[open]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria & YOU
WHAT: Anchor-related adventures and/or drama in fantasy September.
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Some anchor and rift-related peril; open stuff is in the comments, but may use this as a catch-all. If an open prompt doesn't suit you, feel free to wildcard me or hit me up and I can write something bespoke. Prose or brackets is a-okay.

Comments

FIELD WORK.

[heirring]

THE RIFT. (open, one thread only; threadjacking welcome + encouraged)

[heirring]

The rift hangs in the quarry basin of an old copper mine. Partially abandoned first thanks to the sweep of Venatori through the northern Free Marches, the rift's appearance had successfully chased away what was left of the workforce—much to the chagrin of the quarry's master of operations. And so here they are at the request of one of Riftwatch's economically advantaged would-be allies, conducting a survey in the shadow of the Imperium's hold on the Minanter river.

"I shouldn't worry," Wysteria had remarked at some point during their ride out. "It seems to me that if Tevinter thought to take possession of the quarry, they might have done it before this moment. I doubt we are likely to see hide nor hair of them."

It is fine logic so long as one presupposes that the Venatori's interest must be in the copper and not in the rift itself. Apparently, say the hail of arrows which rocket murderously downward now from the upper steps of the quarry and toward Riftwatch's forces, there are reasons aplenty to be worried after all. To say nothing of the terror demons currently pouring out of the open rift.

The shielding burst of energy which cracks free of Wsyteria's extended anchor hand is entirely instinctive. That it is well-timed enough to save herself and her nearest companion from being turned into pincushions is luck more than skill, the force of of it so abrupt and uncontrolled that it—

—Snaps whistling arrows in half, flinging bolts and broadheads in separate off course directions.

—Flashes with a nauseating acid green light.

—And is punctuated after with a cry of pain. Wysteria doubles over, tightly clutching her left arm.

Above, Tevinter marksmen let fly another round of fire.

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia is well-positioned at the moment to encapsulate herself, Wysteria, and whoever else is within a yard or so of the two of them into a protective shielding bubble, the ground beneath their feet lighting up with the runic activation of a spell well-cast.

The next thing she does is cast once more, this time a fireball that launches itself towards the only marksman she can clearly see from her position. It hits him square in the face, the person beneath the armor screaming out in pain.

"Are you all right?" This is to Wysteria; Adrasteia is pulling off her gloves with her teeth in preparation for laying on hands to heal the other woman if needed. If that would even work, in this particular scenario. She's not sure it will, actually.

There's still the matter of the open Rift to contend with, and the demons advancing on their location.

[heirring]

What is immediately evident is, no. She is not all right.

Buckled over the rigid line of her arm, her hand ratchetted back as far as the joint allows as if in effort to escape the crackling burn emitting from her palm, Wysteria is an illustration of pain. Her face, turned to half bury against her old shoulder, twists.

"It burns—" is punctuated by a sharper inhale as the anchor gash pulses furiously bright.

A further whistle of arrows falls from above. From the pattern of where they thwack, thwack into the mud at the quarry's basin, the archers have turned their attention to hemming Riftwatch in a direction where the demons might do all the hard work on their behalf.

[heorte]

A bubble that happens to include Ellis, whose movements had been fortuitously guided backwards in response to the Terror demon. It means he can retreat further back when Wysteria shouts, but the presence of archers—

"We need to close this and go," is a reluctant observation. Either those soldiers are interested and the rift, and must be denied, or they're interested in any of the shardbearers on hand, and must absolutely be denied.

His off hand comes to Wysteria's shoulder briefly, though the look he shoots at Adrasteia communicates the exact gravity of the situation: caught between Terror demons and Venatori is no place for them to stay.

[kantikoy]

"It weakens when the demons are dead," Adrasteia replies, because she doesn't believe herself currently capable of closing the rift in the Fade on her own, and she isn't sure that Wysteria is in any position to be trying to use her own shard to do anything. "That will be our best bet."

She can keep refreshing the barrier to keep the arrows from doing much damage, but they won't be able to avoid being corralled at the moment; she can't get a good enough line of sight on the entire set of archers to do much about them.

[heirring]

Blind to the exchange of looks and to certain tactical considerations going quite literally over her head, Wysteria tightens her grip on her wrist as if that might somehow squeeze the pain coursing through it into a manageable shape. The heated pulse spills through her fingers, rancid green light liquid bright even in the day. The shriek of Terror draws nearer; this is fertile ground for it to sow in.

"I can close it," is abrupt, cutting in time with the crackle-pop of a fresh set of arrows being repulsed by the barrier over them. "I can. I only need to be closer."

me, a fool who doesn't track threads

[heorte]

Closer sparks up some immediate, stubborn set to Ellis' jaw, a no that goes nowhere because he knows there are no other options. Adrasteia, to his knowledge, cannot close a rift alone. They cannot leave it open.

He still hates this conclusion.

"Adrasteia, can you hold the barrier while I get her closer?" is the only question that matters.

wahoops

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia sees the no in his face and doesn't tell him they don't have a choice. He knows that.

They both know it, even if neither of them is fond of the idea.

"Yes." She can, in fact, do one better by refreshing the barrier in the instant that it goes down, to provide them with decent overall coverage as the three of them move closer to the Rift. She also sends up another fireball towards the archers, which hits one but sails past the nearest neighbor.

[heirring]

That is Wysteria's cue, it seems, to unravel her grip on her own forearm so that she might blindly reach after Ellis. Help me, she doesn't say though it's written in every piece of her as she lurches clumsily under the protective umbrella of the refreshed barrier toward that gash seared in the air above the muddy basin of the quarry's bottom.

She'll be quick about it. That's a given. There's unlikely to be any other option.

CAMPING. (open, feel free to handwave presence for rift-based action if you'd rather skip to this)

[heirring]

In the aftermath of the assault on the quarry and given the successful closure of the rift, the party has fled an hour south in an effort to put some distance between themselves and the site of the skirmish before making camp in a dense copse of trees high over a riverbed. The cook fire is little more than embers and ashes. Tent canvas has been shielded with boughs of end of summer tree limbs and even the horses have been picketed at a distance so that any would-be assault on the animals might serve as a preparatory warning rather than a too-late signal to arms.

If Wysteria's tendency toward unrestrained chatter might typically be an imposition under such purposefully covert circumstances, there is little chance of her incessant conversation betraying them now. Burning with fever, she has been tucked up inside one of the tents where she alternates between shockingly lucid and startlingly muddled.

slides this across the table before i dip out

[heorte]

And Ellis is on hand.

On hand between the spans of time where he is well and truly required elsewhere, though he has capitulated to those duties with quiet reluctance. The pinch of worry has not left his face. If anything, that it is reduced to a pinch is some improvement over the entirety of their flight from said skirmish.

There is a singed book open across his thigh, but he's diverted from the reading to look at Wysteria and her flushed face, her obvious misery.

"Keep the cloth across your forehead," is spoken very quietly, instruction that precedes Ellis reaching over to her to readjust said cloth for her.

[heirring]

"It is in place already," is her bland protest, her right hand sluggishly chasing his as if she has thought to rob him of the opportunity to make the requisite adjustments and has only moved three or four beats too late to actually accomplish the thing. When she finds his knuckles in the way, she lowers her hand back down with a flicker of exasperation.

It had been fine where it was. There was something soothing about the cool touch of the thing at the top of her head where she can feel the sweat prickling amidst her hair. It would be preferable, she thinks, if by wrapping it about her left hand they might relieve some of the heat from it too. But surely they have tried that. Or, more rationally, if Adrasteia's magic had been of so little effect to it then what could a damp cloth possibly accomplish?

"Why have you stopped reading? At this rate, we will never be through it."

(It would be something to squeeze her fist around at least. The cloth would be.)

[heorte]

"We have time," Ellis tells her, a statement which is true to a degree. There is no specific sense of when they'll be able to travel safely. And so it is fortunate he'd brought something long and so far, satisfactory as a distraction.

He turns the cloth over on her forehead, tipping it back slightly in concession to the clumsy trajectory of Wysteria's fingers.. His thumb briefly smooths along her brow.

And despite the implication in her question, Ellis still asks, "Is the pain any less?"

His voice is very steady, quiet over the words. What he wants to say is that she should drink some water, or tea, or eat even a single slice of bread to fortify herself for the trip back. But he stops over that one question, assessing before deciding whether to press her or go back to the book as prompted.

A fortunate thing: Ellis is well-practiced at suppressing worry, at being a steady, fixed point in the middle of any difficult situation.

[heirring]

In the morning, they will refresh the clay poultice which was slathered over the gash in her hand. She knows that because she recalls having a long conversation about it after attempting to unwind the bandage covering the paste because it had begun to itch on top of everything else. Which she is trying not to give too much thought, for she has only just put it out of her mind and if she thinks on it too much then the itch will return. It will be like when you see a spider in the grass and then every little tickle against the skin is perceived to come from eight legs—

Ellis has asked her a question.

"It is much improved. And this will pass also," is an absent, automatic answer.

Tomorrow she will be fit to ride, she thinks of saying. It is the missing reasonable connective tissue to, "I dislike that horse. I have been thinking of whether I might have one of my own rather than borrowing."

[heorte]

Will it pass?

Ellis doesn't know. There is no one to ask here, and perhaps no one to ask back at the Gallows. His thumb strokes once more along her forehead, thumb coming to rest at her temple, his attention held more by the blithe assertion of improvement than the possibility of the purchase of a new horse.

The missing link between her answer and her objection to the horse isn't questioned, but it wedges like a stone alongside all the worries he is careful to keep from his tone. At any other point Wysteria might have noticed, but he has an advantage in this.

"We can see about purchasing a horse," Ellis says, proposition taken in stride. "You'd have to stable whatever your new mount at the Gallows, unless we knock down the brick wall and expand into your neighbor's yard."

[heirring]

"I don't believe Madame Allard would take kindly to trespassing. She already takes such exception to the clucking. Poor Lady Shayna, unjustly demonized and simultaneously terrorized by the lady in question's cat. It must be a very hard life," she says, closing her eyes under the cool shape of his thumb. "To be a chicken."

No, she is already well sick of living adjacent to a barnyard. Madame Allard is. And perhaps, just a little, herself. It would not do to have chickens and a great dog and a horse on top of everything else. Riftwatch's stables would be a perfectly acceptable place to put such an animal—

She opens her eyes again and looks straight up at him, her attention an unsettling combination of too sharp and too disoriented.

"When we return to Kirkwall, you must meet Derangér. I have been forgetting to introduce you."

[heorte]

Ellis' answering aye is quiet, offered without expectation of response. Wysteria's eyes are closed and perhaps she will sleep; it would be for the best if she did, he thinks.

If the fever would just break—

The motion of his thumb doesn't falter when her eyes open. His expression doesn't waver either, patient attention set upon her face as she focuses on him. (Fear and worry is contained in the furrow of his brow; the tender edge of something at the corners of his expression is likely easily missed.) Some minor adjustment of the cloth occurs.

"Who is Derangér?" he asks, without any real expectation of a clear answer.

[acreage]

"I brought you some water."

He says by way of announcing himself, as he lets himself in. He's careful to pull the canvas closed completely, offer Wysteria what protection from the elements they can afford her out here.

It's not enough.

But nothing is going to be until they can get her back to the Gallows. He doesn't dwell on the fact that he doesn't know what they'll be able to do for her there; he can't help thinking that the person he'd normally ask that question would be Wysteria. Instead, he focuses on what he can do — which is drawing closer, right now, sitting near her cot and looking for her response. There's a flask in his hand, and he uses the other to open it so that he can bring it to her mouth if she so desires.

[heirring]

Bundled under a veritable coat closet's worth of cloaks and blankets—whatever could be spared from their company's persons or from the horse's tack—she is startlingly pale and kitten weak about the arduous task of freeing an arm (her right one; the one which doesn't currently feel like it's being slowly chewed to pieces). But despite the fever sheen about her person, there is something quite alert in Wysteria's attention when she finds him in the blue shadows of the tent.

"I would prefer you to bring me my traveling case. It is just there near my feet." She makes a small motion toward the end of the cot, shifting her shoulders about her in some vague effort to sit higher in the make-do bed. "My little writing desk is there and I have a great deal of correspondence to attend to."

[acreage]

"Wysteria," is definitely some kind of admonishment.

If she wants to take the flask herself, he'll let her — but hover close, hands at the ready to help in case she needs it. In the meantime, he'll look somewhere between worried and disapproving, glancing towards her case with a frown.

"What you need to be doing is resting."

[heirring]

"I am resting. Here you see me, lying in state in the dark."

She is indeed capable of taking the flask, though getting it as far as her lips to drink from is a bridge slightly too far and requires some gentle guidance from his hovering presence. But after she has had her little sip of bracingly cold water and has managed not to spill it all over herself, she is quite insistent.

"It will hardly take so much effort, Mister Holden," she says, her voice pitched to a hiss for she has gathered they are meant to be quiet. "And I'm only a little ill. And if you like, I will even dictate my responses and you may write them down on my behalf."

[acreage]

There's no reassurance to her glibness —

well. There's some reassurance to her glibness. If she's well enough to gently mock his concern, to demand she be allowed to do her work, to give him things to do,

he can, actually, imagine that she'd be doing so no matter how awful she's feeling. But he takes comfort in it now despite that, because he'll be best useful to her if he does. So he takes back the flask after she's had her drink, sets it down nearby close to hand, and considers her traveling case.

There's a real danger, probably, to her trying to get it herself if he doesn't. And it has to be miserable to lay there, sick and cold, with nothing to distract her. So he sighs acquiescence and goes to get it, sets it nearer his own feet and opens it up.

"I'll read them to you, too."

Read, then write her responses: he can be her eyes and her hands, if it helps her rest.

[heirring]

"Very well. But I warn you that the bulk of them are quite boring and not at all salacious and there will be very little for you to gossip about, should that be your motivation for wishing to read my private letters."

Ha ha ha. James Holden, a gossip. Imagine.

She squirms a little lower under great arrangement of items piled on top of her. If she is going to have to lie here as he reads to her, she may as well be comfortable.

Indeed, the letters are a strange combination of technical and conversation and they range from a number of locations on the globe. It seems that over the course of her travels—which have, in the last years, been rather considerable—that Wysteria has contrived to make and keep a friend or two here and there. There is a brusquely worded but not dismissive letter from a blacksmith and enchanter in Orzammar and long great treatise from a scholar in Markham by the name of Brown with whom Wysteria is evidently quite familiar if the contents of the letter (equal parts mathematical engineering and Markham University gossip) are any indication; and so on and so forth.

[acreage]

"You caught me," he says dryly, pulling out her letters, preparing writing implements. "Having nothing to gossip about keeps me up at night."

The real reason he's an insomniac, revealed! But he dutifully puts himself to reading her these letters and making notes of her responses; though he struggles with the more technical terms at times, needing some help so he doesn't completely mangle them, probably needing to repeat a few for her more than once, till she understands what he's trying to read.

At some point, he'll say, faintly impressed,

"I didn't know you knew so many people around Thedas."