closed.

[cozen]

WHO: Bastien, Byerly, Darras, Edgard, Ellie, Gwenaëlle, Julius, Loxley, Yseult, & Special NPC Guest Stars
WHAT: THE FATE OF THE FOX
WHEN: Shortly post-mod plot
WHERE: Arlathan Forest
NOTES: OOC post! Use TWs in your subject lines as required.

It's a long shot. Bastien returns to the campsite they've all been sharing with only a silver, black-corroded medallion held carefully in his palm. With the dirt washed off, there's no question that the angular, geometric face stamped onto the front of it is a fox's.

"It's dwarven," he explains, more than once. "It's, look, 8:84, that is Ansgar Aeducan's reign. That is around when the Black Fox met Bolek. He came to the surface with them to help with—well, there four or five different things they are supposed to have been helping with. Most commonly it is bringing back the king's wayward daughter without letting anyone find out she had been exposed to the sky. This was over near one of those tower—cliff—cave-things, that way. There might be more."

Again, it's a long shot. But it's not nothing. Even if the medallion is all there is, it's not nothing.

And—for those who notice and care about the subtle differences between his sometimes-artificial chipperness and his stiller, quieter happiness—this is the best mood Bastien has been in since the sacrifices, the longest he's gone without tapping or tugging at his newly deafened ear. By the end of his brief, earnest-eyed it's not far, we could go look while there's still daylight and be back in plenty of time campaign, with no real protest from anyone, he's practically glowing.

The tower-cliff-cave-thing in question is one of the elven structures half-swallowed by earth, accessible through what was once a balcony door, now framed by vines and tree roots climbing in and out of the opening. They have to climb a root-threaded mound of dirt and rock to reach it, but they're rewarded almost instantly by the remnants of a 50-year-old campsite, a pair of leather boots that have only mostly rotten away to nothing in the humidity, and a change in the air (veil? vibe?) as they descend the uneven stone steps (or drop more impatiently through a nearby hole) to reach the next floor.

It's not good, the air-change. It's also not the energy-sapping miasma of shades or the tension of some nearby malevolence. It's the kind of not-good that makes one want to look. When they do, they see the skeletons first—five of them, half-jumbled, partially dressed in what metal and leather has survived the decades—and only for a second, before the thing waiting behind them in the dark reaches out to make them see something else.

OOC | Reply with your character's heroic dream as a new top-level! We're tagging them all at once. No tag orders. Don't boomerang so quickly that people get left completely behind because they're busy/asleep for a day but also skip people as needed—all nine of us don't need to tag every single round. Aim for brief threads!

NPC CAST: DESIRE: Charlie / REMI: Cass / KAROLIS: Brooklyn / SERVANA: Libby / BOLEK: MJ / CLEMENTIS: Ammmy

Comments

Ellie's Dream

[notathreat]

It is very much somewhere else.

The hush of the hallway pushes down on them, decades of rot and the tang of green in the air. It's impossible to see out of the closed windows, because ivy has crawled over them, making a curtain of soft jade light. The hallways stretches out before them, the surgical suites of a hospital.

It's quiet, but the lights are on, and down the hallway there is the stirring murmur of indistinct voices. The smell of chemicals.

There are x-rays illuminated in a light box on the wall. The skull of a young teenager, growths all over the brain. Circled, notated. Papers with test results, and pictures and diagrams of a bitten arm, covered with spores. The words that jump out are mutation and removal of specimen and vaccine and cure.

Ellie is suddenly barefoot, looking pale and small in a faded green hospital gown -- younger, much younger, much less scarred.

Her arm. Her x-rays. The ring of teeth marks is right there on her otherwise unscarred, un-tattooed forearm, surround by a halo of spores and growths.

"It's your choice," says a soft voice at Ellie's side, thick with emotion and an edge of Texas twang. It's low, older, a bearded man with salt and pepper hair and a gruff bearing. Fatherly. He reaches both hands out to take her by the shoulders, look her in the eyes. "But you don't have to do this. You know that, right? We can tell them to find someone else."

"There is no one else," Ellie answers him, her voice quiet, but firm. It breaks only at the edges. "It has to be me."

The edges of the man's mouth tighten, devastation in his eyes -- there is no doubt about what this means. Whatever this is, Ellie is not coming out the other side of it.

"It's my choice," she says again. Her voice is brittle. "You can't take that from me, Joel."

Her hands close on the front of his shirt, and the look in her eyes is not a little girl's. Her eyes are her own, the Ellie of Riftwatch, of Thedas, the Ellie who has lost. Who carries unfathomable anger and grief, and keeps going anyway.

"Not again."

The edges of the room flicker, and fracture and reform. Ellie pulls away from him, wraps her hand around his and holds tight.

Joel's eyes change -- something softer, and suddenly far more sinister.

"It's your choice, babygirl," he says, as Ellie turns to lead them down the hallway. He keeps his hand wrapped around hers. The words seem to reverberate around them, a whisper of unreality.

"It's your choice."

[cozen]

In this unfamiliar world, with its strange lights and foreign accent, Bastien finds himself most distracted by the feel of elastic against his face—soft, itchy, pinching, attached to a surgical cap and mask he wouldn't know to call that. He's too well trained to yank them off in confusion. But the impulse is there, the confusion strong enough that his arm does move, a restless reach to touch the edges, caught and stopped midway by a stranger.

A short stranger, whose thick, dark, grey-threaded beard is spilling out of his own surgical mask.

"Play along," says Bolek. He has one of those deep, resonant voices that physically can't whisper; as quiet as he can be is still loud enough for everyone to hear. "Don't draw attention. But you have to stick with her. Make sure she doesn't believe it. Get stuck."

Her, Ellie. Engaged in a conversation with Joel. Bastien knows that name. He doesn't know this dwarf, but the dwarf feels more trustworthy than the blinking lights and the man Bastien knows is dead, buried in Ellie's past. He focuses past the mask to take in everything else.

[bouchonne]

Byerly hears that, and glances over at the dwarf, and then looks to Bastien, and then looks to the scene in front of him. He doesn't really understand what's going on here, not fully. It all has a rather...scientific gleam that makes him feel immediately lost and confused and out of his depth.

But one thing is clear: whatever magic is doing this wants Ellie to make some choice. He'll be damned which one it is - if she should be saying yes, it's me or if she should be resisting it - But so the solution for keeping her from getting stuck is not making one of those choices, right?

So. Lost, confused, and out of his depth has never stopped Byerly from speaking up before. Clad like the others in this odd little gown, with all the authority that comes with that costume, he clears his throat and says - "Of course, there may be another option."

And then he glances at the others with a tiny grimace of can you think of another option?

[muckspout]

Edgard nods at Byerly, vigorously, and shouts through his mask.

"Yes! Options! Many, so many. Choices!"

He has no idea, but whatever choice this is, it's seems bad.

"You really don't have to. Really."

He coughs. Everyone looks up in alarms. Edgard wants to cough again, but his eyes widen and he swallows it.