faderift | closed.

Almost in tandem with Flint's whistle:

the same kind of odd subtlety yet oppressive discomfort of a shift in atmospheric pressure, and while glimmering radiant light flashes out, it's mostly Derrica that feels it. The staff in her hands, thrummed with potential, is now a slightly unwieldy stick as her tie to the Fade is severed.

It's joined by the whisper of steel and leather as three Templars, crossbows discarded, draw their blades, and advance on the group. The two others draw back to reload, and one helm seems to clock something about Flint's signal that has it turn to look to the trees.

Edited 2022-07-04 21:27 (UTC)

Whatever surprise can be mustered is considerable when your opponents believe you to be dead. In the split second between Derrica's barrier going up and the Templars drawing their blades, he has time to evaluate the exact placement of his spell where it will hit three of the Templars (the two reloading and one of the ones advancing) without hitting any of the Riftwatch agents or the carriage.

When he releases the spell, it requires standing, and while it doesn't require dropping his hood, when it falls he doesn't pull it back up. But presumably that's not the first thing the Templars notice. The first thing they probably notice is why the spell is called "fist of the maker," as it slams its targets to the ground hard enough to rattle their bones.

Force magic and rift magic have a lot in common, at least in the spells that Tsenka is most likely to reach for in a fight — pull of the abyss is not one she's under the impression it'd be a good idea to pull out of her arse casually, and firestorm is sort of overkill if you're not fighting a goddamn dragon — which means that they also work spectacularly well together in tandem. Julius rises, and at his side Tsenka drops into a crouch, sweeping her staff out as if she might knock someone's leg out from beneath them,

but when she releases stonefist and a boulder bigger than her torso fires violently across the space, the way Julius has already brought them down means the collision is not necessarily with their legs and the force of the impact on them, pre-grouped, is a mess.

In all of this, Bastien finds time for an eyebrows-up glance of gratitude in Derrica’s direction. He did not come dressed for being shot at close range. Or for being run through. Light leather fit for travel, metal scaling in a few key places, the Riftwatch half-cape in case it mattered—which it doesn’t appear to.

He takes a few cowed steps back from the drawn swords, hands up, eyes darting and calculating behind the alarm. When the magic hits (and hits), he moves, which he is dressed for. A forward dart, a downward drop into a crouching walk, and his blade out on the way to take a stab at the less-guarded tendons on the back of one of the Templars’ knees.

He pops up on the other side and segues into trying to wrest the crossbow away from the one who’d been distracted.

It's sickening.

It's a severing, concussive pressure that smothers the sparks gathering at the tips of her fingers and the heavy, blunt weight of her focus lashed to the top of her staff. It knocks the wind from her.

But only for a split second.

And then she is abruptly so angry. She feels the venom gather in the back of her throat, vicious sentiment: How dare you.

Bastien goes one way, and she breaks towards the other. Dances outside the impacting wreckage of stone and force to swing her stave with all her might at the first helmeted skull that presents itself.

Negotiations, over.

Edgard stands still a moment as 'negotiations' fail. His eyes dart wildly around. He'd been told he was needed on this mission, but only if he could keep his head. It was the wrong thing to say, now he questioned every step. And after all, who was he in combat among mages?

He shuts his eyes and takes a breath. Horses, He thinks, Flint said horses. He opens his eyes, stands tall and aims his bow and takes down a horse. As the magic hits, he misses, his hand shaking. Don't be useless! He takes another breath: Bastien pulling a crossbow from a Templar. He aims for the Templars' eye and lets fly.

It's quick. One minute thin lips and terse words, a barely kept air of civility. Then it breaks: the whistle of arrows, spells and stones, the air bending and flexing, and the earth itself crackling. Nothing should come to this.

Riftwatch's volley lays half the troop low. Then Bastien cuts one way, Derrica the other--another arrow whistles from the treeline, counterpoints the dull crack of Derrica's staff, two grunts of pain earned. Tiffany moves center, bullish, hands wrapped tightly around her sword. Her step is surer, her intent focused. She's not lived this, day in and day out, but she trained for this--the part where peace fails, where something goes wrong even if you wish it didn't. Now it's brute force for brute force.

Her eye is on the leather-armored agent, the one who had done the talking. One of the Templars--twice laid low, first by force and then by stone--shoves himself up, helm crumpled around his head. Tiffany shoulders him back down to the dirt, and smashes at his face with the pommel of her sword to keep him there.

A well executed ambush should always start and end the same way: fast. The volley of violent magic flattening half the unit, the shrill scream of a horse, collapsing onto its knees and dragging the carriage at an angle. The human cries of pain as a knife finds a soft place, and then silence when an arrow disappears through the narrow gap of a helm.

It is a three second nightmare and it doesn't take any longer than that for the leather-armored agent to recalculate his chances.

"Wait!" he barks, hands empty and flung into the air. The Templar laying at Tiffany's feet groans and lets his sword slip from his gauntleted hand. Still posted at the carriage, half-ducked as if fighting the impulse to dive for cover, the agent shouts again, "Drop your weapons."

But it is not to his enemies this order is directed, and a Templar still standing, winding back to return Derrica's last blow in kind, lowers her sword down.

The sword lowers, and Tsenka rises from her crouch, the blade of her staff dug hard into the earth in the process, and at Julius's side she nearly vibrates with the desire to

to

it's obvious what to do. To strike again while their guard is down, and have fucking done with it. It is not the presence of Flint or any of the others that stays her hand, not any inclination on her part to mercy or to moralizing, but the knowledge that even she can't pull anything out of the minds of the dead. Her lip curls, and she does not relax the threatening hold of her staff, but neither does she unleash another boulder, holds. Waits.

Some of them can always die later.

Bastien's arm pauses in the midst of the extension that would have pushed his blood-streaked knife—which is only a knife, one no one would look at him askance for using at dinner—against, or into, the barely-exposed side of a neck. The crossbow from the felled Templar is in his other hand, unloaded and held incorrectly. He might have smashed it into a head, given the opportunity.

He is not disappointed to be robbed of that opportunity. When the dust and adrenaline have settled better, he'll think about the fellow on the ground with Edgard's arrow protruding from the mask. Avoidable, if a show of intimidating force was all they needed. A shame.

But neither have settled yet, so he keeps the knife up, unwilling to fall for a feint. He looks to the Commander for orders or an example to follow. And he fills the sudden tense silence, for himself, with a cocky little knife-twirl.

That venom is still burning in the back of Derrica's throat.

The Fade is a far off prickle at the very tips of her fingers. Out of reach, but the distance is closing. She might grasp the hem of the Veil, but that does no good.

Yet.

The templar in front of her barely manages to lay her sword down before Derrica kicks it hard enough to send it skidding out of her reach. It is not comparable. But it is something. Repayment, of a kind.

But Derrica too, is looking at Flint as she says, "We should separate them, away from the carriage."

There is a question at the end of that, space for Flint to overrule or refine or substitute, however he sees fit.

Julius, for his part, is more surprised than Tsenka to find his first reaction to a quick victory is ... disappointment. He's not usually a vindictive man, but he had wanted to make those who had ambushed him and Marcus feel the same level of frustrated helplessness. It isn't a pretty sentiment, and he deliberately puts it away.

Instead, he glances at Tsenka and Edgard and motions his head toward the others. The element of surprise has been profitably spent and the battle is over; he doesn't see a remaining need to hang back.

Later maybe, there will be some space for a flicker of approval to be spared in Derrica's direction. At present however, Flint simply briskly corroborates the suggestion as he cuts up from the rear with his unsheathed sword still in hand:

"Move them down the roadway two dozen paces in that direction and collect their weapons. Edgard—" This, barked with the terse carrying volume of an order passed down the length of a ship. There is a dead man in the mud of the road, an arrow shaft jutting from the eye slot of his helmet.

(Aim to incapacitate, he'd said.)

"Gather their horses and lead them a ways back in the other direction. You,"—is addressed to the agent in the light leather armor—"Step down."

As if Flint's tone has smacked him in the head, Edgard lowers his bow and his head, walking quickly towards the horses. His hands shake a little. It was wrong. The wrong call, everyone thinks so and he should too. Or maybe if he hadn't it would be one of ours lying still on the ground. Or the whole front group: Bastien, Derrica, Flint and Tiffany, all gone. Or more and many. He sees it, then breathes slowly out, letting the vision go.

He'll focus on the horses as he was told.

closed.

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