Melodrama!!!: The Opener Prompt

[altanhawke]

Find My Character Look at the state you're in! How did this happen...?

Listen, maybe I don't want to know. Let's just deal with what you have going on now.

how to play

• Your character needs help; those who reply get to decide the predicament they find your character in.
• If you think this holds dangerous potential, you're absolutely correct.
• Thread your way out of this fix.

prompts

• Tears - Find my character crying.
• Rest - Find my character sound asleep.
• Dream - Find my character moving in their sleep due to a dream or nightmare.
• Bleed - Find my character injured.
• Drink - Find my character drunk.
• Collapse - Find my character blacked out on the ground.
• Leaving - Find my character dying.
• Grave - Find my character dead.
• Fear - Find my character panicking about something.
• Hide - Find my character hiding from something or someone.
• Anger - Find my character very angry.
• Escape - Find my character trying to run away from something or someone.
• Toxic - Find my character poisoned.
• Bruise - Find my character badly beaten up. 
• Freeze - Find my character trying to keep warm in the cold.
• Battle - Find my character in the middle of a fight with someone or something.
• Saw - Find my character getting a limb amputated. 
• Cough - Find my character coughing out blood.

Comments

[altanhawke]

[prompt: Bleed]

The man is found - it doesn’t matter, yet, where he’s found. Perhaps on the literal shores of fate, as he is an archmage, and has before waded in the shallows of those waters. Information that his rescuers may not yet be privy to.

A dense man of middling height and almost middling age, he is a starfish drift of embroidered, dark, hard-wearing textiles flung about him as he lies on his back, face drawn and eyes shut, uncharacteristically pale. He has an odd, crystalline red sword stuck out of his gut. There is a slowly spreading pool of blood, and the base of the blade flickers with obscured green light up through the crystal that otherwise has a thick rose hue.

[vegalthon]

If he'd been hoping for a saviour, Altan is surely not going to find it in the slinking figure that approaches from the fog. With curving, segmented antlers and cat-like, slitted orange eyes, the grey-hued tiefling jingles a little as he carefully steps into the water. He's dressed in a heavy, forest green robe, and appears to be as bedecked in bangles as he can get his hands on... though some of those are tarnished, and the robe thrown over his head and horns is in rougher shape than he'd like.

He's carrying a light, white-hued walking stick wrapped at the top with undyed hide, and now he uses it to poke at the corpse's body. "Are you dead yet?" he asks. "Can I have your things?"

[altanhawke]

Altan is only mostly dead. The sword in his gut has missed his spine, but that’s not the most dangerous thing about this sword; if he can survive it. He is vaguely aware of this, but more than the sword, the phrase ‘can I have your things’ filters down into his unconsciousness.

He’d been in this stranger’s shoes, saying nearly the exact same thing to someone important, a long time ago. But time enough for that story - what is that story? He can’t quite remember. There’s the pain, and a strangely familiar phrase. And there’s something funny about that phrase. He jerks from absolute stillness with a horrible coughing laugh, and one weak hand flutters up towards the sickeningly wavering blade. “Don’t want this … anyway …”

His hands are strong and nimble. Even operating mostly on instinct, he tries to steady the sword for the process of withdrawing it.

[vegalthon]

The tiefling stands at the ready, and raises his free hand, careful, as the glowing, bloody blade gets held. If that thing isn't cursed, he's not of the devil.

But he's been cursed. He has lost his mind and found it again, more than once, and after so many gambles, it's hard not to take life brazenly while he has it, especially when times have been so hard. He says, "if you live, you have to tell me how you got this." He says it furtively, though, and there's a splish-splashing sound from near behind him as his tail whisks back and forth over the water. He's got his ears cocked for trouble.

A man floating in the muck with a blade in his gut, and with the job left unfinished, means there's probably at least one other person out here, maybe nearby. Oran doesn't want to get jumped for the sake of a bad-luck bauble.

Still, his cleft tongue catches the roof of his mouth as he utters something under his breath that is in no way related to common, and the hand that reaches for the hilt bypasses it entirely, instead reaching for Altan's fist. He pumps some vitality into the half-ways corpse before he pulls back and, using the cloth of his cloak, attempts to pull the blade free.

[altanhawke]

It’s quiet, here on the shore, an overcast sky rising above a swathy blanket of mist, large stones and shoreline jumbling together in the tiefling’s line of sight. How did he get here? Can he answer it better than Altan, half-dead as he is, can answer it? It’s eerily silent; if there’s any threat here, it’s not obvious.

Altan opens his clammy hand to receive the spell; Altan, or something unparseably connected to Altan, reaches out and into the tiefling’s magic, yanking greedily on it. The eager guzzling of a starving man; it does not feel inhuman, if that’s a difference that the tiefling can immediately recognize.

If this unexpected animation, even on the numinous plane, does not disrupt the tiefling’s attempt to remove the sword, the near-corpse doesn’t. His near-closed eyes flicker up at the tiefling; he grits his bloody teeth in silent acknowledgment and dare. He makes his hands into fists, resting by his hips.

[vegalthon]

Whatever it is that takes from Oran's wellspring, it meets little resistence. There's something about the power there that doesn't feel quite right; maybe it's one system of magic attempting to interface with another, or perhaps it's simply that Oran's tainted everything is leaking over... but it's enough to keep a man conscious while a glowing hunk of sharp-edged glass is pulled free of him, and it's enough to keep every severed blood vessel from immediately gushing forth a crimson thanks. For now, at least.

Oran holds the blade at arm's reach, looking at it for a few moments, careful, before he frowns and finally throws it down. "It clashes," he admits, nose wrinkled.

He gathers his cloak up around him as he crouches, and looks more closely at the chunky man. "I think I saw you in a dream," he says. "You look... familiar? I don't know. Who are you?"

[altanhawke]

During the sword’s removal, Altan makes a horrible low grating whine, his knuckles going white, and when the sword is free, he tosses his head back in welcome at at least a slightly different flavor of pain. He slowly uncurls a hand, and then moves it over the awful, seeping wound. The green glow gets even stronger; it seems sourced in the man’s body, instead of the sword, which lies inert, shining ominously with fresh blood.

“It sure fuckin’ better,” Altan grunts, and looks sidelong at Oran as he pants tiredly. And then, with impressive wherewithal, he squints in apparent mounting bemusement. “You - oh. That would.” He pauses for a long moment, what little spare energy he has forming into suspicion. Altan does not know what a tiefling is. He does, however, know demons. “Why do you look like that?” he asks, wearily. He intones it as if the question should already be understood.

And then his eyes fly open, and he begins trying to curl upwards, before stopping abruptly and hissing in pain.

[vegalthon]

"Like wha--?" Oran is interrupted by the wave of pain that wracks the stranger. He frowns, and reaches for something beneath his robe at his neck. There's nothing left to give, though, and he exhales a noise of annoyance bordering on dismay. "I'm not great with magic," he apologizes. "And I don't have anything with me to help you. There's..." he looks over his shoulder, trying to remember how he'd gotten to this bank. It's foggy-- both literally, and in recall-- and he furrows his brows as the memory outwrangles him. Instead, he bluffs, "there's a tavern not far from here. I can drop you off there. You might get lucky? We could bribe a cleric?"

[altanhawke]

The stranger regards his words with a steady squint. “Not great with magic, right.” There’s something about this that he finds ironic. “I’m sure a cleric would love to see me right now, would finish the bloodletting. Look, friend - Charity,” for some reason it sounds like it’s capitalized, “if you’d be so kind as to play nurse a little longer, I just need - I just need …” He trails off, gazing blankly up into the air. “Food, rest. Well.” He grimaces. His blood-soaked hands twitched gingerly around the wound. “Can’t stand travel yet, can’t stand food quite yet. Tea, milk.”

[kaitan]

There's another creeping along that shore, cautious but uncowed by the strangeness around her. She sees the light from the sword soonest, and then the body underneath it -- the corpse, surely. Anything magical enough to be glowing like that is magical enough to be big fucking trouble, the horror of a gut-wound aside. Wiser to give it a wide berth, but then, few have accused the woman of being particularly fettered by wisdom, and if something's out stabbing people in the gut with swords that scream their magical nature, she wants to know.

Only it's not a corpse. That's worse. She doesn't even check its breath until she's already hunkered down and looked at the sword, and when she feels wind, she grimaces. Alive is worse, frankly, and even with the knowledge that it's probably kinder to let this stranger die without regaining consciousness, she's also rarely been praised for prioritizing kindness.

"Hey." She touches that pallid forehead. "Hey. Anything left in there or are you already gone?"

[altanhawke]

Altan’s face is cold, and slicked with sweat. His dark eyelids, bruised by bloodloss, flicker; and then his eyes burning with fever open slightly. “Yes,” he croaks. “Yes, it’s still me.” Whatever that meant. He steadies his breathing for a long moment. The green light pulses momentarily brighter.

[kaitan]

Worse. Definitely fucking worse: maybe he's not all there, but if he's there enough to answer he's going to be feeling his death. She grimaces at the poor gut-stabbed bastard, wrinkling her freckled nose, but her eyes are dark and shuttered.

"If I pull this out, you'll die faster." She gestures not quite blithely at the sword jutting proud from the man's flesh. Her tone is tightly neutral: it's an offer as much as a warning. "Except I want to know first if it's going to kill me if I touch it. You can't stand, can you?"

[altanhawke]

The man smiles a tight little smile, showing bloody teeth. There is something that she’s said that has grimly amused him; he’s aware of his situation, but there’s some joke in it for him. “Not the most desperate man could stand like this.” His voice is a rasp. “Just touch the hilt - not the blade - don’t nick yourself - drop it when it’s clear. You’ll be fine. And do. Pull it out.”

[kaitan]

"Right." Seeing someone die today, having a hand in someone dying today, had not been what she'd woken up hoping to do. The act should have a heaviness, and it does, even without knowing this man. It's not nothing to be there for someone's last moments.

Still, he hesitates. "You want a mercy cut first?" she asks, voice softened, touching her own dagger that sits at her belted hip.

[altanhawke]

The man’s largely indrawn, steady expression softens and waivers - he looks over at her look he’s seeing her for the first time. “You’re kind,” he says, quietly, with almost a chuckle, like he’s just discovered that someone has snuck an extra bun into his lunch. “No, my friend. Trust me on this. Pull out the sword.” Despite his pain and exhaustion, he speaks steadily, with the echo of long-accustomed command.

[kaitan]

It's the second hint that something uncanny is going on here, after the glowing of the sword. Her eyes narrow: hope would be overoptimistic, but now she's watchful. She hasn't seen so many deaths that she can match this to any death-delirium she knows of, but maybe it's as simple as this man wanting to die in his own time.

"I'd've taken the cut, personally." She bites her lip and stands to her unimpressive height, braces a little wide against the sand, and pulls her eyes from the stranger's face. The hilt welcomes her scrutiny, suspicious and strange, and -- just in case -- she pulls a fold of her cloak around to act as some barrier between her hands and the uncanny handle. She braces, adjusts, not wanting to cause undue pain, but she does not hesitate once her grip is sure. In one hard, quick motion she yanks it vertical and tosses it aside.

[altanhawke]

The sword at least does not act unlike a sword, except for being too light - it splashes down not far. The wounded man groans in pain, but under his hands, a cool green light wells. There’s the awful septic smell of a gut wound, but, as far as it is to tell in the water and against the existing stain, the bleeding slows to nothing.

He lies there and pants, steadying himself.

[serge_sallust]

"I know you're not going to believe me, but I've seen worse," says a head that seems more raucous chestnut curls than face. That head is hovering over Altan's body, attached to a dark, shortish man with his hands in his trouser pockets, all together resembling nothing so much as a stout double-handled vase with a single dying chrysanthemum poking out of it. Smells about as nice as one too, or, well, as nice as a dying chrysanthemum soaked in rum.

"I suppose you could still lose more blood, though." He stops jingling whatever is in his right pocket and pokes the hilt of the sword with his index finger like it's a hot stove. "You want this thing out?"

[altanhawke]

“If …,” the dying man grits out, “you’d be so kind.”

[serge_sallust]

Serge shoots up an eyebrow at the dying man, a man Serge thought was surely unconscious, if not already dead. He scratches his head and looks to see if anyone is watching. He doesn't want a reputation for being kind, especially not *so kind*. One doesn't make a living by being kind. Often enough Serge had thought it'd be nice if it weren't so, but too many days starving at sea had toppled the prominence of that sentiment. Choosing who to be kind to was skill Serge spent years cultivating. All those choices were now dead, and if Serge hadn't seen them get dead, he assumed they had become so. This one here is almost dead, so being kind can't make things much worse.

"Well, just this once." Serge grits his own teeth and gently pulls out the sword. "Though, I fear I'm not much of a surgeon. I'm not actually drunk enough to pretend to be one, either."

[altanhawke]

It is a strange coast, although Serge has probably seen similar strange, lonely coasts before. He’s also almost certainly heard men die of gut wounds. But the strange cool light between or welling up from that wound, that Serge may not have seen before.

Does Serge keep hold of the sword?

[serge_sallust]

Serge holds on to the sword as he stoops down to inspect the man's wounds. He's not quite used to magical items, though he's heard tales of them.

[altanhawke]

The man is still focused on the magic he’s working, which is still a low glow out through a reeking mass of red, purple intestine. “You should drop that,” he grunts. “The sword. You should set it down.”

[serge_sallust]

Serge is momentarily transfixed by the glow seeping through the guts of the man. Will-o-the-wisps and creatures like oil lamps beneath the water, that he's seen, but never a glow from inside a person. Not a real glow, anyway, not one he saw with his eyes. "This thing?" Serge looks at the rosy sword in his hand, "If you say so." He sets the sword down gently on the ground beside him. "You need an extra hand in there?"

[altanhawke]

“Yeah,” Altan says, but doesn’t immediately move. He gazes fuzzily across the dark, slate-grey water. “Where are we?”