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WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Late night evacuation drill
WHEN: Early Harvestmere, don't think about it too hard
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See OOC note below.

Lashes of rain batter at unyielding fortress walls. It is dark, quiet, and peaceful save for all the rolling thunder summoned from over the sea. It is a good evening to be warm in bed.

Until it isn't a couple of those things.

Wherever you are sleeping (or working) late at night in the Gallows, you will hear it: an incessant and noisy bell ringing, handheld, clanging and clanging loud and obnoxious from the top of each tower and downwards, lingering in the key residential halls until there is sign of people emerging from their rooms. Gwenaëlle has been assigned to harass the Central Tower, while Abby takes the Mage Tower and Matthias is assigned the Templar Tower. Even if you happen not to be in either of these places, the muffled cacophony of bells is liable to still reach you.

It may take a second to realise what's happening, and how real this emergency is, but in the past week, all will have received some suspiciously timed updates as to evacuation procedures, including the protocols surrounding what to do when the instruction is to shelter in place (because they do, after all, live in a fortress).

The first step is moving without hesitation when the warning bells ring out loud. The next is to descend the towers, down dim stairwells lit by lyrium glow, in as orderly a fashion as possible. From there, it's a matter off finding the correct subterranean chamber (tonight, indicated with lamplight) and waiting it out.

At least, this route does not take them outside.

In the basement chamber will be Edgard and Marcus, the former equipped with a medieval clipboard and the latter marking the time in his head as people enter, while semi-supervising the other man's work and guarding the exit. The space is large enough to comfortably fit the whole company, although it is also cold, dripping, and musty. There are places to sit, chairs and tables both, and a few blankets if you find yourself underdressed.

And if you attempt to leave too early, you'll be bid to wait it out a little longer to accommodate and cause no disruption or confusion to late comers.

To encourage this, there are a few bottles of wine set aside along with some lukewarm tea. Stay a while.

[ ooc ; feel free to top level at any part of this interaction! I will handwave the cooperation of anyone who doesn't tag in or assume they are out of the Gallows, so don't feel like you have to, but there is also a comment below for anyone who deliberately wants to be on the naughty list of no-shows. ]

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Jude smiles back, the grin of someone caught, but not at all unhappy about it.

"No change, this is still just a drill. We meet, go through the motions." Viktor is still excused for the purposes of this drill; Jude won't go hauling him unwillingly down the stairs when there isn't an actual, life-threatening reason at hand. More than pissing Viktor off, it'll make things difficult for them when the time comes for them to actually be bug-out buddies.

"But I'm due to report."

And a pause. Then, sincerely:

"Much as I'd rather keep talking to you."

Then, with the air of someone who knows it could well be a lost cause, but has to try anyway, he gestures down the stairs. "Couldn't persuade you to humor me? On wolfback, if you prefer."

Wolfback? Is that what he said? Viktor's answer sticks on its way out, like it's snagged on something in his throat, leaving a little strained silence before it pops free.

"No, I—"

Automatic refusal, because that wasn't the plan, because he's not prepared to change his mind on a whim, because it's a strange suggestion, because a shirtless guy he just met is suggesting it to him. Because even though he despises the idea of being carried, this is an unforeseen loophole, the part of him that always leans into the unforeseen is already winning this argument, he needs to go through the motions of considering it, and doing so is an incredibly self-conscious thing. His eyes flirt with the idea of looking away, darting, his shoulder comes up.

"I don't think," he starts, but curiosity pulls him back, eyes and all. "What... would that entail?"

Edited (while i'm editing things,) 2022-10-19 04:39 (UTC)

The smile ebbs away, replaced with something softer, more open and curious. He won't push. Now, it's all up to him.

"First, getting out of these pants. Then, changing over to fur. And I do recommend looking away. It's normal when you grow up with it, but it can... come as a shock."

To put it lightly. Just a casual bit of breaking every bone in your body and then re-forming them in a handful of seconds.

"Then I crouch down a bit, you mount up and get a good grip with your knees, and hang on."

A shifting of weight, a thinking pause. Viktor considers mount up and grip with your knees, the way they drop into his belly and sink like little stones, doubt and displeasure trailing after. Their presence is an invitation: he knows it well, and declines. (There is absolutely no chance he will take Jude's recommendation, either.)

He does, though, turn his hand over and point down to his leg with a few little taps in the air. The hinges and shanks, the thick hard angles at his knee, the shell encasing his shoe.

"And this won't cause you any discomfort?"

When it digs in.

"Oh, it will." Matter of fact, of course- but Jude is very used to discomfort. "But it won't actually hurt me unless it's all day."

Like marching a man in plate armor all the way to Cumberland.

Jude drops down to a squat to get a better look, the movement fluid -- he's big and heavy, but he doesn't move like it. He laces his fingers together, lifts his shoulders.

"It's hard to hurt a shifter."

He considers the shell across Viktor's shoe, gestures to it with a crook of a finger.

"Hanging on will hurt me less than letting this hang limp," he adds. "Undercoat cuts the friction."

If they do this often, they can troubleshoot. But for now, it'll work. He rolls his eyes upward to look at Viktor's face.

With the unannounced squatting, and the unusual scrutiny it enables, comes a fresh bolt of tension. It's allayed by Jude's straightforward assessment, though, and soon returns to baseline unease—and even that is settling. The promise of seeing something new and strange is a powerful incentive.

(And maybe being crouched at has something to do with it. Maybe some part of him is satisfied by it. Maybe, once in a while, he imagines being the tower that turns heads and casts a long shadow.)

Viktor's yellow eyes, aimed down from above, are steady. He answers the advice with a nod: just the one, firm.

"OK."

OK, he'll ride a wolf-man down the stairs. Why not.

"Okay," Jude echoes, and gets to his feet, dropping one hand to the drawstring at his waist.

"Don't mind being watched, but if you have a weak stomach, look away," he warns-

And then he changes.

It is disgusting. The wet snap and scrape of bones breaking and moving under flesh. The way Jude steps out of his trousers is smooth, practiced, so much so that the black fur racing along his skin preserves his modesty well enough even if Viktor chooses to look, and that might spare him the sight of Jude's maw breaking open into impossible, glinting fangs before skin and fur cover them properly. His eyes turn from warm brown to glittering wolf gold.

The whole change takes only a few seconds, but it sucks all of the air out of the room, and in his place is an absolutely fuckoff enormous wolf, midnight-black and rimed with deep brown. Jude's lips pulls back from his teeth as he scents him, his tongue lolling out once, demonstrating huge fangs and jaws that could easily envelop a man's head and crush it outright.

Jude wags his enormous tail to one side -- and in a way that no wild wolf would do, stretches his front paws out before him in what is obviously a modified bow.

Yes, he's in there.

(And so is his wolf, who thinks this is all a great game.)

Against the prevailing theme of his body, Viktor's stomach is only weak for a particular combination of anxiety and motion, but this—

this grotesque rearrangement of parts, the undulation of meat and bone, stretching, pushing, growing—

this is challenging.

He doesn't choose to look. Not there. Like any living eye, his are drawn to the face, seeking language, familiarity, something to comprehend. The face bulges and opens and bristles with teeth. He comprehends only endurance of pain: a familiar language, reflected back to him in a yellow eye.

And then it's done, and his awareness expands to include his own wild pulse and shallow breath. When did he reach the wall? The bones of his back ease off stone and into stiff balance. For long seconds he stands just there, drawn in small around his crutch, shoulders up, arm across his belly.

Then that arm lifts away, breaking his closed and cautious silhouette, to extend the relaxed shape of his hand.

Jude's head comes up to Viktor's chest; it's no wonder he offered himself as a mount, he's nearly the size of a horse.

Jude tilts his head to one side with watching eyes, swishing his tail to the other side, letting Viktor come to terms with the horror of what his eyes have seen. Though he was in company with humans now and again back home, he's still learning just how disturbing they find this. He's also learning the capacity of how quickly they can accept something new.

It's astonishing, really- and something he very much likes about them. Humans are adaptable, stubborn, enduring, and most of all, they will pack-bond with anything.

Jude gets to his feet, head dropping lower to delicately sniff over Viktor's fingers, scenting his skin, the sweat, the old pages of books, the dust of the library, quills and ink. He is so young, younger than Jude's first impression of him, and it fills in more of the blank spaces. They ache.

Jude's tongue is pink, and the soft lick is delicate, friendly, reassuring. He laps across Viktor's fingertips, then eases in to push his giant head under his hand, soft ears flickering up and back as he steps in close.

His fur, if pressed, is impossibly deep and dense, his ears sensitive and welcoming the touch. He politely tucks his teeth away and sniffs at him curiously.

The library, quills and ink; warm leather, steel and brass; and something else. Deeper. The shadow behind Viktor's sharp cheeks and his thin neck and the bruised look of his eyes. It's on his breath, in the taste of his sweat, this silent, insidious thing.

The lick reminds him—not of fur, but of rough-smooth skin, the way it would barely wrinkle under his hand, so delicate. A big, bright eye looking at him, warm soft foot pawing at his pant leg, huge head filling his lap from knees to chin. Her strange sounds and peculiar smell.
The withering shape of her, suspended.

This is a grown man, he reminds himself. The both of them are; he's young, but not much younger than Jude himself. And there's a bell ringing. He releases the gentle fistful of fur, the roll of loose canid skin.

"I, ah... how should I..."

Little abortive movements, indecisive, unsure how to arrange himself. Most people around here know how to sit on sittable animals; Viktor isn't one of them. There's the matter of his gear, besides, and points of inconvenient stiffness or looseness where the opposite should be true of a body—

Edited 2022-10-29 00:55 (UTC)

It's too-sweet, the scent of something so close to decay, the half-life of things ending. It tingles along Jude's nose, the horrible knowledge. He wonders if Viktor knows, and decides, as his long fingers curl into ruff around his neck, that he surely does.

What a thing to carry. What a thing to so utterly refuse to bow to.

The sentinel in him stretches, presses, bigger than his skin. He leans in to gently push his head against Viktor's chest, inviting the touch with a cool nose.

One ear flicks back at the question, and Jude eases up, turns to present his back to Viktor, and sits. The slope of his back is nearly as long as Viktor is tall -- and moreover, he eases down on forepaws, head up.

Gives a soft woof. Unlike a horse, he can do most of the work.

Unlike a horse, there's no saddle to advise his seat or balance, either, or tell his feet where to go. They—Viktor's feet—can only spread so far, his caged leg can only move so much, before stability crumbles. This isn't life-or-death, where the wrenching and jolting required of him to hurry are negligible tolls. If it were, if this were a real fire or an attack on the fortress, the slow, gawky steps he now takes as he figures this out would be preposterously out of place.

He falls, more or less, onto Jude's back. No standout cause makes it happen, he just falls, because of course he does, because what's more embarrassing than falling because you're doing something stupid? Falling when you're hardly doing anything. His crutch slips loose, clatters in metallic competition with the alarm bell.

"Guh," he says, approximately.

Fine. There. At least no one is here to see, and it's furry muscle, not stone, that catches him.

Edited 2022-11-02 03:04 (UTC)

Jude joins him in the guh, though it comes from a canine chest so it's more of a whuf. Shuffling somewhat inelegantly underneath him, Jude arranges himself so Viktor can scoot up a bit, place his knees near his shoulder blades, where there's naturally a slight dip in his spine.

It takes a touch of fiddling, but then he slowly eases himself to a standing position, paces the few steps forward to pick up his crutch in his jaws, swivel his head to hand -- teeth? -- it back, checking on him as he does so.

They won't head downward until he's far better settled.

What a strange way to be given something. The sight of the crutch's shaft swinging around must be even more unusual from a distance than it is from Viktor's point of view. Now somewhat more upright, if hunched and clinging, he lifts his hand to receive it— or goes to, and quickly aborts to snatch a fistful of fur, nervous of his balance.

"Aah," unsteady, tremulous, "let's... leave that here." If he has to worry about carrying it, he's going to slip off and fall on his head, he's pretty sure. "I'll get it later." Or someone can bring it to him.

Reminding himself of the context—they aren't just screwing around, this is meant to be a drill—doesn't do much to mitigate the anxious frustration rising within him. At home, even if left to his own devices, he'd have a fair shot—but here there are no clever evacuation lines to rely upon, no flameproofing or express lifts, no unyielding doors to seal a passage behind him, only flight after flight of thick stone stairs.

He keeps looking at them. The stairs. They're already steep enough when he's standing at the top, in command of his own locomotion, and down is always more dangerous than up. Up, you fall into them, bang your shins, clip your chin if you're unlucky, but at least there's something to grasp. Down...

Well. Down is bad.

Edited (a letter) 2022-11-07 00:24 (UTC)

Like this, Jude can much better judge the weakness and possibly pain in Viktor's legs. Does it hurt him to do this? His hips also won't easily go wide enough, and gripping with his knees will be difficult.

On a wolf, it's going to be more difficult to balance, and more difficult to trust.

That's what's going to be key to the success of this. Trust.

Jude opens his jaw, lets the walking stick roll down his jaws contemplatively, catches it again in a loose grip, thinking. He flicks one ear back, indicating said thought. Would that he's able to speak like this, but Viktor's not connected to him like pack, and even in packs more than vague concepts are difficult.

Jude places one paw on the stairs, which just barely dips his body forward. He pauses to judge Viktor's reaction and how he's going to hold himself.

His reaction? Stiff, fearful, bent at the waist, trying both to hunch in close and find some purchase with his arms on the shifting pelt. How does he hold himself? Poorly. Viktor doesn't trust his own body, his spine, the weakness of his leg even in its supported state, let alone that of the creature beneath him.

And this with just one step, when he was so sure a minute ago.

With that thought it rushes back in, a tide of foolish determination that urges him to hug in close and cling with every available limb. It is difficult, it does hurt to use these meagre muscles in ways they've hardly been used, and head down is the worst way to descend any incline—but everything hurts all the time, anyway. In his professional opinion: fuck it. Might as well try.

"Go," he croaks, and squeezes his eyes shut. "Just— one flight. Go!"

Before he changes his mind.

Jude would have preferred to wait, one paw plainly hesitating on the first step, but something in Viktor's voice twists at him, aching. Some part of him wishes they didn't have to do this, but it's a familiar feeling. Like lancing a wound.

He wishes he were surer of the recovery.

Instead, he is smooth as they descend, keeping his back as level as possible in the way a horse would not. His feet are fast, quiet. He's never been one of the ghosts of his pack, but he's studied the way the sentries move in the rare times he's allowed to see them with his eyes.

He tries to channel that, now. Swift, smooth, flowing. They curve, dizzyingly, then even off at the first landing available, where Jude steps well away from the stairs, pausing to check on his passenger, let him adjust his grip, get his bearings.

Swift, quiet, smoothed bounces, a dizzying curve endured with closed eyes. His perception of time stretches out after them, elastic, only catches up at the landing; their descent is as mercifully quick as it is unbearably long. He feels himself slipping, strains to keep back from the wolf's head. Planed shapes, harder than bone, bump the wolf's back where a flat chest should be.

The stairs end, they come level, and Viktor nearly bails on impulse, but rises instead on quivering arms.

"That wasn't so bad."

And that sounded queasy, even to him. He swallows against it, steadies his breath.

"One more?"

Jude pauses on the landing, his tail swishing in mute encouragement. He's still carrying Viktor's walking stick, and he lets it clack in his mouth with a conversational arowrwo, which sounds suspiciously like praise.

(What is under his waistcoat... thing?)

Jude pauses again for all manner of settling Viktor wants to do, then moves when he's given the all clear. He takes the flight just the same as the last time. Oil-slick down the stairs. Even if Viktor's confidence is up, it won't do to get cocky.

He braces for the possibility that it will go wrong. He can shift back in an instant, if arms are needed for catching. He will, rather than let Viktor get hurt. It would be extremely painful and probably awkward, but nothing he hasn't done before.

The commentary, such as it is, hits just right to push an amused sound out of him. Objectively, this is an absurd situation. They've gotten past the first impetuous leap, more or less successfully, so now would be the time to quit while they're ahead.
Right?
Nah.

Having roughly zero knowledge of how to ride any creature correctly, and no guidance beyond supportive dog sounds, Viktor decides to try this one propped up on his forearms, which is both uncomfortable—probably for everyone involved, his elbows aren't the friendliest shape—and unsteady. By the landing, he's pulling a big yikes face and trying hard not to slide off sideways, which happens anyway as they stop.

There he goes, slipping to the floor like a collapsed puppet. A slow cascade of skinny arms and legs. He makes a strangled noise that flutters on the way down, laughter or nerves or both.

It's fine. He's fine. No one else is here to see this and that's terrific.

It's fine, this is fine. This is totally not fine and oh shit there he goes, there he goes.

Thank goodness they're on the landing. As soon as he feels Viktor slipping, Jude goes belly-down on the floor so minimize the distance to fall, sniffing at Viktor's face and hair to check on him without getting up from his side.

Once he determines he's not hurt, he'll thump the floor with his tail and let loose a soft whine. It's not a fully wolflike gesture but he finds that it relaxes people when they view him as more of a giant dog. And better an animal than a human, when considering comfort levels.

He licks Viktor's ear once, lifts his head.

There have been worse falls—Viktor's had a quantity of those himself. As he reaches blindly to pat a furry shoulder, he's quite aware of the points that took impact, the muscles put to uncommon use, and not very concerned with any of it. That'll change very soon, he knows, but that shadow is always looming on the horizon and he's sick of looking at it.

He's sitting up when the tongue finds his ear, sparking a broad cringe, scrunched face, raised shoulder and all.

"Please," is lilting undertone, a good-natured moue as he gathers himself to rise. "Don't make this weird."

He'll need help to stand up, but between Jude and his crutch it'll go smoothly enough; he'll be swiping the ubiquitous thoroughfare grit from his trousers presently.

Jude noses the crutch at him.

The tongue-out panting that shows off every one of Jude's absurdly huge teeth is canine laughter, Viktor will come to realize if they spend more time together.

Between the two of them they get Viktor standing again, and Jude leans just slightly against his legs. Not enough to push him over but enough to steady them both. To stand with him until he doesn't feel so shaky.

The alarms are still going off, though more distantly now, and Jude looks down the stairs, looks back up the way they came, and flicks his ears back, then forward at Viktor. Tilts his head to one side.

That's a plain enough question. Viktor mimics it without thinking, casts glances down, then up, as he considers. The alarm, the stairs they've cleared, what awaits at the bottom. The room full of people with eyes on the door, waiting to see who shows up next—maybe not all, but some, and at least one doing so intentionally. The trouble Marcus went through to arrange this, unprompted. The gesture behind it. The way it tangles even now, even in the middle of this very exercise, when he thinks of it.

"Down," he decides. "We've come this far. I just... need a moment." He's rolling his hand by his torso as he says this, which also ought to be plain enough: either he needs to catch his breath, or he's perilously close to puking. Possibly both. (It's both.)

After one long breath that seems more restorative than those previous, he adds, quietly, "Thank you."

Jude nods; it's a distinctly human gesture wrapped up in the enormous body, but it shows how much effort he's putting into being understood. It is perhaps undermined by the light lick he gives the back of Viktor's hand.

(It's meant to be both an acknowledgement and a reassurance, but maybe it's just gross.)

For his part, though- despite the alarm, he shows not the least shred of impatience. If Viktor wants to stay here until morning, he's committed to doing it.

There's been a priority shift here, the kind that Jude knows is not very like a soldier, and not entirely like a wolf either. He's not worried about his orders.

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