fadewalk | Private Character Introduction: Commander Cullen

It had been a long day. Reports (more than usual, it seemed, but truly Cullen had a feeling he thought that every time he returned to his office to find yet another stack) had taken most of the morning, and the afternoon had been devoted to overseeing how the training of the latest batch of new recruits was coming along. He'd even joined in, for a time. Now, though, he wanted nothing more than to be out of his armor before the constant weight on his shoulders turned the dull throbbing at the back of his skull into a full-blown migraine. That would ruin his evening for certain, and he wanted - he hoped - Evelina would be free for a little while. Perhaps he could persuade her into another walk along the battlements, or even just tea in his office. He quickened his pace up the stone stairs, remembering the softness of her lips when he'd kissed her, the way she smelled sharp, like ice or the winter air before a storm, presumably from her magic. He wanted little more than to kiss her again.

It was somewhere between one step and the next and suddenly he was wrenched forward, like a strong blast of air had blown at him from behind and tipped him over an edge, except he hadn't even been to the top of the battlements yet, so he shouldn't have been falling, tumbling, feeling the world slip away and nothing but a deep endless void beneath him. That wasn't right. He reached out blindly, tried to grab on to something, anything, but there was nothing.

And then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, and he found himself stumbling forward a few steps, no longer on the stairs to the battlements, but down just in front of the stables, still at Skyhold. And yet. There was something wrong with the sky, and the castle was, abruptly, eerily, empty.

Something was very wrong.