PLAYER PLOT | Forgetti Catchall, now in the right comm

[wythersake]

WHO: Ennaris Tavane, Julius, Bastien, Viktor, Clarisse La Rue + OTA
WHAT: Strangers arrive at the Gallows.
WHEN: A week in Haring.
WHERE: The Gallows / elsewhere
NOTES: Check out this OOC Post for details.

This is a catchall post for threads with or about the forgotten characters plot. Feel free to thread about it elsewhere as well!

• OOC Info
• Rookery Post

 

Comments

[dissolving]

You ever try to swim while someone kicks you in the balls?

The lights go out. Cedric chokes on a lungful of grey water, and nearly pukes. Comes up a beat too late, dizzy of it, and a whole lot fucking madder than he was just a minute ago.

He charges, crashing them both into the side of the ladder back up. Impact rocks the salt-warped boards, wood mites skittering, but their shoulders are both clear when he pulls back to swing for her face.

[laruetheday]

They hit the side of the ladder hard. The air feels like it rushes out of her lungs all at once, and she sucks in a throatful of water trying to inhale.

She's still gagging it out when Cedric's fist crashes into the space just below her left eye. Luckily—maybe?—the freezing water has made her go half-numb, and it doesn't hurt as much as it probably should. Still, Clarisse feels her head rock back, and she hits the ladder again, this time with her skull. That hurts.

At this point a normal person would probably be doing their best to haul themselves out of both the harbor and this entire situation, but Clarisse only grabs for the slick ladder with one hand and slams her other elbow into Cedric's jaw.

[grindset]

It has occurred to Viktor to leave while the leaving's good—while he's not quick, neither are most freshly battered persons with full dress soaked through by the winter sea—but that would be entirely counterproductive. Nearly everything that might be of use to them now is inside that fortress.

Temporal distortion, altered memories. The temple. The time graft. Young scars, barely healed over, easily pulled open. It's why he went in the first place, why he's fussing with a makeshift notebook instead of gawping at the brawl taking place right there. (It's why his chest is tight as a fist; it's what trickles cold at the base of his spine.)

Pages snap until he finds the most recent log. His stomach leaps. Predictably, the notes end before whatever incited this, but that which came before—

has just been slapped with a spray of silty saltwater—

[dissolving]

He's slipping on silt when her elbow rockets out, an icepick into bone. He stumbles back in a wash of water, spitting blood, and green flares at the end of his hand. Cedric glances at the anchor, as if surprised to find it there,

Before ripping up its shield like a club, smashed down above her into the ladder. Wood splinters, splits a shattered rung.

Clarisse already decided: If one of them's in the water, then both of them are.

[pathlit]

It’s enough commotion to draw attention, onlookers curious but wary enough to avoid interference in Riftwatch chaos unless directly impacted. Jayce had taken care to cross Lowtown in brisk strides rather than a run, in some misplaced, perhaps, hope that doing so might avoid garnering attention himself. Now, with the docks in view, he breaks into a sprint.

The acid glow of an anchor shield supersedes the small group of onlookers—those individuals claiming to know them, belong to the same organization as them. A fight in the water— Who—?

His eyes dart to the strangers, all risk-assessment, no trace of recognition. His mind stumbles over the oddity of their inaction. Are they not—?

After another wary glance, Jayce turns his attention onto the scuffle below. Recognition, then. “Carsus!” he shouts, withdrawing his mace. The shard in his left palm snaps with an acid electricity of its own.

He can only assume the worst of intentions, even if the players aren’t positioned correctly. (Why haven’t the others jumped Cedric, too?) Even so, firing into the water would be exceedingly careless, but he sure as shit isn’t jumping in yet, either. Maybe his addition might be enough to break things up, if only for a moment— if only one of them is hostile—

[laruetheday]

Clarisse winces, jerking back as the rung she'd grabbed for splits apart, and just like that, she's treading water again. She should probably be thankful that Cedric didn't bring that shield down on her head, but she's beyond thinking clearly about any of this.

If she can just get behind him, if she can grab him in a chokehold or something, maybe—

Footsteps on the dock above them. At first she thinks it's one of her group, finally backing her up, but the voice she hears next isn't anyone who was on the mission.

"Jayce?!" She risks a look over her shoulder. It's Jayce, yes. But he's got his anchor shard pointing right at them, ready to fire. "Wait," she starts, "wait—"

[cozen]

Clarisse made a fine point, a minute ago. One Bastien would have carefully considered for at least ten seconds before reasoning his way back into not going to the prison island with the possibly-brainwashed or possibly-demonic Cedric-shaped man.

But that was a minute ago. Now there's chaos, and there's Jayce and his mace—

that rhymes, there's a song to find in there

—and anchor, and Bastien shakes his head at the entire situation, looks from Ness to Viktor to see if either evinces any interest in coming with him, and turns to shoulder his way through a small cluster of bundled-up and bemused onlookers. They part without resistance, much more interested in craning to see whether anyone's being drowned.

jayce and his mace in a one-man foot race from the marketplace

[grindset]

Viktor, meanwhile, in acute dismay, is watching this page bleed into oblivion when a familiar body charges past him without so much as a glance his way. He breathes in—but Clarisse says it first, leaving his mouth empty and the rest of him rooted uselessly to this spot.

He, too, turns a look to his companions, likewise taking stock, and so catches Bastien's eye just in time to communicate his own inner disarray; You're leaving? hardly has time to spark before the man opts to abstract himself from their circumstances. Here Viktor remains, now very aware of the bystanders, who will receive from him only silent reproach before he snaps his attention back to the absolute shambles of a situation unfolding here.

"Don't," comes out steely. "Put that away." The anchor.

[aberratic]

Everything is happening so fast—Ness went to the crystals to attempt to get them passage on the ferry, and still no one knew them, and now Cedric and Clarisse are fighting—she wrings her hands at the violence between friends, near to tears. Jayce's appearance, mace in hand, anchor shard snapping, draws a gasp, and her hands go up in the universal signal for 'I have no weapons, I'm not a threat.'

Of course, that means her anchor shard is pointed directly at him.

She barely spares a glance for Bastien—it hasn't even occurred to her to run.

"Messere Talis," she says, a distinct pleading tone to her voice, "what is going on?"

[pathlit]

Alarmed, his eyes dart from Clarisse to Viktor to Ness, the latter on whom they remain, narrowed with confusion and suspicion. This isn't just one unfamiliar voice on the crystals recognizing him anymore, and while that doesn't really change anything, it does deepen the prickly discomfort in his stomach.

After a beat, Jayce lowers his anchor. "Question of the day, isn't it?" is not an answer because he hasn't got one. Glancing between Ness and Viktor, concluding that, for at least the next few seconds it's unlikely for either of them to suddenly attack, he approaches the edge of the docks and crouches down, not resting on his knee (in case he needs to spring back from an assault). The woman in the water seemed disarmed enough, so--

Offering his shard palm, he grimly says to Clarisse (and Cedric), "Let's go."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse grits her teeth. She wants, more than anything, to say him first and force Cedric up onto the dock ahead of her. She wouldn't put it past him to try and hit her from behind as she climbed up first. There's a similar problem with Cedric going before she does, though, where he and Jayce will both be standing above her, at an advantage, while she treads water.

Wild that these are real thoughts she's having—that Jayce, her friend, the person who sat with her in the forge for hours working on that knife, might attack her.

After a few more seconds of deliberation, she snaps, "Fine." She reaches up for his hand and uses the momentum and Jayce's weight to haul herself up and out of the water.