Ensign T’Fearne - …And onto the Pyre
teayl.thorn
((OOC: picks up from where T’Fearne regains consciousness in the scene at the Bantica Spire, Some tags and comments have been removed as T’Fearne would not have heard them, check out Ensign Sybil Nemes - I see fire for full sim tags!))
((The Bantica Spire, B'Hala, Kendra Provence, Bajor))
The world was nothing but darkness.
Then T’Fearne felt the thick, acrid smoke claw at her lungs, each breath a struggle, each inhalation like a slow poison. The ringing in her ears drowned out everything, the distant sound of voices a faint echo she couldn’t quite place.
She felt like she was drowning in a nightmare, again!
And then, through the haze, she heard them—snippets of voices, distorted by the pain and the smoke.
The high-pitched scream of a frightened lopp.
Alieth’s voice—commanding, urgent.
Alieth: Release her immediately!
And then, a voice that struck her heart with the force of a sledgehammer. Lenik, rasping and bitter, screeched near her ear.
A voice that felt like she hadn’t heard in years. Nemes, with a sharp bark, full of indignation.
Nemes: Hey! Leave her alone!
Pain flared across T’Fearne's head, her body struggling to fight back to consciousness. Her eyes fluttered open. She gasped, choking on the air around her, her body jerking against the grip holding her upright.
T’Fearne: Alieth…Sybill? Oww!
Her words were more a pained groan than anything intelligible. The world spun sickeningly around her, but she fought to push through, to focus.
Two burly cultists, their hands like vices, yanked her arms behind her back and dragged her toward the clearing at the foot of the Bantica Spire. The world was a blur, her surroundings an indistinguishable haze of smoke, fire, and blood-red robes.
Vrozek/Nemes/Lenik/Alieth: Response
Through the smoke, she caught sight of her friends—Alieth, Luxa, Nemes—fighting like cornered animals, dragged toward the unlit pyres that surrounded the spire. Alieth's gem flared, a pulse of green light. Then the glyphs of the Bantica Spire responded with their own green brilliance.
Lorana: You don't know what you're doing Lenik!
T’Fearne: Lenik, please, you don’t need to do this!
T’Fearne rasped, struggling against the grip that held her. But the plea fell on deaf ears. Lenik’s eyes were like black hollows, swallowing all hope.
Vrozek/Lenik/Alieth/Lorana: Response
Nemes: :: With a face contorted in pain:: This is just madness.
T’Fearne clenched her teeth in rage and pain. Struggling to free herself, to get to her friends. She could see the pyres, and hear the incantations being muttered by the cultists as they prepared their offerings. They were going to be burned at the stake. She felt hot tears leak down her cheeks.
Vrozek/Nemes/Lenik/Alieth/Lorana: Response
The smoke thickened, swirling in waves, and she heard a voice through the chaos—a mocking voice. One of the red-robed cultists.
Red-robed guy: We want you to witness your own burning, don't we?
A torch was raised, its flame licking the air as it moved toward Sybill. The cultist's grin was cruel, filled with malice.
Nemes: You… you son of a…
The faint, rhythmic clang of metal against metal filled the air, it came from beyond the clearing and out in the gloom.
From the edge of the courtyard, swirling out of the shadows and smoke, figures emerged. Their clothes were simple, unadorned—browns, indigos, oranges, and blue woad in stark contrasts to the red of the cultists. Their faces were hidden beneath cloaks and damp scarves, but there was something determined in their stance and lethal in their eyes.
Some were frail, barely able to stand, but in their hands, they wielded incense burners like weapons, swinging them on ropes and chains with deadly precision. Though cloaked, some were clearly women, brandishing pots and pans, T’Fearne spotted a rolling pin of terrifying proportions.
oO Some of them look like Oogan’s incense tenders!Oo
They began engaging the red robes with fierce vengeance.
The two guards holding T’Fearne promptly dropped her on her face to defend themselves from three women with wicked-looking kitchen implements.
T’Fearne::: Spitting sand out of her mouth:: Who are you?
Bajoran Woman::: Pulling down her face mask:: We are B’Hala! We serve the true Prophets of Bajor. Not those Kosst Amojan:: She spat on the ground:: Just you wait, Lady. B’Hala will save you, Priestess’s.
With that, she hiked up her skirt raised her rolling pin over her head and chased after a fleeing red robe.
Vrozek/Lenik/Alieth/Lorana/Nemes: Response
The ensign crawled to her feet and seeing Nemes in grave danger she rushed at her assailant. Kicking the cultist in the knee, as his leg crumpled she grabbed the top of his head and used his own falling momentum to smash his face into her rising knee.
T’Fearne’s voice was urgent as she moved to free Sybil, her hands shaking with adrenaline.
T’Fearne: Hold on. I’ve got you. I think help is here.
Vrozek/Lenik/Alieth/Lorana/Nemes: Response
The ground shook, seeming to quake the city all around them, but the earth and stone courtyard that surrounded the Bantica Spire only trembled faintly, like the calm at the eye of a storm. Small patterns and ripples began to shape themselves in the dust and sand, flowing from circles to squares and repeating patterns. The fires raging around the city whipped into a frenzy, the dull crackles turning into an infernal roar as intense heat washed over the tiny denizens, fighting their time war.
T’Fearne::: Pointing to Lenik and yelling:: It’s Lenik, she has an artifact, we have to get the duck away from her!
The stone around the courtyard CRACKED, a narrow rift widening on all sides. The courtyard swayed and tilted slightly, and then the entire courtyard and all the cultists, Starfleet and the Bajoran citizens that had stepped onto it lurched downward. The stone cracked and ground against itself as the platform descended deeper and deeper, sinking under the city with the Bantica Spire.
Ten feet. Twenty feet. Thirty. More.
(( Deep in the Undercity, B’Hala, Kendra Provence, Bajor))
Finally, the descent slowed. The platform groaned, its downward momentum grinding to a halt deep within the undercity. Darkness enveloped them, the only light now the eerie green glow of the Bantica Spire and a few torches clutched in the hands of the remaining cultists.
T’Fearne, shaken and disoriented, pushed herself upright. She staggered, her vision swimming as she tried to assess her surroundings.
T’Fearne::: quietly in the cave-like atmosphere:: I think we’ve sunk to the undercity.
Seeing Nemes free from the pyre, T’Fearne turned to hunt down Lenik if she was down here as the lights on the Bantica Spire began to grow brighter.
Vrozek/Lenik/Alieth/Lorana/Nemes: Response
[Tag, You’re It! / TBC]
((OOC: 1chladni plate - a flat, vibrating plate that demonstrates the patterns of sound vibrations in a two-dimensional object. ))
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Security Officer
USS Ronin - NCC-34523
R240107T14