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

gwenaëlle's dream. cw: the slaughter of halamshiral, associated tws.

[elegiaque]

Halamshiral is burning.

They rush into — a square? A street? The roads are so wide here, it's hard to say in the confusion of screaming and smoke and the thick, awful scent of burning bodies. The thudding sounds of arrows hitting flesh and wood and stone indiscriminate as if they are the same thing—

Across the way, an elven woman is struggling with a door. She is slight and dark-haired, her build and complexion akin to Gwenaëlle's, covering her mouth and nose with a wet cloth that looks torn from her own dress and doing her best to manage both this and the door, which simply will not give. A chevalier raises his bow,

Gwenaëlle raises hers, unthinking, from the middle of the group. Her arrow is still whipping toward his temple — where it lands, dropping him and his weapon clattering to the pavers — when she bolts from them, elbowing her way beside Alix and, “No, here, do it this way,” and hands her a knife, their similar heads bent together over the new task of lifting out the hinges, even in a dream certain of her companions covering their unprotected backs as Celene's chevaliers move deeper into the burning city.

When the door falls, a third— nearly identical to Alix, except for being thinner and paler and dressed only in her nightgown, falling into their arms.

“Naëlle,” she says, urgently, tugging at Gwenaëlle's arm, pointing past Bastien and the others to—

was Celene here, like this? Gwenaëlle doesn't know; she wasn't. The chevaliers who flank her have familiar faces within their ranks, dredged into this scenario as spirits by the memories she holds of them elsewhere— Lucien du Lyon, who had been at Riftwatch. Michel de Chevin, who had served a time at Skyhold when she first arrived. Alexandrie's own twin sister, flame red hair spilling from her helm. And the empress, cold and dispassionate as she gazes upon what she has done.

Gwenaëlle raises her bow a second time, tilting her head, sighting with her remaining eye.

[charmoffensive]

Fire, smoke-filled skies, screams. Loxley has acted before on even less knowledge, surging ahead with blade drawn to fend back these clear villains in their fine armor. They are back in Thedas, and he has reverted back to his qunari colours, his scrappier armor, but the handsome blade he carries still moves with speed as it parries back the blade of a swordsman. Scrap fabric has been bound tightly over his missing eye, and he can't remember if he'd had both of them in the prior dream.

It's more the strength of the dream that pulls focus, turning his head when Gwenaëlle does to see the regal figure of a woman flanked by more of these—whatever they are, knights? Orlesian, certainly. The unrepentant murder of elven civilians does not, to him, seem very knightly at all.

Anyway, he notes the way they all start to close rank in protection of this woman, notes Gwenaëlle raising her bow, and moves. Not to engage with the target, but draw focus, moving directly to the group and provoking the woman with her red hair to slide into position, and raise her blade. He knows—he thinks he knows—that they have to go somewhere, but instinct calls to him to be a good team player. He snarls a laugh when he lands a strike, rapier turning to parry the next where her blade slides to the guard.

Karolis is nearby. He has Celene in his sights too, at first operating more on instinct than any recognition. That comes a split second later, when he looks to Gwenaëlle. Twitches his crossbow to the side, and sinks a bolt into the thigh of another chevalier, and sets about reloading as he looks for the clear path out.

[notathreat]

Loxley's lead is a good one.

Gwenaëlle has Celene, Loxley has the red-haired woman, and Ellie picks another. Unfamiliar faces all, but drawn in such stark relief that she knows Gwen must remember them as surely as she remembers these women who so resemble her.

She raises her bow, moving to a position at Gwenaëlle's other side.

There is a way out, and it might as well be through.

Celene's eyes are all cool disregard. She turns away as the others convene to shield her, as if they are nothing. As if they all are nothing.

"Kill them," she says.

With a casual sweep of her hand, she continues the destruction, signaling another group of chevaliers down the street- they toss oil and burning pitch, and the fires continue to spread.

The Chevaliers cut forward, between Gwen and her allies, shielding the empress, and attack as one.

[elegiaque]

Fuck that.

Fuck that, not this time—

it's an impossible shot. Gwenaëlle has made an impossible shot before, arguably even moreso, with even less experience, but that had been— she had barely known enough about the weapon in her hands, then, to know how absurd it had even been to attempt. She's never since recreated anything so perfect as that first, perfect shot,

but this is her dream. Her dream, her moment. The Chevaliers begin to move and Gwenaëlle doesn't hesitate because she wouldn't hesitate if she got the chance, it wouldn't matter what happened next. She can feel the breath of her sister's panicked cry on the back of her throat and she focuses on nothing but the nearly nonexistent path to the Empress through all those bodies and gleaming metal and smoke and she hears Alix whisper, “I'm so proud of you, Naëlle,” and that is all that matters when she looses the arrow that lodges directly in Celene's throat.

It's her dream. It strikes Celene just the way the arrow struck Guenievre, and a moment later she throws up her anchor-shield around the women who must be her sisters, breaking from the fight to

to

“Run,” she hears herself say, “fuck it, run, we need to find the way out of this.”

Because it isn't real, and there is no rescuing Alix or Magalie.

[cozen]

It isn't real, and Bastien hears her clearly through the shouting, clanking, roaring din, even while he's dancing around Lucien du Lyon's sword. (Bards of course train to fight Chevaliers; Chevaliers train to fight bards. Bastien has never killed one without first getting them out of their armor. But this is a dream, so maybe, this once—)

Bolek's ax embeds itself in plate. The sword drops.

"Run," the dwarf echoes.

The Chevalier is still breathing, but it'd hardly be sporting now. Bastien backs away, looks at Gwenaëlle, the elves she protects. He only belatedly registers that she's done it. That the Empress has vanished almost entirely into a swarm of concerned henchmen, arrow protruding from her neck.

He nods and then he runs after her, hand grazing over the arm or back of anyone else who might need encouragement to disengage as he passes them.