abraxaslogs | [Closed] into the inferno with three princes and a devil [Quest]

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[Closed] into the inferno with three princes and a devil [Quest]

Who: Rhy Maresh, Kell Maresh, Prince Wilhelm, Lucifer
When: September
Where: burning fields of Nott
What: Three princes on a quest to show how A True Royalty should behave in time of crisis ... or rather Kell is. The other two are most likely there to help, because they're good people. There's also a devil. Who knows what his motives are.
Warnings: most likely none

Rhy wanted to help. As if he wasn't already helping. I bit too much Kell would say if he was allowed an opinion on the subject. Which he wasn't, as long as he wanted to avoid the look.

Lucifer must have overheard Kell's shouting match with Mildred. The one where she called him a selfish, moping child. Not something he'd like anyone to hear, but here they are.

Wilhelm? How on the good earth has Lucifer been able to drag Wilhelm with him? And most importantly, why would he do it? This was beyond Kell's understanding. Not that anyone asked for his opinion, or even less permission.

All of it lost any meaning the moment they reached the scorched plains that were, not that long time ago, fields and forest around Nott. With so many fires still raging in spite of the work of the teams, mages and Summoned, already present. It was one thing to hear about, but something entirely different to see it.

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Due to the circumstances, Rhy's mood is understandable, but he has been unusually somber and quiet these past few days. As soon as the opportunity opened up to come out to Nott and actually, physically help, Rhy was insisting on taking it. He always expected Kell to join him.

Wilhelm is also not a surprise; Rhy knows the young man is just as eager to do something about all this awfulness as he is. Lucifer, however-- Well. If he wants to be of assistance, Rhy is hardly going to try to chase him away. But his patience is short. His focus is on administering the rain spell where they were tasked, and then he fully intends to visit the city and assist in the makeshift infirmaries there.

The fire before them is getting bigger, the whole sky orange and dark. Rhy covers his face with his sleeve, stifling a cough.

"Shield at the ready?" he asks, looking over his shoulder to see who's got it.

Is he bringing the kid out of spite? Just because he feels like it? Is it a test? To prove a point? To prove a point to both Kell and Wilhelm?

Well, can't it all be true?

The kid's not useless and he needs a confidence booster. And Kell needs to see that just the same, and hopefully he's learned a bit more to keep his mouth, especially with Wilhelm around him. Lucifer needs to be sure that they'll be able to work together, even if by proximity. This is a good as time as any, away from the Castle.

There is a part of him that really, really wants Kell to screw up his side of things, but he's not about to sabotage the everything, and anyway, he needs to--loathe as he is--look good to the Thorne higher-ups, not just passable. That means doing work, and being successful with it.

He's got his own copy of the spell to work alongside Kell. Twin-castings to bolster the effects and a shield to bubble over them all.

(He wonders if Kyle's seen the spell, what with his interest in learning Ancient Thornean).

'Stay out of your own head,' he'd told Wilhelm. 'Don't think about the others. You're strong. You woke up with a physical fire. That's a power all in itself. You just need to--to channel that energy, not control it.'

Penance brings him here. Helping to quench the fires feels like an apt act of contrition, on-the-nose in the way of storybook sinners reaping what they sow. It's a healthy alternative to wallowing in his room under the weight of the outsize responsibility he can't offload.

Well, penance and Lucifer, which on paper makes a strange combination. Lucifer, who apparently believes in Wilhelm far more than Wilhelm believes in himself. Maybe that should allay his anxiety, but — contrarily, because emotions are terribly unwieldy things — it compounds it. He doesn't want to let him down.

Plus, he wants to impress Rhy. Or, the next best thing, avoid revealing that he's in fact an idiot. Then there's Kell, whose eye he can't quite meet — but also whose somewhat aggrieved look ignites in him the desire to prove that he can do something right.

So, with his own entire atmosphere of pressure pushing down on him, Wilhelm just...focuses on slow, steady breaths as he activates the shield. Around them bubbles some kind of forcefield, detectable only by a faint warping of the wall of fire ahead of them.

"Got it," he answers. Holding onto a weird magical doodad — yup, he's got this.

"Let's not burn to crisp today, shall we?"

Kell knows he shouldn't. This is an unnecessary, and frankly cruel, comment. It slips out anyway. Wilhelm doesn't need more distraction. In all honesty, Kell doesn't even blame him for the card spell fiasco any more. Kid's just learning, he's bound to fuck up a few times. A lot of times. It was not his fault that the spell had no safety buffer built in. It was not his fault that it backfired. But Kell is internally seething since the gathering at the throne room, and he has no outlet for his rage other than barking at everything and everyone around. Well, almost everyone. He doesn't bark at Rhy. He'd never. Besides, he had complicated their life enough even before this madness begun.

The way he strides right in the direction of the raging fires is a vote of confidence in direct contradiction to his earlier words. Kell would have preferred to have done this all alone. Even after he's been told, repeatedly, that it is not possible for one perform to cast the rain spell and hold their own shield simultaneously. He tried. The first time he practised the spell. Only to be forced to agree that it is, in fact, quite impossible. Which only made him crankier.

When he does, finally, get a chance to cast it, it requires all of his focus. To the point Kell's barely aware of his surroundings so much of his attention is on the spell. The effect though, execution is in all ways possible flawless, an image of absolute perfection. No tinkering, no attempts at improvement, no showing off. Kell is a genius mage, it can show whenever he tries. This time he really does. The only sign of his arrogance is that, against better judgement, he plans to do this more than once.

The absolute withering stare he sends towards Kell should be enough indication for him to keep his damn mouth shut. Lucifer had called Wilhelm a child in the woods but maybe he should have cast a wider net with the label.

What Lucifer should be doing is making use of Kell's volatile anger and find a different target for it. Doesn't matter the target as long as it isn't one of Lucifer's projects, thank you very much. Hell, it could be Thorne if it didn't end with someone likely thrown in jail.

Problems for another time.

(One of those problems being he sees a lot of himself in Kell and isn't that just awful.)

His irritation doesn't cause him to lose focus. If anything, it helps empower his own casting of the spell, the words on his tongue unpracticed but flowing easily. He once called forth Death the Horseman from his box; this was nothing.

Wilhelm pointedly holds his gaze straight ahead as if he didn't hear Kell at all. The tightening of his jaw and the inward pull of his shoulders, however, wreck the charade.

"I said I've got it," he mutters — but not quite soft enough to get swallowed up in the roar of the fire around them. "Jesus fucking Christ."

Gathering his focus, turning it into a shield to block out Kell's barbed remark, he reaches for the flames with his mind. It's the weirdest thing. He can feel the fire — not just the heat hissing from it, but...something else, something tricky and flickering.

The full expanse of the inferno is beyond Wilhelm's flimsy control, but he can at least bend the tongues of fire away from their party. That will provide another narrow buffer between them and, well, burning to a crisp.

"Kell," Rhy snaps, warningly, at about the same time Wilhelm mutters his own defense. Good for him.

"Don't pay him any mind. He's a right knob when he's in a mood like this."

Rhy's got his own shield artifact to activate, which he does on the other side, with him and Wilhelm forming a barrier around their little group. Matching Wilhelm's idea to manipulate the fire where needed on top of the shield itself, Rhy focuses his efforts on pushing the flames back. The shield requires little concentration on his part, since it's just something to activate and hold, based entirely on the object it's attached to; this leaves him free to pay close attention to the fire, which is uncomfortably close and hot despite their shields. It chokes the air, the harshness of its heat suffocating. They might be protected from the flames, but there's nearly as much danger in the smoke, even out in the open air.

"We can't stay out here long."

Lucifer's death glare barely registers, Rhy's warning does, but Kell is too focused on his task to realize he probably deserved it. Later, he will barely remember he said anything at all. Most likely being quite surprised why they're all mad at him.
If he had any attention to spare, he would have appreciated the shield spell more. The moment it goes up from both sides around them, he can feel the temperature drop. No longer is the blaze unbearable. No longer are there flames everywhere, just the blacked ground. He would have noticed the gap between the shimmering edge of the barrier and the raging inferno around. He does neither of those things. Not until they're a good distance into the fires, the flames closing around their suddenly very fragile bubble, suffocating, grey smoke seeping slowly inside.

As the spell is cast - two of them in fact - and the rain falls, a veritable torrent of it coalescing high above their heads. For one short moment, they lose all visibility behind the blurry curtain of the falling water as it flows down in streams bending around their little bubble. Where the water falls, the fires die down, the air clears, leaving only battered, black mud where the scorched ground has been.
Kell almost expects for them to end completely drenched, but as the shield has held the flames at bay, so it did for the water, only some of it soaking from below.

Now, that he can pay attention to his surroundings, Kell looks forward, meaning only to check how far the effects of the spell has reached. He doesn't expect to see clear lines of what is unmistakably a man-made structure, stone walls rising two floors up, even if still wrapped in the all-consuming blaze.

"Is that a building?"

It's not far behind the end of the cleared area. If they managed to cast a spell again, they might be able to reach it.

In another day, another world, Lucifer would likely be proud of Wilhelm.

As it is, Wilhelm's used the fuel of his emotions to shape the flames, so maybe Kell's remark did some kind of job.

There's hope for him yet.

And then he realizes he doesn't know any of the capabilities of the brother pair and that's something to keep in mind. Lucifer has a vastly different relationship with both of them, but there's potential here, too, between them.

While Lucifer's usual way of life thrives in destruction, it feels good to cast even this. It feels normal. A different kind of fresh air, even as the smoke around them clears.

He follows Kell's gaze and stifles a groan. Must they also play the rescue game? He wants to say they should just let it burn, that this was enough.

He knows the comment would not fly with any of this group. He folds his arms. He bets someone would whine about what if there's people in it.

"You sure you can handle another casting?" he asks instead.

So far, so good. The shields are holding up — the air around them swelters with the fire, but the fire doesn't burn them. And as the deluge comes down, the flames shrivel and hiss. Wilhelm keeps pushing his focus farther out, seizing control of new fingers of the fire and bending them back.

It's the first time since the night at Lunar Pond that he's tapped into that vein of magic running through him unseen. His avoidance has been half deliberate. More harm has come from it than good — that's self-evident in the current state of things. He knows enough to keep himself from lighting inadvertent fires, and that's really all he needs. It's not like he has any aspirations to climb the ranks of mages.

Half deliberate, and half out of his hands. He's hit a psychosomatic wall: when he thinks of reaching for that inner flame and sparking it into reality, his whole body rejects it. His stomach churns, on the verge of throwing up. His lungs seem to shrink, his throat seems to tighten.

Wilhelm is relieved, then, that the flames answer him at all. And that, although his heart falls heavy and fast, his stomach lies still. Lucifer was right about one thing: he can't make it any worse.

When Kell indicates that there's a building up ahead, he scours the wall of flames. There. Wilhelm throws his concentration, trying to pull the fire away from the structure. But with the whole landscape blazing, it's impossible to send it anywhere.

Trusting Kell to be able to handle himself, Rhy puts most of his attention to the flames -- and some of it on Wilhelm, mirroring the way he moves and holds the shield on his side, so they form a uniform bubble of protection around Lucifer and Kell both.

The flames pull away from them, coerced by Wilhelm on one side and Rhy on the other, and he murmurs, mostly for the young man's benefit, "You're doing great."

But then Kell speaks up, amidst the black smoke choking their nostrils and eyes, and Rhy squints up ahead. He has the same thought as Wilhelm, unknowingly, but only for a moment; the building is too far still, and the flames too large. He doesn't have the confidence to make an attempt at them. He isn't Kell, not an Antari, not even a magician, truly.

Though in the end, there's no other answer he could possibly have given but to agree. It's the decision Lucifer knows they'll all make, bleeding hearts as some of them are -- and Rhy's perhaps the bloodiest of all.

"There could be someone still alive in there. We should at least get close enough to call out."

"I can, but can you?"

Kell looks straight at Lucifer as he says those words. Is it wise to sound so confrontational? No. Does it mean he can stop himself? Not really. There isn't even much need for twin casting this time. One should be enough to cover the building. Unless it's bigger than the flickering silhouette they can barely discern among the flickering flames.

"And if the shield holds," he adds. "Do we even know if those things can be activated repeatedly?"

Kell can't shake the feeling that the magic fire that started the blaze still burns hotter and brighter in the parts where it wasn't put down by similarly magical means. He has little hope anyone could have survived it. Still, it would be cruel not to check, and now that he had brought it to everyone's attention, Rhy won't let them leave it like this.

"If there's a basement underneath, they might have."

Lucifer doesn't groan, but it's a near thing. The only uptick of interest comes in Kell's fired-back challenge, and Lucifer grins, slow and pleased. Preserving human life? Ugh, boring.

Proving a point?

Yes, of course. That's what's important.

He offers a wink and buzzes in delight. Thankfully, Lucifer has rested long enough that he isn't too worried about a second casting. After that though, waiting might be wise.

"The shield will hold," he says, and that's not just for Wilhelm's benefit, but Rhy's as well--though not on purpose. Except, Kell raises a good point--"I would hope if the rain spell could be cast multiple times, the shield would as well."

But then they've already discussed Thorne and poorly-designed spells, so...

He might smile at Rhy's encouragement, except with a thousand things to worry about, he can't let his focus falter. His face stays rigidly set in a look of determination. The only acknowledgment that he heard Rhy at all is in the flick of his eyes and the slow gathering of his breath, as if attempting to absorb Rhy's faith in him and use it to temper himself.

Wilhelm's hopes for the burning house aren't high, but...they have to try. He pushes away his brain's warnings about what they might find among the smoldering ruins when they're done. If he let himself think about it, he could lose his control, so tentative and temperamental, over the flames.

"The shields only last a few minutes," he warns over the roar of the fire. "We should hurry."

Rhy nods in agreement. They should hurry; he pushes ahead, glancing at Wilhelm to make sure they're in sync, and when they reach the flames that haven't been put out yet around them, closer to the house, he announces when he's about to activate the shield again. He's not sure how many times the enchantment will activate, but it probably isn't indefinite.

"Hello!" he yells when they're close enough, over the roar of the flame. "If anyone's in there, shout for help!"

He looks to Kell. If anyone is in there and can't hear, there's no way they'll know -- but even Rhy isn't convinced they should run into the burning building without signs that there's anyone even left alive.

There's a split second before the shields activate, miraculously almost at the same time, when they're so close to the flames that Kell can feel the heat of the raging blaze threatening to consume them. The shields unfold around them cutting away all but the smoke and the sour stink of baking limestone. His heart sinks. Nobody could have survived that.

He looks to Lucifer. It's time to drench it and see. He starts casting the spell, feels the power flowing through him, but his focus is frayed, the execution less flawless than the first one. The second time is harder. It takes more from him than the first one. It leaves Kell short for breath, his heart racing; absolutely certain he can't pull it off the third time.

The rain falls nevertheless. This time it's not only the downpour they hear. Cold water meets hot stone with a deafening hiss as it turns into steam. For a brief moment, all they can see is white. Only when the air clears is when they finally can take a better look. It's a hollow shell of a small building, two floors, whatever skeletal frame remains after the roof have burned down and the front wall collapsed. The charred beams that once held the upper floor still sticking out of the walls. There are small cracks on almost every surface of the structure. The stone floor included.

Yet, even from where they stand, they can see there's a hatch in the middle. Barely a stone rectangle with a simple, metal handle, leading to what would most likely have been a wine cellar if this was a wealthier house.

It's a possibility. A tiny chance at best, that the cellar is big enough it could have held enough air for someone to survive the inferno above. That the stone slab was fitted into the floor tight enough not to let the smoke seep in. Kell would rather not check, would rather find nothing there than bodies if they have to. And it's obvious they have to.

"Come, let's check," he says shaking off the daze. "But be quick, I wouldn't put much trust in the integrity of those walls."

Somehow, the sight of the burned out skeleton of the building stamps out what little hope Wilhelm had that anyone could still be alive inside. Stubbornly, he tells himself that whoever lived there must have gotten out before the fire devoured their house. The approaching wall of flame would have provided enough of a warning. Right?

Then at Kell's prompting, he spies the cellar door amid the rubble. Carefully, he picks his way toward it. Slipping the stone bearing the shield enchantment into his pocket, he bends down to pull at the handle.

"It's stuck..."

With some yanking, the hatch yields, and Wilhelm stumbles back from it. Down into the darkness below dive the narrowest and steepest steps he's ever seen. He looks back at the others, hoping that somebody else will take over from here. Anything could be down there. A survivor, perhaps, but a corpse seems just as likely. Nose goes?

Well. Hearing no immediate agonized screams for help is possibly a good sign. Rhy does his part with the shields, and helps to hold back the flame as well, a bit beyond the shield's reach, trying to let Kell and Lucifer get as close as they can.

Eventually, they all end up close enough to the soggy, smoking ruin to get a pretty good view inside; this is unnervingly easy to do when the house is nothing but charred support beams and a burnt foundation.

Rhy swallows, heart racing. He rushes to help Wilhelm with the hatch.

And then, with only one look to Kell, begins to make his way down. It probably looks much braver than he feels; his hands are shaking, head pounding with the sudden burst of adrenaline, building fear of what he might find. It's dark, and he resists summoning a flame to light the way. He shouts again.

"Is anyone there?"

"Rhy, don't!"

Kell cries out, but it's too late. Rhy is already moving down the stairs. He groans. This is not what he meant when he said they should hurry. Now all he can do is follow.
Kell turns to Wilhelm.

"Yell at us if this thing were to come down, or you just noticed anything suspicious. We'll be right back."

He doesn't wait for an answer, too worried about Rhy to waste time waiting. Doesn't expect neither Wilhelm nor Lucifer to come to their rescue, but they can at least give them a warning. This is insane what they are doing.

Kell can feel the temperature drop as he descends the stairs. Rhy's voice echoes in the darkness. It's obvious by the sound that this is no man-made cellar, rather a natural cavern washed out in the stone by some underground current that just happened to be under the house. While above the stones are still steaming, here it's cool, and he can hear the water dripping. Water and something else.

Voices.

It feels impossible, but there are people down here.

There's the barest slip in Lucifer's concentration before he grabs ahold of his spell with his mind again.

His distraction is of his own making.

Look, they accomplished the task they were sent out for. Anything else is tedious. And, what? They're risking their lives for the chance that someone isn't charred down here?

It's just meaningless to Lucifer.

He glances at Wilhelm. The kid has no reason to ever think any ill, or know any better.

It's... a light influence. Reaching out with his mind and twisting at a few points at what holds the structure together. Just loosening slightly. Nothing much. Nothing to exert too much strength.

But it will move their timetable up rapidly.

Rhy and Kell disappear into the darkness below, which leaves Wilhelm to stare warily at the scorched walls that threaten to cave in around them. He debates if he should step back outside. Well, more outside — the absence of a roof sort of renders obsolete the difference between inside and outside. But what if the brothers need help? Or the hatch somehow falls shut? Plus, he can send warning more easily from the mouth of the cellar.

So here he stands, ignorant to Lucifer's sabotage, brain careening between scenarios — most of them grim — from second to second.

It doesn't take long for him to catch up with Rhy. The cellar is bigger than he'd expect from the size of the house. Still, another few steps, and they reach the end of it. A row of wooden crates with a solid wall behind it.
No people, yes, but no bodies either.

"I think that's it. Let's head back."

They must've gotten out, Rhy thinks. Even burnt, bodies don't turn to ash so easily. The house above is small, and he hadn't seen anything. There might be a way out through the cellar, judging by the natural curves of the stone, maybe into some cave system--

But that's when something crashes up above, and Rhy flinches, sharing a worried look with Kell before he makes for the ladder again.

"Wilhelm? Lucifer? You all right up there?"

"I don't think you have long," Lucifer shouts back, eying the structure with worried eyes, all for show.

Mostly.

Despite his machinations, he does need the brothers to actually get out. He'll step in if he has to. Lord knows how much them dying would break Wilhelm, and Lucifer does not want to deal with that. Wouldn't even know who he could pawn the kid off to for someone else to deal with.

"Hurry it up!"

Thank you for not actively trying to kill their teammates in a staged accident, Lucifer. That's very considerate of you.

The collapse of a broken beam has Wilhelm ducking down and throwing his arms over his head, as if elbows might make a suitable shield. He does, in fact, forget in this moment that tucked in his pocket is a magic shield, which he could activate with a few seconds worth of concentration. Functioning under pressure isn't really his thing.

When the rubble settles a good fifteen feet away, he uncurls from his crouch.

"We're fine!" he calls down to Rhy.

"We're hurrying!" Rhy snaps back at Lucifer, though despite his annoyance, he can feel the tension too. He can hear the creaking above, and dust rains down on him when he starts up the ladder, the top of which seems already worse for wear.

There's a crash, and Rhy begins climbing faster, about to call up--

Thankfully, he hears Wilhelm reassure him right away, and then a moment later sees the rest of their team near the hatch as he hauls himself back out.

"Kell!" Rhy turns, reaching down to help his brother out.

Kell is right behind Rhy. He curses when a cloud of dust falls from the entrance before he even sets his foot on the ladder. Followed by a loud thud echoing through the cellar behind them. He lets himself relax a little only when Rhy is back on the surface. Maybe too early. Kell grabs Rhy's hand mere moments before the last step of the ladder gives in with a crack. He wobbles dangerously for a blink of an eye, but manages to get out with his brother's help.

"Let's get out of here."

He's done with being a hero for now. It was very stupid to go down there in the first place. It was also impossible not to. What if someone was there, and they didn't help? No, they had to.

Now at least they've, what? Seen the error in their ways? That this whole endeavor was pointless?

He shields his eyes with a hand and unseen to any of them a wing to block out the dust over the entryway so that the brothers can get out without anything unkindly falling from overhead. The house is still shifting, after all.

"Can we go back now or did you have some other suicidal wish to accomplish?" he snipes at them.

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[Closed] into the inferno with three princes and a devil [Quest]

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