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

loxley's dream.

[charmoffensive]

Opulence, brightness, and a smell of brimstone in the air.

The team finds themselves stepping into a massive palatial chamber, marble floors, stone walls, a hanging chandelier heavy in lit candles, tall windows of stained glass, intricately carved pillars, unfurled banners of foreign symbols, and raised dais carpeted in velvet on which rests two empty thrones. This is a place of royalty, and it is not empty.

A scream fills the air, directing focus to the centre of the throne room. The creature there is nearing nine feet in height—a woman, you might think first, until all the rest is taken in. Deep red skin, shining like polished garnet, and massive devil wings with hooked claws, stretching far wider than her height. Curling black horns erupt from her forehead, and as she looks over, her eyes glow and gleam, and she grins with a mouth full of fangs. She is not terribly different from some of the demonic entities that emerge from rifts, but in some way, she is plainly so much more than that, power radiating off of her as she flaps her wings, pushes through the air.

And a tail, she has one of those. Long, red, muscled, spaded at the end, it wraps around the limb of a figure who is dragged along the marble, blood smearing. A human woman, who seems so much smaller in comparison, gives another scream: furious, threatening. A tiara has fallen from her head, her gown of green smattered in crimson.

"Kally," is a very informal kind of way to reference such a person, but it's what Loxley says when he finally takes in all they are seeing.

He moves forward, scarcely noticing the fact he has changed. Silver-grey qunari skin is now a deep, rich gold, and the practical leathers he'd worn for the trip have been replaced by blue and gold brocade fashioned into a piratical coat, a sash of more gold than blue, and a cloak of deep red. His eyes are also changed (and he has, here, both of them), where the whites are black, pupils and irises both flashing discs of gold.

Everyone else may find themselves altered a little: their clothes and armor are surely of more elaborate and fine craft, magical in nature, strangely unscuffed. New weapons, perhaps, or pieces of jewellery with runic inscriptions and symbols. Heroes, all.

"Do we—" It isn't real, yes? This, Loxley tells himself, even as his eyes stay locked on the devil-shaped woman who descends to land on the marble floor. "Do we just run?"

One of the strangers among them speaks up, then, a handsome man with a crossbow slung across his shoulders, saying, "Would you? Run."

Silence, first, and then the sound of steel and leather as Loxley draws his rapier from his belt. (It, too, is rather beautifully made, but familiar—he has it in real life as well, but seems to fit in better, in this place.) The archdevil before him twitches her tail, sending the princess tumbling aside as she turns to meet him as Loxley breaks from the group, running for her, cloak flaring.

Karolis looks to the group, and tips his head. There is one more thing for consideration: out from the shadows of a nearby corner emerge the shapes of large, wolf-like creatures, eyes aglow in hellfire that seems to burn from within, sparking between their fangs as they snarl, muscles beneath black matted fur rippling as they duck low in preparation to launch after the group.

"This way," says Karolis, and makes a break for a door at the far side of the throne room as the helldogs take up chase.

[elegiaque]

Tassia is different.

It's a dream, but it's— Loxley's dream, strange, familiar-but-not-the-same. He is changed, a tail whipping between the split in the back of his coat as he moves forward ahead of them, confident and golden and she has the split-second thought that while her answer would not have changed if he had asked the question this way

well, look, she might have thought about it a little longer. He's making a compelling argument for himself. (Is that prehensile—?)

Maybe, as she darts after Karolis and has to slow not to skid in a trail of blood, it's her preoccupation with these changes that snags on her own reflection in dark glass, and the high tilted point of her own ears exposed by the habitual braid her curls have been pulled back in for work. (Violence. The same thing.) In Tassia, there is such a thing as half-elven,

“Baudin,” the mage Servana's voice, planting a staff that looks more elaborate than the one Gwenaëlle remembers her introducing herself with, “focus—”

and half-elves go skidding across the palatial floor and eat shit like anyone else when the warning is only enough to turn her head towards where the massive animal has launched itself at her, and not actually get her out of its path. She pivots enough to avoid its jaws closing at her waist, and slides painfully on her hip, managing to kick a wall to slow her sideways fall and scrambling for a dagger.

What's a dream to a spirit? Servana clocks the progress of the rest of the group, and a wall of whirling blades springs to life between them and the beasts, which is...

“Alright,” she says, aloud, “that's creative, demon,”

not the barrier she had thought she was casting, but certainly serviceable in their escape.

[notathreat]

"Fuck, Loxley-"

There's no doubt that it's him. Even with the changed details, it's still his face, still his bearing, still his rapier, but there's something far more urgent about this than she's seen of him before.

While he runs toward the demon, the others are making for the door- but they can't go. They can't leave him here, caught up in what's surely some kind of fantasy. They have to play along, but they have to see through it, too-

"Fuck," Ellie swears again, whipping her bow off her back and stringing an arrow -- the god-shard doesn't come at her call, but something else tingles against her fingers, a golden energy that slips from the magical bow down along the shaft of the arrow- and she figures that's got to be good enough.

She looses the arrow at the demon rather than the hounds. It's not a particularly vital shot, but it hits.

"Loxley! The girl!"

[cozen]

Bastien (human as ever, but mustache perhaps slightly larger, slightly curled at the ends in the current fashion), says, "C'est quoi ce bordel," very helpfully.

He is already running while he says it. Looking while he does: the dogs that are not dogs. The wall of knives between them. Gwenaëlle on the ground, still at risk if the beast after her recovers before she does. He changes trajectory so quickly he slides on his feet and angles sideways. He means to throw a knife—or he would said that's what he meant to do, if anyone asked and he had to think about it—but what he produces is a fistful of crushed pastry and a feather.

If he were any less good on his feet he would fall over from confusion. But he does not. Somehow he knows what to do, and it's the demonic dog who falls over, snorting with demonic canine laughter (from which it might recover at any moment).

This might be funny later, recollected in safety. But at the moment there's still the archdevil, the wounded princess, the pack of dogs turning bloody as they try to tear through the wall of knives.

Bolek comes to a stop beside Servana, giant gleaming sword at the ready, and says, "New ideas," about the dreams generated by their new company. "That's exciting."

[bouchonne]

Beside Bastien - of course beside Bastien - is Byerly. Similarly still human, similarly looking the same, dressed like Bastien, with a fiddle on his back - he looks around, rather baffled and alarmed, but with a sense of what to do. Somehow.

And so he turns his attention to the beasts threatening Gwenaëlle. One is coming around for an attack, snarling and fierce, and even though he knows logically that what he should do is throw himself before her to take the blow, he acts instinctually instead. He calls out to the creature, "What nasty little teeth you have, you ugly thing," and somehow the beast is so ashamed of itself that it fumbles the blow and misses her entirely.

By casts a baffled look at Bastien, but continues running alongside him. This is - weird.

[charmoffensive]

An arrow flies, slamming into the archdevil. She lets loose a shriek that doesn't even sound slightly human as radiant light bursts on impact and burns.

Her tail, long, ending in a wickedly curving bladed bone, lashes out towards the princess in the moment Ellie calls out. A flicker of cape, and Loxley spins into its path, raised blade catching it midstrike and slicing through where boney tip connects to muscle. Burning blood spatters as the archdevil whips her tail backwards, half-severed at the end. With another unholy shriek, the archdevil brings her wing around, its claws sharp enough to tear flesh from bone.

So of course he catches it in his offhand, and as she rears back either to yank herself free or fling him aside, her feet leaving the ground as she hauls her wing upwards, Loxley holds on, springing upwards along with her. Arcing around, and up, sword raised high with the tip of its blade pointed down to her back so that when he drops on her, he lands steel first. As the blade sinks in, the archdevil crashes down from the air, landing on her knees.

She reaches back, snagging where Loxley landed and is braced on her back, grabs a fistful of cape in her claws, and flings him aside. He lands with an audible thump, sending him and his sword, now loose, skidding across the marble.

All the while, the hell hounds are relentless, far more determined to get at their prey than any ordinary dog should be. As one of them goes skidding under the effects of its compulsive laughter, another leaps, feet landing on its fallen packmate's flank and springing itself up towards Bastien and Byerly.

And it catches in the wall of magical blades, barely corporeal steel tearing through fur and muscle, near-black blood spattering on marble and smoking on contact. The hell hound staggers as it lands on the other side, turning its snarling maw towards the group and opening its jaws wide. Flame, bright and terrible, floods out from between its fangs, streaming out and fanning wide in a rush of hellfire and smoke, threatens to burn all who aren't fast enough to dodge.

Some of his brethren struggle and bleed themselves to death in the wall of blades; others stubbornly tear through, snarling and snapping in hot pursuit.