chrisisofaith | IC Contact

[Well this is unexpected…but not unwelcome.]

Consider me available.
I don’t bar fight much anymore, but I’m willing to make an exception.

We could drive too fast and weave through traffic if you want something less social

Maybe drink too much on the tallest building here

These are my go-tos

Normally I'd be concerned but who am I kidding? I'd be way too happy to see a fucking walker at this point.

Count me in, you pick, as long as there aren't any clipboards.

Gather your poison of choice and then text me again when you're ready. It'll be a quick trip.

[Is he going to waste a 9th level spell on this? Yes. Why the in the hells not?]

[It doesn't take long. She's not far from poison of one stripe or another at any given time.]

Waiting on you.

Good. Step through.

[A moment later, a large, circular door opens before her, awash with the light purple energy Chris’ magic sometimes suffuses.

The Gate transports her to the wide ledge of the tallest building in Duplicity, its angled glass top standing like a monolith behind them. There’s no railing here, nothing more that a small service door and a hook base by it for anyone to use, but it’s locked tight.

Chris sits with his legs dangling off the edge while the wind pulls at his hair. It’s not unbearably windy, but the height provides enough breeze to be cold and uncomfortable.

On the other hand, most of the Up is sprawled out below them like a living picture.

The cleric raises his bottle of brandy in greeting.]

Glad you could join me. Don’t fall off, it’d not be pretty.

Once upon a time Rosita would have balked at traveling this way, but she's become accustomed to Vrenille's portals; the magic is even the same color, or near enough anyway, although there's no pleasant bell tone with this one. It doesn't matter. Chris says step through, and through she steps.

She had some warning about the possibility of ending up where she ends up, but she hadn't been sure and anyway - hearing it and seeing it, feeling it, are two different things. Her eyes widen and her arms automatically go out for balance, but she's steady. She doesn't jump when startled, she doesn't leap without looking, and she never loses her feet.

No, instead she stares down, transfixed. She's shivering almost immediately, her newly cut hair whipping around her shoulders with the wind, cheeks flushing - but it is, indeed, beautiful.

"Death isn't known for being pretty," she answers, belated, still holding her bottle of rum in a now very tight grip indeed. "Especially not being pasted by this kind of a fall. Did you fly up here?"

"Death isn't pretty? As a death cleric, I'll try not to be fussed for that one." He's joking, his tone light and his smile small. Death isn't pretty...but it also isn't ugly, it simply is and always would be.

He holds out a magically warmed hand for her to take, an offer to come sit with him as she wanted.

"Yeah, I flew. It's a bit of an effort for the height and how rough the wind blows, but it's worth it. Come sit a spell...watch the ants go about their programmed lives, most without a thought to spare about how shitty everything is."

Whether she joins him or not, once she's settled as she liked, he opens his bottle to take a good, long, swig off of it. "Want any? Not my best Brandy, but it's smooth enough for the drinking and effective enough for the mood."

"Yeah, yeah - I was a deathly woman for a while, I know," she assures him, because as much as she has experience with a lot of unnatural death that has left its mark on her, she was raised to think of it as a beautiful, natural, transitional thing herself. Her relationship with it is different than most from back home.

She eases down next to him, eyes steady on the ledge and careful in her movements, but join him she does. And she'll trade her bottle for his.

"I just grabbed the fullest bottle I had," she admits, sniffing his. "I'd apologize for using you for helping me get rid of it, but I'm prepared to do my share."

"I remember that...I think I sang to you as a siren." It was a little hazy there in the lake, but he remembers singing to death herself.

Regardless of her admission, he takes a healthy swig off her bottle. "Like I'll complain about helping a friend rid herself of shit alcohol. It's still alcohol." He takes another, smaller, sip and toasts the bottle towards her.

"But...in exchange for your shit alcohol, I'd surely like to know why we're needing the rush of open air and gravity tonight."

She tries not to think about la catrina. Things go a bit strange on her when she does it too much, for too long.

She smiles anyway, toasting his bottle to hers, drinking. By the time she's letting it soak into her tongue and breathing around the sting, by the time she's swallowing, he's saying that and she feels the expression drain out of her face.

She leans forward and stares down, first only a little, but then a bit further.

"What's the angriest you've ever been, Chris?" Her nails dig into glass, and cement.

"I don't need details of what happened. Just what were you prepared to do?"

It takes no time to know his answer. He feels it like an old wound that would never fully heal right. He could remember the bile in his mouth and the fire in his veins and the tears blurring his vision as he threw raw magical energy uselessly at a creature far beyond his capability in felling.

All over the cold, pale, corpse of his twin sister. The scream he'd given had left his throat raw for days and he'd wanted to cry when it started to heal. How dare his body heal and move on when hers never would? How dare their feet carry them away from the burning and destroyed city of his home when his heart was burned to ash on her funeral pyre? His friends spoke of war and retribution and finding answers and attempting to rebuild and all Chris wanted to do was scream and tear and break everything around him until they could tell him why it should even matter anymore?

Rhyt had wanted a life in their city...all Chris had ever wanted was to be free of it. To leave and live his own life.
But not like that. Not at the cost of her.

He swallows too hard and takes a very long drink. "Burn the gods down from the sky, starting with the impossible metal dragon that dared to exist before me in that moment. I wanted to tear it apart...gear by gear...until I'd torn my fingers down to stumps doing it. I wouldn't even have cared so long as I could have just made it hurt."

Edited 2024-05-14 22:52 (UTC)

IC Contact

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject