abraxaslogs | {Catch the freedom of falling

Entry tags:

{Catch the freedom of falling

Who: Inej + Various
When: Month of September
Where: Cadens + the Horizon
What: Various closed threads
Warnings: Things that might come up in Inej's narration are: stealing; murder; descriptions of touch aversion, anxiety, depression, PTSD; heavy trust issues, paranoia; mentions of past instances of prostitution, slavery, sexual assault. Everything will be clearly marked if-when it comes up.

I took a hit of heaven

waiting for the sky to drop

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Cassandra nods back, and they set off.

It’s devastation that greets them, and although the destruction and devastation that had befallen Whitestone had been different for the most part, there is a similarity there all the same that turns her stomach. But she can help. She can do something, here, now. And that’s what’s important.

Her gaze is sharp, observant, taking careful notes and keeping an eye out for anything unusual. Marking the changes and the destruction. Mapping them.

There's no change in Kaz's expression as they go. Pale, cold eyes taking it all in, filing away things for later when it's him and Inej and Jesper. It's for that reason he makes small notations on a slip of paper in his palm, using the stub of a pencil. He doesn't need it to remember what's going on but to add markers to his map on the wall. They're known areas but nothing he's personally seen or been part of in his time there.

"You've both been here longer than I have," he says in a low, rumbling voice. "Were there outward clues to this war they were kidnapping people for or just timing they were snatching people just as a war started?"

It's a thought that keeps rolling around in his head. It felt convenient that war had started, but then he hadn't been there long at all.

"There've been tensions, yes. It's clear that The Free Cities and Thorne, especially, have been... in a particularly precarious position for quite some time," Inej starts as they continue down the path, keen eyes seeking at all times.

She shakes her head a bit, "I don't think it was timing... I think it's been brewing for a long time, they found a way to bring other people into it and hope that by isolating us from the others, feeding us their personal propagandas, they can make us see their reason, fight their war."

"Have you found anything in your research that's been any more helpful, Cassandra?"

"It definitely seems as though it's been brewing for some time now. I think they were half-hoping that if they were the faction that brought us here that we'd just... fall in line." Which she will NEVER do. She doesn't particularly appreciate being kidnapped for someone else's war. She's been used for far too long. Never again.

"There were some who would have happily fought it. Happily fomented it, for that matter." It had been hard to miss, in the Free Cities.

She shakes her head. "Unfortunately nothing yet." It's frustrating, to want answers and to have almost none, but to have a rapidly growing list of questions.

He's quiet, considering that as they travel. There's so much about this that doesn't sit right with him. It's been months that they've been gathering people. So why now? That, to him, is the important part.

Trying to think about it keeps him from overfocusing on this moment, on their travel, and on a myriad of things he can not let his mind engage on. Not now. Not with a stranger there and how nervous that alone leaves him. Nonetheless the closeness. It's all a lot and he's working hard to cope with it.

"I'd be curious to know just who was behind this outreaching of friendship that opened up expected portals throughout the different cities and gave someone and opening." Because he has no belief that was somehow coincidence.

Inej keeps a subtle watch on Kaz and how much he favors his bad leg, she'll pull them to pause if she thinks he's ignoring it to his own detriment. "With Cadens the military is who makes the moves for the most part," she shrugs. "But the history of this place is long, and the research is tedious. It's hard to parse all the-"

She's cut short when the hound takes alert to something. "Cass-" she gestures, falling in step behind her, since the other girl is guiding the hound.

Cassandra's attention is as much on the hound as it is on her companions, and although she's listening to what Inej is saying (and has Thoughts on the matter), the moment the hound alerts to something she's reacting, and even as the other girl is falling into step beside her she's murmuring one of the orders the hound is trained to obey. Instructing the hound to lead them to whatever it is that they've taken alert to.

No matter how bad it might be, he will push on. He didn't come along to drop out, and he won't let them truly see how rough it might be. Especially not a stranger. Whatever is needed, and not only for the information. For the life that Jesper and Inej seek to make here. They followed his orders, now he was part of their new life in much the same way. It might not be easy, but he was trying.

So he stayed close, but behind the other woman and the hound, scanning the ground before them as his gloved fingers flex atop his cane. This could well come with corpses and not people and he suspects the handling of such bodies so they're returned to their families. He understood the reasons but that didn't change his apprehension.

Inej steps softly behind Cassandra, all three of them letting the hound take point and lead them toward a jutted tower of debris. She sends up a prayer to her Saints as she edges closer to inspect it.

“Hello?” she calls out, just in case someone is there to hear her. Something shifts. Small, easily missable except that they’re all this close. “If you can hear me, you’re all right, we’ll get you out.” Either she’s talking to ghosts or just offered someone a shining beacon of hope— either way, she starts moving the smaller pieces of the pile away first.

The hound makes it clear that there's... SOMEthing there. Be it a person or a body. Either way they've found something. Cassandra only hopes that it's a person. Let them not be too late. Inej starts moving some of the smaller pieces of the pile away, and she joins in.

Twice over, as she's gained something that's at least a little useful, here. With telekinesis she focuses on the pieces she knows she's able to move with it (she'd tested that as soon as she'd realised that she'd found herself with powers), while she focuses on moving other pieces with her hands.

Carefully, though. They need to be careful in how they do this. "Easy," she murmurs softly, voice pitched for her two companions alone. "We don't want to unbalance the wreckage and make it collapse."

Coming along had meant finding himself a part of this community but it had also meant risking facing the one thing he has very little control over when it comes to himself. While they hoped to find living people buried in the rubble, there was a very real chance that what they would find was bodies and not living people.

Now, as they worked on clearing the rubble, that is suddenly a very real and frightening reality that he might find himself face to face with a corpse, even as he works to clear what he can, his cane carefully balanced against his side. Watching the emerging space carefully for signs of life, finding himself nearly holding his breath waiting for a hand or to hear a voice before there was a body before him.

The telekinesis from Cassandra helps a lot to make quicker work of it all, but it is the effort of the three of them that eventually unearths the woman trapped under the rubble.

Inej gasps softly, another prayer silently sent as she reaches to check for a pulse. Faint, thready, but, “She’s alive,” she breathes out softly.

She is no stranger to the dangers of war, her country had been war-torn for so long she had rarely know anything else, but it has never touched Inej quite so up close. It’s a heavy, overwhelming thing that she is glad to not have to carry the burden of alone.

“How far do you think we are from one of the healer tents?”

Cassandra breathes a soft sigh of relief, exhausted; despite all her practice with her telekinesis rubble is... far heavier than what she'd used in order TO practice. It was worth it, though. They weren't too late. If she held any sort of faith in gods anymore she might thank them.

She doesn't. Not anymore.

Frowning thoughtfully, she tries to calculate distance. "Farther than I'd like," she murmurs. "Particularly depending on how quickly we move." Which, with their injured charge would not be terribly so.

"We'll need a litter," Kaz says in soft, determined tones. He's not facing a corpse that could be in who knows what state of disrepair. Living, nearly dead people, that he could handle.

Balancing his cane carefully against his leg, he begins to slip out of his long coat he had obtained along the way since he'd come to this place.

"I'll be easier on us all," he says, glancing at Cass and all the energy she's expended and then to Inej. "Especially if that hound could be used to pull it, but less stressful on us if we can't."

He lays the coat on the ground near where they've uncovered a person, not a corpse. That is all he keeps reminding himself. "Lets get them on here, layer it on what else we might have, a tarp or sheet would be ideal and another piece of wood beside my cane, and find a way to secure it for movement."

She glances back over her shoulder at Kaz, watching as he offers his coat for part of the make-shift litter. She scowls silently at him, something meant only for him and which needs no words to convey the meaning: What about your leg?

"What do we have that we could use to stabilize the other side of the litter?" She asks Cassandra, not wanting to move from her place next to the unconscious woman.

"Let me see," Cassandra murmurs, slipping away silently for a moment, picking her way through the rubble. She disappears from sight for several long minutes, before returning with a long piece of wood that used to belong to a building. Stair railing, probably.

He stares back at Inej, trying to look innocent and expressionless because they both know it's going to kick his ass to try and walk without the cane. He's already doing poorly but he has no plans to slow down.

"Come on then. Let's get them stable and get them to someone that might see to them."

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{Catch the freedom of falling

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