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

[justice_is_blond]

"All right." There's so much that they don't know about spirits. Maybe if they're able to stay free, that can decrease. Knowledge spreads when communication is allowed, research is allowed, creativity is allowed. When fear does not rule. That doesn't mean they'll find answers about what Cole is at the end of the day, or a way to split Anders and Justice, but it does mean they can do better eventually.

He doesn't have many hopes, but this is one he holds onto. The longer freedom lasts, the stronger it will be, and the more fruit it will bear. They can keep this.

"I know you're not a ghost, and I know you're not just spirit or just human. I don't need to know more." He hopes that's some comfort or reassurance. He also knows Cole is no demon, but that part feels obvious enough it doesn't have to be spoken.

"Do you ever miss the Fade, though? The part of you that is Compassion." Or was, or however it goes.

[colecomfort]

Cole tilts his head to one side. His chin is tipped too far down for his eyes to be visible, but they're trained on Anders' chest, looking through to a point somewhere near his heart.

"Do you?"

[justice_is_blond]

It's a question for Justice, and Anders doesn't like the answer.

"He doesn't." Of late, Anders has been hoping to find a way to become unpossessed if they can't balance out and find peace. The situation as it is isn't going to work long-term, he worries. "I wish he did. But he feels like he can do more here to further the cause of justice."

It's true. But they've already crossed lines. Anders doesn't want to cross more.

[colecomfort]

"Yes. I'm the same. This is where I can help."

Justice gets it then — that part, at least. There's one thing he said earlier, however, that Cole took exception to.

"I'm not broken. I know now what I was — what I'm supposed to be. That's enough. The words don't matter."

[justice_is_blond]

He's quiet for several moments, processing that. Someone with a purpose isn't broken. Would Compassion as it had been or Cole as he had been see this form as something not broken? Anders can't say, and if the Cole before him says he's not broken, he has enough, then who is Anders to say otherwise? Just because Anders feels divided and conflicted and a mess doesn't mean anything. Part of why he speaks to Cole, beyond simply liking the boy, is because he seems far more whole than Anders has achieved.

"It's enough to know what you're supposed to be," he agrees after that time. He's not sure he knows what he's supposed to be. Not this. Not being in fear that Justice will harm someone, not struggling to find balance. He needs to find a way. A purpose that's more concrete than mage freedom, because there are a thousand ways to work toward that.

"How did you figure that out?"

[colecomfort]

In the pause before he answers, Cole turns, begins heading back toward the healing tents. Anders will want to get to back to work soon. They all will.

"Pieces. Parts. One thread at a time, until I started to see the picture." He has to think back, to before the Herald, before the Templars, before Rhys. It does seem that it came to him in stages.

"I was almost me by the time the Herald came, but only almost. I'd thought I had to follow the Templars so they could kill me if I went wrong again. She opened the door to something different. I think it was always there, but I hadn't seen it."

[justice_is_blond]

He walks with Cole quietly, thoughtfully. Cole isn't broken, but if he had to put himself together, then he once was. And Anders... has not been. Not that much. There was certainly a time he had to find himself again, but that was before Justice, after a year spent in the dark. There are parallels, but he doesn't know that there's enough to help them find a way here. The rituals Adelaide's found may be the only hope of solving things for himself and Justice.

"Hope?" If Cole had been ready and willing to die, then he'd certainly not seen hope at the time.

[colecomfort]

"A different direction. A new way to help." The concept of something greater he could dedicate himself to. In a way: "Hope. Yes."

[justice_is_blond]

"Maybe I can find that again." It would be helpful. Right now, all he has is his causes and what he can provide before he loses his life, as well as a little joy with Nate and finding that he actually still has friends. Hope, and faith, are things he's very short on. "Right now, at least I've some direction. Perhaps it will be enough if I can't find hope."