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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Anti-climactic is one word for it. Of all the ways Ellis might have died, (cut throat, crushed by fallen buildings in Tantervale, torn apart by darkspawn—) quietly bartering his life away had never entered into any factoring of potential. A twitch, brief, easily missed, at the corner of his mouth. Not necessarily amused, but registering the grim humor here.

He is looking at Tony, all the way up until Cosima and Viktor has finished before looking back to them.

"No."

Unyielding.

"We are not risking losing this opportunity and this information by giving less than what has been asked for. This is the price. There are Venatori behind us who won't hesitate to pay it, if we falter and waste our chance. This is not a puzzle. The terms have been made clear to us."

A life. (It makes sense. Of course this is what must be given over.)

"I'm not asking permission," he repeats, firm. What little softness there is in his voice is for Tony, when Ellis' fingers slide down to his wrist, reasserting the same request as Ellis looks back to him to finish, "But I would appreciate if you made this easy for me."

Tony doesn't look across at the other two as they speak up, studying Ellis, chasing that little tic of not-really-amusement. Rational reason and conviction pipe up from that corner, stuff that clearly isn't going to tolerate getting handwaved off with parental or institutional or experiential authority. He might be able to call a shot, here, but he can't make anyone not be mad about it. There's a renewed pinch of tension in his expression, because—

His own little rat brain is attracted to the notion of a way out, of fossicking around for the loophole, spending that time, and his interest in doing that some more renews just for a second. Of teamwork, of sharing something, dispersing the damage.

By the time Ellis is saying stuff again, with more steel than Tony is used to hearing out of him every day, there's a building tinnitus-like whine in his hindbrain, and the impulse is there, to shake off the other man's grip to his arm. Back to the drawing board, kids. That doesn't happen either. But now there's a simply awful sheen of wet that's glossed over his eyes by the time Ellis appeals to him more directly.

He doesn't lend his voice to the argument. He does turn his hand in his friend's, ready to be handed something.

It is crystal clear that Cosima hates this. She couldn't physically stop Ellis even if she had two good arms. And Tony outranks her and Viktor, which is important mainly because it makes him the only one Ellis might listen to if push came to shove. The feeling of being backed against a wall, that there's surely something she can say to make them listen if she'd only think of it...

When Tony turns his hand over, it feels like a door closing.

"We're not even going to try anything else?" It's a question, but more or less rhetorical now. Quiet.

That No was thick enough with finality that it rendered all that came after it a mere surplus of noise and movement.

It's not as though Viktor is unaccustomed to being little more than set dressing for other people's big decisions. This is both a given for his position and a comfortable advantage: it's easy to do what you want when no one looks to you for anything. It's practically his birthright. Granted, he's a world away from his position and his people, and so fresh out of the rift he's still green behind the ears, but this,

"This is wrong."

If the Warden's voice is steel, Viktor's is the gleam that passes over it, soft and cold. His gaze cuts away from everyone to rest on the mosaic.

Wrong.

The glancing skim of Ellis' eyes from Cosima to Viktor assess and dismiss that summation. A lift of his shoulder in silent reply, unyielding acknowledgement.

Yes, it is wrong. Yes, it is unfair. Those truths change nothing about the present moment.

"This what's required," is certainly a no to Cosima's question. "Make use of what we've purchased."

Ellis' fingers leave Tony's wrist only to take hold of his hand, cup it as Ellis deposits a delicate chain and little gold ring into the center of his palm. Close his fingers over it and obscure it from view.

If there is any part of this that sticks like serrated blade caught on bone—

Unburdened, Ellis' hand finds Tony's shoulder, then nape of his neck. Don't is somewhere in the motion, and in the kiss Ellis puts to Tony's cheek on the way to whisper, very softly, into his ear before breaking away fully.

What else is left but to depart?

Tony would love zero set dressing, for what it's worth. Cancel the whole production. Curtains.

His fist closes around the stupid ring and his hand finds a place to grip Ellis' stupid arm, minor resistance that doesn't know if it wants to shove the other man away (impossible) or hold on tight (what he opts for) gathered in wrist, elbow. He is unhappily still at these gestures, the picture of containment that's already stressed at the seams, save for that grip.

Above them was a big hole where the only solution was to jump into the darkness. This feels like that, from the lurch to the inevitability of something swiftly on its way. One problem, one solution.

"Hey," he says, finally, voice beaten and rough and quiet. "Thanks."

You know. For many tea at many midnights and carrying his stuff and being his friend and [redacted] and dying for these ingrates himself included and can't emphasise enough how helpful the stuff carrying was.

Tony doesn't give into the urge to ramble, instead squeezing Ellis' arm and letting go.

This is the worst fucking puzzle. Zero stars.

Cosima is crying a bit, and she won't apologize for it if anyone mentions it later. (She has a brief memory, vivid and unwelcome, of Westmoreland pushing a gun into her hand, how little good her refusal to use it did Yannis in the end. It's not a helpful memory, and she pushes it away.)

"If this information isn't great I'm gonna come find you in the Fade and yell at you so much," she says, which isn't really agreeing. But it is an acknowledgement that this is out of her hands now, a train rolling along tracks with no way to divert it. Viktor's assessment isn't incorrect, in her opinion, but it won't stop anything.

That threat, that's the kind of thing you say to a treasured friend, an expression of love in defiance of futility, and to that Viktor can relate more deeply than any moment of quiet tenderness. He presses his lungs empty against it, one slow breath, tenses his belly up to still the activity within: unhappy twisting, tangled complexities turning in on themselves. The swell of an urge to interrupt, to say he needn't resign himself to dying, that there's some other way, they simply haven't found it—

But maybe there isn't.

This isn't his loss, not like it is theirs, and the decision has been made; there's nothing more for him to say.

There is nothing else to say.

Ellis isn't practiced at good-byes. He's better when allotted hours in which he might put words to paper, cross out and rewrite until the shape of the sentiment is satisfactory. Here, he has nothing to offer anyone.

Tony lets go. Cosima's voice cracks, stubborn anger in it. Viktor is silent.

Get on with it, comes clear as a bell, Joppa's voice, as if this were a training yard. What is different in this moment? Ellis has walked towards his own death for years now. (What is different? The tears, the misery thick in the faces of these people who would hold fast to Ellis.) He walks to his own death now, aware of the certainty of it. Aware that this is an ending, that he has found his way to it at last.

Ellis' voice is calm when he puts a palm onto the mosaic and says, "I'm here. Take me."

And the spirit—

Doesn't.

This is a reprieve. It is meant to be a reprieve, Ellis knows. The spirit's offer comes shimmering with pleasure and satisfaction, stone and magic rippling under Ellis' palm before he breaks back, one step, then two as the spirit's attention widens to encompass all of them, promising—

AND FOR YOUR DEDICATION, YOU WILL GIVEN A CHOICE.

Each of them. One by one.

Everything is on hold. Besides the wet sheen his eyes are holding, the rest of Tony is locked down, arms folded, grim tension making an unhappy line out of his mouth. As Ellis breaks away, he stands in place and watches, and the anger beneath it all is more apparent to the zero people who have their eyes on him.

Tiles, clicking, bristling. Tony's brutally agile brain kind of sticks in the gears when the thing doesn't happen. Voices changing, until the image of Sylaise clicks into the fore, her voice echoing through the chamber yet somehow winds its way to him in his corner, leaving no room for error:

I seek memory, fragments of home. Choose which to give: the son, or the daughter?

A shock of relief, and then a knife twist. Wide eyes stare at the wall, then look down to Ellis: whole, alive, standing. That Tony feels a flash of rebellion is stupid and selfish but real, heartache immediate rather than the dull ache he's more accustomed to when he thinks of either of them, both of them.

"Peter," he says, out loud, almost to himself but not really, and sharp memory of a gangly energetic teenager who he'd only gotten to hold onto for a second, that one time, vanishes from his mind like ash in the wind.

It's almost too much. The relief of Ellis still standing, not dead after all, and the sudden devil's bargain in front of her. Another time, she might have said no; she might have tried to fight back, but they've been fighting for hours and she's got nothing left. And Ellis is right. This is important. She'd been willing to give up years of her life for it, this isn't...

The present or the past. Will you give me two fingers or the memory of your right hand?

She's not sure whether it's magic or just a function of her thinking about mortality, but it's instantly clear what the question means. She involuntarily thinks of the way they bounced theories off one another, by how much he gave up to try to save her life, It's an honour, Cosima, and she hates herself a little as she says quietly, "Scott, fuck, take it." Riftwatch needs her hands here and now, she thinks to herself like an apology, as the man who never stopped trying to help fades from her mind.

Ellis lives. The suspense rushes out of them all; the chamber itself seems to exhale. The spirits are satisfied,

but they aren't finished.

As irreplaceable things dissolve around him, and his turn draws near, Viktor's dread rises. Once again the mosaic crawls its patterns in elegant mechanical clicks: image of an anvil, of its maker above, inscrutable. He knows at once it's for him.

That which sees with a glance: your measurer's eye. I would have it.

"No—" Quick, unthinking, a snap of terror for the threat of losing even one small part of what keeps him going when there's so little of him left. But can he even do that? Can you deny a spirit what it wants and not suffer for it? He looks to the others, worried more for what his refusal might mean for them than how they might judge it. "Ask me... ask me for something else."

The silence that follows is too long, the mosaic too still. He knows at once he's made a mistake.

The runes, it says. Simple. Resonant.

Tiles flicker and twist for the hearthkeeper's return, her shining halo and sharp, pale eyes.

Or the face of the smith who wrought them.

Viktor's gaze falls, softens to the middle distance. His face loses no colour only because there was none there to lose. To forget the most crucial parts of his work, to surrender to their absence and retire in this place so full of magic? To rest, unburdened by all but the inviolate memory of his friend (can that word, or any other, ever be sufficient)? It sounds like something he should welcome, like something he should want the way his body does, but he doesn't. He can't. He wasn't built to stop.

"Not the runes," he says. Simple. Quiet.

In the midst of all other parts of this, the melodic clicking of the tiles and the disorientating shift in terms, one thing sticks in his mind:

Choose which to give: the son, or the daughter?

A son. Peter.

Ellis hadn't known. How hadn't he known? (And now he can never ask. There can be no answers.)

These sacrifices piling up around him, all these voids opening in the people alongside him that might have otherwise been circumvented had these gods simply taken Ellis. Choices that are cruel, just as cruel as what had been put to them already.

He is still looking at Tony when the mosaic's shift and clatter ripples again, anvil breaking apart to make way for—

O Warden, so willing to fall upon your sword, Falon'Din greets. Shall it be your mother or your father you give over to me?

Maybe it is fortunate that Viktor went ahead of him. Someone else has said no, and been met with no particular displeasure, so Ellis can risk a flat: "No," only softened by "Please," a few beats later.

The rhythmic clatter of tiles meets him, too swiftly for Ellis to offer his life a second time, as Falon'Din recedes to be replaced by a pair of chorusing voices.

Andruil suggests, Give me the mace you carry, alongside Ghilan'nain's request: Give me the place your hearth and home once stood.

He cannot say no a second time.

Ellis says, "Take it," to the glowing halla, and the location in the Bannorn where a small village had once stood, only ever spoken of once in passing to Wysteria Poppell without any specificity and never revisted properly since he'd once fled from it, is wiped from his mind.

What was comparable to Morgan Stark? The place where a memory lived is felt around, trying to determine its shape and size, trying to navigate and track the trail of negative space, but it's just for a second before Tony blinks hard in an effort to stop himself from driving himself crazy over figuring out the thing he gave up.

That's for later. Possibly forever.

He re-attunes to the present, enough to parse the dim shape of the things being lifted out of his companions. His body still feels it, that immediate stab of mourning from half a minute ago, even when the object of that mourning vanishes for him. Phantom pains. But it's just One Thing in the churn of everything else. Anger, relief, dread. And now,

the mosaic scintillating and bristling, tiles parting, showing a way ahead.

"Yay," Tony says into the after, flatness of tone dry and tired. "We did it."

His hand closes on Ellis' elbow as he steps up. Keeps it there, moving forward.

Her face is still wet, though between the broken elbow and the argument they'd just had over Ellis sacrificing his own life, that might have been true even without whatever it was she'd just sacrificed. (She can't help a brief, involuntary inventory: her parents, Delphine, Herian, her sisters.) With her good hand, she smears the tears that have gotten low enough that her glasses aren't in the way and says, "Let's get the fuck out of here, then."

It's a relief not to be the only one who balked, it's a relief to see the passage open before them, and it's hard to call it relief at all, when everything is surpassed by this sudden awareness of absence. He searches, too, standing there. Impressions remain, events left mercifully intact, but the figure that shared them is now elusive, vibrating just beyond the limit of perception. A vague shape; a voice muddled into low, soft sounds; no warmth or weight of presence; and, he notices, with private awkwardness, as if anyone here might read his thoughts, no smell.

Each of them holds the memory of a memory now lost: a home, a child, a friend. How strange. How sad. If any of them had shared more of themselves, they might be able to fill in the gaps for one another.

Yay, we did it, let's get the fuck out of here: Viktor's feelings exactly.

He's slow to muster any movement, the slowest of stride by far. Every step is an effort. The bolts in his knee and hip are loosening—not literally, but that's how he thinks of it, fixtures coming unfixed, wobbling in spare millimetres. They'd collapse if not for the scaffold around them. There's a dry film of blood lingering on his lip, and on his hand where he wiped at it, smeared from finger to thumb, a remnant of the bear's aftermath. His aches are numerous, and growing.

But the ache of omission eclipses them all, and besides, he is determined: he walked in, and he is walking out.

Tony's hand at his elbow is a blessing.

The sharp, distant ringing in his ears had risen up in the wake of this startling absence. Ellis is examining the ragged edges of the hole in his memory at great remove. (The Bannorn is vast. Ellis remembers all the ways he'd traveled across and through it, but the roads and landmarks that might have guided him back to his village are so neatly excised he might never have known them at all.) Unprompted, he might not have moved. He might have remained there until the Venatori crowded into the chamber themselves.

But he is stirred to motion alongside Tony. Allows himself to be drawn forward and swept up in the momentum carrying them onwards, towards the knowledge that Ellis knows to be worth any price they've paid.

He reminds himself of this, as they walk forward together into the final, darkened hallway: this knowledge was worth everything they gave away.

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MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | PUZZLE LOG

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slaps down haphazard bow