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]

It's late in the afternoon and the sun is starting to sink low when Solas slips into Sina and Korrin's tent, and walks over to the Elvhen woman curled up on the bed. He leans down to carefully touch her forehead and take her temperature, before his fingertips run cold, and he let's a gentle cool wind wash over her, just for a moment, to relieve the heat.

"It seems fitting, to meet you in person like this," he murmurs, not really caring if she's awake or not.

[eolasemah]

She is and she isn't. The coolness of his touch is enough to rouse her slightly, however, and she opens her glazed-over eyes to see him leaning over her. In a tent, not on the beach. He's touching her.
"...it's you," she whispers with a small, mystified smile. "You came."
True to her dream, the shard embedded in her chest glimmers brightly through her thin undershirt, its light strobing oddly over the entire interior of the tent. At least Araceli's used to it.

[singularwill]

"I did." He smiles at her, warmly, before he pulls the cloth away. His hand moves until his fingers hover above her chest.

"May I?"

[eolasemah]

Speaking again would require too much energy, so Sina just nods. The shard isn't what's troubling her lately-- that's the same fever as everyone else-- but it is ever-present and her body is always aware of it, compensating, keeping itself going around the intruder. Her heart and lungs have not fully recovered from when she opened the rift, and it's possible they never will.

[singularwill]

His touch is incredibly light, fingers pressing just above the shard, before glowing a gentle blue. A long moment passes, until he pulls his hand away and smiles at her.

"There. That should soothe it, for now. I realise it may be of less relief, in the midst of illness, but there was no reason to leave you to suffer doubly."

[eolasemah]

Adelaide has done something similar in the past, but this time it feels a little different. She can't place how, but also doesn't care; the relief is enough.

"Serannas," she breathes, and another tired smile follows. "You know about them," she continues in a whisper, careful not to overexert herself, "what can we do?"

[singularwill]

"For the moment, I am afraid, nothing." He offers an apologetic smile, but it is small, and he is obviously concerned.

"I would not risk removing it. Doing so would almost certainly kill you."

[eolasemah]

There's a trace of dismay in the look Sina gives him, a brief but pointed anguish in her large eyes before she remembers how tired she is and weighs it against the energy it would take to get upset. Instead she nods again, her eyes tearing up regardless. Although she's feverish and her mind is a million places at once, this is the one person who's supposed to know what to do. And she's pretty sure she isn't dreaming this, which means it's real.