faderift | OPEN: Cloudreach Event

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Vasran scoffs softly, weakly. "Who even knows." Well, actually — no. She knows. A bit. "You didn't wake me."

She knows that as long as she looks directly at him, she won't see the demon hovering nearby. Still, her eyes keep wandering off, until she sees the green flickering at the edges of her vision, the billowing cloak of the demon over his shoulder. It's terrifying, but she does it all the same, like worrying at a sore spot on her lip.

She herself doesn't have such constant companions, at least at the moment. A Wraith of some sort hovers over her, almost mirroring her posture. Every so often, a looming Terror demon stalks by the tent.

"I saw..." She swallows thickly, wanting to know, not knowing how to say it. "...it wasn't my dream." Is that even possible, or is the fever making her just that delirious?

She is present but not present. But he supposes that's many people right now, even occasionally him. That he can see her drifting lets him know she's...focused without focusing on something else. Something just out of the corner of his eye.

Stay here, and he won't notice it. He'll try not to notice it. "There's a lot being seen lately that isn't...our own. It was a dream that you saw?" That's worrying. The details are crisper in his head, but even in the Fade, the details are twisted. He's not sure if that's better or worse than the actual memories sometimes.

In a dim sense, she recognizes that he can tell she sees the demon, that it's making him uncomfortable, maybe more aware of the demon himself. She does her best, then, to focus, to bring her attention back to him.

"It felt like one." When she looks away this time, it's involuntary, a part of trying to remember, to gather up the threads of what she saw. She closes her eyes. "It was — bloody. A battle. Not in the Hinterlands, I think."

"No," he says tiredly, "far from the Hinterlands in fact." He doesn't talk about Dairsmuid, and he certainly shouldn't use a word like annulment around the mage. Easier on both of them that way. "Better not to dwell on these things, hm? As if we haven't enough to grab our attention while we're awake, I suppose dreams must also start bleeding through."

"It wasn't mine." It not being the Hinterlands confirms as much, though she'd already suspected it. Seekers have always seemed untouchable, even more than ordinary Templars.

"Was that real? Did it actually happen?" He can go into as much or as little detail as he likes. She just wants to know.

"Nothing in the Fade is ever truly real." He mops at his face with his blanket, a mix of cold sweat and fever sweat dabbed off. Despair keeps saying how he could have, should have stopped them. In a way, it's almost nice to have a voice saying it that isn't his own.

For a half-moment when he looks up at Vasran, he can just make out a flash of a hooded figure in his periphery before it's gone. "It's based off an event that did actually happen," he says, honestly, though with some reluctance. "That I was present for."

Despair speaks clearly enough for Vasran to hear, and though the sound of its voice makes her stomach clench, she pushes the thoughts aside. A Seeker's duty must be grim, from time to time. It's no more than the cost of responsibility.

"Don't let it tell you that. Don't believe it." Months ago, she wouldn't have dreamed of telling a Seeker their business when it came to demons. For the moment, the fever's broken down whatever barrier to that sort of talk still remaining. "You must have done what you had to."

"I was following orders," he says as sharply as he can manage, and despite the fever, it's still a cutting edge. "The orders were wrong. I did what I thought was right." It's what he always does, always tries to do. "I did not do enough."

The authority in his voice is still enough to make her lips snap shut. She wasn't seeing the whole picture. Of course she wasn't.

And that thought prompts a hard sigh. She isn't thinking straight in general. Vague visions from the Fade are only making things worse.

"Still." A demon is a demon. He doesn't have to take that. "They'll say anything to get to you."

"That doesn't always make them wrong." Still. He did what he had to, did what he could. The numbers were not in his favour. He has to remember that just because the demon gives voice to the doubts in his head doesn't mean it's right, either.

Time for a topic change. Or at least a shift of focus. Off of him and the things done in the name of the Chantry. "And you, are you having any unfortunate dreams people around you can see? Hating this bloody illness..."

She lets out another huffy sigh, which makes her stomach lurch — eugh.

"Don't know if anybody's seen them." But there's a certain fairness in admitting what she's dreaming about. She butted in on his, after all. "But it's — dark. Close. When the demons took over Kinloch Hold, I hid in a trunk... I think it's putting me back there."

"A trunk saved you from that madness?" He shakes his head, wondering at the little miracles and mercies the Maker grants them. "Perhaps nobody would know if they saw your dreams. Might not be anything there they can see."

OPEN: Cloudreach Event

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