faderift | [open] and when i wake up you'll be here

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[open] and when i wake up you'll be here

WHO: Clarisse
WHAT: Arrival + some quarantine stuff
WHEN: Now, ig
WHERE: Ferelden somewhere + the Gallows
NOTES: n/a

Arrival

Weird dreams are a near nightly thing for demigods, so Clarisse doesn't bat an eye when she finds herself waiting for the elevator at the top of the Empire State Building in her basketball uniform, other than to wonder what kind of weird symbolism it is and hope that it's not going to interfere with her midterms. Even when the doors open and she steps in and lands on nothing but empty air, she manages not to scream. It all happens too fast, anyway.

Clarisse only has time to think, oh shit, and then she hits the dirt hard. The breath gets punched out of her chest and she wheezes pitifully, wondering since when her dreams are realistic enough to hurt. She rolls onto her back, wipes at the dirt on her chin, and finds herself staring up at something she can't comprehend, much less identify. The air looks... torn open, and through the jagged green split, she can see patches of concrete and red rocks.

The view is interrupted by something moving—something humanoid but elongated, with a grin that spreads too far in each direction. That's comprehendible. She's not sure what she's looking at, specifically, but she knows bad news when she sees it. Clarisse pushes off the ground at a run, angling herself away from the whatever-the-fuck-that-thing-is and trying to put some distance between her and it.

Quarantine - Dining Hall

At least the food here looks... pretty normal. She should be thankful for that.

Clarisse is in the dining hall, sitting straight backed and uncomfortable and pushing a piece of beef (probably?) around with a fork. She looks a little bit miserable, but what else is new? Push, push, push. The fork never seems to actually make it to her mouth.

Finally, she can't stand it anymore, and says to whoever's nearby: "Is there a place around here I can make an offering?"

Quarantine - Training Yard

Maybe she'd been slacking off on training a little bit, before she'd fallen out of the fucking sky, but that's over. If anything, the practice gives Clarisse a sense of familiarity, even while she's stuck in a place that's the complete opposite. She knows the moves. She's done them almost every day, for years. Doesn't matter where she is.

For anyone who happens to walk by and see her, it's clear that Clarisse is no beginner with the spear. She handles it with practiced ease, and it seems like she'd have no problem showing anybody else what it's like to be on the other end of Maimer's barbed tip. But when she does notice somebody watching, Clarisse only gives them a terse nod.

"You waiting for the space?"

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Almost like she can sense what Ellie's thinking, Clarisse gives her a little raise of the eyebrows. She doesn't say anything, though, just catches the brush and starts to go over the mare's side with it. Circular motions, the way Silena used to. Brisk, efficient.

"Demon," she says. "Monsters where I'm from don't bleed red." They'd also, apart from a few brief encounters, been leaving her alone since she moved back to Arizona. It had been a nice break, for a few weeks, but then it had just been boring.

Not that that matters, here. Ellie got stuck here a whole fucking year ago, after all. Clarisse blows some hair out of her face, annoyed with herself, and keeps moving.

"I'm in Forces. Scouting would've been my second choice." She would have been really, really bad at it, but she's not saying that part out loud.

Ellie grumbles to herself but doesn't otherwise comment. If there's anything worse than being distracted by a hot girl, it's when the girl knows she's distracting.

(But, moving on.)

A fine down of horse hair rains to the stall floor, along with road dust. The mare blows happily, content to be fussed over from either side.

"Forces would've been my second choice," Ellie nods to where her bow is propped in the corner neck to her pack- it's nice, clearly well-made and probably custom-built, if the fade-touched crystals or the tooled-leather quiver are any indication. It looks astronomically nicer than anything Ellie's actually wearing.

But Ellie comes back to that interesting tidbit, frowning at her over the mare's withers.

"Your monsters don't bleed red?"

"Well. I guess they bleed some, but once they die they fade away into dust."

Clarisse sounds distracted, though; her hand's slowed where she's been brushing the horse, and she's staring over its back at the bow in the corner. It's extremely cool, and she's itching to pick it up and feel it out, inspect some of those crystals. You just don't touch somebody else's weapon, though. She'd rip a person's head off if they strolled over and grabbed Maimer without her say so.

"I'm not much of a ranged weapons girl," she admits. "But that's nice work. What's it called?"

"Nice and clean."

Ellie sounds wistful. "The ones where I'm from just bleed." Because they used to be people, but now's not the time to get into it. It's rarely the time to get into it. Not a great first or even tenth conversation to have with someone.

But she can see Clarisse admiring her bow, she she steps away to go get it, pass it over so she can take a closer look. She's not going to get in the way of someone wanting to admire the work.

The crystals are are a deep green, and they shimmer faintly where they're embedded into the dark wood. If Clarisse pays close attention, she might realize it's close to the shade of green of the Shard in her hand. The design is simple but beautiful, and not flashy enough to attract thieves.

"It's a... bow."

New to the concept of naming weapons, is Ellie.

"I closed a Rift out on the Storm Coast, saved some of the crystal stuff that came out of it. It seemed right to get something made with it."

Clarisse pauses in the middle of holding the bow (gods, it's really freaking cool; kind of making her wish she used a bow and arrow more often) out in front of her, the way she would if she were about to use it—for someone who just said they're not a "ranged weapons girl" she seems to know exactly what she's doing with it—to give Ellie a completely devastating stare.

"I know what a fucking bow is. I meant what did you name it."

The fact that Ellie might not have named it anything doesn't seem to have occurred to her? It's just... what you do, right?

"Are you f-"

Ellie cuts herself off, looking deeply offended, thanks. And she doesn't miss that Clarisse knows her way around a weapon, because of course she does. She moves like somebody who knows how to punch someone to death.

(Less common out here in Thedas.)

"What, like... Excalibur or something?" she scoffs aloud, but eyes the bow. Most of her other weapons have been a little interchangeable, with the exception of her knife.

... unfortunately, Ellie's exactly nerdy enough for this to appeal. She mashes her lower lip between her teeth, thinking.

Edited 2022-08-18 23:48 (UTC)

Excalibur is a sword, though. A bow has a totally different vibe.

"Like Air Strike, or Skullpiercer, or Kairos, or Agonistes—" Look, she has a dumb list of names for any kind of weapon, and not all of them are completely terrible, except she finishes with "or... Marshmallow Roaster." It's a joke, but she's pretty sure a few of her brothers would actually go for it.

Anyway. She hands Ellie back her bow before she gets too hyped up. "My spear's called Maimer. I'll show you sometime." Because fair is fair.

Ugh, and all her bow names are cool and now she can't pick any of them.

Ellie snorts aloud, reaching out to take her bow back, set it back into place. (Don't touch the arrows, some are poison actually.)

"... Maimer."

She tries to sound incredulous, but okay. She's a little impressed. "You hunt monsters with a spear?"

Clarisse nods. "Been using one since I was, like, eleven. A spear's a great weapon. You get extra reach, it can cut shit, it stabs things, you can use it to beat the shit out of someone, you can even throw it."

Look, maybe she's a little bit defensive about it. The spear was a gift from her dad. If people think it's a lame weapon, aren't they sort of also saying they think he's lame?

"Besides," she adds. "Mine is electric. So." So it's even cooler.

Defensive as she is, she absolutely doesn't need to be. Ellie's firmly in the camp of that sounding fucking awesome, actually.

"No, it's just. Most people don't know how to fight with one."

It's something that actually takes skill, like a sword, and-

(Quick, don't imagine a spear with an amp.)

"Like magic?"

The question gets a little of the tension to leave Clarisse's shoulders, and she grins.

"Yeah, like magic. I'm a demigod. Sometimes we get a special gift from our parent if they're feeling extra generous." You know, to make up for all the years of abandonment and shit. They're not always weapons—Annabeth has that invisibility hat, and supposedly Hermes is fond of handing out all kinds of random stuff—but Ares' gifts usually are.

"Weirdly, you're not my first demigod," Ellie grins back, feeling it sneak over her face. She wouldn't call Clarisse's grin infectious, but it's something.

"But most of 'em don't seem like they're in touch with their parents."

But Ellie pauses again, interested. "So does it like- shoot lightning? Or is it like a taser?"

"Taser," Clarisse says, but she's more focused on the other thing Ellie'd said. Weirdly, you're not my first demigod. She fixes her face, carefully moderating her expression so that it doesn't look too hopeful. It's been practically beaten into her never to get her hopes up too much—but her heart's beating faster all the same.

"You've met others? Are they here?"

"Loki? Sure. He's all right."

She regularly breaks into his house as a form of affection, don't worry about it.

Ellie notices the way Clarisse is almost too casual about it, so she matches that. "He lives over in Hightown, but he comes around sometimes. If you want, you can ask for him on the crystals. He'll probably answer."

And Loki loves talking about himself, so make that a definitely.

"Oh." Not Greek, or even Roman. She should've expected that, and it's stupid to feel disappointed, she tells herself. Like she could actually turn a corner here and run into someone she knows. It was dumb to even ask.

"Yeah, maybe I will." The more words she says, the more normal her voice sounds. "That's Norse, right? It's not my pantheon. I'm Greek."

"I only know all the Roman gods because they named a bunch of stuff in space after them," Ellie admits, shrugging apologetically.

But she frowns, chewing her lip.

"What god are you?"

Demigod, Ellie.

"I'm not a god," Clarisse says. "I'm a girl." It's not like they're mutually exclusive, but whatever, it gets her point across. "My father is Ares, the god of war."

Another person might leave it at that, but she can't resist getting a dig in at the Romans. "By the way, the Romans totally stole everything from the Greeks. They just gave all our shit a different name and called it a day." She's not bitter or anything! Who cares.

"Pretty sure NASA named moons and shit after the Greeks, though," she adds. "Like Charon. And Phobos and Deimos."

So Mars? Ellie wants to say, but she won't, because she's finally started to grow a few braincells. She thinks it, though.

"Shit. You're right.

"Okay, so your dad is some souped-up wargod. What's that mean for you?"

A couple seconds pass without Clarisse answering. Nobody's ever asked her that before—well, most of the people who know about her father are also demigods, so they wouldn't need to—and at first she's at a loss for how to describe any of it. It's just... her whole life, her identity. It means everything.

Her dad's a war god, and it means when she was eleven she got ripped away from her mom and her home and had to make her way across the country so she could learn how to fight monsters. It means she has a list of dead friends, and bad dreams way more often than good ones. Her baby godson is a satyr, and once the Oracle spoke a prophesy on her, and she burns a piece of her dinner every night as an offering for a father who barely ever thinks about her at all.

That's not what Ellie's asking, though. She means what can Clarisse do.

"Means I'm strong and I can fight." Slowly, her furrowed brow smooths out. "I can call down curses onto weapons, and I can summon the dead. I mean, I could. It isn't working here, since I fell through the rift."

Ellie watches things pass over Clarisse's face, behind her eyes. It's interesting what she chooses to share. Nothing about her godly dad. Dadly god? Or them together. Just a list of what she can do, like she's reading off a skill sheet.

Like it's a recitation. Like she's had to explain not the god stuff, but what she can do.

"Summoning the dead seems way more like a... Hades thing?" that was the other name for Pluto, right?

Far be it from her to poke holes in her story. She sounds way more curious than accusatory. She's seen so much weird shit she doesn't bother questioning it anymore. If Clarisse says she can summon the dead, Ellie believes her.

“It is,” Clarisse acknowledges. “Pretty sure a child of Hades could summon anybody they wanted. I can only do people who died fighting on the losing side of a war. They owe a debt to Ares for losing.”

Plucked out of the fields of Asphodel, most likely. Everything about themselves faded and forgotten except the idea that there is something to fight for, and somebody’s orders to follow.

"One last kick in the balls," Ellie mutters.

It's fucked up enough, really, but here in Thedas, it's a little bit more than that.

"There's a lot of weird baggage around anything like blood magic and necromancy in Thedas. Most people in Riftwatch won't care, but outside it, they really do."

“Oh,” Clarisse says.

She has picked up on that vibe, a little. The necromancy thing is something she’s only brought up a couple of times, when someone asked about her powers, but it’s gotten a reaction. Or more specifically a non-reaction, which is just as telling.

Maybe she’s wrong, but she gets the impression that Ellie’s telling her to watch herself without actually saying that. Clarisse appreciates it more than if she’d come right out and said not to mention it directly. And she’s not going to say thanks or anything because that would be dumb, but she nods.

“Good to know.” She picks up the brush again and goes back to brushing the mare.

Ellie's not one to shut anybody down from talking about themselves, and in her opinion the people who'd judge Clarisse on it are dumbasses, anyway. Clarisse is a Rifter, a completely different box from blood mages here, and doesn't play by the same rules.

But she doesn't want somebody to have a hard time, either. She nods in acknowledgement. It doesn't sound like a thank you, but she never expected one. Instead she puts up the currycomb and takes out a regular comb, moves to brush the bits of hay and dust out of the mare's mane. She's relaxed now, leans into the affectionate touches.

"There you go," she murmurs under her breath, fond. "Better now?"

It softens the gruff edges of her voice, makes her sound younger -- gives away that the lower register of it isn't completely natural, just habit.

"I've thought of a name," she says, suddenly.

There's no real physical resemblance between Ellie and Silena, but something about the way Ellie's voice softens as she talks to the horse makes Clarisse feel like she could close her eyes and be right back in the stables at camp, pretending to be bored while Silena worked. She wants to lean into the feeling just as much as she wants to turn her back on it, and so in the end she does nothing. It's a relief when Ellie speaks to her again.

"Yeah? What is it?"

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