faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES

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MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | PUZZLE LOG

WHO: Bastien, Byerly, Cosima, Derrica, Edgard, Ellis, Flint, Gwenaëlle, Josias, Loxley, Marcus, Mobius, Redvers, Sidony, Tiffany, Tony, Viktor
WHAT: Puzzles and sacrifice
WHEN: Mid Kingsway
WHERE: A temple in Arlathan Forest
NOTES: See also OOC post, open log.

The search pays off, after a few weeks, when a team—every team, independently, separated from the others by foliage and time, and unaware they aren't the only ones—stumbles upon a sizable contingent of Venatori and their allies making steady progress toward a ruined temple complex. It's too large a group for any four- or five-person team to combat directly. But they can outrun them. Whether they dash ahead of the enemy unseen or pause first to ambush or delay them, they'll beat them to the ruins. The forest is so densely grown up around and over its remnants that it's impossible to get a sense of the full scale, but something about the size of the walls and doorways arching high overhead, the opulence of the carvings and mosaics even encrusted by millenia of moss, suggests an important site. And there's a feeling, too, a spine-prickling sense of mingled excitement and foreboding, that whispers this must be the place.

That feeling is confirmed by the contents of the mosaics lining the walls, depicting a glowing golden city with a familiar arrangement of spires and towers. Looking at it causes a strangely powerful sense of deja vu until someone puts it together—these same towers now haunt the Fade, their blackened heights always visible, never reachable. The mosaic of the city circles what looks once to have been a great temple hall, perspective sloping to draw the eye to the only other doorway out of this space, an arched portal opposite, gilded to appear as if it's part of the mosaic, as if walking through it might take one through the walls of the golden city itself.

Each team will reach this temple alone and will travel through it alone. As far as they will be able to tell, they are the only ones to have made it here—perhaps the only people to set foot inside it in a thousand years or more—and the combination of time distortion and crystal lapses will make it impossible to determine otherwise. They can send all the messages they like while inside the complex, but will receive no replies until it's all over. As far as they know, they are the only people with this chance to investigate by far the most promising site Riftwatch has found in the forest. The enemy is going to arrive soon to take whatever is here, and if they leave here now who knows how long it might take to find it again.

Once they're inside, their passage through the temple will follow a linear path, with no opportunities to branch off or divide their party. There is a single route to follow, and the walls are still high and sheer and thick enough to stop them going over or under or through. Each room will present a new trial, a puzzle to be solved, feats of strength and cunning and bravery to be accomplished before the way forward is revealed. If they take the time to clear away some of the vines and study the statues and reliefs, they'll find that each room is dedicated to one or more of the Elvhen gods, which may provide clues if they know their pantheon.

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Years ago, Derrica had sat on the ferry in the cold with Richard Dickerson. He'd put a question to her, in the course of that return trip: Would she choose a rifter over her countrymen?

Neither of them could have known that there would come a point when that theoretical was made very real.

"Stop it," is so broadly directed that it includes even the Commander, who must have opinions though he has not voiced them. She finds them telegraphed in the knife-edge of his expression. There is a split second where she might wish to take those words back, or temper them in some quiet deference to him, but the urge is set aside.

She has made herself very still where she stands, spine straight in spite of the weight leaned onto her stave.

The choice must be made. Derrica can see no way past it, because the information is so precious. Leaving without it is not an option. The Commander volunteering himself is not an option.

More time to think on it isn't going to change the confines of the choice set before them.

"I can try to speak with it," is a tenuous, maybe useless approach. Derrica knows better than perhaps anyone in this room how intractable spirits can be. "If we can persuade it to accept a different barter..."

No one has to argue over which of them dies here.

If it can be persuaded—

With a turn of the bandage's end, Flint secures the dressing about Gwenaëlle's arm. The drill point of his focus, so rigorously fixed on her, shifts. He half turns and all at once the scope of his attention has broadened to encapsulate both her and Loxley.

"I've a coin in my pocket. Is it a silver or a bit?"

Derrica is excluded from the game (if that is the word for it). No, they won't be wasting time on bargaining.

The problem with having presented her own argument as one of pragmatism and logic is that— well, it would have been difficult to argue the significant point that she had overlooked about which of them might just fucking vanish at any moment. Imagine, only briefly, if she dies for this and a week from now Loxley dissipates like a dream upon waking,

what's she got to counter that? It isn't that she wouldn't like to try, but even she can hear the problem with well, but you haven't, all this time and unpacking the part of her that's all too willing to lay her life down right now is an unnecessary and unhelpful delay when time might well be of the essence.

So—

so she doesn't hesitate, when Flint provides her with an alternative to simply giving in, and says, “Silver,” immediately.

In his corner in this little room, Loxley's posture stiffens in place first at what sounds like reprimand from Derrica, but he does—sort of—stop it, in that he falls silent, grimly. There is a necessariness, he thinks, to letting people talk out a thing before the thing is done. But that grimness doesn't let up when she offers her alternative, instead sliding into a look to Gwenaëlle that is imploring of something.

Sharper, then, to the Commander. Teeth parting, protest catching between his fangs as Gwenaëlle is quicker off the mark. In the gloom, night-seeing eyes flash like dull pennies at the bottom of a well.

"A bit," he says, reflexively pleasant. "Most certainly, I think."

They are all faster than her.

What Derrica can do is a tenuous, carefully spun out thing. She had never intended to try it without Kostos in the room with her, to intercede if it need be.

Even if she could make contact, what would supplant a soul? Bargaining with spirits, even for prophecy, is challenging. She would still try, except—

It is the kind of thing that she would need time to do regardless, and the debate rushes past her before she can press the point. It flows away from her like the tide pulling out and away.

The urge to repeat herself bites at her. Instead, her grip tightens around her stave as her entire body pulls taut, waiting for the coin flip of this bargain to fall where it may.

Then perhaps she will press her point again. Hope that even one person among them will be swayed.

Usually when someone is sent to their death there is some comfort of plausible deniability—a tangible reward to goad with, or a selective failure to give voice to the inherent risks. Unsurprisingly, most men answer poorly to 'Do as I say,' being applied broadly enough to include being the first ones over onto an alchemically scorching deck so anyone following will have something sure to step on. How preferable it is to say instead, 'Here is why we're going over there' and simply allow enthusiasm to take the course it finds most natural.

It's a pity that this is work is primarily defined by the assignment of small, randomly allotted luxuries, and that today they haven't been afforded one which might make everyone feel better about cutting throats.

(Does Flint keep more than one coin in his pocket? It's certainly possible. The hsk of the mural's attentive rearranging and the way the notes linger in the room would be sufficient to mute the rasp of change carefully turned between a thumb and a forefinger.)

So: Despite Derrica's presence and her attempted check on the proceedings pressing like a digging thumb, a coin is produced. It gleams dull green in the morbid hued light of the passage in the open turn of Flint's palm.

Copper.

A bit, most certainly.

In this moment,

in this moment, Gwenaëlle is oblivious to what calculus may be happening, and by who. Maybe it will occur to her, later, a thing that she might examine before putting away with the question unasked— maybe it won't. Now, she only feels the unsteady twist in her stomach of mingled disappointment and relief that chance had come to the same conclusion that at least two of them already had.

(Chance would be a fine thing.)

“Ancient elvhenan doesn't like to negotiate, in my experience,” she says, finally. “They're real cunts that way.”

It's the coin he expects to see. Heavy stone certainty. From where that certainty is rooted is less clear, and doesn't matter.

Which also doesn't mean Loxley is spared the sensation of cold gravity hollowing him out, which is neither worse nor better than what he might have felt had the pirate captain produced a silver, for some lunatic reason. It does mean, though, that he is a braced for it, drawing a breath in on impact. Gwenaëlle says something and it's not a protest, and beneath her words is the click of leather and metal.

The rapier at his belt is a lovely thing, flourishing silver guard, subtle runes, well balanced. It was probably crafted for a proper hero and he found it in a cave full of hyenas, once. He unbuckles it in its sword mount, looking first to Flint and saying, in a Normal Voice, "Half a minute."

Less, if he can help it. He moves to Gwenaëlle, first, offering the weapon out for the taking. "Get good," is jokey, if muted.

In his awareness, Derrica's presence and her silence throughout the coin gambit burns brighter to him than anything, deliberate in turning his shoulder against it for the moment. Necessary.

Copper.

Loxley turns away, and Derrica is only tracking this motion out of her periphery. Her eyes lift from the glint of green-lit copper in Flint's palm to his face, incisive and searching. So sharply intent that the scrutiny might flay him open.

It's a question that shouldn't be asked. Can't be asked, because it would do too much damage.

But it's a question rooted in the kind of pain that shocks, too overwhelming in the moment to grasp and contain. Loxley's acceptance is so straightforward, unhesitating, and Derrica sees the future unspool in the wake of it, spilling out ahead of her. Loxley will offer himself up. The spirit will take him. And he will be gone. Forever.

The inhale of breath is not a scream. Everything in her freezes, tense and braced tight. Everything but the wet gleam of her eyes as she finally lifts her gaze from Flint to press again, "You have to let me try to offer them something else."

Is Gwenaëlle right? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter if she is right, because what compromise exists that compares when the starting offer is a life, given freely? What does Derrica have that could compare?

The relentless slice of Derrica's look should cut to the bone. Why not let her try? What harm is there in making the effort, particularly from a mage of Dairsmuid? Isn't there something just in insisting on trying to see all four of them out of this place? What person would stand there, recognizing the thin but real possibility in Derrica's point, and not bleed from it?

That decisive coin is closed in Flint's hand. It isn't returned to his pocket. If he's cut by either it or her, it certainly doesn't show in the stony, impenetrable attitude that's gone hard in him.

"We're short time." Half a minute. "I suggest there are better uses for it than debating this."

Let the man say his goodbyes and lay out whatever business he wishes to have resolved on his behalf.

With Loxley's sword in her hands, Gwenaëlle's mouth twitches like a smile might have happened when he says get good — an expression that doesn't survive the moment, but the sentiment is there, all the same. She was already standing close to Flint, her injured arm tucked close to herself, so she can just— stay there, and doesn't have to do any of the math involved in deciding whether or not to move closer, she's just incidentally where she is.

Actually, he came over here to help her with the bandage. It's wholly out of her hands and definitely not because she'd prefer to be standing near to him, under the circumstances.

Loxley would probably find it funny, if she said something about how she's going to have to start writing heroic epics, but Derrica seems like she wouldn't and that seems like it's going to be hard enough so she doesn't, although if she does it she supposes she'll bounce it off Flint. And he might get some amusement out of I was going to make a joke but for once in my fucking life I didn't.

Just once, could the Venatori go after something in— a modern house in Orlais that has no basement and they all know the owners and can just borrow a key. One time.

“Right,” quietly.

"Right," echoed, even quieter.

Similarly, a joke on the tip of Loxley's tongue—turning to Flint to tell him how nice it was to meet him, huge fan, too bad about the circumstances and all that—but it dies immediately as he stalls for a few seconds instead. It might make him feel better, that levity, but it also might not. Instead, Loxley gives Gwenaëlle a nearly-smile in return, and draws back with a step, turning towards Derrica. Moving closer.

Pauses breed cowardice, in Loxley's experience. Hesitation has rarely served him, compared to being quickest off the mark.

She is tightly wound, resistance locking muscle to bone. Loxley doesn't reach for her, not immediately, as he says, "I think you could persuade anyone to do just about anything," quietly, although privacy will simply have to be feigned. "But there's no bargain we can make, here." A life is the cost, and what might happen, if Derrica were to try to coax these spirits into some alternate thing?

It talks in capital letters and everything. Maybe a capricious kind of entity such as this would simply take her, tiring of their dithering. All because he couldn't make good on something.

"Come here?" is a request, hands lifting, open for her.

But there's no bargain we can make, here.

This, more so than Flint's rejoinder, registers like a door closing. Final. It is more Loxley's decision now than anyone else's, just as it would have been Gwenaëlle's in the (unlikely) event the coin had come up silver. And this, the response he offers her, unmistakably declines the offer.

Knows that what follows this decline and entreaty will be a good-bye.

Braced as she is, it takes a moment to thaw enough to answer that entreaty. Not to step into the circle of his arms, but to take hold of his hand. The tension hasn't ebbed out of her body when she tips her head up to look into his face, direct the full force of her attention into studying him.

Her grip on his hand is very tight, for all the good it will do. Her jaw works around some last impulse towards protest, a further plea that she refuses to voice.

More life lessons: being heroic hardly ever feels like it.

Like now, how Derrica is still difficult to look at (for once in her life), Loxley's gaze lowering first when she takes his hand, gripping it back and his other laying gently atop. He doesn't stay like that, though, meeting her gaze after a few more seconds of his half-minute are spent. He's sorry. He knows the ways this is a betrayal. Should he spend this time, saying so?

Can it be read, in this silence? Instead,

"Here," he says, the hand resting on their joined ones now scuffs around in a pocket, retrieving two keys, both affixed to a ring. She'll recognise them as the two necessary to enter the room he has, and he goes to press them into her hand. "There's a book at the bottom of my trunk," he says, still quiet. "It's silly, but, I'd like it rescued. And. If you can tell Richard—"

A beat. Says it anyway, after all that. "That I'm sorry."

Hang on, what book.

Gwenaëlle grips the sword in her hands, with no where especial to put it right now given the number of weapons already on her person — thinks distantly that it would be deeply unhinged of her, probably, to see if Derrica wanted to trade keepsakes because she is immediately, burningly curious about what sort of silly book Loxley would have rescued.

Maybe if she lets Derrica hold the sword she can read the book. A bonding experience, in their time of shared grief.

She is dimly conscious that she is putting off their shared grief, that she is holding it at arm's length from herself because there's more work to do here and Loxley is her friend and he deserves—

to live, but failing that, for them not to fumble the bag after him. Not to make it a waste by doing nothing.

And,

probably she would honestly like to know what book.

The keys are still warm.

They are more than a book in a trunk. They are that little room, Loxley's creaky bed and the table with one uneven leg. The cracked bottle and dried out sprig of flower held in it. All the small touches that had nothing to do with her, hadn't been done for her but instead done for him, to make that place a home.

She is slow to close her fingers around them, balking at the solid press of metal into her palm. Derrica blinks hard, and tears spill down her cheeks, even as her expression remains unchanged. Still braced too tightly to allow enough space to cry. (They are not alone. It wouldn't matter, even if the Commander and Gwenaëlle averted their eyes.)

"I'll tell him," she promises fervently. Holding onto him so tightly, her nails are digging into Loxley's hand. "I'll take care of him."

Because Richard would certainly make that very easy for her. (Who will tell Richard what happened, if not her?) But what else can she offer? If she doesn't say this, she'll say something else, give voice to that shrieking rejection of this moment that's building pressure at the back of her throat.

And she can't. They can't. Too much hangs in the balance for Derrica to risk derailing it with her own selfish desperation.

She accepts the keys. Speaks, promises, holds his hand tightly. There is a knowing pinch at Loxley's mouth that indicates he knows perfectly well what a task that would be, will be, looking after Richard, but even more pronounced is the gratitude in his nod, the ripple of deeper feeling that tugs at his brow, makes him hold his breath for count of three, two, one—

"You're very good, and I hate to make you sad," he says. He draws her hand up, the one clutching his so tightly, and presses a kiss to the back of it, holds there for a moment. Maybe he can ease the tension locked through tendon and bone, the pressure of nails dimpling his skin, and ease the rest, just like that.

Probably not. He can see that that tension is doing some work, here, and it's just so very tempting to make this all the worse.

But he opens his hand instead, the one she is gripping, allowing her to ease up on her own.

No, they're not alone. And it's only as Loxley raises Derrica's hand to his mouth that Flint, near to Gwenaëlle and the pair of them looking like two figures cut from the same near-parodic cloth, pushes the point of his attention away. He looks past them to mural, observing with steady intent as its pieces rearrange from Andruil to one of the twins—Dirthamen or to Falon'Din.

He can't be held to identify one from the other in that bleakly lit room.

Then don't sticks in her throat.

The crushing weight of all that rests on this moment, this sacrifice, bears down on her as Loxley opens his hands in hers. It is the cue to let go of him. Allow whatever is about to begin to take its course. They have all agreed on the necessity of fulfilling the terms of this bargain.

And Loxley didn't take her up on the offer to try and barter their way to some other arrangemnet.

If she weren't so aware that these last dwindling seconds were the last of the time allotted to her to look into Loxley's face, she might have looked over his shoulder at the Commander. Derrica has never cared to have so much of her entanglements known, much less observed, by him. And the echoing similarity of Gwenaëlle alongside him only serves to include her in that feeling, far off as it is.

But this is an ending, and Loxley's face is so solemn as he invites her to let go of him. If she kisses him something in her will crack open, so the entirety of that impulse is contained to the vise grip of her hand on his as she tells Loxley, "I'll find you again. I promise."

Why withhold this intention, when she's more or less made clear her capabilities?

Her promise disrupts that solemnity, a flicker of feeling that Loxley manages to make a smile, if muted, if crooked. Maybe it should be a chilling thing, but it's not. He has spoken before of the feeling of finding the dusty remains of unnamed explorers, far forgotten in dark places, and while all signs point to a very similar fate looming over him now—

That's not one of them. It's with a touch of gallows humour that he says, "It's a date," and then abruptly can't stand this conversation—or any conversation, with anyone—much longer.

He'd been mediating something similar in himself, as wrong as it feels not to reach for her more than he has, but he breaks it in the moment to use his greater height and duck in, kissing high up on her cheek, before moving back. Away. His hands from her tight grasp, his shadow off the wall, turning away with an intent that is far from eager but no more hesitant for it.

Fuck fuck fuck. Heart racing, but at least with his back to them all, he doesn't have to crush down fear as hard as he has been, feeling a cold dash of it as he turns to the mosaic. As long as he can keep it from his voice, he can rest somewhat assured of having done this right.

"Hello," he says, at the wall. "We've done what you've said, and. It's me, I'll do it. We're agreed."

Sort of.

The mosaic tiles ripple with a purr of stone, that voice filling the room once more. Approval, gladness that they've understood the importance of what the spirit has to give, assurance that they would spare this life in exchange of

blah blah blah, Loxley's posture slackens, stepping back, a breath leaving him that turns out not to be his last as he bows forward some, hands resting on his knees.

“What?”

—is not the most articulate response, but it is the first thing out of Gwenaëlle's mouth in the dizzying elation of relief, narrowly avoiding bonking Loxley in the back with his own sword as she fumbles it under her elbow to lay a hand on his back, the start of a truly awkwardly angled but extremely fervent embrace.

How rarely they're ever actually rewarded for trying to do the right thing. Though, when she straightens, it feels — a little less like a reward — she's nearest and not bent over, so the mosaic takes up bargaining for her sacrifice. A secret, a memory, or,

“The eye,” Gwenaëlle agrees, before she can think better of it, something cold gripping the back of her neck at the thought of relinquishing any of her memories. “You can take my eye.”

It doesn't hurt.

Edited 2022-10-02 00:39 (UTC)

The sudden veer in the room's dire momentum is jarring, disorienting. No sooner has Loxley's reprieve been granted than the mosaic shifts. The rumble of the turning titles borders on the perverse, something physically revolting in the rapid way the spirit or spirits reorients their sights in spite of all that would-be praise.

It's the sort of alleged mercy that leaves Flint just bristling and back footed enough to delay the impulse to take some argumentative step forward. To what end would his boot been committed to, exactly? Impossible to say, but occasionally instinct rules even men who imagine themselves very rational. And then Gwenaëlle's eye is gone as if carved from her face a month ago rather than a moment prior.

He balks. The rasp of the mural's turn sighs through the chamber, undeterred by what absences are left in its wake. Sylaise, the Hearthkeeper with her fire and thread and gloss gold laurels, asks Your sword, or your ship, Captain?, and that answer too is frustratingly obvious.

This is a cruelty, Derrica thinks. The transgression slices so deeply that there is simply no space for relief. (The tumbling progression from grief to shock to embarrassment to anger takes place in the span of a breath.) Fury burns cold as frostbite in her, simmering as she reorients: hands at Loxley's back, over bowed shoulders, on her way to step out in front of him.

Surely now is the point in which she might say something, draw a line and reorient the flow of events within this chamber. ( Or perhaps to say only, Don't look at them, because she is angry and there is a clear point at which to direct that anger.) Now she might bind and barter the way she had been raised to because the terms are something else entirely, except—

Except there is no time still. There is no bargaining. There is only Gwenaëlle and the Commander both answering, the mosaic clattering as gods rotate in and out, sated by their newfound spoils.

There is a decision for her too.

Falon'Din's voice is a murmuring bass, chiming a rumbling harmony with the delicate chorus of Dirthamen and Sylaise.

Give up your dead twining and layering over Give us your mother tongue.

The answer is clear, just as it was clear that she could not volunteer herself. But it is agony. Her throat burns cold then hot, and every word of Rivaini is gone from her.

Wait.

Loxley does not get so far as to say that out loud, wait, but it's all he can think when Gwenaëlle speaks, when those mutating voices swirl through the chamber, the ghostly extraction of prizes. He's straightened up now, his hand reaching out to Derrica's wrist, his other hovered in front of Gwenaëlle, flinching when he marks what's been stolen from the former. Guilt, a cold sweep of it on the tail of relief.

Then to him, last, the image of Andruil assembling itself where Dirthamen had been, Sylaise's presence still mingling together.

Your trust of a friend, born of battles and burdens, says one, and the other—

His hesitation is not indecision, for there's only once answer for him as well. The eye, and perhaps Andruil had wanted a matching set, when the one opposite to Gwenaëlle's disappears out from his face.

When it happens there's no pain, and it feels like it should be more dramatic — as if half the world should go dark, when instead she's just disoriented, feeling the absence of something she's never had to think about before and her world become smaller, a little, around her. That she nearly hits herself in the face with the pommel of Loxley's sword has less to do with her clarity of vision than of thought in the moment,

oh, he's probably going to want that back, now.

The glow of the mosaic is not blinding, but its absence when the tiles slide away to allow them through nearly disorients her again, as if for a moment she'd forgotten what they were doing this for. And she hadn't, it just— overwhelms, briefly, the enormity of the thing that's just been done. How near it'd been to something else, worse.

Gwenaëlle casts a look around at the others, at the myriad of emotions, the thick tension of the room,

it's Loxley she goes to, pressing him into a hug before she can think better of not waiting to see if it's welcome.

“Can I still have your sword?”

Edited 2022-10-11 08:32 (UTC)

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