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

[acreage]

Such is his gratitude to see Wysteria again — alive, and real, and out in the light of day, far from that goddamn fortress — that he lets her take her pique out on him without comment, or drawing away, or much more than a faint chuckle that she can feel more than hear. Awkward angles of her arms and great mass of fur be damned; he holds her as close as he can.

He hums in some agreement, or maybe just to make a soothing sound, before he says, "It's good to see you."

God, he never thought he would again.

[heirring]

"I should hope so," she snaps back with all the outraged energy of a pettishly stamped foot. That she doesn't actually do so is strictly an allowance for the safety of his toes.

Her face is very red, flush up the back of her neck under the traveling cloak to the very tips of her ears, and her anger - such as it is - is all tangled up in it and the effort to not cry more loudly and the fact that she can't simply place her face in her hands to muffle the sound and because she is getting snot on this lovely fur which someone has lent to her—

It is all so supremely irritating, down to the very rumble in his chest. She attempts to hold her breath, and when that fails Wysteria instead gasps out a few last ornery sobs. Somewhere in the mess of them, she says:

"I told you to come back at a certain time. You remember. I gave you very explicit instructions that you were to find someone and make it known that you were to fetch the refined version of that stupid repulsion field. If you'd done that, I thought we might find some way of taking you with us. Only it all went all wrong and they moved us and you didn't come. So it is not my fault."

[acreage]

There's something absolutely fucking ridiculous about the fact that he's thought her dead all this time, has been eaten up from the guilt of it, and she's talking about blame and trying not to leave without him. Instead of answering, he lowers his head, buries his face in her shoulder for a long moment.

He thought they were dead, and they'd had plans to attempt escape — and they'd made it, against all odds, despite even the resistance turning on them. But surely Holden should know better about betting against Wysteria and Tony. His mistake, then.

Presently, without looking up, he says, soft, "I know. I'm sorry. You didn't do anything wrong."

[heirring]

"I know that! I just said so!"

It's a silly thing to object over, and outrage is very toothless when expressed in the midst of an embrace. But it's the thing that occurs to her regardless, a verbal balk to all of this nonsense even while she's content to press or be pressed close or some combination of the two. The circumstances are stupid, and it is stupid to argue against them, and it would be stupid to sort who is hugging who (never mind that her arms are otherwise engaged; it's a technicality that shouldn't be credited with much).

But the relief of it is real even if it's absurd. She cries a little harder and more because of it until she runs out of tears. And then because the options are either to become one of those terrible women who gasps instead of crying or to master herself, and so in an great effort of sensibility she forces herself toward the latter.

It's very good of him. To not simply be gone forever.

[acreage]

Maybe her relief isn't so absurd. Prior to their respective improbable escapes they both, after all, came closer to death than the other can know.

But her objection helps smooth back some of the snarl of emotion that seems to live in his chest, and he's able to lift his face, straighten his spine. And he favors her with a brief smile as he draws back just slightly, leaves his hands on her back to move in soothing circles.

"They told me you were dead," he finally admits, a shadow of bleakness in his voice. "Both you and Tony. What happened?"

[heirring]

Her face is very red. She can feel the heat in it. The moment he pulls even that small measure away, Wysteria makes a concentrated effort to untangle one of her hand from the fur so she may mop at her face with her sleeve. That at least is grimy already and can be done little harm from silly thing like tears and whatever else (such as: her dignity) which might be leaking out of her.

"No, we—" she begins to say, then stops short in favor of fixing him with a bewildered look. "They. Who is 'they?'"

[acreage]

He has to think about it.

Which he recognizes, now, as a sign of the unreality of time — of everything. He keeps forgetting, remembering, trying to piece together what he remembers and what he knows (or thinks) to be true.

Still, the answer is easy, mostly.

"Silas." He's not sure, actually, if she knows about the role Silas played in (unsuccessfully, apparently) getting them killed. "Others from the resistance camp didn't deny it."

Athessa. John Silver. Byerly, probably, given that Athessa stormed off to fight him.

[heirring]

She searches his face, the question of 'Who?' hanging starkly there in it. But she doesn't get as far as giving voice to it; it doesn't really matter, does it?

"We'd devised-- a shielding mechanism against mage work. And repurposed a barrier generator." There is something dreamy about every piece of it, some air of bafflement still lurking at the corners as if she opens her mouth and the details simply spill out of their own volition. "The thought was to escape from the fortress, but then they saw fit to move us and the convey was so much less well defended. Which I suppose is why the Ambassador thought it such a promising opportunity to be done with us. But we slipped away."

The manifestation of her frown is a slow thing, confusion forming a crease in her brow.

"How are you here?"

[acreage]

"It was a great idea," he says, because it has to be said.

It was a great idea, and it clearly worked for Wysteria and Tony when they needed it. How they put these things together while still ostensibly working for the Venatori, under constant threat of punishment, he doesn't know — but that's not what matters.

"Also Silas," he says in answer to her question, a corner of his mouth pulling up. Then he clarifies, "Richard. Turns out, his loyalty was to the resistance the entire time he was working with the Venatori. He got me out."

After getting Holden in, and also providing the intel that allowed the Ambassador, whoever that is, to nearly kill Wysteria and Tony. But, for the moment: credit where it's due. Jim's not ungrateful.

[heirring]

"Oh," she says. It sounds like a puzzle piece clicking into place, like Oh, naturally. "How clever of Mister Dickerson. Would that we'd known of it, we might have--" We being herself and Mister Stark, though the thought is half formed and readily abandoned before she gets more than halfway through it. What they would or wouldn't have done hardly matters now, does it?

Only--

"Just him? No one else was acting as a...—a saboteur?"

She is aware, like a shadow at the edge of her vision, that there had been others. Old friends (in one sense or another) who had worked on behalf of the Venatori rather than at the behest of them.

[acreage]

"I don't know."

Not Isaac, that's for damn sure. Nor Marcus, if he had to guess — but then again, he'd saved Petrana, hadn't he? And Derrica, what about her?

He breathes out, shakes his head. And then, cautiously, he asks,

"What do you know about the attempt to kill you?"

[heirring]

If there is some flickering edge of--Something. Disappointment?--in her expression, it is vague and not fully formed. The dashing of a hope which had yet to fully manifest in the first place. She hardly feels it at all.

"Only that it didn't succeed. That Byerly Rutyer was there with a force which I may assume has or had some association with this one." Whatever they are calling themselves. It isn't Riftwatch any longer--

She sharpens. It's a subtle thing. Something goes very still in her countenance. It is strange, to see Wysteria Poppell with any measurement of seriousness in her, and yet there it is beneath the red rimmed eyes and the tear tracks.

"Do you believe we're in danger here? With these people."

[acreage]

"Hey."

Whatever he wants to tell her can wait; instead, he brings his hands to rest on her shoulders, leans down a little so he's closer to eye level.

"As far as I can tell, the point was to take your talent away from the Venatori. Now that we're all here, that doesn't matter anymore. There's no reason for anyone to try anything."

The fact that it happened, of course, matters. That this was the choice made by the resistance's leadership, carried out. That he came this close to never seeing either of them again, that they had to go through so much. But Wysteria and Tony aren't captives making weapons for the enemy anymore, so every rationale for killing them is now worthless.

He pauses, gives her shoulders a little squeeze, makes sure he has eye contact.

"And I'm not going to let anyone hurt either of you. I promise."

[heirring]

Her study of him is shockingly quiet, focused in the way one might expect from the study of a machine. This is how a collection of lyrium coated wires and spinning plates and enchanted metals must feel while under the points of Wysteria's fine little tools. It spins out for a moment, second hands on the kind of clock which doesn't exist in Thedas--

And then she shrugs under his hands, raising her hand to wipe her eyes once more.

"That's perfectly well then. I suspected as much - that that was the reason. And Mister Ellis will--"

The turn in her expression is immediate, sunburst bright. For a moment, it seems as if she might explode into tears again as her hand closes over Holden's forearm, grip tight. But no, the impulse fades. She blinks rapidly.

"Oh, I didn't say. Mister Ellis has turned up as well. My gods, what a strange winter we've all had."

[acreage]

"He's what?"

You would think — after coming to realize that parts of the last years aren't real, after hearing of others returning from the grave, after inexplicable coincidences, after, after, after

what's one more impossible thing?

But it's still enough to make him to pause, blinking, as he takes that news in.

"Did he come here with you?"

[heirring]

Despite the tenor of her voice, she wears her own kind of bewilderment right there in her face. The whole of this - him, and her, and Ellis, and even Tony who is so ill that there is no logical reason he should not have died on a road somewhere in Orlais - is so nonsensical that even the things which are good (and it is good; that he is here, that Ellis isn't dead in the Deep Roads somewhere--) feel seem strangely like a burden.

"He did, yes. He's with Mister Stark right now. He has been traveling with us for these past few--Since we reunited after escaping the Venatori the first time." How long has it been? All the days melt together. "Were it not for him, I doubt we'd have gotten half so far. In fact, we were bound for Orzammar. Only it seems our getaway was not as clean as we might have hoped for, for we were pursued by all manner of people which put us off the road and chased us in this direction to begin with. Without Mister Ellis I think we would have been lost forever in the foothills and never made it here to Haven at all."

That sounds right. Logical.

"But we've seen neither hide nor hare off the scouts who followed us since we first found signs of you all. I suppose it was the threat of numbers which discouraged them."

[acreage]

He breathes out.

Skyhold — which has drawn all of them here, has pulled Ellis from the dark underground, brought Wysteria and Tony here against all odds. And for what? What the hell is waiting for them up there?

"I'm glad you found him."

Or, by the sound of it, that he found them. There's been little enough to be happy about in all those years of Venatori captivity, makes strange miracles like this (the dream, the dream) all the more unbelievable.

"You should know," he says, "that Richard was part of the plan to have the two of you killed. He gave Byerly the information that made it possible."

For all that he's talking about what someone else did, there are echoes of guilt in his frame, his voice, his eyes. He was to be saved, and they were to be killed. How can he not feel guilty about it?

[heirring]

"Oh."

It sounds silly to her own ear even as she says it. Oh, like he has delivered news of poor weather which will ruin an afternoon's longstanding plans. Oh, like the inconvenience of a horse throwing a shoe while on the road.

"Well yes. I suppose someone would have had to."

There is a brief pause, a rapid calculation. All at once, she laughs. It's a surprised, slightly delirious sound. How stupid all of this is. "Then you're welcome. Mister Stark and I made an excellent distraction for your escape. Is he here? Mister Dickerson."

[acreage]

His hands, still at her shoulders, clench painfully for a moment. An excellent distraction for your escape, she says, like he wouldn't have given his life in a heartbeat if it would've spared theirs, if it would've spared them any part of this ordeal. Like he hasn't lived for weeks (has it been weeks?) thinking he lived in some measure at their expense, that there was more for them he didn't do.

Then he makes himself let go, drop his hands to his sides.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him."

[heirring]

He releases her, but Wysteria in turns reaches out with the free hand she has wrestled out from under the fur to touch his elbow. It's a strangely firm thing, braced to reassure.

"Then it can hardly be so pressing a matter that we need waste any effort on the subject. Should Mister Dickerson resurface, we may of course revisit the subject for a choice word or two. But don't let it trouble you in the interim, Mister Holden. Gods know we have enough before and behind us already."

Maker, what a grotesquely rational thing to shake free of her. It makes her laugh again, a little delirious from the absurdity of--

All of it.