faderift | open | merry & bright

Entry tags:

open | merry & bright

WHO: Anyone!
WHAT: Everyone lives happily ever after, forever, for real, wait don't look behind that curtain—
WHEN: Late Haring
WHERE: The mountains
NOTES: No one is late to this. Feel free to get around to it in January. Or February! And if you have questions you can ask me here, but for any question that's "can I do this within my character's dream?" the answer will be yes! You can do anything.

The snowstorm that blows up around them in the mountains isn't unexpected and isn't a disaster. It only dashes some thin hopes that it might not come on so strong or so swiftly. But they've almost reached what they're aiming for — a cave along the cliffy coastal road that's associated with the disappearances of several caravans and now said to be home to a rift — and there's a village up ahead, glowing warmly through the snowfall once they're near enough.

They're not the first waylaid travelers here. The one little inn is full to bursting, with just enough room for Riftwatch's contingent to squeeze in at tables if they get creative about the seating, the lower floor so packed that body heat and the little fire combined make things outright toasty. The beds are all spoken for, but the innkeeper, a warm, upbeat woman with frizzy hair escaping a bun, says not to worry. She's not turning anyone out into the cold. Blankets on the floor is better than that. If anyone finds it too uncomfortable to sleep curled with old blankets on a creaking wooden floor surrounded by the snores of colleagues and strangers — no, they don't. It's comfortable. It's warm. The sniffles and rough coughs from the other side of the room have the rhythm of a lullaby, and the snow-covered roads and the rift and the missing are all problems for a tomorrow that does not immediately come.

They wake, each of them, in a world where there is nothing of significance left for them to worry about. Not the road or the rift or the missing. Not the war; that's over now. Not poverty or obligation or illness. Between them and the life they've always wanted, the way has been cleared of obstacles, and there is nothing left to do but enjoy the comforts of a well-earned easy life — and if something is a little off, no it isn't. Shh. If the victories feel hollow, or the details blur, or the seams begin to show, the world will tighten around them like hands around a wounded bird who needs to be kept from thrashing, whispering that they don't need to worry. Everything will be fine. Just hold still and let it take care of you.

The first to pull free of the delusion on their own will find themselves in the twisting grasp of a lucid dream that's trying very hard to snare them again, stumbling out of their happy endings into the worlds of others'. They might be pulled beneath the surface for a time: the entity saying, all right, if that didn't work for you, maybe this? But the more of them who congregate together, with their incompatible wishes, the more the fabric will begin to fray, until at last it rots away altogether and they find themselves waking on the floor of a cold, abandoned inn, covered in moldering blankets and lingeringly queasy from half-rotted food eaten at least a day earlier, surrounded by the bodies of the inn's other occupants in various early states of decay.

And after, because rest for the weary really is just a dream, they do have to go find that rift.

ooc | Final confrontation with the spirit that allows breaking out into the real world will happen via a log in here I will link when it's happening. But you're also welcome to say your character wasn't involved in that part and went straight to waking up!

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The city has changed.

The memorial garden has grown, and grown, become thick with grasses slim and tall or bent beneath seed heads, leaves spreading broad or in fine sprays of green, flowers upon flowers upon flowers. Trees raise twisting branches in praise of the sun. Vines stretch, coil, and cling to weave canopies over walkways. And the building of metal and glass, standing where once stood Kirkwall's Chantry, dominates the skyline with a silhouette of spiralling organic forms.

Within the structure, consuming much of its footprint, is a hole, carved straight down through the city to open its long-neglected depths to filtered light, to air that moves, and life has mustered in village terraces all around its circumference, from Hightown to the lowest of the low. Vent shafts, marked by windmills, pierce the city's crust all around. Darktown's air flows as fresh as that of the clifftops.

Visitors will find the streets clean and lively, its dwellers united by a spirit of progress. All ornament is evolving toward the biotic: ancient stone walls are refined, additions are wrought in iron and steel, round windows form new spirals of coloured glass. Fellowship pervades and technology flourishes. Machines are everywhere: a wagon of alloys pulls itself; sleek-built golems share a heavy load; enormous engines nod, nod, nod their steel beams in ponderous rhythm; others bore through the rock below. All are inscribed with flowing runic sequences and limned in lyrium blue.

Loitering around the greenhouse tower will soon prompt a question from a placid man with iridescent marks, like scars, maybe, across the upper half of his face: Have you come for an audience? It's not a trick—one need only ask, and be led inside.

Or, perhaps one is far below, one of many in a tended garden of gently pulsing vesicles, ready to emerge. The chrysalis stretches, splits for determined fingers. Luminous film sloughs away in strings. Of the body emerging, what was damaged is now whole again; what once was frail is now fortified by a scaffold of some unnamed alloy, branching across the skin to form a shimmering mesh wherever it's needed most. The metal is unyielding to touch, to grasp, but flexes like flesh—alive.

On the face of every emergent soul are ovoid marks, like scars, maybe: five of them, around the brows and eyes, spaced like fingerprints.

All those similarly blessed, their thoughts half-open to one another, to murmur nearby, like the muffled voices of family in another room. Emotions soften toward the pleasant. Heads turn to look, eyes and mouths smile. There are no strangers here; not anymore.

Those who came before, who now dwell here, do so happily—they start families, make lives, enriched by community and all they share. The citizens of Kirkwall share everything, happily, from the food on their plates to the marks on their faces: five, spaced like prints. Some are tasked with bringing unmarked visitors to the towering, twisting, hive-like greenhouse. One simply must be led inside.

The turn begins as a slow erosion of mood. Vitality drains from the streets, though the bodies linger. Gazes persist, smiles lose their warmth. Food spoils in the mouth. Machinery slows, stops. Glass cracks in its frame. Clouds thicken to overcast. The many-hued metals begin to spread, to envelop surfaces indiscriminately with a gleaming, creeping, plasmodial film, sharp-edged where it sets, which mages fall sick to touch. The blue glow dulls to purple, then to a deep red.

Soon, fluid drips from the eyes of citizens and those newly hatched alike—first eyes, then mouths; first pearlescent, then viscous black, as all iridescence decays. They engage in fleeting squabbles among each other, but outright attack visitors on sight, viciously, mindlessly, tooth and nail. It spreads and spreads and spreads, withers the gardens, chokes the air, darkens the sky, gurgles in shrieking throats, rot upon rot upon rot.

Too late to run. The city has changed. The Blight is everywhere.

[be a tourist, live here your whole life, hatch from a magic blister, become darkspawn, present your friends to a twink against their will, etc. will NPC the friendly forehead guy on request, and if anyone enters the greenhouse Viktor will join the thread. catch me on plurk at abyssal or discord at whalesfall if you want V some other way (oh my) or have any questions.]

Edited 2025-01-08 06:06 (UTC)

Well. He looks very dashing in that whole dramatic ensemble, painted lips included. Extremely wealthy, too.

"Not much for these social events," she admits, a sheepish smile. "I try to wiggle out of them as often as I can, but..." For some reason, she can't remember why she's attending this one. Was it to find herself a suitor? Was it her parents' desire - but no, her parents are not here.

Hey, don't worry about it, the dream goes, providing them with a show. A proposal is happening right on the dance floor, complete with gasps.

"Dear god."

And immediately after, another man challenges the gentleman proposing to a duel, in front of everyone.

If Benedict is here to besuit someone, he shows no indication of it; instead he seems content to take refuge in the company of a girl as weirdly dressed as he is, all things considered.

Her exclamation draws his attention to the proposal-turned-duel, a wicked little smile curling onto his face.

"The challenger's wasted," he mutters conspiratorially, "he's been mooning over her all night."

"I admit it is not the cheeriest of topics but ... do you have any books on the nature of the Fade?" It isn't exactly how he'd planned to start, but face to face with Ness, he falters when considering his original, bolder approach. He's almost certainly jumping at shadows, and there's no reason to frighten her if it's only his own melancholy to blame.

(And, of course, there's the years of lyrium use, even if he's stopped. It's never far from his mind, how it might affect him.)

It's clear in the way she blinks at him that this is not anywhere near the realm of topics Ness was expecting him to be interested in, and she looks a little lost for an answer for a moment while she adjusts to this new reality. Only a moment, though, and then she blinks again, and looks away to squint at one of the shelves.

"Hmm... We're a bit small of a library to have anything too advanced, but I think we have something on the basic theory, if I'm remembering right..."

She comes around her desk, crossing to the shelves where they keep their small collection of books on magical theory. As she peruses spines, searching for the one she's looking for, she calls back to Vanya with a question.

"What's your interest in the topic? If you don't mind my asking, of course!"

"He'll trip on his sword before it comes to anything," she murmurs to the side, towards Benedict and for his ears alone. "Two sovereigns."

She probably has the money, as the story goes. Fancy bachelor(ette) and all that. Gold coming out of her nostrils, really!

What patchwork background has this dream given Marcus? He remembers the Circle of Starkhaven. He remembers the rebellion. Remembers—

That it ended. And a new world order has arrived. And his loves have ascended to great echelons of influence and rulership, and Kevin is no longer retired, for no Templars are alive to have ambushed him on the road one day.

What is his purpose, in this happiest of endings? To wear shining metal and be magnificent, maybe. He is not directly concerned with the duty of the various guards towards seeing Orlais— Kirkwall— Lamor secured, but makes the rounds anyway. As he enters the thoroughfare leading the palace, his presence earns some attention, all of it admiring. Dismounting his horse and leaving him to the care of whatever faceless servant hops forwards.

Entering the halls, the parties in full swing, he is in his formal uniform, cascading red velvet and polished steel, decorated with all the markings and formalities of a Knight General who is here to display himself as such. A sidearm lashed to his hip is among the few weapons permitted through the doors. An absence of a heavy war staff at his back feels like a phantom limb.

Stops. Observes the crowd, the proceedings. Appeals about land disputes and requests for charity, all the carryings on of an empire at peace. What is his purpose here?

"You're on," he whispers with a wicked little smirk, "--the dance partner, the man? He'd rather fuck him than fight him."

And Stephen might have rolled with it, might still have been tidily wrapped up in this comforting and comfortable illusion — an uncomplicated world of wonders that he does, in fact, wish he lived in — except. That Benedict’s mouth moves and nothing comes out, just the vague idea of speech and dialogue and specifics, a glitchy blur in the tape,

and Doctor Strange, accustomed to picking his way through dreams and the Fade and diving through astral dimensions, hesitates.

He is holding a cocktail. He can’t remember what he ordered; it’s sweet and cloying and strong as a punch, is the most important part, except that his memory is usually a steel trap. What was the name of the artist Benedict just mentioned?

Something prickles on the edge of his senses, his hackles rising, the sense of the room tilting slightly beneath his feet. Disorientation. Vertigo.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the name,” he says after a moment, his brow crinkling; searching out and finding that fault-line, applying pressure.

It's not just a sense: the room is quite literally beginning to tilt, but nobody other than Strange and, now, Benedict, seems to notice. The latter takes on a nervous, faraway look when asked to repeat himself-- he clears his throat, opens his mouth, and grimaces as the world shudders beneath his feet.

In another setting, he might shout, panic, do something to protect himself or those around; here, he simply meets Stephen's eyes again, looking quite lost.

Those eyes will have to track up —

Cedric's hand extends down from horseback, sat atop a gleaming stallion, its mane shimmering under moon. He's taller here, impractically silky shirt plunging low over muscular chest. It's a dream, so the flashes of scar are only dashing. It's a dream, so he doesn't remember a wound.

"Been looking for you," Shoulders ripple. "They're after that book of yours."

Who? Someone dangerous. The air is heady with jasmine. They're far from the stables, and never mind how he made it into this walled garden, only that the hedges are short enough to leap.

Edited 2025-01-15 08:26 (UTC)

"Thought I'd pack lunch," He waggles a daisy beside his own mouth, the tip of his tongue catching between teeth, the breath gone out of him a little. Way it always does for a look at her: Smooth and clever with her boots up to there, "Been working up an appetite."

There are enough blankets that they’re in a comfortable tangle in the center of the room. There’s an occasional cold gust slipping in around the edges of the front door — the wood warps in bad weather, and neither Avvar cabins nor Dalish aravels are as tightly-sealed with mathematical precision as the work of a city carpenter, it’s more likely your doorframe was built by some cousin’s grandfather who had a hand towards woodworking just enough to get the job done — but, still.

Whenever one of those gusts creeps in and blusters across the floor, Astrid wriggles a little closer for body heat instead. It is warm indoors and bitterly cold outdoors. She has company. That’s all she needs.

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, her chin propped against Talin’s shoulder. “Or even if you have: tell it again, though.”

Some people might handle this situation with blunt words (Gwenaëlle), others more calculated aplomb and grace, and Astrid—

Well, Astrid just ploughs right into the man and spills some of her red wine all over his expensive white shirtfront.

“Oh, shit, I am sooooo sorry,” she declares, not looking sorry at all. Instead: she delivers a quick ogle at Hermione’s impressive bosom, then a proprietary arm looped through her elbow. “Best go get that taken care of, mate. I hear it stains.”

She’s not given a shit about wine stains before in her life, really.

Her foul mouth and lack of social graces don’t fit this scenario at all, but the dream has at least tried to make her look the part. She’s still too mistrustful about her ability to manage a dress, and so her outfit isn’t very different from what she might wear in regular Thedas; but it’s made with better-quality fabrics, a sharper cut than usual, stiffer trousers, although still well-made comfortable boots. The heavy leather jacket is the main hint of her Avvar origins. (She should be sweating through it, but the temperature here is always perfectly pleasant. Funny, that.) Her hair’s even tied up in a more elaborate updo than ever before, although some strands are already trying to escape.

This dream fits Astrid a little better than the rest; it’s not like putting on a well-worn coat, but at least a comfortable one that doesn’t chafe and pull at her shoulders. It’s a Nevarran town, but it looks so similar to the Fereldan lowlander villages she’d once frequented for market.

So she is a seasonal trader: she passes through on a predictable schedule to barter hand-made tools and supplies and dried jerky, buying and selling crafts, whatever someone might need. (Where does she live, and where does she actually lay her head at night? Don’t worry about it.)

And today Astrid comes meandering, with a click of her tongue to make the horse keep pace beside her. They make their way up the lane towards the Orlov ranch. The mare isn’t wearing a saddle, but Astrid only winds her fingers into mane and tugs lightly to redirect it, showing an easy confidence in handling the animal and trusting it’s not going to bolt when she reaches the outer fence of the ranch, undoes the gate, and ushers it through. Once she sees the silhouette of the man himself outside his home, in the garden, she whistles for his attention —

“Oy,” she says, gesturing with a thumb to the horse. “Got a runner.”

(It had leapt the fence a day earlier, escaped off onto the moors, tried to leave. He can’t settle.)

It isn’t anything so dramatic as Stephen jolting and coming to gasping, suddenly awake like being struck by a bolt of lightning. Nothing so obvious or immediate or clear-cut.

But Benedict looks so lost and there’s something painfully familiar in that look on his face — almost like dementia patients, forgetting where they are — and the surroundings are tilting underfoot. And when Stephen closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his eyelids, trying to clear his vision, then opens them again, he can see

the gaps in the negative space, the shimmer behind the curtain, the fragile corners of the dream where he is so accustomed to finding and applying pressure, moulding and shaping a landscape, and Benedict’s mouth is moving blankly like a startled fish, and for a moment Stephen simply wonders if he’s dreamwalked normally, meandering into his sleeping comrade’s subconscious.

There’s a headache throbbing in the back of his skull. Has he done this before? (He cannot shake the feeling that he has done this before.) “At least I didn’t walk into a sex dream,” he says, more to himself, but then turns his attention back to the other man. “Benedict, have you dreamt this place before?”

It still seems like it might be normal. Maybe.

As always when there is something in the dream to appeal to him, Stephen Strange is successfully caught and snared at first, dropped into it like a fish hauled wriggling over the edge of a boat —

And he lands in a better Kirkwall. There is much to draw him in here: the same simpatico that made Viktor and the doctor first start to compare notes, beautiful glowing runes, magic married to science, societal conveniences, remarkable achievements, pushing the envelope ever further and further and further.

Stephen crawled out of a blister only a couple hours ago, reborn, reforged once again. He has the five-pointed marks on his face. He is here at the greenhouse to seek an audience with the mind behind all this (once a colleague, a patient, a friend), and to marvel at his own improvements.

His hands no longer shake. The prosthetic fingers on both his hands are beautiful, that mysterious living alloy melded to his flesh, the seams indiscernible. His fingers flex and move with all the same crisp delicacy they once did as a surgeon; there is no longer any pain.

This one almost gets him.

So much of what sings to Ennaris Tavane’s subconscious appeals to him, too. Stephen has always wanted to see Candlekeep, and this altered version of it presents such an alluring image, an oasis he could sink into: wouldn’t it be nice? just to stay here for a while, read a book, settle into your studies, the war is on the brink of success and all is tranquil and well,

and he’s almost sold on it, until he finally meets Vazeiros. The wrongness of it sinks and hooks deeper under Stephen’s skin every time he has to see the girl so glowing and happy with this father who Stephen knows neglected her, this man who always called her Ness for selfish convenience and steamrolled over her own preferences —

The moment Stephen becomes self-aware, he drops a book on his foot. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

Shaking himself out of it takes concerted effort; this feels less like waking up and more like ripping out his own stitches, bleeding and limping down the hallway of not-Candlekeep-not-the-Gallows. He’s psychically tired. He feels like he hasn’t actually slept in weeks. He hasn’t been able to properly reach Gwenaëlle in any of these worlds. He wants it to end.

Every time this happens, always, part of the dream starts to warp and destabilise around him as if the very landscape is trying to fight him. Whatever’s driving the illusion is onto him, just as he’s onto them, and nobody’s happy. He’s really starting to get pretty pissed off, actually. He’s pretty sure the last dream killed him and yeeted him out by dropping an actual piano on his head. This migraine has not abated.

But for the sake of not ripping apart reality from the get-go, he’s trying to find Ness for the subtle and polite approach first, even as doors slam in his face and the hallway twists labyrinthine, and he comes face-to-face once more with the adult drow.

“Sorry, I just, I’d very much like to have a word with Ennaris,” but Vazeiros cuts him off again, blocking his path.

“I really need to speak to your daughter,” Stephen says, through gritted teeth.

"You would disturb my daughter from her work."

The drow stands, positioned just so between Stephen and the door behind him. He has to tilt his head to meet Stephen's eye, such is the difference between their heights, but unlike many men, it doesn't seem to bother him. He's not bothered by anything, it seems, self-assured and calm in the face of Stephen's frustration. Stephen doesn't bother him. Stephen, in fact, means as little to him as anything that is not his library, his books.

"She is happy doing it. She is worthwhile when she works. You would take that from her? Make her nothing again?"

Vazeiros steps forward. There are no weapons around them, nothing but stacks and stacks of—not-quite-books. The suggestion of books. As Vazeiros moves, they resolve into solid form, taking shape: unending stacks of magical tomes and wizards' spellbooks, volume upon volume of arcane secrets. Some Stephen is familiar with from his own studies, books from Kamar-Taj and the multiverse beyond, and some he has never seen. They spread through the room, an endless trove of knowledge, waiting to be cracked open.

"You would be happy here as well, wouldn't you? We have so much to show you, Doctor. So many secrets to share."

He plucks a book from the top of a stack. It's bound in leather, maybe, or maybe worse, a face caught in a scream raising from the cover as if trying to escape. The air is heavy and chilled with its arcane power, and somewhere in the room, a purple gem pulses invitingly.

Vazeiros holds the book out between them, an offering.

"No,"

Impulsive. Contrary. A lie: She must have enjoyed the soup, it's impossible to imagine any less. That she can't recall details,

Doesn't last. Taste blooms across tongue, a memory, but at once foreign; new. Of course she enjoyed the soup. Of course she lifted spoon from bowl. And why be so reflexively stubborn, here of all places? This is a place of honour.

(Why?)

"In Par Vollen," Her stomach lurches. There must have been something off in the dish, oily. Wrong. "Who picked them?"

"This--?" Benedict asks, shaken from his stupor by the question as he looks worriedly around. He has, at least, come to grips with the fact that he's not about to die, even as concerning as this is.

"--it's my house," he says oddly, glancing back at Stephen.

"Hm?"

He's not offended by her rebuff, or has just decided not to show it, but the following question manages to catch him fully off-guard.

"What?" Who picked what? Do people need to pick things?

"Hang on," Talin smiles, shifting against Faron, uncurling his torso and opening up his diaphragm, his throat, "I have to put on my hahren voice."

He clears his throat, makes a show of finding the right timbre and resonance for his voice. The way he sounds isn't really so important as he's making it out to be—it's not an essential part of the storytelling, not in his clan—but...

It's a way to keep hahren Davhalla alive, he supposes.

His voice is as gruff as hahren's used to be when he begins, and he shapes his words with as much soft affection; because hahren was teaching children, because he loved his People.

"Long ago, in a time when the People were still young, the Dread Wolf went hunting. It is often said of Fen'Harel that he is a liar and a trickster; that is true, but even Fen'Harel did not abuse the gifts of the forest as the shemlen do now: The Wolf did not kill more than his share, nor was he so unskilled a hunter that his quarry suffered before they died, and in this, he was just, and a true member of the People. But the Dread Wolf held no respect for the Creators, and in his hubris, he had foregone the first, necessary step of any hunt: he had refused to seek the Huntress' blessing."

Here he pauses, and looks to Astrid, waiting for her to respond with a cry of censure, as the children of the clan always did.

Edited 2025-01-20 21:12 (UTC)

He's aware that I think there's something wrong with reality or my mind, and I'm not sure which it is is an alarming thing to say, and probably unfair to put on her besides. But he hadn't fully thought through an alternative explanation. It causes a small hesitation before he says, "I'm not sure if you knew, but I used to be from the city. I have a correspondent back in the capital who's interested in magical theory. She mainly uses me as a sounding board, I suspect, but I thought it would be nice to actually follow what she's suggesting if I could."

It's not entirely a lie; Benevenuta still writes him even buried here in the country. But he still feels a bit guilty for the misdirection, even if it's done out of a desire not to unnerve Ness without cause.

She laughs, clearly at him, but not unpleasantly so. "It seems your appetite is always formidable on days my husband happens to be off on a long ride. A remarkable coincidence, I wonder if the full moon is involved." She comes to lean on the fence, near enough to pluck the daisy out of his hand if he doesn't fight her.

"Maybe you shouldn't take such a long walk out here, if it exhausts you," she adds, idly.

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Page 3 of 7

open | merry & bright

kirkwall: the herald's collective (oblique spoilers for Arcane s2);

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and i'm here

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hatchling in the greenhouse

turning;

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https://i.etsystatic.com/20116867/r/il/cd35c4/3214625358/il_1588xN.3214625358_s5e0.jpg

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