faderift | OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

WHO: Living Residents of the Horrible Future
WHAT: Ah ha ha ha stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
WHEN: ALTERNATE FUTURE, 1-15 Cloudreach 9:48
WHERE: Anywhere, but especially Orzammar
NOTES: This is the first open log for False Gods, Great Demons. Anything that happened prior to Cloudreach 9:48 should go on the flashback meme. Most members of the TTT and their friends in Kirkwall will be arriving in Orzammar on approximately Cloudreach 7. In the meantime, feel free to make your own adventures. If you want to blow up an bridge, assassinate an NPC of your own invention, steal supplies, or anything else--it's all yours, go for it!

SOUTHERN THEDAS is a wasteland. The Blight crawling across the Orleian countryside and into Ferelden leaves nothing alive in its wake, scarring the land like an insatiable fire until no birds sing and the only things that grows is the Red Lyrium that speckles cliff sides and crawls up dying trees until they look like rows of jagged bloody teeth. And where it's still green, where people can still survive, the atmosphere is nearly as stifling. Every city and settlement is watched over by a Venatori or trustworthy collaborator. Those who don't keep their heads down and their dissent a whisper may vanish without warning. They may take their whole families with them. There are flashes of hope--an assassinated lordling here, a village rousing itself to brief and doomed rebellion there--but for every man the Imperium loses, they seem to find two to take his place.

NORTHERN THEDAS is at war. The worst of it doesn't reach west into Tevinter or the Anderfels; the line between the Qunari and the Imperium is drawn straight through Antiva, with Nevarra and Rivain on either side quiet and calm as only lands under martial law can be. The Free Marches vary between complacency and rebellion, but the rebellious ones risk ruin--there are murmurs it won't be long before a whole city is made an example. A steady stream of desperate refugees is fleeing north to the Qun, but plenty are picked off and punished as traitors before they can cross into Qunari-controlled territory. Your best best for a clean escape are the pirates who still hold Llomerynn free from both sides of the conflict.

ORZAMMAR is the only kingdom in Thedas that looks much the same--and Kal-Sharok, but they're not accepting outsiders. The heavy doors at Orzammar's entrance are sealed and guarded, as much against the steady flow of refugees asking for help as against the Venatori. The refugees are turned away. There's no way to know who can be trusted, and even if there were, there's not food enough for people who can't fight. Orzammar Thaig is still the dwarves' home--though with stealing shrinking numbers and poor prospects, King Bhelen has been amenable to allowing casteless surfacers some leeway--but the once-abandoned Ortan Thaig is the Inquisition's. Quietly. The only things stopping a full assault on Orzammar is the Venatori's need for dwarf-mined lyrium and the plausible deniability that the Inquisition's remaining rebel bands are using the Deep Roads with Bhelen's consent.

An hour's walk through caves and deepstalker swarms, Ortan is a city in its own right. A crammed city, one where cots and bunk beds crammed into shared housing are the norm no matter how important someone is and you occasionally have to protect your dinner from a restless, swooping griffon, but one where you can still find a pint of ale or a game of cards if you've time to waste on them. It's just that not many people do. There's the watch to keep; the tunnels that creep further into the deep teem with darkspawn who are held back at barricades, while the hidden, narrow tunnels that lead to the surface are watched at all hours so anyone coming or going can be identified. There are weapons to forge and sharpen. Plans to make. Bands to lead. Maybe you weren't a leader five years ago, but these days, there aren't that many people with more than five years' experience still alive to give orders. Fewer every week.

And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars,
We dreamed up false gods, great demons
Who could cross the Veil into the waking world,
Turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you.
Threnodies 1:8

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Once Bethany had established that they were not keeping her husband a prisoner, but that he was with the healers, she calmed down greatly. Much to relief of the soldiers at the Thaig's prison, naturally. However, that anger faded into fear when they told her how badly off he was, and she moved hurriedly to the healing tents.

Whether or not he heard her, she was loud enough for everyone else to, "You will let me through. That is my husband, damn you all!"

The sound of Bethany's angry demands for admittance doesn't go unremarked by Aleron. Though between the haze of pain he remains in, and the addition of sedatives given him to cease his fretful pacing, he cannot actually recognize or identify the source. Still, if his wife isn't fuming already, she will be on seeing him for the first time in some three years. His fine nose was broken and never set some time ago, the right cheekbone bashed in and against left untended. Those are the least of his concerns. It's the lethal dose of red lyrium that's eating away at him physically and mentally. His once ice blue eyes are now searing red and angry red veins throb in plain sight just under the skin.

He's seated on a makeshift cot, twisting and untwisting the hem of his shirt, having been firmly prevented from disrupting all the other patients with his pacing. Even as he glances up to identify the source of the yelling (they'd told him not to yell, she shouldn't be yelling), it's done with him mumbling Transfigurations to himself.

Hi honey?

They let her through, all the while warning her that he wasn't looking good - that there wasn't much she could do - or anything at all - and all she did was ignore then as she pushed past and into the tent where he lay.

She let out a cry, and ran over to him, dropping on her knees and looking at his face, "Aleron ... oh my Al, what have they done to you, my darling?" She touched his face gingerly, her brown eyes flashing grief ... and anger. "They'll pay, I swear they will pay." She put one hand to her mouth, "...first we have to get you well. You will get well, I promise you, I just ... "

She stopped, then cleared her throat, "Best - best you don't ask about that."

He sits in silence for what will likely seem an eternity to Bethany. Aleron's watching her, sees her, focuses intently on her face because it's something to keep him grounded. But it's not her. It never is. He's seen her, talked to her, but in the end, when he's reached out to touch her, the illusion fades and he's left quite alone in his madness. That is, perhaps, the worst part. He can feel his mind slipping away and it's abhorrent to a man who was once lauded as one of the most brilliant strategists among his brethren.

But that touch. It felt real. It's felt real before too. She cannot be here. She must not. He will not be the bait who finds her taken. The song of the red and the pain it causes are screaming, fighting for dominance over the wishful dreaming he's facing again. Again. Even knowing this cannot be real, there is a deep and abiding yearning that this time it is. Despite the warning of his mind that it is too dangerous to be so.

"Bethany?" Briefly, he raises his hand, daring to reach out and touch her soft cheek. But he forces it down, unwilling to let the facade be unmasked and fade away. Maker, how he aches for her to be real just this once. But it is wrong and he knows it. "I've said nothing. I've kept you safe."

Because all of this torment he's suffered is sourced in an attempt to flush out the last Hawke.

She looks up from where she buried herself into his chest, tears streaking down her cheeks, smudging the red slash across her nose and cheeks. She lets out a noise, something like a strangled animal, before his words sank in.

"Oh ... Oh Aleron. I am safe, You are safe. I am going to save you." She takes his hand, and presses it against her cheek. "See? You're home. With me. I'll never let you leave again." Fresh tears splashed down her cheeks, "You just have to hold on a little longer, until Merrill gets back, all right? Stay with me, Aleron, please."

Having his hand lifted to her face initially causes a panicked reaction from Aleron. He knows how this plays. He tries to reach out to his lovely wife and then she vanishes. It's happened more times than he can count. But this time she doesn't. Maker be praised, she's really here!

As if a switch were flipped, hesitation and fear give way to relief. He grabs hold of his pretty wife and crushes her tightly against him with one arm, while cradling her head against his chest with his other hand. "Oh, my sweet Bethany." Aleron nuzzles his face into her hair, blithely ignoring that his 'sweet' wife was moments ago making not-so-veiled threats that imply some major destruction as payback. "Don't weep. I'm here. I'm not leaving."

Not willingly anyway. The man's possibly got days at most left from the lethal doses of red he's had forced on him.

Although her remark that she's not letting him leave again brings to mind their argument before he had left. He was right to prevent her from joining him. They would have had her years ago. It might have spared him three years of torment, or they might have just killed him outright. But she's here and she's safe and that is the only thing that matters. But. He was so right.

Bethany lets out a gasp of surprise as he suddenly crushes her down, and she has to be careful not to breath in any of the red lyrium, but she doesn't let him go. "I was - I was so scared they had killed you and no one could tell me anything..."

She sobbed into his shirt for a moment longer, before she pulled up to look at him, touched his unbroken cheek with one hand. "I don't care what I have to do ... I won't let you go this time."

She shook her head, "I never should have let you go in the first place. We both should have never left."

Ah well, that's up for debate, really. Because the problem with a lucid moment is the crushing reality of their situation is going to come crashing in and force a rather ugly discussion. For whatever reason, his captors were hellbent on getting the whereabouts of 'the last Hawke'. Somehow she poses some threat to the mastermind of all this chaos. It hadn't taken long in the early days to realize he was being tortured to try to lure her out.

And instead, he'd been walked right to her doorstep. Well, shit.

Suddenly the ease of getting out makes a little too much sense. The open cell door, taken out without bonds. This was the plan all along. If Bethany wouldn't rise to the bait, wait for her now insane spouse lead the way to her. He stayed silent and suffered greatly for her sake... and now? What was it for?

Whatever traces of his calm composure and stoicism vanished alongside his mental stability ages ago. His eyes widen in fear and panic and he pushes Bethany back (not too roughly) with a a firm shake of the head. "I cannot stay. I have to go." Wait. That won't help. He probably sounds as if he's slipped again, since his thoughts are coming out one over another. For once, he's half-way sane; the paranoia is vicious, however. "No. If we were followed, it won't matter if I leave. You'll be here. Forgive me. I've led them here. You have to flee."

Putting aside for a moment that Aleron is in absolutely no condition to be traveling anywhere, he makes to stand as if intending to be the one to leave after all. Except he's not able to actually get up and flops down rather uselessly. His mind continues to race and it's all to find some sort of way to convince her how much danger he's put her in unintentionally. As his distress mounts, he begins to shake, which is terribly uncharacteristic for him. Or it used to be. Sadly the building panic is doing a number on his concentration and making it impossible to stave off the madness.

"Aleron - Aleron." Bethany may have been pushed back a step or two, and the shock itself had surprised her enough that she allowed his panicked tirade to continue ... but then he tried to stand. All of her instincts kicked in - the protective, and loving wife who once sat on Aleron to keep him in bed while he nursed his way through a nasty cold.

This same wife stood in front of him, pushing him down back on the bed by the shoulders, "Aleron Darton, you listen to me. We are in Orzammar. The only way they are getting in here is if they are willing to piss off the dwarves -- and they aren't. They need lyrium. Could they have gotten a spy in here? Possibly. But my darling one..."

Here her eyes flicker, just slightly, "I have taught them to regret that, over the years. So please, lay back down. Relax. I'm safe here - you're safe. You shouldn't excite yourself ... "

It would only worsen his condition -- and it was coming clear to her that it was as grave as they told her it was.

The only thing keeping Aleron from resisting being held down at the shoulders by his wife is a complete inability to do so. He's too weak and in too much agony to fight it. But frustration is rapidly building, though not with her. With his failing faculties. He can feel himself slipping again and he needs to get through to her before it's too late. Because she is not safe and it is his fault. "Bethany, my beloved light..."

He dallies studying her face, as if memorizing every detail anew, with a growing realization that it likely is his last chance to do so. But not for nearly long enough to sate his yearning to dote on Bethany, because he's desperate to convey something to her, even though putting two words together at a time takes effort. His speech is broken as he fumbles and trips over his words. The song and the pain are forcing their way in through the cracks.

"I would... I would lay down my life... to save yours. But Anders... Anders told me... to live, for you. I swear I have done." Even at the precipice of madness, he remembers the injunction to live because Bethany had lost enough. That's what's truly kept him from succumbing some time ago. Unfortunately, sheer stubborn will alone is rapidly proving not enough. "They... wanted you. '...last Hawke.' I would not... You must live." His lip quivers while he teeters on the edge of tears; he's quite lost control as the sound is drowning his clarity out. "I've failed you. You must live."

She's terribly correct, unfortunately. He should not have been allowed to get worked up because it's proving detrimental to his already deteriorating condition. Whatever he was trying to convey is now lost to the fog of the red lyrium's silent internal torture. The song is all that's left to him and Aleron clearly can no longer recognize where he is or with who. The only solid thought left to him is that he wishes he could die and bring the pain to an end.

She shakes her head a little, both disbelieving and grief warring on her face. She shakes him a little, because she does not want to hear this. Not now, not after she has gotten him back. She cannot lose him. There is no point to 'keep living' without him.

"Aleron, no... please, don't leave me." She pleads again, feeling weakness overcoming her. "You can't leave me here alone. They're all slipping away from me and without you - what am I living for?"

Grief warred with stubborness, as she squeezed his hands in hers, "If you leave me - I will not be long in joining you. You must know that. So you have to hold on -- for both of us."

Ah how he's tried to hold on for just such a reason. Even when pain would have driven him to end his life for relief alone, he's refrained from retreating into the safe recesses of his mind to extend what time he has left with his wife. But his control is gone. He's not dead, but that release would be the greater mercy. Still some fragment of him holds on tightly to Bethany, unwilling to let her go, though he truly should.

It's the dream again, where she is in his arms and there was never any red lyrium. Just the promises of their country estate and their children playing in the shade of a flowering almond tree. He won't let go this time, won't let her fade away and vanish into nothing but memories of loving smiles.

He's clinging to Bethany in reality just as firmly as he is in the fantasy, unaware he is doing so, beyond a mumbled, "Forgive me, I tarried too long." Alas her pleas to stay with her now fall on deaf ears, seeing how his obedience only extends so far as to not pass on to the Maker's side.

Strangely enough, the memory that comes to her then is that of Aveline, leaning over her husband Wesley, as he lay there dying of the Blight. Marian, whispering to her, telling that it was her choice and she could not make it for her. Bethany remembered holding one arm around Connor's waist, as she sent bouts of healing magic through him even as he grumbled, Mother's concerned and strained look.

She had prayed then, Please, Maker, never put me in that position.

Yet here she was. The Maker truly had abandoned them - abandoned them all.

"... Hush love. There is nothing to forgive." She pulled back enough, to grab one of the pillows from the bed. "We'll be together, forever, soon enough. I love you. Always."

Then she pressed the pillow over his mouth and nose, pushing it down with her own Force magic to smother him. Tears ran down her face, mixing with the blood that was splashed across her nose, and falling on the blanket as she kept Aleron down with every ounce of pure magic she had in her. To take away his pain. To put him at the Maker's side.

Her words were choked as she whispered.

"The Light shall lead her safely
Through the paths of this world, and into the next.
For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.
As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,
She should see fire and go towards Light.
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,
And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword..."

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OPEN ↠ FALSE GODS, GREAT DEMONS (OPEN LOG 1)

Re: Ortan Thaig | After the Arrival of the TTT

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