faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES

Entry tags:

MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | OPEN LOG

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: A race to a Gate, with detours
WHEN: Late August to mid Kingsway
WHERE: Arlathan Forest
NOTES: See also OOC post, puzzle log.

Intel out of Hasmal and the Antivan borderlands suggest the enemy has abruptly changed gears, hurriedly redeploying most of the teams that have been busy combing the southern end of the Hundred Pillars north, to the edge of the Arlathan Forest. The only plausible explanation is that they've got a hot lead on another gate, more urgent than whatever they've been (so far fruitlessly) searching for north of Starkhaven. This provides Riftwatch with an opportunity to finally beat the Venatori to a Gate and prevent them from opening it—but they're going to have to move fast.

Helpfully, previous surveys of the Crossroads located an eluvian only a few hours' walk away that leads into the Arlathan Forest, so the enemy's head start in terms of travel time can be swiftly made up. The fact that the Venatori have brought so many of their search teams up from the south suggests they don't know exactly where in the forest the Gate is, but there's no telling what clues they might be working on and they out-number Riftwatch, so it's all hands on deck to scour the ruins strewn throughout the forest and find it first.

I. HOME BASE

The eluvian Riftwatch is using is located inside an expansive chamber, so cool, dark, and quiet that it might initially be mistaken for a cave. Or not even mistaken, exactly. It is both cavernous and underground. But when torches are held near the cavern walls, they reveal a wall within the wall, smooth dolomite bricks with large, arcing windows that frame nothing but sheets of limestone, both smoothed and in some places receding in rivulets where water has been seeping through for hundreds of years. Young limestone stalactites are beginning to creep in through the windows.

In summary: a room within a cave, scattered with ancient stone benches in various states of crumbling and more recent additions made of wood, cloth, and vine, all partially rotten. One of its two expansive doorways opens on a stone corridor, perfectly straight, between three smaller rooms. The smallest looks like a shrine, walls adorned with a crumbling mosaic of the elven pantheon. Another room was not always a bathroom, but in the past century or two someone has fashioned it into one, harnessing a rivulet that's streaming and seeping from somewhere beyond the cavern walls to build a stone bath reminiscent of a fountain, overflowing into smaller pools before the water is swept out of the room altogether by the stream's disappearance through the wall. The water tastes of limestone, but it's fresh and safe to drink.

This is where Riftwatch sets up its temporary base of operations for the search of the forest. Carting supplies across the Crossroads and replenishing them from time to time is simple enough. Someone even thinks to bring hay to spread beneath the bedrolls in one of the smaller rooms. The central chamber is lit by the glow of the eluvian, torches, and lyrium glowlights, ultimately bright enough to do paperwork. Some people make a routine out of doing their normal ("normal") work here, for the time being, to be on hand if there's an emergency or to save themselves the walk back through the Crossroads between stints in the woods. A map of Arlathan Forest—a bad one, at least at first—is spread over a wooden table that's gone soft and spongy with age and moisture; it wouldn't support a man's weight anymore, but it can hold a map and the markers used to keep track of which areas have been searched, where Corypheus' people have been spotted, and which landmarks seem promising.

The second doorway in the chamber opens to stairs. Stairs down. This structure was once above, not below. But two stories deeper into the earth, the stairs give way to a natural cavern, no sign of elven construction in sight, with a draft that guides visitors through a narrow passage and out into the forest.

II. CITYWIDE GREEN INITIATIVE

Arlathan Forest is not as tropical as the Donarks that Riftwatch found themselves stranded in a few years ago, but it is far enough north to be warm, humid, dense, and deeply green, home to a constant symphony of buzzing and chirping and squeaking and the occasional (hopefully) distant snarl or growl. Of particular note are the presence of alligators, jaguars, and small elephants, along with the usual collection of smaller wildlife and the elusive halla.

Wild as it is, the forest doesn't allow anyone to forget that it was once a city. In the heart of the forest the terrain is cliffy and jagged in a way that suggests that, rather than the city only sinking into the earth, the earth might have risen to meet it halfway: there are towering, sheer-faced rock formations that evoke the image of buildings several stories tall, now encased in stone and plant life. Sometimes a vine-covered fragment of roof- or tower-top emerges from the top of one of these rock formations, or an expanse of brick wall from the sides. They're all in an ancient elven style familiar from, if nothing else, the Crossroads everyone walked through to get here. The lower, marshy land between them–in some places occupied with streams or wider rivers–have occasional patches of tiled stone where roads once ran instead.

There are signs, too, of more recent occupation since the ancient city of Arlathan was swallowed by the earth. Forest-dwellers from within the last age have built walkways and bridges among the cliffs and rock formations that occasionally still hold up. They've left behind tools, collapsing huts, signs of occupation in caves, and occasionally a more recent skeleton or three. And there are rarer signs of the Dalish who still occupy the forest: arrows embedded in tree trunks, statues of wolves or other symbols of the pantheon, a few old abandoned camps, a damaged aravel.

III. MORE MAGIC MORE PROBLEMS

Of course, this is not a normal ancient city swallowed by the earth and left to become a wild forest over the course of more than a thousand years. It's a magical one.

Alongside the bugs and birds and creatures occupying the forest are spirits, in more abundance than most people have ever seen them. There are small swarms of wisps drifting like butterflies around objects of interest to them, and more humanoid, ghostly, temperamental wraiths drifting over marshlands. A very rare wraith will have a voice, a name, and perhaps an errand to ask or a bargain to make. Shades wait in caves, and demons of any kind might be discovered waiting for victims in the nooks and crannies of the woods–but in particular the sylvans for which the forest is known, which any traveler passing nearby is warned to watch for.

Less common are the Forest Guardians. Easily missed among the rocky, viney landscape until they begin to move, they're massive constructions of wood and stone, tall as golems, with vine-covered stone bodies, walking on four wooden legs bound to stone feet covered in runes and moss. They remain immobile until attacks on the forest (or someone drawing enough magical power to disturb the Veil) rouse them. Then they wake to hunt the perpetrators with two wooden arms that end in thick metal blades imbued with lyrium. The arms swing in predictable patterns–they're enchanted, not thinking. And with sufficient force, they can be "killed."

Between all of this and the unfamiliarity of the landscape, it may take time to notice the biggest problem of all, which is: time is fucked.

At its mildest, traversing the same ground might take an hour going one way but two or three hours going the other, as if it's stretched out somehow, despite no clear changes to the landscape to justify the added time. If there is added time? They may burn through rations and tire as if a whole day has passed, while the sun hangs unmoving in the sky or it stays dark for just as long, and return to the base camp to find they've been gone only a few days instead of the weeks they thought. And even a confident navigator may march confidently north for several hours before realizing they've been going south the whole time (or have they).

The effects become more severe the closer to the center of the ancient city one goes. At some point a team might find themselves going in circles no matter what they do to avoid it. And that's not the worst of it. If someone is inventive enough to begin marking a passed landmark with tally marks, they'll find the count flickering back and forth each time they pass it, requiring them to put the marks down out of order: their second time past the stone, then their seventh, then their fourth.

Their sending crystals work—erratically. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes with long waits between answering messages. Sometimes with responses to the five questions they asked in silence arriving out of order. To those on the other end–or those waiting for them when they arrive back at Riftwatch's underground base—nothing unusual will seem to be happening, and their trips back and forth no longer than expected.

And it gets worse!

Through all of this, visitors to the forest may begin to see themselves and others in their traveling party, some distance ahead or behind them–mirroring their actions, having conversations, before or after the real ones do or did or might have done the same. While you're not oblivious to them, they are oblivious to you–the best way to tell the real from the mirage. Except they are not exactly mirages. They affect the world around them. A bridge that breaks beneath their feet ahead of you will still be broken when you reach it; should you break the bridge, the copies behind you will stop at the destruction to plan another way around.

No one is bound to the fates of these forwards- and backwards-echoes: should a double fall off a cliff ahead of you, you can choose to be more careful or avoid the area altogether to prevent the same mishap. Attacking animals, demons, and enemies will see them, as well as you, and may be convinced to go after them instead. Or they may pick them off ahead of you, giving you some forewarning of what you're about to step into.

Despite their apparent solidity in these moments, they don't last. The branches they have bent will remain bent, their footprints will remain printed, and the debris that tumbles over a cliff's edge with them will remain piled at the bottom, but they themselves inevitably disappear when no one is looking. They're only people who might have been.

IV. THE AMAZING RACE

Anyway, Riftwatch didn't come here to hang out with possessed trees and walk in endless circles for fun. Teams are sent into the woods in specific directions or in pursuit of particular landmarks, combing the forest for signs of a Gate or the Gate itself. They may travel three or four days in one direction—three or four real days, however brief or long they feel to those doing the traveling—before reaching their destinations. Along the way they'll have to make and break camp in the safest places they can find, forage and hunt to supplement their rations, and keep their eyes peeled for the forest's other intruders.

Corypheus' people are here too. Venatori, Red Templar, or corrupted Wardens and various lackeys have fanned out within the forest, searching for the same things Riftwatch is. Intelligence indicates they don't know for certain that a Gate is nearby. Riftwatch would like to keep it that way, so the rules are a little different this time. They can't know that Riftwatch is here. Everyone who ventures into the forest will be required to dress like they could be hunters, bandits, or recluses. And anyone who could report that Riftwatch is there can't leave the forest alive, and they need to look like they've been killed by something or someone other than Riftwatch.

This could mean ambushes and traps, herding them into angry wildlife or forest monsters (or vice versa), arranging for mysterious accidents, anything that maintains the Venatori's illusion that they are in a one horse race to the Gate. And in the meantime, the enemy search parties need to be tracked, misled, and thwarted whenever possible, and any information they have—clues they're following, records of areas already searched, maps—stolen or, if that's not possible, destroyed.

Sometimes these plans will be complicated by the presence of time-rippling doppelgangers. Your team might agree to sneak up on an enemy camp in silence, only for copies of you who came to some other agreement, apparently, to launch a coordinated fire-raining attack in the background. Or they might be ahead of you when you sneak in, oblivious to your presence while they beat you to slitting throats or stealing notes. During firefights it may not be possible to tell whether the person you've just watched die is your friend or only one of their echoes. And Corypheus' people are suffering the same effects: a man you ambush on the trail might only be a double of the real man, arriving on the scene a minute later to see himself already dead on the ground, suddenly very on guard.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One more evening to tie up loose ends, and the company is due to start packing up for a full return at first light. Many have already made their way back through the mirror, making for less shadows and echoed voices, scuffing footsteps and hefted torches. It's late when Loxley returns, having offered use of the night vision he still has in his one remaining eye to patrol the edges of their territory, before finally turning in.

He is a quiet, lanky figure, moving back through this odd fusion of cavern and naturally form cave. Mud spattered boots are quiet, by reflex, but he doesn't do anything to still the click and jangle of sheathed sword. Despite his own weariness, his own ego injury, he reflexively raises a hand to fix the muss of his hair as he sets a course, a newly formed habit to see that his curls do something to distract from the bandaging that disguises his left eye.

It's possible she has already departed for the Gallows, a thought he entertains before he collects some food anyway and moves to the cavern where bedrolls live, the scent of stale hay and warm bodies.

It hasn't been long, since the temple. Exhaustive travel, a long sleep, a patrol. Maybe now, things can get back to normal.

She had considered leaving.

But had recognized it as a kind of—

Fleeing, maybe.

Trying to outrun everything that had happened in that last room. Find a place that is quiet, where no one knows her face and she can sit with all the events of this exceptionally long day. The churn of emotion is near to being battered by a riptide. It has quieted when set alongside all the things that must be done to keep them safe, but it is still there. She can feel the pull of it even now, sat with her back against the cavern wall, knees pulled up to her chest.

Listening and observing. She might lay down to sleep, but for the moment she is following to the ebb and flow of movement, attentive to any kerfuffle signaling injury.

She knows Loxley immediately. Height and horns, yes, but to some degree it is simply the fall of his boots on packed earth, the directness of his approach.

There is space beside her. He is welcome to it, though her invitation is muted in this moment, telegraphed in the uncurling of her body, the straightening of her posture from where she had been curled over her knees.

Maybe had she stayed curled, Loxley would have set some foot down by her feet, and withdrawn.

Maybe not. It is not in his nature to pull away from certain people, to leave things unaddressed and unspoken, despite everything. But that there is invitation eases a little of his own tension, and he sinks down cross-legged, setting items down between them. A little bread, a couple of bowls of something soupy with spoons half-submerged.

"Pickings seem to be a little thin on the ground," he says, lightly, quietly. Like a more muted version of the normal tempo of conversation. Like he hadn't felt a small twist of apprehension and worry and guilt at seeing her so quiet and still. "Tempting to just fuck off, though, isn't it."

What would anyone do, fire them? After all this.

After all this.

"We'll leave soon, I think," she tells him, rather than agree. "Once everyone is satisfied that we've done all we can here."

Shamed, at the part of her that would have picked up to run. She had wanted very much to have grown out of that impulse. But yes, she was tempted. Is tempted.

Reaches a hand to catch loosely at one bowl, turn it idly without lifting the spoon.

Loxley feels far from her, though the space is hardly so great. She is unsettled by that as much as she is unsettled by every other aspect of their situation, her own conflicted emotions. Grief and lingering anger and apprehension and uncertainty all muddled, making it difficult to gather herself the way she should.

But she manages to center herself enough to arrive at a gently posted: "It isn't hurting you?"

Loxley tears some bread with great unenthusiasm, where whatever hunger he is feeling is deeply subordinate to other unpleasantries. One of them that isn't, though,

"It isn't," he assures, between a bite of bread. "It doesn't feel like anything."

So there's that. The consolation prize that he won't subject Derrica or Richard to inspecting it, when he would simply rather they did not. There's self-consciousness in a touch to the edge of the bandage high on his cheek, ensuring its placed correctly, before his hands go to fidget with his bowl too.

Hesitates. Says, "Don't take this as anything, I just want to know," before he takes a moment to determine the least childish, selfish way of saying a thing, "But are you unhappy with me? For how everything happened.

"Because," a rush to add, "I wouldn't blame you. If you were."

Is she?

It is hard to pick through all the conflicting emotions to try and parse which parts of them might be unhappiness connected to Loxley. Which parts are incidental, more about what she hadn't done, what things feel like a failing, what had been shown to her and what had scared her to feel, all with no clear way to cut through and separate.

She doesn't say anything for a moment. Turns the bowl again, spoon sliding along with a soft rasping sound.

She has held herself so tightly for so long that even the smallest breath towards loosening brings a treacherous tremor forward that works through her expression, sets into the line of her mouth and the words she speaks as she says, "It wasn't your fault we were in that room."

And Loxley hadn't set the terms.

But he hadn't let her dispense any part of what she could do to try and keep him from fulfilling those terms. This is what sticks, painfully, in her mind.

Edited 2022-10-14 04:08 (UTC)

It's not really a no, is it.

Just because he wasn't chiefly responsible for all that had occurred doesn't mean she is incapable of being unhappy with him. Loxley is quiet, first, scraping together some food to eat before setting the bowl aside with clear disinterest in its contents, or at least, eating alone in front of her while she keeps a hold of her composure so tightly.

I hate to make you sad, he'd said, and meant it. Days later, Gwenaëlle will make a joke on the crystals about how he hadn't kissed a girl during his moment of noble heroism, and he won't have a smart reply back.

"I know that," he says, on a delay, which is a conscious effort on his part not to start rambling, but to make space.

Her hands lift from where Derrica had curled them around her calves, from the fiddling turn of the bowl, to press over her face. Her hair is coming loose from her braid in curling wisps. The quiet in the wake of his acknowledgement is meant for her and she knows it, but there is a lump in her throat she can't swallow past.

And it feels unfair to be anything other than relieved. He lost an eye. He could have died. He would have died, if the spirits hadn't relented.

"I would have had to watch them take you," she says at last. Wrenching the words free, hands brushing hair back from her face before returning to catch hold of her knees. "Without having tried anything."

This complex, tangled admission. She isn't certain whether or not Loxley fully grasps what she is telling him. Of all the things hooked into these words.

There's a beat, before Loxley shifts position. If she isn't looking, she'll hear her bowl set aside too, and sense the way he aligns with her to rest his back against the wall. There is still space between them, but perhaps breaching it would be a little less awkward, if either felt the compulsion.

He does, but holds back from it. It feels strange, to no longer be certain about how much his physical proximity might be welcome, but it's secondary to wanting to remain comfortably near, even without touching, rather than not at all.

And on this side, his missing eye is angled away.

Now he talks, still quiet, trying not to let too many words escape him uncontrolled. "When peoples' lives are being threatened, I've found that hesitation or—any kind of unwilling, on my part, might get people killed. And when Gwenaëlle spoke up like she did," and he trails off, there, fingers flexing open, relaxing. "I recognise I moved to put you through what I was avoiding for myself. Of her flinging herself on the blade, or if you— what if they took you, you know, or punished your efforts to try something."

He stops there, feeling some kind of knife-twisty tension high in his chest. "I'm sorry," finally, a little flimsily but no less sincere. There's no talk of Flint's coin, from him. He knows what he'd have done, standing where he stood, and is rather sure he did.

There is no reason to invoke Flint's coin.

Derrica has a sense of what had been done, and doesn't necessarily fault him for it. At a remove, she understands the reasoning. It was Loxley's own case for himself, after all. And Flint was a captain before he was ever Commander of Forces. All of this aligns, settles into place in a way that she doesn't raise any particular objection to.

Feeling her way along the hurt in her body, the churn of emotion rising and falling in her chest, she tries to parse what might be mended. What part of her his apology might become a balm for. Why it is so difficult to bring herself to lean into him, and let that be enough.

"I know it was very brave," she says finally, when she is more certain of her voice, that the tremor working through her has been suppressed, for the moment. "And I know we didn't have a better choice."

Because they had chosen. Coin or no coin.

"I don't want you to apologize. It feels too unfair. I just..."

A trailing pause. Her fingers knit together over her knees. Hang on tightly enough that all her knuckles whiten.

"I didn't want to watch you die. I can't do that."

Edited (words) 2022-10-14 07:17 (UTC)

"I don't mind unfair," offered, after a moment. "But I won't make you assure me of anything."

Except that knifeish feeling hasn't let up, seems to have deepened at her latest words. Loxley considers saying something, but it starts with I feel and he can't bring himself to let it past his teeth. He slides a look sidelong, notices the way tendons stand against her skin where she hangs onto her bent legs.

Swallows, waits until he's sure his own voice will come out the way he wants it to (bright, but gentle) before he says, "Statistically speaking, I'm rather good at not dying. I know it seems comparatively quite likely, what with recent events, but given the sheer number of scrapes I've survived—"

His fingers splay, relax. Basically untouchable.

"Next time, you can save me. How's that."

"Would you let me?"

Is unfair.

But it is what sticks. They will never know if she might have been able to avert this bargain. If the spirits had simply taken him, Derrica knows how heavy that would weigh on her. It chimes and mirrors what she recalls of Dairsmuid. Yes, she'd fled then, and yes, it was very different.

But she hadn't argued as she should have in that room. Maybe she shouldn't have argued at all.

None of this is Loxley's fault, other than he had been willing to die and taken all those conditions in stride.

And that it had been very instructive for her, realizing exactly what it would be like to lose him. It's hard to say which part is worse than the other, only that both sting and ache and scare her by turns.

The easy answer is: yes.

It wouldn't be a lie, would it? In theory? How many times has Loxley been saved by wielders of magic, whether it's Richard's divine abilities pulling him back from even further than merely the brink of death or stranger, arcane influences shielding him in battle? But he doesn't trust himself to say these things in case it sounds

well, insincere, or dismissive. There's a risk of a pause sounding worse than that, but he takes it anyway to take a moment and better track what led Derrica to ask it in the first place. Frowning into the dimness of the cavern, focused forwards.

Then, finally, "Your abilities far usurp my own," he says, "and that isn't flattery for nothing. The things mages of your kind can do, of Richard's kind, I've seen it to its fullest extent, both here and back home. Your understanding of the things we contend with usurps my own. There aren't a lot of problems in this world that will be solved with a quick blade or a flash of bravado, but I apply it when I can. It's not nothing, those things, it's just. I know it isn't everything."

There's a world where Derrica talked to the spirits and it was fine, maybe. It doesn't feel likely, but it doesn't feel impossible. "If I misjudged today, then I won't again. I promise."

Is this what she wanted?

Loxley is choosing his words carefully, offering this sentiment sincerely. But it doesn't soothe any part of what feels cracked open in her. She has never really doubted that Loxley has the correct estimation of her strength, even without a full understanding of what she is. What a woman with magic raised in Rivain might be capable of.

But the abilities a Rivaini Seer may or may not have aren't what she wants to talk about.

Derrica's grip on her knees shifts, not loosening but readjusting. Resettling the taut clasp of her hands. She takes a deep breath, tipping her head upward to blink at the ceiling. There is a pause here, because she doesn't know what to say, and what she'd sound like as she was saying it.

"I'm sorry," she says, finally. Because it's cruel to keep him waiting, and this is the first thing that sounds right. "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say. Or what I need you to tell me."

"So none of that, then,"

is meant to be funny, to ease something. Delivery lowkey, but intent plain.

And a reflex, too, a defensive realignment to protect himself from that sudden cold dash of feeling foolish. He rests his head back against the stone cavern wall. He thinks it would be tactically wise to leave her be. It could be kind, too. But so much of him wants to stay right here, even in its painful awkwardness, and not simply because being alone has no appeal.

"I don't want to just—say things to try to make it alright. It all happened so fucking fast and it was awful and unfair and now we've got a moment." A breath taken. "But mostly I came here to be near you."

That all didn't sound quite as elegant, but it is something.

It is something.

And the way those words sound, falling from his mouth to the space between them, is abruptly too much to bear.

The tears, when they come, aren't accompanied by any kind of sob. She blinks against the gathering prickle of tears, until they spill down her temples, disappear into her hair. The memory of that moment, his hand slipping out of her grip with the press of his kiss still warm on her cheek, is inescapable and painful. Derrica inhales, shallow and unsteady. Feels the tremors that single breath sets off in her body, how they continue even when she tightens her grip on her legs.

She manages half of something. A word. His name. But when her voice breaks, Derrica stops rather than go on.

He looks to her late, at that broken-off word in her mouth. Then, movement, leg folding under him to move nearer to her.

"Hey," even quieter. For all that Loxley had been strangely conscious of the few inches of space between them, of feeling it as a wall of kinds, breaking through it now is as effortless as if he'd never been conscious of it at all, even if there is a minor twinge of worry that it is the wrong thing to do.

But he could spend forever worrying after the wrong thing to do, and rather, he does what feels right, which is to reach for her, to touch the curve of her cheek as if to stem that trickle of liquid run across it. "I'm here," he says, at the same time. "Right here."

They're not words from nothing. Words whispered, once, repeated, affirmed, and echoed now.

loxley.

closed to derrica.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

closed to gwenaëlle.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject