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faderift2024-01-15 09:35 pm
faderifting) wrote in faderift2024-01-15 09:35 pm
MOD EVENT: Crossover
WHO: Everyone (give or take)
WHAT: Reorganizing the Crossroads
WHEN: Wintermarch 9:50
WHERE: The Crossroads
NOTES: A small event to help everyone shake off the winter break.
WHAT: Reorganizing the Crossroads
WHEN: Wintermarch 9:50
WHERE: The Crossroads
NOTES: A small event to help everyone shake off the winter break.
Shortly into the new year, Riftwatch's routine visits to the Crossroads–to get from here to there, or just to check up on the eluvians and watch for any signs of Venatori or elven presence–turn less routine. Patches of the Crossroads give way quite suddenly to patches of what seems to be (for lack of a better word) the real world, evidenced by sudden changes of landscape and temperature, the sudden presence of small mammals and birds. In the first of these locations to be discovered, snow blows up a crumbling Crossroads stairway from the snowy clearing below; in the clearing, gravity's hold is gentler than it should be, snow swirling up alongside the staircase that climbs up into a grey sky and never coming back down. Wisps or spirits may follow you freely here. One enterprising spirit has possessed a squirrel and is considering the merits of wandering off into the world. Walk far enough across the ground, away from the stairs, and things become normal (as much as Thedas ever is)–but the staircase is still waiting if you turn back the other way, the Crossroads there to walk into without any particular effort or magic at all.
This is of course a sign of a grave problem that warrants further investigation. But the instability in the Crossroads also presents a more immediate and practical threat to Riftwatch's work: the eluvians Riftwatch uses to traverse Thedas and reach some otherwise far-flung or inaccessible locations are scattered throughout the Crossroads, and reaching them is already becoming more difficult, not to mention the danger of someone else—foe or unwitting stranger—blundering into Riftwatch's work. So for a week in Wintermarch, everyone able and available will be assigned to relocating the eluvians: reaching them in the Crossroads, uprooting them from their ancient locations, and carrying them to rearrange on a single stone platform that so far seems sturdy and unaffected, where they can be more easily monitored and protected all in one place.
There are only six eluvians that Riftwatch regularly uses, but the instability is making them more difficult to reach, and they're heavy and unwieldy enough that multiple people will need to assist with transporting each one. Meanwhile, everyone will be asked to observe and make notes on the changes they encounter, as well as to collect other eluvians–the ones that lead to ruins in wild forests with no signs of where those forests might be, or deserted remote fortresses, or pitch-black caves, or the unyielding wooden walls that mean the mirror's counterpart is packed up somewhere behind and beneath loads of junk–to preserve them in case their Thedosian counterparts can be located and moved somewhere more practicable in the future. (These that are not yet usable will be arranged in a second location, separate but not so inconveniently far from the first.)
While trying to complete this work, Riftwatch will encounter the same spirits and hazards that have always made using the Crossroads a bit of a headache: paths that collapse ahead of them if they tell a lie while chatting with their traveling companions, spirits of suspicion that try to trap and drive wedges between them, guides who take on the embarrassing and/or adorable forms of the people they're guiding as children, wisps fascinated with travelers' impulses and emotions who endeavor to replicate them. The good news is that the new configuration of the eluvians will make walking through these spirits' domains unnecessary in the future and could mean many people will never have to deal with them again after this.
The bad news is that in the meantime, those retrieving the eluvians will have to deal with both the usual nonsense and the new patches where the borders give way and dimensions blend together. In these patches, the landscape and laws of the world mixes with the features and rules (or lack thereof) of the Crossroads. Sometimes this means the world, like the Crossroads, is more colorful for elves and more oppressive to everyone else–something akin to having to walk and work with a terrible headache, except there's no pain, only light and sound sensitivity and a general sense of difficulty and slowness. Other times it means something that looks more like the Crossroads feels more like the mundane world to humans and rifters, actually. Sometimes the Crossroad's loose ideas about gravity will be applied to a real river; sometimes the world's more strict laws will impose on a river in the Crossroads.
When these places are discovered, agents will be tasked not with avoiding them, but exploring them to estimate their sizes, note any features that might narrow down their locations on the map, and search for any signs of populations–in vain, fortunately. While a number of these locations are within ruins or abandoned villages, something is currently causing them to appear in areas that people seem to be avoiding. Journeying beyond the perimeter of the effect will reveal a strong contender for an explanation: these areas are places where the Veil is already damaged and thin, with spirits and demons passing through to discourage resettlement after whatever disaster or massacre weakened the barrier.
But the largest patch of bleed-through that Riftwatch will discover is also the least remote. Here a door in the Crossroads opens onto a wet, cold underground chamber, clearly man-made, roughly fifty yards across and roughly circular. The perimeter of the chamber shows signs of use for some academic purpose–crumbling shelves, the moldering and unreadable remnants of books left exposed to the damp for centuries, rusted and shattered equipment.
But the center of this chamber turns to jagged dark rock threaded with raw lyrium veins, and the ceiling shifts in the dark–sometimes a ceiling carved into stone, sometimes a churning sky in sickly dark green. Squint and you might see the Black City's floating island in the distance, for a moment. As the moments add up over the course of hours, a keen eye might notice that the carved ceiling of the chamber is shifting in a way stone shouldn’t shift, losing its careful patterns to a more chaotic swirl.
Exploring to establish the outer perimeter of this disruption will require venturing down branching hallways and tunnels, some of them populated by shades and freshly possessed skeletons. Another fifty yards or so out, in pursuit of any identifying features to place this on a map, the jet black stone and design of crumbling old mining equipment might start to give the observant a sinking feeling. Another hundred, and one of the labyrinthe and increasingly claustrophobic tunnels will end in a cave-in that is fairly recent, judging by the state of the three skeletons of people who appear to have died trying to dig back out. Their clothes and possessions have mostly rotted away in the moist air, but two of their skeletal hands are still wearing signet rings stamped with the Coterie's symbol.
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"Ow," he whines, though the sound of cracking ice cuts him off quickly. He doesn't move, his eyes darting to meet Bastien's.
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The top of Bastien's skull smarts from the impact and his mind feels oddly rattled within it, for a second, but for that second his body and his mouth are well-trained enough to carry on without the help.
"Sorry."
He doesn't rub the top of his head or show any sign of pain; it's only the cracks in the ice that are keeping him from going over to Benedict to offer a hand up and some polite fussing about his chin.
That, and distraction: the spirit beneath them is moving.
He'd assumed it was encased in ice, and maybe to some extent it was. But not so much encase that it couldn't break free downwards, rather than upwards, and begin to claw and crawl its way through the muddy slush below the sheet of ice, heading for Benedict.
"Fuck," Bastien says. Even though he very much means it, it sounds kind of pleasant, same as if he were impressed to the point of profanity by something marvelous.
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Then Bastien says fuck, and Benedict isn't sure why, so he follows the man's gaze to the approaching spirit and clocks it with a loud gasp.
It seems the choice here is to move it or lose it, so, in the interest of not punching one of his extremities through the precarious ice, Benedict begins to very carefully scootch himself in the general direction from which they came.
He has the distinct look about him of someone who is only not out of his mind with panic because the situation is too absurd to be his cause of death: he would just never fucking live it down, and he has too much to lose in that regard.
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Almost. He isn't smiling. He comes around behind Benedict to try to haul him up by the scruff of his clothing, back onto his feet on a safe patch of ice.
The skeleton has stopped following them a few yards further back—perhaps because the marsh has gotten too shallow or the reeds too thick for it to continue its crawl.
Instead, from where it's stopped, there are distant, thick thuds. Some further cracking. It's trying to break through. And the faint, scattered glows of the other frozen bodies beneath the surface are moving now too, making their way toward the spiderweb of the crack Benedict left behind when he fell.
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"Your name," it demands once more.
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He throws a look over his shoulder. Calculates without numbers the time it will take those skeletons to reach them, once they've clawed their way through the ice, against the time it will take him and Benedict to shoe-skate their way further down the path, away from this guardian, and scramble their way back up onto it. If the guardian doesn't follow them. If the ice doesn't give.
He bites out, "Laith."
It's quiet. Not inaudible, unwilling as he is to waste seconds litigating whether mouthing a word counts for this spirit's infuriating purposes, but quiet. Maybe the consonants are obscured by the sound of the ice scraping and creaking as the undead soldiers scratch at the seams of the cracks. Without time or presence of mind to adjust his accent, the th becomes more of a dz. Maybe what Benedict hears is Aze. He hopes.
Regardless, it's enough for the guardian, whose sword turns like a compass needle to Benedict, bothering him after all.
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“I don’t know,” he says, barely getting the words out before the spectral knight begins to advance again, driving him back toward the now-emerging shitshow behind them.
“I—-“ he stammers, holding up his hands, “I don’t know! Love!” The sword holds fast, but doesn’t come closer.
“…being loved,” he tries, in a low, mumbling voice. not in front of the guys,
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He's still angry.
But the spirit is satisfied. The sword lowers and the guardian drifts back, away from them. The path beyond it is satisfied too: the pieces that had fallen away at the first lie rearrange themselves, curving sideways and down to reach toward them in a short floating staircase. Very accommodating.
Behind them, the skeletons have found their way through the ice. Bones and the corroded metal of the armor they were wearing in death rattle as they start to climb out.
And angry as Bastien is, he grabs a fistful of Benedict's sleeve to pull him along, then propel him ahead of Bastien toward the path. This is Bastien's fault—and however uninterested in nurturing Bastien is, Benedict is younger—and if one of them is going to be pulled back into a mass of evil skeletons at the last moment to never be seen again except in unrecognizable pieces, it'll have to be him. That's just how these things are supposed to go.
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He only slows when the last sounds of rattling bones and armor have faded away, and the path has given way to seemingly another location entirely: a dry stone hallway lined benches, overgrown with ivy.
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It is possible they lacked the coordination to climb the little staircase. But even though it would be really funny, if that were the case, he isn't going back to check. He isn't going to stop moving yet, either. He keeps walking backwards even as he's putting his hand to his side and bending forward a bit, taking a few measured deep breaths to catch up on oxygen.
Then he says, "Sorry."
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When Bastien speaks, Benedict looks up at him, a touch of his earlier wariness remaining; just because other things were going on doesn't mean he doesn't speak Orlesian, didn't hear what he said.
"I can forget about it," he pants, pushing his hair back out of his face, "if you can."
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He should squint, is what he should do. He should exhibit some skepticism that Benedict is going to forget — or maybe take it as a compliment. Maybe he is so convincingly trustworthy that it really does seem like nothing to worry about. Maybe he should take a bow. Or be offended. Or both.
But any reaction would only draw attention to this thing that he would actually prefer Benedict forget. Forgetting would be great. So he takes a louder breath, wipes his damp forehead with his sleeve, and says, “I’ll forget it five minutes.”
He turns and sits next to Benedict on his bench.
“So you have that long to tell me if you’re alright. You know people love you, ouais?”
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"...maybe," he admits, and fusses with his hair again, straightening a bit as if that will save his dignity. "I'm all right." If the spirit with the sword were here, they wouldn't be satisfied.
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"You know, I made a career out of, uh," a lot of things, but most importantly, more importantly than the music or the robbery or the murder, "figuring out what people wanted and giving them enough of it to get something else out of them. And it was almost always love that they wanted. Some kind of it. I think people have loneliness more in common than anything else. I would say it is what binds us together, but the lack of binding, that is kind of the problem, no?"
He's patting around for his runic lighter now, unlit cigarette in his mouth, but when he realizes where it is — an inner pocket with an inner pocket, lots of buttons in the way — it's simpler to cock his head and ask Benedict for a magic light with a gesture.
"So it's nothing to be embarrassed about," is his point, "but I'm sorry. Spirits are dicks."
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"That makes sense," he concedes, still clearly feeling a bit raw on the topic despite Bastien's reassurances, "...the lack of binding. Nobody knowing that everyone feels the same. And it's still hard to think about other people, sometimes."
He looks down at his feet. Poor little rich boy, who wanted for nothing, who never even realized connection was something he needed until he saw that he didn't have it.
"Why'd you change your name?" he asks gently, carefully, and is quick to add: "you don't have to say."
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“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” he says. “I mean, it’s not a security issue. Byerly knows all of it. Yseult knows it wasn’t always Bastien. Ellie guessed — Bastien de Ghislain, he was the Black Fox’s apprentice, you know? So it was,” hm. “Aspirational? Dorky? I don’t know. I was twelve.”
Give or take. He looks back the way they came, but no skeletons are heading their way. And Benedict would probably hear them before either of them saw them.
He says, “Don’t tell anyone?” with the syntax of a command but the intonation of a plea. “Anyone who doesn’t know. If you need to check I’m not lying, that’s alright.”
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"I won't tell anyone," he says quietly, with a subtle shake of his head, "it's none of my business." It kind of is, in the sense that he's Personnel Officer now, but there's no reason he can't work with the names people give him.
"Twelve's pretty young," he observes, however, casting his own glance back at the path from whence there arrives not a single skeleton. This place is weird.
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People whose parents write these things down or celebrate birthdays — but even they can never be sure. Maybe it's all lies. Maybe Benedict was adopted and never told and they only guessed at his age.
He gestures back the way they came with his head. They need to find their way back to where they came from. Before hitting the skeletons, ideally.
"That was very cool, by the way," he says, snapping his fingers like Benedict did to produce the flame. "If I could do that I would never stop. Walk around all day — " like snap, snap, snap, which he does now, to a beat, but with nary a spark.
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"People whose... parents care a lot about them being old enough to get married," he remarks instead, with a little shrug, "it's hard to forget."
He smirks at Bastien's finger-snapping, doing it once more himself before extinguishing the little flame and stuffing his hand in the pocket of his overcoat with a shiver. The damp is worse, somehow, than the freezing cold.
"It's a conversation starter." His smiles grows a bit, "at least in the South."
And then he's quiet a moment, as they walk, the danger having dissipated for now. He's got the telltale demeanor of mulling over what he wants to say, because it's either embarrassing or stupid, but he wants to do it anyway.
Finally, "what you and Byerly have," he says quietly, "you're lucky. And... I'm glad I get to be around it. People who really love each other."
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It might be the first time Benedict has ever brought him up short—which is an accomplishment for anyone, not only for Benedict. But having something kind and sincere to say about him-and-Byerly—not teasing, not annoyed, not please don't go on about this, not (in the case of Madame d'Asgard) tinged with tender aching jealousy—is one way to do it.
But he finds his footing again swiftly, just as the landscape around them blends back into the Crossroads.
"I am lucky. And it took me until I was thirty-something—" again, who can ever know "—to get lucky, so do not lose hope, Monsieur Bachelor. Somewhere out there is a man who will only be cruel to you in the hot ways."
(He does pay attention.)
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"Thanks," he mumbles.