[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

[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.