war table: one giant leap.

[propulsion]

WHO: Intrepid heroes
WHAT: Forging a path to the second Crossroads Gate, and then poking it with sticks.
WHEN: Late Drakonis
WHERE: The Crossroads
NOTES: n/a

Comments

pewils

[armd]

Abby, breathing hard, does not let go of Adrasteia. The ground that cracked and gave way underneath of her foot has fallen into some kind of pitch-black oblivion beneath them, but it's not at a height if she can't see the bottom. Right? There's little danger of falling, with this much of Riftwatch on the scene with her.

... Still. Tremulously, "Fuck."

She hates this. "Thanks."

[kantikoy]

It's okay that Abby doesn't let go. It gives Adrasteia a moment to follow the movement of cracks along the stone, to see if she can determine how much farther from the edge they should get, or if they've settled in a good place.

To say it's a long way down, well. That much is obvious.

She looks around. There's ruin, yes, but beauty in her eyes. Blossoming trees and vivid colors. But for every human with them, like Abby, it's a completely different story.

Was that on purpose, she wonders, or just a side effect of elvhen magic? Would they have known how to stop the beginning of a Blight infecting the Crossroads?

"You okay?"

[armd]

The ruin, to Abby, is normal. It doesn't strike her as beautiful or ugly, it just is. What she notices about the place is the danger, the practicality of where she chooses to place her feet to keep from stepping on any ground that might crumble further. This is easier said than done. Everything is falling apart. Her heart is beating hard.

"Yeah." She makes herself let go.

"Um," breathlessly, "What- happens, if you fall off of this thing?" She sounds like she's trying to make a joke.

[kantikoy]

"I don't know, honestly." Would the poor girl float, or fall? It's impossible for Adrasteia to say. "But if you did, I would do my best to get you back here. Even if that meant riding a griffon to do it."

Not like riding a griffon is a hardship by any stretch of the imagination, as far as Adrasteia is concerned. She's a little too focused on what's going on to pick up on the fact that Abby might have been trying to make a joke.

[armd]

Abby makes a mostly quiet, miserable little noise at that– not griffons– but says nothing at all. All she has to do is not fall off the edge. That's easy. It's so so easy.

Casting around for a distraction, she ends up staring uselessly at the ruins around them. "What happened here?"

[kantikoy]

"I don't know. There's a lot of elvhen history that is just... lost to us, after the fall of Elvhenan at the hands of the Tevinter Imperium, and with the..." She pulls forth a sigh, trying to think about how best to put it, especially for a Rifter who wouldn't know what little there is to know of elvhen history. "The relegation of elves to a second-class status over time and history, the destruction of whatever record might have existed prior to that, the subjugation of elves as a result of all those things? Means that there's no knowing for certain, but...

There were elven cities, once. Places where magic and the Fade interacted with waking reality. I suspect these are the ruins of those cities, much like there are the ruins of dwarven civilizations in the deep roads."

[armd]

Sprawling cities, suspended over nothing. Or maybe the nothingness below their feet came with the ruin and wasn't there to begin with, but it doesn't really matter. Abby kicks at a bit of ground that is broken off and flaking away into the ether.

"... I'm sorry you didn't get to see them as cities." Is an honest sentiment, and she looks sidelong at her.

[kantikoy]

"So am I," she admits, because it must have been something spectacular to see. An entire civilization, gone, decimated by time and human hands.

It's unsettling, how upset she gets about it, but it's easy to breathe it out. Let it go. None of the humans here, today, had anything to do with that. Abby definitely didn't.

Adrasteia nods her thanks at Abby.

[armd]

Yeah, she gets that. Adrasteia has no way of knowing where she came here from, but she grew up in the ruins of civilisation. It's all she's ever known, and that's why sights like this aren't unfamiliar to her. No less eerie, though.

She's here as muscle. To protect the people that know what they're doing and that, ostensibly, includes Adra. "What's going to happen with the rift?"

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia takes in a breath. "Hopefully I can close the literally Blighted thing." She glances at her left hand, at the shard she got on purpose just to try doing this and hopes she hasn't done it all for the sake of nothing.

But there's always the chance. She's been highly unlucky before. There's bodies between then and now. "If I can't, I don't know."