war table: strangers in the mirror.

[propulsion]

WHO: Closed to the gang
WHAT: Delving into the temple of Dirthamen in search of artifacts, Riftwatch finds that the temple demands more than they seek. But what else is new?
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Arlathan Forest, within the temple of Dirthamen, Elven God of Secrets and Knowledge
NOTES: OOC post.

You stand before it, a glow emanating from its smooth surface, a perfectly round sphere whose warmth bathes your face and hands in light. Around you are veiled faces in hoods, heads bowed in reverence, and a murmur of chanting echoes, overlapping, like the clashing of tides. Your hovered hands drift apart in a slow and elegant motion, and you can only faintly see it, the lines of magic you draw between your fingers, like faint golden cobwebs of shivering power.

They tremble between your fingers, they shiver, and they bend towards the orb. You must master it so it does not, in its wisdom and hunger, take from you what you're not willing to give, but you are well trained, you are beyond compare, and you will give only what you will.

The chanting rises, and the orb pulses with light. You focus, and the magic drawn between your fingers pulls away from it, arcs around in loops. It feels akin to reining a wild horse or mastering the lines affixed to the sails of a ship in a storm or pulling taut a bowstring.

And your control slips. Or you set something free. Either way, your hands come down on the surface of the orb, and it burns you alive.

...

The fading impression of this memory glimmers in your mind.

And nothing else. Where are you? What are you doing? Why do you wield this blade in your hand, or lay here with your bare throat offered to another's? You don't so much awake; you become aware of yourself, cold and aching and tired, and as you try to assess the situation and evaluate the motivations of the weary, filthy strangers that surround you, you wait for context to return, but it never does. You reach backwards for memory, for anything, encountering only the image of the glowing orb before you, and the way it had burned you with the things it knows when you touch it.

But there are more pressing matters to resolve.

After the initial confusion and chaos, all that is left to do is assess the place you are in, and decide what next to do. To escape, perhaps, or, some niggling part of you wonders, find the location of the glowing orb, which you know, deep down, is somewhere in this place.

The Temple of Dirthamen

Not that you know its name.

This place feels like an underground palace, sunken deep inside the earth, grand chambers that connect to one another with various passageways, tunnels, and staircases. Light sources come from your flaming torches or travel-sized lanterns hanging off your belt, or the occasional luminescence from green-glowing runic engravings on tiled walls, or the faint glow of a green miasma that lingers in hallways and chambers. There are walls set with elaborate mosaics, and great statues depicting twin figures, one of them cloaked in shadow and the other more detailed, and creatures such as ravens, always a pair, or the arching legs of a giant spider.

As intentionally built as it is, it is also half-wild. There are chambers that seemed carved directly into rock, and floors of rough natural stone. It is not, however, all intentional. You will find the frames of stone archways set directly into rough rock, or stairwells that lead nowhere but directly into cave wall, as if the earth had grown around it.

Despite this oddity, it is a beautiful and grand place, but clearly one steeped in ancient neglect, with flooded chambers, moss-riddled stairwells, crumbled stone, and the smell of rot and dust.

Traversing this place, however, is a challenge in and of itself, hostile to the strangers that crawl through its catacombs. Not only will you find whole pathways blocked with crumbled stone, or rooms that require you to swim through them to get to the other side, or a strangely angled corridor that forces you to climb up its craggy surface, the building itself is intentionally guarded against intruders in a myriad of passive ways. Traps trigger when a previously unnoticed puzzle is left ignored or incomplete, or doors refuse to open without the presence of a key in spite of there being no discernible lock. Some of these you may be able to solve, some will force you to double back.

You are also not alone. Out the corner of your eye, the presence of spirits dart in and out of the catacombs, and occasionally, you hear the ominous chittering sound of many-legged beasts that put you to mind of all those giant spider statues.

Some places you may encounter in your blind journey forwards:

THE QUEEN'S LAIR: You don't know how it happened, but the ground gives beneath you and whoever you are with, sliding without dignity down the abruptly steep angle of not-quite-smooth-enough rock. You land with a violent tumble upon surprisingly soft, spongy ground—fungus, moss, mud, deep puddles. As you look around, you see the large stone chamber you are in is lit with a sort of ambient bioluminescence of green miasma, showing up the sight of thick patches of cobweb strung between pillars, statues, hanging from loops from the ceiling. You see bundles blanketed in web, tellingly humanoid in size and general shape and, thankfully, perfectly still. The smell of dust and old decay in the air makes you hopeful that perhaps this place is more tomb than nest, until you see the way the giant cobwebs around you begin to sway. Looking up, through the miasma, the shadowy shapes of dog-sized spiders begin to pluck their way down. And you think you see, far above, the unmoving shape of a truly colossal spider resting high above. At least, you hope it's unmoving. You have two choices: take your chance in trying to scramble back up the steep incline you fell down, despite slippery rock, or brave the chamber and try to make your way in deeper in search of the gated archway on the other side that you will only know is there when you find it. Or the secret third choice of being eaten by spiders.

THE RED REVELRY: You and your companions, such as they are, find yourselves at the entryway of a great chamber. The walls glow with a faint blue-green light, only barely illuminating the wide open space. The open tiled ground is littered in debris, some of it crumbled rock, and some of it, ancient shattered skeleton, scraps of cloth, the evidence of many corpses that have long since decomposed to nothing but dry bone, dull jewelry, and the rotted remains of their clothing. Unpleasant, but unless you wish to yet again double back, the only way forward is through, and you do see another archway towards the back. However, the moment you step into the room, your mind fogs over. The room fills with golden light, laughter, music, and a swirling crowd of elven folk. You are in the midst of a revelry, and your heart feels light and joyous. One offers you a goblet of wine, another bids you to dance with them, another offers to share from a platter of fruit. The room is also surrounded by tall men and women of more serious demeanor, dressed in rich ornamental armor, dark cloaks, armed with curved blades, and you barely notice the sound of metal on leather as they all at once draw them. You do notice, however, as the screams begin, as blood begins to spatter, as the ring of guards begin to systematically cut down each reveler in arms reach. Now would be a good time to remember that none of this is real, but as you can't quite shake the immersive experience of a panicked grip to your arm or the visceral sensation of wet arterial spray spattering against your armor, it might be best to run for the next door before you find out otherwise.

Optional dice roll: A d20 roll of 16 or higher has you break the illusion, safely restoring the chamber around you to the dark dusty tomb full of unmoving skeletons. A result between 10 and 15 means you are still immersed in the illusion but you have your wits, and, with focus, are able to move through the figures as though they aren't there, but may still struggle. A result between 5 and 9 means you are too immersed, and the crush of the crowd is preventing you from running, and if a guard with a blade strikes you, you will be injured. You may need help. A result between 1 and 4: oh my god all of this is real and you're going to die unless someone drags you out of here. Otherwise, choose your own result, no dice no masters.

THE PATH OF THE SIGHTLESS: The broad hallway you approach is tiled with jade, with an atmospheric light coming down from the tall arched ceiling. Up ahead, the road is strange. The tiles are grey stone and then foot-square tiles of dull gold or similar metal. Upon stepping into the corridor, you will find that your vision is gone, cloaking you in darkness. To anyone else, standing outside of the corridor, they can see within it and you perfectly fine. What's more, any step you take that is not on one of the shining tiles, comes with a consequence: a psychic kind of torment that feels like a swarm of ravens invading your mind. They tear and claw, a physical sort of headache-like pain that becomes quickly overwhelming and paralysing, leaving you cold and shaking. What's more, this assault has things to say. Although you do not remember anything of yourself, these ravens seem to know. However, if you make it back onto a shining tile, or are close enough to one of the ends of the corridor to leave it, the torment will stop.

The idea here is that those with you will need to verbally guide your way through the corridor. If you are subjected to punishment for mis-stepping, the 'ravens' that flood your mind will pluck and claw at all the insecurities and fears you would have had if you remembered them. This is one way to get information about yourself, but as delivered through the bitchiest and harshest of critics. Your character will not be able to withstand it for long but will have difficulty hearing or moving, so feel free to assume they need extra assistance or manage to help themselves.

In general, feel free to find the kind of obstacles you might anticipate, such as ancient elven magic hopscotch, doors that only open if you pierce your hand on the knife-like protrusion where a handle should be, rooms full of wisps that taunt and mislead, platforms that require Big Jumps to get across or else you'll find yourself wet or on fire, Veilfire puzzle with tiles that ripple and shift, and so on.

There are also places of respite, ancient prayer rooms or barracks-like quarters, where you may discover the rations you have on you and get to know people who do not know themselves.

Strangers in the Mirror

Here is what you must bear in mind.

MEMORIES OF THE LIVING: Although you have no recollection of yourselves, recollection is not forever withheld. At any time, your mind may jerk towards an impression of something, clear as day. You may whole heartedly believe that you are recalling something of your own past, or it may be so incorrect that you are certain that this memory doesn't belong to you. These flashes come in moments of quiet, in looking upon the face of an ancient statue, or catching your reflection in a shining surface of water or metal or polished tile, or seeing the light in another's eyes.

If you happen to meet the person for whom these memories belong, you will know like a hook in your heart that this memory belongs to them. There is no way for you to give it the way you got it, for only the gods can parcel out memory and knowledge without the tools of language and writing, and so what you choose to do is yours to decide.

MEMORIES OF THE DEAD: There will be moments, likewise, when the memory of those long gone from this place invades your mind. However, they are not for you to know. At any point, you will find that you lose time, that a great stretch of blankness takes hold of your mind, and you come back to your own forgetful self in some other place, perhaps with entirely new company, performing some task you did not mean to begin: sweeping the floor, or kneeling before an altar, or sitting at a table prepared to eat a meal that is not there, or even once again about to slit the throat of a willing supplicant.

Use this mechanic to free up your character to pursue threads with others rather than only your home team. If you can also play out encountering someone in this fugue state or vice versa, in which they will be largely unresponsive, but seem to know their way around, completing their tasks, until they snap out of it.

And some general advice on your current affliction:

This is a fictional form of amnesia, so don't overthink it. Broadly, your character should instinctively know standard facts like what colour the sky is, even if they can't see any sky currently, or they may have an instinct towards certain skills they have practiced every day since childhood, like the yo-yo. However, knowledge of who they are, what their name is, where they've come from is completely lost on them.

More specific world facts like what the Chantry is, what a mage is, what a Ferelden is, you can be fast and loose with. If your character is deeply intimate with something like the Circle, they may roughly know of it in vague terms. Alternatively, if it's more fun if your mage doesn't even know that magic exists, then go with it.

Rifters from profoundly different worlds, like modern earth, can absolutely have a sense that they are in some kind of weird ancient world surrounded by old timey people. This is left to your discretion.

As far as what your character is like without their memories, again, this is up to you. They can be cluelessly the same, or exhibit hidden personality traits they ordinarily keep suppressed (or suppress ordinarily prominant instincts), or simply be fundamentally different without the burdens or highlights of their own lives to inform them. Are they friendlier? More vicious? Braver than usual? Less selfless, more? Whatever you like!

A Gift of Revelation

And then it ends.

Seemingly without ceremony, if you are far away from the thing that ends it. You feel a lurch and then it all comes flooding back: your name, your life, the mission, the people around you, the forward camp merely a few hours of travel outside the bounds of the temple you are in. You may be close enough to where you'd already started scouting before it all went foggy to make your way out easily, or you may be so immersed in the depths of the temple that your mission of trying to escape hasn't really changed, despite this context.

And yes, your sending crystal is still not working. Figures.

You still harbour the memories that you were given unbidden, even if they've lost their bright shine in the void, and you will still feel that sense of knowledge for whom they belong when you meet them next, if you are unable to work it out on your own.

Once out, the warmth of the Arlathan Forest greets you, and your crystal begins to flicker back to life once more. Truly, they don't pay you enough for this.

Comments

[notathreat]

There is a rawness to this world, a chaos of beginnings. For all the peacefulness of awakening, it doesn't stay that way.

There's no time to think. She has a knife to his neck, the man on his knees in front of her, and he moves to defend himself. The reflexes that kick in mark this as far from the first time this has happened. She relaxes her grip to flip the knife in her hand, a spin that slices a hot furrow on his forearm.

They stagger, the two of them, through the water. Teeth bared, she fights him. All sharp elbows and bony knees and quick fists. Like he's tried to scruff a cornered feral cat.

If she gets the opportunity, she'll spit in his face.

[luaithre]

The knife scrapes thick leather stretched over metal buckled to that arm, but knicks exposed hand on the downslide harsh enough to evoke a grunt from him. Water churns around his knees as he pushes back up to his feet, and flinches his chin down at the strike of spittle against his face as she twists and hisses.

Another violent splash of water as he muscles down, tries to drive her backwards. There is wall nearby, and the mounted flaming torch. They can see each other in fits and starts; him, a severe twist at his mouth that bares teeth back at her, the tug of scarring.

And her, smaller, defense and attack in the same hasty scrabble. Confusion pulls taut at his expression.

"Stop," he growls, without stopping, intent to twist or knock the blade from her hand.

[notathreat]

Spray dances up from their feet as the girl scrambles backwards, near-graceless and moving on reflex and desperation. He's got a good grip on her, and has the advantage of weight. She doesn't want walled or trapped in any way, and when the man tries to twist the blade from her hands she clamps her fingers down on it all the harder and tries very hard to knee him someplace tender.

While he's confused, she is scared.

"You stop!" she snarls at him, as if he's the one who attacked her. "Let go of me, you chickenshit-"

[luaithre]

It immediately feels wrong, this fight, having gone into it adamant he would be defending himself from someone who wished to slit his throat; now he finds himself throttling the skinny wrist of someone with fear flashing beneath fury in her eyes, snarling at him to let her go, and it smarts in an instinctive way that he almost lets go. He doesn't immediately, because she does have a knife,

and a knee, rising sharp. It doesn't aim completely true, but true enough.

Fuck it.

His other hand comes around like he really is trying to scruff her, finding hair and collar as he hauls in closer with a sudden surge of intent while keeping that knife twisted away. Here, her back against his chest, arm grappling around up under her chin (and the smell of smoke, suddenly, but that must be merely the run-off from the nearby torch, hissing and crackling) in a lock—

"I have her," is a harsh bark into the room, loud, and he does, caged close with the knife angled in such a way it is weaker in her fingers than it is in his, threatening to come for her throat.

Memory please!!

[notathreat]

Here, whatever instinct is keeping Ellie fighting splinters into rage and panic when the man grabs her hair, grabbles her close and presses her back to his chest. She screams, fear and rage both as the man yanks her head back to bare her neck. The knife nicks at her throat when she struggles and she's forced to go still. She sags against him, one hand still on the knife and the other wrapping around his forearm, grip weakened because hold shit her fingers- her fingers are missing-

The scream dies off into too-fast breathing and a terrified hammering of her pulse, her short fingernails scraping at the man's wrist, digging in for what little purchase they can get.

[propulsion]

The shout by her ear fades, and as she sags into the grapple holding her, the touch of a rough-edged blade at her throat, her gaze swims around. The motion of the water and the flicker of flame means all reflections in the inky black around their knees are warped and fragmented, but she sees the shape of herself, a half-slice of her face lit in orange, in flames, and then,

that the house is on fire is not surprising or especially urgent, at this point of your recollection, except that it adds to everything a shorter time limit and a constrained number of exits. At the moment, the way out is behind you. Ahead are flames, and two of the kitchen girls somewhere beyond them, crying.

The agreement to help them has been largely tacit. So is the plan: a marble pedestal, home to some priceless statue, to heave over and make a bridge through most of the fire consuming the rugs and falling beams.

Yseult, a mask pushed back up into darkened hair, sets her back against the pillar, ready to push. "It's surprising," she says, a note of dry skepticism in her tone, "that a man willing to risk his life for the dozen servants in this house cares so little about the many that will suffer if your client succeeds."

"No one is paying me," ends on a grunt, as you shove back against the pillar in time with her, then pause to allow for the crash– "No one is paying me to let them die."

Her unimpressed look only has a second to skewer before she focuses on the more immediate problem and runs across the pillar ahead of you, nimble as a cat on a fence. It takes a leap to pass over fire that it's not long enough for the pillar to bridge. And for a moment–for the first time all night–there is enough flame-filled space between you and Yseult that kicking aside this tenuous partnership and making a break for it might work.

Another moment might not come. It's a lot of money. The client will kill you. Inés will kill you. If you make a choice now, you could have made a choice every time before.

You'll have to make a choice every time after.

Across the creeping flames, Yseult is watching you hesitate. The math of lives lost versus gained works out in favor of giving chase, if you run. She’s right. And she has very blue eyes.

You dart across the pillar, less prettily. Leap. As soon as your feet hit the ground you're both walking. You shed an outer layer of ridiculous Orlesian fashion and toss it into the fire. It won't stop the paint melting off your face, but it makes it easier to remove the thin leather journal (such a small thing, to cause all this fuss) tucked into your vest. You hold it out to her without looking, focus ahead on the door trapping the girls.

"If anyone asks, you beat the shit out of me," you say.

It feels like recollection, it feels like she lived it, the slightly ungainly but good enough leap after a blue-eyed woman she has never met, but did meet, must have met,

for all the same reasons it doesn't feel right either. But Ellie will come back to the present in a matter of seconds, the hold on her no less firm.

[ipseite]

Marcus's shout draws Petrana's attention away from Vanya — sparing him, perhaps, the obligation to immediately answer her question — and, feeling strongly that she trusts absolutely nothing presently happening in front of her, she snaps at once:

“Well, let her go—!”

[pathlit]

Ellie's scream jars him out of his memory-stupor. Attention snapping in their direction, he gapes in dismay at the scene and hastily holds the ceremonial knife out by the blade for Viktor to take because: 1) a visible knife is safer than one fallen into the water, and 2) what can this scrawny person do to him, anyway?

But if Viktor doesn't grab the hilt within a few seconds, then he'll drop it anyway to scramble toward the grappling pair, not yet registering the heavy thud of approaching footsteps in the face of immediate chaos.

"Wait, wait, wait," he cries, not a whit commanding like Petrana but alarmed just the same. He practically throws himself at Marcus, trying to tear his arm away from Ellie's neck. "Stop, please!"

[luaithre]

The blonde woman snaps at him, disorienting. Were they not on the same side? His expression in the half-light shows sharp confusion as clear as anything, teeth bared and brow tense, and,

when one of the original knife wielders comes at him, it is perhaps the only thing that doesn't have him respond by dragging the dagger across Ellie's bare throat.

It is, after all, what he was threatening to do.

But a sense of disorder stops him, that same sense of miscalculation, but he can't not act. The man goes to grab his arm and so Marcus hauls backwards through the water (still keeping Ellie gripped around the throat), and slashing the dagger out towards him, more to drive him backwards than to do harm, but not minding if that blade edge catches face or hands in the process.

"Get back," has the snapped quality of a wolf snarl, fangs and spittle, fear and anger.

[wearyallalone]

Before Vanya can spend too much time getting alarmed when he realizes the answer to the woman's question is basically nothing, they're both drawn into the wider events of the room. It feels like they're spinning out of control rapidly, and he's not sure where to grab on.

Still, he thinks it's necessary to try. "Everyone just ... step back a minute," he says, his voice more level than his emotions would suggest it should be. "Step back." He doesn't know if it will work, but better that than continuing to toward the chaos they're approaching.

[grindset]

The sound of the knife falling beside him is completely lost amid swashing and shouting as the group's collective tension rises to boiling. Only once the towering man has moved away does he snatch that, too, and tuck it alongside the once empty loop, now home to the rod it was made to carry, the runic array glowing at his hip.

Step back, someone says, as he puts some distance between himself and the fray. By comparison, being well below eyeline and moving away from the excitement, his splashing, hobbling scuttle is easy to overlook.

Those blunt footfalls are growing louder, coming down the corridor at a pounding jog.

[atonally]

Redvers is already a safe distance from the scuttle. A safe distance from his own would-be assailant. But he still steps back, agreeably, from the safe spot where he was already standing, into a safer one about six inches further away.

"She was trying to kill him," he says, conversationally, in an accent that matches the angry knife man's.

He's holding an unsheathed sword. He has kept tabs on who was to be throat slitter and who was to be throat slittee, if it comes to taking sides.

[ipseite]

Under the circumstances — of knowing absolutely nothing about the circumstances in which they are in — Petrana's instinct is to trust none of them, and to instantly dislike the sight of a large man gripping a young woman by the throat. Her side is invitation-only and none of these people warrant that just yet—

and she's already had rousing success with the elbow maneuver, so the only person in the room she was definitely being threatened by is already on notice.

It does seem to suggest something, that two of the men supposedly with her share an accent, although it doesn't match hers. Maybe it doesn't mean anything. What in the name of names is going on here.

She counts backwards in her head from ten. It is the first thing that's felt dimly familiar so far.

“Does anyone want to hurt anyone else?” she demands. “Has anyone a good argument for it? Right this instant.”

[notathreat]

The memory happens in just seconds, leaving her disoriented, fading in and out, breathless with panic. It's loosened her grip enough for the man holding her to pull the blade out of her fingers and point it at the others trying to interfere, to save her.

He's scared, she's scared, they're all fucking scared, and something is coming.

Ellie doesn't know who she is, or why she had a knife to this man's throat, but the ringing of the choice is all through her head, pounding like the beat of a remembered song. What means that when her hand falls to her side and lands upon the handle of a dwarven-make dagger, that it does not bury itself in the side of the man's neck.

Instead when she draws it free, she punches it into the side of the man's thigh, biting deep before she wrenches free of his grasp.

Staggering back, she goes for Jayce to shove him back, manhandling the both of them out of Marcus' reach. It's not pretty or nice -- when she turns to face Marcus, her elbow is in Jayce's chest, shoving him further back, protective in a way she can't explain.

Maybe it's because he was willing to get hurt to help her. Maybe that kind of stupid, self-sacrificing need to do the right thing hits a button in her somewhere. Maybe she just wants the most obvious two targets out of immediate reach of the rusted blade.

It's not something she has the space to think about.

"If I wanted him dead, he'd be dead," Ellie growls, her voice low and breathless from being choked. She doesn't know why that's true, but it feels true, in her jumbled-up mind. It's an indirect -- very indirect -- answer to Petrana's question.

The memory wasn't hers, but it still means something.

[pathlit]

Marcus’ feral warning succeeds in halting his approach, but he is unwilling to give up completely. Instead, he holds out his hands near his sides, showing no weapon, and opens his mouth to respond when the sensible command to Step back is made.

He glances in the direction of its voice, attention then flickering between each new one as they arise and the hostage situation in front of him. Then, a flurry of motion and a sudden impact against his torso, his surprise aiding in Ellie’s effort to Back The Fuck Up.

For a split second, his adrenaline spikes. Is she attacking him—? No, she’s— she’s just trying to get away, he’s in her way— no, she’s definitely pushing him back with her—

He adjusts his weight, but doesn’t touch her, relieved that she’s out of immediate danger and wary that one wrong move could turn her distress onto him. In the long shadows and flickering lights, he suspects the blade in her hand may have made its acquaintance with Marcus, but rushing forward for the second time without some sort of tenuous truce will surely result in meeting a blade himself, so he stays put.

“No one wants anyone dead,” he says firmly, loudly, meant for everyone in the flooded room. He doesn’t actually know if the statement is true or not, merely assumes because the opposite is unpalatable. Gesturing in Viktor’s (presumed) direction, he says, “I came to with a knife at his throat and no idea why.”

[luaithre]

A blade, punching through leather and into the meat of high thigh, gets a grunt.

The stab is more effective than that sound implies, probably, because he lets her go. Folds, a hand clutching down at the wound, a lurch in backing up and away that froths water around a leg that stumbles and the other that shakes. A strangled kind of groan and then panting breath, sinking further backwards until his back finds brick wall.

Something echoing down the space out beyond the gate, a pounding of metal on stone and rattling his nerves and getting closer, more audible to him than voices flying around about who does not wish to kill anyone else. Knives to throats.

He keeps an instinctive clutch on the dagger he'd won, but curled in defensively. Room to realise how little he knows, which doesn't help.

[wearyallalone]

He certainly didn't mean stab someone and then back up, but he's uncertain how to respond. Part of him wants to help the injured man, but he can hardly blame those who had knives to their throats for acting in self-defense.

Instead of moving closer to anyone, and still displaying his own empty hands, he says, "The lady makes a good point," indicating Petrana with a tilt of his head. "Does someone have a reason older than a minute or two?"

[laruetheday]

Clarisse has turned to slosh through the water and watch the show, gone through the whiplash disorientation of getting someone else's memory, and is about to ask a question (probably "what the fuck is wrong with you guys?") when her attention turns itself to the sound of heavy footsteps coming from the corridor outside.

These people are as clueless as she is, that much is obvious. Some instinct deeper than memory latches onto the sound as being more important than the immediate scuffle happening in their small(ish) group (but she does see the stabbing happen out of the corner of her eye, and lets out a very judgmental "dude").

"Who cares who has a good point and who doesn't," she says, waving the hand holding the knife very aggressively in the direction the sound of footsteps is coming from. "You people are hearing this, right?"

[notathreat]

The loud, clanging jog is only getting closer, and Ellie, who's been casting glances around the room, wondering exactly that, levels her slightly blood-stained knife at Clarisse -- only for something else to turn over in her mind.

Clarisse is perhaps fourteen and sitting in a small room, a ship's captain's quarters, along with three other kids around her age -- a boy, a girl, and a second larger boy who only has one eye in the center of his forehead (a cyclops). The kids are all seated with white china plates of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and glasses filled with Dr. Pepper, but the mood in the room is tense and antagonistic. Clarisse is clearly in charge, having positioned herself at the head of the table.

Perhaps most interesting, though, are the skeletal crew and ship's captain also in the room. They stand around Clarisse and slightly behind her, awaiting orders. Every few seconds, their faces seem to shift, showing transparent skin that flickers over their skulls before fading away. They wear musty, rotted gray military uniforms.

"You think your daddy is the only one with sea power?" Clarisse says with a sneer to the first boy. "The spirits on the losing side of every war owe a tribute to Ares. That's their curse for being defeated. I prayed to my father for a naval transport and here it is. These guys will do anything I tell them to. Won't you, Captain?"

Standing behind her, stiff and angry, green eyes glowing, the Captain responds, "If it means an end to this infernal war, ma'am, peace at last, we'll do anything. Destroy anyone."

Clarisse grins. "Destroy anyone. I like that."

It takes a second to come back to herself, to blink back to reality... and to realize that something that doesn't fucking belong to her got shoved into her mind.

Something that belonged to this girl in front of her.

Ellie sucks in a rattled breath. As fucked up as this is, they don't have time.

"She's right," is what she goes with. "Something's coming. We need to go." She casts a glance at Marcus. Visibly hesitates. This guy can't fucking run.

"You gonna grab me again?"

(Kind of an unfair question, but they don't have much time.)

[grindset]

This thin man is no longer kneeling where that gesture thought he was. Now on his feet, he slouches against the dank wall, one pale hand in the other, thumb rubbing into palm. Amid fraught chatter and thick, blunt clangor of iron on stone, he says,

"Stand back from the gate."

Beyond the chained bars, not so far down the corridor, a huge silhouette bearing an arrangement of glowing shapes emerges, slowing for the junction. First the head turns, shows them the blue gleam of its eyes, then a bright patch on the chest as torso and legs follow in a cascade of artificial movement. As it moves to gather speed, this thin slouching man over here, he grasps the handle slung on his belt, likewise lined in luminous marks.

"Slower," doesn't address these people, but he casts a sharp gaze among them as he says it. "They're friendly."

Right?

[atonally]

The sound Redvers makes when Marcus is stabbed is louder than the one Marcus himself makes, a hey of angry alarm that cuts off midway when it doesn't stop the blade from going in. When the eruption of further violence and chaos and scrambling he expects in the immediate aftermath doesn't come, though, he sheaths his sword. Frees his hands up to hold aloft, empty and nonthreatening, to go over and have a closer look at the damage.

The footsteps are a problem. He's still not inclined to cooperate with the knife-wielders. He's peering down at the wound—or at the man's hands, more like, covering it—and trying to remember anything about first aid when the glowing stone beast becomes visible. Redvers twists his head around to look, first at the golem and then at the fellow giving it instructions.

"Right," he says, mostly to himself. "Sure, alright."

Why not this too.

[luaithre]

Someone nears, and his shoulders tense, a glance over that is full of bared-teeth distrust until he recognises one of the few things he knows, which is that Redvers was kneeling in the water just like him, and his hands are empty. That starting bristle relaxes back, and he looks down, following the other man's look of assessment. For both of their benefits, Marcus peels his hand away from the wound, though it is difficult to see in the layers it had torn through.

Bright fresh red coats his hand, however, shiny as a crimson mirror.

A memory with two layers: you are accosted by a young woman wearing Circle mage robes, who approaches them directly and demands information on someone whose name is no doubt being said, but which cannot be recalled at the moment.

It leads to a second memory, understood to be a few hours previous, in a Circle's Harrowing chamber: another young mage, entranced and undergoing their Harrowing, begins to convulse as their body mutates before your eyes. An Abomination rises from their form, turning on the gathered watching Templars before they descend upon it. You and your brothers in arms act as you've been trained, Silencing and taking your swords to it with ruthless efficiency; this is not the first time you've had to do this, and it won't be the last.

The memory returns briefly to the first vignette, the sight of the woman's face as she awaits the truth, but nothing is said to indicate whether or not she learns of it.

The breath that leaves him is harsher than the last, putting pressure back down over the stab wound at the feeling of it throbbing. He shakes his head as if to clear it of the images clinging to the corners of his skull, tattered without context.

At this stage, the dagger he was holding is pinned negligently to the wall he is leaning near, trapped under the flat of his hand. He does look, then, to the only way out, the gate with the chain, and also the source of the thing everyone wishes to run from.

The look he returns to Ellie is withering, and articulate: don't fucking touch him. He'll figure it out.

[pathlit]

Hm. Maybe he should've held onto that knife.

With a gentle tug of Ellie's sleeve, he wordlessly gestures for them to back up closer to the wall. Then, a questioning look in Viktor's direction, a curious frown emerging from the blue glow shared between the approaching heavy thing and the item he clutches. A means of control?

The area to target if he means ill.

Lifting his gaze to assess Viktor's expression, the glint of fire off golden eyes glows hotter, warmer as another memory enters his skull unbidden.

The sound of rain patters against the window panes, drums on the roof. The little kitchen is warm, stove glowing hot in the corner, fed with split logs stacked neatly against the wall.

Wysteria Poppell is brewing chicory tea. It's sharp scent fills the air as you begin spreading out your mending across the burn-scarred table in front of you. She and Tony have been bickering, though the nuance of the argument is faded and indistinct.

It is not a true argument. It is an exchange. You know this. You know how the trading of snippy rejoinders eventually coalesces into a course of action or an idea.

You are content to listen, while affection glows warm within your chest. Your awareness of that feeling, how careful you are of it, is not unlike how you might handle a bruise, a fracture. Something that might pain you if not handled gently.

Before Tony can seat himself, Wysteria lifts her feet up onto the third chair, crosses them at the ankles. The flurry of movement draws your eyes up from the threading of a needle, in time to catch the exchange of Looks between them. You return your gaze down to your work. The table creaks as Tony settles himself atop it, heedless of Wysteria's tut of reaction.

The flow of their conversation, combative and easy, continues onwards unimpeded. You exist alongside it, within it, a stone submerged in a stream until you are moved to contribute.

Disoriented, he stumbles into the damp wall, chest aching with a yearning both neglected and utterly foreign.

[ipseite]

The arrival of the something that was coming is, in its obedience to instruction, somewhat anticlimactic as well as decreasing the immediate urgency of getting the stabbed man on his feet, besides to get his thigh further away from murky water. Emerging factions still seem inherently suspect to her mind, but two of the men who were kneeling with her seem inclined to band together and of the options in front of her, well,

she is rather instinctively minded to favour broad shoulders and brisk manners, and whatever protective impulse seeing a young woman in his grip had inspired has been thoroughly proven unnecessary. The stabbing or the pragmatic pivot, well, either she might think sensible; both together suggest an unpredictability she's inclined not to get nearer while the girl still has a knife.

The man bleeding seems eminently more manageable. And, well, his companion (obviously, they are companions) has a sword.

(Hard to say which of them is the handsomer, if she were sparing it particular thought rather than merely allowing the background notion of it to colour her approach, but one of them does have a sword.)

“A hasty assessment,” she mutters, of they're friendly, but she uses the time bought in that to kneel by Marcus and Redvers, frowning. “Everything we have is wet,” an aggrieved complaint, “we need a better look at the wound before you try to move anywhere.” She is not sure of anything particularly medicinal; she is certain, though she couldn't say why, that she knows there are particular places upon a thigh that someone might bleed out from at great speed, and urging him to walk before they know if it won't kill him to do seems ill-advised.

[grindset]

Hasty, hopeful, a strong recommendation... one or more of those.

There's a man bleeding, others tending to him. Do they know each other? Someone stumbles into the wall. He's got his knife in his belt.

Who is anyone? What is he but small, easy to overlook, though probably less so in a sealed chamber. Most obvious in the way he leans, even through his guarded glaring, is that he's just as interested as anyone else might be in seeing what it is that he's summoned—precisely what shape belongs to the notion of safety that compelled him. Into the gate's torchlight it emerges, inscriptions, fabricated forms: not a creature. His scowl falters. A look down to the implement in his hand shifts focus, pulled to the light moving in oily patterns on the water around his feet—

There’s a way of telling which louts are going to be trouble. There’s a way they linger amongst the beggars, a way of leaning, that shows they’re looking for some cruelty. You’ve learned to recognize it by now. You are not, of course, a beggar: you are a busker; there’s quite a difference in status and treatment. Louts largely leave you be, or even throw in a few coins and request a tune, at times. But buskers and beggars rub shoulders, and that means you’ve seen the sorts of things that can happen.

Three of them are leaning, now, over Colm, a one-legged veteran of the Orlesian occupation. You can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but their laughter carries, cruel and guttural. You’ve seen this before, seen what follows - humiliation, sometimes violence. A beggar’s bowl tipped or smashed, the fellow himself pushed into the mud.

You can’t afford to be heroic. All you have is your violin. A violin is something easily smashed. But on this day, you aren’t thinking in terms of what you can or cannot afford. You’re thinking that you’ve seen these three before, and you’re thinking about how Colm was kind to you and shared some bread last week.

And so as they lean over Colm, you act: you draw your violin bow and send it screeching discordantly over the strings. The three louts shudder. You do it again, higher still, and the noise is so horrible that they turn to you instead. And they approach.

You say something to them. It’s witty, of course. Your tongue is always damnably witty when you’re facing down a heavy-handed man who despises wit. You can’t help yourself. You can’t fully remember what it was that you said, though - and nor do you remember the beating - but you remember Colm helping to peel you up off the ground. And you remember your terror before you find that they’d left your violin alone and intact - and then you remember feeling achingly, heartbreakingly grateful to the louts for their mercy.

“Can you believe,” you say to Colm through blood, “that I used to be a lord?”

He smiles pityingly at you, and helps you rearrange your threadbare and bloody shirt so it looks just a bit more respectable.

—and there he drifts a moment, eyes gone soft.