an alert | open

[hassaran]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Yseult
RECIPIENT: All members of Riftwatch
NOTES: Branching off of this scene. Note that despite the IC call for assistance we OOCly don't actually need to add any more people to that thread, the three of them will deal with the demon themselves before anybody else can get there. We just needed an excuse to make an all hands post asap.

Riftwatch, there is a demon in the Gallows masquerading as Benedict Artemaeus. He has been cornered in the fifth floor workroom. Assistance would be appreciated.

[ Yseult almost always sounds brisk on the crystals; today her speech is quicker and more clipped than ever. ]

Until we know more and can confirm there are no other imposters among the company, be on your guard. Report any unusual activity immediately.

Comments

not the weirdest nor the loudest thing i've witnessed in the library fwiw

[muckspout]

Edgard who generally would be toppled by Jayce's shove, catches his arm and shoved him back. He is ready to land another blow when Edgard, hearing Abby, turns around to face her, rolls his eyes and waggles his fingers at her and makes a face. Oooooo scary demon! He laughs to himself.

"See that people listen to you when you talk to them on the crystal." He spits bitterly behind him.

He folds his arms.

"Wasn't doing anything. We were just talking."

[favoriteanalyst]

"Is that what you were doing," from up above, as Mobius hauls himself down from the upper levels, studies (increasingly fruitless) into envy demons forgotten. He doesn't, for whatever it's worth, appear to be armed. "Because it sounds like you were causing a whole ruckus in my library. And after I told everyone to knock it off just recently, too."

He sees, as he makes his way down the stairs, the situation starting to unfold, and Abby's presence is at least going to help in wrestling (or killing) a demon wearing Edgard's face. Maybe if they surround the damned thing, it won't know where to strike.

[pathlit]

Jayce staggers back with a small noise of surprise. He honestly thought the shove would push Edgard off-kilter enough simply based on the appearance of him. His attention is so focused on Edgard that he doesn't notice the sound of Abby's approach until she's shouting. Relief blooms in his chest, even as his eyes dart between the two, and then, a second voice above, the Head Archivist--

It's enough to afford him a quick glance behind, searching for Viktor to visually confirm his safety in lieu of responding. Who's to say Edgard (or, darkly, Edgard) is the sole hostile individual in the library?

(And is it cowardly to let himself finally accept the suspicion now that there are other people -- more capable people -- present and presumably willing to kill on that very same suspicion? If he'd his weapon, would he do the same?)

[grindset]

Viktor doesn't respond to probably-not-Edgard's fixation upon this figment of injustice—could, but doesn't. He doesn't even glance at him, only looks past him, to find Jayce as he turns.

(It's very intentional. Distraction, angry or otherwise, can be as good as weapon as anything handheld.)

To trust a familiar voice, a face you recognize, patterns of known behaviour, it's all but involuntary. Abby's voice, the face of Mobius, Jayce throwing himself in bodily without pause, these are all reassuring. (The horned one stalking nearby, he's a mystery.) When your own mind is working against your interests, that's the trap. He and his partner share a similar thought: this likely pretender may not be the only one.

Nevertheless, with a crisp flurry of gesture, he waves Jayce in.

[armd]

Abby pauses, panting from the running, a kick of adrenaline still blooming in her chest. Her mace is held loosely before her, in both hands. It's a little startling that Edgard — the demon — doesn't rush her for barging in when she's clearly ready for a fight. More than that: it's disarming. She hesitates, and Mobius' voice fills her silence (she doesn't look up).

"Library's not for talking," she says evenly, rolling a shoulder. Aware of Jayce moving behind Edgard, aware that Loxley is somewhere in here, that Mobius doesn't know that and is descending the stairs. "That's kind of the whole point.

"How 'bout we get out of here, and talk somewhere else?"

Keep him busy... she doesn't have to stall for long.

[charmoffensive]

Not long at all.

Because there is a virtue to being invisible, and thus, a little bit outside of everything that's happening. Unseen, Loxley doesn't have to play pretend at conversation or consider how much the archivist above understands the situation or whether or not the other two, further in the room, are planning to involve themselves. Doesn't have to pretend he's doing anything other than sizing Edgard up, considering his approach, looking for weak points.

One last judging look to Abby—determining whether or not she is making a meaningful attempt at separating the demon from everyone else, or simply offering herself as a focus. The latter, he decides, and quietly steps in somewhere at Edgard's flank.

It'll take a second—it'll feel like a flash of fire, first, until impact and damage actually register to higher thought. A dagger rakes with sharp precision along the back of Edgard's leg at the hamstring, comes away bloodied. In the same moment, as Loxley draws the blade through, his invisibility drops, revealing a rangy-limbed qunari on a mission.

And it also means that Edgard will see it coming when, with speed, Loxley then moves his second blade to cut somewhere vital at the man's elbow. Whether he makes it or not, he'll be twisting aside to avoid retaliation—or get out of someone's way.

Cw: body horror

[muckspout]

Edgard, or perhaps someone else, intakes a breath to retort to Abby that he won't speak with someone who earlier spoke to him so rudely, but is unable to say anything before pain is felt in his leg. Instead of speaking, he roars and his mouth opens unnaturally wide distorting the face that belongs to Edgard.

While he is roaring, he is sliced again and suddenly his legs grow long and distort into large spidery legs. In a flash, the demon, half revealed and half Edgard appears away from Loxley, but next to Abby. His Edgard arm stretches wide to turn over a shelf onto her, books falling everywhere. It's possible she might get away, but in a flash the demon appears next to Mobius. He screams again in pain, Edgard's face fully sloughing off now, but is unable to move away once more.

[favoriteanalyst]

There's a lot that happens all at once. How a qunari can be so stealthy is startling, "Edgard"'s face contorting in that horrifying way along with the rest of his body, Abby suddenly in danger of simply being crushed by a weight--and then the demon with increasingly terrible gore suddenly by him.

He knows this from his studies: an envy demon on the run, or backed into a corner, or given a chance to flee, can put up some form of defense that seems to require a good deal of lyrium. Which means they can't let any opportunity pass by. There's a small influence of--power, perhaps, or a soft but righteous energy, something that Mobius summons up from his chest the way he summons any skill granted to him by the Templar ways, subtle and directed around him. A powerful fervor against demon-kind.

From his sleeve, a letter opener. It barely counts as a weapon at all, but he launches himself bodily at the demon with a yell. It might stop him in his tracks, or it might take a tumble down the stairs or even over the banister. Whatever the case, he makes to plunge the makeshift dagger into what more or less constitutes the thing's neck.

[armd]

Any chance that Abby may have had at retaliating to any of this — a hasty curse slipping free when Edgard roars and opens his mouth wide, wider, enough to split his head in two — is lost when the thing appears beside her so suddenly she can't get her mace up in time. It swipes. She ducks.

Her answering gasp is lost in the sound of the case knocking her down, wood hitting the floor, the soft spill of books out the sides. Stillness, for a moment. Then movement, one arm appearing out from underneath, scrabbling against the ground, Abby trying to decide if she can somehow wriggle out or if she needs to lift it off of herself entirely.

She's breathing hard, now pushing with her shoulder, head stinging where she hit it. At least it's less heavy with all of the books out of it.

Demon-Edgard is roaring in the background.

[pathlit]

Nodding to Viktor, Jayce has every intention of joining his side -- of removing him from the situation entirely -- when the roar of pain snatches his attention. The horror of the demon's reveal overtakes the surprise of a suddenly apparent third individual; it turns Jayce's blood cold, freezing him in place until the shelves connect with--

"Abby!" is an involuntary gasp, alarm burning through the terror. Jayce rushes to the toppled bookcase, the demon, the demon shrieking in the back of his mind all the while. Falling onto a knee, he grasps the edge of the case and lifts, affording her more room to scramble out.

[grindset]

It's changing now, screaming and splitting, rearranging itself with contortions beyond reason. It's pulling the room down. It's so fast, it's so—

Mobius charges. A qunari has appeared from nothing and the nod has evaporated. "Abby," they say, in unison, and then Viktor shrinks against the shelf behind him. He flinches bodily, seems on the edge of retreat, shoulders turned and watching over his own arm, transfixed—

[charmoffensive]

A starting leap in the direction of where the demon appears beside Abby is stalled to a slide, flinching backwards at the avalanche of books, the heavy tumble of the shelving. Shows teeth in a wince, and then pivots automatically for the sound of that demonic screeching—above.

(That all was horrifying. But, he is busy, and will simply have to process it in a minute or two.)

With something that is both faith that Abby will be fine and someone else will see to her (he hopes) (in his periphery, that appears to be resolving) as well as an understanding of where he, Loxley, should be in any encounter, he starts taking long strides for the staircase, letting one of his daggers drop to the floor.

The item that springs into his hand is pointed upwards as soon as he can get an angle, and gives off a sharp metallic twang. A hand crossbow, firing off an innocuous barbed bolt, aimed for where he can see distorted muscle hopefully up near the demon's throat, if not, his shoulder.

And then continuing up the stairs, bounding leaps, two or three at a time.

cw: idk its gross

[muckspout]

The demon, no remants of Edgard left, rises taller and taller on his spindly legs, stretching into his true form and then leans down and with an equally spindly arm knocks down Mobius, dagger clattering. The audacity of this man to yell at him and also attack him!

The mouth opens again full of teeth and gives a preternatural screech and then abruptly stops. Even the demon isn't quite sure what happened, did he run out of voice the way humans do sometimes? The pain then consumes him and he realizes that he has been struck in the throat. He tries to screech again and with every gutteral gasp--once, twice, and again the arrow digs itself deeper. The demon makes vicious eye contact with Loxley realizing who struck him.

The demon's legs appear to fail, it's large enough now that the fall is tremendous and takes down two more bookcases with it. Then the demon is gone--into the floor? Only to appear under Loxley, knocking him head over feet. But the demon is unable to rise tall as before and with one more hitching gasp, it explodes into a slimy sludge that rains down on the others and the books.

[favoriteanalyst]

Great, Mobius thinks, this is it, dying before fulfilling his purpose to a creature he's supposed to know how to fight if only the commanders had taken the rare threats as seriously as the more common ones. He sprawls out along the stone with the air knocked from him and several aches from the hit and the impact both, damned spindly thing packing more of a wallop than one might think, letter opener skidding away. He'll fight it tooth and literal nail if need be. Dazed, he raises a hand, intent on summoning up a blast of Fade energy--

--and turns out he doesn't even need to. Loxley has taken full advantage of the distraction, flanking, firing, hitting his mark. It falls, then disappears, then appears once more to give the qunari something to think about.

And explodes. Lovely.

He wipes some slime from his cheek and sends out a silent prayer to on high. Maker knows that all could've been a lot worse. Hefting himself with a wince to sitting up, his mind starts catching up to everything that happened in very short order as the effort of his own abilities eases back to nothing. "Abby? Is Abby okay?" Given she took the brunt of a whole bookcase.

cw injury description

[armd]

"Fine."

God, she's pissed off more than anything else, inching the shelf up bit by bit. Somebody takes most of the weight from the corner and together they lift, enough that Abby can pull herself out and get slowly to her feet, testing. It doesn't seem like anything is broken; thank fuck the shelf falling didn't push her own mace into her.

There is black slime everywhere, thick and clinging to books, floors and people. To add insult to injury, it stinks.

"Wait, is he fucking dead??" Abby's braid whips the air as she turns her head, searching for a body. If there was a body left behind, she could at least kick it with her boot. At the back of her head, there is blood in her hair, from where she hit her skull falling.

[pathlit]

One day, Jayce might gain enough experience to utilize all readily available resources to mitigate morbidity in combat. Alas, today is not that day; he does not consider deploying his anchor-shield quickly enough to protect against the showering of demon guts.

Grimacing, he glances over his shoulder and grumbles, "I hope so." He looks at Abby again, eyes narrowing at the sight of blood on the backside of her head. "Got a little something back here," he adds, tapping the back of his head to illustrate.

She's standing and sounds cognizant so far that he isn't immediately worried about it, so his attention turns to a raised call of-- "Viktor?"

[grindset]

"Here,"

is Viktor, hand up at shoulder level. Left to manage himself, he'd kicked the Thaumoscope a little farther away and begun to follow it from the immediate skirmish when the demon fell. Had he remained where he was, he'd now be under one of those toppled bookcases, but here he stands, merely uncomfortably close to the wreck of them, whole and upright and wearing some of those mucilaginous remains.

That's two, now, reduced to some kind of... ethereal soup. A catastrophic loss of physical integrity if ever there was one. Rowntree didn't allude to any explosion during their brief exchange—perhaps the other one met its end less violently.

Looking over the slime-splattered destruction, collapsed shelves and ruined books, half in a daze, he says, "We should collect samples."