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Fade Rift Mods ([personal profile] faderifting) wrote in [community profile] 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.


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.
eviscerates: (Default)

[personal profile] eviscerates 2016-03-16 08:30 am (UTC)(link)
Between Asher's work on it, the metal spearing it, and the Wolf's teeth ripping apart its throat, the Terror starts to crumble. When she looks back to Asher the demon is flat on the ground and unmoving, and black ichor is smeared about her mouth.

Sadly, this particular wolf can't talk, and she tilts her head at Asher quizzically before shaking her head. Besides, there's one more thing moving towards them before they're in the clear - creepy, looking like the grim reaper, but with teeth that make up its entire face. It makes a horrifying feeling well up inside her. The Wolf rounds on it, growling, and is about to leap towards it when the despair demon unleashes an ice attack that bursts up through the ground beneath her and makes the Wolf stagger.
hlif: (Default)

[personal profile] hlif 2016-03-17 11:21 pm (UTC)(link)
"That's disgusting."

It'd sound more serious if Asher wasn't grinning and laughing, wiping his brow before he looks up when the sweat starts to freeze on his skin. Fuck. Fucking terror demons, because you really needed a primal fear of bags of rags and something with a face like a nug's ugly cousin at a wedding. It doesn't stop how he feels frozen to the bone, how it's a struggle to breathe around terror demons but he lets it make him angry, digging his fingers into a still healing wound on his arm until the pain makes his vision blur before the world comes back into focus.

The ice burns when he forces himself to keep moving but the wide head of the axe takes the brunt of it, gritting his teeth close to take a swing.

"It moves fast when it wants to! We need to--" Well for a start he needs to not get hit with a shower of ice to the face that steals his breath. "Pin it!"
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[personal profile] eviscerates 2016-03-18 12:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, well. She'd tell him that it looks worse when she changes back to being a human... but the poor guy might just witness it in a few minutes.

Once she's heard his orders (suggestions? communications? whatever) the Wolf is moving, fast away from Asher. It can't attack her and Asher at the same time, and with the Wolf snapping at its ankles, she's pulling the attention onto her as she turns it away from Asher. She's seen his attacks now, seen how strong they are, and as a team this'll be a piece of cake, aside from how her heart feels uncomfortable in her chest. She can handle the ice better, and he can send the damn thing back to Hell.

Or... wherever these things came from. The demon swipes and claws, and she darts and snaps, attacking it low down. Maybe this isn't quite what he meant by pinning it, but it's a pincer movement so... kinda works, right?
hlif: (Excuse me just gotta go wrestle a bear)

[personal profile] hlif 2016-03-20 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Asher has witnessed Malcolm Reynolds in the buff and in a dress and pretty floral bonnet, he can deal.

Strategy always has to change on the battlefield and unlike the common rank and file, Asher knows how to make a situation work once he's at least got an outline of it. And he'd never say that while she could easily tear out his jugular but he runs with a big solid hound almost all the time so this is pretty much how Bronson would do it, if he made Bronson fight demons. (But he won't if he can help it, no old dog needs that and if there's something that's going to hurt him? It'll be the demons with how fast they move.)

Taking a good swing, he catches it where it should have ribs. You know if it wasn't a sack of robes, ice, and too many teeth. At least it screams and falls to the ground for him to hit it again.

"Fancy going for the jugular?" Tell him how it tastes lady wolf bro.
eviscerates: (007)

[personal profile] eviscerates 2016-03-23 04:21 am (UTC)(link)
Fancy would be a strong word for it. No, she'd really rather not take any kind of bite out of this thing, but they're doing this together. The Wolf lunges - not over the body at all, so it's still exposed for any attacks Asher might make. Her movement is fast, as if she'd been snapping her teeth around a rabbit rather than closing them over the throat of a demon and ripping away.

It's done, she thinks, and her mouth tastes disgusting. The enhanced senses of a wolf aren't always a wine, and she moves away from the body, light shimmering and air going smokey before clearing to show Ruby there, once more. She's kneeling on the ground, holding herself up with one hand because of the exhaustion and dizziness that's overtaken her with the change, scooping some snow into her mouth so she can wash the taste and blood out.

"Nice work," she manages, before shoveling in more snow.
hlif: (Default)

[personal profile] hlif 2016-03-26 09:42 am (UTC)(link)
The one good thing about this is that there's nothing to burn. It's not Asher's preferred way to get to the afterlife but he doesn't believe in leaving a problem for anyone who might pass through or live in the places he's fought, but burning hair and flesh stink, somehow greasy enough to cling to you. The river is frozen solid and he doesn't want to melt snow to scrub that sort of smell off his skin and out of his hair.

Leaning forward on his axe, he watches her, unable to stop himself from tensing because he's heard stories. Everyone has heard stories, especially if you're from Ferelden, but they were stories, even for someone who believes in ways the stories of his own gods, his own people. Slowly, his heart calms itself, the pain and rage recede, his mind is his own again; he's Asher, sweat cooling on his skin, lungs screaming for air, mind catching up with what it saw.

"Not so bad yourself," he manages. One hand drags through the braids and hair twisted back at his scalp. "So...mages. Mages can do what you do. Or a rare few can. Except you are absolutely not a mage. You a werewolf?"
eviscerates: (010)

[personal profile] eviscerates 2016-03-26 11:07 am (UTC)(link)
She's got a mouthful of icy and unpleasantness, and the question makes her pause before she spits it out, wiping her mouth again, and finally being allowed the relief of seeing there was no bile or blood or ichor left. Demon gore and slime was not to be recommended.

"I'm not a mage," she confirm. "And some people call people like me a werewolf in fictional stories from back home, but, uh. There's so many different stories about werewolves it's kinda hard to know what anyone means when they ask that.'

Ruby shrugs, pushes herself up, looking up at him with a careful gaze, green eyes clear and serious. She feels... she feels heavier than she did before the fight. He's twisting his hand through his hair, and he's riled up from a fight, and she knows what men fresh from a fight can do when they sight a legitimate danger. She knows what all kinds of people can do when they're afraid.

"I'm a human and I'm a wolf. That's all you really need to know."