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faderift2016-02-23 01:43 am
faderifting) wrote in faderift2016-02-23 01:43 am
OPEN: turn off the lights and I'll glow
WHO: New rifters & characters in Emprise du Lion
WHAT: More people falling on ice than usual, this time with demons, templars, and bonus nighttime
WHEN: Guardian 23
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: This month, the arrival log is open to all.
WHAT: More people falling on ice than usual, this time with demons, templars, and bonus nighttime
WHEN: Guardian 23
WHERE: Emprise du Lion
NOTES: This month, the arrival log is open to all.
You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.
But there's no waking here, just a flare of green-white light and a jarring impact onto freezing stone or ice that is twice as cold and just as hard. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself beneath a dark sky, a full moon straining to be seen through intermittent clouds, and a second moon low on the horizon. Its light reflects off snow to add an eerie ambient glow to the darkness, made stranger by the sickly green tint added by the fluttery menacing shape of the rift hanging in mid-air. Be careful getting up: you are at the edge of a cliff, what was once a waterfall now frozen solid in a massive curling sheet of icicles. The drop to the bottom is several stories, surely a deadly fall even without the huge humps and spikes of ice and snow that litter the ground where splash and spray were petrified.
You are also not as you were: in the palm of your left hand there glows a narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Like the fact that you're being attacked by monsters--some tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all. Some are entirely different but perhaps more monstrous for it: men and women in heavy, gleaming armor, all of them with chunks of red crystal protruding out in a way you soon realize indicates it is actually growing out of their skin. Their eyes are a dull red, hollow and empty, and they attack with a single-minded determination.
Luckily, you are not on your own. Around you others are waking up, equally confused, with the same green lights flaring from their hands. There is stuff scattered about, like the contents of someone's life exploded through the rift with them: a picnic table and benches upended, metal camp furniture flung about, clothes and utensils, bits of wood and canvas and mattress littering the ground. Even better, you are not far from a path leading toward an Inquisition camp, and noise travels far in this terrain, echoing up canyons and off cliffsides, carried by the chill night wind. Help is on its way; just last until it arrives.
But there's no waking here, just a flare of green-white light and a jarring impact onto freezing stone or ice that is twice as cold and just as hard. When your breath returns and the light's after-image fades from your eyes you will find yourself beneath a dark sky, a full moon straining to be seen through intermittent clouds, and a second moon low on the horizon. Its light reflects off snow to add an eerie ambient glow to the darkness, made stranger by the sickly green tint added by the fluttery menacing shape of the rift hanging in mid-air. Be careful getting up: you are at the edge of a cliff, what was once a waterfall now frozen solid in a massive curling sheet of icicles. The drop to the bottom is several stories, surely a deadly fall even without the huge humps and spikes of ice and snow that litter the ground where splash and spray were petrified.
You are also not as you were: in the palm of your left hand there glows a narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Like the fact that you're being attacked by monsters--some tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all. Some are entirely different but perhaps more monstrous for it: men and women in heavy, gleaming armor, all of them with chunks of red crystal protruding out in a way you soon realize indicates it is actually growing out of their skin. Their eyes are a dull red, hollow and empty, and they attack with a single-minded determination.
Luckily, you are not on your own. Around you others are waking up, equally confused, with the same green lights flaring from their hands. There is stuff scattered about, like the contents of someone's life exploded through the rift with them: a picnic table and benches upended, metal camp furniture flung about, clothes and utensils, bits of wood and canvas and mattress littering the ground. Even better, you are not far from a path leading toward an Inquisition camp, and noise travels far in this terrain, echoing up canyons and off cliffsides, carried by the chill night wind. Help is on its way; just last until it arrives.
no subject
His head jerks in that direction, spotting the templar and, rather than immediately wrenching his blade free of one of the templars, he jerks one hand free to seize the soldier by the pauldron and yank him off his feet. This close, he can see the burning red eyes behind the eye slits of the helmet, the bloody complexion, the madness.
Before he hurls him into his compatriots, sending them tumbling before finally wrenching the axe free and taking a step back, towards Hermione. Only two left standing, barely, and it'd be a mercy to put them down at this point.
"You want to take another shot at them, here's your chance."
no subject
Her insecurities can wait, though. She knows she can't take out both of these creatures on her own, or even one of them, and so she hesitates for a moment before realizing that they aren't hesitating. Leery as she might be of using any particularly strong spells, she at least readies herself for whatever bizarre complication might arise and readies her wand again, calling out, "Impedimenta!"
To her surprise, that one works more or less as intended, though her feet slip back a bit on the ice as she seems to experience the recoil of the magic; the pair of opponents don't stop advancing entirely, but they certainly slow down enough to be no problem for the warrior at her side.
no subject
This time he takes a running charge at them, axe braced as he barrels across the snow, and moments later the templars collapse to snow, twitching in their final throes, shattered armor spilling more of those sinister red shards across the ground.
He glances around once to make sure that's the last of them before reaching to slide his weapon into the holstering on his back, grimacing as the movement pulls at that wound. It's nasty, but provided nothing got into it...
"You alright?"
He lifts his gaze to Hermione, though it shifts once to her hand and back again.
no subject
She's watching him carefully, because now that there's nothing else for him to swing that axe towards she wants to make sure it's not going to come for her head anytime soon. But despite her wariness, she notices the fresh wound, realizing that he'd gotten it in part to save her. Or because he really, really hates whatever those things were.
"I'll live," she murmurs absently, looking away from his injury and meeting his gaze again. He seems to have sustained quite a few war wounds over the course of his life, but this one's new and is more than likely her own fault, however obliquely.
"Are you? I'd offer a healing charm, but my wand didn't survive... however I ended up falling into this." She has no problem talking about magic, because clearly, he's a magical creature. She hasn't seen anything like him before and can't pin down his species, but what else can he be?
no subject
Girl seemed to be having all sorts of a bad time. Best thing to do was get her back to the others. At least then she'd have some kind of protection. Mages without their magic didn't do all that well out in the wild.
"Assuming of course that camp sounds like a good idea to you. Because sticking around out here might not be a good plan." An eyebrow lifts. It's still her choice, for the most part, but not much of a choice at all when considered from all sides. Still. Better she feel she has one.
Being shepherded around by a horned giant might rub some people the wrong way.
no subject
"Were those really demons?" she asks, looking back at where the last of them had fallen. "I've never seen... I've never even heard of anything that looks like that. But then, I've never heard of anything like you, either. Anyone, I mean. Sorry."
Peering up at him and taking in all of his less friendly features, Hermione takes a breath and tries to smile a little in an effort to prove that she hadn't meant to sound racist. "Can I safely assume that you would have killed me by now if you really wanted to?" After all, it's usually a good idea to clarify that she isn't just walking out of the frying pan and into the fire.
no subject
What follows is to be expected. Nearly everyone who comes through the Rift is from somewhere where nothing like this exists or happens. It's rough, any way you cut it. "Pretty good assumption," he agrees with a chuckle. "Though not everyone's as transparent as I am."
Ha. Ha ha. That's going to be funny, later.
"This place you fell into has more than just demons. The red templars are running around, killing and capturing people. There's an old Grey Warden ruin with Darkspawn crawling up out of the holes. And that's not mentioning the dragons. So, on the list of things to kill? You'd be pretty low to start with."
no subject
A little taken aback at all the unfamiliar terminology he throws her way, Hermione needs a moment to process that before admitting, "I'm only familiar with dragons, out of all of those things. And even then, I wouldn't exactly call myself an expert." Unless, of course, he considers having ridden a dragon during a harried escape from a vault to mean she's an expert.
"I'll consider the fact that you don't want to kill me a compliment, and I'll go with you if it means getting some answers."