The Vanya Orlov who is currently confronting the ferryman is notably thinner and much dirtier than the one currently inside the Gallows. His clothes are unidentifiable, whatever they once looked like lost in filth and disrepair; the jut of his shoulders and hips is evident beneath them. An ill-kempt beard obscures his jaw line. He has no weapons or armor, and the remains of his boots are doing almost nothing to keep his feet dry at this point. Gela is behind him and listing to one side; she’s just as dirty, as pinched in the face as he is, matted hair hanging limply over her shoulders, down her back. She’s used a strip of skirt fabric to keep it back from her face.

Whatever else the pair of them has lost, Vanya seems to well and truly lost his temper. It’s unlikely anyone in Riftwatch has ever heard him raise his voice before, and it’s a bit raw when he does now.

“If we had a sending crystal, I would have called for help weeks ago, do either of us look like we were out on a planned mission?” For all he’s undernourished, he’s still got his height and decades of martial training; posture can at least partly make up for the sorry picture he knows he makes otherwise. “If you would contact Commander Flint or Captain Rowntree, I think they would be exceedingly interested in what we have to say. It’s a matter of life and death, and it’s urgent, and I am not trying to invade anything while unarmed and nearly barefoot, for the love of the Maker.”

“Please,” Gela adds, tired, imploring. She’s too exhausted to actually cry but the wobbling lower lip and fine tremor in her hands is certainly selling it, threatening some sort of imminent meltdown. “You won’t come to any trouble, we’ll explain everything to them when we arrive but we need to get there now.”

[Open to anyone not actively suspected of being a demon who could be sent out to deal with the disturbance.]