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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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

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.

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.

Edited 2022-09-17 00:01 (UTC)

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.

Those who have been to the Cumberland Circle before won't have any problems recognizing the College of Magi's traditional gathering place. For those who haven't been there in waking life, the lavish surroundings are striking on their own merits, even before the observer can register just how many Southern Mages are gathered in one place. Nearly everyone present is in robes and carrying a staff. While there's no particular indication of time period in the setting — the golden opulence looked much the same on the recent trip some of their number made to Nevarra — the number of mages present suggests they're occupying a moment before the war(s) that decimated the former members of the assembly. (In reality, there would have been Templars present, surely; there's no sign of them in the dream.)

One mage, a man of about Julius's age, approaches him, ignoring the others for the present. "Senior enchanter," he says in a low, Marcher-accented voice. "The College is ready for you to speak." Julius seems momentarily shaken, though whether by the unfamiliar title or the news he's about to be given the floor is not immediately apparent. The man, seeming to sense his hesitation, lowers his voice and says, "A lot of us are behind you. We just need someone to put it clearly. We won't desert you." He gives Julius a small, inscrutable smile.

He can, evidently, see the others, finally turning his attention their way. He glances back and says, "You should take your seats. The College is about to reconvene." Whatever he sees of them doesn't seem to give him pause, but it's also clear he's about to pull Julius off, away from the group.

The room is gilt and glittering, ormolu candlesticks and polished mirrors and fine parquet floor. In a velvet armchair sits a smiling villain with beautiful eyes. He speaks in a voice that drips with disdain -

"Dearest cousin, you have no proof."

Across from him, standing tall, is Byerly. Dressed not as he normally is, in the finery of the Kirkwall social set, but in his version of Fereldan garb - belted, booted, kidskin gloves picked through with embroidery. Sword at his hip. Fur peeking through at his hems. And on his finger, a ring that bears the insignia of office for a blackhaller, appointed personally by the queen to see to her justice.

"Dearest cousin," Byerly returns, his voice arch but resolute, "I have all the proof I need."

And he turns to look at the assembled crew standing behind him. There's a slight narrowing of his eyes, a moment of confusion - and then that confusion clears as he's drawn once again into the illusion, his addled brain believing in this moment of great triumph.

"Speak," he says to them, "on what you know of the wickedness of Richars Rutyer."

(It's not hard to guess what might be plausible stories about Richars Rutyer, even for those who've never heard Byerly speak about the man. The arrogance in his face, the cruelty in his smile speak hint at a sort of sadism. The opulence in the room hints at the way he's living on the fat of his estates while his people, perhaps, must endure the lean. The creep of his hand towards his dagger speak to a violent temperament. If the others decide they must play along with this fantasy, they can make many guesses that sound quite plausible.)

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.

"He sliced the tongue out of a man that once worked his grounds. Claimed he'd stolen from him after fifteen years of service."

Loxley has no idea what's happening. He does not know Richars Rutyer, and he does not, very much, like Byerly Rutyer. He doesn't know where they are, or really recognise any the significance of the way everyone is dressed—heavier leather, on him, than he's used to, some charming fur trim, everything a bit, you know, skirtier—but far be it from him not to speak up anyway when asked, breaking his analysis of this figure on his chair to look towards Byerly, not permitting his uncertainty to eke through.

He glances to the rest of the group, the spirits that are guiding them through. Qunari, once again, rings of black metal decorating his horns, his hand resting on the hilt of a shortsword that doesn't belong to him but nevertheless is lashed at his hip.

"And who knows what he knew."

Having been momentarily — and truly, a rare occurrence — speechless when Byerly turned to them, Loxley provides a path forward and Gwenaëlle, beside him and keeping her eyes forward and not looking down at what feels like heavy Fereldan skirts because she knows it's going to be appalling and distract her, seizes upon it.

“And that's the pattern, with Richars,” she picks up his thread, “isn't it?” Isn't it? She has no idea, but she knows about the lengths someone might go to, to protect a secret. How much more dreadful they might be, the more dreadful the person. The more dreadful the secret. “A— a chatelaine reached out to us, she intended to travel to— us—”

Where the fuck is anything in Fereldan. She didn't know they were going to have to do geography this morning, the only place names she can recall offhand are the places her grandfather once had soldiers, and that's no help at all,

“to bring to light crimes that she felt honor-bound not to stand by. She couldn't speak of them in letters, she said. Not a week later, she could only be identified by a port-wine stain on her hip. We'll never know what she knew.”

(Gwenaëlle would sell this better if she weren't looking sideways at the others to check if she's doing a good job. She is doing, at best, a mediocre job that would not stand up to scrutiny if there were no one else here to pull focus.)

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.

Servana, holding her staff rather than carrying it on her back as many of the others of this dream and perhaps her temporary, living companions— has a faint, indulgent smile on her face. It looks a little like the way she might look at her own child (she had not betrayed Remi in truth, but played a dangerous long game to rescue their daughter held for his exchange, and even this spirit-echo is hungry for news of her that none of them have—), a sort of oh, bless mixed with the aromatic flavor of lol, nerd.

“You needs must keep it brief, Senior Enchanter,” she says, instead of sitting. “You know that we have an urgent engagement.”

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?

Edited 2022-09-18 13:49 (UTC)

Ellie recognizes that face.

Their encounter was brief and through the thin veil of Byerly's memories, and he was a good few decades younger, still a child- but he was a cruel, twisted one even then. Anger burns up through her blood. Stronger, now, because she knows he's capable of even more than what the others are throwing out, convincingly spinning tales.

Ellie doesn't have to make anything up. And maybe that's why when she speaks, the very real anger hammers through every beat of her words.

"It's not like he limits that shit to what people might say," Ellie grinds out, and her eyes flicker to Byerly's -- there and gone, the color high in her cheeks.

"He just fucking loves hurting people. Especially little kids who can't fight back. Loves cutting off their fingers. Breaking their bones."

She fixes her eyes on Richars' face, his fucking smirk and the dimple that's fading. She swears she can see the fear in his eyes- but beneath that, there's a gleam of some monster, even beyond this one. Coaxing.

Play into it. Play along. It's so good, isn't it? So satisfying, to mete out justice.

"Kids lie, right? Who would ever suspect?"

"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!"

The flowing robes and a staff in her hand are easily the most uncomfortable thing Ellie's been equipped with today, but the pattern is starting to emerge, even if she can't focus. The woman looks familiar. She's seen Servana before. And Julius, and the people with them-

Fuck, it's happening again.

The edges of the dream ripple, and the man who approached Julius is still smiling, but there's something just too serene about it, too poised.

"Can there be anything more urgent than this?"

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.

Here, a candlelit and furnace-warmed room, low-ceilinged and windowless and cool. And crowded. Not meant for nearly twenty people—the dreamers and ghosts now dressed, for the most part, the way Bastien and his ilk frequently dress, in muted colors and working-class simplifications of Orlesian fashions.

"This is it," says Antoinette, in Orlesian. In this dream world, she's an odd-looking woman. She's dressed like the Lady Antoinette Maurel, a woman in her forties who has long since turned her sharp mind away from dreamy politics and toward protecting the comfort and modest fortunes of her two twenty-year-old daughters. At moments, in shadows, her face matches the matronly figure; it's a face Bastien's only seen from a distance. But in the flickers of the candlelight that require it to be clearer, it's instead the face of Toinon—sixteen, sharp and wild-eyed, hair falling out of its elaborate crown of braids, a pen behind her ear despite the ink spots it left on her apple cheek. The sort of girl who'd try to teach a gamin to read using pamphlets about the travesty of his condition.

Bastien had loved her with his entire twelve-year-old heart.

That is not why he's blushing. He's blushing because he knows this cellar, and he knows where this is going, and he knows it's a dream, and it's quite a thing to have one's childish dreams laid out for examination by nine people and five ghosts. Especially the ghosts. He would love very much to impress the ghosts.

Anyway: "This is it," Antoinette is saying, nodding while she reads the document in her hands. "We are on the edge. This will push us over. Things will change. This is very good work—"

Her tongue is curling for the L that begins his given name, maybe beginning to make an identifiable sound out of it, but he's quick. "Thank you," he says in Trade, cutting her off, and takes the paper from her hands. He squints down at it, with the foolish hope there might indeed be something profound written there, but of course there isn't. A swirl of revolutionary-sounding half-thoughts. The kind of thing one might sit bolt upright in the middle of the night to write down, convinced it's world-changing, only to be greeted in the morning by CHEVALIERS = ALLIGATORS with three urgent underlines and no further explanation.

Fortunately, he is spared the humiliation of discuss this any further by a pounding knock on the door, gruff and muffled voices outside it explained promptly by Maximilien—another familiar face, from more recent history, refined beard gone grey—saying, "Shit. That will be the guard. We have to—"

(Sheet. Zat will be ze garrd. We 'ave to—, technically.)

He hands the nearest person an armful of papers and points toward the furnace. Burn the evidence. Antoinette takes the document back from Bastien to fold it, with reverence entirely undeserved, and tuck it into his jerkin.

"This is the part where we have to escape," Bastien explains to everyone else, sounding a bit weary and gesturing toward the steps that lead to the back door out into the alleyway, "and run for our lives to get this masterwork to—"

"To Gauthier," Antoinette fills in. "He's not expecting you yet, but—go. Hurry. Get it to him."

She is ushering them, all fourteen of them, toward the door. It was silent outside before, but now that anyone's attention might be aimed out of the cellar, the sound of shouts and crashes is growing slowly louder. The edge Antoinette was discussing earlier, via this nonsensical dream logic, already tipped over with or without a final push from CHEVALIERS = ALLIGATORS. There's an uprising out there.

"This is very embarrassing," Bastien says. He knows the drill by now—there's a door somewhere out there, the right one—but he's not yet moving.

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."

Lightning cuts a crack in the sky and for a brief moment, it's lit up like day. Edgard throws a hand through his wet hair and blinks through the rain up at an impossibly large house upon a hill.

"His name's DuPont." A thin faced man with greasy hair who identified himself by the name Sunshine (Is that his actual name? Can't be) yells and points to the house in question.

"Rich fuck who has these feasts for other rich fucks while good people like you and me go hungry so little children won't starve. We think we can do something about him and this."

At the word we, Sunshine gestures behind himself. Edgard looks behind himself. There are a great many people behind him who cheer with fists raised.

Lightning flashes again. The storm is here.

Edgard steps in through the furnace somehow, unburnt, and is greeted with a faceful of papers that burn in front of him. He's fine. He coughs stepping out.

He sees Bastien among people, ghosts?, and a woman gesturing them all to the door. Edgard doesn't know where he is, but Bastien seems to know what he's doing most of the time, so following seems like a good idea.

"What's embarrassing?" He asks. "Our lives? The masterwork?" He says repeating what Bastien said. "Or--it's me isn't it?" He grins. Maybe not the time for a joke, but Edgard's never been one for timing.

Edited (i aint afraid of no ghosts) 2022-09-19 04:06 (UTC)

Through the first two accusations, Bastien's still as a dog listening to a distant noise in the dark. Eyes on Richars. On his dagger. He recognizes him too, from By's stories and from the haunting. The first time he encountered a spirit in the man's shape, he wound up at the bottom of a flight of stairs. This is a different kind of demon, but he'd still prefer to be between the two Rutyers, all things considered.

It's Gwenaëlle's sideways search for affirmation, caught in his peripheral vision, that snaps him out of that thought. Bastien turns his gaze in time to catch hers and tips his chin up. Bon travail.

He's not next in line after Ellie. Bolek is, and he rouses himself to the task with a gravitas one might call Shakespearean, if one knew what the hell a Shakespeare was: "He had my dear brother killed. My dear little brother. He tried to cheat him, buying our wares, and he had my brother arrested to keep him from reporting it to the Merchant's Guild. He died in that dungeon. But he told me, 'fore he went. I knew." He sounds believably on the verge of tears. "I knew."

Bastien's next. When he takes a few seconds too long to speak, the dwarf elbows him in the hip.

"He's a manipulator. He draws people in and makes them think he can give them what they want, but it is always poisoned somehow." It's an attempt to reach Byerly. Maybe too subtle to do the job. Maybe not subtle enough for the spirits. (They can be anything. An end table shifts ominously.)

Edited (I changed my mind about the cw thing but forgot to remove the cw!) 2022-09-19 04:48 (UTC)

Is this a fighting dream or a running dream or a talking dream?

It seems, almost, to be all three at once. Loxley makes for a lanky and somewhat out of place figure in this crush of humans, once again lacking his sword in favour of a hidden dagger he can feel under his jacket. He tugs it free of its sheath, clear tension in his posture and expression at each intensifying crash and shout.

Karolis, likewise, watches the door, a weapon in hand with a loaded crossbow carefully pointed for the floor in front of his feet, but the noises of an uprising, of shouting guards and the working class clashing together, doesn't absorb his focus completely. Bastien speaks again—and there is a glance from Karolis to Edgard for his own last statement that says maybe.

"That's for later," he says, with a kind of long-resigned sense of humour that must have, at some point, been cultivated before he died, or else he would not carry it with him now. You'd think, anyway. "But there was a moment when it wasn't."

Maybe it still isn't. Karolis doesn't know.

"Focus. Remember. They'll turn on us if you don't."

What is it in him? What is that bright pinch of pain that hears these stories and grieves and rejoices? The Byerly that's taken in by this spell, the heroic judge, doesn't understand it, because this heroic and noble version of Byerly has never suffered skepticism. But the true Byerly that's lost in this vision knows keenly what it is to be doubted and disbelieved. And this faith, this steady testimony, this affirmation of his memory, hurts like a frozen limb being rubbed back to life.

Kids lie. That one makes him want to scream - in fury, in gratitude. Kids lie. He didn't. He never did.

"These are lies," says Richars. Perhaps the spirit is inspired by Bastien's manipulator and poisoned, or perhaps by Byerly's own mental fixation. Richars lifts a hand and points to Loxley - "Outsider and infidel"; Gwenaëlle is labeled a "Bastard half-blood," Ellie a "Cowardly child," Borek a "Fabricator," Bastien a "Peasant."

"Who, of any of you, have the right to bring testimony?"

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.

Dwarves cannot be mages. Ergo, Bolek should either not be here or not be a dwarf. The dream has chosen not a dwarf. He is present, accounted for, and very tall, though still proportionally built stocky and broad. At this height, his beard looks arguably wizardly when he strokes it.

"Let the man speak," he says.

He is enjoying this. This one small part. Just a little.

Bastien is, too, just a little. He is moving his leg in such a way as to make his robes swirl, somewhere in the background, and then there is a visible, eye-widening moment of realization. He holds his hand out. Somehow—will and imagination substituting for the missing years of training, in addition to the missing magical ability—a perfect miniature fireball appears above it.

He sits down in the chair behind him without snuffing it out or taking his eyes away from it, mouthing, "Ça décoiffe." (He will quickly pay attention again when the speaking starts.)

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.

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.

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.

Edited (2 many italix) 2022-09-21 10:59 (UTC)

"Perhaps not how I would might have put it, but the sentiment is admirable," says a compact man of middle height at Bastien's shoulder. His mustache is too well-oiled to match the simple tradesman's clothes and cloth cap this dream has chosen for him, and thought he is moving briskly to the door with the others his eyes are on the page he has somehow plucked back out from his countryman's jerkin with impossibly light fingers.

"And the metaphor, so colorful!" The ends of Remi Vascal's mustache bob as he grins. "Perhaps the author's point would be better delivered through allegory? Say, the invigorating and inspiring tales of a band of dashing rogues?"

Julius has a split second to think it's a shame Petrana isn't here before he says, "I'm the eldest son of Bann Selwyn and here in his stead." He's dressed for the part, a look not unlike Byerly's, if perhaps a bit more conservative in style: a world where Julius wasn't a mage, perhaps, and still lost his older brother. Maybe he never had one at all. It's not his dream, so it's not important. "What will you label me to dismiss what I know, Richars?" he goes on, mildly, his polite tone belying how he dispenses with a title.

He glances to Byerly, evaluating. Playing along is one thing, but they do need to keep moving. "Perhaps, though, we'd best take the evidence we've gathered elsewhere. I can think of an arl or two who would be interested in just how well you've weathered these challenging times, and whose pockets may be lighter than they should be in consequence."

The man who came to fetch Julius says, "Yes, yes," a bit dismissively, to Servana and Ellie's respective concerns. (If he registers Bastien's behavior as unusual, he gives no sign.) Nodding to Bolek, he takes Julius by the elbow and steers him to the center of the assembly. Julius seems to straighten a bit as they move, the dream catching at him more firmly and dispelling the hints of disorientation.

The crowd begins to quiet down as it's clear he's preparing to address them, which is going to make moving through the room conspicuous absent new developments. In the meantime, Julius begins. Most of the Riftwatch contingent has had the opportunity to hear him speak, but it's clear that in the dream, he's even more poised, more articulate. The way he speaks of a new future for mages has some things in common with the speech he recently gave in this room in reality, but it lacks the fatigue and the hard-won pragmatism of the real thing. Instead, he paints a picture of a world where mages can rebuild something new without the war that, in the dream at least, isn't an inevitability.

(It's an excellent speech and, in the way of dreams, Julius is going to be irritated he can't remember the specifics of it later.)

Lightning flashes. The eyes of the crowd catch it, and flash in kind. The torchlight is warm in contrast, when the lightning fades. The flames are hissing and spitting under the rain, heads bowed low.

Edgard isn’t alone. There’s the crowd, yes, but also at his side, Darras says, “Won’t be much to act.”

The torch nearest to them gutters, as the rain begins to fall harder goes out, and Darras smiles in the near dark as the crowd begins to move forward, to follow Sunshine up the hill.

One last door (or window, or waterfall, or cave entrance) brings them to a place where all disguises fall away. The landscape is a twisted, misty island of the raw Fade, the Black City hanging in the distant sky. No spirits appear to pull them into games and delusions. The island is the domain of the spirit who trapped them here, and it is apparently tired of putting on airs to try to please them.

"I never had dreams when I was alive," says the dwarf who has accompanied them through the maze, "and now I've dreamt for a lifetime. Or—we are dead, aren't we?"

Bastien nods. He's only slowly relaxing, and only relaxing so far. They aren't done. They're pausing.

Bolek takes a breath. "Well, I'd like to be returned to the Stone, once we get you out of here, if the Stone will have me. I'm—"

"Bolek. I know. Everyone knows," is overstatement, but not much of one, in his opinion. "Everyone knows all of you."

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.

Edgard's entrance and quips earn from Bastien a sardonic eyebrow raise that does well enough to cover for the fact that he's overwhelmed, more than overwhelmed, without the added complication of friends crawling out of cellar furnaces in front of Remi Vascal—

Who is speaking to him. Who has his dream-writing.

"That is," he says, and swerves away from the most brilliant thing I have ever heard, I will do it and anything else you recommend immediately, into a halting, "not a, not a bad idea. Actually. Merci."

But Karolis (Karolis!) is right. Focusing.

"For the next one," with a mindful look at Antoinette, before she can urge them to hurry again, "after we get this one to Gauthier."

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

closed.

Ellie's Dream

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loxley's dream.

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

julius's dream

Byerly's ego-trip

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cw: mention of child abuse

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Bastien's!

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Edgard's Dream

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Chat & Confrontation

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvEn1u_s5HA