katabasis | [psl] dos rowdy boys

Not so close to catch him in the radial burst of heat, no, but the burst of flame is near enough to raise a hot spike of instinct alarm under the skin—an animal sort of not-flinch in the thud of the pulse that comes from all things without magic being so close in proximity to its more bombastic (literally) workings.

He'd turn his face away from a burst of Antivan fire splashing across a ship's rail too.

The sword is held as the wyvern twists off from it, gouging the cut deeper as the corpse looks to cringe uselessly from the gout of fire tearing through its interior. Sends the vestigial wing limp, a fleshy fan dragging across the uneven paving stones no longer fit to snap anyone across the face (or face height arcane barrier).

It affords him the opportunity to cut in close alongside, turning the cutlass blade to cleave bloodlessly down behind the wyvern's crown.

It buckles beneath the blow, blind eyes rolling wild in sockets and herky-jerky twitches rolling down serpentine spine. With fire eating through its ribcage and a leg pinned to the ground, which it resists enough to tear the flesh that hasn't yet turned to stone, all that's left is butchery.

And immediately, another, heartier screech maybe a block away. One can imagine these things crawling from the water, if news of the docks being under attack has merit, and flooding into Kirkwall like infesting snakes. Or perhaps there aren't so many as that, but it's impossible to know from the street.

That streaking pulse of fire dies. Stone cracks, begins to dissolve, transformed flesh returning to its previous state and claws prying back up from the cobblestone. Marcus letting up, carefully, trading in spending his energy on faith that Flint has it—in time for the sound of screams and panic further up the street to register. He looks, sees the spill of people running, sets about casting. Fiery runes decorating the stone at that juncture, and everyone too afraid of the thing behind them to take much notice of the queer light they scamper over.

When the dead thing in pursuit of them twitches and crawls into view, hissing gouts of venom and flaring its wings—fire, a thick column of flame erupts upwards from those runes, engulfing it. Renewed screams of those nearby are just as much in response to this shock of heat and light than the thing being immolated.

He is engaged enough with the task of incapacitating the first wyvern's jaws, and then crippling it's stringy foreleg with similar single mindedness that he almost misses the glittering sheen of the glowing runes before they're detonated in a gout of fire and sizzling flesh. Chaos burst down the street with it, running figures veering in confused directions as smoke comes heaving down the roadway before it seems to remember that it's lighter than air and begins to climb rapidly up over their heads.

The first wyvern is dead already and is insistent on continuing to be that way. But a lolling head and the last whack of Flint's heavy blade parts it's forelimb from the body at a joint just as the last of the transfigured flesh sheds its scale. The body lurches, ungainly and slow, dangerous due largely to its weight and the thrashing of its broad tail— but lingering here simply to hack the undead animal to pieces is as untenable as rending the scorched mess on the other street into disparate parts simply to see it progress fully arrested. They've more pressing matters to attend to, the blue crystals to hand illuminating with the rapid fire chatter indictive of real trouble and not just confusion pouring up through Kirkwall's lower warrens.

Fuck the street, he decides in the same moment that he reaches out, catches Marcus by the back of the shoulder and shoves him in the direction of the crooked building leaning out from this end of the street. From here, he can see the patterned shade stretched over a section of the roof—suggesting some access either through the building or along its back wall.

"Go. Meet your griffon there and rendezvous with the other riders. Get me a sense of what's happening while I see to the ground."

Across the way, the burned out husk of an undead wyvern writhes in place, fire eating through too much mass for proper mobility. Twitches, stills, smoke rising off of charred black flesh, flames continuing to nibble and lick at now unmoving parts.

Marcus is shoved by a step, stops, looks back at Flint. Where a clipped word of acknowledgment and an immediate departure would go, there's hesitation, a snag of something that hooks him in place. What scuffling had just transpired while Flint was busy hacking the monster behind him to further death hasn't been enough to dispel the abjurative magic clinging to him,

but it doesn't stay forever. Flint has been fighting alongside mages for long enough, by now, to have some sense of the spell's impermanence as well as roughly how many hits it can take, so Marcus doesn't say anything before reaching back across that distance to snare a grasp at the other man's arm, and imbue that casting once again with a pulse of power, the glimmer of light that clings to himself dimming, transferring.

It doesn't make it all feel more right that he should let go and make for that building, but Marcus does anyway, adding, "Tell me when you've made it to the docks," past his shoulder as he goes. Gathering his crystal back into hand.

Then Flint too is off, cutting sharply down a narrower side street where easy prey and the likelihood of finding a wyvern might be momentarily lessened. That gleam of protective magic goes with him, arcane light clung in a bright haze about his person.

Better for all involved that Marcus be airborne. For all that abandoning the street entirely would be a mistake, someone must have eyes on the scope of this thing. And a mage, particularly one without his staff, benefits most from a good vantage. Meanwhile, he can make do with scraping along Kirkwall's back streets and side alleys, winding his way rapidly down through Lowtown's mercantile squares and poor boroughs—following instinct, and his sense of direction, and the general way that the city collapses downwards toward the waterline to guide him more than any real recognition for the particular avenues themselves.

And then, a detour. Cutting not for the docks, but for the stockyards and auction houses and their associated cut rate public houses which cluster in the streets above it. On a good day—and this one has been fine up until very recently—there are a dozen of the Carta's lowest and half over that many hired swords to be found there.

A hasty process after what feels like a lengthy wait: getting into Monster's saddle and roping the harness about his waist, shingles clattering aside under talons as she launches up into the air, snowy wings powering higher. Once in the air, it's also hasty, seeking out one of the small pouches strapped to her saddle, procuring the vial of lyrium tucked within it and drinking it down.

Kirkwall is decently lit even at this hour, street lamps and windows shining brightness from within buildings, a full moon, but it's still no easy thing, attempting to make sense of the narrow clusters of streets, the stream of those people who haven't found a place to shelter. The crystals gleam with readiness to transmit the continuous back and forth between those in the sky, but eventually, a message directly to Flint will shuffle itself to the forefront when he takes a moment to check it—

"More are coming from the water," and Marcus sounds even enough that he may as well be on the ground rather than flying in wide spirals above a city under attack. "The Gallows-side docks are overrun with them, but the gates are down, now. They're still coming into Kirkwall. They've collapsed the western wall by the harbor."

There's time, up here, to think of why in between the other more immediately relevant questions, but it's about as evasive as trying to discern the strategic priorities of several nests worth of spirit-possessed dead wyverns.

The answer is slow in coming, though that's to be expected. Meanwhile, the Kirkwall Guard will have flooded into the streets of Hightown by now. Maybe they have begun their push down, even, while in the streets just above the docks are peppered with bursts of arcane light amand the sickly green flare of anchor magic at work. There are members of Riftwatch there in the fray, working their way steadily in the direction of the harbor.

When Marcus has the opportunity to answer it, what the message on the crystal says is—

Not for him, for starters, but rather some broad order: Flint has twenty swords with him. They are moving west for the ruined wall. Anyone on foot in Kirkwall is to make every effort to join them, but they are strictly not to take the low road directly along the water and between the harbormaster's warehouses. The wyverns are thick there.

Then, more pressing (though the message can be no more than a few minutes old): "Rowntree, see that the fire doesn't jump over into the city."

Which makes no sense at all until, seconds later, a gout of Antivan fire pours down the very thoroughfare in question—cutting a short brilliant vein along the harbor front, fueled by the bitter salt water and eager to make a meal of the dark shapes clambered from up out of it.

Marcus is already close enough that its all as loud as it is bright, draconic shrieking and hissing as fire erupts, burns, eats. Smoke curls and shreds apart under the beating of powerful griffon wings, his own magic cutting them a path of clearer air as Monster spirals above, white feathers catching the light if anyone were to spare a second to look upwards.

Maybe those near enough will feel it, the invisible force that pulls flames back from brittle, salt-weathered wood, the way heat seems to pull itself towards the water edge, or maybe most of the men that Flint has gathered aren't acquainted with the subtle sense of a mage's work in proximity.

An explosion of splintered wood, nearby. A wyvern, one caught on the wrong side of the fire, crashes through some shack, the purpose of which is made irrelevant when rendered to pulp and fiery kindling as the creature screeches, writhes, half-maddened by Antivan fire clinging oily and flaming to its scales and thrashing tail. It charges without hesitation for the gathered swords, maybe Flint amongst them.

From up here, details like that are hard to tell, and Monster's gravelled screech as she's pulled into a dive is just as hard to make out from the ground.

In the street, the shape of the fire and black smoke is dense as a weight—a force exacted against the body, embers splashing to burn fine pinpricks into fabric and the bare backs of hands, and liquid fire boiling away the moisture in cracked paving stones. There is the rush of heated air, and the thunder crack! of imperfect stone splitting under sudden heat, and the shriek of undead things as, burning, they surge from the splashed fire.

The charging wyvern bowls through the collected sword points and axe edges. Half a dozen skate off the surface of tightly knit scales. Half that find some soft point by chance and are driven by momentum into the stringy fetid flesh.

Flint, the fabric tie stripped from under his belt and wrapped now about the head and face to protect himself from the smoke and billowing sparks, finds himself being forced backwards—half clinging to the sword punched in under the undead wyvern's shoulder joint to keep his footing as the animal moves bodily through them, and half bracing to see the blade worked deeper.

No, there's little telling the shriek of a griffon from the scream of possessed wyvern here on the ground.

Which means there isn't so much warning when a griffon drops from the sky.

A controlled drop, talons extended, as though the wyvern were a promising looking elk who hadn't looked up at the right time. Monster lands with her full weight, claws sinking into rotting wyvern flesh and bone, screeching early victory as her wings flare, and she ducks in to rake her beak through where the creature's skull connects to its spine, a spatter of ichor following the tear. The undead creature in her grasp doesn't freeze up as something more alive might, but she only latches on harder.

In the saddle, sootier and a great deal more windswept than they parted, Marcus braces against the lurch of riding out her attack, a tight fist about the reins. Panting, breathless from the sudden plummet, and not able to do much to help or hinder his own griffon's participation in the battle for the moment.

A look out at the street and the people gathered, and backwards towards the ruined wall.

He flinches. It's the natural reaction, whole body twisting from the huge shape that comes plummeting out of the sky through the ash and smoke. The griffon's impact with the wyvern briefly flattens, but doesn't quiet, the undead wyvern. Wrenches the sword directly out of Flint's hands, and has him tripping free of the fray's slashing talons and thrashing wings with little more than his belt knife.

For what is maybe five seconds. Then his boot heel finds the handle of an axe similarly knocked free from its owners grip, and it promptly becomes Flint's axe in time for a second wyvern to come staggering up through the melee drawn by the stench of blood or the shriek of its sibling spirit. Or it comes simply because the fire burns, and all spirits in the waking world are drawn to the bodies of the living with the kind of hunger that makes all creatures insensate. Never mind that there is a modest armed throng waiting to rebuff it, and a griffon ripping into one of its fellows.

A brief look—he can hardly mark Marcus, save for the general shape of him there in the soot smudged griffon's saddle—, and this his attention too diverts to the wall.

The struggle of Monster attempting to rip apart the still thrashing wyvern beneath her is a little like attempting to stay on the back of a bucking bull, Marcus gripping onto the saddle and reins for the time it takes him to concentrate—

And collapse incorporeal, forming into smoke and flowing quickly down onto solid ground, embers trailing. Boots scrape in a slight stagger, and only the nearest of the gathered swords might spook backwards at the sight of a gust of smoke roiling under its own power and turning back into a man. The rest are more occupied with the crashing appearance of the second wyvern.

From here, he can mark Flint, face covered and all, more immediately for his stance and shape than anything else. This time when an arcane barrier is cast, its runes scatter broad enough to imbue at least half the gathered company, whether they recognise it for what it is or not. The flash of his magic only barely precedes Marcus moving alongside while his griffon makes messy work of the wyvern behind.

No time for an Alright?, when men and women, wielding weapons, are already attempts to ringfence the wyvern in to ensure it doesn't break through.

What there is time for in the scattering embers and floating fragments of ash under the blue glow of the arcane barrier is the thought that the wall won't have come down for nothing. Something will come passing through it sooner than not.

Then the second wyvern's lashing tail comes cracking across the face of that warding. It recoils, swinging it's great head impatiently around, and snaps it's jaws at the closest brandished sword. The wyvern earns a shout of surprise and the blade punching directly into the soft palette. Because the wyvern is already dead, this doesn't discourage it from clamping its rows of needle pointed teeth down on the arm of the unlucky unguarded mercenary.

Flint with his axe and protective barrier leaps reflexively after the animal. A half dozen men and women do the same, looking to stab and slash and hack at the fire mutilated creature—a kind of animal impulse of their own as the wyvern's jaws tightens and the caught mercenary's scream adds a curdled note to the butchery Marcus's griffon is presently engaged in.

Existing in tandem with the rise of fall of the axe: the consideration that they will need to cut up and away from this soon, and make all haste farther down the harbor to meet whatever means to make this evening more complicated than it already is.

Fire and strange green light stabs in through the crowd here and there—with decent precision, though some may feel a superficial sting of close heat or the odd prickling presence of raw Fade magic, may shy back from it. The brunt of these attacks strike true, burning desiccated muscle from bone or weakening hide under the next slamming down of the axe.

Eventually, someone gets a blade in at the hinge of the monster's jaws, and two others pull the mercenary back, his face grey and his arm and torso coated crimson, but breathing.

Behind Flint, a familiar sound, a sharp summoning whistle. It has Monster finally leave off the now disabled wyvern, clambouring down and nearer. Marcus turns, climbs back up into the saddle, and there is a brief wave of vertigo, a rush of blood where some internal chemistry is hastily configuring itself to make up for depleted reserves. It isn't unfamiliar, just something to sit with a moment before he barks across the way—

"Flint," and there's no conscious decision between it and 'Commander'. One is more economical than the other.

A fleeting glance follows in answer (to the whistle, maybe, as much as the shape of his own name). It hardens a moment later, prompting a barked order from the man to one of the an elven woman extracting her saw toothed sword from the side of the mangled wyvern's flesh and for him to bend and snatch a sword from off the smoking ground.

("Right, we'll see to the quay. You there! Stop gawping and see to tying it off. Maker's fucking tits, have I got to do everything myself," she grumbles, shucking black blood from the blade with a shake as she steps across a strewn bit of flesh.)

When he straightens, the axe is shoved unceremoniously into his belt and the sword simply remains in hand as he strides through ash and ember toward griffon and rider. He extends an arm to be hauled up when he gets that far. There's space behind the saddle, and little point in walking in the direction Marcus might see them flown faster.

"Our people should be nearing the wall if they haven't found more trouble on the way."

The last fastening of his own harness is yanked into place, and the leather strains as Marcus leans down to grip Flint's arm, helping haul him up. Monster is hardly able to stand still, let alone properly bow to make his going easier; the fire, the smell of blood and the clamour of strangers, the rotten shreds of gore caught on the rough edges of her beak. The reins are pulled in tight, neck arched and eyes blazing, to stifle some of her energy.

With the other hand, freed once Flint's gotten a leg over, Marcus collects up the half-loose leather lead intended for passengers, to guard against the likelihood of slipping off the back, and offers it as he starts to apply some pressure to the stirrups.

"Aye," he says, more acknowledgment than affirmation.

Most of the sooty cast to his clothing and skin is likely to do with his own magical run-off, where the only meaningful fire that's broken out are the nearby purging flames. Clean, otherwise, less gore-spattered or even mud-speckled from racing through Lowtown. Just smudging grey, and the slightly acrid scent of the Fade, beneath campfire overtones.

Monster peels off from the crowd with a tug to the reins, moving to find an adequate position to take flight. "No sign of the city guard making a push, yet," he says, meanwhile. "Some barricading, nothing coordinated."

"In Hightown, no doubt," is a blasé remark, the Guard presently so devoid of relevance to their current affairs that he can't summon the will to be heated rather than factual.

(This is probably unfair, in any case, but neither is he in the mood for charity.)

Instead, Flint twists the loose line twice about the arm and cinches himself in tighter behind the saddle seat. Finds a one handed grip, a fist closing on the back of Marcus' clothes. Between his knees, he is aware of a ripple and flex of muscle as the ash colored griffon's body clambers clear and tenses. Feather pinions flicking, thick cords of sinew unwinding.

"How much have you left in you?"

Magic. How far can he yet reach with it?

A grunt in the affirmative. More or less, and likewise not relevant enough to elaborate much further. Hightown will be fine, and Lowtown will continue to be in shambles for the foreseeable future.

Flint's fist clenches tight and Marcus glances down and aside to confirm this as signal enough that they're clear for flight, but pauses first at that question. Some amount of internal measuring, before he says, "Enough for a scrap," and he wouldn't even really know how to better answer that to a mage who has first hand reference, never mind a man who is only sympathetic to one.

A fight's a fight, and that internal fatigue that is neither physical nor mental but some other thing is familiar enough to manage. A sharp kick and Monster coils up, and catlike stillness in the haunches is a sharp contrast to her restlessness a moment ago. Then the lurch, the catching of air beneath wings, the ascent.

"I can keep something in reserve to protect us," louder, over his shoulder, "or focus fire downwards."

So he will more useful than Flint presently is, stuck on the back of a griffon with a hand axe in his belt and and unsheathed short sword. He longs for a crossbow. But there's nothing for it. He will just have to find some other way of utilizing his arm.

"Hold until I tell you which," is barked against the wind, the stomach plummeting sensation of leaving the ground, and the muscular working of wings and expanding lungs that sees Monster from the street.

In short order, they have pinwheeled above the thickest of the black smoke, and above the dying fires, and Kirkwall recedes into balls of lamplight and the pale spiderweb of paved streets reflected in either them or the ragged moonlight. Here and there: bright flashes of arcane energies, and the surging shapes of figures in the dark. Ahead of them, there is a dark scour of shadow splitting the city's wall, and in the rubble a fight is mounting.

The motion of the griffon is too extreme for a a spyglass to be worthwhile even if he'd a hand not occupied by either the tether or the sword. But from even this distance, he can mark a scattering of figures—a glint of gleaming red lyrium light, or the crackle of some arcane casting maybe; and a throng of the same wyverns they'd faced in Lowtown and along the harbor front. Though here is a brilliant flare of neon green Rift-light, and a matching flare of elemental fire. Marcus is hardly the only capable member of Riftwatch.

The arduous work of Monster's wings evens out into a glide as they circle ride around where the fighting has thickened at those crumbled walls. One might have expected an army, maybe, but there is no marching force making good use of the fallen wall.

A fight, nevertheless. Runic flashes and contained blasts of fire and Fade-green. It's spilled into the city like an injection of venom, but Riftwatch and anyone brave enough to lend their arm has done something to stop it from flooding much further than the now shattered market square that's turned battlefield.

"See that?" Marcus shouts back, and points.

Past the main scuffle, which is a clash of Venatori currently dammed up in a wide thoroughfare by Riftwatch and anyone brave enough to lend an arm. Back, towards the wider open space, where morning would have seen the square lined with merchant wagons and fishmongers. Now, a circle of figures, and little more detail than this, until the glow of runic patterns begins to light the cobbled stone beneath their fit, concentric pulsing circles of queer blood red glow and rippling shadow.

Up here, there's no chance of hearing whatever they might be saying or, more likely, chanting, and perhaps it wouldn't be useful to them if they could. When Marcus tilts in his saddle, as if straining to hear, it likely has nothing to do with anything that the traditional senses can pick up on.

There is no second set of stirrups on the griffon's tack, otherwise he might make some absentminded effort to rise in them (as if an additional two inches would really make any difference, given they already have such a favorable vantage to observe the chaotic tableau laid out under Monster's shadow). Instead, Flint wraps the secondary tether once more about his forearm to steady himself—an equally reflexive motion in answer to the thrill of adrenaline that rises unbidden in answer to the pulsing red glow emanating from the ring of figures.

There are six of them there. It's not so great a number, save that they must all be mages. But their pointed lack of interest in the fighting among the rubble and on the streets beyond suggests some focus is required for the work in which they're engaged.

"Take us in. Low." His grip, adjusting in the sword. "We'll rake them as we go."

That circle beats, a sickly red pulse then shivers outward—light stretching its fingers in fits and starts along adjacent pathways like water creeping up and errant hem.

"Aye Commander," maybe goes unheard when Marcus doesn't shout this back, instinctively unwilling to draw focus, but it hardly matters when Flint can feel the bucking of movement beneath, the coiling in the shoulder as reins are adjusted. Answer enough.

All three might well be of a mind, predatory adrenaline surging, bracing. Marcus frees a hand on the side opposite to Flint's sword, held out and aside in preparation to draw magic from beyond the Veil, a pulse of rippled heat emanating from open palm, and the smell of smoke. Both of these things, easily cast aside by the rush of cold wind as he kicks Monster into her dive. Marcus hunkers down, tight into the saddle, as cognizant of Flint behind him as he is focused on the six robed figures below.

Something strange, in that split second. Marcus can feel it as an invisible rending in the Veil—expected for a summoning of this power, its lines spiderwebbing out through streets as though they were imprinting one massive rune upon the city for Maker knows what purpose. But Flint (and Monster) can detect the other thing too—the unlikely and unmistakable smell of blood, thick and coppery in the air. Tainted, repulsive of an animal level.

But they slice down like a swinging axe, Marcus flinging flash-fire and Monster giving a piercing hawk's shriek.

They only need to draw attention for a moment. Then the others fighting up and over the shattered rubble of the wall will be through it—if not all, then a half dozen at least. They only need to complicate the question as to where the assault is coming from; the rest of Riftwatch on the ground will make ample use of the distraction. Mages or no, the number of Venatori there in that stinking arrangement are hardly so many as all that. And as with all mages, they must be dealt with quickly and decisively or risk accomplishing nothing at all.

The ground rises rapidly to meet them, briefly more brilliant and red than the fire Marcus throws down before them. The heat is sharp and instant, and the sensation of the air splitting around it or buckling at the behest of the Venatori's work tangible even against Flint's own senses. There is a feeling when magic is at work—the hind brain shivering, a ripple of goosebumps breaking across the skin, the stomach rising toward the throat without any assistance from the griffon's dive.

They're among the circle in an instant. With the kind of unlikely precision that only an absurd moment of adrenaline can grant, the point of Flint's sword drives directly down into the shape of a shrouded figure as the griffon falls out of the sky amidst the lick of fire. And then a wing beat and the sword is wrenched from his hand and they are shrieking out of the embers and away from the too bright glare of the Venatori's blood soaked work.

Three seconds, he thinks. Then a volley will follow them.

This has been done many times before, in the past—a swooping down, the frantic lift. Monster barely needs to be told via reins or stirrups what to do, screeching as they tear through the circle. Well used to the flaring of fire as Marcus casts a broad wall of it beside her, a couple of feathers curling and singeing but only that. She swings back up towards the sky as if on a pendulum, already on an ascent before she needs to flap her wings.

That she has wriggling prey in her talons doesn't slow her, snatching up a robed figure only to let them be thrown loose of her claws, the impact too great for the cultist to even make a sound save for when they hit the ground.

Three seconds. Maybe less. The air is cold, and still strangely tainted with organic copperiness in scent.

A lurch. With the ascent, it's natural to sit in the saddle (or behind it) in such a way to counterbalance the tilt, but as Monster suddenly dips, Flint may find himself jarred forwards into Marcus' back, and hear the grunt of irritation-surprise from the other man as instinct has him setting his heels in his stirrup as Monster moves against instruction. A swerve aside, a wild turn, Marcus barking a vowel sound in an attempt to corral her.

And only then that might feel it, an odd psychic prickle at the backs of their minds. A moment of disassociation, confusion, anger. A more immediate and violent effect on the mind of a less intelligent predator, maybe.

It's paired with a weightless belly sick moment as the griffon moves one way and the momentum threatens to carry him another, little more than the dig of his heel and that tethering of the narrow cable lashed about the arm to drag him along. Later, he will mark the bruising about his forearm and it will be the least of his concerns but the part of this most easily criticized. He has worked with lines all his life, and should know better than to be foolish with them.

But in the moment—

A hot flare of animal fear and impatience both. A demanding constant growl as his hands scrabble for purchase at the saddle's cantle. The griffon veers still further. Bucks and squirms sideways in some unlikely aerial acrobatic effort. It's coincidence, he thinks (if that's the word for it) not intent, that sees the violent burst of some arcane bolt go searing just shy of their port side: a bright white flash of magic ripping across the dark, burning away the impression of stars above them and the glow of the fire below.

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puts thumb over timestamp

what's a timestamp

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#rememberwhen