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tushanshu_logs2014-11-10 01:47 am
ironwood) wrote in tushanshu_logs2014-11-10 01:47 am
ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1
Characters: ALL!
Date: Early/Mid November
Location: Under the shell
Situation: It's either Malicant or the Foreigners... and their worlds.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.
The Foreigners had begun their counterattack by trying to possess the Great Turtle whom Malicant had taken, and although the movement had failed, some vital information had been uncovered. Under the shell lay Malicant's weakness, and inside the Dreaming was where he could be fought.
Any help from the kedan is uncommon. They're wary, watching, as a group beginning to lose sight of the community. Their family groups are more tightly-knit than ever, and any approach from the Foreigners is answered by suspicion at best and violence at worst. That makes daily life difficult, when the majority of the city refuses to have much to do with them. Why aren't you doing anything? they seem to say. What good are any of you? All you've done is make things worse. We'd be better if you'd never come.
The Foreigners are unwelcome in Keeliai. The cultists are becoming a majority. Now is the time.
There aren't many left of the Foreigners left, but inside the Dreaming the limitations of the waking world no longer exist. For every Foreigner and their worlds, their loved ones, this is the chance to make themselves safe for good. And all of them will be needed.
LINKS
Beneath The Shell/Midnight Hotel | Malicant’s Tools/The Vilii Stone | OOC Plot Post
OOC
There are two main headers, one for preparation at the Hotel where Milyn and Eva will be available to speak with The second section where they will be able to search the caves beneath the Shell inside the Dreaming to find the Vilii Stone, and where the boon'd characters will be affected. If you are threading something that doesn't fit one of those categories, just add it to the bottom of the post. Questions go to the plotting post, please! Once the Stone has been acquired the second half of the plot will go live in the logs comm.
Date: Early/Mid November
Location: Under the shell
Situation: It's either Malicant or the Foreigners... and their worlds.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.
The Foreigners had begun their counterattack by trying to possess the Great Turtle whom Malicant had taken, and although the movement had failed, some vital information had been uncovered. Under the shell lay Malicant's weakness, and inside the Dreaming was where he could be fought.
Any help from the kedan is uncommon. They're wary, watching, as a group beginning to lose sight of the community. Their family groups are more tightly-knit than ever, and any approach from the Foreigners is answered by suspicion at best and violence at worst. That makes daily life difficult, when the majority of the city refuses to have much to do with them. Why aren't you doing anything? they seem to say. What good are any of you? All you've done is make things worse. We'd be better if you'd never come.
The Foreigners are unwelcome in Keeliai. The cultists are becoming a majority. Now is the time.
There aren't many left of the Foreigners left, but inside the Dreaming the limitations of the waking world no longer exist. For every Foreigner and their worlds, their loved ones, this is the chance to make themselves safe for good. And all of them will be needed.
LINKS
Beneath The Shell/Midnight Hotel | Malicant’s Tools/The Vilii Stone | OOC Plot Post
OOC
There are two main headers, one for preparation at the Hotel where Milyn and Eva will be available to speak with The second section where they will be able to search the caves beneath the Shell inside the Dreaming to find the Vilii Stone, and where the boon'd characters will be affected. If you are threading something that doesn't fit one of those categories, just add it to the bottom of the post. Questions go to the plotting post, please! Once the Stone has been acquired the second half of the plot will go live in the logs comm.
no subject
For one thing, Wreath would have killed him.
"I'm not talking to you," Skulduggery said, his tone equally calm, his demeanour equally conversational. "I'm talking to Raine. I'll shoot you if I have to, but since that's likely to kill Raine, I'd rather we avoid that. Raine, do you remember what Solomon told you about his boon? If we don't find him soon, his own magic is going to turn on him. If it doesn't rip his mind to shreds, it's going to kill everyone in the caves. I need your help. I need you sane."
no subject
And whatever pull that was had broken her focus, damn him. It was a tactical error to let the skeleton talk-- no. It wasn't, it gave her time to cast while he nattered-- no. She wasn't thinking clearly; her judgment felt clouded. Raine gripped her staff with both hands, braced it before her. "I am Raine," she said, and mostly sounded certain of that fact. Think. You know yourself. Something isn't right. "And you'll have to shoot me to stop me. Do you know how much damage a body augmented by an exsphere can take? It's not insignificant. You'll need to be precise, to kill me instantly, or I'll simply heal myself." She tried to gather mana again, shaping it for photon, for anything more substantial than first aid, but it slipped from her grasp, focus shattered once more by that same weight. What was that? What had he done?
Stall. Stall. Pick up a thread from his words, engage him in conversation, keep him talking until she could cast again. "Tell me, Skulduggery, why should I care what happens to Sol--"
The sentence died unfinished. Her tongue rebelled, and she closed her mouth on the name. Her heart lurched, treacherous organ that it was, irregular and inexplicable. Something was deeply, deeply wrong, and the specifics were frustratingly just out of reach.
no subject
Raine was capable of healing herself, however - Skulduggery had momentarily forgotten that. He still wasn't about to shoot her in cold blood, but he raised the revolver as he took yet another step forward. To the uninformed, he was aiming directly for her heart. Any good marksman would have realised the bullet would narrowly miss its mark if Skulduggery were to pull the trigger.
It would hurt, but it wouldn't kill her. Not immediately. And Skulduggery still remained ever hopeful that he wouldn't need to resort to something so morally questionable.
"Trust me," he said. "I'm nothing if not precise. You probably shouldn't care, Raine, but for a number of reasons I don't particularly care to understand, you do. Solomon is a stubborn, narrow-minded, cruel and ego-maniacal sadist, and I'm sure more than one psychologist would agree he has some sociopathic tendencies. But he's a good man. And, as such, he has certain redeeming qualities. You must have seen them. You're likely the first person he's trusted in centuries. Are you so willing to throw that back in his face?"
no subject
Still his words kept striking at that weight in her chest, and for a moment, a brief moment, Raine found she wanted less to pull Skulduggery apart to see what made him work, and more to slap him right across the skull. Cruel? Sadistic? Hardly. Unless the teasing counts-- And there it was, the thing that had been disrupting her, emotion twisted up in memories of Solomon Wreath, strong enough to cause a physiological response, one that was unexpected enough to shake her. Clever. Not clever enough. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to make the customary distancing, to separate emotion from logic and return to business.
It wasn't. Working. She couldn't step back, couldn't ignore that emotion. "I shouldn't care," she said aloud, testing, and didn't quite manage to speak evenly. "I don't-- Why would I--" Couldn't even finish a sentence without her voice betraying her too. All of her carefully built self-control was deserting her, and it was directly linked to the things Skulduggery was saying, and he needed to stop talking.
Conscious anger sharpened her focus, and for the moment it didn't matter that it was directed at herself as much as Skulduggery, because it was enough to keep her grasp on the mana she was reaching out for. White light started spinning again, fast and determined even though her staff was shaking in her grip.
no subject
But then it passed, and she was struggling again. Skulduggery gave her the room to do it, the room to realise she was the more powerful of the two. He didn't, however, step away. If there was one thing he'd learned from his own experiences and from dealing with Darquesse, it was that a single moment of struggle indicated only that there was a struggle - nothing more. It could just as easily have ended in a renewed onslaught as it could have success, and he wasn't going to let his guard down.
The white light shone from the top of her staff again. Skulduggery doubted Raine would give him the chance to escape any of the spell's effects this time, so he didn't try. As he'd told Valkyrie over and over again - when a fight is inevitable and the enemy has the advantage, you strike first and you strike decisively.
He pulled the trigger.
no subject
Raine closed her eyes, and that was all. She felt the impact first, a hammer-blow of force to her chest. Pain followed close on its heels, hot and sharp and sudden. She fell, then, dropping like a stone with the barest of strangled gasps, but she wasn't dead yet. Skulduggery had missed. No. He didn't. More fool him. Perfect. She tried to shape mana to heal herself, she had enough time, wouldn't bleed out quite that fast -- but her staff rolled from nerveless hands, and the shape of first aid, so familiar for so long, went right out of her head. Why did she falter at every turn, like she was sabotaging herself deliberately-- Oh.
Fight it, he'd said. That was what he'd meant. She was fighting her own mind. No wonder she'd been making tactical errors, no wonder she hadn't thought of Solomon till emotion became a useful weapon-- against herself. No wonder she hadn't thought to try Resurrection. No wonder those intrusive thoughts had sounded like her own voice. Her chest was an insistent throb of agony, a concertedly real touchstone. Deliberately, consciously, Raine pressed trembling fingers against the wound, bringing her mind to bear on the pain of it, and on what she might yet be forced to do.
Ryder, broken like his siblings. Skulduggery, shattered apart piece by piece. Solomon, dead or worse, insane in the depths of his power. Absolutely not. And there was, yet, something she could do to prevent those, wasn't there. If she moved quickly; her exsphere was probably the only reason she was still alive.
Raine clawed herself halfway up, clutched for her staff, ignoring the bloody handprint she left. Hesitated. She should say something before casting, if he shot her again she really would be dead. "Thank you," she managed through numb lips, and cast. Same white circle, even and quick. "First aid." That took her out of the realm of near-death, though she was nowhere near combat-ready. She inhaled slowly, winced at the lingering pain, but noted an absence of any actual desire to try to murder Skulduggery. Thank goodness. "I... believe I am in my right mind again," she said next, slowly, gaze on the ground rather than Skulduggery himself.
no subject
Then she hesitated. Thanked him.
She didn't need to spend the energy to do that. Skulduggery was trying to avoid actually killing her, after all. Sane or not, he would have left Raine the time to heal herself properly. The fact that she appeared to be back in her right mind while she cast her magic was an unexpected bonus.
He still didn't put the gun away. "Are you?"
no subject
"I'm as sure as I can be," she said, with a little nod to herself. "Pursuing the stone is a priority, as is locating Solomon, and I no longer have any desire to harm you. That said, I recognize that you can't be sure of me; I could simply be pretending to have regained my senses in order to lure you into letting your guard down." Hm. That was a conundrum. The difference had been in focus, in attitude and morals, not in knowledge. Skulduggery would have been possessed as well, however, since he carried a boon as well. He'd know that much.
"I will, however, point out that I appear to have been cognizant enough of the situation to... forget the discussion we had in the Hotel in August, regarding an arte which resets mana to its initial state." Raine didn't know what Resurrection would have done to him, and she didn't want to find out. Carefully, she used her staff to help haul herself to her feet, finally looking at Skulduggery straight. She still hurt, would fix it when they were both satisfied.
no subject
It didn't satisfy Skulduggery, not by a long shot, but it was enough to let him give Raine the benefit of the doubt. Every moment they spent being suspicious of each other was a moment not spent searching for the stone.
He met her gaze, nodded, and holstered his gun. "Find Solomon. Plenty of us are searching for the stone. Unless he's taken precautions, no one else is going to be searching for him."
no subject
A brief self-assessment. She was healed fully, though her jacket was going to be stained. No help for that now, it was a secondary concern at this point. Her mind was as clear as it was going to get, it seemed. If there was something else of Malicant lying buried, it was also not something that could be dealt with now.
Solomon, on the other hand... Raine tapped the butt of her staff on the ground, trying to simultaneously tamp down the sick sense of worry growing in her. They had known this was going to happen. It was not irretrievable. She would deal with however much of a problem there was when she found Solomon. "Regardless, I should find him to be sure. Will you pursue the stone?"
no subject
If someone else had to discover the depth of Wreath's magic, at least it was someone Skulduggery trusted - someone who wouldn't go abusing the information, even if their memories remained intact upon returning home.
"Yes," Skulduggery replied. "If there's any chance of talking Solomon down, you'll lose it the moment he sees me. I may as well do something productive. Will you be alright?"
no subject
One step at a time. It was all that they could do. And if Skulduggery was in pursuit of the stone, that endeavor was in good hands.
no subject
"If you're not back at the Hotel by the time I'm there," he said, "I'll find you. Leave a trail if you can, but I'll find you regardless. Good luck."