fadewalk | RP: Open to anyone

Cullen straightened, then slowly rose to his feet. He was in the main yard of Skyhold all right, but there were telling differences even beyond the troubling sky. The greenery hadn't all been stripped away, for one. The Herald's blood red banners were nowhere to be seen. The tavern still stood, and the high parapets were bare of their bristling defenses.

If he could ignore the tempest going on above his head, it almost seemed...peaceful. Like it was before things started going so wrong.

He turned in a slow circle, chains clanking, and silently noted the changes--then went perfectly still when he heard a footfall.

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"Enchanted goods, my favorite words put together."

Her smmile didn't reach her eyes. Things were awfully quiet in Skyhold and Neria, if alone, would already be miles away from there, if needed, trying to find a solution by herself. Having companions really made things slower, but the time to consider things without being in a hurry was good, for a change. Alistair was definitely not the man she remembered, and despite Cullen felt familiar, the differences between her version of the Inquisitor and his was odd. But the time to discuss it would come soon.

"Any chances for plate suited for mages, Cullen? I don't see myself fighting around in my sleeping clothes."

(ooc: sleeping clothes - just a simple dress, nothing revealing or appealing about it; Neria is rather prude.)

The armor selection was broad. This was a well-equipped outfit, or hallucination, or whatever it was, that was certain. Alistair hadn't worn full plate in a long time, and didn't really fancy all the clanking, but he could do with.. ah. Perfect.

His efficiency with getting himself buckled into the brigandine with an obsidian chased chest plate had not been compromised with drink at least. He was settled into it quick enough to satisfy most commanders during morning drills, sword buckled on and someone who knew what they were doing to follow.

He wasn't sure he liked how much more he felt like himself all of a sudden.

However, pulling his coat off had revealed the journal he'd awoken with and he rejoined the others thumbing through the pages with a frown.

They all seemed to be naturally moving toward their usual roles: Neria itching to be off, unencumbered and fleet; Cullen in full Commander mode, plotting defensive strategies; Alistair the warrior who would keep them all on their toes. "The Herald was not one for allowing mages to remain uncontested," Cullen said, "but if you look in the trunk there, you'll find Vivienne's old armor. It won't be an exact fit, but for now, it should be better than nothing."

He waited for her to get situated before tilting his head toward the door leading to the requisition office. "We should keep moving. It-- What is that?" Cullen added, catching sight of Alistair.

"Okay, that should probably do."

She went to said trunk, hands looking for a armor. That Vivienne surely had once fancy, dangerous looking and fantastic taste. The elven woman left to a close by room, far from the men's sight, and changed herself. Some adjustments here and there to keep the mage armor in place and it was good to go. Not something she was used to wear, but certainly efficient and gourgeous.

It didn't take long for her to rejoin the men, looking for a journal.

"What are we looking at?"

(ooc: see, now you're making me draw my poor warden dressed like Vivienne xD)

Alistair's first impulse when Cullen asked what he was holding was to slap it closed and hide it behind his back, like he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Which was foolish. The man's ragged demeanor and suspicious eyes had just stopped making Alistair's neck prickle and now he had to go and try to hide was plainly some sort of clue to their predicament.

"Ah, well, it's a book, yes?" He pulled it back out, turned it over, looking at the spine and cover, and then handed it out to Cullen. "I found it in the garden with me when I came to. It looks like people have been writing notes to each other, but... I don't know how, or why, or where it came from." He looked to Neria as she paced closer.

(OOC: I'm not sure where Neria is at relative to herself in the two threads she's been participating in, or what she wrote in the journal, so Alistair doesn't mention that her name is in there. Maybe he missed those pages.)

"An enchanted book?" He frowned, flipping through it. "There were books similar to this in the Circles, but nothing quite so elabor--"

Cullen looked up. "There are others here. Do you know anything of this?" he asked Neria.

(OOC: Timelines in rps get so tangled during the first few days, so I'm willing to kind of handwave any way Neria needs or wants.)

"Well, this is certainly curious."

She grabbed the book, flipping some pages with interest.

"There is a whole chapter of me, but it can't be me, right? I'm, not there."

(ooc: I was wondering maybe we could consider the other rp lines as things that could've happened to our characters but didn't, due their choices. Like a book registering alternate timelines. Then we shouldn't have big problems trying to go through the other rps until they're settled and we can also rely on it to explain hypothetical timeline tangling if we need. Everyone up for it?)

"Enchanted books, of course." He tipped his head, looking down into the pages over Neria's shoulder. At the top of the page she had turned to, past her own section, there were drawings. Silly drawings. That was a scribbly doodle of an peacock with a mustache. "Maybe everyone who writes in the book has been driven mad by being trapped here. What if you just don't remember you wrote those things?"

Alistair drew his hand back, fisted it into his hair and then let it drop with a disgusted sigh. He turned away, muttering to himself. "Maybe this all could have been avoided if Anora had just chopped my head off. Oh! I could have died at my Joining! If I'd been really lucky I would've been trampled by Lady Isolde's favorite Orlesian palfrey. What fun!"

(OOC: However you want to handle it is fine. Maybe there's two of you here even. Who knows! :D)

"Are there...echoes of ourselves?" No, that didn't seem right. Did it? This place, this strange, strange place... "There was a book by my knees when I first arrived here. I left it. But if we can assume there are others--whether or not they are echoes of ourselves," or whether Neria was lying or had gone mad, "and that each of them has been given a book like this, then it seems possible we might have been deliberately brought here. Collected."

He looked between them. "Where were you before you were here? What are the biggest turning points of your life, or recent history, that you remember?"

"I woke up in the underground library, perfect place to miss a book." she snorted "Points of my life, right... I was travelling west by myself, following some leads on elven magic so I could craft the Cure. The Breach was closed and the last thing I know, Divine Victoria had been chosen, as Leliana told me. The Inquisition was a good thing for people, helping refugees and anyone in need."

She took some steps in the room, avoiding both men's gaze.

"I was a Circle Mage. Left after being betrayed by a friend, Duncan took me in. He died in the battle of Ostagar. Me and Alistair were the only Grey Wardens left, we had to fight the Blight and the Civil War with the help of people with common goals, that later became or friends. Anora was crowned Queen of Ferelden after the Landsmeet, I killed the traitor myself. I became Warden Commander, me and Alistair went to Vigil's Keep and..." she took a deep breath, shaking her head "Years after I left, to search for the Cure. Soon after, Kirkwall's Chantry was blown away, the Templar Mage war started. Then, the Inquisition came to be after the explosion of the Conclave, in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, when the Breach first appeared in the sky. Your turn."

She turned to the men, still avoiding their gaze.
It would be very weird to say she had married Alistair after the Blight. Better to avoid that subject.

Hearing the events of the Blight narrated, even in such broad brush strokes from this woman as if she were the one who lived it and not... Alistair shook his head abruptly. It wouldn't do to think about what might have been if this yarn she'd spun had come to pass for him. But it was hard. Loghain dead, still a Warden, happy, a Warden, given purpose beside his love.

He clenched his jaw until it ached. She wasn't the Hero of Ferelden. But she wasn't lying about everything. She was a Warden, and he frowned at her at the mention of a cure.

When she fell silent he cleared his throat, staring at the floor between them. "I-- well, the Blight happened, and all that. But Loghain was pardoned, after-- after everything he'd done. And I couldn't stay." His voice broke and when he continued it was a bit gruffer. "I was almost executed, but they decided if I renounced all claim to the throne I wouldn't be a threat. So." He rocked back on heels and glanced up, feeling his mouth pull into a sour half-smile. "I've been loitering in the Free Marches for more than a year, but only just. A wandering sellsword, drunk, bit of a waste of space really."

"So you are the Hero of Ferelden," Cullen began slowly, "very close to the one I knew, but not an exact match. And nothing at all like the one Alistair one. He is nothing like the Alistair either of us knew." He frowned. "The witch Morrigan mentioned an artifact that could take you to different worlds, or shadows of worlds, before the Herald had her executed. Could we have all been brought to one of those shadow worlds, each of us from a different path that could have been?"

"Morrigan? What sort of artifact?" she frowned, realizing the answer "An Eluvian, this have to be an Eluvian! She was really passionate about them. That's it. That's the answer! If we can find a Eluvian here, on this Skyhold, maybe we can use it to go back to our rightful places!"

A smile died on fer face before even blossoming, as she stared Cullen.

"Of course, considering your reality, maybe this isn't a good idea for you, sorry about my eagerness."

Alistair shifted uneasily, eyes moving between them. There was so much of this to untangle, and his head hurt, and people were executing Morrigan, and any reality that had an Inquisitor (whatever that was) who had the power to kill a witch who could turn into a bird and had a dragon for a mother?

"Send Cullen back to have his head chopped off, not high on the list of our goals for the day, I agree. Besides, is the Inquisition the kind of place that just has Eluvians lying around?"

"Well, I'm not going to argue for execution," Cullen said, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "But actually, yes. The Herald had an eluvian in Skyhold. She moved it after Morrigan was killed, kept it hidden from her advisors, but it has to still be here."

Then he paused and cocked his head.

"Or," he said slowly, "it could be where we used to store it. So much of this Skyhold is like how things were before she started to show her true colors. Perhaps that is one of the things that was like before."

"Well, lead the way, Commander. Though I doubt we have any sort of appointment here but... and maybe we should go after our respective books, as well. Maybe see what the other us is up to may help us to solve this equation."

She waved her hand to the door.
It would be nice to find a way to avoid Cullen's execution, as well.

Alistair took his book back folding the soft leather cover so that he could stick it beneath his belt. Better than carrying it around and trying to fight one handed.

"Poking the ancient magic mirror and hoping nothing horrible falls out of it. Instead of bunkering down with weapons and supplies and fluffy pillows." He nodded firmly. "Wonderful plan. I can see why we put the both of you in charge." He stepped out of the smithy first, hand on his sword hilt, eyes scanning. The change in the set of his shoulders, the distribution of his weight was obvious, plain that he is for all his claims to being a drunkard still a fighting man.

That earned a surprised laugh--rough and more than a little rusty, as if he hadn't laughed in a very long time. "Common sense would seem to be a prerequisite," Cullen said as he led the way. There was a large part of him that wanted to continue to shore up resources and build defenses, but he recognized the need to find and quarantine the threat first.

Still, it was a gamble.

"Well, I don't think I'm in position to speak of common sense. Nor are you, Commander Fancy Pauldrons." she smiled "Don't listen to him Alistair, you look really good. We could all be part of a carnival parade, in Antiva. Now, where can we find this Eluvian?"

They really were fancy, weren't they? Alistair eyed Cullen's surcoat and ruff for a moment as he fell in line behind Neria. Her armor was... well she had no room to talk about fancy pauldrons. Those were the most elaborate mage robes he'd ever seen. He snorted and turned his attention back to scanning the grounds, eyes training to the battlements, the passthroughs and archways, all the nooks that could hide someone who was watching.

Because Alistair truly felt like something was watching. The prickle was almost as sharp as the sensation of the taint reacting to darkspawn, hairs on the back of his neck practically bristling. "This is worse than all the fog and the werewolves trees trying to murder you in the Brecilian forest," he murmured, mostly to himself.

They were all, indeed, the very fanciest.

Cullen kept a wary eye out, one hand braced on the hilt of his sword, as he led the way toward the room where they had stored the eluvian before the Herald had spirited it away. After what had happened in Kinloch, he had never done particularly well with this kind of bell jar paranoia...and yet recent experience with the Herald had somehow managed to make him, if not immune from the creeping dread, at least able to compartmentalize and let it haunt his dreams later.

"This way," was all he said.

Neria followed Cullen's lead back inside the great hall. She couldn't shake away the unsettling sensation she felt and wondered if this was part of being physically inside the Fade or if this was part of seeing familiar faces with little clue about her.

Cullen was pretty much the man she remembered from Leliana's letters; strong-willed and trying to make up for his mistakes in the past. He also knew a Neria (and this Neria looked exactly like her, she supposed) so maybe, the only difference between her reality and his was the Inquisitor. In her reality, Inquisitor Lavellan was a good woman, driven and righteous, fighting for the helpless and the needed. She didn't knew much about Cullen's Inquisitor, but things were bad if she demanded executions of everyone. A knot formed in her throat.

Now, Alistair was completely another person. Betrayed by the Hero of Ferelden, of all people. That was a blow almost directly against her. She was a Hero of Ferelden and she would never, ever, let Loghain live, not after Ostagar. A faint smile appeared on her lips when she glanced at Alistair; he stood his ground and he gave up something he really loved to stick with his beliefs. Perhaps, he was the same Alistair, after all...

Which really doesn't have a soothing effect over me.

RP: Open to anyone

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