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

[stabsbooks]

She stills her hand, pausing in her writing to look at him fully.

"Skyhold will not crumble," - more than it already has - "but its people will, if I do not work."

Someone will die, Despair whispers behind her, too soft to really hear, and Cassandra repeats the words, unconsciously feeding on the demon's lies. "Someone will die, if we do not ration the medicine, the food, the supplies that we need. There will be another avalanche, another disaster because the caravans do not know to avoid the mountain passes. There will be another altercation between the mages and the templars, or the Dalish and the humans, and this time - this time it will be more than a fistfight - " She stops abruptly, her breath coming short as she grows more agitated, and bows her head for a moment, drawing in a ragged breath.

"Rest yourself, if you have the time. Save your own strength. I am sure it will be needed."

[singularwill]

"Cassandra." The tone is half chastising, half pleading, and he reached out once more to touch her arm, fingers only gently squeezing, as if to underline his words.

"You are only one woman, for all your strength. We are here to work together. The entirely of the Inquisition does not lay squarely on your shoulders. An hour, maybe two. That's all I ask."

[stabsbooks]

It's the pleading note in his voice that gives her pause. She could brush off a reprimand, decry it as unnecessary condescension and return to her work with renewed vigor, spurred on by the need to prove him and everyone else wrong.

But Solas seems truly concerned for her, and it surprises her enough to make her stop and really listen to him. We are here to work together. It's easy to forget that, to forget that the responsibility of holding the Inquisition together belongs to more than just her, or herself and Leliana.

"Solas," she begins, not knowing herself what she plans to say even as she asks. "Why did you leave us?"

Not angry, not accusing - merely curious.

[singularwill]

He doesn't answer immediately, a lingering pause before he offers her a half smile, with just a hint of shame and perhaps a hint of sadness.

"I underestimated you," he admitted. "I thought, without the anchor, without -" The barest hitch, "Evelyn, the blame would fall on me. I was the one who led that course of action. Her life was my responsibility, and I failed her." The smile was completely gone, now, something blanker and darker taking over his expression.

"I am an Elf, and an Apostate, and history has taught me much, when it comes to what happens to human organizations that face such a blow. I thought I would be a target."

He paused again, and then let out a breath.

"... But I was wrong. I admit I am - happy, in this instance, to be incorrect."

[stabsbooks]

She listens quietly, her exhaustion giving her patience that she might otherwise not have had. Patience is easier, when her own brain seems to be working at half the speed it normally does.

But she strives to consider all that he says, all the same, pain flickering briefly across her own face at Evelyn's name. Solas had been affected too, she can tell. She had wondered, when he had disappeared so quickly after her death. Was the pain so great? Or did he simply think the rest of them not worth bothering with any more?

Both, perhaps, but also...this. The fear of backlash, of blame. She chewed on her lip, thinking.

"You were not without reason to fear such things, given...given the Chantry's history," she admits. Not only the Chantry; Cassandra herself had threatened to execute him, once upon a time, if he did not live up to her expectations. "But...it is good that you returned."

She looks down, thinking of everything that had happened since he had left. The Abomination. Galadriel. Her own potentially disastrous, and very public, missteps, as she tried to do a job she was in no way qualified to do.

"The Inquisition needed you."