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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[Wandering in a place like this (laced as it is with only the thinnest of barriers between magic and reality— between spirits and the living), isn’t a particularly pleasant time. Nothing feels real enough beneath the steady ryhthm of Astarion's strides (a little like lucid dreaming, if Astarion had to pin it down: his body operating more on the assumption of solidity, rather than the undeniable promise of it over stone), and yet everything is also far too real. Too loud, too bright, too sharp, too present.

Thankfully they haven’t been assaulted by childish spirits or beckoning cries from the cliffs, but there’s something distinctly Not Right about this particular stretch of road they now tread, the sky (is it a sky at all, Astarion wonders absently) that surrounds them, growing dimmer by the minute.

And the rocky stone beneath their feet, it’s...

More like polished flooring in places. Flattened and glossy, but still that same shade of lightless brown.]

I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to this.

[Vital, yes. Important, as far as missions go: ensuring Corypheus hasn’t sunken his claws into the byways here, given that his forces have already been proven to travel by eluvian.

But still.

Someone else could’ve done it.

The pathways descend into fractured cliffs: boring into tunnel work that’s difficult to parse even with their elven cat’s eyes. A few feet ahead at best, if that, and it seems as good a place to look as any for a nest chock full of slippery Venatori.

Hands to the glassy pommels of his daggers, he adds, fitting Fenris with a sidelong glance— only to realize that the elf's become more glowing tattoos than recognizable features in the sprawling dark:]

I don't know what you were thinking when you agreed to this.

He can't sleep. This place haunts in ways he'd never expected on infrequent occasion, discomfort creeping in beyond whatever baseline disorientation swims through his peripheral awareness at all times. Little whispers. A hint of a familiar scent he thought he'd forgotten somewhere over the last nine months.

It leaves him irritable, drawn thin and narrow, only a handful of steps away from whirling on his heel and biting (mostly figuratively) at the person nearest to him.

Unfortunately at present, settled along the edge of one of the Crossroad's lower plateaus (a pitiful sort of play at making camp in shadow away from the starkness of unsettling light) beneath a towering cliffside overhang, the person closest to him is Bastien— who also happens to be one of the least enjoyable people to snap his fangs at on a whim.

"That's it, I can't take anymore of this miserable stone digging into my spine," it's hissed out as he all but leaps to his feet without any visible catalyst, hackles raised as high as the set of his shoulders when he adds, coldly:

"You're welcome to come along, but I refuse to just sit here twiddling my thumbs whilst sick to my own damned stomach."

Amongst other things.

We’ve been wandering for hours, now. [What a whiner he is when the mood strikes. All-powerful creature of the night turned slouching, snarling pest. Snitty if only because he isn’t getting his way.]

All I’m asking for is five minutes in the shade. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable for it, either.

[They aren’t far from a darkened overhang, in fact. Some place where the blinding light seems a little less oppressive. Where the whispers might die down just a little if only because they won’t be utterly exposed to what passes for elements, here.

His footsteps press forward— then stop, turning.

It has the added effect of making him look more like a dog trying to coax its owner into walking. This way, come on, stop dallying.

Red eyes so utterly expectant in their unblinking demands.]

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 isn’t a doting thing by nature, it’s important to note. Even at his fondest, he tends to bite and snap and snarl and pick at figurative (and sometimes not so figurative) open wounds whenever it suits—

And all right, yes, he’s doing exactly that right now. A sulking kind of heel-dragging performance that makes every step forward longer. Slower. More stubborn.

It’s too damned bright. And loud. And...] By the Hells, if this headache gets any worse I’m going to rip the next person I see apart with my fangs.

[So yes, they’re mutually suffering right now as non-Thedosian creatures in their stricter origins, but let’s just say that as much as he adores her, he isn’t only thinking of her well-being when he casts a glance towards darker cliffs not far away.

Ominous to look at, yes, but at least not piercingly bright.]

Look, just five minutes. Maybe a little longer in the shade and we’ll both feel right as rain.

[It’s dark. Cold. Better than outside, yes, but only just: the air feels sickeningly tight within his chest now that they're huddled within a winding series of sloping tunnels, and no matter how Astarion tries to get comfortable where he’s slumped against a nearby wall, nothing seems to ease the prickling tension strung tight across the back of his neck. Nothing makes it any easier to rest.]

I almost miss your copy, shocking as it is to admit. [Huffed out between sharp fangs, brow pinched tightly. His hollow eyes glinting like a cat’s when he shifts them Dante’s way.]

Rambunctious as the little spirit was, at least it served as a distraction from...

Well.

Everything.

[He works a hand against his temple, letting out a thready sigh beneath a fresher bout of gnawing unease.]

I don't say this often: but this is the worst.

Ugh. My blisters are going to have blisters at this rate.

[It’s awful. Why did he ever sign up for this? What in the Hells was he thinking, really?]

You’re a god, aren’t you. Can’t you just conjure us a way back?

[He isn’t quite serious (all right, maybe there’s a sliver of him that hopes Loki somehow can pluck them up and spirit them away with some long-held secret), but what’s more than apparent is that he is tired.

Too much fighting the pounding pressure of this place and all its disorienting magic, too much time on his feet— and the ruins they’ve wandered into, shadowed and looming in their cavernous array— don’t look anywhere like the path they’re meant to be treading.

Maybe they’ve gone too far.]

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Fenris;

Bastien;

Emet-Selch;

Mobius;

Ellie;

Dante;

Loki;