faderift | open | holiday spirits

Entry tags:

open | holiday spirits

WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.

THE CASTLE

Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.

The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.

As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.

By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.

THE SPIRITS

--so back inside, then.

The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.

As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.

As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.

The hauntings will continue until ~~morale improves~~ the eldest, most powerful demon has been dealt with.

THE END

When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.

The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.

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"...I know," he says, after several moments of silence, and the spirit brings a closed hand up to his mouth, half-stifling a laugh as he looks up to Astarion.

"Come, do not speak of it so. He does belong with us."

The spirit considers him for a few moments, then.

"But I suppose he has found himself new company, after his departure...?"

"Hythlodaeus," Emet-Selch says, faintly strained, and the man still just smiles. "Too on the nose?"

“It isn’t real.” Astarion grits, baring his fangs in jealous defiance, glowering at the apparition beside Emet-Selch. It might seem kind. More merciful than so many of the other reflections haunting this cursed place, but therein lies the danger.

Emet-Selch, tired as he is, is probably weaker to this more than any other tack.

“Why are you speaking to it.”

"There is no need for jealousy, truly," says the man to Astarion, almost placatingly. "Truth be told, I should think I am the one who ought to be. I may be no one of any true consequence, but it beggars belief even for myself that our Emet-Selch should favor others over us."

"None of us choose to arrive here," he says, his tone lower. Warning, almost. Despite Astarion's objection, it's difficult not to speak to the apparition, here where the lines blur. "As the both of us can certainly attest."

"But you were weakened by beings such as this even before. Consorted with them, lived among them, took on their lives as your own-- did you not? Do you not think that if you had not made that particular miscalculation, you might be here with all of our people now instead, alive and well?"

His mouth sets into a thin line, one hand curling in on itself, nails biting into his palm. This isn't entirely like the man himself, there are edges to this apparition of him that were never there before, and yet--

And yet.

This time, Astarion listens. Though he’s close to biting, though he’s seething with possessive irritation, the back and forth isn’t something he can overlook.

Because real or not, Emet-Selch is reacting to it.

And if there’s something to be understood here, if there’s a thorn lodged deep in Emet-Selch’s paw, then Astarion wants to know exactly what it is.

And how deep it runs.

The man considers Astarion, briefly, but with his lack of interruption-- he turns his attention away.

"You would have had more success," he tells Emet-Selch, gently, "had you kept your distance. Had you never experienced age, nor illness, nor death. You have had so much taken from you, Emet-Selch, and only invited further loss-- would you not resolve this, were it possible?"

"It is not," he says, his tone harsher. "I have done what was necessary to orchestrate--"

"You never needed to have an heir. You never truly needed the bitterness of mortal life, my friend."

Silence, aside from a slow exhalation of breath.

"If you could repeat it all, knowing their measure from the very beginning, would this not make the process easier?" He looks back to Astarion again, then, glances between him and Emet-Selch. "Ah, or could you not distance yourself from them even for our sake...? 'Tis odd company you keep!"

"And I kept it with you as well." Snappish, unsettled. "It is not all so simple as distance. I could not have..."

-could not have succeeded in what he needed to do otherwise. He's always been so set upon the paths he chose, always evaluated them carefully, and although inevitably they led toward a single end... it is an end he already accepted.

Still. Still. Acceptance meant never seeing this place again, and it is as much a cruelty to have it before his eyes once more as a kindness, with his friend offering such things.

"They are more than I believed them to be," is what he eventually decides upon. "You would have thought the same."

“We should go.” Astarion urges at last, his voice low, his stare lower. Sunken through his shoulders like an animal, now that Emet-Selch seems to have mustered his own resolve, Astarion’s weighing the miserable differences between his own fight or flight response: he can’t know how these illusions work. Whether it’s magic, or repetition, or real temptation laid bare, and despite being certain his Ascian companion might still want to stay, it doesn’t seem right.

It doesn’t feel right.

“You’ve made your peace with these— spirits, or whatever they are. The longer you stick around, the more trouble you’re just begging to find.” Harmless or hateful, it doesn’t matter. Not if the end result’s the same.

“Come on. Come with me. Let’s just leave.”

"...a while longer," he says, after several moments of silence. The apparition smiles, faintly. "I am fully capable of handling myself within my own home, whosoever may haunt it... myself now included, I suppose."

Now that he is here, it is difficult to leave, resolved or not. This is the place he recreated with his own hands and magic, once, the home that he did everything for.

"We will leave, I promise you, but-- stay. Just for now."

“This isn’t your home.” The words are urged, but Astarion knows already that Emet-Selch isn’t fool enough to mistake any of this for reality. That he’s already forgotten the way they’d arrived, or the apparitions seen— Thedosian or otherwise.

But the smugness of that damned smile irritates, and Astarion’s all too quick to press forward across Emet-Selch’s path, glassy daggers drawn.

“Fine. But if I he have to stay, I’ll at least dismiss the dead weight.”

Emphasis on dead.

"-Astarion."

A gloved hand circles around his wrist, whichever is nearest, as Emet-Selch's attention shifts from the scenery back to him. "There is no need."

"Surely the dead pose no threat," the man says, mildly, head tilted. The braid at the side of his head drapes over his shoulder with the motion. "My dear friend, you surround yourself with people of such little faith. But, well-- you have sent me to my death once before. Is another of any consequence?"

“The dead always pose a threat.” Being undead— or formerly so— Astarion likes to imagine he’s uniquely qualified to attest to that truth more than most. His exhale is thin, his dagger (wrist still held fast) tips away in a show of acquiescence.

What Emet-Selch desires, he can have.

For now.

“Play in this last, lingering fantasy if you want, fine. But don’t expect me not to bare my teeth when it tries to cling.”

"You need not feel threatened by it," he says, by way of clarification. His voice remains quiet, fingers still wrapped around Astarion's wrist a few moments longer; it's difficult to ignore the apparition, given what it says, but having him present is a form of distraction. An alternate focus, when needed.

When he releases Astarion and glances back, the apparition has gone. Despite himself, there's a twinge, a brief sense of loss at its absence-- a brief moment where he reminds himself to pay attention in case anything else happens, now, that they both should likely remain alert.

It's difficult to be, here.

With it gone, his hackles...lower. Carefully. Slowly.

He'll always be guarded, but at least with the shadow over Emet-Selch's shoulder dissipated, Astarion is far less wary of watching his companion sink wholly into the arms of possession.

"Who was that?" He asks, circling in front of his companion.

"What did he mean about sending him to his death?"

"Hythlodaeus. Chief of the Bureau of the Architect, working under the scope of the seat of Emet-Selch."

Too much of a rote answer to be the full one, particularly with the way Emet-Selch spoke to him, but it takes him a moment to get to the rest of it.

"An old friend of mine, and... one of many who offered up their lives, for Zodiark's summoning." A quiet huff of an exhale. "He believed it to be the best way that he could help."

"Then it was his choice," Astarion presses, serpentine in the way his neck cranes forward, eyes still wide as he wades through the span of what he'd just witnessed.

What he witnesses still.

"Not yours."

"They all gave of themselves willingly, for the sake of our plan-- for the summoning which we carried out. I am well aware."

A few weighty moments of silence follow, there, his gaze turned away from Astarion-- to the scenery, to the place where that apparition once was.

"I could not possibly have asked him to do otherwise."

Nor any of them. They all lost loved ones in this way-- he doesn't believe there was anyone among the remaining half of the population who didn't see someone dear to them leave, to join the new will of the star. He could not be any different; he could never have been selfish in that way, when he held those willing to go in the highest regard. He still does.

It doesn't make Emet-Selch miss him any less.

“I don’t understand.”

True, that he and Emet-Selch share the curse of immortality. True that Astarion knows loss. But the shape of it all between them doesn’t align. Doesn’t fit. It’s too different— and maybe if Astarion possessed enough self-awareness to truly hold the glass up to his life in Thedas, it might make more sense.

But he can’t. He doesn’t really know how.

Not yet, or not ever.

His brow creases, his head tilts. It has the stupid effect of making him seem more like a lost dog than anything deeply insightful— which in a way, is the truth.

“Why are you so unhappy, then? It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have changed it.”

You still can’t.

So there. Absolved. A relief, right?

"Changing it is precisely what I was attempting to do, until very recently... but you are not wrong. It could not be changed, in the end."

He'd worked for it until his death. Until the strings he pulled to put an end to it one way or the other: to either remove the largest remaining obstacle, or to be removed from the stage himself. There was no other ending, save for this one.

He's quiet, a few moments, debating his words, restraining himself at first from saying the ones that come to mind; finally, though, he sighs. Reaches up to rake his fingers through his hair, before he turns to fix his eyes on Astarion.

"...I will be blunter than you may like to hear, Astarion," he begins, "but you will not fully understand. You have lost, before, but you do not have a past which you remember losing. It does not live with you in the same ways-- you cannot return, either, yet there is naught there to be missed."

He isn’t wrong.

So much so, in fact, that even Astarion doesn’t balk at the bluntness of it: it’s fair. It’s true. And even if the reminder might technically sting under other circumstances, spelling it out at least comes with the benefit of easing something tangled up within his chest. Something worried still that his companion might opt to leave him— all of them— in favor of the world he’d left behind.

“Can’t have been better than present company is all I’m saying.”

Pressed out after a steady beat, his voice softer than his sense of humor.

In fairness, it's a reasonable thing to worry about, for someone who has been so married to the past that he spent millenia trying to restore it-- it's still hard for him to think of leaving it behind once more, when it feels real enough that he half-thinks he could walk into the Bureau and find someone there to speak with of concepts. That there might yet be debate in the Hall of Rhetoric.

"You know well enough that I will not answer that," he huffs out with a shake of his head, gesturing for Astarion to come along as he begins to walk. They'll have to exit sooner or later, though he has no idea yet which way that might be.

"Too afraid to hurt the spirit's feelings? Kind of you."

There's something so near to his usual cadence in it, despite the fact that Emet-Selch is presently dismissing Astarion's attempt at garnering reassurance.

The fact that he isn't so enchanted that it colors his response completely is, after all, a fair sign.

"...but...I suppose it is rather pretty here, at times. I'll give you that."

He knows he's after reassurance, but there are ways in which he tries not to indulge it too often; nevermind that he simply refuses to compare anything of his world and name it inferior.

"It ever was. The crown jewel of the star, from which we oversaw the world itself. Studied it, nurtured it-- loved it."

Little wonder that he has missed it so, when it is a place like this. Immaculate, gleaming, peaceful... though these things may not be so much to Astarion's taste as they are to Emet-Selch's.

"The star?" He asks, head tilting slightly as he wends his way around Emet-Selch's side, glancing for some sort of matching waypoint or landmark. Something that might— at least to Astarion's own eyes— fit the idea of a star, even roughly. A gilded tower, perhaps.

Or possibly the city itself.

Or...

"Ah- it was synonymous with the world itself, then. I have found it useful, since, to denote the differences between heavenly bodies."

He's still observing the vision around them as he explains, his steps slow, unhurried.

"And upon deciding it was our time to depart the world... this journey was said to be returning to the star. The Underworld is an integral part of the world itself, after all."

"To depart the—"

He stops, there, standing in celestial streets, expression lifting in sudden understanding a beat later.

"Oh. You mean death."

"Death, yes, though it was not known by that word. We did not die as people do these days-- it was a choice made, upon the fulfillment of one's life and purpose. A journey undertaken when one was prepared for it, a return of their soul and aether to the world to be used anew."

His voice is softer, there. Slightly distant.

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