MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | OPEN LOG

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[tender]

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.

[charmoffensive]

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.

[tender]

It's such a simple thing, turning into the brush of his fingers. Of course it's easy. Her body knows to do this; they've turned into each other over and over again, months and months of time in which it's become second nature.

She comes apart by slow degrees. Easing the wire-taut tension brings forward deep, shuddering breaths, staving off the kind of bone-deep sobs that would be impossible to stop once started. Hands leaving her knees to catch hold of the draping fabric of his tunic, grip there before flattening her palm over his heart. Wavering over whether to draw him closer, as if that's not nearly a foregone conclusion. Inevitable the moment he touched her face.

Facing him, she can take in every part of Loxley's expression. His eye is simply gone. No scar to mark it's leaving. She hadn't been able to stop it happening.

And every moment they'd spent in that room had made certain things very clear to her. How impossible it would be to lose him. How much she wanted to keep him.

It's too much to hold, to explain if he asks.

"I know," is what she manages finally, fractured and quiet. "I just can't—

Breaks off. Changes form to settle on a ragged, "I'm relieved."

Among other things.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley nods.

Brushes the edge of his thumb over the high curve of her cheekbone, hand resting in place without necessarily relaxing. It's only then that he realises he's now facing her, that the damage (even represented by the way it is disguised beneath silk) is more intrusive in this conversation than it was when they were sitting more sidelong.

Nothing for that now, save for letting that twinge of self-consciousness pass and disperse. It's just an eye. It's not something uniquely treasured.

"Me too," he says. (Among other things.) His other hand finds a place to lay against her bent knee. The hand at her face sinks down, his fingertips resting against the side of her neck, warm at her jaw, keeping contact now that it's been established.

A little apologetically; "You can't?"

[tender]

She can’t.

Part of her would simply like to leave it at that, if only because she wants to speak precisely. It’s an important thing to communicate, and she doesn’t have a clear grasp on the idea of it yet. It’s a small sentiment that hooks into something large and more than a little terrifying.

Yes, she could distract him. Or even perhaps tell him she didn’t want to speak of it. Loxley has given her space for the things she couldn’t or wasn’t ready to speak about at the time.

The indecision mixes oddly with the flow of tears, the teetering towards proper sobs instead of this slow drain of emotion. Her fingers curl in his tunic, clutching fabric against his chest.

“Loxley,” is half a protest, half a plea. A little stall for time while she tries to find her way through the disorder this mission has made of her thoughts.

[charmoffensive]

There's an impulse to quiet the conversation, bundle it up and set it aside for another time or even for never, if needed. Instead, Loxley first remains silent, the aim of his remaining eye reading hers as intently as he can, to gauge exactly what she's half-protesting, half-pleading. There's no doing that, though.

Because it could be anything. It could be something that hurts.

The subtle stroke of his fingers maintain, and his other hand winds around hers, insisting his fingers through where she grips his tunic so that he can instead hold her hand, although he keeps it bundled to his chest anyway. There, his heart beat, doing its thing. Strange thing: in Tassia it beats far, far slower than it does in Thedas.

Something he tends to only notice in moments like these, moments he almost entirely shares with her. "You can say anything at all to me," Loxley says. A promise, of kinds.

[tender]

A small shake of her head answers him, unthinking even as she reminds herself she is done running and hiding. This a kind thing for Loxley to say, of course. Derrica hadn't really expected otherwise; Loxley has been patient and attentive, listened even to the worst of her life without flinching away from it.

Of course he would hear her, whatever it was that she had to tell him.

She could simply ramble out all her misgivings, this jangle of hurt that doesn't entirely make sense. Maybe he could sort through it enough to take some meaning from it.

But it's unfair. It's as unfair as the prickling upset anger she carried out of that chamber with her, directionless and stubbornly clinging to her even after the gamut of Venatori they'd had to cut through. Loxley has been through enough.

So she straightens. Not enough to break his hold on her, but to create a little space. Attempt to order her thoughts, even though she'd rather say none of this at all.

"I can't lose you. It would be too painful."

It shouldn't have taken this temple, this choice, to illustrate that for her. And it hadn't, not really. She'd known. She has only been cornered into saying so.

"I'm sorry," tacks on as an after thought. What is she actually sorry for? She hardly knows, only has this reflexive apology for the trouble of hearing it.

[charmoffensive]

"Please don't be."

Impulsive, quiet, sincere, a flicker of an uncertain smile at the corners of it. Of all the I can'ts she might have said, there are so many worse ones—at least Loxley thinks so, trying to keep a calm grip on the conversation while her ears flow and she navigates the steely labyrinth of what she is willing and unwilling to voice. He owes her that much, he thinks.

See how long it lasts. "You've always made me feel as though I mattered to someone," he continues. "To you. I don't know that anyone's done that before. And I think it's good."

His hand squeezes hers. There are pieces of this that he'd wanted to express before today happened, had imagined doing so more elegantly, without having to work against the tide of this forceful thing that tried to push them apart. But no matter.

"I can't lose you either. And I'm not very sorry about it, I'm afraid."

[tender]

Loxley is braver than she is. Derrica suspects he's never run from anything, least of all his own feelings.

There is some part of her that wants to pull away from him. Preempt all that had been shown to her in that room by severing herself from it first. It is a bad habit, this urge towards flight. She'd thought she'd come much farther in breaking herself of it.

"You do matter to me."

Confirmation. Unnecessary, maybe. All the nights they'd shared a bed, woken up wound together, the nightmares they'd traded and the way she'd pinned him and the things she'd murmured, all of it pieced together tells a specific story. Yes, he matters to her. He is hooked into her bones.

How could she be the first to give him this? How?

"I love you," is tearful too. It scares her to say. It is the truth but it is easy to warp and twist; it's a truth that might break them apart. She's learned that lesson. She has learned to be careful, to define lines and boundaries, make herself understood. Loxley understands, she thinks, but they are in uncharted territory, fraught in the wake of having nearly lost him.

[charmoffensive]

And there it is, then, and Loxley isn't sure if he'd dared really imagine it himself, of it, of that, being the true source of her current pain, dark at the centre of his good intentions. That painful twist of anxiety loosens, anyway, perhaps too soon—she is so upset, and he has likely made missteps all over the place in his attempts to understand, but,

a small flicker of a smile, even as his brow pinches. Not an unalloyed good, but a good nonetheless. Leans in, longer proportions letting him land a gentle kiss to her temple, lingering there in a nudge of his face near hers. The side without the wrap of silk.

"I love you too," he says back to her, quieter in this shared space.

There's no not saying it. He waits for it to feel like lying, but thinks instead of that uniquely painful break in turning away from her with the knowledge he'd never see her again. Nerves, suddenly, a short breath out, and he has to ask; "Is that alright?"

[tender]

The proximity should be a good thing. It is a good thing, in some respects. It is familiar and it is a comfort, but the anxious, terrified thread working through her body can't be soothed away so easily.

Is it alright?

She is still thinking of the shock of realizing how easily he could slip through her fingers. It weighs against the flex of his expression, the smile that had sparked for a moment even in this place.

"I don't know."

Is part of an answer, unsteady but closest at hand. Having these words given back to her, softly, intimate as a secret, is more complicated than it should be. Warmth unspools in her chest as surely as anxiety radiates a chill.

"Is what we have enough?"

A terrible, miserable question when she is thinking of how she is not enough to keep him here. Rifters are ephemeral. When Holden had gone—

This isn't entirely about Loxley slipping away. It's about what he needs. About whether she is enough, as she is, as she prefers to be.

[charmoffensive]

It's a question with angles, certainly, some of them spikier than others. When Loxley does not sense her turning more towards him, opening up or relaxing further, he settles back again, giving them both space without breaking contact.

He can do nothing at first but give her his instinctive answer, an optimistic, "I love what we have," but it's not so obliviously sunny as that. True, though. The question of more has not loomed in his mind, but perhaps he's been spoiled for their quietly building intimacy, a pattern and entanglement. Perhaps 'more' would be nice, to have, to give.

But there are so many things she could mean, and her eyes are still glistening and she doesn't know if it's alright, the thing they've shared just now, and everything is still chilled with, you know, the confrontation of mortality. So.

"Let's," he starts, pauses over it. Tries again. "We deserve it, don't we? What we have. And being alive to enjoy it."

[tender]

"Yes," is a simple answer to give. Of course they deserve all of this. Being alive. Happy. Together.

But the pinch of worry at her brow doesn't ease. Derrica looks into his face, observing all his sincerity, the earnest quality in the way he poses this question that makes her heart hurt.

She touches his face. Cups his cheek.

"You deserve everything," she tells him softly. "You're brave and kind. You're so good, Loxley."

Derrica is saying these things just to say them, just to speak them aloud for him to hear. She is careful not to disturb the strip of silk obscuring his eye as she touches him. At the end of this statement, I love you still echoes, a palpable weight.

"Let's what?" is prompting, softer still on the tail end of these things she presses back to him.

[charmoffensive]

A subtle tip of his head accepts and leans into that touch, and it's good, too, the familiar feeling of warmth and the conscious lowering of his own defenses he has to do when she says those things too. A fine discomfort that is more of a balm to hear now than ever.

She prompts him, but he's already turning his head to touch a kiss to her wrist, whiskery and light, and a subtle hm of amusement for the echoed way in which he also is not permitted to simply leave things half unsaid.

Turn about, and all that. "I had a few," he explains, another twinge of a smile. "Let's give ourselves a little time to feel better about everything. Let's not let all this get in our way. Let's go home."

But rather than wait for a reply, he asks, "What do you need?"

[tender]

A question she has no answer for.

So she weighs his suggestions. Time, perhaps. Setting all this aside, nice but impossible. And the idea of going home—

Maybe the closest.

It's difficult. Derrica so rarely has to field this question. She is the one who puts it to other people. There is some quiet kind of discomfort in trying to parse out what might soothe all this quiet anguish for Loxley to do with what he will.

Sooner or later, she'll have to think about losing Rivaini. The first language she'd ever spoken. A piece of her home that she had always carried with her. But for the moment, she has the warmth of Loxley's kiss on her skin and the bristle of his cheek under her fingers, and she owes him some kind of answer.

"Can we go to sleep?" is maybe a little irresponsible. This conversation feels unfinished, and she is certain he'll worry over it. But this is the closest she can come to naming some manageable, positive thing. For them to lay down together, and sleep until the entirety of their party is ready to return to Kirkwall.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley nods.

It will be something to worry over until they can find the time to speak again, but as he had said: he had come here to be near her, and certainly for their mutual benefit, not only hers. There is enough exhaustion in his body that the prospect sounds nice and he can't quite bear to ask anything else of her, in the moment. Sleep it is.

"Let me clean up a little," he says. "And I'll come join you."

[tender]

"You don't have to. I don't mind."

They are all tired. Some manner of worn out, all the trials of the day embedded on them one way or another. She doesn't care.

It is abruptly beyond her ability to tolerate, the idea of having him out of sight. Even if in the moment having him close is almost like pressing down on a bruise, it can't possibly weigh up against having him walk off, even for a moment.

[charmoffensive]

"Alright."

Staying, then. He goes as far as to shuck off his boots, before shifting so that they might share her bedroll. Down, rolled onto his back, a long breath eased out of him. After the trials of this forest, even simple camping gear laid out on cold stone feels wonderful, simply for the ability to stretch his spine out.

He opens an arm, inviting her in. Watching her with his remaining eye, the gloom of the cavern catching at the night-seeing reflection at the back of it in brief glimmers. Confesses, as she does so, "I didn't want to be alone, to sleep," in case she's under any illusion that he is simply indulging her.

Not in this, anyway.

are we in bow territory

[tender]

I didn't want to be alone, to sleep.

If she wanted to, she could willfully misunderstand the sentiment he is trying to express to her. He doesn't want to be alone. The options here are limited. So on and so forth.

But no, that isn't what this is meant to convey to her.

Derrica has fit herself in alongside him, and the simple action of finding a comfortable position alongside him adds dimensions to his confession. It isn't about being alone, it is about being here, together, specifically. It is about the way settling down to sleep beside each other is so familiar as to be unremarkable.

She has tucked herself in against his chest, where she might observe his face as they sleep. His arm is comfortably heavy where he's laid it over her bicep. There is nearly no space between them, but there is enough for her to lift a hand up to tuck beneath the loosened laces of his tunic, lay her palm along his neck, thumb under his chin.

"I'm here. I'm not going away."

Truthful. It scares her to say so and realize that.

"Just try to get some sleep."

Because it is a near certainty Derrica will be awake for some time longer, dwelling on every part of this day.

bow time

[charmoffensive]

There's a specificity to it. Not just any warm body comfortably tangled with him, but hers. The knowledge that the sleeping form beside him houses Derrica in particular. The comfort and ease of knowing how they best fit together when bedding down, having done it so many times.

His fingers slide between locks of her hair, over braids. It's difficult to be in close proximity of Derrica without immediately wanting more of it, but any twinge he feels for intimacy has to contend with

everything else, not the least of which being where they are.

"Alright," agreeably murmured, but doesn't close his eye right away, studying her face, the little crinkles of worry and apprehension, where dampness still shines where it tracked from the corners of her eyes. He closes his hand around the one she lay at his throat, lifting it to kiss her palm, before loosening his grasp, and settling in.