faderift | [Open]

WHO: Vasran and OPEN
WHAT: Celebrating being declared a Real Mage, training with her very own staff
WHEN: Late August
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: N/A

In the end, the pseudo-Harrowing endorsed by the Mage Council had turned out to be just like dreaming. Vasran had been prepared for what she was about to face, as well as one could be prepared. To walk in the Fade was to know that nothing could be trusted except one's own mind. And it was the mind that was truly important, because demons could trick the eyes, could distract the senses, could so easily toy with emotions. Logic and will, two things which were so simple and yet so difficult to wield effectively, were the only things that could be counted on.

It was a Desire demon that had tried to take her, offering her comfort and wealth and position enough to take whatever she wanted from a world where everything had once been lost to her. Of all things, it was Vasran's pride that allowed her to refuse the demon's offer.

She would take what she got back from the world on her own terms, and no one else's.

The day after she woke again, she celebrated in the Tavern, a place where she had rarely been seen before, dancing and tossing back as many cups of wine as she could afford — or convince others to pay for. As the evening went on, she got bolder, approaching a few people head-on with her empty cup and shoving it toward them.

"Buy a drink for a demon-slayer!"

In the days after — once the subsequent hangover had subsided — she could be found on the Training Grounds, drilling battle techniques with her staff, sending bursts of electrical energy toward the targets.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

More surprising than anything else is the smile. For a moment Anders just stares, before giving her a small smile back.

"Anders, please, Vasran. It may not be my name, but it works." Ser is about as far from what he is as one can get, and lately he feels it more. "Take a seat, tell me how it went?"

Anything had to go better than his. And if she's smiling, even with that edge, maybe she's amenable to chatting. He can read his notes again later.

She settles next to him, still looking smug, accepting the refilled wine.

"It was frightening." And she can admit as much, because she made it out the other side. Because she pushed through under her own power. "Even though they did tell me what was going to happen, they couldn't say what kind of demon would appear, or what it would do to try and sway me. And the raw Fade is... an eerie place."

She is no longer so envious of those who were tossed into the Fade in the Western Approach.

"And it's odd, isn't it? You know what the demon's telling you is wrong, but you can feel it working to persuade you." She takes a sip of wine, and remembers who she's talking to. She wonders how it felt, talking to Justice, if he'd been able to tell the difference, but isn't certain how to ask... so instead, he gets a glance, half-knowing, half-curious.

"It's very odd, and very eerie. And it's about time that mages were informed beforehand rather than being ripped out of bed and sent into the unknown." It's good she's pleased with herself, that she feels some confidence in defeating a demon... but at the same time, there's nothing the old or new Harrowings can really do to prepare a mage.

"They've ways of getting inside your head. I've been in the Fade..." He exhales and shakes his head. "Three times?" Harrowed, dealing with the Black Marshes, and then helping Feynriel, even if he'd been barely a passenger for the last. "I'll be glad to never go back in. But I know how my luck tends to turn out."

Ripped out of bed. She'd never known that part. Anders being Anders, she's inclined to think he's exaggerating, but for a second, she imagines it. Woken up, not gently, but roughly, pulled toward a ritual you had no knowledge of.

He must be exaggerating.

"Where did you first encounter—" she hesitates to call it either Justice or Vengeance. "—your demon?"

Anders stiffens a little, and some of the ease leaves his expression.

"The spirit. Justice. We, Jonas Cousland, Nathaniel, Velanna, a few others, were thrown into the Fade through a trap. When we got there, we discovered a massive pride demon that was feasting on the souls of all of the villagers who had died in the area we'd been in. Trying to fight her was Justice."

He shrugs, gaze still a little steely. "We joined forces against the Pride demon, and she decided she had enough when we started to beat her. She flung us back out of the Fade. All of us. Justice wound up in the corpse of a former Warden, stuck in a rotting body and head filled with the memories of a dead man as he continued to do his best to help fight darkspawn and demons and injustice. He only became twisted in this world, a world where things were confusing as they weren't black and white. He wasn't beforehand."

Vasran wrinkled her nose, out of confusion rather than distaste.

"Why couldn't he just go back?"

"He didn't know how. There weren't exactly rifts opening up all over the place that we could get roughly predicted. And when we went into the Fade later to save a boy from demons holding him in dreams, there was no way for him to detach and stay behind."

Imagine how much easier everything would have been, though, if somehow Justice had stayed behind. Then again, there's no worth in that wondering.

Vasran nodded. She knew very little about spirits, compared to some — so that much, she was willing to accept.

Which brought her back to the one point she was still stuck on. She paused a second, mentally preparing herself for the question. Reminding herself who he was. There were bound to be biases in his answer.

And she could always ask someone else later.

"Did they really," another pause, for emphasis, "rip people out of bed?"

He blinked, a little surprised. Was the whole history of Harrowings being whitewashed? Is that why she was so proud to be Harrowed? It... wouldn't be surprising.

"Yes," he said. "No one was allowed to talk about what the Harrowings were, what a mage could expect, so all we knew as apprentices was that one night, the Templars would be literally pulling you out of bed, dragging you through the halls, and you might or might not survive."

A beat. "Fear has always been the most powerful tool the Chantry has. Knowing that was coming, and that around half of the people who vanished from their beds would never be seen again had a striking effect on most."

Hopefully that helped to set the record straight.

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