has it worked, Mister Dickerson—?" She is halfway through calling, all incongruous delight as she reaches without looking to fetch another arrow from her quiver. And then the acid green scar of the rift hanging over the water pulses bright, crackling bright like a warning flag being waved as black robed Despair forces through it, and something in her hand answers to it.

It's a specific, splitting kind of agony—shocking for its sudden intensity. Wysteria makes a sharp sound, recoiling. The bow slips out of her grasp, clattering off the statue's base and splashing down into water waiting below.

The look is caught and met, but there are more pressing things than shitfights at the moment, if that's possible.
The demon erupting behind Ellis receives the warhammer's haft to its ribcage, too close for Barrow to get in a proper swing-- but he backs away then, to whirl it at the converging shades, careful not to catch the Warden in his arc. What good is a heavy weapon against these half-ethereal creatures, which are solid enough to rend with their claws but not enough to get in a good whack?

He sees the splash of the bow falling and glances up to check on Wysteria, but can do little other than that, occupied as he is.

Adrasteia isn't here this time, to make dealing with Despair easier. Ellis' expression darkens with frustration the instant he recognizes the creature; anything given to flitting away at a moment's notice is always a difficulty. He knows what has to be done, and that it'll be annoyingly difficult, but squares up regardless.

But the dropped bow—

"Wysteria?" he shouts, before following it with a louder, prompting, "Richard?"

The rift can be closed now, between the two of them, surely. If they're finished, if the science has been achieved, if Wysteria isn't hurt—

The bow clatters, Dick twists sharply to see. Pupils peel open wide in the cat’s sightless eyes as she tilts with him, slithering at his shoulders.

“...It’s done!”

His voice carries saw-edged over the din -- he’s not accustomed to raising it -- remnant flame still licking orange at incense overhead as he picks his way down the statue’s flank. He leaves five-fingered smears of crimson behind in his hurry; crumbles of stone click and clop from a slip under his boot, cascading into black water. It’s a distinct break from the sounds of hammer cracking bone, a demon drowning, boots sloshing in the muck --

“Miss Poppell?” he’s rounding the base for her, sure-footed in the dark, just above the water.

It’s time to close the door.

Edited (dont look at me) 2021-04-12 05:23 (UTC)

Yes, it is time.

She is bent nearly double in pain, forearm clutched and her face senselessly buried against it. Below them, Despair with all its teeth and here the sweep of shades, and closer still Mister Dickerson and the shape of the magic roiling across his shoulders—

He is just to her when the pulse of the anchor in Wysteria's palm turns acid hot and lashes out to catch some opportunistic shade mid-drift, sending the spirit recoiling from their company. And then, as if reminded of its purpose by the assault, the anchor flares hotter still. Seemingly self motivated, it leaps snarling after the open rift. The connection is like a thunderclap, primordial-loud in the water logged cavern.

The shriek of the rift being drawn closed sounds like so much white noise to her ear.

They're on the verge of being overwhelmed in the moment before Wysteria turns the tide, Barrow recognizing in himself the creeping knowledge that he is becoming fatigued and will never outlast these creatures. How could they have thought that one Warden and a rusty Templar would've been enough on the ground? Is this how it--

The rift spits and roars, and Barrow is compelled to lower his hammer as the demons shriek back into it. He's seen them before, fought around them certainly, but it's one of those things that just never gets old: a glowing hole in the sky, reacting to someone's magic palm.
The resulting shockwave nearly knocks him prone, but he plants his feet to hold fast and is glad of it (Maker knows what's in this water.)

"Is everyone," he pants into the ensuing silence, "alive?"

It's almost business as usual: demons dissolving into fragments, a sickening crackle of connection overhead. the concussive boom of the rift closing. None of it is necessarily unfamiliar. He's been trailing after Tony and Wysteria's rift experiments for months and months; he knows what it sounds like.

But overhead it's one flexing line of connection, not two. Something's changed.

Ellis has abandoned Barrow even before the rift has properly knit back together. Ichor-stained water sloshes around his legs as he briskly turns and hastens up the crumbling rock towards Wysteria and Richard both. Presumably to look them over himself, whatever might be said outloud in response to the question.

For her part, Wysteria doesn't have an answer for Barrow. Rather the moment the rift seals fully shut and the connection between it and the anchor severs, she pitches as if shoved by it—stumbling like some ungainly thing, all elbows and knees. She grasps clumsily (and blindly, guided by that hot glow of the arcane) in Dick's direction while crumpling toward the statue's base.

Wysteria’s anchor jolts and Richard spooks in the light, his outstretched hand snapped back, Thot’s ears pinned flat. Their eyes are pale in the electric crackle and snap of it. Confused, alarmed, suspicious, in that order.

The echoes of the collapse are still rebounding around the chamber when he hisses a healing spell beneath his breath.

It’s not for her -- the wound across his palm closes over as he lurches to catch her up under the arms, mostly elbows himself. A regular barrel of monkeys over here, wrapped around her with an all-too-keen awareness for the sound of Ellis churning water on the approach. That the move to stop her falling takes precedence over a very pressing need to wash the literal blood from his hands is a real testament to their friendship.

”Yes!” he calls back hoarse to Barrow’s question. We’re all fine here, how are you? Much more quietly, and with greater urgency, he adds in aside for Wysteria: “Are you hurt?”

The goblin on his shoulder stretches an arm long to touch her hair, very helpful.

Getting up out of the morass is going to require too much agility and energy from someone who is already quite tired, so Barrow just sloshes toward the statue, slowing his step once he sees that Wysteria isn't in danger of falling.
He stands and looks up at the others, still trying to catch his breath.

"Well done then," he says flatly, eyeing the cat-creature on Richard's shoulder. "Miss Poppell? You all right?"

Edited 2021-04-13 20:48 (UTC)

What a sight to behold.

There's a spared glance to Thot, outstretched paw and all, which sparks some flicker of pleased half-recognition before the entirety of Ellis' attention narrows to Wysteria. Richard is upright, seemingly not possessed or in danger of exploding into flame, doing an admirable job of not dropping Wysteria. Ellis' hand grips his elbow briefly in passing acknowledgement (a silent congratulations on retrieving your cat holding place for a whole different set of questions) as he lets his mace clank to the stone at his feet to free both his hands, touch her shoulder lightly.

"What happened?" comes first, followed by a quieter, prompting, "Wysteria?"

Pap, goes the little creature's paw and that of all things seems to be what narrows some of her otherwise scattered attentions. She blinks like a concussed fawn up at the creature, and then at Dick and everyone in is asking some variant of Are you well? and here now is Ellis, and her arm still hurts, pain pulsing from palm to elbow in time with her heartbeat.

But there is the cat, and to her eye its dark sharp is all shot through by filaments of magic like a jumble of threads pulled into some feline shape. She stares at it, realizing only later that she has been in the process of absently answering their half dozen questions:

"I don't know. Something is wrong with my anchor, I think. A mutation, perhaps. Like Mister Stark's and Madame Baudin's. It is likely nothing to—it only hurts a little."

Wysteria blinks from the goblin hunched over Richard's shoulder, takes in the awkward shape its master has contorted himself into in an effort to keep her upright, and makes some effort to steady herself.

"I've lost the bow," is said in the same breath as: "How charming. I'm so pleased that it's worked."

Richard glances to the grip at his elbow and nods once, a flash of his teeth nearly a grin as he reaches to turn Wysteria’s wrist over gently between them. A gossamer string of ectoplasm follows Thot’s paw back to his shoulder; she’s left a shimmering trail up his front and across his sleeves, the whip of her tail still heavy with the stuff where it’s slapped in a U across his back.

“Yes,” he says, “thank you all. Sincerely.”

The end of that gratitude even finds its way to Barrow via a (less poisonous) look before he checks down to see that her arm hasn’t charred itself, split open, turned entirely green, etc. Barring that, he’ll make to pass her over into Ellis’ care,

only a little awkward in his readiness to extricate himself.

“I saw where it landed.”

"Eyyep, we'll find it," grunts Barrow, acknowledging Dick's glance with little more than a nod. There's still a conversation to be had about the blood magic, but it can wait, and, as far as he's concerned, it doesn't have to be with him.

Instead, he starts to poke around in the murky water with the haft of his warhammer, searching for any irregularities in the floor that could be the fallen bow.
He hits something; pausing to work the haft under the object, he scoops it up to reveal a dead spider the size of a small dog.

He lowers it back in without comment.

Some fraction of Ellis' concern is eased by coherent answers, though his steadying hands remain, lingering at her elbow as he nods back at Richard. The cat. The bow. Right. Below them, he can hear Barrow's sloshing progress through the water and is content that nothing grows back in response to the sound.

The dreams of a few months ago have turned to hazy impressions, but he remembers the slinky cat that had ridden into his sightline on Richard's shoulders.

"Does your cat have a name?"

A question that's followed, very closely, by a quieter, "Let me see?" to Wysteria, with full knowledge that there's nothing he'll be able to do for her. Can a change like this even be caught by the eye?

"Thank you, Ser Barrow," she calls, for it is the simple thing to say. The one which makes the most sense even as she is passed along from Dick to Ellis, and invited to turn her hand over while the glint of the cat's presence leaks like light under a closed door.

Her hand is—it looks the same, doesn't it? Burning a little brighter, maybe. Or the shape of the gash in her palm has widened. Or maybe that it only her imagination, given over to the pulsating pain of it. Her fingers tremble a little under Ellis' inspection, and she decides to pay all of it very little mind.

Instead, she says, "We will need to take records of the thaumoscope's readings." The instrument box is there, tucked between what remains of the statue's feet. "And watch must observe the creature very carefully, Mister Dickerson, lest it be somehow different from what you are used to. And I—"

Some jolt of sensation pinches in her forearm. "I believe I would like to sit sown for a moment, Mister Ellis. Thank you."

Dick slips into the water with the kind of quiet grace one might expect from a reptile, hardly a splash before he’s waist deep.

“Her name is Thot.”

A flick of his dagger beneath the surface precedes the cat in question crawling down his arm and into the water, claws pricking quiet at the leather of his armor. True to his word, he’s looping back to the shallows where he believes he caught the splash, more distaste than alarm for the corpse Barrow fishes out along the way. Thot paddles in circles after him, sleek as a caiman.

“She feels the same.” Slimier, perhaps, than he expected. “It was around here.”

He thinks. Richard pauses to turn in place, measuring the distance back to the base of the statue before he stoops to stretch a groping hand beneath the surface. It'd be very easy to stuff his head underwater from behind.

The temptation is there, but its strength is lacking. Barrow is busier with fishing around himself, and with the sight of the little cat paddling about, unnatural and magical though she may be.

"Aw," he intones, before he can stop himself, "little pusspuss." Dickerson can't be all bad, if that's his choice of familiar.
Whatever the fuck that means.

In the event that the bow has drifted, Barrow keeps poking around the vicinity of where Dick is searching, but believes him when he says he saw where it fell.

Edited 2021-04-14 05:31 (UTC)

Ellis will not bring this up now, but if the bow isn't found, then maybe in a few weeks he might find himself compelled to ask: had she taken her chance to evade archery lessons altogether going forward and pitched it into the water?

But in the present moment—

"Here. What's left of the big toe," Ellis tells her, gaze darting down to Richard and Barrow to track their progress. He's kept tight hold of Wysteria's hand, the gleam of her anchor muffled by his palm, and he doesn't let go until she's steady and more or less balanced to duck to the side to retrieve the thaumoscope.

"She needs a bath," is Ellis' contribution, pitched to carry, as he sits back down alongside Wysteria and tips the thaumoscope towards her. He's a little damp, but thoughtfully has kept from dripping onto the equipment.

Thought is, she thinks distantly, a very charming name for something pulled from the ether and made out of magic. It is so charming, Wysteria decides, that it is going to successfully distract her from the thrumming pain in his arm and the light headedness even as she takes the thaumoscope into her custody.

"My papers are just there as well if you would please, Mister Ellis," she adds, waving toward them with her right hand as her attention drifts down to where Barrow and Dickerson are dragging the cavern's floor.

"If you can't find it, no matter. It is only something from the Gallows' armory. I doubt anyone will even notice it has gone."

“I’ll see to it,” Richard calls back.

Thot craws back at Barrow like a raven in the water, stirring along with webbed claws, stubby whiskers all a-prickle. She is strange, as cats go: leggy and sleek, with overlarge ears and protruding fangs. Her eyes are as wide as they are wide-set.

“Here.”

The bow: Dick twists it from the water and an earwig nearly as long as his forearm slides off the far end. As he’d disengaged from Wysteria, he aims to disengage with the bow, holding it out for Barrow to take. Expectant.

“She needs a bath,” he will repeat, in naked hope of excusing himself to attend to the more pressing matter of his slimy cat.

"We all do," Barrow grunts, charmed in spite of himself by the weird little creature, and accepting the bow without complaint. He holds it up, waving it to Wysteria so she can see that it's been recovered.

"Shall we return to the surface?" he asks, as ready as anyone to get out of here, "...have a pint by the fire maybe?" The second request is all in undertone, something he deeply wants but for which he does not, perhaps, need all their company.

Archery practice is back on the menu, boys.

Though Ellis' nod of acknowledgement to the bow gives way back to Wysteria as he returns back to her, sheaf of mercifully dry papers in hand. He doesn't sit, but one hand sets at her shoulder gently, calling her attention as much as attempting some silent comfort.

"Aye," is for Barrow, even though Ellis hasn't looked back down at him.

"Should we go find Tony?" is for Wysteria, an proposition that doesn't actually preclude the possibility of a warm fire and a good meal. It doesn't even require discussion of her hand, but Ellis would gamble on conversation turning to that way of it's own accord.

Later, she will be irritated that the bow was found at all. And then after that, she will be irritated at her irritation, for surely there is a whole host of replacements on hand within the Gallows, and so losing the thing in a slimy old waterlogged cavern would hardly have interrupted her accessibility to the range. 'Oh, well. It's just that I had only gotten so used to the other bow. I couldn't possibly pick up a new one now--'

But for the moment that is neither here nor there.

"I shouldn't trouble him with anything just yet. I've to write up a summary of our findings first," she says in absent answer to Ellis. Already with the papers in her possession, she has summoned that ever present pen and has begun to transfer the thaumoscope's readings to the page. Louder then, for Barrow and Richard's benefit: "I think that is a capital idea, Ser Barrow! Mister Dickerson, we will collect your things from here and come down unless you would like to fetch them yourself."

The sound of streaming water marks Richard fishing Thot out of the lake like a sodden black towel once she’s been rubbed down; he turns his back to the others to cradle her belly up in the dark. The better for him to examine webbed toes and bat ears, the cord of her tail while she purrs and stretches to press cold, filthy pawprints at his cheek, under his chin.

“Please,” is his answer for Barrow and Wysteria both, distracted.

He looks over properly after a second check confirms the findings of the first, watching Wysteria from afar for evidence of any wincing or wobbling. Something he probably should’ve done before sliding into the water to play with his cat.

“It’s just the brazier up top.” And his satchel at the statue's toes with most everything else.

He could very well just trundle on out alone, but Barrow instead politely opts to wait, hammer slung up over his shoulder as he watches the others situate themselves.

The faster they're out of this cave, the better.

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dont talk to me or my daughter ever again

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