faderift | OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

WHO: Everybody present for the effort to draw out the Nightmare.
WHAT: Oh no.
WHEN: 28-30 Bloomingtide
WHERE: THE FADE as it exists, approximately, in an incomprehensible nongeographical way, alongside the Western Approach.
NOTES: You can only participate in this plot if you signed up in advance. (Not really, this is a joke.) For driveby GM taunting or to have the debris of personal nightmares appear in the Fade sign up here. Check here for notes on crystal functionality, which will not be normal. (GIF source.)

The plan is simple enough, on paper.

Lord Livius Erimond, locked in Skyhold's dungeon since his capture, finally cracks when he learns that the Grey Wardens have moved on and no one is coming to negotiate for his release. There's no mind-control driving the sacrifices, he says, only fear. Corypheus has an arrangement with a demon to amplify it and extend the reach of the song that's driving the Wardens to desperation. Handle it, and maybe they'll see that they're being manipulated.

In practice, it's a little fuzzier. Some guesswork. Some optimism. Approximating the demon's location takes time and effort from the Fade-fluent. There's a rift nearby, but it's small, nondescript. Making it bigger, drawing attention and drawing the demon out onto solid ground where it can be fought, calls for every anchor shard on hand, mages and Templars to assist, archers and swordsmen at the ready. The Herald did it before, at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It's feasible. Just wiggle your fingers, and--

--and the sky opens up wide, then wider, too wide, green light flooding out like water finally cresting over a bank, and the ground beneath your feet turns from sand to stone. In some places it becomes vertical. In others it stops existing at all. The rift sprawls and spiders out with almost sentient aim, encompassing everyone it can reach. It takes two seconds, maybe three.

Then it closes.

I. THE NIGHTMARE

The good news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly. The bad news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly.

So if you find a second to to wonder where you are, there are two possible answers. The first is the raw Fade, where few have trod since the ancient magisters entered the Golden City and began the Blight. The City is Black now and it hangs in the distance, always on the horizon, always visible, but never within reach. The light is sickly green and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, creating shadows from any and all directions. What direction is up and what direction is sideways is open for debate anyway. The ground--if it can be called that when it is only sometimes below you--is dark and rough, all crags and cliffs and spires. It's wet, too, with puddles and stagnant streams wound through the rock.

The second possible answer to the question of where, and the one that might warrant even more attention than the first, is right on top of a damn demon.

The Nightmare is massive, as large as a small fort. It has a dozen legs and at least twice as many eyes; a warm, civilly sinister voice that knows your deepest and darkest fears; and a seemingly endless supply of minions. Terror demons spring out of the ground around you with creaking screams. Fearlings take the shape of your simpler phobias: here a spider, there a snake, or roaring flames, a lyrium-encrusted Templar. Fighting through the flood of demons and bringing down the Nightmare will take every sword, every staff, and several hours. Pick a leg.

And when it's over--when the Nightmare is dead and only straggling Fearlings and occasional Terrors present an immediate threat--try to figure out what's next.

II. SEARCHING

Attempts to tear a new hole in the Veil from the inside will produce no results. But those sensitive to the Fade may be able to feel something--not quite like a draft guiding you out of a cave, but there's no closer analogy in the common tongue. A faint whiff of reality, somewhere in the distance, straight away from the distant Black City. There's no sunrise or sunset, and an hour can feel like a day or feel like a minute, but time is passing, and the walk is long by any measure.

While it's in your best interest to stay with the rest of the Inquisition's forces, this region of the Fade is a twisty, treacherous thing that seems to actively conspire to separate and mislead its visitors. More Fearlings slither out of crevices to menace anyone who lingers alone or tries to sleep. There's a marshy expanse that does its best to trap feet, and a field of memorial stones with the names of visitors etched into their surfaces, each with a cause of death marked below. Everywhere you step the ground is littered with evidence of terrible dreams, worked into the landscape like they were there first and it has grown up around them. There are skeletons in the stone, rock formations that twist into the shape of gallows, lost toys underfoot, an entire home tucked down a winding path, achingly empty.

III. ESCAPE

The Nightmare is dead, but its absence creates new reasons to fear. It begins slowly, things crumbling: the edge of a stair giving way unexpectedly, a towering hunk of rock a ways off collapsing upward into the open air and reforming there. The path rearranges as it's walked and takes wanderers in different directions, leaving them to fight their ways back to the main group. It was the concentration of fear and willpower embodied in the Nightmare that held this domain of the Fade intact, and without it, there's a power vacuum to fill. The spirits drawn here are drawn by lingering fear, and warped by it.

The forms they take may not be those you're familiar with from outside the Fade--less deformed, more malleable, more insidious, the things you most or least want to see. Those who long for safety may find a gentle Desire demon willing to offer it. Those whose fears stem from insecurities may hear the whispers of lurking Envy, mimicking their voices from its hiding place, cautiously testing for a foothold. If fear only pisses you off, be prepared to face your Rage. And if you refuse to be afraid--if you have this under control, if you know you'll be all right--a smiling embodiment of Pride may appear to praise your prowess and ask you to put those skills to other uses.

Whatever form your demons take, they are distractions from the larger issue: this part of the Fade is collapsing, unstable, and not meant for creatures like you to survive in. As important as it is to face your fears, it may in the end be more important to run from them. Regroup, keep moving, take head counts. There's a rift ahead, small enough to slip through one at a time, out into the desert, with its bright sun and relatively solid ground--and however long it feels like you've been walking, days or weeks, Adamant Fortress is visible across the sand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Her head snaps to the side when she hears the cry, and the fact that it is a familiar voice, she tells herself, has nothing to do with how quickly she reacts. She would, of course, have done the same for anyone who called for help on the battlefield.

But it isn't just anyone - it is Obi-Wan Kenobi, his lightsaber glowing, a single bright spot in the gloomy darkness of the Fade. Cassandra dashes toward him, sword held tight - doubtless he had meant cover in the form of arrows or spells to distract the creature, but there are no archers or mages to spare, not when everyone is already fighting.

She's nearly reached him when the fearlings appear, and she recoils, pulling a face as the oversized maggots swarm him.

"Ugh."

Her reluctance to act doesn't last long. As awful as the maggots are, it would be worse by far to leave Obi-Wan to deal with them on his own, and she lunges forward, hacking viciously at one of the creatures and cleaving it in two.

Obi-Wan is a wolf, surrounded by dogs-- demons, rather. They swarm and then ebb away, each eager to attack, but each acutely aware that whichever one of their number reaches him first will die. He is able to maintain a circle of clear space around himself by sheer stamina, but even Obi-Wan must falter at some point.

He is alone, after all, and they are many.

But Cassandra Pentaghast, the implacable right hand, is a host unto herself. She is not what he looked for, nor is she what he meant when he called for assistance, but there is no denying her effectiveness. Indeed, there is no denying her in any capacity as she cuts a swath of panic through the avatars of fear. Her own disgust is just as clear... or, maybe her face is always like that, in combat, perpetually annoyed as if her enemies were little more than dumb obstacles, as meaningless and easily dismissed as if she were chopping wood. It would not surprise Obi-Wan in the least.

If nothing else, the distraction buys him a moment's breath, a rallying of momentum, and he shifts, suddenly off the defensive, overhand third form he had favored since the approach to Adamant, into the vertical stances and abrupt, aggressive movements of the Ataru style. It is one thing to fight alone, for however long one must, and another to fight alongside an equal partner: hope, like fear, comes from within.

Edited 2016-06-12 20:22 (UTC)

It's a good thing for Obi-Wan that Cassandra can't know what he's thinking, either about her expression or her effectiveness in battle. She would appreciate neither observation.

But she doesn't know, and so she's free to think only of her work. She fights as she always does, intense and focused. She doesn't have the brute strength of a warrior like Iron Bull, and so she maximizes what she does have, each blow efficient and clean, with no wasted movements. Slowly, bit by bit, they cut the fearlings down, until all that is left is the great leg of the Nightmare itself.

She glances up at it, drawing a breath for courage, before glancing at Obi-Wan - and, thoughtfully, at his blade of plasma, still glowing brightly and humming with energy.

"Will it cut through?"

Obi-Wan's grateful for her delicacy. There's a great deal of splatter involved in fighting like the Iron Bull, and Obi-Wan's already lost his cloak somewhere in the melee.

"Yes," He says, giving her a nod. Yes it will, yes he's going to scale the massive, shifting, living chitin of the impossibly huge spider-leg, and yes, he's going to cut it off, "But only if I have someone down here to make sure there's enough time."

In the shadows beyond their immediate vicinity, the fearlings are already regrouping, eyes shining out of the darkness, reflecting the lightsaber's glow like eerie beasts. His smile is grim, but the humor is real-- he knows what her answer must be, but still he asks. Sometimes the illusion of a choice is enough, if it's all you have.

"Shall we?"

She smiles back, not exactly amused, but not quite with the grim humor of despair either. They are far from despair, and there's a fire in her eyes as she nods in agreement.

There is a certain vitality in this, in standing against an enemy with only her armor, her weapons, and her own skill to protect her. Everything else fades away, the complications of politics and bureaucracy and interpersonal drama all vanished. Everything is simple, black and white, for as long as this lasts. Even Obi-Wan, who she had once interrogated, who had once challenged and cast doubt upon her, who still holds more of her secrets than she ever would have liked - even he is her complete ally in this, without question, because it is them against fear, against the Nightmare, and their course is clear. Her eyes flick up to the Nightmare's leg towering above him, to the humming blue of his lightsaber, and her smile grows.

"You will have time."

His answering grin is nothing like the stalwart knight, or the kindly master-- it's pure Skywalker influence, adrenaline rising up his spine and into his eyes as if to say, watch this!

Without a further word, he turns, and leaps, Force-assisted, like an impossibly large grasshopper, scaling the rough surface of the spider's leg. It is dotted with hairs, thick sensory cables, spiked downward as if to thwart just such an attempt. The leg lifted and twitched, as if Obi-Wan's ascent tickled. He was, for just a moment, in a zone of calm, the Nightmare not yet aware of him, its focus elsewhere, and the fearlings scurrying around its feet.

The lightsaber reignites, far above them, raises, just once, and then plunges down into flesh.

...Flesh that is just as suddenly bubbling, hissing, cooking around the blade in a black cloud of acrid stink. Now the Nightmare notices him, screaming and kicking in a way that at first hinders Obi-Wan's efforts, and then only accellerates them, the final third of the leg hanging half-free from the rest, then by a thread, and then flung away, crashing over the battlefield below like a felled tree, studded with lifeless, leafless branches.

Obi-Wan falls with it, somersaulting just once, and lands light on his feet, lightsaber still alight.

Her jaw drops, and Cassandra stares, frozen in astonishment, as he turns - gracefully - and makes an impossible leap up into the air, catching hold of the creature's leg far above her head.

There is no time to stare, or to think. A sickening, wet rustling sound catches her attention, and she turns to see the fearlings approaching once more, crowding in. Already a few of them are approaching the Nightmare's leg, as if to crawl (ugh) up and attack Obi-Wan, and Cassandra throws herself into battle, hacking away at the fearlings until they are either dead or skittering away.

The thick smell of smoke and scorched flesh hits her nose, and she looks up, diving away from the Nightmare's leg just in time to prevent being kicked aside. It flails, screaming, and Cassandra can do nothing but wait and watch, heart in her throat as Obi-Wan is flung violently through the air and then lands, easy and light as a cat, before her.

She stares, stunned and relieved and - now that she has time for such luxuries - angry. There is a beat of silence, and then she looks around the battlefield. Obi-Wan's victory had been a tipping point, perhaps, or a final blow - the Nightmare is dead, or dying, the Inquisition's various forces eagerly rushing in to finish it off as the fearlings flee in the absence of their - master? Captain? It hardly matters. Cassandra's taste for battle is gone, and she turns cold eyes on Obi-Wan.

"Come along." Time to get out of here.

"Yes, of course," suddenly cognizant of his unbecoming enthusiasm for the moment, Cassandra should expect no protest from him. He only takes the time to stow his lightsaber, tug the jacket of his robes back down into a semblance of presentability, and frowns at the blood on his sleeve before following, "The question is, where to?"

They are surrounded by a sickly, yellow-green haze, twisted rock formations dotted at irregular intervals with chunks of unnaturally straight lines, strange architectures, and unsettling statuary. There are paths in all directions, twisting, moving above or below themselves and one another, a knotted ball of twine. Finding their way would be difficult even if they knew where to go.

"Proceeding blindly seems... foolhardy."

"Does it?" She glances sharply at him, her expression forbidding. "Perhaps you would care to assist. Some ability that will lead us safely out of the Fade?"

Still, she can't deny that he's right. She has no idea where to go, and getting lost in the Fade with Obi-Wan is among the last things she wants to do. Far better to stay with the group. She turns back, but all she sees is haze, and when she steps forward to wave it aside, the Nightmare has vanished, along with everyone fighting it. They are alone.

Cassandra stands, staring at the empty landscape where the Nightmare had been, hands clutched into trembling fists at her sides.

She has very fierce eyebrows, our Seeker Pentaghast. Obi-Wan is initially taken aback by the vehemence of her gaze, then very deliberately, almost visibly puts it aside. If she wants to have a tantrum, well fine, it's none of his business.

"I could..." Obi-Wan replies, and when he realizes she has turned around, turns with her, and sees that where they had been was gone, vanished like mist, or the memory of a dream, "...Oh, no."

He had a bad feeling about this.

"Well," He says, after a moment to let the stunning unreality of it all sink in, "I've closed Rifts before. Perhaps it can be done in reverse."

Perhaps he will be able to master a strange new application of a poorly understood and barely-practiced ability, before the Fade kills them both. Or at least before Cassandra kills him specifically.

Of course.

Of course that is what he would suggest. The very thing that Galadriel had threatened that had caused such an uproar. The very thing Cassandra had been so frightened of. The thing that had led to months of fighting between herself and Leliana, a schism between them that has not yet been fully mended, one that she had briefly feared would tear the Inquisition itself apart. Of course.

And the worst part is, it may actually be the only thing that will save them, in the end.

She expresses all of this with a disgusted noise aimed at the empty Fade before rounding on Obi-Wan again. She will deal with rifts later. For now...

"You said you were not a mage," she says, and jabs a finger accusingly at him. She is not hurt, of course. Merely disappointed, and perhaps - given all he knows about her - afraid. He had almost proven himself trustworthy. She had thought he was. "Why did you lie?"

"I have never lied to you," Omitted a few things, perhaps, allowed at least one mistaken assumption to go uncorrected, but certainly not about that, "And I am not a mage, for the love of--"

Obi-Wan cuts himself off, arms flung out in a wide, exasperated arc, as if to ask what more she wants. This again? Again? Honestly, he could just...

"...Nevermind. Let's just focus on the task at hand."

Literally at hand, in his cast. Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, focuses as he has always done, when trying to call on the shard's power. It is a strange, foriegn sensation, despite the familiarity, but he pushes through, confident that what can be closed surely may be opened again. The strain was there, a pull, but muted, blunted away, and the effect negligent. He shook out his hand, then winced as the motion pulled at his injury, and sighed.

"Kriff," He cursed, feelingly. Trapped in the Fade with an angry Cassandra Pentaghast, "This is just not my day."

Edited 2016-06-15 05:21 (UTC)

Cassandra barely stops to watch as Obi-Wan holds out his hand, trying and failing to open a rift. She feels a strange, unjust satisfaction when he fails. It's not a good feeling, but she'll take what she can get.

As soon as he lowers his hand, she pushes into his space. If he thinks he can brush her off so easily, if he thinks she's about to just let this go, he must not know her any better than she, apparently, knows him.

"I saw what you did!"

Never mind that he had done it to fight the Nightmare, to save so many lives, not least of all her own. She all but jabs a finger in his chest. They are of a height, or nearly so, but she manages to loom anyway. "No person could have moved like that, not without magic. And your blade!" She scoffs, angry at herself, now, for being so naive. "Made of stars. And I believed you."

Maker, how could she have been so foolish?

"It's not magic, I'm not a knight-enchanter, which I presume is to what you refer, and a good many people can move like that without magic," He said, neither backing down, nor allowing himself to be cowed, "You held and operated my lightsaber yourself-- It's remarkable, how stubborn you are! Honestly, I don't know how you do it!"

Loom all you like, Cassandra, you'll never out-do Yoda, who somehow manages to tower from an impossible height while still only coming up to one's knees.

"I fell into your world from an entirely separate plane of existence, a world without demons, or Fade, or mages, and yet the fact that I can land a jump any apprentice Jedi could make is what's unbelievable. Is it really so inconceivable to you that I'm not going to fit into your...your preconceptions! Why is it so hard to believe that you could be wrong?"

"I was wrong. About you."

She frowns, more unhappy than anything else. No, he's no knight-enchanter, his blade is no spirit blade as anyone in Thedas would describe it. But he is...something. Even if everything he's told her is true - the lightsaber, the stars - there is something she's missing. Something that...that would bind this all together, make it make sense.

She studies him, much as she had the first time they had met. As if she doesn't know what to make of him, or whether he can be trusted. As if she is almost certain he cannot be.

"What aren't you telling me? What are these...these Jedi, if they are not magic?"

For some reason he'll have to take out and examine later, that hurts. He's always done his best to do what was right, to be honest, or at least honorable, to answer for himself and his Order with as much of himself as he could give.

He hadn't even realized that she was, truly, coming around to him. And here she was claiming disappointment, as if he owed her any such guilt. It should have been ridiculous, unimportant, easily dismissed as the ravings of a zealot. But as devout and passionate as Cassandra was, he knows she isn't that kind of person. And it stung.

"I don't believe I could possibly explain anything so nuanced, not to someone who refuses to believe the truth when it's given to her," He replied, taking a step back, "I'm sure if I turned right around and began insisting that I was a mage after all, you'd be happy to swallow that!"

Edited 2016-06-15 17:14 (UTC)

So there is something he hasn't told her. Satisfaction flares briefly in her eyes before being extinguished just as quickly, replaced by something else. There's hurt. Vulnerability, just briefly. She tries, always tries, to do the right thing, to find the truth, but more often than not her efforts seem to go so badly...

And then it's gone, replaced by the old, familiar standby. Anger.

"You have not even tried," she hisses, voice shaking. "If you have not lied, you certainly have not told me everything. You use my...my ignorance as an excuse, and then insult me when I try to understand! Why do you - "

Her voice grows louder as she speaks, more anguished and filled with restrained fury until she's nearly shouting, advancing on him as he backs away. But they are in the Fade, and though they may be small and inconsequential to the spirits and demons inhabiting it, they cannot hope to go entirely unnoticed. Even - perhaps especially - in the Fade, raised voices attract attention.

There's a horrible screech, and suddenly Cassandra finds herself flat on her back, the spindly shape of a terror demon holding her down. Her skull hits hard rock with a sharp crack, and she cries out, face twisting in pain even as she reaches for her sword.

And now, every word she shouted rang true. This was what comes of losing your temper, he thinks to himself, and then is startled by the clarity of the thought. He's touched a nerve, and she struck back in kind. Anger begets anger. Impatience only makes yet further impatience inevitable. Fool of a Jedi, what are you doing? You're smarter than this!

Apparently not.

He opens his mouth to temporize, to offer some protest, or the promise of an explanation, when everything changes. That seems to be a permanent feature of the Fade, where no other persists: everything changes. Even the exceptions have exceptions, it seems.

The demon, whatever it's name, is not facing him, bent over Cassandra's supine form, a thorn-barbed tail on an impossibly elongated humanoid form. Obi-Wan's reaction is instinctual and immediate. He flings out a hand, Force answering him even here, and shoves the demon, flinging it head over taloned feet. Without thinking, without questioning the instinct, he takes up his lightsaber and moves the distance it takes to put himself at best advantage to guard her. Were he alone, he might simply pursue the creature, but there's no sane plan that involves abandoning an ally on the ground, leaving her vulnerable for the sake of an expedient kill.

"Are you hurt?" The question is urgent. There's no quarrel about facts nearly half so important as this moment, and the next, and surviving it. Everything else can be put aside, and wait, "Cassandra!"

She gropes blindly for her sword for a moment before giving up. The demon is gone, somehow, and Obi-Wan is there, shouting at her. Her head is throbbing.

There's a too-long silence while her head swims and she tries to sort out what had happened and remember how to speak. Finally, she sighs, hand fluttering up to press against her forehead. "Do not be so loud."

The demon is not gone, and now Obi-Wan has to split his attention between the mass of bones and screeching and Cassandra, who is passing judgement on his tone from her lofty position of concussed on the floor. This really is just not his day.

"Stay there," He says, more quietly, and steps over her towards it, careful, blade upraised.

As if in answer to her request, the terror demon screeches, a high, piercing challenge, back arched like an angry cat. But it's only the one, and it seems to be alone. It screams again, and melts away into the ground. The silence and sudden stillness are unnerving, their surroundings suddenly redoubled in menace for the lack of obvious threat. He steps back, cautious of the unseen pounce, but nothing comes. Not yet at least.

"Are you alright?" He asks, kneeling beside her, trying to evaluate the extent of the injury, then remembers himself and goes into the pockets on his belt searching for the last healing potion, a little vial with a few fingers of red still sloshing around inside, "Don't try to sit up, just-- here. It isn't much, but it's all we have."

She makes a disgusted noise that, to her horror, comes out as more of a whimper. Luckily, Obi-Wan has already stepped away - hopefully he won't have heard.

By the time he gets back and admonishes her not to try to sit up, she's already doing just that, bracing her hands against the hard ground to lever herself up. Her vision swims as she raises her head, badly enough that she has to stop where she is rather than risk losing her balance. Badly enough that, when the vertigo doesn't dissipate, she gives in and carefully lowers herself back down with a harsh breath of frustration.

Not badly enough to keep her from glaring at Obi-Wan like the idiot he is. "I can hardly drink that lying down."

She's getting a look for that. He may not deploy stern looks with the same prolific fierceness that she does, but he's got a good one all the same-- and perhaps all the more potent for being deployed infrequently. Well, he's giving it to her now.

"I'm going to help you sit up," He replies, with the evenness of tone that suggests a brimming frustration, firmly tamped down, "Don't fuss."

Sit down and drink your medicine.

Oh, this is terrible. Cassandra presses her lips together stubbornly, glaring daggers at him, but she doesn't protest as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and eases her up to a sitting position.

It still hurts. She has to lean heavily against his arm, depending on him for support more than she'd like, and she closes her eyes briefly against a wave of dizziness. Only once she feels certain that she won't tip over does she dare to open her eyes and reach for the bottle.

It's disconcerting how small she seems, just for that moment. She is not, after all, much shorter than he, and certainly not what one might call unresisting. Obi-Wan does his best to be a good support, saying nothing, pretending...

Well, pretending there's any dignity at all to be had, here.

"We should stay where we are, rest awhile," He say, quietly, once she seems to have mastered the difficult art of swallowing, "At least until the bleeding stops."

If nothing else, the potion, once she manages to down it, seems to help. The dizziness fades, and finally she can sit up properly without swaying dangerously or feeling sick. And Obi-Wan has the good sense not to comment. Not to tease. There are many, she knows, who would be only too happy to see the great Cassandra Pentaghast so vulnerable - so helpless.

But he is all business, even if she grimaces at the idea of rest, of staying here any longer than absolutely necessary. The bleeding. She reaches a hand back to prod gingerly at the back of her head, wincing at the pain. When she pulls her hand forward again, the fingertips are red and wet with blood.

"Oh." She stares, then drops her hand, cautiously looking around. "The demon - " Had he killed it? Surely not, not so quickly nor so easily, before she could even recover.

OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

Nightmare

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