faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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.

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Once his neck is free, she slashes at it, the blood spraying out hot and thick. And again, and again.

It's quick. It might hurt, but it isn't the eye-bulging agony of choking himself to death. Laura is spattered with his blood where her face is exposed to the elements. It steams at his neck like a hot breath on a cold day.

When he's dead, she finally feels the hand at her arm and whirls around, claws bright again--to find Matthias. She startles, flinching back before she can hurt him, hands shifting into something more defensive. Her heart is still racing, her breath still as loud as the winter wind, and she takes stock as quickly as she can. Matthias--ice around them--no Venatori but a dead man at her feet.

Matthias jumps back, hand abruptly off of her arm like someone that's touched a hot oven. Ice and stone both crackle underfoot, a rime of frost that spreads in a wave, chased by a ripple underground that plows a furrow.

Behind her, the soldier's throat is a ruin. Blood runs in a gush, softening the ground under his head. There's a ringing in Matthias' ears.

"I had him," he says. The ice walls muffle sound, make his voice sound small. There's a cut on his forehead, trickling blood. He lifts his shoulder, bends his neck, swipes it clean. It leaves behind a tingle. Power.

Laura has no magic, and imagination is something she's still learning to have and use. But the dream does some of the work for her, her claws turning a sickly green colour as he speaks. Still slightly too long, now made jagged where they're normally sleek lines of spirit-light.

After a moment, she realizes she's growling, hopes the sound doesn't reach him. All her muscles are wound too tight, her breath too loud, her throat squeezing shut.

"You made him do that." She wants to claw her way out of the ice and run until she can't feel her legs anymore. Every breath already comes as quickly as if she'd sprinted here, her claws breathing along with her. A little larger, a little smaller, every inhalation and exhalation. "You--you stole his mind."

Edited 2021-01-31 02:09 (UTC)

His hands raise, almost an involuntary motion--he means it as a gesture of peace, but another ripple of ice and rock pushes out from him, a little greater this time.

"I stopped him." That comes out louder. Didn't she see? "I stopped him! It's a battle, I had to stop him! I did for half a hundred others--" Not with blood magic, she's not wrong there, and Matthias feels a prickle of shame at the back of his neck--a little chill of fear, too far--and Laura has never looked at him this way, with her claws out-- "I stopped him!"

"You hurt him!" Even furious, gulping in air as her heart races in her chest, she knows that sounds absurd. It's a battle, I had to stop him--'hurt' isn't the right word. But she can't find the right one and doesn't have any energy left for trying.

Matthias reached into someone else's body and made it do unthinkable things. Matthias, the first and only mage who's ever seemed truly safe, turned a man into a puppet in front of her. Is this what he dreams of? Is this the kind of power he wants to learn to wield?

They're questions she can barely form, let alone think through. All her instincts say is run. Turning, she jumps at one of the walls of ice around them, stabbing all six claws into it. There's a battle outside this space, and it's preferable to staying within it.

Edited 2021-01-31 15:32 (UTC)

"Stop!"

The ice creaks as her claws bite in. The walls make this a small space, a little room--Matthias thinks of the dream of their tent, drowsy peace and the early-morning quiet, laying on his back with Laura's hand in his. This is the opposite. Fear and blood, a dead man on the ground. His throat is laid open so the bruises can't be seen anymore. His eyes stare at nothing, frozen in that last second of horror.

"Stop!" he says, again, and he starts for her, grabbing at her arm again, "Don't, I can-- I was protecting you--" How stupid, Laura doesn't need protecting, she's more than capable, and Matthias shakes his head at himself, shut up--

She freezes, her gaze wild over her shoulder. Once, Biter was startled by a noise Laura couldn't hear and had run halfway up one of Laura's tunics before she could be coaxed to pull her claws back. Laura's in a similar place now, tension crackling through her limbs as she clings to the ice and stares at Matthias.

Their eyes are on the same level for once, Matthias no longer a head taller when she's several inches off the ground.

"That is not protecting." Her throat hurts. She does not want anyone's hand on her arm. But she doesn't keep scrambling up the ice. "Let go."

He lets go. He doesn't back off. Standing here close makes the scene even smaller--but if he backs off, if she runs away--this is only a dream, it isn't happening, it isn't real. It feels real. Matthias can feel the pounding of his heart against his chest, frantic and solid, like something knocking to get out.

"It can be. It was." Or, rather-- "I meant it to be. There's-- It can be protecting, they're our enemies, I only meant to stop him."

"No." This much, she's certain of, clinging to a sheet of ice, listening to the wind blow and metal clash against metal somewhere beyond them: "That never protects."

Even if it's the reason she's alive right now. Her life is at the cost of someone else's will. That she killed the man herself, that she would have anyway, doesn't register to her as contradictory. She turns back to the ice, yanking two claws out and reaching up higher.

"Stop!" --again, and this time it rings out with desperation. But not the sort of desperation that controls. That part is important. What happened before was just a moment, and this is Laura--

"Don't-- It's safe here, for now, don't--" If it's only a dream, she'll be able to cut through the soldiers waiting outside like they're only paper. But Matthias doesn't want her to go. The sound of her claws biting into the ice is loud, leaves a ringing in Matthias ears.

Above her, the ice grows. Each sheet thrusts up, thick and solid, meeting in the middle, interweaving like the fingers of two hands.

"It's only magic." He's practically begging, even if the words don't sound it. Please. She can't go. "It's only magic, it's like anything--like a sword, but it's better. It can do anything. It can protect--it's protected me before, that's all I wanted--"

She doesn't know what the words are for what she's feeling, only that it makes her tired and lonely and desperate not to be touched all at once. Maybe the Laura who had lived another five years could have named the way her stomach keeps lurching without actually threatening to make her vomit--but that woman feels very far away right now.

Letting her claws disappear, she drops back to the ground. It isn't far, especially landing on her feet, and the snow's so thick that it wouldn't matter if it were otherwise. The snow is cold, and it's wet, but it feels distantly so. She doesn't know if that's the dream or the fact that she feels like a stranger inside her own skin just then.

"Don't touch me." There's so much ice around them that the wind hardly seems to matter, either. She doesn't have to shout the same way now. "Just don't--don't--"

Matthias--having moved toward her when she dropped back to the ground, pulled in her direction as if he's on a string---stops short. The ringing in his ears is worse. There is very little ground between them. If he stretched his arm out, he could touch her.

"I wouldn't do it to you."

--It had been easy, thoughtless. Everything in the dream has been thoughtless, actions that lead only to bigger actions, and Matthias can still feel the power, all that magic, in him, not deep-down inside but right at the surface.

The air just to the left of Laura wavers with a sudden surge of heat. The wall of ice begins to soften, and then to rot and melt, thinning and caving in places, like springtime spinning forward. The snow and the grit of the mountain is on the other side, the sound of the battle--the road, leading up the mountain, leading down the mountain.

"I wouldn't," he says, again.

She's reminded suddenly of her mother--whispering Laura with the last of her breath--and of curling up in the snow beside her body. More than anything, of the hollow-chested sense of loneliness that came of staying with her and wishing the snow would cover them both.

Eventually, she had walked away. She will need to do that here soon, too. The snow will not come and blanket her; nothing is ever that simple.

"I want to wake up," she says to Matthias, her shoulders slumping. Crossing her arms around herself, she glances at the melting ice, the way it threatens to become a doorway out of their argument. "I do not want to be here anymore."

"We have to get to Skyhold."

And if they go together, this will be between them. The ice above the door-shaped hole is rotting now, showing through to the sky and the rocky hills. The wind is there too, whistling through the thinning ice. Matthias wants to put his hands on her arms. He wants to put his arms around her. The magic is still in him, tingling in his veins, sparking at his fingertips.

He takes a step closer. His boots crunch on the snow and the ice, and the grit of the soil underneath it, the pebbles and gravel he'd shaken loose.

"That's when it ends. It has to."

There are other ways they could stop it, she thinks, her hands gripping her sides until her windchapped knuckles go white. But Matthias will worry if she says that, and she can already see worry in his face. He'll worry more. And even after what he did, she doesn't want to think of him worrying.

"Have you been to Skyhold?" The thought of continuing like this--trudging in the snow, the wind, past the bodies of Venatori and monsters alike--makes her faintly nauseous. Is it close? she wants to ask. When will we be there? I don't wish to fight anymore.

She's so tired. It's hitting her now, after those adrenaline-soaked minutes of tension, of screaming and too-quick heartbeats and trying to claw her way out of the ice. But in this, Matthias is right. They have to keep going. So she walks through the arch of melting ice, little droplets hitting the crown of her head.

"No. I only heard about it--"

In the world outside the dream, where none of this happened. Everyone has heard about Skyhold, about the Herald of Andraste. And in the dream, why would Matthias have gone to Skyhold? And even if he had, it wouldn't have really happened. None of this happened. Will they remember it?

The battle is gone when they emerge from the ice. The Venatori are gone, like dogs that lost interest in a chase. The corpses are still there, and behind them--Matthias looks over his shoulder, back into the ice hut that his magic had made--the dead man is still laying there with his throat gone.

On the wind comes the sound of shouting. A rumble of rock, a flash of lightning. Things are still happening. Matthias folds his hands over the cuffs of his thick wool shirt, an old habit.

"We're close. We've got to be close. So we can run," he says, and it sounds stupid and childish. Seventeen, twenty, it doesn't matter, he wouldn't know what to say. "We would get there faster, so it'd be over faster."

Matthias came to Riftwatch first. What it was like before her, she doesn't know--Skyhold was as much a possibility as anything else. But if they're approaching together, equally unfamiliar, that...it's something, she thinks. They have it in common. In this, they aren't so different.

And there is nothing they need protect each other from. Matthias won't use anyone else's hands to hurt them.

His logic makes a childish kind of sense to her, perhaps because she feels more like she did as a child than she has in months. Perhaps because she wants to get away from this spot as quickly as possible. Perhaps because she's too tired to think of something better. There's no value in trudging through the corpse-littered snow. "Go."

And she starts running.

She's faster than him. In the dream, Matthias can keep up, but she's still faster. The path quickly grows steep, the type of steep that might be easier to take on all fours. Matthias thinks again of being a child, the stairs to the loft so crude they were half a ladder. He thinks of all the running he's done, away from the Circle, through woods, across battlefields. Running and then hiding and running again.

The path curves around the sheer face of the cliff, a ribbon wrapped tight. Skyhold is there, tower peaks among peaks and clouds.

It's begun to snow, thick wet snow. It hides the ice, makes the path more treacherous. Matthias feels his foot slip--once, twice--on the sixth time he knows that he has to slow down, or he'll fall over the side of the bloody mountain. Laura is almost disappeared in front of him, sheets of snow that separate them. He shouts to her, and her name gets snatched up by the wind, thrown over his shoulder. Or maybe she heard. Maybe she heard and she would rather keep running.

Laura hears her name, belated and disconnected from anything around her, as though brought on the wind by a helpful spirit. And it's Matthias' voice that calls it, sounding pained and frightened.

She doesn't want to be near Matthias right now. But she doesn't want him to be hurt. And when she glances back over her shoulder, she doesn't see him, only her own footsteps disappearing under the drifting snow. Her chest tightens at the realization he's fallen so far behind. He might have fallen. He might have been stopped by more Venatori. It's only a dream, but it's a dream with no shortage of peril, and she does not want to think of him hurting.

So she finds herself running back through the snow as best she can, following the faint path back, calling, "Matthias!"

The world is white and gray and the way in front is more of the same. The path has mostly disappeared. There are indents that might be footprints that have snowed over--or they might be something else. Matthias prides himself on being decent at tracking. He's never had to do it during a snowstorm, not alone. But there's only one way to go, and that's up.

His hands are shaking. It should be cold, bitter deep-down cold, but if it is, Matthias isn't really feeling it any longer. He knows that it's there the way that he knows he's still breathing, an awareness that only comes with focus. The shaking feels more like trying to lift something heavy, more from all the magic that he has in him. It's funny to have felt it only vaguely, like the moment your foot leaves the bottom of the lake and you stride into the vastness of its center--something deep, something unknowable.

And there is not yet a sign of Laura. Matthias tries for a burst of speed. His foot slips sharply to the right, toward the edge of the path--he falls, hands and knees. He's too close to the edge when he lifts one hand, and both sides of path rise with a grinding of stone. Two walls, pushing out of the mountain. It stops him from falling. It doesn't stop rising, moving at this slow grinding pace as it goes. From above comes a rumble, danger, the mountain above shifting to make space for this unnatural formation.

Laura appears then, the wind whipping at her hair, the snow swirling around her. She's still so far away. Matthias pushes himself up, back to his feet, and starts to run toward her again. He can hear her voice, thin and distant, chewed by the wind.

When she spots him again, he's a dark spot against the snow, a lump of fabric and the suggestion of a person through the wind-whipped snow. And her ribcage feels like it might collapse in on itself. Even as he struggles to his feet, so far below, the mountain having moved around him--she might as well have swallowed a chunk of the ice. It would be as easy to breathe around, melting slowly into her lungs.

Laura skids down to him, running until she can't seem to control her feet on the terrain, and then slowing, and then running again. She's going to be tired when this ends--already, she's on a second burst of terrified energy, and already, she knows it'll ebb away. As long as they're out of the snow by then, it won't matter.

She comes to a stop before him, a few paces away, and doesn't come closer. Somehow, she wants desperately to hug him and never touch him again, all at once. More than anything, she wants to crush herself into some hidden corner and bring out her claws. And then to sleep, dreamlessly.

"We do not have to run anymore." Not if that means he'll fall behind. It's the only thing she can think of to offer.

The wind thins her words, but not so much to render them unintelligible. She came back. Matthias' breath is shaky and for no reason at all he feels the hot prickle of tears behind his eyes. He blinks; the snow kisses his cheeks, leaves them wet instead.

"We can run," he says. High on the mountainside there's another rumble. The walls of stone grind, slowly, to a halt. The wind is coming from every direction, pulling on their clothes and their hair, whipping up the snow and carving its way down the sides of the walls that Matthias' magic has made. "We can run. Just-- stay with me. Please."

Please. It's a small word. The wind tears it, makes it sound smaller still. His palms, his knees, they sting, distantly. Matthias grabs onto his sleeves again. He used to do that when he was small. He does it unconsciously now.

"I will walk with you." Otherwise, the same thing will keep happening, over and over again. She'll run, he'll fall behind, she'll feel like she can't get a full breath in. "We'll go together."

If things were different, she'd reach for one of his hands--and that's how they would go, stumbling up toward the mountain's peak as a team. As it is, she pulls her dragon-wing cloak tighter around her, trying to remember warmth. Cold and not-cold all at once, as cold as things get when they aren't actually real. It isn't warm, either, though; they just are, and the howling wind makes it possible to imagine her fingertips turning bloodless and numb.

He begins to reach for her out of habit, then remembers--drops his arm, fingers clutching again at his sleeve. Being together, that will be enough.

He thinks of asking her why--but that would be stupid. He knows why, really. Magic is dangerous. And whatever she saw in what he did, no matter how he meant it-- No, she doesn't understand. It isn't her fault, but she doesn't understand. Even in the fear of magic there is something wonderful. There's no other way to describe it, the way it heats in the fingertips and sings in the blood. Being here in the dream is like having some part of that unlocked, a door thrown open, and if he overstepped--

Matthias swallows, bends his head down against the wind that tears hungry down along the path. His hood is blown back and he grabs onto it, pulls it back into place. The cold has no teeth. Everything feels distant. If the rest of his life is to walk up this mountainside, following in the little footprints that Laura leaves, watching the asymmetrical hem of her cloak flutter in the wind, he could let that be enough. Isn't that what he said to her, in the tent? It could just be them. It's only a dream, all of it, but Matthias still meant it. And even with her back to him, it's still them. He wants to touch her. He doesn't.

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MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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