MOD PLOT ↠ BEFORE THE GATES | PUZZLE LOG

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[tender]

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.

[charmoffensive]

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.

[elegiaque]

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?”

[katabasis]

And then, with a shudder that sends dust in a soft rain from the chamber's ceiling, the glutted mosaic recedes. It slides sideways. The glint of the gold inlay in the room beyond glows warm out of the darkness.

It would be a kindness linger briefly in the great doorway opened to them and make sense of what's just happened—all this having clipped along at the kind of speed that inspires vertigo. Let Gwenaëlle and Loxley sort the matter of his sword as substitute for something else, and let Derrica be furious. Instead, with the urgency of vulnerability buzzing at the base of his skull, Flint strikes forward. He zags deftly around and between them and moves purposefully into the room that's been opened to them.

It's possible they've only won minutes with all this decisiveness. It would be unbearable to risk wasting them.

[charmoffensive]

There's no clarity to his sense of feeling in the aftermath. Near misses in battle don't feel like this at all, feeling none of the delirious exuberance of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, but—relief is still present, abuzz down to his atoms, even as his world narrows, tips uneven.

Gwenaëlle snares him into a hug, and there had been no sense of momentum in him to interrupt, hands landing on her before he gives a slightly choked sounding laugh and returns the embrace more fiercely. Senses Flint's motion forward. Senses Derrica leaving his side.

But there it is, just a sliver of it, in all the confusing rest of it, a pulse of adrenaline of a near miss.

"Absolutely the fuck not," he whispers back to her, but he doesn't muddle in place anymore than that, grabbing the hand holding the bundle of leather and steel, and pulling them both along out into the way forward.