Event Log: Assassin

[hadrielmods]

Who: Everyone!
What: The Assassin event
Where: Throughout the city
When: April 15th-23rd
Warnings: Inevitable character death, potential horror and gore and unpleasantness. Please remember to tag for warnings in the header if it things get too bad!

The morning of April 15th in Hadriel is cheerful, with artificial light streaming through your window. Your blankets are warm, jabberjays are shrieking, and you're probably going to experience a murder attempt today.

Maybe it'll be from a stranger, maybe it'll be from a friend, but the bottom line is that everybody is after somebody and nobody is safe (...okay, twelve people are safe, but that's beside the point). Time will only tell when you'll be overcome by that murderous rage and try to kill someone else. The best thing you can probably do at this point is stay calm, keep your head high, and try not to die for the next eight days.

Helpfully, Rage will have restocked her armory for the event, for those of you have yet to arm themselves. Additionally, for a limited time only, the armory will be stocked with bear traps, tripwire (in both 'general wire' and 'barbed wire' flavor), and voice recorders. Use all of them, use none of them, just get on out there and kill each other!

Oh, and one last thing...

► This log covers April 15th-23rd.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► Did your assassin catch up to you? Please remember to hit up our death post!

Comments

[closerift]

He clinches her upper arm with a crack and she cries out, drawing it close to her chest with the other, still backing away. She can run, but he'll just stop her. He's stronger and with magical abilities, and she... won't give up either way. Things have been worse, have been more dire. Usually, she's managed her way out of them.

"My name is Cecily Trevelyan," she begins, almost wildly. "I came from Ostwick in the Free Marches of a place called Thedas. I had-- have three brothers, and I miss them, but more than anything I miss the other members of the Inquisition. They've become my family and most of them aren't here, but I need to get back to them, I have to be able to get back--"

She's rambling, her arm flaring up with pain, but she doesn't stop talking. Not if there's any chance that what she says might get him to stop, to at least bring him pause so she can escape. Maybe someone will hear and come to help (though she isn't about to scream out, not if it might bring others to potential harm).

[glacius]

At first he seems like he might not--her voice grates like nails on chalkboard in his ears, and the alien hisses and glares. As she continues he actually goes as far as to rear his arm back, and he seems a second away from striking her again, this time with more intent--but then as she mentions her family, and how much she misses them, and about how much she wishes to return to her own universe... something finally seems to slip through in Glacius' mind. Because he knows that plight--it's his own, isn't it? Not a moment has gone by since he's been there that he hasn't missed his own people, his own homeworld, and wanted desperately to be reunited with them...

Glacius looks at Cecily again, seeing her for who she actually is now, not just a target assigned to him by a cruel god. He sees the injury he's dealt, and the pain and fright it has caused... and he hates himself for it. With awareness of what he's done slipping back into place, the alien immediately reverts his weaponized limb back to its normal form, and both arms dangle limply at his sides. Then the otherworldly being collapses, falling heavily to his knees in the grass before his upper body pitches forward, and he has to support himself with his hands as well. He bows his head and tightens his hands, fingers raking furrows through the grass and dirt as he tries to keep himself from shaking.

"I--I'm sorry," Glacius chokes out, not daring to lift his head for fear that looking at her might cause him to feel that ugly, terrifying rage all over again. He doesn't want to be the monster that everyone assumes him at first glance to be; he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He doesn't yet realize that he was being manipulated--he's not savvy enough yet to the level of control that the gods can directly effect in their prisoners--though when that clicks, it will be its own can of worms.

[closerift]

He changes and she sighs audibly, catching her breath, relief flooding her like a drug. He may not be finished with her, but it looks more and more that way every second, and she's never been so grateful for running her mouth than in this moment. Usually, it doesn't exactly help, but she's gotten lucky between distracting Corypheus at Haven and now offering bits of her life's story to the alien.

"It's all right," she says quickly, in a low voice, because though he'd been trying to kill her for virtually no reason, it hadn't been him. Not really. "I've been manipulated by them before. I became a weapon. It wasn't my fault then and it isn't yours now."

How could she possibly blame him? She feels nothing but gratefulness that he seems to have regained his wits... and also her own rage, though it's directed, still, toward another person. To a woman she hadn't killed and still has to distance herself from.

Cecily steps away slowly, still grasping her arm, which sings with pain.

"I think I should go: it'll likely be easier on the both of us." She takes one step away, and then another. "Is that all right?"

Better to ask, considering his reaction when she'd last tried to leave.

"We can speak when we've all got our wits back," the Inquisitor adds firmly. "I'm sure it won't be much longer now."

Or, she hopes so.

[glacius]

It's alright? Glacius doesn't understand how it can possibly be alright--and he's about to retort, but Cecily carries on, leaving him only with more questions. Them? Who is them--the gods? He thought that they manipulated the world around their prisoners to make them feel things, not that they could manipulate their feelings directly. The knowledge that he's been played like this, that his will has been subverted to force him into harming an innocent--an atrocity in the alien's eyes--has a quiet rage begin to bubble in his hearts...

... And, unfortunately, that's the worst thing he could be feeling right now with Rage's game still in play. It compounds on what had made him lose control before; the alien had lifted his head in surprise at Cecily's revelations, and just looking at her again is enough to make his anger flare once more. Thankfully this time he realizes what's happening, and the alien drops his upper body to the ground, curling his arms up over his head with a guttural snarl. Tiny ice spears begin to rise from the ground around his body, growing tall and sharp...

He'd pierce himself through before he let the gods use him as one of their tools again.

"Go," the alien chokes out, beaten to into this pathetic, curled kneeling position by the weight of his own resolve. Anything else he might say--any other apologies that he might offer--are trapped inside his gills underneath quavering operculum. He's not going to move or even let himself look up until long after the Inquisitor has left him.