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[tiveragh]

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Caught in the Rift (Caldera CRAU)

[lost_and_foundry]

The moon-shard shatters at last under the tenth, or hundredth, or thousandth blow from Barcus' hammer, and for a moment everything goes dark. Which, given the realm of glaring light he was just caught within, is highly ominous, but also a relief to his sensitive eyes. He lies still for a long time, unsure whether he's unconscious or whether the world has simply ceased to exist around him.

He died once before, in Caldera. Can't remember the aftermath. Can't remember where he was, before he became alive again. Maybe this is it? And he finds himself thinking worriedly about the dozens of people who will be very upset with him for dying again, until he starts to hear the soft sounds of crickets chirping around him.

Gradually, his other senses return. The smell of wet earth. A whisper of wind in grass or leaves. His hands are cold, so cold, and stiff. He flexes his fingers gingerly, feels the joints pop unpleasantly. And slowly his eyes open.

He finds himself on a forest path, but it's unlike the forests he knows in Dryad Territory, and even less like the woods of Faerun, which begs a lot of questions.

He will ask those questions. Eventually. When he can sit up and find his voice.

All You've Got to Do is Fall

[hellrider]

The skies over Avernus are red in the daytime and red in the night, but sometimes smoke and sulfur obscure them to the point of true darkness. Twenty, thirty, forty years ago, the darkness would be no issue for Zevlor's fiery eyes, but decades of working under the constant light of the Companion has left him night-blind, a frailty shared by some other older Hellriders.

A sacrifice he was willing to make, though he was not informed beforehand it would occur. The sacrifice of his soul to Zariel is not one he would have made willingly, and the betrayal of it aches and burns in his chest. His Oath is unbroken; he will fight the devils and save as many of his people as he can. His faith, however, is burning away in hellfire.

He makes his way in the darkness as best he can, smelling of brimstone and blood: his own, and the blood of the devils he's slain. When he does emerge again into the light, he cuts a figure that's more than a little unsettling: tall, horned, bearing a sword and wearing plate armor slick with gore and ashes. Anyone catching a glimpse of him would be excused for assuming he's a threat rather than a hero.

[imperfectsoldier]

Steve is a problem for HYDRA.

It isn't just that the formula in the serum used to create him was subtly different, or that one of the things it heightened was his pre-existing strong sense of justice, or even the time he served after the serum, operating on his own and outside their (or anyone else's) control. It isn't even wholly the relatively short amount of time they've had with him, since excavating him out of a block of ice.

It's all of them, and the upshot of all of them is that they can't quite completely overwrite his sense of identity, or entirely erase his memories. That doesn't mean he's himself - he's not, but he's not the point and shoot weapon they'd like him to be.

He is disoriented a lot of the time. He is more disoriented when he gets woken up, pulled out and taken to (and into) a 'holding' cell in one of their facilities to watch (guard?)--

a really short guy, who is definitely not human.

What the hell has HYDRA done now?

Steve stares for a second, expression pointedly blank, and slowly tilts his head over to one side. He says nothing until the agent who brought him down leaves. Even then it's still pretty blank and exactly one word.

"...Hi?"