MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

[faderifting]

WHO: Open
WHAT: A dreamy conclusion.
WHEN: Wintermarch 20, 9:47
WHERE: The Fade, Kirkwall
NOTES: Please use content warnings in your comment subject lines as appropriate.

THE JOURNEY

The pull to Skyhold becomes undeniable. Whatever justification is necessary to get people onto the road the dream makes real, whether that's planting an idea in their head or having a message arrive drawing them to the area or having them wake up and find themselves in an onion cart halfway up the mountain. The dream will do its best to smooth over the gaps between conflicting stories and the strangeness of everyone heading that way at once until they're all well underway.

At first, the journey seems normal (in the context of the dreamworld they're in), with the sort of mundane dangers faced by all travelers: wild animals, bad weather, brigands, and in the future where Corypheus has won, enemy patrols. But as they get nearer to the mountains, the trip grows more dangerous. More wild animals—and perhaps now they're infected with red lyrium or Fade-touched. More bad weather, perhaps almost supernaturally so. More enemy forces hunting them, ambushing them, barring the way up into the Frostbacks.

As they get into the mountains the opposition to their journey will become increasingly improbable. Hordes of beasts, entire enemy brigades that have no reason to be where they are, a necromancer coincidentally located atop an ancient cemetery hidden beneath the ice, a rift spontaneously opening to spew demons in their path, darkspawn clawing up out of the ground, a random Qun attack thousands of miles from their front, a dragon appearing out of nowhere. More and more, it will become obvious that things are not what they seem, and that something—some larger force—is trying to prevent them from reaching Skyhold.

HAVEN

No matter where people came from or when they left, they will all arrive on the road into the mountains at roughly the same time. Not precisely, but near enough that they'll begin to encounter others making the same journey. And whether they are attempting to reach Skyhold from the East or the West, they'll find themselves in the ruins of Haven first, converging with the entire group. In the world where the Inquisitor defeated Corypheus, the village is home to a monument to those who were lost when Corypheus' forces first attacked, with evidence of a steady stream of recent pilgrimages—though presently no pilgrims—to pay their respects. In the world where Corypheus dominates, a lifesize dragon has been constructed from bones, some of them human, to stand triumphant over the ruins.

Once they press past this point, taking much the same route once used to lead Haven's refugees to Skyhold, the dreams will begin to unravel. The two dreamworlds may begin to overlap and merge in confusing ways that fuel awareness that the dreams are dreams. People from one dream may step into the woods to forage and encounter people from the other dream there to do the same thing. A person who has experienced both dreams may find that they begin to bleed together, leaving them certain of one history in one moment and of another the next, and increasingly unsure about which of their conflicting sets of memories—if either—is real.* The gaps in memories will also become increasingly apparent, as will the strange coincidence of all of them heading to Skyhold at once for very different reasons.

As people gain awareness that they are in a dream, they may find that they gain more control over the dreamworld. Non-mages may find themselves capable of impossible feats, like willing a storm into being to push enemies back, or speaking to animals to learn the enemy's movements. Mages may find that the normal boundaries on magic have been stretched, and spells that might once have been beyond their power no longer are. Their newfound capabilities do have limits, though: their enemies grow in strength to match them and cannot simply be wished away, and the major threats that more and more clog their path are still too strong to be beaten by any one person alone.

The last leg of the journey up to Skyhold will be the most difficult yet, as difficult as it has ever been. The paths are even steeper and rockier than anyone remembers, in places appearing as if they've been deliberately heaved about and strewn with boulders in an attempt to narrow the way. Surely so much of the road wasn't treacherous goat paths along the edge of precipitous drops before? And if that wasn't enough, while the enemy forces have receded here there comes in their wake a blizzard of tremendous strength, clouds blotting out the sun, the way lit only by the occasional crack of lightning. Snow lashes the rocks and wind screams through the passes, ice slicking every stone, as if nature itself is trying to throw them from the mountain. While it might normally be wisest to hunker down, they will all somehow know that this is not a storm that can be waited out and the only course is to press onward through it to the top.

OOC | * Characters from one dreamworld won't meet the other version of themselves face to face. There's only one consciousness in the dream per person, in one 'body'. They may switch back and forth between dream versions, or lose one version entirely, or begin to muddle their memories and personalities together, or drop them both when they become fully aware of the fact that they're dreaming, but the two versions will never coexist as separate entities at the same moment.

SKYHOLD

They will know when they've reached their destination because just as suddenly as it began, the storm ceases. The tranquility is as abrupt as walking through a door: one moment they are in the howling heart of the blizzard, and in the next step they are beyond it. The air is cold but still, the sky clouded but calm, the path across the great bridge to the main gate clear of snow.

Skyhold would be a striking sight at any time, perched atop its peak against a backdrop of stark white mountaintops, but in these dreams, it's ethereal. The stones have a faint luminescence, like a smooth pond bathed in moonlight, that makes it stand out clearly against the night sky. No windows or braziers are lit, and the valley around it is still. The walls are unguarded and the portcullis open in an invitation they can't bring themselves to refuse.

As they approach, they'll find themselves able to call on memories from both dreamworlds at once—while the gaps in their memories of the years prior to the last month grow. And memories of the true world, one where it's Wintermarch 9:47, may begin to reemerge and solidify, no longer a future that will never arise nor a past that's been left far behind them. By the time they reach the Great Hall, yesterday may feel like as many as three different days, each memory as clear and vivid as the others.

Once inside the walls, the castle grows still more dreamlike. A great tree grows out of the far corner where the War Room ought to be, its massive trunk somehow coexisting with the walls around it, its canopy broad enough to stretch into the Great Hall. The building's form doesn't seem wholly fixed in time—one moment it will appear to be the Skyhold of the Inquisition, in another, one might instead see a glimpse of the ruin it was before the Inquisition arrived, or a bare mountain peak with only a few foundation stones laid, or even an ancient elven temple built around that great tree. There are remnants too of those who have lived and work here in ages past: a flicker of movement in the corner of an eye might be the ghostly shape of an ancient elf or a dwarf lord or a Fereldan mason, or even someone in Inquisition uniform. Attempts to interact with these apparitions will fail, as they continue on about their routines, incorporeal and unaware, vanishing again as soon as they're out of sight.

The only exception is a spirit in the Great Hall, waiting for them.

AFTERMATH

When they wake in the Gallows, it is Wintermarch 21, 9:47, and nothing in the world—outside their own heads—has fundamentally changed from when they went to sleep.

OOC | It will feel like a month has passed at most, similar to how rifters wake up from their canon updates. They will only remember that month-long span of the dream itself, not the years of history that led up to that point. Essentially, they may wake up from the dream and remember "so back when the Inquisition fell I turned assassin and killed a bunch of people," but they'll only be remembering that in the dream this fact was true; they won't remember a years-long period in which they became an assassin, the assassin skills they supposedly learned, or the act of killing those people.

As is the manner of dreams, memories may be fuzzy or disjointed, and some things may stick in the mind more clearly and vividly than others. Anyone who interacts with the Herald spirit (or witnesses others doing so) will find these memories particularly clear and strong.

Comments

wysteria | ota

[heirring]

[[Prose or brackets aokay. Feel free to gently modify/wildcard anything as it suits you.]]

HAVEN

On its own, the interior of the Haven chantry hall--thoroughly shattered in whatever conflict had taken place there and left as a ruin in testament to the might of Corypheus--makes for poor shelter from the blanket of steadily falling snow. But there are tent canvases stretched in defiance of the snow and fires to do battle with the cold, and enough in the way of half surviving fortifications that there are, candidly speaking, far worse places in the world to make camp. Certainly at this point she is learned enough with respect to sleeping in ditches or under trees to be something of an expert on the subject. In fact, were someone to question her on the subject, Wysteria Poppell - rifter and triumphant escaped captive of the Venatori - might suggest that the temporary encampment in Haven possesses something of a dreamlike and elemental perfection. This is exactly what the winter windfall of a struggling rebel force should resemble. This is exactly as battered and bruised and threatened as they all should be.

There are people she must speak to - members of leadership who would like to know where they have been and how they escaped and what considerable uses the Venatori have found for them since their capture - but she is so very tired, and after it's finished Wysteria finds she can recall almost no details of the conversations whatsoever. Instead, they blends together with other necessities such as finding the more hard-worn of her traveling companions warm (enough) accommodation and acquiring something to eat. For a time, the world is fractured and indistinct.

Until it isn't. Until she becomes aware of its finite parts again. Her hands are cold, is the first thing Wysteria thinks. The sky is very pale. The hem of her skirts is black with mud. It's the last one which makes her laugh.

So: there is a young blonde woman wrapped in a heavy traveling cloak who has paused on the footpath. She is heavily laden, a borrowed bear fur clutched in her arms. Her laugh is such a bright, pleasant thing - clear and true like a bell in winter.

AFTERMATH

A clatter of footsteps in the stairwell is the only warning which precedes Wysteria as she twists her way rapidly down the central stairwell of the Gallows' mage tower. She is bound for the Research division's work rooms, three books under one arm and a series of papers clutched in her other hand. 'Harried' might be a fair description; 'positively indecent' might be another, given that she has failed to pin up the great waves of her long hair and is wearing little more than a robe cinched closed over her ruffled sleeping shift. By contract, the heavy field boots in which she is clomping along are comically out of place.

It is, conveniently, the sort of scenario custom made for collisions around blind corners.

WILDCARD
[[throw whatever at me; if you want a bespoke starter, ping me on plurk or disco and I can make it happen.]]

Haven

[okayimin]

The landscape of dreams is a slippery thing. Sawbones is a country doctor and then a Chantry sister and then perhaps nothing at all, because dwarves have no business with the Fade. Regardless of the machinations of the demons and spirits, Sawbones is still a Sawbones.

She has a steaming cup of tea in one hand and a kettle in the other. She has no idea where it came from, only that it's miserably cold and there's miserable people and the least they can have at the moment is a cup of tea. She holds it out to the laughing young woman.

"Take this," she says firmly, "And let's get you by a fire. You look a mess."

[heirring]

It's the sort of thing to make a person laugh a little harder, isn't it? A hot cup of tea, manifesting all at once in the company of someone concerned enough to be fussy.

What a thoroughly charming novelty.

"My hands are full," Wysteria begs off, in high spirits despite the biting cold and the mud and everything in the entire world. The heavy bear skin does, to her credit, require both her arms to haul around. "But I'll sit by the fire for just a moment, and we may compare notes. I don't believe my skirts can be improved."

[okayimin]

"Your skirts aren't any of my concern," Sawbones says, dutifully bullying her along the path, "But I do have a lot of questions and you seem coherent for someone who was standing in the middle of a path laughing."

She doesn't actually get around to asking them til they've located a fire and Wysteria (the name comes to mind and she hasn't a clue where it came from) is settled with her bear skin and a cup of tea. "Now then. Tell me what's going on."

[heirring]

Wysteria follows along as directed without complaint, in part because they are trending generally in what is the correct direction - meaning: back in the one where she must have last left Misters Stark and Ellis. They must have been secure, she is certain. Otherwise she wouldn't have separated from their company even if only to fetch more blankets. Tony will make some crack about being draped in a fur, but he had best not complain—

Is the trend of her thoughts, clipping along at a formidable and familiar gallop for the time it takes to find a seat near a fire and for the cup to at last find its way into her hands.

"We're bound for Skyhold, Sister. By accident at first, but there's hardly an alternative available now. We had meant to make for Orzammar after our escape." It sounds fragmented and strange even to her ear, but what doesn't?

"Have you been with the force from the Gallows this whole time?"

aftermath

[thereneverwas]

Rounding the corner brings Wysteria facefirst into the broad chest of a a slow-moving boulder of a man, which succeeds in actually waking him up enough to take her gently by the shoulders to prevent her freefall onto the stone floor.

"Whoa there!"

The bags under Barrow's eyes indicate he slept about as well as any of them, but he offers a tired smile nonetheless.

"All right?"

[heirring]

She manages to keep her grip on the pile of books. The papers however go scattering - spilling down the stairs as an illustration of what she might have attempted to do bodily where Barrow to have failed to catch her by the shoulders.

"Oh, Mister Barrow! Yes, quite all right. Thank you. You're unharmed, yes?" He is a great sturdy wall of a person, is he not? "There are notes in the division work rooms I must consult."

Wysteria moves to twist free of him, no nonsense, so she might bend and begin to fetch her scattered papers.

[thereneverwas]

"Yes," he manages to slip in, watching with fond bewilderment as the whirlwind of a woman goes about her business.

He bends with no small amount stiffness to help collect some of the papers that fell nearest himself, the unpleasantness of the previous night slowly ebbing away and replaced by the humor of the situation.

"What sort of notes?"

It's all right if she doesn't answer him, but they've got a good half-minute to kill while they get her things back in order.

[heirring]

"Do you recall when the Gallows was plagued by walking memories? Or the illusion of them, in any case. I can't remember whether you were in residence then yet, Mister Barrow," she says, scurrying around and snapping up papers—stuffing them into her books or under her arm. "I took extensive notes during the whole of it which I would like to compare to compare with these."

These evidently being in reference the papers. Indeed they all bear her impeccable handwriting, and from the half viewed or hastily viewed contents, it seems that the very first thing Wysteria had done upon waking was to write every conceivable remembered detail down. And then following that (or perhaps in the middle of the effort, given her shocking state of dress), she had recalled her other notes and seen fit to dash out in pursuit of them.

"You dreamed as well, yes? I can see it in your countenance. You should come with me and we will take a full record of the thing while you still have some bearing on it."

haven

[degenere]

"She finds your incompetence as amusing as I do, monsieur!"

Val, some ways away, does not mark the laugher herself, only the sound of the laugh. He is otherwise engaged, stood toe-to-toe with a man in a green tabard, whose face, later, he will not be able to remember--a curious thing! His memory is excellent, and any face that he has forgotten, he has forgotten purposefully, or pretended to forget so that he might make a point about the relative unimportance of the owner of the falsely forgotten face.

He himself is clad in brown and blue, thick warm clothes and a heavy cloak, all made from sturdy materials, heavy wool and densely packed cotton. The mud has turned the blue browner. He still carries about himself an entitled importance, and it is with this that Val stabs a finger at the chest of Monsieur Green-Tabard.

"There are stables in Skyhold. I know there to be. And it is in these stables where Anne-Laure will stay, and--do not speak, monsieur!--anything else is to be laughed at, as the mademoiselle--"

He interrupts himself to look over with a sharp eye at the mademoiselle to whom he has referred, whose laugh has now struck him particularly. This is the moment that he forgets the face of Monsieur Green-Tabard, not that he is aware of the forgetting. Swift is the manner of recalibration, a rearrangement of priorities. He turns and strides off across the ground that separates them, pushing past equally faceless people. Behind him trails an overlarge mountain dracolisk, unfettered by any lead or chain and moving by a spirit of loyalty (or love, perhaps?) alone.

"Mademoiselle!"

[heirring]

It's possible she marks him there in opposition with his opponent. More likely his introeuctory salvos are just noise, similar to the loud organization-minded conversation being carried further up the footpath toward the chantry hall or to the person nearer to hand who tells her brusquely that if she's going to stand while cracking up then she might as well get out what constitutes as the roadway to do it.

In any case, the details of the circumstances rapidly become inconsequential in favor of sharpening toward the peculiarities of a familiar cadence, of a certain self importance of carriage, of a keen eye very focused on—

Wysteria, with the bear fur bundled awkwardly in both arms, for a moment simply stares at Valentine de Foncé as he elbows his way against the flow of foot traffic. Her bright humor has caught high in her throat and her face has grown suddenly very pale, drawn sharp in the way someone ill-used and then hard worn must be. Then all at once she erupts into laughter again, having noted the dracolisk dogging his heels.

"Monsieur!" is a fine stand-in for all the other things she might shout, laughing, back at him.

The bear fur is summarily cast into the arms of some unlucky 'oof'-ing bystander. Wysteria, moving in what popular opinion has deemed the correct direction, hardly has to push past anyone at all to meet Val.

[degenere]

There are many things that have happened, Anne-Laure the dracolisk being only one of those things on a list of great length. Val de Foncé himself remains, however, largely unchanged. He pushes through the last of the crowd, fairly easily, for when forging a path, a dracolisk does help, no matter the strength of the opposition.

And now here he is: the same height, the same proud stature--longer hair, a scar that hooks back behind one ear (carved by an encounter with a common hawk, less exciting than it might appear at first glance)--the same frown of mild dissatisfaction.

They are now close to one another. He takes her by the arms, just below the shoulders. Is he aware that she is not meant to be here? Do her arms feel thin, the result of some captivity or recent return from death itself? Is this fit of laughter some madness?

"You owe me, mademoiselle."

[heirring]

Maybe while quite literally under his hands she does seem thinner. Certainly her garments themselves, which show every mile of the countryside she has gone traipsing about in the dead of winter in addition to simply being rather a drab dark color to begin with, are doing her no favors. She is pale in the way things kept in the dark are, a little wiry through the hair, and maybe slightly too bright seeming in the eye. Yet despite this and even with all her seeming good cheer, there is a fiercely sharp point to her attention. She studies his face—notes the scar and the hair and the frown and the dracolisk and the frown again—, and despite having her upper arms thoroughly captured, momentum has managed to get as far as setting her fingertips at his sleeves—

"Owe you!" In another place, in some other circumstance, it would be equal parts confusion and outrage. Here, under these, she almost laughs at him again. The impulse toward it is a bright, full thing. It rises in her like a knot in the throat. "My gods de Foncé, you should see your face. You look so very serious."

haven

[acreage]

How long has it been since he received the news of Wysteria's death? How long has he made himself live with it, wrestle with the implications of going back to the resistance that was willing to do that? How long has he thought himself and Petrana the only rifter survivors from captivity?

Who can fucking say?

The laugh is unfamiliar for how long it's been since he heard it, since there's been cause; the laugh is familiar, because of course he's heard Wysteria laugh —

and his mind catches on her name. From wherever he'd been, he's soon nearby, and if he looks like he's seen a ghost, well.

[heirring]

And there she is, looking for all the world as if she has turned a corner and arrived here directly from out of the depths of that wretched Venatori workshop. Under the traveling cloak and the fur clutched in both her arms, she is still wearing the grim dark skirts allotted to her. But her laugh is such an unvarnished thing, untinged by any unhappiness, and the relief in it may as well dismiss the rest of it. Pressing her cheek into the warm, soft bristle of the fur, she laughs again and clutches the thing close, and steadfastly ignores the good natured heckling from whatever passerbys are close enough to give her grief for her absurdity.

It has been a long time since she was free of the uneasy itch between her shoulder blades, and it will come back (it's already is), but for a moment the shape of this place and everything in it had caused it to—

Slip away. Her good humor goes abruptly jagged. Crumbles away. She goes stock still and across some wrinkle of the bear's fur, Wysteria stares at Holden.

[acreage]

He moves swiftly, but also carefully — especially as he reaches out hands to her shoulders, as if in reassurance, or to confirm the reality of her.

It flits through his mind, the idea that Silas lied to him. But, no — he doesn't think so. At least, not knowingly.

Somehow, despite the creeping knowledge that this reality is wrong, despite improbability of so many things he's seen and experienced already, this feels impossible. At it doesn't make sense to him, immediately, why she should also be so shocked at this meeting.

Slowly, he says, "You know, you've looked worse."

[heirring]

She allows herself to be captured or for the moment where it would matter simply doesn't think to untangle her arms and shift the weight of the heavy fur to her shoulder or side or— To make up for it, she unconsciously clutches the fur tighter to her.

"What a charmer you are, Mister Holden," is absent like a reflex, a practiced muscle doing what it does best while the rest of her lags behind. But we left you, she can't quite bring herself to say. Because here he is. Because it's been the unspoken thing that has followed her since she and Tony cut and run. Because the world is folding in on itself and logic doesn't really matter like it ought to anyway.

So "I don't understand—" is the thing she starts to say, only for it to snarl on the suddenly very stark frustration of the thing. There is nothing quite so infuriating as not understanding, and the sting of that point is more real for the instant of relief she'd allowed herself. It's a uniquely unfair thing, to be in possession of so many details and entirely unable to sort them into any reasonable order.

Viewed over the lumpy bear fur, her face crumples.

wildcard + cw animal violence and regular violence

[nonvenomous]

At a distance outside of Haven: the muffled scream of a wounded horse, a flash of cold green light that sizzles the air and reverses morning shadows.

In close: snow bright enough to burn the eyes mires the cannonball shot of an oversized hoof and crumbles in to fill the wake of a workhorse charged well off road. It’s drifted waist-high, spattered with loops of crimson that pit the surface where they land. Astride the beast’s back, a lean figure in black has one hand buried in blood-matted fur at the neck, healing spellwork distracted by the look he twists back over his shoulder.

There are feathered shapes circling in the snow -- predatory, raptorial, and white on white, marked by the fog of their breath and the lunge of their keelbones cutting through the drifts.

The spell complete and the spurting ceased, Silas coils back to begin casting anew, only to be torn sideways from the saddle by the bus-from-out-of-frame, talons-first pounce of a Phoenix who clears the back of his horse with room to spare. One second he is surveying the scene for a target, the next his world crunches cold and wet and white beneath the weight of a creature curling its claws in through furs and leathers in search of bone to stop his twisting struggle.

He snarls like a wildcat when they find it, garbled wet, the pair of them all but buried save for the triumphant puff of the dinosaur’s tail sweeping side to side with the effort of stomping him to death.

[heirring]

The stone which strikes the creature is not especially heavy or large. It possess no extraordinary properties. It does, however, crack directly against the crown of that broad reptilian head before rebounding off into the bank of snow in which both man and beast have crunched down into. To find its target at all makes it an exceptionally lucky strike. That the Phoenix is induced to pause by it is nearly miraculous.

The great head rises. The buried talons arrest their flexion. The sinuous feathered neck twists. Its bright slit eye finds the shape of the young woman standing at an unlikely height on the surface of the waist deep snow. The Phoenix stares at her. Wysteria, a second stone held in her glowing green hand, stares back

It's a very narrow window of opportunity - the instinct of an animal presuming it has a kill to defend rather than a man left to murder.

CW GORE

[nonvenomous]

The horse rolls upright first, an abominable landslide of muscle and packed snow thundering away into blind escape. Purely by chance, he catches one of the other beasts blind in his hooves, and leaves the thing a mangle of bloody feather and smashed bone in his wake. It steams faintly as it ragdolls downhill, pursued at a hop, skip and flap by a second phoenix more concerned with free entrails than it is the standoff happening over Dick.

Presently: the painful hitch and complaint of a squashed man struggling to find air signals life from the mire of snow beneath the remaining animal’s breast.

The stink of it is stifling: freezer rot, musty old meat gone off grey in the undershot jaw, clotted in the gaps between craggy fangs. Feathers puff at the neck as it sizes up the competition, bristling along the back, a glimmer of intelligence in its tiny eyes. It chuffs at her, flexes its claws, locomotive steam curling up through the flue of the jaw. Ghostly white mist glimmers faintly blue at its end; frost crawls fuzzy over the gore in its teeth. Warning.

It draws itself up, and the maw splits open wide, black against all the white, the tunnel of its gullet sucking air in air like a billows to back the icy glow of magic charging cold in its craw.

[heirring]

Well, Wysteria thinks. It's one of those useless placeholder thoughts - a break between paragraphs, or the hovering of a pen over an unappealing line which has already been written while debating whether it is more guache to cross the thing out or to simpy soldier on from one's mistakes. And then the magical bolt jags free of beast's jaws.

The impact of it cracks across the face the anti-magic barrier projected from the flimsy buckler-sized disk at her forearm in a burst of magelight and a shock of ozone scented mana burn. In reply, undisturbed by the spellwork but ruffled in the way someone concerned about sharp teeth naturally should be, Wysteria lobs her second rock out from behind the barrier. It travels at a respectable but unremarkable rock throwing speed (if one had the means by which to make measurement), but does fly with alarmingly true accuracy.

The sound the stone makes as it finds its way directly to the sprawled open gullet of the ravenous beast is a disturbingly sharp POP!

aftermath

[clawings]

There is one such blind corner near her destination where Erik has stepped into the stairwell; he's a fairly tall, solid sort of man, and so Wysteria might end up bouncing back from the moment they collide. This isn't helped by the fact that he was also moving forward.

Either way Erik does manage to catch her before she, say, strikes backward onto the stone stairs. "Shit! Sorry, fuck. You okay?"

The things she was holding may have scattered into the stairwell, but he's more worried about her being bruised or having hurt her in some way.

[heirring]

Luckily - if such a word can be used for repeat mistakes reaping repeat consequences - , she has done this song and dance once already. The collision occurs, but the papers and books in Wysteria's possession (significantly multiplied now that she is up the stairs rather than rushing down them) remain so.

"For Maker's sake. Twice in one day--" is not precisely 'Why thank you for catching me before I bounced all the way down the Mage Tower steps', but it certainly answers the question. Yes, she'll survive.

And then a light catches in her eye as Wysteria fixes the exact identity of her next victim.

"You. Oh, what a turn of good fortune this is Mister Stevens! You're the perfect co-sponsor for this project."

[clawings]

"Me?" He asks almost comically, letting go of her in favor to point at his own chest. He hadn't realized that saying roughly five words would make him stand out so much, but then he remembers not everyone curses like him. Or looks like him. And he's probably the only Rifter who does both of those things in combination.

So. He gives her a little nod.

"What is the project? And what does being a co-sponsor entail, exactly?"

[heirring]

"The project is to take a record of everyone's experiences within the dream. You shared in it, yes? I saw you there."

In passing, at the very least. He had asked a question of the Herald's spirit, she is certain, though now that she makes some effort to think on it the details of the thing seem to slip through her fingers. In what order had the questions been asked? In which order had the answers been delivered? From who and to whom?

"It seems of the utmost importance to me that we note what can be noted now, while the memories are still as fresh and they can be. And myself and my colleagues have devised of a great many surveys. So much so that to submit another to the outfit is all but asking for derision. But were you, a somewhat unlikely collaborator if you don't mind me saying, to present the survey with me then we might impress upon our fellows the severity of the thing. We might describe it as a cross-division effort even."