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player plot | when my time comes around, pt 1
WHO: Abby Anderson†, Byerly Rutyer†, Clarisse La Rue†, Cosima Neihaus†, Darras Rivain†, Ellis†, Evelyn Farrier†, Florent Vascarelle, Gwenaëlle Baudin†, Jayce Talis†, John Silver†, Josias di Jaconissa†, Jude Adjei†, Julius, Marcus Rowntree†, O. Barrow†, Peter Parker, Tiffany Hart, Valentine de Foncé†, Xiomara Novoa†, Yseult
WHAT: A bad end.
WHEN: Solace 21
WHERE: Granitefell, Free Marches
NOTES: This is the first log for this plot. Use this for fight scenes, death scenes, poignant (or not) last conversations before anyone knows they're going to die, etc. Characters who are not dying or on the limited list of survivors can't participate in person or be on-site during this log, but they can appear via sending crystal as needed/desired. (Or you can inbox that stuff, but please link it somewhere so I can find and read it.)
WHAT: A bad end.
WHEN: Solace 21
WHERE: Granitefell, Free Marches
NOTES: This is the first log for this plot. Use this for fight scenes, death scenes, poignant (or not) last conversations before anyone knows they're going to die, etc. Characters who are not dying or on the limited list of survivors can't participate in person or be on-site during this log, but they can appear via sending crystal as needed/desired. (Or you can inbox that stuff, but please link it somewhere so I can find and read it.)
I. BEFORE
The attack that brought them here happened a few days ago, leaving the village of Granitefell a smear of ashes on the plains between Starkhaven and Ostwick and its surviving population scrambling for shelter, food, and medical supplies. That's what Riftwatch is doing here, mostly. Helping. There's also a report that the dracolisk-mounted soldiers who burned their way through the village were looking for an elf in particular, whom they searched out by name and plucked out of the flames to carry off into the dark, and looking into that—questioning the elf's family and acquaintances, examining the belongings that survived the fire, searching the surrounding cave- and ruin-dotted landscape she used to hunt to see if she might have stumbled across anything in the process—is helping, too, in a bigger-picture sense.
The first day they spend there is hot and quiet. Even the injured villagers succumbing belatedly to their injuries do so without much noise and fuss, and the survivors not strong-backed enough to work alongside Riftwatch hide in the shade and talk quietly about what they could possibly do now that everything is gone.
The night is a little noisier. First in a normal way: the heat lifts, people are more willing to move about, the children and teenagers who spent most of the day in heat-induced dozes are suddenly full of energy. So while all or most of Riftwatch, having forgone naps themselves, may be asleep in the early hours of the morning, someone is awake to shout in alarm when something dark briefly blocks out one of the moons. Which is all the warning anyone gets.
II. DURING
The sky rains fire, and once the camp is burning, the flames light the dragon from below, glinting off the red lyrium crusted along its joints and ridges.
Not long after, attacks come from the ground as well: Tevinter and Ander soldiers, some mages, some mounted on dracolisks that breathe fire or electricity, others effective enough with their swords and morningstars, coming at the camp from multiple directions to sweep anyone who tries to flee back toward the center. They're not surprised to find Riftwatch there; perhaps that's why they came back in the first place.
But they're not distinguishing between soldier and civilian in the carnage, indiscriminately crushing bones with magic or running bodies through with swords, taking the time to pause and kill anyone who cowers and screams rather than focusing only on those who put up a fight. They're led by Itaeus Ferra, a figure who may be familiar to some, riding a dracolisk that seals the fate of many of the injured by spewing poison over their burns and other open wounds.
Still, it's a closer thing than they expected. What begins as an obvious plan to wipe out everyone they find transforms, as time wears on, into an attempt to merely take out as many as they can before their own losses become too great and their remaining soldiers withdraw. When they do, the dragon lands to guard their retreat, with a tall figure—not Corypheus, but a cackling and corrupted man of similar stature—riding astride it, urging his dragon into giving the encampment one last torching while inviting whoever may be left alive to come out of the dark and try their luck against him. (Maybe someone takes him up on it, but if they do, it does not end well for them.) It is only after a long lull when no one stirs or answers his taunting that he announces they're boring him and departs.
III. AFTER
The survivors are much fewer this time. A handful of Riftwatchers; only a slightly larger number of villagers, mostly children whose protection was prioritized. The numbers will dwindle further over the next few hours, as the sun rises and people succumb to their injuries before even the fastest-flying help can arrive.
during. closed to gwenaëlle.
There is no clear way to go. No obvious place to hide. For a moment, Florent huddles in place. Dirt and soot cling, now, to the silken nightshirt he is wearing. His anchor shard flares in his palm as if in response to his own sense of brimming panic. He watches, without really reacting beyond mute shock, as a steady gout of flame scorches across the campsite, and he watches the fire engulf a pair of fleeing bodies, and light up some carts, and incinerate half-collapsed tents, and then with a gust of wind that buffets the smoke in new directions and lifts of the ash and dust from the ground, the winged creature above pulls itself back out of sight.
There is, also, the sound of galloping. Screams. Riders tearing through the campsite. Florent laces his hands over the top of his own head, curling up where he kneels to make himself small, and the slightly hysterical thought that soon someone will find him and put a sword through his back doesn't compel him to move. It seems less scary than the prospect of attempting to run.
A little like a nightmare, you hope it will be over soon.
no subject
A hand grips his elbow— Gwenaëlle's hand, Gwenaëlle dragging him up to his feet with the strength of combined training and adrenaline, her bow on her back and the gauntlet on her hand lighting up a shield around the pair of them that at least buys time. His terror of running is apparently, in this moment, irrelevant to her determination that he should regardless, and her hand on his arm keeps him close to her.
“Don't think, just move,” she says, not sure he'll hear her; not sure he's able to, not even entirely sure that she's said the words aloud rather than only in the chamber of her own mind. “I'll find cover—”
She smells of smoke and blood, but so does everything. It's impossible to distinguish.
no subject
Hears her. Enough to plaintively bleat, "Where?" but not otherwise being uncooperative. Flinches at the flare of Fade magic, but then— moves as she does, feeling adrenaline grip his heart and squeeze it as his vision swims.
no subject
Because the next thing that hits Florent is Gwenaëlle, again, her grip on him a riptide as an ugly thud behind them forces her forward, coughing blood, only to be dragged backwards a moment later by the sickening, wet crunch of a morningstar being wrenched from the wreckage its made of her back, ribs bursting broken into her lungs, drowning her in herself.
It is not an immediate death.
It is not painless.
Gwenaëlle's white-knuckled grip and inability to remain on her feet bring them down in a tangle of bloody limbs, her remaining eye huge next to the patch covering absence, struggling even to gasp. It's surprise on her face, improbably—
The words gurgle, “Don't move,” desperate, last-ditch. “Don't move until someone comes—”
Gwenaëlle's eye fills with tears.
She does not promise someone will come.
no subject
That is how it feels to Florent, who staggers, braces for pain, receives none. Collapses with her, watches out the harsh angle of his vision as the lizard-like talons race away towards some other distraction. Flinches at the sound of thundering gallop nearby, but it passes, fades.
His arm is pinned beneath her, but he doesn't struggle away. Places his other hand on her face. She is (a thump and a crack and a lurch, her gasp) upset.
"Okay," he says. Whispers. "Light breaths only. In little bits. With me."
no subject
What is not immediate does not take long, the blood loss weakening her determination to press for breath as she runs out of it, little breaths becoming choking, wet gasps,
she is still gazing at him, unfocused. Unmoving.
no subject
His expression is more imploring than anything else, even as his eyes fill with their own tears, as those tears spill unbidden. His hand leaves her face to clasp gently at her neck. Something intended to reassure in the press of his fingers, where he cannot feel even the fine flutter of her breath, much less her pulse.
"Gwenaëlle," he says. "Gigi."
The unfocused glass of her eye. No reassurances forthcoming.
A tremor in the ground, distant. Swallowing around a sound, Florent holds her closer, a huddled embrace where he can hide his face beneath her shoulder, and watch the world go by through the barest slitted opening of his eyes. Another thunder of galloping, near enough that he can feel the gust of the motion.
And on. After a while, he can tell that her wounds are no longer bleeding. He breathes shallowly. He will tell her later, or remind her, about how his very first role was Cowering Elf who had to stay dead on stage until the end of the second act, and that it was very funny how on the third night he had collapsed incorrectly and it was an extremely undignified position to maintain, and then—
It is later.
The smoke is clearing. Florent has pushed Gwenaëlle's corpse aside from him, and he sits there, staring at her, his hair plastered to his face where her blood had gotten and his expression expressing very little. After a while, he pushes her onto her back so that the ugly wounding is hidden. Fixes her braid, the tilt of her eyepatch.
Sits still once more. Waits for something else awful to happen, or better.