[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

[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.

[heorte]

Later, Ellis might regret not pursuing some other, miraculous option.

But in the moment, there is just simple instinct: Wysteria reaches for him, and he catches hold of her. The calculations have all been made, and even if they weren't, there is only one response to the stretch of her hands towards him.

He is bigger than her, broad and armored and a good defense against arrows and whatever else the rift might belch out at them. They don't have the luxury to fell demon after demon, though Ellis' mace is still held at the ready, even with his other arm looped around Wysteria to support her as they do indeed draw closer.

Adrasteia's barrier holds. Ellis allows no room for any doubts as to the longevity of it, or how quickly they can flee when their work here is done.

[kantikoy]

The barrier falls and in the briefest blink of an eye she has it refreshed; Adrasteia tries to keep the archers occupied by sending more fireballs their way, but neither of them hits a target any more alive than the ground beneath the enemy's feet.

Part of her thinks she understands what she's just witnessed, the blind reaching for Ellis by Wysteria and his immediate response, without pause. Part of her feels good about it, but another, quieter part is a little heartbroken.

She's ignoring it. There are more pressing matters, and it is none of her business besides.

Still. Perhaps that's the reason her next fireballs miss the terror demons that she can see clearly.

[heirring]

She pays no mind to the barrier—the crackle of various impacts which rain down against it—, or even to the gruesome shapes that rise up to impede their progress to the rift. There is just the tear in the world and the hot pulse pound of the length of her arm in answer to it. Just fifteen paces more. Just ten.

It is not a relief to get within range of the rift. It wrenches at the anchor in her hand without even making the effort to raise and extend her hand. Or maybe it's the reverse: the anchor yanking at that open seam to devour it. The curdling heat sensation of it is like how a pyre reduces a thing to ash; like the burning of cordwood; like the sound cloth makes when ripped along the weave.

With a clap of sound and light, air rushing to refill the place it had been displaced from, the rift shuts. Cinched in the loop of Ellis' arm, Wysteria's knees buckle. Terror and shades disassemble in the same beat that Wysteria loses consciousness.

[heorte]

Ellis can feel the exact moment it happens; Wysteria had been rigid with the effort of her work, or perhaps with the pain of it, and then abruptly she goes limp.

There is a split second of very real panic and then it is all gone, shunted aside as if into a very small box and kicked into a dark closet. All that fear is excised completely, so much so that Ellis doesn't miss a single beat as he catches Wysteria and hitches her securely up into his arms.

The demons are gone, and the barrier has held, but answering fireballs are still splashing across it. Ellis pivots to Adrasteia, expression grim.

"We need to run," he tells her, steady in spite of everything. "Right now."

If Wysteria were upright, they might have fought. But there's no option for it now, knowing what would become of Adrasteia and Wysteria both if they fought at a clear disadvantage and lost.

[kantikoy]

"I know. Go, go, I'll follow."

She refreshes the barrier but keeps it trained on Ellis and Wysteria in his arms before she turns to begin running backward in order to send two final fireballs up behind them. Both hit their marks, one of them causing quite the spectacular engulfment of the archer it strikes and content with the level of destruction and chaos this has caused, Adrasteia turns again and follows Ellis out of the quarry and in the direction of camp.