[open] Satinalia/Hand Your Life To Me

[venenifer]

WHO: Riftwatch
WHAT: the greatest Satinalia surprise of all
WHEN: During the party.
WHERE: The Gallows' central tower top floor and Templar tower dining hall/kitchens.
NOTES: A smattering of violence and mayhem, but easy enough to opt out should you not wish to participate! Feel free to create regular party top levels if that's what you'd prefer, as the interruption will be fairly short in the grand scheme of things.

Satinalia has arrived, and with it a bitter rain which threatens to dampen any attempts at outdoor revelry. However, the staffed dining hall in the Templar tower is decked out with festive tapestries and garlands, extra candelabra to offer more light to the large stone room, and a feast appropriate for any celebration. Kegs of ale and wine sit at the end of the food table with an assortment of bottled spirits, carafes of tea and coffee, and at least one variety of juice made from the fruit of a northern region, just for the novelty of it.

The night’s music is largely provided by Riftwatch’s own, with enough variety of musicians among the ranks that they’re able to swap in and out at will, do some dancing and drinking, and return to the fun.

It’s LATE EVENING when the first revelers attempt to trickle off to their beds, but find their efforts discouraged by the entryway’s unwillingness to budge. It would seem that it’s been barred from the other side; it will also quickly become apparent to anyone who tries the door to the kitchens that it is equally compromised, much to the confusion of any kitchen staff currently in the dining hall.

Before too long, a voice begins to speak over the open network, echoing strangely from each individual crystal in the room:


This is the promise we make in her name. We lead by example, untempered by the words of heretics. We fall to pave the way for the Maker’s paradise.

As was blessed Andraste in her time, we must be cleansed in fire. The world must move forward, ever forward, and to do this it must end.

We must all end.

Comments

[venenifer]

The dagger finds its home with deadly aim, hitting Gideon full in the chest with the sickening sound of blade penetrating flesh and bone. He stumbles and collapses against the door, gripping at the jamb to hold himself up, never once breaking eye contact with Dick.

His other hand, still in his robe, flings out its contents: an Antivan fire grenade, which explodes at Dick's feet, further ignited by the lingering chemicals in the air.

[nonvenomous]

There is only so much a shield can do for fire.

Silas is striking headlong for cover when the grenade passes through Gideon’s fingertips, anticipating return fire at the end of that reach. There are tables, counters, a corner of cabinets, barely breathable air for him to cast in at all --

The gossamer flash of his spell is wreathed in concussive flame, a tertiary flash the blast of glass and napalm and burning gas rebound away from. Directed down, away from his core where he’s landed, his face turned hard over his shoulder. It all happens very quickly: boom, crash, a lightning flash.

A guttural bellow pinches up in agony behind the grit of his teeth, the sound stifled somewhere behind the bank of cabinets he’s put his back into.

[tender]

He's in the kitchen is helpful.

Another piece of good luck: the entryway at the far side of the kitchen. It doesn't help with visibility, but it is a door not presently blocked by an injured elf.

Without clear target, Derrica's first action is to focus in on Richard. The draw of her stave summons up a barrier to weave around his body before she sprints towards him. The folds of her shawl are drawn up over her mouth as she goes to ward against the smoke.

[venenifer]

In this, Silas and Derrica have some reprieve: they are not attacked from behind, and no second grenade is hurled their way, because the person who would do so is still on the floor. The still-roaring flames separate him from the pair, but he's weakening by the moment, the dagger's hilt sticking out of his blood-slicked chest as he scrabbles for the latch on the door.
His free hand has gone to his cloak again, but the next flask is not for his companions. They are, for the moment, forgotten.

[nonvenomous]

Visibility is poor. A stranger’s sprinting arrival through the barrier is met with the point of Dickerson’s misericorde, twisted up in his fist between them like a sting.

He’s wild in the eyes, nastiness and pain distilled into a fight or flight rictus, the knuckles gripped to his dagger greasy with blood. The state of the leg he caught the brunt of the blast with doesn’t bear describing in detail; there are smoldering holes in his coat where spatter boiled through the cloth and into the hide beneath. Shrapnel glitters here and there. He’s missing a piece of his ear.

But shock hasn’t quite baked into disassociation.

He recognizes Derrica quickly enough to turn the dagger and cranes his face around after the door he last saw Weelright collapse against instead, coughing through his teeth. If he isn’t right here, he’s somewhere else --

[luaithre]

Under Gideon's hands, the latch—the door as a whole—suddenly shudders as if under great and sudden impact, wood cracking and splintering inwards, not yet breaking—

And then a second impact, and wood cracks apart into pieces, blown off hinges, no longer a door at all but flying debris beneath the force of a meteorite swarm of Fade-summoned boulders that go hurtling through the entryway, trailing ember-flecked smoke and green light. And very possibly slamming into the elf standing immediately in their path if he hadn't taken that first warning to dodge.

The last remnants of door barring the way are dismissed with a gout of flame, and intruding to stand and block the entranceway is Marcus. He's gripping two-handed his mage staff, more battleready than the rest of him dressed in bright white linens and silver and no armor at all. (He'd had the presence of mind to at least discard his Satinalia mask lest it get in the way.)

The blunt end of the staff precedes him into the room, some spell half-cast and at the ready as he tries to make sense of moving bodies, flames, smoke.

[venenifer]

Already being on the ground helps Gideon's chances of not being knocked off his feet, at least, though he's pushed back by the impact of the boulders, his back and shoulders crashing up against a raised stone firepit that houses an assortment of (now very scorched) pots once containing party food in progress.

He gathers enough strength to sit up, another Antivan fire grenade gripped tightly in his bloodied hand as he raises his eyes to Marcus' and then looks past him, as if acknowledging someone standing behind the mage.

"My Lady," he half-wheezes, so quietly as to be nearly inaudible, "I've failed you. They weren't ready."

His fingertips twitch over the glass of the flask. He's not going to let go of it.

[tender]

Earlier this evening, Derrica had seen Marcus in the company of Julius and Petrana and thought What lovely outfits.

Now, having come to a stop over Richard's prone form, encased in glowing barrier, in the midst of all this chaos, she has a different thought: He's going to ruin those linens.

Not that it's important in the moment, but still.

But with Gideon revealed, Derrica's gaze darts across the room to Marcus and hold there for a split second before she brings her stave down hard against the stone. The clack of contact summons a rune in the air before her, lighting up the space in the wake of Marcus' attack as a flurry of bright, crackling bursts of energy arc from her staff and soar towards Brother Gideon.

[venenifer]

Whether it's by Derrica's spell or his own hand, the flask shatters and Gideon barely has time to take one final rasping breath before he's consumed by flame.

The vapor in the air having already been burned away, this second explosion is rather more contained.

[nonvenomous]

The door explodes inward, Derrica casts, Dick flattens himself bloody and smoldering against a burning cabinet like a cat attempting to camouflage itself into a file organizer at the vet. The concussive blast of another detonation sees him flinching in on himself.

He barely has hold of his dagger, tongues of flame still lick at what’s left of his cape

Pls.

[luaithre]

There's a flash of defensive magics from Marcus' end of the room, the pending Barrier spell releasing only a split second late as flames blossom upwards and outwards. Spares him from the worst of it, but fire is now raging, the stone floor merely scorched but wooden beams, shelving, cabinet licked with flame.

With a sharp gesture, a gust of ice paints over Brother Gideon's blackened body, and another coats over the worst of the fire to Marcus' immediate right. Then, a turn his his staff draws the smoke in the room to a tornadoed point and vanish, leaving mostly a hazy film in the air that stings eyes but doesn't burn lungs, at least.

Another look is flicked Derrica's way, and he nods, and his, "See to him," and gesture to Richard, is not so much an order as it is an assurance that there's room and time for her to do so.

Marcus moves to the body, then. At least, it'd be in Gideon's best interest to be dead, and Marcus keeps the bladed end of his staff angled in his direction just in case he has chosen poorly. Otherwise, iron edge is used to perform a rudimentary search, nudging limbs aside, the folds of charred-iced clothing.

[tender]

The instruction is enough indication that Derrica doesn't need to ask. If Marcus thought there was a continuing threat, he'd have said something else.

And so the shimmering barrier around Richard ebbs away, and she kneels beside him. He's a scorched mess, but all things considered, it might have been worse. There's no mistaking what that Chantry Brother had been attempting to do.

"What first?" she prompts gently, keeping her body angled towards Marcus as she sets a gentle hand on Richard's shoulder. Just in case, you see, that there's some other threat yet to be dealt with.

[nonvenomous]

The dead clank of Dick’s dagger hitting the floor seems to seal his acceptance of the immediate danger having passed, for all that Marcus is here and swirling spellwork around the kitchen. This is something like being circled by the toothy grins of orca whales who’ve just torn the shark that was trying to eat you in half.

His trousers are blasted clear through to patches of exposed dermis across his right knee and in ragged strips across his thigh. The damage chars deeper in places -- severe but not irreparable. The high rise of his boot has likely saved him from a more terrible fate, leather chewed and blackened crisp, broken through here and there and scorched beneath.

Elsewhere, cuts and burns range from superficial to likely to leave scars. He’s bloody up to his elbow on the same side where he swept at or patted out his own flames.

He trembles beneath the set of Derrica’s hand on his shoulder rather than answer her, tension locked down painfully through his core in an (unsuccessful) effort to wring the rattle out. One thing at a time.

[luaithre]

There isn't much to find on Brother Gideon's body. Most of it's been taken by the fire, but even then, there doesn't seem to be much. Marcus has ducked down, now, making quick work of rummaging through with bare hands, peeling aside ice-soaked, fire-blackened folds, unsqueamish as he encounters raw flesh. Pieces of paper, burned beyond recognition and now wet besides, are left to fall aside. A necklace, with the symbol of Andraste, wreathed in flame.

This, he snaps loose of its cord, pockets it. Lastly, Marcus wraps his hand around the dagger buried near to its hilt in the elf's chest, and jerks this free. Easy to miss, between all the flying rocks and bolts of lightning and fiery explosions, but not insignificant, the weight of it far greater than its balanced perch on his fingers.

He stands, holding it, and moves closer to Derrica and Richard. Questions start and die when he notes the severity of injury. Selects one, then, for its pertinence; "Was he alone?"

oops crashlands back in here

[tender]

Derrica's brow is knit into a sympathetic wince, looking Richard over. Her attention has drawn from Marcus to him in the course of her examinations. Richard's loosening grip on his dagger and Marcus' steady footsteps lend credence to the idea that the altercation has finished.

There is so much damage.

Her hands are very gentle when she eases him onto his back, the better to see the great sweep of what needs mending. One hand sets lightly at his hips, just above the worst of the damage to his leg, and the other sets over Richard's bicep. Two steady points of contact from which she means to begin. When she starts to hum, it's for Richard rather than to work the spell into his body. It's not a prayer or incantation. But it's low and soft and sweet, as blue-marked warmth flows from her palms and spreads across his skin.

And it lingers, cool light glowing beneath the splay of her fingers, even when she stops humming, raising her head to look up at Marcus.

"I didn't see anyone else when I arrived," is the best Derrica can offer, further compromised by the chaos she'd arrived to find. If there had been anyone else, there's a chance they'd departed before she'd entered the kitchen, or under the cover of smoke.

It's for Richard to contradict her.

[nonvenomous]

The roadkill, rigor mortis curl to spine is reluctant to release as he’s laid back, tendon twisted taut through the back of his scorched arm. Tears sting hot at the whites of his eyes, thinning tracks through the blood on his face.

There is an instinctive distrust to his watchfulness, how closely he struggles to track her through his rattling.

Clearly this is an operation he’d more commonly take charge of himself.

But he’s in no condition and the humming seems to put something in his soft mammal brain at ease besides, the more he listens. Remaining tension bleeds off with the ebb of five alarm pain to endorphins and healing magic. The floor isn’t so terrible, now that the kitchen is no longer on fire; he could stand to lay here for a little while.

“Thank you.” His throat is claggy with snot and smoke.

He nods, late, to confirm once it occurs to him: Gideon was alone.

[luaithre]

Despite the primacy of his question, Marcus waits out getting an answer and watches Derrica work. He is only half keyed in, an occasional glance over his shoulder at whatever noise draws his focus—a gesture, something that says it's fine to some query through the dispersing smoke. In his other hand, he turns the dagger around in a fidget of pent up and carefully cordoned energy.

Looks back and down at Derrica's report, eyes flicking to Richard for confirmation, which comes. Marcus nods, then kind of just—bends enough to place the weapon somewhere in reach, the blade greasy with blood.

"I'll come back with help," is more directed to Derrica, hand drifting to touch her shoulder, before he withdraws from the scene. The fragile web of her healing can be easily broken if they don't get a couple more hands in the necessary relocation to the infirmary.

slaps down bow

[tender]

"Thank you," follows after him. Derrica has come more or less to the same conclusion. If there were a lingering danger, it would have struck at them already.

Of course, there is the question here: why had this man acted alone?

But Derrica can pose that later. Richard's thanks is answered with the lightest squeeze of her hand at his elbow. Now, she draws in a breath.

"I'll try to keep the pain at bay until he comes back," she reassures. "Close your eyes, if you like."

No obligation to continue conversation, not when Derrica is fairly certain Richard would rather melt into the stone beneath him. So there is humming again, and the soft wash of green light from her palms, chasing the pain off to a manageable distance while they wait here in the wreckage of the kitchen.