Fate - First Reply Bomb in the Garden

[Elliot Aldmar]

OBAN, LOW TIER, NORTHERN QUARTER​

They were going to be too late.

Elliot Aldmar, under the false identity of Darrethyn Ilsendrith, foreign courtier of the Beaufort Court, ran with a squad of Obanese soldiers down the avenue. Restaurants, food vendors, wine markets blurred past. The heavy clanking and rattling of the soldiers' armor trailed in their wake. Orders were shouted to the citizenry to "MAKE WAY!", and their dire urgency spoiled the pleasantness of the afternoon.

"There!" Elliot yelled, pointing.

The Purple Valley wine shop. That was where one of the zealots was supposed to be. The building was intact, so it was clear that it hadn't happened yet.

The soldiers burst through the Purple Valley's door, flooding into the shop, Elliot the last to enter. Every single woman in the shop was either seized about the neck, thrown to the ground by arm drags, or outright tackled by the soldiers--much to the shock and alarm of their male chaperones, their sons or husbands. The scattered sounds of glass breaking filled the shop as bottles and cups were knocked from shelves and stands, these in addition to the yelps of surprise.

Elliot spotted a woman in the near corner of the shop, missed by the soldiers. She had a satchel in her hands, clutching it tightly, close to her chest. Elliot rushed at her and threw a punch squarely into her jaw. Her wide eyes rolled up into the back of her head. She collapsed, sliding down with her back against one of the storefront windows before coming to rest as a heap on the floor.

Elliot squatted down and wrenched the satchel from her hands. He opened it quickly as the woman groggily started to drift back into consciousness.

Nothing. Nothing but everyday items. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The soldiers started to call out similar findings, or rather, the lack thereof: "It's not her."

"This one's innocent."

"I've got nothing here."

Elliot tossed the satchel aside. Hushed by dreadful creeping realization, his voice, "Something's wrong. She was supposed to be here."

Wherever the zealot was in Oban, everyone around her would be in great danger.

 

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ooc: thread still free to join?

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

((Yep, it sure is. However you'd like to place your character in is up to you ))

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[alphabunny]

Unaware of the chaos going down only a block away Rou had cornered a mean looking man in an alleyway. With her dagger to his throat she waited for answers. The man stuttered, his earlier "rough and tumble" dimiener had now faded.
"I-i don't know anything I swear." He gulped, sweat running down his grubby face. The hood of Rous cloak cast a shadow over her face, allowing her to seem much more intimidating.

Rou kneed him in the gut and he crumbled. "Go!" The man scattered like a rat. The Earl ain't gonna like this news.

She diecided that all she could do know was head to the pub and buy herself some ale before handing the man unfortunate knews.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

The Obanese soldiers gathered by the storefront of the Purple Valley. Elliot had his hand on the door, preparing to open it and depart with them, when one of the soldiers spoke.

"Seems the whispers you heard counted for nothing." The soldier sneered behind his helm. "Elf."

Elliot glanced back over his shoulder. "I have good sources in Dornoch. Maybe some of your Obanese fellows in the courier network have sympathies which lay outside the Kingdom of Dalriada."

The sneering soldier's eyes flared at the insinuation that there had been a leak. One of the other soldiers raised a hand, suing for peace, and asked in a calmer manner, "Then what are we to do now?"

"First, we--"

BOOM!​

The explosion across the street from the Purple Valley rocked the storefront, blowing the doors off their hinges and shattering all of the glass and knocking Elliot and the soldiers all flat to the ground amidst the shower of debris. A violent cloud of dust plunged the Valley and a large section of the street outside into a thick haze. Above it all, a fireball curled upward toward the afternoon sky, the orange of it dissipating with height and leaving only black smoke. The concussion was powerful enough to be felt even from Rou's own vantage a block away.

Elliot's ears were ringing fiercely. He lay on the floor of the Purple Valley, broken glass and copious amounts of spilled wine littering and pooling on the floor all around him. He struggled for breath--it felt as though a boulder had slammed into him, and he clutched at his chest and neck. Blood ran liberally down the left side of his face--one side gray, the other now red.

He tried to sit up.

And failed. Falling onto his back once more, wheezing as scattered sunlight was only just breaking through the haze of dust.

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[alphabunny]

The glass shook in the window frames of the pub as the bang went off. Rou could not see a thing out of the window due to the dust. She stood from her bar stool,placed coin on the counter and went outside to inspect. Following the wreckage, she was led to street that was home to the Purple Valley. At this stage the dust was so thick she couldnt see a thing ahead of her. Sceptical, Rou pulled her dagger from its sheath and held it i her hand, still allowing it to be concealed by the sleave of her coat.


People shoved and pushed trying to make sense of their surroundings, picking up items they dropped and searching for any wounds. Next to Purple Valley was a small corner shop which fixed shoes. Rou went in there first, she knew an elderly dwarf owned the place and she went in to see if the old man was alright, fortunetly the only damage was a couple broken glass jars which contained nails in. Then she walked into the purple valley, she could not even go through the doorway without caution, a mixture of glass and blood covered the floors.

The first person she found on the ground was Elliot. Alarmed with the amount of blood she saw running down his face her instincts had kicked in. From many battles and all her years on the road she knew she needed to make sure the man was awake and keep him that way to help privent any brain injury or slow down one that had already taken place.

Rou knelt down and placed her palm under his head and lifted it slightly. "Hey..." Rou tapped is cheek with her other hand. "You awake?" Rou waited for a response and as she dude she looked around the room. A few others lay unconcious, some slowly coming too and the rest scrambeling out as quickly as they could.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

The restaurant across the street from the Purple Valley wine shop was in ruins. Through the haze of dust, scattered flames of a magical nature licked the destroyed walls, the broken floors. There were screams of horror, of shock, of pain, from those who lived and from those who had seen and flocked to the site.

Elliot, meanwhile, grimaced heavily on the floor of the Purple Valley.

He felt a tapping on his cheek. Heard through the intense ringing in his ears a voice--not one of the soldiers. He opened his eyes once more, slowly and with great effort, as if this simple action itself brought a disproportionate agony along with it. Blood vessels in his eyes had burst from the pressure of the concussion, streaking them through with chaotic lines of red.

When his vision focused, he saw that it was an elf. Or a half-elf. He wasn't sure. But he was sure that he could see the pointed tips of her ears poking through her hair.

It wasn't the Dornite zealot he and the soldiers had been looking for. She would be a human--which, in Oban, was something akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

"I'm awake," Elliot rasped, trying once again to sit up. This time he succeeded. He took in a breath, and coughed harshly as he inevitably inhaled some of the dust.

Outside, shouts from guardsmen and other soldiers who were just now arriving on the scene: "ALL OF THE WOMEN! DETAIN ALL OF THE WOMEN!!"

A rumination. Perhaps nothing was more reflective of Oban than that: a magical incident occurs, and the populace immediately assumes it to be the fault of a woman. In this case they were accidentally correct, and yet in cases with a perpetrator contrary to their assumptions, they would be blinded.

Elliot looked up to Rou. "They'll come for you too."

Elliot knew for a fact that it wasn't this elven woman who was responsible for the attack, yet it wouldn't matter. Not in the heat of this moment.

He started to stand. Unsteadily. "Is there a backdoor? A back window?"

Going out the front through the dusty haze would be risky, but if there was no alternative exit, he and the innocent elven woman would have no choice.

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