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

[bouchonne]

Dear Colin, you know I haven't the head for this. I'm a simple man.

[keenly]

[...Oh. He's telling him to shut up. Colin winces.]

Sorry. Um. In summary, I think it's only 9:47 and whatever's ahead isn't about to kill us.

[Or it would have done it earlier, while no one knew this was the Fade.]

[bouchonne]

[ Dryly: ]

What optimism.

[keenly]

Or our bodies could have already wasted to death in the waking world.

[bouchonne]

Now, that's more like it.

[keenly]

[He chuckles.]

Of course. Any time you'd like the worst-case scenario, I'm happy to oblige.

[bouchonne]

I only want the worst-case scenario. It makes me feel warm and comforted.

[keenly]

It's one more scenario than anyone else wanted to hear, [Colin says as a way of giving Byerly credit.] Except Athessa, I mean. She can see the color red in the Fade, so she believed me straight away.

[bouchonne]

[ A grunt. ]

Typical.

[keenly]

What?

[bouchonne]

Oh, dear Athessa being willing to trust the most outlandish things you tell her, while I could say that the sky was blue and she'd figure out a way to call me a liar.

[keenly]

She believed me because I was wearing a red shirt, Byerly.

[bouchonne]

[ A scoff, and a look towards Colin that suggests his intelligence is in doubt. ]

And I know that when I have vision changes, my impulse is to doubt the nature of my reality. Of course.

[keenly]

It wasn't her impulse, it was mine, and only because I spent ten years getting it hammered into me that I need to do that whenever something seems off.

[bouchonne]

Of course.

[ He looks off, making a show of losing interest. ]

[keenly]

[A soft sigh. And, because it worked last time, another fairly gentle smack upside the back of Byerly's head.]

Quit angering yourself over hypotheticals. She loves you.

[bouchonne]

[ A noise of annoyance greets that strike. His look towards Colin is a bit harsher. ]

Which is why, no doubt, she called me a monster and tried to have me removed from my current position. A familiar sort of love that's pretending to be.

[keenly]

[Colin does a double-take.]

Wait, what?

[bouchonne]

[ Bone-dry: ]

She apparently was under the impression that the resistance would become quite a bit kinder and gentler once I was no longer around to drive Flint and Yseult to the violence and ruthlessness which is so deeply against their natures.

[keenly]

[That's probably unfairly worded, but Athessa has always had a naive view of Yseult, and may or may not have ever spoken with Flint.]

Right. As someone who has worked for both those people, it's frankly rather heroic that you still try after all these years.

[bouchonne]

[ Dismissively: ] There's nothing heroic about me. It's simply inertia at this point.

[ But anyway. ] Any tolerance she felt for me at any point has long since curdled. No one feels any love for the man who leads them into defeat.

[keenly]

[Colin could argue for Athessa's affection for Byerly. He could mention things will change when they wake up. None of that would make Byerly feel better, though, while it would be dismissive of the very real pain Byerly feels, so all he offers is a sad smile.]

I'm sorry. It's awful when things fall apart like that.

[bouchonne]

[ He answers with a shrug. ]

Well, the fault for that can be lain at my feet. My just rewards.

[ But he seems quite a lot more comfortable - less hostile - while casually excoriating himself than he does while receiving some kind word from Colin. There's real humanity in it, rather than bristling stiffness, when he says - ]

I'm sorry it's what you came back to. I wish you might have actually had some home.

[keenly]

[And it's much more comfortable for Colin to focus on someone else's feelings than his own, but after a moment, he is able to remind himself that minimizing what Byerly's talking about is just another way of pushing him away. He swallows.]

Either none of this is real, or I've convinced myself so. But even if, if none of it's real, there are people here who are. Those people have made real, hurtful choices. Edgard didn't know this wasn't real when he left me in the house of a slave master, or sold Benedict to his mother. Athessa thought I'd survived four years of horrors only to tell me she was leaving Riftwatch to go somewhere I couldn't follow. Ben ran off after we saved him. Lexie was going back to her family. It started to seem like I didn't even have enough pieces of friends to put together to make one whole one.

[bouchonne]

[ A moment of silence. Then, quietly - ]

I'd tried to stop Artemaeus before he went. He was - regretful. [ Well. ] Not that that helps.

[ Another moment. ]

Do you believe in the Maker?