faderift | [CLOSED] AND YOU'LL KNOW THE NEXT TIME I WAKE UP SCREAMING

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[CLOSED] AND YOU'LL KNOW THE NEXT TIME I WAKE UP SCREAMING

WHO: Astarion, Fenris, Bastien, Emet-Selch, Mobius, Ellie, Dante, Loki
WHAT: fear spirits are no joke when you're a bag of broken glass
WHEN: backdated to Crossroads plot hours
WHERE: the Crossroads
NOTES: so many content warnings: mind control, slavery, torture, blood, mutilation and abuse of every conceivable/literal shade, possibly more warnings to be added later, not joking this is a very horrible space. There's a reason why I'm divorcing this from the main log; Astarion's canon is, in short, unkind.

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Can you sense anything? Do Seekers have that sort of trick up their sleeves?

[Astarion asks mildly from where he paces in darker shadows: this section of building blocked off from piercing light by what looks to be crumbling ruins— elven mirror frames, all emptied, though it might prove a struggle for Mobius to pick out what lies where the further they trudge on into darkness.

Astarion, with glinting eyes that are significant kinder in places like this, hardly seems to notice.]

I don’t see why this wasn’t a purely Warden expedition anyway, if you ask me. They’re, what, attuned to all this? The corruption Corypheus houses.

[He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from correcting Astarion. He'd nearly forgotten the man had convinced himself that Mobius is a Seeker, and in some ways that's funnier and easier to deal with. He can still answer the questions with a vast degree of honesty without actually correcting the mistake. No, he can't sense anything. Seekers probably do not have that sort of trick up their sleeve.

Wishes that he could, because this darkness is giving him a bit of a spook. Not for it being dark, of course. But like everything else here, his human senses perceive it all differently. Unsettling and off-kilter. Head-spinning at first, but at least after a time it settles into a nagging feeling that creeps along his skin. The light at least is a blessing, if an odd and somewhat sickening one. In the shafts of it in the hallways before, he could see the bits and bobs of destruction and decay, strange frames with some cracked and broken and dust, and some merely dusty.

But now as they move out of the light, the wrongness intensifies. Heightened senses, but somehow heightened in all the wrong ways, sideways. He doesn't stumble, but it almost feels like he no longer knows which way is up.

He sticks close to Astarion. Close as he wants to dare without gripping hold of him like a frightened child. It isn't pitch here, yet, but his eyes don't seem to be adjusting well to the dark as they normally would. He hopes his ally will give him a heads up if he's about to stumble into a hole.]

They are, in a sense. As I understand it, the corruption in the blood courses through them and gives them a sort of connection. [He frowns. Better that Wardens tend to Warden business, sure. Or elves to elf business.] There may not be enough Wardens about to do a proper expedition. Makes it easier if the rest of us can find them a clear path first, and have the ones we've got focus on whatever is happening.

Complicated history. [If Astarion wants to keep up the pretense of being a native, Mobius will...not necessarily directly call him out about it. But he still might not be aware of the story.] More in recent years. Used to be everyone saw them as venerated heroes. War's messed everything up, turned it all upside down.

[It’s not like Astarion to be attuned to— no, it is, in fact. He reads too well the shift in moods and emotions, and he clings to that knowledge like a tool at all times: something in his pocket to pry, to nag, to utilize, if and when he needs an edge.

So yes, he feels it. Yes, he’s acutely aware of Mobius’ own limitations in the growing dark— as one discomfort (nauseating light and too-harsh sound) gives way to another in the form of shadow that almost has a clinging sort of weight to it. The echoes of their footsteps hissing like the start of someone speaking. Soft. Uncomfortable.

Astarion’s long ears strain to make sense of them, even as his mind presses back.]

Mm. Corypheus didn’t do much to help. [He knows about it only because of Ellis, in truth. The full measure of what’s happened— just how muddied things have actually become.

Just how terrible the twist in the Wardens' shared tale had been.

Astarion reaches out, gently steering Mobius back towards him with a hand across his forearm, rather than letting him stumble headlong into a break in their path.]

Does it frighten you?

[Corypheus. The Blight. Wardens and their ties.

Everything.]

Something might've happened down the line eventually. [Slow tectonic shifts, rather than collapsing all at once.] But no, didn't help.

[And like Templars, there are those who survived the shifting and collapsing and still remain, still remain in the light of the Maker and are still willing to do their jobs and fight for what's right and just in the world. He wonders if Adrasteia is going to be here. Would make sense.

He breathes out, a subtle surprise and subtle relaxation, at the guiding hand. He doesn't want to be the child clinging to someone's skirts and jumping at shadows--or whatever's in the shadows. But this place was not meant for someone like him. It makes the lyrium in him feel like it's humming at a strange frequency. His steps are careful, but steady. He will not lose his way or trip over himself, or he'll do his damned best about it.]

I think only those who are truly well and lost wouldn't be at least a little bit scared. One uncertainty to another. From war to unease to war to uncertainty to war and strangeness everywhere you look? [If Astarion means to encompass everything, then yes. It frightens him.] If you mean Wardens, no, they don't frighten me. But the Blight, Maker. Of course it does.

Can't let a little fear get in the way of the job, though. You?

[Time has a way of doing that all on its own, true— even Astarion, contrary as he likes to be, can’t help but admit that much.]

Arguably, one could. But I know your heart would never let you, steadfast little menace that it is.

[In fact, Astarion would turn tail and head back at this very moment, now that the path they’re on has turned so uncomfortably constricting; even his own acclimated sight seems to be failing him now— the radius of his world narrowed to only a few steps ahead at best.

The ground beneath their feet feels wet. And it does, admittedly, smell of something like rot.]

On second thought...

[The rest, he’s trying actively to ignore. Something like a nagging pressure along the base of his neck. His shoulders. Likely the wind.

Likely nothing.]

I’m...starting to think we may have gone too far. [That stench, so far as either the Blight or Venatori are concerned, isn’t doing wonders for Astarion’s own nerves.]

The other side of this place looked like it sloped up in a pretty 'closer to the goal' way. [Just to point out. The reason they even started going through these ruins. But he wonders if this place is like the Fade. In theory, what you see is not always what you get. Things shifting and twisting around. Left is right and up is down and now you've lost your way while walking in a straight line.

He's never been, but the stories the mages tell are fantastic in the classical sense. Would he want to walk in the realm of the Maker, in the primordial chaotic soup of dreams and being? He's not sure.

Unless it feels like the Crossroads but amplified, then he's pretty sure he wants nothing to do with it. What in the name of blessed Andraste is that smell? It wasn't there before.

Rot. Decay. Not of crumbling old stone but a breakdown of living matter. Feels like it should be accompanied by the buzz of flies, and yet all he hears is their breathing, their now-damp footsteps. Is it possible it's akin to rotted seaweed strewn across the shore rather than the dead?

(Or are they lambs to slaughter?)]

It'll take us a while to go back, and it didn't look like there was a way around. We'd have to find another path.

Do things...live here, do you think? Is this a place where creatures could exist? [Not spirits, spirits are another matter. Things. That go bump in the night, that eat up wayward travelers. Things that may require the sword at his hip. He wishes he knew, but his research on eluvians and subsequently the Crossroads has not exactly been a focus previously, mostly references in passing, the occasional musing of a Brother in passing, and many texts in elven scripts he can't decipher.] Should've brought a torch.

[Somehow he gets the impression that firelight would even be reduced or even snuffed out from this oppressive dark as though a physical blanket to smother them. Maybe it isn't things in the dark that are after them. Maybe it's the dark.]

Live might be a relative term. [Astarion scoffs, the sound a sticking half-breath of a thing that tangles itself against the roof of his mouth, grating.

Air shouldn’t feel this stagnant. Earth shouldn’t feel this soft. There’s such a hideousness to that dichotomy that for a moment it opens up the possibility in Astarion’s mind that he might be dreaming. Uncomfortable to say the least, but this place is undeniably built on discomfort— if he’s fallen asleep somewhere along the way, the shape of his dreams might be altered, too.

But then there’s still Mobius at his side. Solid and steady beneath every glancing touch, and he thinks—

No. He wouldn’t dream about him. Or if he would, it’d be a very different dream than this, in all fairness (and the puff of unprompted air let out from between his slightly curled lips is a cryptic little sign of an amusement he keeps entirely to himself). Which means yes, they’re descending (or ascending?) into something overtly more unwelcoming than what lies somewhere outside the mouth of the ruins they’d delved into. And yes, it’s all probably real.]

And I don’t normally need a torch, you know. [Astarion, don’t be petty.] My eyes should be working well enough for the both of us, and yet I can barely see a damn thing anymore.

Hell’s teeth, if we never come back here it’ll be a bloody mercy.

[He reaches out. All the more blind as he is now, it feels important to track where the wall breaks and where it—

Something feels different beneath his fingers. Smooth and polished stone, not the crumbling, pock-marked ruins they came wending through before: this feels new. Newer, anyway. Well-kept and well tended to, and Astarion leaves his palm pressed to it in order to trace it through the darkness.

Sharp ears attuned, when— ]

Listen, do you hear music?

Or...am I going mad.

[Soft. Faint. The sort of humming orchestral suite suited to a soirée in Orlais or perhaps Hightown, or... ]

[Astarion's fingers might be grazing along his arm, but the further they get, the tenser, denser the air, Mobius finally grips him in return, firm on the upper arm.]

'Hell's teeth', that's a new one, I like it. Get it cross-stitched on a handkerchief.

[Is it colder as well, or simply the dark and the damp starting to seep in? He trusts Astarion enough to try and get them somewhere, where they're going or where they want to be going, but the admission that he can't seem to see much either is not...great.

When the music happens--he thinks his companion has finally gone crazy, but Mobius tugs on his arm, draws them up short, to a stop. It's a strain to his ears, but he does hear something that seems musical. And in spite of his reminders that going back would take time, that they would have to take the time to find another way around:]

We can go.

[Is the curiosity excruciating? Absolutely. But the option is there.]

Get some light, some reinforcements, or even let it be. What do you think?

I vote leave.

[A bastion of bravery, Astarion.

But there’s something about present circumstance that has him too on edge to be accepting of the idea of delving in any further, with or without courage: scraping in the shadows might at least be darkspawn, the shambling pad of footsteps a sign of roaming undead or listless Venatori— all things they’d expected to face as a possibility of sorts while on this mission.

Music, though. Glassy marble running smooth between his fingertips, coupled with a wafting rise of listless chatter (laughter, he hears one voice break out amongst the rest, harsh and high and flanked by softer echoes), and with Astarion capable of discerning nothing of its source or where they are in relation to it—

It’s unsettling. More unsettling, in fact, and he can’t quite explain why.

Not in any way that’d make sense.

So yes, his hold on Mobius turns, twisting to start pulling him back the way they came, rounding a narrow bend only—

To set foot, suddenly, in the middle of a grand ballroom. Dim at its edges, as though the clinging darkness flocks it, too, edged out by candelabras and their many-armed flickering flames. The music’s stopped. The guests, numerous as they are, all cling to that same, void-strung edge of the dance floor, making them look more like shadows locked hatefully behind gilded masks.

Easily mistaken for something Orlesian— except, no. Astarion knows this place. Wrong as it looks now:] ...the Duke’s estate.

[Muttered under his breath, tangled like a nauseating thing in the pit of his stomach. He’s gone still, his grip on Mobius far too tight.]

[Gotta know when to pick your battles. Sometimes bravery only gets someone killed. And if the elf (he doesn't know, specifically, what it is about Astarion that makes him different, pale of skin and red of eye and sharp of teeth, only that he is an elf but something else from wherever he comes from) decides it's better to leave, then leave it is.

Only to turn into a dimly lit Orlesian ballroom. He presumes. It's been rare for him to step outside of the large swath of land that is the Free Marches, but he's done it before. More he's used to the idea of grandiosity, dances in fine clothes to fine music with finer wine pouring about than having ever witnessed it himself.

But his partner speaks up. Or. Murmurs in surprise. In shock, even, or fear, from the way his arm starts to ache like he might sport a hand-shaped bruise there.]

Breathe. [Through clenched teeth, his freer hand resting on Astarion's shoulder, giving him a brief but insistent shake.] It's like the Fade. A world of dreams. [How else can this be explained if not dreams and spirits? This wasn't here before, and it's something one of them recognizes as though plucking threads of thought and trying to weave it into a version of reality.] If this is the way we came, let's ignore it and keep going.

[He might indeed sport a print there later. Or sooner than later: Astarion’s fingers locked down like a deadened vice, knuckles white as a sheet in withering lightlessness.

Breathe, Mobius says, and the reminder’s so peripheral that Astarion almost doesn’t hear him at all— a kind of belated snap back to reality that only half-sticks thanks to the view that surrounds them. Twisting heads that watch all too closely as they walk in deadened silence, each footstep echoing, wetter and wetter than the last, soggy across the soles of their boots.

He breathes. He does. He tries. Holding fast to that grip at his side, almost shivering with tension as if he expects something to come leaping from the depths.]

What do you do with it. [So hollow it barely sounds like a question.]

How do you stop it, when you’re not dreaming...

[Gods, don’t let him be dreaming.

Don’t leave him mired in this.]

[There are some severe limitations to the power a Templar wields. And in normal, waking life, in a standard reality under standard circumstances, it would have felt absurd to want more. He can stop someone from reaching out to the Fade, cupping their hands in the emerald waters and abusing the powers of creation.

But this? He can't do anything about this. He cannot dissipate a spirit or demon from being with the power of the Maker, only fight them until they submit. He cannot banish a dream, good or bad. And in a place so closely connected to the Fade, in this place that seems situated somewhere between waking reality and the realm of dreams, he doubts it would be so simple as to sever a connection to the Fade. What would happen then? Still, should anything try to wield magic against them, he won't be useless, but the circumstances are...unusual.

Why in the Maker's name is the floor so wet?]

That depends. [Mobius tries to stay a rock. Keep walking, keep talking, keep calm. Whatever this is frightens Astarion quite badly. There aren't any eyes, just black pits of shadow to masked faces that seem to follow them.] If it's a demon, it'll eventually make itself and its desires known, and we stab it to death. If it's a spirit, we may need to just talk to it; it may not understand what it is exactly that it's doing. If it's another test of this Maker-forsaken place? Then we figure out the rules and muster through.

[If it's plucked from Astarion's mind, it's too late to suggest stop thinking about it; he probably wasn't actively thinking about it at all in the first place. A small part of him doesn't voice the idea that better Astarion's strange rotting ballroom than anything from Mobius' history. That's unfair. But the thought is there. (Don't get cocky. Something might decide to plumb his depths as well.)]

But seeing as I've never been in the Crossroads before, I have to warn you that it may be something else entirely that I don't know about.

[Just in case it's something Else.]

...comforting. [Astarion whispers, voice hoarse with offset concern.

He can smell iron tang. The splash of liquid underfoot distilling scent upwards into the air (he doesn't need to see it to know better), and when they cross the mid-point of the ballroom his foot catches against something solid. A weighty mass that sits directly in their path.

—when he looks down, he already knows what he'll find. What he does find, in fact, lifeless figures laid out in a shallow lake of blood, cresting the surface like ragged monuments to ruin. Utterly stilled in their frozen reflections of gruesome horror.

And Astarion stops at the sight of it. Wavers, rocking back just onto his own heel, utterly silent for a few beats longer before something in his mind spools up like an absent failsafe, clicking into gear where he otherwise can't.

It means he talks, in essence. Fighting against the strain of the past the only way he truly knows how.]

This...was the first time I’d been sent from my master’s side, after my enslavement. [The first he can remember, if nothing else. One of the earliest clear-cut memories he possesses aside from the night of his turning— though it certainly didn't look like this in either recollection or reality.] Or at least I think it was. Those first few clustered years within his care are all a messy, sickening blur.

[Nausea prickling as it rises in his throat like bile.]

I recognize it still.

[Not the bodies he tries to step across rather than on top of, a feat that isn’t easy, given how tightly clustered they are: a tangle of limbs all held at odd angles, unnatural in the way of all things dead. No longer able to feel pain, nothing deters them from their wretched state.]

[Mobius dreams of the dead. Sometimes. And if he weren't focused on his own breathing and his own calm to try and be a rock for Astarion, he might have been unable to stifle a hysterical noise that he feels the beginnings of, shallow in his lungs. They are perhaps not ever quite so dramatic, and there are fewer mage robes among the tattered bodies, but.

It's a memory or damn near it for his companion. And the thing to focus on is not the blood their feet slosh through, nor the bodies in their terrified rigor. It's Astarion.

Because every word out of his mouth is something new, something sharp and fascinating to cling to. He knows nothing of the strange elf's story, his history. They had made up some silly backstories for one another, mused on whatever the reality is. But to hear of enslavement and years of half-remembered bloodshed, this is new. He doesn't know what to make of it. Elves have been traditionally used as slaves in Tevinter and not-quite-slaves in Orlais and the Marches as houseservants and...elsewhere for whatever means. Sometimes assassins. Was Astarion's world so similar?

But. Hard still to concentrate through the smell. He would try to go around, even knowing that it isn't quite real, but Astarion goes over, and he doesn't really have much choice for the vice grip on his arm. He breathes through his mouth nevertheless, feet trying to find purchase where they can. These weren't clean, easy deaths.

The faceless figures keep watching them.]

He had you kill people. [Clearly. Not a question, to him.] Political rivals? Inconveniences.

[Going around would be a novel idea. It might even be the smarter course overall— but it would also bring them nearer to those idle spectators. Hostile, hateful, unfeeling things, looming too large for their own nonexistent skin. Astarion would rather wade amongst the dead than draw within their reach, whether he’s right or wrong in the path presently chosen.]

...sometimes, yes.

[A twisted hand lifts itself from the mire in passing, pawing weakly at Mobius’ heel— bloody fingerprints streaked with traces of lyrium, a staff lingering in the visceral bog nearby.

Or perhaps that’s just a trick of the light, what little there is.]

But most often it was a matter of feeding. [Feeding, the word sticking so hard as he tries to spit it out that the f clings tightly to the back of his fangs, making itself an entire consonant. Know that he doesn’t want to admit this, but some part of him dreads that if he lies, he’ll be punished for it. Dearly.

By someone other than the Seeker at his side.]

He drank blood. And he was...particular.

Nobility, beauty— purity [vitriol living white-hot in that final descriptor] it made them taste better, according to him. But you can’t lure people in just by asking.

[You have to bait them.]

They have to want something. Greedily, stupidly. So feverishly they don’t realize—

[’That they’re walking into a trap.’

Calls a voice both sharp and domineering, one that seems to circle them rather than coming from any discernible direction, and to the sound of its tune Astarion buckles in a single instant: cowering through his own hunched shoulders like a beaten dog, abandoning his hold on Mobius’ arm as he shrinks down right into himself— closer to the ruin sunk beneath them as if it were a comfort in comparison.

The faceless masses are gone, now. The darkness has closed in tighter, and it leaves them exposed beyond any sense of reason. Crushing. Constricting.

As heavy as hands pressed across their shoulders.]

[Every step feels heavy. They can't just leave these people here to rot. They deserve a proper funeral, a pyre to burn them all. He shakes his head, trying to remind himself that this is a trick of some kind, but the thought persists. Just leave them there? You animal. Stepping on their bodies with no thought of dignity for the departed.

A hand comes up likes it's trying to grasp his ankle and pull him in, and he sees--he thinks he sees--if he sees her face he'll lose all composure, but it isn't her, it's someone else, half drowned in blood and if he can't make out the faces then he doesn't have to know who it was.

No. They're not here. The dead are dead and gone and only memory and ash now. Why doesn't the thought settle him, when he stumbles from the grip and against his companion?]

Maker's breath, they aren't all dead, some of them are still alive--

[No. A trick. Sometimes the things that are alive are not really alive. He gasps in a breath, chokes down another one. Astarion tells him of blood, of feedings, blood not just for magic but something seemingly even more sinister. He's heard stories, folktales, ghost stories told around a fire. Things in the dark that steal people away to drink and bathe in blood for eternal youth or some variation like that.

Is that the sort of world Astarion comes from? Where there are things, where there are people who partake of the blood of the noble and virtuous and beautiful, who enslave others to lure them in? How many had been brought to their deaths, how man--

The voice calls out, and Astarion crumples as though all his strings had been severed. The dark, the dark, the dark circles them. Is it really a trap they've walked into if there was no forward nor any back? Or have they just been ensnared?

Against the darkness, he only knows one path. One hand settles on Astarion's shoulder, to keep him within reach, do not lose sight of him, and the other draws his sword and holds it at the ready. Long familiar words fall from his lips, a steady recitation even for the waver of his tone.]

Maker, my enemies are abundant. Many are those who rise up against me. But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion, should they set themselves against me. [He turns, slow, as though the Chant could pierce the dark.] In the long hours of the night when hope has abandoned me--

['You put Her words in your mouth?' Another voice cutting in, spitting, biting, disgusted. His cadence falters. He has to breathe it all in before he gets back on track.]

--I will see the stars and know, ['What do you know, what do you think you know?'] Your Light remains.

[Does that comfort Mobius? Those shaking words, hitching in his throat as the world sloughs away like dead skin— useless and unwanted. Or is it a reflex, like Astarion’s shivering supplication: an innate response done because it’s all he knows— all he puts faith in, without having any faith at all.

(Because if he kneels, he might not suffer as much. If he cowers and scrapes, some infinitesimal aspect of his sire's fixating wrath might dull by meager little degrees.)

No one with pride to spare does well before Cazador Szarr unless bid to, and even then, there is so much risk within it. Because as much as beauty or grace is a prized thing to his ever-envious eyes, too much inspires a sort of hatred of it when he’s in one of his own weathervane moods.

Mobius’ voice flickers like a candle, and in that waning break there are eyes in the darkness directly ahead of them. Blood red and gleaming, set like rubies into pale, elegant features— sharply sloping, framed by hair as pitch as what surrounds. A little too perfect. A little too difficult to look at directly. Too much a predator in its own right as it sneers, this cruel vision of Astarion’s nightmares brought remorselessly to life (or is it real? What doesn’t the fade make whole when given just enough kindling?), long fangs glinting with terrifying clarity.

How long. How long had Astarion played at freedom, only to be confronted with the truth. Is it the truth? It must be, how else could Cazador be standing here—

It's like the Fade. A world of dreams.

Dreams. Nightmares. The looking-glass reflection of his master that somehow shifts when Astarion gazes at just the wrong angle, painting the image of someone he doesn’t recognize at all. Robes, it looks like, or...

No. Cazador is too grand here. Too pervading in his presence, for as resplendent as the vampire lord had always been, he never came flocked by such a sense of dread (nor the hushed whisper of souls wreathing broad shoulders like a cloak ‘How could you. How could you leave us to rot. Liar. Serpent’.)

But seeing as I've never been in the Crossroads before, I have to warn you that it may be something else entirely that I don't know about.

Ah, and there, that prior confession strikes up against Astarion's every attempt at determined dismissal of what surrounds, snagging like a thorny burr. Keeping him from trusting in the notion that this isn't somehow real, even if only in part.

What if this is something different. What if the Fade weaves this into truth. What’s the difference between Astarion (anchor shard embedded hot in his palm beneath thick, dark gloves) and what surrounds them?]

I... it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t choose to—

[‘Astarion, come here.’

Like calling a heeled dog, that command, as Astarion bends to it with a twitching jerk, intrinsically bound. A sluggish start to movement.

And those hands (plural, now), aren’t brushing distractions. They grab at Mobius’ legs, his feet, fingers brutally clawed— lifting from a river of blood, sporting damage of every shade: scorch marks, bubbling pockets where flesh cedes to bone, no longer shapes Astarion would recognize if he looked, but ones familiar to Mobius himself, yes. Close or distant (does it matter? They’re all ruined beyond easy recognition now), all struggling to hold him.

To keep him.

For this is where he belongs, in the mire of his own fate.]

[It's a little of all. Rote memorization over decades, study of the words and their history in his own time, a reflex and a comfort that doesn't seem to give much comfort. He reaches for another like flipping through an index of cards.]

Maker, though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure.

[He hasn't needed to cling to faith like this in years, shattered with a bang, with the dead and dying, with an avalanche crash. When those eyes pierce the darkness, a figure too terrible to behold directly, he doesn't fold, stands straighter, wants to force his gaze up but every time it seems to slide away to only take it in periphery. This thing, this monster doesn't scare him. Tell that to his beating beating beating heart, the sound of it loud in his own ears that it seems to take up physical space. (Hot fresh righteous blood. A fleeting thought: would that taste any good?)]

What You have created, no one can tear asunder.

[But when he looks next, it isn't the pale figure of night, but glinting, familiar armor, flaming sword emblazoned on its chest. The face is shadow but the glinting ruby eyes remain. Ruby everywhere, red lyrium itching out from the seams of armor, growing out like a plant, a sickening radiance about it. It hurts to behold. He gags from the sheer wrongness of it. The figures flicker back and forth as he moves his gaze. They start to seem one in the same.

'Put it to rest. We will save them from themselves.'

The lyrium inside of him feels like it's physically recoiling, and he wonders, then, how it would feel to have a Seeker strike him down and burn it from the inside out. How sweet the salvation to burn as she--]

For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, she should see fire and go towards Light. [Another one, then, louder than before to block out the unbidden thoughts. He swings his sword, and it sings in the air and hits--nothing. Nothing but the darkness.] The Veil holds no uncertainty for her, and-- Astarion.

[The man has started to move at command. A recruit at his commander's say-so. A child to get his knuckles rapped by a stern Sister. Mobius feels hands, and stands firm, focused on his companion.] Astarion, stay here. I won't abandon you. ['Just as the Maker has not abandoned you?' A mock. Mocking. Mockery. 'Did you think you were special?' It sounds familiar but he won't think of it. The words wash over him, and he shivers as though they are physically cold.] It's a demon that wants to feed on everything you hate and fear. We'll get out of this together.

[The hands keep coming instead of slipping away with loosened grip, and he swings down without seeing to sever hands and arms from bodies. And then he sees. In the midst of the blood he sees robes and ragged clothes and abandoned staves, he sees skin burned and electrocuted and frostbitten, he sees gruesome cuts from swords and holes from arrows that hit their marks, he sees the familiar. He sees--faces from the Circle, he knows them, I know you. Mouths gaping and flapping in hate how could you or begging please let us go or screaming howling in the dark. He swings again, trying to shuffle back but they are there as well. They are around him. They will drag him down where the rest of his brothers and sisters lie, to correct the mistake of his survival.

He reaches down, into the well of emerald waters inside himself. It sings: a warble, a tune, a song, an opera. His powers are rusty with disuse but come to him with all the ease that practice of decades grants him. Cleanse this place of the hostile magic that surrounds them. Banish the powers of the demons that haunt them. Shut that shit down.]

And she will know no fear of death! [He bellows it as much in fear as in faith. There is a pressure that grows around him, some unseen force, and when he lets it go, everything...shifts. The world around them. Where normally in the world of mortals he would expect many of the nightmares to shy away or simple cease to be, in this place that shakes hands with the Fade, magic does, magic is. The stuff of dreams, the stuff of this existence, held together by tightly woven strands of magic. The darkness around them ebbs; the hands shrink back and begin to vanish; the blood evaporates from around his feet in a perfect circle expanding outward.] For the Maker shall be her beacon and her shield! [Though it is nothing physical, it takes visible effort as he pours energy into it. The ballroom beyond the dark buckles and sloughs off to reveal the crumbling relics from before.] Her foundation and her sword! [Until the illusion seems to have had quite enough of that. The walls themselves buckle when his power touches it, crumbling down, held up only by the power of the strange magics around them. Pillars tremble. The ceiling towers high above them, but it, too, trembles and begins to cave.

And then, for a few brief moments, it is done. The stone tumbles around them, the dark banished, the figures plaguing them seemingly gone, the feeling of wrongness momentarily lifted. Adrenaline rushes through him, and he feels the glory of the Maker in a way he hasn't for quite some time.

And then.

Like the world had to take a breath, the magic floods back in around them. The stones clatter where they fell, or pause in midair. The room around them changes. The floor shifts under their feet, the walls and ceiling reforming but in new ways, different shapes, doorways created in different directions, pillars in different sections of the wall. The ceiling is lower now, the stone under them smoother, the wrongness returning.

When the dust begins to settle: 'Is this how you squander your ill-gotten gifts?']

[He’ll go back to Cazador because there isn’t a choice. Stiff strides and a sunken, fearful stare; much as he hasn’t the desire to, much as he dreads what’s to come, his legs still move. His fingers twitch. He goes back to Cazador because he always goes back to Cazador— and with the dream of freedom so utterly collapsed, there’s nothing left in him that can find enough simple, pointless hope to reject it, knowing it’d only worsen the inevitable.

And then something changes.

Like a ripple— like a blink— the scenery winks out of existence, void for a second, then back to the ruins he’d seen before, ebbing like the fall of a tide.]

A demon.

[Of course, he thinks bitterly. Resentfully, falling back on the memory of only a few months prior when an abandoned castle's crumbling stone walls nearly trapped so many in the hellish pit of their own waking nightmares. Of course it would be a demon, preying on the illusion of possibility. Of fear. Of—

This time, when the darkness comes crawling back in, and he sees his master there before him (jagged crystal jutting from his skin, more monstrous in its reddened glow), he takes a step away.

And nothing comes from it.

'Astarion—' that voice commands again, louder and sharper than before, but it isn’t true compulsion. It isn’t his master come to claim him in the gap between worlds, just some pale, conjured imitation, and this time Astarion reaches back once more to latch his fingers tight across Mobius’ wrist, pulling him against the grain of this consumptive illusion.

They have to move towards that hideous amalgamation to be free. To follow the path they’d taken on their way in.

Fine.

He isn’t afraid anymore, seething through the edges of his fangs. His sneer.]

We're leaving.

[Knowing the specter of fear for what it is does not always remove the fear. The feeling of victory begins to collapse in on itself when the magic washes back over everything, and though it hasn't all fallen back into place, no ballroom, no sea of blood, the cold itch of sensation of hands returns, and knowing these are all merely reminders doesn't make the guilt any easier.

His voice is rough and quiet in the aftermath.] Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just. Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood... [It catches in his throat like the stench of rot and of blood and lyrium but wrong. 'Have you forgotten?' A little chilling sing-song. He redoubles the effort. He hasn't. He hasn't yet.] In their blood the Maker's will is written. In their blood--

[He starts when Astarion grabs hold of him, pulling his blade back as though to swing before blinking in realization. Astarion who is now with him, who sees through it all. Instead, he simply holds it ready as he comes along, is half-dragged. The figure looms large and distinctly angry. The demon itself is real, certainly, even if the illusions are not.]

You don't have any power over us, creature. Go back into the hole you crawled out of.

[The less they fear, the weaker the spirit’s hold on their reality— on itself, as well, the tangled mess of its own form a wretched, flickering host of features more akin to transparent glass: an overlay that fades with every step closer.

And they are moving closer.

Astarion doesn’t dare stray from whatever magic (or no— the antithesis of it) Mobius provides, and so he only draws one of his daggers, flicking it back into a readied grip, red eyes so hatefully set. Teeth bared. Ready to rip that spirit to tatters the moment it’s vulnerable.

Only it’s smart.

Or perhaps self-serving.

Perhaps, like a spider exposed to the light, it knows better than to try and strike out at a losing battle against prey when it has other souls ensnared elsewhere to feed upon.

Perhaps a Templar frightens it instead.

Whatever the reason, it twists like a struck snake once they close in, illusion slithering around it like waved smoke— tendrils of reality coiling as they settle once more— and the demon, the spirit that had hungered so deeply for fear, rushes away into the shadows.

Leaving them in silence.]

...I...

[No. No, better to wait until they’re clear. He pulls faintly on that hold he’s keeping, mercifully light, now.]

I can smell fresh air.

This way.

[It takes a few minutes of walking in silence, but eventually they find their way back to the light, hostile and headache inducing as it is. An agonizing balm if ever there was such a thing.

Astarion’s grip abates almost instantly; he tucks his gloved fingers over one another somewhere in front of him, picking tediously at leather seams.]

I should...

[Ah, no. That’s not right either.

Start again.]

Don’t tell anyone what I told you back there.

About my master. What he— [His sigh is tired. His head aches. Everything aches.] No one would understand.

[He doesn't dare to fight Astarion's grip or his sense of direction. Mobius has gotten all turned around in the way everything has change and shifted when the magic of the Crossroads slid back in over everything. It was enough to show the illusions for what they were, even if it has left him feeling drained and aching.

Could be that's from the tumult of emotions, too. Best to only parse that later.

He could fight a spirit or demon or what-have-you, he's sure, but best to let it run away and leave them in peace. For as light as Astarion's hold becomes, he's still pretty sure he can feel bruises along his arm and wrist from earlier. And when he's released into the (strange wrong altered sickening) light and air and ground and sight of it all, he sheathes his sword at last and lowers himself to the ground, sat against a rock. Runs his hands through his short hair and ruffles it out of place.]

Haven't had to do that in a while.

[He glances up at Astarion, sidelong, from an angle, rather than directly.]

I'm not gonna just tell people your old master indulged in a more fucked up than usual form of blood magic and had you fetch people to feed him. He's not here, you're not that, not anyone's business.

None of it is.

[But Astarion was exactly that.

Is that still, bearing the marks from his past in full.

Even so, it’s a relief, hearing that the most damning aspects of it all aren’t about to be dragged out into the figuratively blinding Thedosian daylight (Astarion could always lie if he had to: blackmail and cheat and deny every last scrap of unsettling truth— but it’s difficult to be believed over a Seeker), and doubly so that he doesn’t seem judged for it besides.

His movements are tentative, like a wary stray inching nearer to an offered meal, but Astarion does settle down opposite to Mobius there, braced against the sickening hammering of his heart within his chest (against the painfully stark vertigo of the Crossroads, too, and you know what, maybe he’s done with all this mess for now, once they’ve finished their impending chat). Hands to his knees, posture slouched.]

I didn’t have a choice, you should know. [He says it just in case. Just in case Mobius lies now, adrenaline still pumping in his chest. Just in case he changes his mind later on a whim, or decides he no longer cares for Astarion’s presence.

A thousand different precautions all drawn up by a survivor's mind, one conditioned to see avid threats lurking in every potential corner, no matter how far away from his master that he is.

(But then come to think of it it doesn’t really matter if Astarion did have a choice: all those times he’d spent watching the delicate fools he’d lured in howl in betrayed anguish, and what wouldn’t Astarion have done to protect himself from Cazador’s ire?

Their ends were quick, relatively speaking.

Astarion’s wouldn’t be.)] My enslavement in its totality was exactly that: total. Absolute. An eternally binding curse in the most literal sense.

My mind remained my own, but my body would always adhere to his commands the moment that he spoke them— no matter how cruel.

[A puppet. A toy to be broken or mended at will. One of so many others.]

And he was cruel.

[A pause there, his own stare lowering.]

What was it you saw...? What did the demon show you.

Slaves usually don't. [Even without any literal curses. Kind of what being a slave is about, not having choices. That there's a distinction doesn't necessarily change anything in Mobius' mind. But it means something to Astarion that there is in fact a distinction, so he will make note of it.

He sees now more of the wounded dog that he had glimpsed in their first meeting at the tavern. After Mobius had read parts of him like an open book. This is playing defensively. The elf thinks no one can be trusted, and that Mobius will inevitably break his word. Say one thing, then go running off to everyone to blab about the elven blood slave and his otherworldly master and the murders perpetrated. Cast him out.

It had been sad to see then, and it remains sad now. But that Astarion cares enough to expand on any of it means...something. Even if it's just from the shared experience.]

And slaves to blood magic and enthrallment more so. I'm sorry.

[It doesn't mean much, even if it's earnest. He has questions, of course. Astarion might be from elsewhere, but he seems to bear a few similarities. Those teeth are probably not merely decorative, and those eyes are probably not exactly natural. But he's not sure how he would react if his partner in this nonsense suggests he also partakes of blood. Maybe actually better not to get into it. Digging deeper invites digs deeper. The elf asks. Mobius leans his head back against stone and blinks up at floating bits of land and a bizarre sky. So much better than a sea of blood and dead mages.]

You asked me about the red lyrium dragon, before. And I answered honestly. [Big ol' dragon crusted with the hateful stuff. He has to imagine. He hasn't seen it for himself.] I don't know if you've ever had to fight Red Templars. Same thing, but in a person. It doesn't...end well. For anyone.

[He's not necessarily afraid of fighting them if he has to, and he's in no danger of actually accepting an offer it if came to him. But. Something could happen. It could somehow end up happening to him. They could rise up and take power from the Chantry and drag everything down with them-- He breathes out slow. That's hardly the only thing. Frankly the least scary thing, even if Astarion's version was his most frightening.]

Unless we wanna talk about the dead people. Or the things it said.

[His throat feels very dry suddenly. He keeps staring at the sky. Even if it feels wrong, is it not still the Maker's light in some form? He'll take it far more readily than the dark.] You can ask questions. I can't promise I'll answer.

Mm. [Flat and stiffened; Astarion isn’t particularly kind when it comes to the subject of other slaves— particularly other vampire spawn.

Nine months free and it’s still too vivid a memory, after all. The ones that never needed the figurative whip to fawn and scrape at their master’s heels. The ones who so often convinced themselves their suffering would somehow be eased if they were the favored few amongst the flock. The adored. The cherished.

They never knew how wrong they were.

But Mobius isn’t relying on platitudes.

That counts.]

I’ve only seen red lyrium embedded in corpses. [He stops there, correcting himself with a thin gesture down towards nothing in particular. A sort of stand in for an acidic little shrug; how wretched their enemies are.

How abysmal their measures.]

Or a dragon. Or corypheus, when I saw him last.

You knew templars that subjected themselves to it?

Mobius;

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