heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

The splintering of the room's contents about her prompts a flinch, a mindless throwing up of her arms to protect her head and maybe some sharp sound of distress as a thrashing limb crashes before her, bringing down shelves and dozens of books after it. To say that she ducks and weaves to avoid the assault would be to give Wysteria more credit than she is truly due—it implies some sense of strategy, where in reality she has none. Luck is not the same thing is good sense or practiced instinct as she stumbles half blind and fully desperate through the unlit library without any real sense of where the spirit is manifesting, and only the memory of where the door had lain, and hardly any grasp at all as to the state of—

"Ellis! You must come away from it!" A book is snatched blindly from the nearest shelf and chucked with force at the deepest miasmic point of shadow at the room's dreadful center. Arcane energy thrills over the receipt.

The inevitable outcome of this misadventure: a full suit of armor for Wysteria.

But while that consideration flashes across his mind, it takes an immediate backseat to the roiling mass in front of him. It's a toss up as to whether the impact of the book did any damage, but it was a reminder of a second person in the room. The swiveling, shadowed face shifts towards the secondary threat, and there's nothing for Ellis to do but shift with it, keeping himself centered in it's vision, even if he can't singularly counter the abundance of lashing tendrils. The sweep of his mace swings low, clanging against something substantial enough to provoke further pained writhing.

"I'll be right behind you!" is perhaps not the most reassuring thing, when Ellis has held his ground. A mace is not effective at a distance. "Get out into the hallway, and we'll go!"

Would this follow them? Is it bound here? Ellis doesn't recognize it, but he's hopeful that it's contained to the house. The disturbances had seemed centered here, and surely, surely just this once they could get lucky.

In the dark on dark, with the glowstones scattered and lost, there is nothing at all reassuring about his assertion. But what is there to be done?

Wysteria flings another book at the writhing mass of tendrils, and then— "I'm going then!"

And she does, ducking another lashing of dark tendrils and fumbling through the uneven terrain of scattered books and splintered shelving and the warped moss slick floor until she reaches the doorway.

And slams into the closed door, briefly baffled. She tries the latch and only once she discovers that it's stuck does Wysteria realize the wrongness of the door's alignment. Hadn't it been open? Why would they have closed the doors behind them?

Somehow, even about the roiling, ozone crackle surrounding the creature, Ellis is still very aware of the rattle of a locked door. It raises the hair on the back of his neck, dread lancing through him.

It's a miracle she hasn't already been hit, even with the creature's attention more or less held. The room is not so big that Ellis can rely on that forever, and it's not so certain that he can kill this creature. When his mace lands, the sense of it is substantial, a connection is made, but the effect is so much less than it should be.

Ellis has no magic, no cleansing run on hand.

"Wysteria! What's happening?" is shouted around the thing, and over the sucking clashes of the mace as Ellis tries to drive it back towards where he thinks the window might have been.

Can they realign whatever it was Wysteria had severed between the rings? The thought comes and goes, followed by the recollection of the pendant and the blood. If there was a ritual, then how would they manage it? Wysteria would have to do it on her own, and Ellis isn't sure—

"I don't know!" Is cried back, alarm flashing brilliant and dreadful in the sound of it. She can hear it in her own voice—that unrestrained bolt of fear that runs through, "It won't open!" as the latch rattles uselessly in her grip. She throws her shoulder against the door again. The thump of it is lost to the destructive cacophony.

Why hasn't the spirit at the room's center collapsed yet? Why hasn't Ellis killed it yet? It's going to devour them in this ridiculous little room and it will be her fault for being so eager to be foolish.

There is the hot prick of frustrated and terrified tears both, and the crack of some shattering plaster, and it's only when she throws herself against the door a third time to no real effect that it occurs to her that she's learned nothing at all from the entirety of the afternoon. That she is being ridiculous. That Ellis will be the person to suffer for it if she isn't quick about it.

She releases the door handle and levers her hand at the door. An instant later, in a bright shock of nauseating green light and force and the liquid heat fade tang of ozone, the heavy wood snaps free of its hinges and crashes outward into the corridor beyond.

Later Ellis will consider this: the sound of such fear in Wysteria's voice is exceedingly effective motivation.

But in the moment, he has time enough only to process that Wysteria is in this room and she is afraid, and he will have to kill this creature because the alternative is—

Strike that.

This is what Ellis had thought her shard capable of, back on the road. But he will take it now, a boon when they had so few other options. That he's maneuvered himself into a less than ideal position to flee is certainly less important than bellowing across the room to her in the wake of splintering wood:

"Go! Run, go on!"

Congratulations can come later. In the moment, Ellis hoists his mace and brings it down with all his might at the point where he thought he saw two eyes, bright spots shifting within the deep, shadowy center.

The answering screech raises all the hairs on Ellis' neck. It's not dying, but it's hurt, enough so that Ellis can duck under thrashing limbs and sprint towards the door. Wysteria won't go without him, he knows this. Even if she's gotten as far as the hall, there will be a point where she looks back for him, and Ellis doesn't need her to return to the room.

Or that is the plan, right before one of those distended, shadowed limbs lashes out at Ellis' legs and brings him crashing to the ground halfway to the door. (Very literal crashing, considering the plate.) Even years of experience still means the processing of rolling up to his feet is slowed, just enough to be a liability in the way it would not if Ellis were the type of combatant that wore leathers instead of armor. The sort of thing that's only an issue when there's no one to provide a distraction from the process of finding his feet.

Which, in Ellis' immediate calculation, there is not.

She has indeed made it into the hall, for let no one say that Wysteria Poppell is not capable of being at least fractionally sensible in times of great stress. She has not, over the course of service for Riftwatch, hidden under tables while various parties descended into assassinating chaos around her out of cowardice. These are merely rational acts. For why should she not do as directed in this? Ellis tells her to Go and she does. In moments such as these, he has never given her cause to disobey him.

(And she is frightened; terrified of that dreadful thing which lives in that pitch darkness; of that fact that she in part summoned it; of what will happen should it follow after them—)

The crash of plate is very loud.

In the room, those myriad limbs take full advantage of Ellis' newly prone position. They lash after him, felling hard against his plate with such shockingly powerful impact that it's a blessing he has fallen forward rather than back and receives the blows across the sturdiest sections of his armor. Still, the hammering impacts are heavy enough to compress, to dent, to mangle as yet more limbs dredge the spirit's main form forward from the rotted library's center. If it's multitude of limbs are whip quick, this part proceeds with all the elasticity of a weeping, tumorous growth. Something to be levered and pried and pulled along by its grasping tendrils. What doesn't beat Ellis finds some murdering grip at first one heavy boot and then an arm or his mace, avaricious as it is unintelligent with mad fury.

(Maybe that's what it is: rage. The kind that consumes. The kind that curses. The kind that begets the most insidious kinds of pain; which lurks in dark places and grows like a cancerous thing, its numerous wretched branches insinuating itself in all directions.)

With a screech of armor and warped floorboards, it drags him nearer.

The crack of Fade energy is loud like a thunderclap. Or like something being ripped open. Or the sudden rush of air to fill a space which once was occupied. The acid green flash briefly illuminates the whole of the room, searing the dark outlines of the creature at its center on the eye. It recoils from the concussive force of Wysteria's anchor with a twisting metal shriek.

It is not so dissimilar to how Ellis imagined death would find him.

A singular mistake is all it ever takes. A mistake and then the exploitation of it, and then—

And then Wysteria breaks the chain of events apart. (Ellis had hoped she'd kept running, feels some immediate, muddle of relief and anger that she'd stopped her flight.) The single-minded, ravenous work of those tentacles falters. The thudding charge of adrenaline keeps the damage to his body at bay. There's no time to inventory the extent of injury, only the recognition of an opportunity and the instinctive reaction.

The coiled, spindled limb around his arm loosens, and Ellis wrenches free, uses that momentum to whip around, bowing his body up to give himself enough reach to splinter the clutching, sucking coil around his ankle.

"Again!" is instruction in spite of himself, strategy overtaking the desperate need for Wysteria to remove herself from this place. "Do that again!"

Once more, that will be enough for him to roll up onto his feet and meet her at the doorway without the process of levering upright being yet again interrupted. Then they hope whoever bound this creature into those rings bound it to the room, to the mansion, whatever keeps it from pursuing them into the woods. There is nothing about this great, oozing mass that promises speed, but it has locked onto them and means to consume them, whatever that looks like. Ellis has no reason to assume it wouldn't give chase to the best of it's ability, to the detriment of whatever crosses it's path in the process.

Again! he says, and this work has always been more demanding than it appears. It requires gathering her thoughts. The conscious focus of direction. Tapping into something which sends the sensation of hot fire up the length of her arm and into her shoulder and to the very core of her. Yet Ellis has hardly gotten as far as Do that again! when the consecutive burst of concusses free of Wysteria's extended hand in an explosive discharge of veilfire.

The spirit recoils. It makes the sound of a thousand mirrors shattering, or like the point of a knife shrieking across the face of a glass (or a stone). Just inside the doorway of that pitch dark room, Wysteria wavers.

It's enough.

Or it's enough for Ellis to make it onto his feet, and sprint out of reach. (Maybe out of reach. It's hard to say how long those limbs extend.) Almost immediately he is aware of all the places where the armor is digging into his body, the points where compression threatens to constrict his breathing, the immediate spiking objection from his ankle when he puts weight on it. Pain thuds grey at the edges of his vision.

None of it matters. It won't matter until they're both out.

"Time to go," is the first thing he says, just as he reaches her, hand immediately catching her elbow to steady her, then draw her along with him. Behind them, the hair-raising shrieks are only rising, going from pained to enraged. "Come with me."

This is a gamble. Running and hoping it cannot follow. Running, and hoping that the blood-rusted pendant in his pocket having remained untouched keeps this demon locked into this place.

The sound of it's pursuit follows them down the hall towards the staircase landing, progress marked by splintering wood as it begins to force it's bloated form through the entryway. Ellis refuses to look back, focus narrowed down to his hold on Wysteria and the distance between them and the main doors. He'd left her things in one corner, he remembers, and if he is fast enough, if Wysteria keeps running, if that thing is stalled by the narrow corner, it will not be so difficult to retrieve them.

In a clatter of plate and to the thump of her much worn field boots and her hammering pulse and the crackle of somethign giving to pressure at their heels, they rush from the corridor. There is no time to find the grip at her elbow reassuring, but it does the job it most desperately needs to do: keeps her on her feet and moving and centers her in a world which has begun to go nauseatingly crooked about her.

(This is the most she's used the anchor in a single day, much less a single hour.)

They reach the staircase landing. They careen down the stairs. They have not quite reached the ground floor when, with an ear splitting shriek and an ominous descending darkness, the burbling form of the unleashed spirit bursts free from the upper level's corridor. Its thrashing limbs reach onto the railing, dragging its heaving shape toward it with a single minded ferocity. Spirits have no use for stairs; there is nothing to stop it from prying itself to the rail and over it. In a few seconds, it will come crashing down into that once grand foyer and if they fail to cover the ground now then it will be between them and the main door.

Had Ellis been in better condition, he would have entertained the idea of Wysteria's equipment further. Had Wysteria been steadier on her fight, he might have still let go of her to send her ahead through the door. Surely there is a back exit. Surely smashing through the smaller corridors and hallways would slow down the pursuit of this creature.

But above them, the rail is splintering into kindling. The ceiling is groaning under the weight. And there is only so much time to get Wysteria out the door. Neither of them are sprinters, but the threat of having their only known exit blocked off turns out to be more than sufficient motivation to spur them on in their haphazard, clattering descent down the decrepit staircase and onwards.

It's almost enough.

They cross under the lip of the upper level in the same instant as the spirit impacts onto the floor behind them in a spray of debris. Ellis is instantly aware of the proximity, that they are both too close even if the door is only a few steps away.

Ellis shoves Wysteria hard, all but throwing her towards the doorway before he turns on his heel to meet this creature. What else can be done? He pivots and squares his feet and raises his eyes to watch as the first blow comes.

Only it doesn't. The lashing slice of limb meets a barrier, scattering sparks of blue-white magic as the netting of the thing absorbs the blow with nothing more but ripples. The answering wail of outraged rises to a shriek as Ellis staggers a few steps backwards.

Taking his eyes from it is nearly impossible, but he darts a glance back to find Wysteria in the same moment as he says, "I'll bar the door."

An almost ridiculous measure, as they both know a door won't hold it. But the urge to make some further attempt at sealing it away before they flee is vital.

Nonsensically, Ellis does not want it to see the direction they travel in.

She is easy to find, having staggered through the main doors and just catching herself on the lip of some cracked old decorative planter worn to a nearly indistinguishable lump by time and weather. Pale though she is from either exertion or terror, Wysteria is shockingly quick to straighten out of her full body flinch in response to the crackle of the barrier and twist back toward the sound of his voice.

For a moment she stands framed in the doorway in something near to uncomprehending silence as the roiling form of the spirit crashes repeatedly against the barrier.

"Oh, but—" Their things, is a nonsensical point of contention. With a jerk, she separates herself from the idea and moves to help shift shut one of the heavy doors.

"I know," Ellis answers. "We'll come back for it."

There is a note of real strain in his voice. But Ellis knows very well how to use adrenaline and practicality as a wall between himself and the gathering storm of pain. Panting, he sets his hands over hers and between them, the door is slammed shut.

It does not dampen the yowling shriek of fury that emanates from behind wood and stone and magic.

"But we need to go," is urgent in spite of himself; he'd wanted not to panic her. "It's not safe to do anything here."

The horses have startled, but gone no farther than the grassy stretch just beyond the door. Ellis draws his attention back to her, asking suddenly, "Can you ride?"

She is paler than Ellis ever recalls seeing her.

"Can you?"

As a reply, it could easily be an indictment—some defensive reflex along the lines of Yes, of course she can ride. But there is some anxious, high thing in it, the outline of a shape preparing to crumple in on itself: worry, the brief flash fire flicker of guilt. If she hadn't been so stupid as to insisted on being so very clever—

Beyond the door, the sounds of that terrible thing have yet to abate.

In a different context, she might have been offering something impatient and snappish, as is sometimes the case when he asks after her one time too many. But Ellis recognizes the look on her face, and shakes his head to dismiss it.

"I'm alright," is true so long as no questions are asked. He can be less than alright when they're in a more secure position and not at any point before that.

His hand comes back up to her elbow.

"Let's go," Ellis entreats, quieter, some labored edge in the words. "It's not safe here."

And won't that be an interesting fact to impart to Tony, whenever one of them is in a position to report in over the crystals.

If there is some line of questioning she might pursue—the wretched shape that his plate is in, perhaps, or how exactly he plans to get his leg high enough to get his foot in the stirrup—, then it is reserved in favor of drawing away from the shuddering door. From the veranda. From the overgrown drive, choked thigh with sapling trees and thick underbrush. He is upright. He is well enough. It seems mad to insist on lingering here any longer than necessary.

It's fully dark by the time they have wind their way back toward the fringe of the little village in the valley. They are drawn in by the first light glowing in a window, and though Wysteria has mentally prepared some thing to say it turns out to be unnecessary. Evidently they look dreadful enough to inspire immediate hospitality from the carpenter they find in the little house here at the very edge of the wood, or Ellis' armor warrants just enough respect, or, or, or—

What does it matter?

The floor of the workshop is sawdust. They're given two blankets and a lantern. Is it better than camping in the cold? She doesn't know. But it feels more secure to have four proper walls and a roof overhead, to have a little flame burning very low in the wood fire stove, and to have a door which may be neatly barricaded with a bench drawn out from under one the work tables.

"I think I'll have to cut this one," is frustrated, something bristling at the edge of her voice like temper or the threat of tears or both. The first two buckles on this side of his armor had come undone easily enough. This one is being pulled taut enough by the dent of the plate that there's little to no give. No flexibility whatsoever to uncinch it with.

One saving grace of plate armor: it is near impossible to bend in certain ways while wearing it. Especially not when certain parts of the armor have been crushed to a point where they compress the chest and dig gouges into a man's back.

Ellis' quiet should be unremarkable. In any other circumstances, going some time in near silence would not be noteworthy. But there's a specific quality to this lapse into quiet that marks it out as something different. Quiet should not feel so labored.

Yes, he has traveled in worse condition. Yes, he knows how to shoulder pain like a burden and press onward, all attention turned forward and the rest walled off somewhere distant. But it's more complicated in some respects, to put himself to that task in front of Wysteria. There just isn't very much of him to spare in the moment; propelling himself onward had taken precedence over everything else.

The moment they'd heaved that bench across the door and Ellis had leaned back against the worktable, some of that taut, braced quality leeched away. If he hadn't been wearing a piece of metal wrapped around his body, he might have slumped, then listed to one side until he was simply laid out in the sawdust.

Still, his head lifts at Wysteria's assertion. It isn't a question, though Ellis momentarily, uselessly, considers her with a slight furrow to his brow, as if there are alternate options they might discuss, before—

"Alright."

He'd put a hand onto her hip and kept it there from the moment she'd drawn up beside him. That grip flexes now in silent encouragement, thumb pressing hard against the sturdy fabric of her dress. The armor will mend. He can't keep it on in this condition. Wysteria's summation is correct.

There is a little working knife in her belt which her hand moves directly to, and then she decides that's absurd. That the last thing they need is for her hand to slip on some toughened leather and so stab him between the woods. So—

"Very well," she snaps, batting his hands away with the impatient cruelty of the distressed so that she can remove herself to go clattering through the various pins and hooks of the dimly lit carpentry shop until she at last produces a remarkably heavy pair of shears from some sticky drawer.

"You must release all your breath," she informs him strictly once she has returned to pull this way and that on the dented plate in an effort to work the shears' blade between the drawn taut leather and his side. "And then hold it that way until I can—Raise your elbow higher—Yes, there—just—cut this—"

It requires both her hands to induce the shears to creak closed through the strap.

It's all very efficient, and Ellis understands the necessity of it, but the rearrangement of the plate is a painful business. (Raising his arm is only a painful business because he is exhausted, having spent his strength elsewhere today.) The only sign of it is a sharply drawn breath, inhaled and held, teeth gritted, until the shears sever the leather.

The grinding shift of plate almost obscures the sound of Ellis' reaction, how hard he breathes out, what that expression of relief sounds like and what it says about the discomfort that had been eased. There is some punched out breath, skewing towards good but the word not quite forming. His skin is clammy with sweat, jaw working around some further sound as one hand immediately, absently moves as if to pull the entire thing off, except—

"Just cut the rest," he tells her. His hand drifts back to her waist, heedless of further admonishment; it's as much of an instinctive movement as the urge to yank at his armor had been. "The other side, just—it won't matter now, if they replace one strap or four now."

Urgency creeps in along the underside of those words, the sound of something caught in a trap, stopping just short of thrashing from it.

There is something in the shape of it that she can barely hear but can clearly detect that catches her short. It prompts a flickering look up into his face.

"Yes, all right." She quickly shifts over to inspect the other side of the cuirass. "Once more. Just—yes, breathe out if you please."

It shouldn't feel so much like a desperate thing, but it seems so very important to pry him free of the armor shell quickly that she is a little clumsy with the shears. What if he's broken something? What if a rib has punched through something? What if the armor is what's keeping everything tentatively in order now, and stripping it from him is going to— Snip, goes leather. Snip, goes an errant triangle of the gambeson's topmost layer of fabric.

"There. There, it's finished."

"Good," manages to be a proper word this time, fraught and frayed, punctuated by the crunching creak of the plate. "Wysteria, help me."

And between them, the wreckage of the plate is lifted from his shoulders.

Ellis' penchant for dark-colored gambesons masks any immediate signs of injury. And even newly freed, Ellis seems less interested in ascertaining exactly what sort of damage managed to bypass his armor than he is in drawing in a slow, deep breath as his shoulder slump and he bows forward by degrees. His eyes close as he exhales again, a hand returning to catch at her, find wrist, then hand, attempt to lace their fingers together to hold on to her.

"Alright."

An assessment of the moment: alive, still upright, armor ruined.

It could have been worse.

Alright, he says, but she as opinions on the subject even as he sags gently forward and makes to catch his breath. One hand, he is permitted. The other Wysteria immediately puts to work fussing at the neck and shoulder of Ellis' gambeson—not undoing anything (for she would need two hands for that), but fleeting after the idea of doing so while she says, "I should have said something before we road all this way. We might have stopped anywhere in the wood and seen this done earlier. You will have to take this off so we can be sure nothing is too poorly off. Oh, there is blood here."

Here is somewhere in the dark curls of his hair behind his ear. Some incidental graze of splinters, or from when he'd been knocked from his feet perhaps? It's dry now and crunches under the probe of her fingertips.

She draws back. It's not by much. Only the narrowest little thing so she might look him in the face.

"I would strongly suggest that you sit down now."

"Aye," comes quietly, though agreement doesn't spur Ellis into movement right away. His eyes open, solely to look her over once more. Unharmed. Color in her face again. Safe, and whole. That's a different kind of relief, easier to absorb.

Satisfied, the hand is ceded back to her. It is a mercifully short distance from the worktable to the floor, where Ellis slowly, wincingly bends forward to work the laces of one boot free against his better judgement. If the ankle is swelling, he might as well leave it as it is.

"I wouldn't have stopped on the road," he tells her, a minor bid to ease her mind that perhaps discounts how persuasive Wysteria can be when she puts her mind to it. "Are you alright?"

The most words he's strung together since they rode away from that manor.

It was that silence which had been so terrible as they'd made their way through the overgrown wood. And the dread which has lived in its wake—a palpable fear that if she induced him to break it, what she would find would be some awful thing to legitimize the hand of guilt currently around her heart and threatening to crush it. He might be injured. Worse, he might feel the impulse to agree with her: that this is all her doing.

Standing still, above him now as Ellis has sloughed to sit in the sawdust, she first nods wordlessly and then—realizing how ridiculous it is to give a man who isn't looking at her a silent reply—clears her throat and says, "Yes. Perfectly well."

She needn't cling to anything to remain upright any longer anyway.

"Here. Let me fetch you some water from what was left with the horses." Meaning, the tiny assembly of saddle bags and the single waterskin which had stayed with the animals while they'd ventured into that seemingly benign place. She is quick to fetch it, and careful about kneeling down beside him in the sawdust so that he needn't raise his arm too high to have the skin passed to him.

cant believe dw hid this from me

an OUTRAGE who do i call

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don't fail me dreamwidth

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spins roulette wheel to see if this notif arrives

denise heard us talkin shit

notifs return when danger is passed, coincidence??????

Carolboard.jpg

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