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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The assurance is a little bit of a joke. Wysteria is only in danger from the usual things, and not from the organization she claims allegiance to. Ellis holds Richard's gaze for a moment before his eyes fall back to his hands.

"I can't pretend I wouldn't have made the same decision. I have made the same decision, in the past."

This is a kindness, even if Richard cannot name Ellis' sins. Ellis can dredge up this admission because of who Richard is to him, all the kindness he's shown Ellis in the course of their acquaintance. Richard deserves this truth: Ellis' anger is not so righteous. It is a selfish, bitter thing.

"But I don't know if I can forgive you for it. Or if it's even my place to be angry."

And he can't walk himself back to Tony's bedside and ask him and Wysteria whether or not they plan on holding a grudge. It doesn't matter just now.

Ludicrous or no, it’s assurance with words carefully chosen to avoid implying a persistent threat anywhere else within the organization, as ’Not from me,’ might have. They all have more pressing problems, now. He doubts anyone with a stake is going out of their way to slash ankles as they travel deeper into the mountains.

The demons, darkspawn and dragons they’re bound to encounter operate on their own terms.

But that’s out there.

In here, Silas nods along in mild support of I don’t know ifs, little in the way of direction offered one way or another. There’s give to it, passive acceptance of whatever feeling lives in Ellis’ warm mammal brain. If he’d intended to mount a more rigorous defense for himself, he probably would’ve led with it.

As admissions go, the one given didn’t run up on any surprise. Either he’s made some very specific deductions through their time together, or he’s assumed all Wardens capable of following through on a particular type of math problem.

"I don't think you can save him," Ellis says into the silence. There is some cracking tremor over the tail-end of the sentence, a place where Ellis' composure threatens to break. "He needed to go to Orzammar, and we're here now. He needs more than a healer."

They're too far. Tony is too sick. There's nothing to do but wait, and then build a pyre.

He reminds himself of his body, rooted here in this moment. The dull ache in his hands, the rise and fall of his chest as he draws breath, the edge of the cot pressed against the back of his knees. Ellis looks back at Richard without any expectation of a contradiction. None of them are capable of performing miracles.

If this is a dream, what could possibly be the point of it? With few notable exceptions, everyone he’s engaged with is circling the drain of some unique personal hell. And here he is among them, likewise circling, and suffering.

Touching Ellis feels ill-advised. There is an unsure parting of his hands, only for them to fit themselves together again upon second thought.

“Wysteria has theorized Rifters are formed from the dreams of our real selves, projected, perhaps, through some overlap in the Fade between planes.” Now hardly seems the time to explain that this is secondhand information, patched over from James Holden’s third party retelling. “It would mean he is likely to suffer here for a time as he passes, only for the real Tony Stark to wake up unharmed in his own bed on the other side of the Fade. Lost to you, but not to himself.”

The words are different, based in science rather than faith, but the tune of it feels familiar. Ellis watches the shift of Richard's hands for a moment, motion mirrored briefly in the clasp and press of his own palms, before the prickling anxiety propels him to his feet. The space is small, so the restless energy manifests in abbreviated pacing, a small circuit of movement as one hand lifts to scrub at his face.

Even if he doesn't necessarily disagree with the theory, it is hard for it to do anything more than knife up against old wounds.

"I don't know if that will bring either of them any comfort."

Under different circumstances, it might have lit the pair of them up to turn over a theory. Ellis doesn't remember this particular one coming up, but he was locked away beneath the ground for a very long time. Life had gone on without him.

"Whether or not it's true, he'll still be gone," Ellis says, head tipped up towards the ceiling. The sky is visible through broken patches of stone. The old, raw refrain goes unspoken: I'll still be here.

“I suppose it depends on how well they’ve rationalized the likelihood of their having an even more fleeting existence than usual here.”

Gods know Richard Dickerson did the math quickly upon his arrival.

This is probably not actually very reassuring to consider. He rises to his feet also -- more slowly, hitched stiff with pain. He’s a wearier counterweight to restless movement, his own energy levels somewhere between tree stump and coat thrown over a chair.

“He will,” he agrees, “but the rest of the world will still be fighting.”

And dying.

“Sister Sara and I can coordinate the arrangements, when the time comes. Or otherwise assist, if you prefer to take the lead.”

There is such bitterness on Ellis' face, some visceral, bracing agony working through him unchecked. It takes time to steady himself to the point where he's confident he can speak without his voice breaking. (Deep, sharp breathes, focusing past the tinny ring in his ears.) A pair of death sentences, Tony had said once, and Ellis had thought of it in such abstract terms. He had been old then, for a Warden. He is older still now.

He is so tired of being the one who survives.

"You should sit back down," Ellis says, a little absently, looking down from the hole-speckled ceiling to Richard, then away. He cannot get his voice around a proper response to what Richard has offered. He doesn't know how to ask Tony what he wants, and he certainly isn't going to make that attempt in front of Wysteria.

"I've built pyres," comes with a lifting of hands, Ellis' body half-turning towards the shuttered window. "But I've never been able to do it when it mattered, when I should have. I can't—I should be the one to take care of him now."

It's about Tony, but it's also about everyone else, all the ghosts crowding at the edges of his vision now. Whenever it matters, Ellis has come up short and other people suffer for it. Wysteria and Tony fall in among a long line of people Ellis has failed. Being there at the end doesn't lift away what he'd been absent for, what he might have prevented had he not been trapped so far below the ground.

He doesn’t sit back down, shabby and grey under the weight of the musty fur on his shoulders. The ginger bristle at his fringes is only just beginning to tarnish dull, not especially distinguished.

Just worn out.

I can’t, I should.

“Alright.”

It would be on brand for Stark to assert in jest that Ellis should cut and artisanally shape each piece of wood himself, given time to write out a list of demands. So long as no one thinks to provide him with a pen, there’s nothing to prevent Sara from bullying others around camp into heavy labor -- he is still and quiet as the stonework around them while he makes mental notes on the degree of subversion they’re likely to get away with.

And the longer this goes on, while he’s gambling anyway, he ventures a level:

“What else is bothering you?”

Apart from his specific betrayal and the imminence of death. His eyes, as ever, are bright in the sickly shamble of the rest of him, expectant of an answer.

Once, when he was a new-made Grey Warden, he'd trailed Joppa through a thaig. He was younger, slimmer then, so he'd shimmied through a crack in the wall to see what was on the other side. The jolting swoop of dread when he'd felt the stonework crumble under him two steps beyond the wall is not so different than what he feels now, looking into Richard's face and trying to parse an answer.

I'd rather not talk about things like that, he'd told Wysteria once. But the question posed then hadn't caught him the same way. This feels like a hammer brought down over splintering stone.

"I'm alive," is a whipcrack statement, blunt to the point of discouraging any further discussion. It's broad and simplistic, but it covers enough ground so as to be overwhelmingly true in this moment. He is alive and he is tired of it. His hands come up to scrub at his face, obscure the aftershock of having said such a thing aloud. Even if Richard doesn't parse the full meaning of it, it's still been said.

"I'm tired," comes almost as a correction, meant to obscure rather than clarify, muffled before Ellis takes his hands from his face. "And none is this your burden to carry."

Oh.

There is a beat where Dick can’t be sure he’s heard correctly -- his brow hoods and his focus whets sharp. And in that moment of rapid reassessment, it’s clear at a glance that no amount of correction or obfuscation is putting that cat back in a bag.

"I am still a cleric -- ostensibly -- " his voice slants low into fleeting self-shade, "so I think that it might be."

His own floor has fallen out, the burden of self-loathing shrugged aside in his startled grab for actionable experience, human or otherwise.

"You do know that if there was some way for you to trade places, he would almost certainly deny you the satisfaction." Laughably, given how hard he and Poppell had evidently clung to the teet of life in Venatori care. But that's a bone he can pick with Tony himself in the waking world, provided they ever return to it.

What a particular choice of words.

Ellis has turned, paced the length of the room and half-turned back.

"I know," is easy enough. Richard is not telling Ellis something he doesn't know, and it is an impossibility regardless. There are no exchanges. Ellis knows that. (He has known that for a long time.)

"You don't need to minister to me," is necessity. The excuse goes unspoken: I am tired and misspoke. "There is nothing about this that can be changed. I didn't come here thinking you would perform a miracle for me."

What did he expect?

Silas flounders a moment in a wash of detached derision directed inwards. Thinking, as he’s dragged in the sand and the foam. What’s the point of dreaming communally if you only use it to unravel everything you’ve worked for, what’s the point of being human if you can’t appeal to another human in crisis.

A twinge of broken glass ire for his own wasted effort pinches late at his brow. Minister. Honestly.

He sits down, at least, hands pushed idle into his lap.

Even the words I want to help you are selfishly weighted. So he sits and is quiet, breath steaming faintly while he packs anxiety away. That he watches Ellis all the while makes it less effective as a courtesy, in the same way that a dog staring at your dinner from across the room is only polite against the alternative approach of jumping up onto the table.

A few moments pass before exhaustion seems to outweigh the restless agitation pulling through Ellis' body. He crosses the room. He sits, not on the cot but on the cold floor in front of it so he can lean his shoulders against the edge of the bed, rest his forearms on his knees and claps his right hand loosely about the wrist of his left. Richard's calf is warm at his shoulder, one singular point of contact that stands in for comfort Ellis should offer but isn't sure how to dredge up.

How long can they sit this way? Richard isn't compelled to fill the silence the way Wysteria or Tony might have been. For his part, Ellis circles around and around different apologies and denials until the spin themselves out into nothingness.

"Do you want me to go?" Ellis asks after a time, voice dipping quiet over what feels like a fair question. He isn't unaware that he's done Richard a disservice, but none of what's been said can be taken back.

Shared warmth nets appreciation in the form of a fleeting shiver before it’s settled in. There’s give to his knee after a while, tension eased off, the rasp of his breath through dry sinuses slowed into a steadier cycle. Easily assured, for the short term.

“No,” Silas is quiet in exchange, “but you don’t have to stay.”

They don’t have to talk about it.

He’s far from qualified to argue for the sanctity of any one specific life, having killed or conspired to kill more friends than he’s saved over the past five years. Now they’re all here, huddled on the rocks of Haven.

“We must have been drawn here for a reason.”

The pressure of Richard's knee at his shoulder is reassuring, whether or not it's meant to be. There is some sense of having managed to repair even some small measure of damage done, and it loosens the tight fist of worry clutched in Ellis' chest. He doesn't rise. They don't have to talk about it. There can just be this minor understanding, and it is enough. There's a particular kind of comfort in that.

If he takes a minute to try and examine the conflicting tangle of emotions around Richard, some of that peace would dissipate. So Ellis simply doesn't, lets the complications sit as he considers the bigger picture of their presence here. That's a difficult enough thing on it's own. His thumb rubs fretfully back and forth along the inside of his wrist as he draws in a deep breath.

"Aye, I hope so," he agrees, voice a little strained. "Or I dragged my friend up this mountain to die in the snow instead of going to Orzammar to get him what he needs."

Ellis is no mage, has little grasp of magic and less of mythical forces surrounding them. He can't guess at what they're meant to do. But he knows the stakes. He knows what they've cost, and it there's nothing—

Well.

"But I can't guess. And I can't ask Wysteria now. So we'll have to wait and see."

Or Richard can ask Wysteria for her theories. Maybe he'll be better received.

Eventually, the rest of camp will begin to stir. Sawbones will return. In the meanwhile, the peeping of fat little birds bustling after scraps of food is nice in the cold, scuffs of snow sifting in through gaps in the ceiling where they take off and land. Dick nudges his foot in closer in under Ellis’ seat, because it’s warm, and because who cares about anything anymore, not him.

“Well,” he says, lightly into the silence: “if I can think of a good reason to kill you, history has shown that I will try.”

He doesn’t think Ellis misspoke, and he doesn’t think he misunderstood, awareness dropped out in the open like a mystery box from the attic. But this hardly seems the time or the place to unpack it. Particularly with Stark already on death’s door.

“I need to resummon my cat.” And spam cure wounds on himself, before Sara dresses him down for not having done it. “You can stay if you like.”

A joke about brainstorming will open a door Ellis doesn't care to walk through at this moment. (Or ever, honestly.) His answering chuckle is very low, head dropping forward, releasing his grip on his wrist to scuff a hand over his face.

"I do," Ellis says, even though he's been gone long enough. If the soap-bubble peace they've managed to arrive at here can stretch just a little further, Ellis wants to linger in it. "Thank you."

He'll leave after, he tells himself. After he's seen Thot. After the sun climbs a little higher and the rising noise of camp becomes unmistakable. After he can't feasibly delay any longer.

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MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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natural 1 means richard wins a prize

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put a bow on this y/y