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Entry tags:
i'll face my fears even if it damn kills me
WHO: Abby & OPEN
WHAT: Coming through the rift. Making a real splash
WHEN: Both arrival and within the first week of her quarantine
WHERE: Kirkwall (specifically The Waking Sea); The Gallows
NOTES: Swear words galore, mentions of past injuries
WHAT: Coming through the rift. Making a real splash
WHEN: Both arrival and within the first week of her quarantine
WHERE: Kirkwall (specifically The Waking Sea); The Gallows
NOTES: Swear words galore, mentions of past injuries
arrival.
Tonight Abby's lucid enough to realise she's in her usual nightmare but not enough to stop it from happening, which is both depressing and boring. The hallway is endless even though she knows that it isn't, and she walks down it with her gun in her hands and her heart in her throat. The alarm is so loud she can barely think over the top of it.
The door at the end doesn't reveal a body on the floor. Abby, familiar with the routine, screams like she's seen one anyway even as she takes a step through and falls forward, out into empty, white space. She's still processing the shift when she hits the churning waves of The Waking Sea with an extra yelp, spun around underneath the tide until she barely knows which way is up.
If you're down at the shore you've got the absolute privilege of seeing her dredge up from the water like a drowned rat, shivering and bewildered.
She hasn't even noticed the rage demon looming up behind her as she staggers up onto shore. Still trying to get her bearings. Still half-convinced she's dreaming.
quarantine; week one.
The Gallows are like something out of a book she's read, Gothic and strange and thrilling. The buildings inside of it draw her eye; the Smithy, in particular, where Abby can be found watching curiously as workers hammer out hot metal and shape it into tools, and weapons. She's feeling the uselessness of her 'gun' but she's kept it anyway, perhaps out of habit, strapped to the side of her leg. It's just to feel something, okay, any measure of normalcy in a world where she's found herself kept in a fortress and wearing some kind of loose, cloth shirt and plain trousers held together by drawstring rather than zipper, so. Don't point it out.
The apothecary reminds her of The Once and Future King, comfortably smoky, sweet-smelling, and filled to the fucking brim with little bottles of... stuff, and things. Abby's most intrigued by the potions, though ultimately belligerent with the shop owner when she finds out she can't just. Y'know, have it.
Yeah yeah she's heard about the 'economy'. She doesn't have enough coin for the bottle she's interested in, but that shouldn't matter because-
"I'm supposed to be going out and fighting for you, but you're not going to give me any first aid? What the fuck do I do if something cuts me down out there? Slap a leaf on it?"
no subject
There are plenty of wooden swords helpfully arrayed around the grounds. Fenris picks up a particularly long one, crudely made, with a hilt long enough to be held with both hands. He takes a starting position, feet spread apart, ready.
Talking is pointless when he's made his motives clear elsewhere.
no subject
Taller person equals taller sword? She'll take a long one too, and hold it in one hand– though she adjusts her grip the moment she notices he's holding his in two hands. Right. The real thing would be heavier, wouldn't it.
"Okay." She settles into the kind of stance she'd usually punch somebody from, her legs planted firmly shoulder-width apart. He mirrors her, across the way.
She doesn't know how he fights. That's refreshing. Abby gives it a beat before she charges him, her weight and muscle thrown behind a hard, diagonal strike with the sword, her left hand coming off the hilt as she instinctively wields it like she might a hammer.
no subject
"Good," he says, "but your form is sloppy."
With one hand on the hilt, it's an easy thing to smack her wrist, intending to make her drop the sword.
no subject
Her sword clatters to the ground involuntarily, her hand wringing itself out in the aftermath of the strike.
Embarrassing.
"... Apparently," she says, and keeps her eyes on him while she ducks to retrieve it.
no subject
Instead, he thinks. "You wield it as though to bludgeon, not to cut."
no subject
She'll use anything she gets her hands on, Abby isn't picky, but she's always leaned towards objects that allow her to effectively weaponise her brute force. If you want to slash at things you have to be quick and speedy a lot of the time, you have to have some kind of finesse.
She's naturally holding the sword in one hand again, seemingly without thinking, "Got any tips for me?"
no subject
"You should spar with a proper sword," he murmurs. "It will be harder to hold one-handed, and remind you of a sword's true utility. Or, you should try a club."
no subject
"... You think I'd be able to find a sword to practice with without having to buy something?" If she spends money on it of course she'll stick with it, but this whole... coin based economy thing is new to her. Abby supposes it is just a more formal way of swapping personal effects with other people back at the stadium; either way you have to keep the thing you pay for.