[OPEN]

[bribon]

WHO: Cornelia + Desidério + YOU!
WHAT: Closing a rift in central Antiva goes awry.
WHEN: Early Fantasy!October
WHERE: Central Antiva, and then also the Gallows + Kirkwall + Wherever
NOTES: Rifts and rift-closing accessories; content warn in your subject lines as necessary.

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UNINVITED GUESTS - Closing the Rift (ota; single group thread only pls)

[amaizing]

It's been just a few short months since the last trouble with Rifts in The Weyrs, but once more agents of Riftwatch find themselves traipsing through picturesque farmlands after a rift in need of closing.

This particular rift has peeled open in the basin below a grove of olive trees. In the rosy dawn, the shrubby plants switch back and forth up the steep hillside above the soon to be battlegrounds to where the grove eventually terminates against a low stone wall. Elsewhere in the region, small gray birds had flit among the trees and shrubbery, calling cheerful morning songs to one another. But here there is no birdsong, and the early daylight is dominated by the crackle and pop of Fadelight from the rift at the hill's base.

Upon approach, the seam of the rift shudders. With a now-familiar clap of air, it cracks open.

The tear belches out darkness and countless demons that roar into the countryside. The sound would have been heard for miles. They swirl out at the bottom of the hillside creating a horrible viscous puddle of shades and slavering hunger. This hill is now the worst hill that has ever existed. Thank the maker it happened here and not in the middle of civilization. There is absolutely no one around to–

A Chantry Sister comes tumbling down the hillside with a yelp. In her wake, yelling significantly less as he's clobbered by the hill, a man tumbles end over end over her. Season-end leaves and bits of yellowing grass shred up after them until, with a great undignified crunch and clatter, the pair are spat directly down into the chaos of the open rift and the slew of demons swarming there.

[altusimperius]

Go to Antiva, they said. You'll spend the whole while doing the usual diplomatic clerical duties, they said, you won't be out trudging through a field dotted with assorted livestock excrement because you're one of the only people around who can help close yet another Rift, which is ostensibly one of your duties as a member of Riftwatch, but--

--but he doesn't want to. But Benedict is here anyway, in his fancy traveling cloak and boots, heaving a dread-filled sigh through his nose at the sight of the seam opening right here and now. His sulk is quickly tempered by the sight of people leaving the rift, however, and he picks up his pace while securing his grip on the staff which has until this moment served as a walking stick.
The anchor in his left hand thrums, and he curses it as he approaches.

[bribon]

Happily for Benedict—and anyone else tasked with closing the rift and purging the hillside of the demons that have come sloughing through it—, it seems for a brief moment that none of those aformentioned corrupted spririts have any interest in the members of Riftwatch.

Probably this is due to the fact that Chantry Sister and her murderous looking pursuer (he has a sword; it's drawn, though it has bounced free of his grip and tumbled away out of immediate reach) rolling around on the ground near the Rift make for more appealing targets. Presumably, the pair interlopers will find this favoritism less than enjoyable in roughly half a second if they haven't already.

Cue: a demon gathering its miasmic arcane energies, and lunging in the direction of the Sister and the Swordsman.

[amaizing]

The chantry sister looks at the sight before her and then to the intolerable man who's been chasing her who she hasn't had a good look at until now. She inhales and exhales trying to catch her breath. She's been running a long way and this scoundrel has the audacity to be handsome? How dare he. But, nevertheless he has a sword.

Before either of them can react, she takes him by the shoulders and pushes him towards the demon, crouching behind him.

"Do something!" She shouts. She hasn't noticed Benedict.

[altusimperius]

"You have to--" Benedict shouts in a strangled voice (what is even happening with these two, never mind, they'll figure it out later)-- "shit." He breaks into a run, lowering the staff like a battering ram to cast through it, surrounding the pair with a temporary barrier.
"OW," he yelps as the anchor spits again, and he raises it to catch the energy coming off the rift, teeth gritted, a low whine in the back of his throat from the continuing pain. Why did he go out of his way for one of these fucking things?

"FIGHT THEM," he yells at the other two, nodding frantically toward the fracas as a demon or three begins to take notice of his arrival.

Lia, After. OTA

[amaizing]

I.
Lia is staring at her left hand where the rift shard is embedded. She stretches her fingers out and then holds her hand out farther as one would a ring. It’s definitely not unattractive.
Speaking to whoever will listen, she speaks:
“They have told me that this”, she wiggles her fingers, “imprisons me here. How does that work exactly?”
Careful, she will have lots of questions.
II.
Later, Lia might be found in a courtyard staring at a stone wall her nose scrunched.
“Is everywhere here this ugly? Is it purposeful do you think? Or did someone just have a thorough lack of imagination?”
III. Wildcard

I.

[heirring]

Luckily for everyone involved, she has struck on the most willing victim in all of Riftwatch.

Wysteria had not been present at the rift that had struck the woman with the shard prior to its closure. She'd been delayed, her let horse having thrown a shoe, and only arrives to join the assembly only after a majority of the shenanigans have shenaniganed and camp has been pitched. They will have to leave this place in the morning—ride back to the rendezvous points where they're to meet the griffon riders who had been dispatched to scout the region for other rifts and suspicious characters—, but for now:

Sat on a log across the paltry campfire in the watery daylight, Wysteria stirs the contents of the pot between them with a long metal spoon. The soup has needed considerable thinning to deal with the two extra mouths they've acquired—so much so that even Wysteria, with her less than able culinary skills, can be trusted to monitor its progress. It's hard to burn what is largely water.

"Well, not here specifically. But it demands you stay in close contact with other anchor bearers, otherwise the shard will begin to assault the body in which it's buried. I've never heard of anyone dying from it, but that is the theory. And certainly I myself have been slightly inconvenienced by some pain after a few weeks from the Gallows. Happily, we will return there shortly enough so I doubt you're likely to to feel any of the ill effects any time soon."

[amaizing]

Lia gaze follows the spoon as it goes round and round, but she's taking it what Wysteria says.

"Who is an anchor bearer? Exactly how inconvenienced were you by the pain? Where do you feel the pain? How would you characterize the pain on a scale from say a pricked finger to a broken bone? Is that food for the griffons?"

She suddenly looks up and looks Wysteria in the eyes.

"What's your name? You know a lot of things."

[heirring]

This is the correct thing to say. Because, as a matter of fact, she does know a lot of things, and it's always quite nice when someone notices. It puts a bit of further metaphorical glitter in Wysteria's already perfectly cheerful demeanor.

She reverses the direction in which she's stirring the pot. A whirlpool briefly forms, and then is gone.

"How kind of you to say so! My name is Wysteria de Foncé. Madame de Foncé," she explains, as if this is a vital specification. "I've been with Riftwatch's Research division for many years now, and once had an anchor like your own. They belong to Riffers and various Thedas natives such as yourself who have been unlucky enough to come into close contact with a Rift.

"As for the degree of pain, I had found it tended to depend on the length of time I'd been off adventuring. What might begin as a mild inconvenience after a number of days alone can quickly become incapacitating if you don't return into the company of other anchors. Naturally I had never found this to be too great an imposition myself—Research has a great many Rifters among its number, and so escaping them all for any duration is laughably difficult—, but I have heard it said that prolonged absence can be quite fatal. Though that is all old rumor from the Inquisition days. As for the pot, no. This is our dinner."

This last bit is the especially cheery cherry at the top of the delicious whipped mousse discussion of agony and death. Wysteria gives the other woman a wide smile.

[amaizing]

Lia's face is briefly extremely horrified at the prospect of this pot containing their dinner, but she quickly corrects her face into a beaming smile.

"Pleasure to be acquainted, Madame De Foncé. My name is Cornelia Fromme--Lia, if you please. Did you say you used to have an anchor? Does that mean that they get removed sometimes? For good behavior or--" She speculates wildly. "perhaps because of marriage?"

The idea of marriage sounds absolutely dreadful to Lia, not that different than an anchor shard, but at least a husband wouldn't be able to keep her in once place without a fight. Lia sighs thinking about it.

"How did you cope with being imprisoned?" She means the anchor shard. (Mostly.)

II.

[armd]

You know, Abby isn't an expert in... 'medieval' decor, or whatever, but she'll try.

"They're just working with what they have, right? Stone and brick and... more stone." She's doing as good a job explaining as she is attempting to hide her smile.

[amaizing]

Lia smiles brightly at this new face.

"But, people make sculptures out of those materials! Designs! Arches!" She sighs to herself.

"It simply must be purposeful, they want it to be ugly."

[armd]

"Maybe they heard you were coming," Abby suggests, joking. "And knew it would really piss you off."

Does that fully demonstrate how pointless it is to complain about stone walls? Well, it should.

desidério, later; ota

[bribon]

i. the gallows
On the third floor of the former Templar tower, a door hangs open. A desk comes squeezing through it and out into the corridor, propelled by a slight man with a sword at his belt. The feet of the desk squeal sullenly over the stone floor until they finally catch against some lip or seam of the flooring. The piece of furniture abruptly halts.

Here, the man straightens. He dusts off his hands—anchor shard flashing in the one, a leather glove on the other—and, with the appearance of being reasonably satisfied with this progress, he returns to the room from which he and the desk originated.

Inside, half of the furniture is in some state of disassembly or rearrangement. With the desk dispensed with, the man has turned his attention to wrestling the old mattress from the second bed. It fwumphs sadly over, crumpling with a crispy rasp of its ancient straw stuffing.

Later, once he has finished redecorating, Desidério may be found poking around the various division workrooms—yes, even the ones to which he doesn't belong—, in the rookery putting the finishing touches on a note before it's slipped into the leg cylinder of a waiting messenger raven, or attempting to scrub all the road dirt from his person in the baths.

ii. lowtown
The Cutthroat Ox is a particularly cheap tavern in a particularly cheap corner of Lowtown—a statement of some significance given that nowhere in Lowtown is known for being particularly rich. Beyond its lintel, marked by the swinging sign of an ox's head with a rusted dagger dangling point up on a chain's link from the animal's chin, lies a tangled warren of rooms populated by mercenaries, and low rank carta, and merchant train security men, and (presumably) the type of thief and cutpurse skilled enough not to actually bear the outward branding of their professions.

Each of the Ox's multitude of backrooms has been decorated as a tribute to some manner of murderous implement: here is the spear room with its walls arrayed with a battalion's worth of broken spear shafts and points notched beyond repair, and here is the cudgel room with a fat balloon-headed stick displayed prominently over the bar and suspiciously well within reach of the woman pouring drinks, and here is the sword room, with every variety of blade crossed and pinned about.

Helpfully, another sword is presently being added. The saber in question has been knocked free of its owner's hand at such velocity that it plunges deep enough into the crumbling plaster of the ceiling that it actually sticks there. An amused cheer goes up among the spectators of the duel.

The smaller of the two men who had been fighting along the room's back wall takes a modest bow, sheathes his own blade, and then clambers onto a nearby chair so he can actually reach the pommel of his disarmed opponent's weapon. He makes to pry the sword out of the ceiling with his offhand, a glint of green anchor light playing briefly across the steel.

—and later (or earlier, or some other time that is less specific and more likely to be repeated), this same man can be found on a stool nursing a drink. He has a collection of swords propped against the wall beside him, and an expectant look in his eye. Eventually someone else will take him up on his challenge, or he'll pack it in and take these prizes off to the nearest pawn broker.

iii. hightown markets
Surveying the comings and goings of Sal Fabiano, a recent addition to the merchant milieu plying their goods in Kirkwall's hightown markets isn't particularly glamorous work. Luckily, Desidério isn't particularly interested in glamor.

Over the course of several days, accompanied by a variety of partners from Riftwatch's ranks, he slums around the Hightown market district and keeps half an eye on the stall, and the merchant in question. This takes the form of shopping for new shirts, or breakfasting at little market adjacent establishments where a good egg might be had in addition to a convenient eyeline, or occasionally even following Fabiano out of the market district from a prudent distance.

And just once, in the dead of night after Fabiano has slipped from the city on some mysterious excursion, does it involve sneaking out over Kirkwall rooftops and along a high wall toward the rooms that Fabiano keeps while in Kirkwall. So maybe a little glamor after all, so long as one's definition of the word includes breaking and entering.

iv. wildcard.
[you know what to do; hmu if you want something bespoke, but happy to roll with whatever]

third floor

[armd]

The desk is blocking half of the corridor.

Abby didn't really need to get by it. She came upstairs wondering where all the banging, squeaking and shoes slipping on stone sounds were coming from. It looks like somebody is moving out, only she's never seen this person in her life before, so they're probably moving in. In light of everything that just fucking happened, to most of them, for a moment Abby seriously considers telling him he should probably turn around and get back out while he still can. But they need people; she should be nice.

She pokes her head into the door, pushing the edge of the desk out of the way with ease. His back is to her. He is struggling with a mattress.

"... You good?"

[bribon]

The mattress flops halfway back into the bedframe as the man straightens, pivots.

He's a slight thing, narrow all over except in the face. That has a broadly expressive quality to it, its various workings emphasized by the scruff of the beard worn over it. Therefore, it's hard to miss that he looks her over from the floor up—a split second's assessment—before he sets his anchor riddled right hand on the bed post and adopts a casual lean. The other hand, wide cuffed glove and all, it propped knuckles first above his hip. Jaunty.

"I've been informed no one gives a shit if I clear out the unused furniture as long as it's 'stored responsibly.'"

Sounds like a direct quote from one the Gallows' more beleaguered staff.

"Don't suppose you've a spare hand, and a passion for heavy lifting?"

[armd]

This pose is, no doubt, intended to make her look at the anchor, which Abby does. And then she looks at him again and carefully this time, as if she might be able to figure out where he was before he went and fell into a rift, but there aren't any general clues about him (Is there ever? What is she doing? She looks away).

To his quote and question both, she snorts. Well...

"Something like that." Even under her long-sleeved shirt the evidence of her considerable muscle is still obvious.

Gesturing with her chin to inform him that he should take the furthest end of the mattress, she steps into the room to take the side closest to the door. "I'm Abby," she adds, and lifts. Mattresses are tough even you can carry them with no problem... they're annoyingly floppy. "Good to meet you. Where's this going?"

the duel, featuring the Two Stooges

[bouchonne]

"Hey!" calls one of the spectators as the duelist moves to take the sword. "Boo! Boo, bad sport!"

This particular heckler is a tall, lean man with a manner that is at once elegant and dissolute, a well-upholstered chaise lounge that furnishes a brothel. He's accompanied by a shorter, stouter companion, a handsomely mustachioed man with a twinkle in his eye.

"You have to leave it in," calls the tall man. Then, to his companion, "That should be the rule, right? Don't you think, Bastien?"

[cozen]

Bastien shrugs with one shoulder and speaks through a smile and a cigarette, teeth and tongue steering words around both with only a bit of mumbling.

"Should be," he says. He's soft-spoken and, unlike his companion, not particularly projecting to get the victor's attention. "Maybe we can have a word with the owner."

They're in the front row of the gathered standing crowd—a safe distance, but close enough for a fleck of plaster loosened by the thud of the sword to shake free with its extraction and flutter down in front of them like a snowflake. Bastien puts out a hand in time to catch it, lifts it proudly, and smiles a little wider. A souvenir.

[bribon]

The winning swordsman stood on the chair pauses with his hand only having just closed around the stuck blade's pommel. His opponent has already slunk back, empty hands on hips and a little red in the face—less from exertion, and more from the embarrassment of first losing and now having the placement of his weapon heckled by the audience.

Desidério, generally having very little impulse to soothe anyone's ego, ignores the chastened loser in favor of the hecklers in question.

"Three silver and it stays."

"Hey—" (this, from the aforementioned loser, still redder now).

Desidério lifts the angle of his elbow and ducks his chin to give the man a look.

"It's worth twice that."

A nod. Noted. Desidério returns his attention back round, and amends, "Six silver."

variety of partners numero uno

[sprent]

Gela is more than happy to accompany, especially because she gets to go to the markets on assignment, which is one of her favourite things. She tells Desidério this very promptly, and they're chatting as they approach the scene together. Or, rather, Gela is chatting, and quite animatedly.

"You know, I was a merchant before I came to the Gallows in the first place, so if you need somebody to go and talk shop with him while you're examining him and his things more closely, unseen, I could do that. I would be good at it."

Joint-division missions are fun!

[bribon]

It's been a little slow going to get here. Kirkwall is oriented considerably more up and down than Seleny, and somewhere between the fourth and sixth set of stairs required to reach the Hightown Markets, he'd been a little winded and had never truly recovered. Thank Andraste's knickers that his partner has plenty to say; it's allowed Desidério to pant back monosyllabic responses with minimal ego shrinkage. Fuck, he thinks. Moysenta may have been on to something when she'd said he should drink less.

(Or had it been Diomara? Lena? Definitely a blonde. He can picture the hair about the phrase more than he can the mouth it'd come out of.)

"Terrific," he says. Three syllables! Progress.

Breathing hard through his nose, Desidério rummages around in his coat pocket, finds his silver case, and cracks it open. Jams a cigarillo produced from it into the corner of his mouth and feels further forward the Riftwatch issues lighter.

third floor, somewhat after the redecoration

[wearyallalone]

There are enough people on the third floor of the former Templar tower that Vanya is reasonably certain someone else has greeted the new arrival. (Not so many of them, yet, that they have to share the rooms for any reason other than inclination. On the other hand, given the events of recent months, Vanya tends to think full barracks would be more of a blessing than a problem.) He doubts that his own particular charms will add or detract much from the new shardbearer's overall sense of welcome.

Still, it seems ungracious to share a wall with someone without at least acknowledging their arrival. Sometime after dinner, not too late, he knocks — if the door is not closed, then on the frame — to ensure he's not simply barging in.

[bribon]

The dor is in fact closed. It is not, however, locked, which makes the "Enter," called from the room's occupant feasible enough if not particularly polite.

Apparently courtesy is thin on the ground in just this moment, however. And who can blame him? It has been a long day of fussing around a soggy grey island, in the company of the world's strangest collection of people. All this, after some days spent traveling from the Weyrs down to Kirkwall, forced to play traveling companion to that horrible snake of a woman. He has fantasized once or twice about cutting her hand off (not the one stuck with the anchor shard) and sending it off to Nimus on principle, but by and large the arrival in Kirkwall had more or less driven the thought out of his head. But presently he has returned to it, and other gloomy things, and he cannot be bothered to scrape together much in the way of neighborliness.

The point being: Desidério is lying in the room's remaining bed with all his clothes still on, boots included. He has a cigarillo hanging from his lip, and his head is propped up just high enough so that the ash can drift into his shirt rather than back into his face. He doesn't raise it any further, and instead just squints down his nose at his visitor from that angle.

"Don't tell me you're another dream person. I can't take any more of them today."

[wearyallalone]

"No." He certainly doesn't look the part, either, the spectacles and civilian clothing he currently wears doing little to hide his soldier's bearing and nothing to hide his Nevarran accent. No telltale green glow in either of his bare palms, so whatever reason he's here isn't that.

"I thought it would be polite to introduce myself, since I'm next door. But I should have known you'd had a long day. I don't mean to bother you." He doesn't look abashed, but rather mildly apologetic. Regardless, his desire not to be rude is evident enough.