OPEN: Cloudreach Event

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

Comments

[singularwill]

"Yes," Solas agrees, his brows furrowing, reaching out to touch the forehead of the patient - clammy and far too warm. "I admit I have never seen anything like it."

It was not something that could have happened, in his youth.

"But the spirits don't seem as if they are... any closer to touching them, as it were. Perhaps they merely gather because they find it so interesting to be able to hear what they otherwise would not." He turned his head to Cole, looking at him. "How do you feel, Cole?"

[colecomfort]

His hands continued their fiddling, occasionally pulling on a finger.

"It's — hard," he admitted with some hesitance, "being too close to too many at once. They start to blur together. I could see the spaces — I didn't try to follow, but I was afraid I might fall through."

[singularwill]

Solas reached out, placing a hand on Cole's shoulder, as if to ground him, and offered him a small, sympathetic smile.

"You are here." It was both a reminder, and happy truth. "You will remain here as long as you wish to. You cannot fall through - you cannot return, unless you decide to do so."

[colecomfort]

The ways in which Cole relaxed in response to the encouragement might have been imperceptible to someone who didn't know how to look for them. Some of the tension left his shoulders under Solas' hand, and the motions of his fingers became less frantic, more idle. He looked from Solas to the prone figure in front of them.

"I watched them as they were dreaming." That part of things seemed interesting now that he thought back on it, despite the distress. "The spirits were showing them parts of memories, or things that almost might have been."

[singularwill]

"Interesting." It wasn't a dismissive word - it really was interesting, but it was something that Solas was going to have to think on, more in depth.

"I wonder... It doesn't seem a natural state, that much I think is clear. Is there anything else that you feel, here? Something - different, not necessarily with the Veil? Something different with the sick, perhaps?"

[colecomfort]

"With them, yes." He continued to stare at the sleeping patient, through them. "They're different. Drifting. Not the sickness, but something inside."

That was as clear as he could make it. He kept on staring, hoping something else might illuminate itself.

[singularwill]

Solas frowned, staring in the same place that Cole was, as if he could see what Cole could - or at least try to.

"Something inside..." He murmured, eyes slightly unfocused as he quickly ran through everything in his mind.

"In the end, I do not think it is antagonistic. Problematic, perhaps, but it seems far more accidental than intentional. It is not the kind of magic I believe Corypheus would be able to employ. We would be able to see his fingerprints upon it."

[colecomfort]

It was true. Cole knew what corruption sounded like — the sick and dark song of red lyrium, or the howl of a demon.

He stood, pushing off one knee with his hand. "Is that what dreams always look like, to dreamers? Reflected remnants, warped and worn, or illusions brighter than what was?"

[singularwill]

"To most, yes." Not to him. Not always. "They see what the Fade offers, but twisted, filtered through their own experiences, their own need. It is no wonder that the Fade warps, through such a lens."

He smiled slightly. "What did you think they would look like?"

[colecomfort]

Cole shifted from one foot to the other, arms crossed. Considering.

"I don't know. I don't remember what it was like on the other side — pulling and shaping, instead of being pulled."

His attention wandered as he lifted his head, his senses casting about for a sign of where to go next. But until something caught...

"But they don't see what they need." It would be more helpful if they did. Cole knew that not all dreams were helpful. They could show blood, pain, fear, darkness — the inside of a cupboard, and footsteps on the stairs.

[singularwill]

"They do not satisfy, no." Solas agreed, watching Cole carefully. Not quite studying him so much as... paying attention. Remembering.

He was a unique creature.

"I admit that mine are different than most. I can go where I will, speak to whom I chose. Most have no control over their dreams, or even understanding. So they fear them."

[colecomfort]

The Fade unfiltered. That, at least, he could catch glimpses of, by virtue of Solas' experience.

"Raw and real, more real than memory. The shape of things from every side — blink, and it becomes itself." At the tail-end of that thought, something more specific: "The tower burns and crumbles, even as it's built."

[singularwill]

He was careful to keep the pain from his face, but he felt it - a knife, long and deep, between his ribs.

The tower burned and crumbled even as it was built.

The future he had so carefully crafted, bringing ruin around him -

No. No, he would not put tinder on the embers of that sorrow. Not today.

"I - Yes. It is... both a comfort, and a pain, as most things are."

[colecomfort]

He felt the disturbance: a flutter of breeze on otherwise still air, a shimmer of heat. No more than a whisper when compared to others' pain.

Cole always hoped that he could do more, but Solas' pain was not always easily broken down into pieces. And the few times he had tried already...

For now, he could accept that this wasn't the time.

"Should we get back to work?" But he was still going to give Solas a chance to open that door.