player plot | when my time comes around, pt. 3

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who's not dead!
WHAT: Various & sundry steps on the path toward time travel, including a dragon hunt and other fetch quests.
WHEN: August 9:49
WHERE: Miscellaneous
NOTES: This is part of this player plot. We have two (2) plot logs still coming up—one for time travel, one for reunions—but this is the last log the dead characters are banned from. Time travel will go up soon!

Following Tony Stark's announcement and its glimmer of slightly insane-sounding hope, there's work to be done. The magic/science, of course; anyone with the ability to help construct a dragon-blood-powered time machine may be enlisted into that effort.

For everyone else, there are fetch quests: everyone collect three Stormheart and five Volcanic Aurum. Swiftly negotiating for raw materials or for jewelry or weapons that can be melted down—or stealing them, because whatever, there will only be consequences if this doesn't work—requires venturing out of Kirkwall to track down miners, merchants, and collectors. And then there's the dragon blood.

In the meantime, keeping things afloat and planning contingencies remains necessary. For now, this remains only something that might work. If it doesn't, this is still the world and the war they're stuck with, so keeping it from getting worse in any avoidable way would be ideal.

Comments

[inkindled]

The slow stomp of the dragon's footsteps wakes tremors across the ground, even here, where they're tucked away--her bellow so low it shakes the air. Ellie's skin smells burnt, a smell Matthias knows well. He touches his fingertips to the raw flesh of her hand. At first the contact will be painful but then it will feel cool, a little brush of healing. Not enough to knit back the skin but enough to temper the pain.

"Back," he says. Dragons see better than they hear--humans are like insects to them--but instinct keeps him quiet all the same. "Back, this way--we can loop around and get some of the blood--"

When she plunges them into invisibility it feels like nothing. Or maybe it's only that they're running, clumsily, squeezed between stone, and Matthias has got to concentrate on that, on putting one foot before the other, on not knocking Marcus' staff about as they go. Once he nearly drops it--he's got to stop dropping staffs--and when he looks down at his hand he doesn't see it, and a little thrill passes through him--but he keeps going.

Out the other side and the dragon's roar comes from behind them now. The blood Ellie had spilled forms shiny blackish puddles on the floor.

gate crashes

[tender]

There is a split second, just a breath of a moment before Ellie's invisibility takes hold of them.

The timing is narrow, very precise in which to work.

Still, the sweep of Derrica's barrier envelops them both, chilly magic swathing their forms and cinching tight just as they vanish from view.

Go forth, and lure a dragon.

[notathreat]

Ellie winces slightly at the touch of Matthias' hand, but then the familiar cool feeling of healing magic soothes the burn, and Ellie exhales, shooting him a grateful look. Adrenaline can keep out the worst of the pain, but burns always fucking suck.

She nods as they make their way, and in a moment, the swath of Derrica's magic rolls over them, wraps around them. It goes with the sigils she'd painted on Ellie's skin before the battle, the wards to keep them all safe.

It's that little edge of protection they need right now, to keep them safe in their audacity.

Ellie and Matthias run hard, and her lungs burn. The puddles are blackish, a little bit rainbow like an oil spill, refracting in the dim light. She moves her hand to the back of his shoulder to give him another one to work with, the better to scoop up as many vials of the stuff as they can carry.

It helps that it's viscous, thick. The thing's so huge it'd have to be. Ellie can't sense magic but if anything had a fucking pulse it'd be this.

The sound of the thing prowling is far enough away for her to risk it.

She takes a breath, struggling to breathe slowly as the invisibility breaks, and reaches into her pack for the vials they were all equipped with. One. Almost two. There. She's got her ear trained on the Thaig, and they have only seconds before she rounds on them again- but she might be clever and switch directions.