One moment, Cyrus was falling.
In the next, he'd been swallowed by green light, and spat out somewhere quite familiar.
His fall was arrested as soon as he bothered to think about it, of course, and he reoriented himself for a much-gentler landing than he'd been expecting. His feet touched ground softly; he exhaled a slightly-shaky breath. Even he had been rather sure he was going to die there for a moment. Despite himself, his heart still thundered in his chest, though he could feel it beginning to slow as rationality reasserted itself. He glanced around, extending his senses as far as they could reach, which was considerably farther here than it ordinarily was.
The landscape was rather foreboding. Everything was cast in a sickly, green-grey pall, tainting each part of his surroundings from the ankle-deep water he stood in to the floating chunks of stone some meters to his left. The taste at the back of his tongue was bile, which was suggestive, but he couldn't dismiss the possibility that this was more a side effect of his fall than his current surroundings. There was no mistaking the oppressive atmosphere, however. He tried willing the water at his feet to change color, something which was usually child's play, but it remained stubbornly fetid. The stability was enough to suggest that something of considerable power dwelt here.
He looked down at his own hands, turning them over so he could see first the palms, then the knuckles. Extraordinary. Even he had never dreamed—but there were other things to worry about. More important things, strange as that sentiment felt. He needed to find the others. If they were lucky, they'd fallen into Estella's rift just the same as he had. If they were unlucky, well... best not to think about that.
Cyrus thought he could sense something ahead; it seemed like the best direction to start, in any case. Shaking his head a bit, he started forward, footsteps sloshing through the water until he hit dryer landscape.
He didn't make it far before the sounds of demons ahead reached his ears. Before long, a pale green light opened up in the ground some distance in front of him, and a terror came screeching through. But it was not alone. Apparently Romulus had hung on for the trip, straddled around the demon's back with his blade at the creature's throat while his other limbs tried to pin it down. There was a brief struggle before the Inquisitor sliced clean through the terror's head, and pulled it off, leaving the demon quite still.
Romulus exhaled a heavy breath, rolling off the creature and getting to his feet, tossing the head aside. He spared a few glances for his new surroundings, but judging by the somewhat blank stare, all of this was quite beyond him. He offered Cyrus a half-hearted nod of his head in greeting.
"This can't keep happening to us," he muttered, wiping the terror's blood from his blade. "Where... or when, are we this time?"
“I regret to inform you that it's really more of a how in this case." He'd intended a little more levity than he got with the comment. Perhaps it was the atmosphere. The presence of demons always caused Cyrus physical pain—a rather unglamorous side-effect of being what he was. In the Fade, it was worse. Apparently, having a physical presence here made it yet more bothersome. “We're in the Fade. One of the more stable parts, which is both good news and bad news, I'm afraid."
The muscles around his eyes and mouth tightened until he was almost, but not quite, frowning. “Congratulations, Romulus. Once again, you and I seem to be making history."
Romulus blinked at him. "The... the Fade? You mean we're dreaming? Are... did we die?"
“We did not, thankfully." Cyrus shook his head. “Nor are we dreaming, in fact. We seem to be wholly physically present. Believe me when I say I've dreamed often enough to tell the difference." He scanned this new portion of landscape. One would be foolish to expect it to remain entirely unchanged from moment to moment, but for now it seemed rather stable.
“Normally this would actually be quite the advantage for us, but whatever lives here is powerful enough to shape the Fade as I do. And I would have to work very hard to alter its domain, which does not bode well." He crossed his arm. “I suspect it is some form of Fear demon. Something of a universal weakness, unfortunately." There were those resistant to Desire or Pride or Rage, but Fear was primal, and something everyone had in common.
Romulus looked to be struggling mightily with everything he was hearing, but that was hardly surprising. "A Fear demon." He began to pace back and forth, avoiding the corpse of the terror at his feet. "Can we kill it? Would that help us?"
Cyrus considered that. “Perhaps. But the real trick is going to be finding a way out of here. If we can find a place where the Veil is thin, that will be easier, but any such place is likely to have attracted the demon itself. So... we're probably going to have to, whether it's otherwise helpful or not."
He started forward again; a faint path had begun to materialize in front of them. Likely drawing them closer to the demon. For now, though, that was where they needed to go. “If we can find the others we'll have a better chance. Fear has a hard time in the face of any kind of fellow-feeling. Acting for the sake of others makes just about anyone braver, don't you think?" Romulus nodded his agreement, committing easily enough to following Cyrus's lead.
Not that he wanted to lead, exactly. Cyrus had always been perfectly content to leave that sort of thing to the people with the temperament for it. But he was the one who had some idea where they were going, and if there was any situation in which his expertise would be more relevant, he lacked the imagination to conceive of it. And he did not usually lack for creativity.
The path took them over a shifting landscape; here the form of their surroundings was much more malleable. He was not comforted by that, particularly not when he felt something brush over the surface of his mind, like a lover might draw a finger over bare skin. Minus anything desirable about it, of course, but the pressure was analogous, as was the lazy languidity of it. A breath hissed out from between his teeth; he heard low rumbling laughter in the back of his mind.
No—no, that was audible to his ears, as well, though it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Glancing up, Cyrus stopped short. Where before there had been almost-empty landscape before them, there was now an entire building standing in the way, one he knew quite well. It was made of the same pale grey stone as the cathedral it was attached to, though that part was absent here. The roof was steeped considerably, shingled with terra cotta tiles that made the rain sound even louder when the winter thunderstorms grew violent. Wisps, formed into the shape of small bodies, ran about outside, chasing each other in some game he'd long forgotten the rules to.
He kept his face carefully blank as he took it all in; the way the air shimmered and blurred to either side of it made the ultimatum clear: the only way out was through.
“Lovely." His tone suggested rather the opposite.
"Did you do this?" Romulus asked, though his eyes did not stray from the building in front of them. There was a definite amount of recognition there, far more than he'd shown thus far in the Fade. As though he was looking upon the first thing that he actually understood here. "You said you can shape the Fade. Why would this building be here?" He stepped forward a few paces, stopping in time to watch one of the wisps rush by, faintly echoing laughter.
"We both know this place."
“We do?" Cyrus supposed it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. The orphanage was, after all, attached to the Grand Cathedral in Minrathous, a place that both of them were assuredly from. But... he detected that Romulus's familiarity went a bit deeper than that. “This isn't... I didn't decide for this to be here. Whatever creature dwells here—" he cut himself off. Cyrus hated little more than admitting his own weaknesses, even when they were obvious. But it wasn't fair to hoard what could be important information. Not in this case.
“Took it from my mind. My memory, I expect. But if it is also significant to you, perhaps I am mistaken."
"It's where I was taken after Tevinter marines found me in the Ventosus," Romulus explained, looking up at the height of the recreation of the building. "It's... larger than I remember it. But I lived here until I was nine. You and Estella were there as well." He looked back at Cyrus. "She never told you? We spoke about it once at Haven. At the time I took it as some sign of fate, that the two of us would be marked together, after having not seen each other since we were children..."
“She probably assumed I knew." Estella had a tendency, in the course of underestimating her own capacities, to overestimate those of everyone else in comparison. Truthfully, his memory for names and faces was not half of what hers was—even Cyrus understood that this was a consequence of spending so much time completely absorbed by the abstract and the theoretical. But, come to think of it...
Cyrus squinted at Romulus for a moment. It was hard to see past their more recent stages of acquaintance: first as Chryseis's acquaintance noting the presence of her shadow-agent, and then as a member of the Inquisition, well-aware of Romulus's identity as one of its two faces. “Wait a moment. You're..." Something niggled at the back of his mind, from a time in his life he seldom cared to remember but could not wholly impel himself to forget. He snapped his fingers. “Yes. I remember now. I remember you."
He blinked, shifting his eyes to the building itself. It was, he recognized, slightly disproportionate. Larger than it should be. “I'm surprised it didn't strike me sooner, but I was quite young." He grimaced slightly and shook his head. “Unfortunately, there's really no way around. We must go through. I think... it's best to be prepared for demonic interference inside. Subtler than merely being attacked. And if this is from my memory... I may well be fooled by it more easily than you, so... feel free to second-guess anything I say or do in there, please."
"If you say so." Romulus looked unsurprisingly disdainful of entering an area of demonic interference, as Cyrus had put it, but he took a few steps forward, stopping before the door. Perhaps he'd sensed Cyrus's own unease, as he was willing to push open the door himself and be the first one to set foot inside.
Though the outside had been populated by wisps wearing the forms of children, the inside was truer to Cyrus's actual recollection. He stepped in behind Romulus, almost wishing there were something in his grip to occupy his hands with. Cassius had always carried a staff, but Cyrus rarely bothered with anything like that. Now, he would have been rather grateful for something to lean against a bit. Disguise any waver that might make itself known.
The interior of the building was just as it had always been, save that the ceiling was vaulted a little too high overhead. An open room with a desk at the front for the administrator of the place, some poor fellow without either enough magic or demonstrable command of the Chant to warrant anything but a minor clerical position keeping track of children no one wanted.
Decimus, his name had been. Rather dour man, but not cruel. Unfortunately, he was not here now, but Cyrus knew why, somehow, without having to ask. And knew, in turn, where he was. The path presented itself before his eyes, drawing him onto it without actually appearing in any way different from ordinary walls and floor. Such was the power of the Fade.
“This way." Carefully, he stepped around Romulus and took the left hallway behind the desk. “It wants us to go to the infirmary." He suspected Romulus still knew where that was.
“What was it like, when they took you out?" The question was out of his mouth before he'd properly considered it. Perhaps because he could not help but find such queries on his mind, knowing what he was likely about to see. “Did you know, what you were going to?"
"They told me I was being adopted." Romulus's words were little more than a murmur. He touched a few things, running his hand along the desk and rapping his knuckles lightly against some of the walls, frowning all the while. As though the feel and the sounds weren't quite right. "I was stupid, but I still suspected. There was little reason for anyone to want me at the time." He glanced down a hallway they passed, watching a wisp twirl out of their sight. "One of Cassius's servants came to collect me in the night. I didn't see the exchange of coins, but I doubt I sold for much. I didn't even see anyone from House Viridius for the first month. I had to be properly broken of certain attitudes first."
“I remember." Cyrus reached out to run his hand along the wall, a huff of breath escaping him that might have been a snort, if there were a little more strength behind it. “You were braver than I was. I remember thinking so. Wanting to be more like you, in fact, and fearing the consequences if I did." He had not been uninformed about where any of them could end up. That the Chantry orphanage did business with the slave trade was an open, but unprovable, secret. Cyrus had been small and insignificant and quiet enough to hear things, back then. And smart enough to figure out what they might mean.
His fingers skipped lightly over a doorway. It wasn't the one they were after and he knew it. “They didn't tell us what happened to you, but I think I must have known. I began to suspect that my fate would be the same. It was one thing to have no family, thought I, but another to have family with the means to take you and... no inclination nevertheless." The whole time he and Estella had been there, they'd had living relatives who knew perfectly well who and where they were. And left them there anyway. If blood wasn't enough reason to keep them, well... what would do it? There was only one answer, and it was one he'd hit upon eventually.
Not without its own problems. “I suppose in the end we were only a small step from living a life much more like yours than the one we actually got." Cyrus, at least, had never quite managed to forget that.
"When did you leave?" Romulus asked. "Or rather, when did you discover your magic? I imagine the answers are similar enough."
“You imagine correctly." Cyrus didn't quite answer the question, as it was about to get a much more accurate reply than he would be able to muster. He drew to a stop outside the infirmary door and sighed heavily. With some visible reluctance, he pressed his fingertips to the wood panel. “If there's a demon involved, it's most likely in here."
Having said it, he pushed the door open, and they both stepped fully into a memory.
It always seemed to be raining, when significant things happened in his life. This day had been no different; drops of it pattered against the infirmary's singular glass window, tracing jagged lines down the pane when the accumulation became too much for adhesion to hold in place.
The room was unwisely dense with people: a man with greying hair lay on one of the narrow beds, bandaged from his neck to his chest, and presumably further beneath the blankets. His face had several pads of gauze as well, held in place by sticky bandages. He was speaking as well as he could to a more official-looking woman, the cut of her robes pressed and severe in a way that suggested greater importance than those who more often passed through the place. She was backed by several lesser-looking individuals; a lot of nervous hand-wringing and so on in that group.
On another bed, unhurt but looking quite shellshocked, was a younger version of himself: round-faced and wide-eyed, with a mess of thick black curls. He couldn't have yet reached seven. Leaning into him with her arms wrapped around his waist was dear Stellulam, every bit as young and vulnerable. Neither of them had yet learned to lie or obfuscate or conceal anything, and so it was perhaps understandable that the anxiety and fear rolled from them in waves. Cyrus's had been threefold.
"It was lightning. Chain lightning, almost certainly." Decimus's words were slurred mostly due to damage from a bitten and swollen tongue. Unexpected electrocution could do that to a person. "The boy didn't mean to hurt me, Magister. It was only meant to be playacting."
True, but ultimately irrelevant, something the Magister's look confirmed. "I see," she said, exchanging a look Cyrus could only now properly read with the other administrators present. Her eyes, cold and dark, moved to Cyrus.
He clung tighter to his sister.
"He will need to be moved to the Circle, at least until such time as further accidents can be prevented."
"Surely there's no need for—"
The Magister's eyes narrowed. "That is my assessment of the situation, serah." Her tone did not soften even when speaking directly to a child, as she did then. "You will assemble your possessions, boy, and move to the Circle tomorrow."
“But what about my sister?" His own voice was tremulous and weak, pitiful even in his recollection of it.
The way the Magister looked at Estella would become typical in Cyrus's world. Even at this stage of things, he'd been an unwanted child with promise. She'd not been granted even that.
"She stays." Abruptly, the Magister shifted, so that she was looking at what in memory was an empty corner of the room, but now contained Romulus and Cyrus. "She can't save you from yourself, you know. Can't stop you from being exactly the thing you hate the most. Not even you can do that, anymore. It's far too late."
“Ah. I'd wondered when you planned to show yourself." Cyrus went for levity, but wasn't sure if he'd gotten there. “Fear, I presume? Admittedly, my childhood wasn't that spectacular, but I can't say it was especially horrifying, either." He wasn't actually sure about that, but left it be.
The rest of the scene around them faded away, the building around them evaporating with it. For a moment, the demon retained its shape, then shifted, until it looked like Cassius. Despite himself, he hesitated to attack it. It had power here, and if it wasn't trying to kill him, it might simply be better to try and get past it some other way.
"I'm not foolish enough to try and overpower a Dreamer. Not here. Though the Nightmare I serve might." The image of Cassius tilted its head. "I'm only here to deliver... a piece of advice."
“Oh?" Cyrus let an arched eyebrow and a single syllable make the inquiry.
"Turn back. Your fears are many, and my master sees them all. You will not like what you find, if you venture any closer." Cassius flickered, and Cyrus stared at a mirror-image of himself. "You will not like what you see, if you look any closer."
Pursing his lips, Cyrus directed his attention at Romulus. “Are there any reasons you can think of not to kill this creature? Aside from the fact that at this point I'd be ruining a rather dashing face?"
"Yes, tell me," the demon said, turning its gaze on Romulus. "You've been seeking reasons not to kill of late. You fear it's all you are, all you'll ever be. You fear that there are a great many things that separate good men from... creatures such as yourself."
Romulus exhaled a strained breath through his nostrils and looked at the real Cyrus. "Get rid of it."
“Oh good. We're in perfect agreement." Actually destroying the creature was hardly more than an act of willing, here, though he did have to form a spell to do it. A blue blade formed in his hand, and Cyrus stabbed himself in the chest.
Well, the doppelgänger of himself, anyway. It was much slower than he, and the wound ruptured its very constitution, dissolving it at the seams. They were left in what looked like ordinary Fade. “Well. That was annoying."
"It said it served a Nightmare?" Romulus said, stating it as a question with his arms crossed. "Is that a different kind of demon?"
“Mm. Powerful demon, in the general fear-despair-terror neighborhood of things. It takes an entity of considerable strength to make any part of the Fade obey the ordinary laws of physics, or stabilize in any fashion, actually. The Black City, for example, is always in the same place, and looks the same. Other locations are much more malleable. I'd have to work for a considerable period of time to make myself a domain like this, if I wanted to. This one also seems to be populated with henchmen, which is the more striking accomplishment. Few demons will consent to serve another, and only then with considerable... persuasion, usually."
Romulus rubbed at his forehead, as though he was developing a headache. "Wonderful. We should find the others before they run into any more of these henchmen. If all of us are still alive."
“Oh I suspect they are." Cyrus started forward again, keeping the blade in his hand where it was in case they came across more demons or anything of the kind. “We have a resilient little group, as I'm sure you've noticed." He suspected any one of them was considerably more resilient than he was, and he wasn't doing so badly, at this stage of things.
The landscape that passed by didn't do much to stick in memory. That was the way of the Fade, most of the time. But gradually, the greenish sky overhead began to darken, and Cyrus could spot something more fixed in the area ahead. He furrowed his brows. “A graveyard. This really is a charming little corner of eternity, isn't it?"
"And such fear you have brought me today..."
The voice echoed around in Cyrus's head, but judging by the reaction from Romulus, he heard it too. A deep, sinister tone, similar almost to the way Corypheus had supposedly sounded from the reports of what had happened the first time they had attempted to close the Breach.
"A veritable feast. I will enjoy this... greatly."
"Show yourself!" Romulus demanded to the air, but the air did not comply, merely responding to him with a rumbling chuckle. Romulus's blade was in hand, and he looked like he sorely wished for something to plunge it into.
"I welcome you, Romulus. You are an agent of fear yourself, are you not? A murderer, inflicting pain, suffering, and death where you walk. You create fear as much as you harbor it yourself. Your mind is rife with fears..."
One of the tombstones in the graveyard shifting and moved, rising up, the stone becoming the edge of some sort of table, and from the earth a pair of feet rose, large and thick, and skinned of their flesh. They were strapped to the slab. Up and up the table rose, until it became apparent that the figure of a Qunari man was bound to it. A warrior of some kind, by the looks of it. He was flayed nearly to his knee caps, worn down to the bones in other areas, his skin pale and sickly, and he was naked, too. Romulus paled a bit at the sight of him, and averted his gaze.
"One of many. Your work. Work you did not hesitate to perform, to excel at. That is the depth of your soul, and you fear you will sink to it again, that you will lose your way and drag those you care for to such an end..."
The Qunari was suddenly replaced with Khari, as she'd appeared when they encountered her in the future in Redcliffe, then Estella, then Cyrus, Zahra, a young elven man Cyrus did not recognize, Asala, Leon... then it burst, into nothingness. Romulus took several slow, controlled breaths.
"Is there any way we can avoid being subjected to this?" he asked Cyrus.
“Not really." Cyrus could try to silence the voice, but it was likely to be a waste of effort. “I suspect it's my turn, though, so for now just keep walking."
"Cyrus Avenarius. So clever, little mage-child." The demon had certainly learned the nuances of dramatic delivery. That note of condescension was quite superb. "Prodigy, they call you—genius. The wonder of the age, a Dreamer's power and savant's intellect. So many expectations to live up to. So many predictions to satisfy. So many hurdles to jump. So many chances to fail."
Cyrus felt his mouth twist into a frown, but he said nothing. It had struck him, but the hit had glanced. He could protect himself, to an extent, even here.
"But we know better, don't we, Cyrus? We know what you are, what you fear. And we know that they are one and the same. You're just a Magister like any other, a cruel, twisted thing with a cruel, twisted heart. All your power has ever done is hurt, and now it's all you know. At least someone like Romulus might rise above his past. You... you can go no higher, and you are still just like the rest of them."
Cyrus gritted his teeth so hard they creaked. “Yes, yes, good show. Can we do you next? I think you might be afraid of being stabbed in the face. Am I right about that? Because it does seem rather imminent."
The Nightmare chuckled, low and dark, but it did not dignify his comment with a response.
Cyrus swore under his breath, but he kept on towards the graveyard. Until it was physically present, all it could do was taunt. He'd heard worse.
In the next, he'd been swallowed by green light, and spat out somewhere quite familiar.
His fall was arrested as soon as he bothered to think about it, of course, and he reoriented himself for a much-gentler landing than he'd been expecting. His feet touched ground softly; he exhaled a slightly-shaky breath. Even he had been rather sure he was going to die there for a moment. Despite himself, his heart still thundered in his chest, though he could feel it beginning to slow as rationality reasserted itself. He glanced around, extending his senses as far as they could reach, which was considerably farther here than it ordinarily was.
The landscape was rather foreboding. Everything was cast in a sickly, green-grey pall, tainting each part of his surroundings from the ankle-deep water he stood in to the floating chunks of stone some meters to his left. The taste at the back of his tongue was bile, which was suggestive, but he couldn't dismiss the possibility that this was more a side effect of his fall than his current surroundings. There was no mistaking the oppressive atmosphere, however. He tried willing the water at his feet to change color, something which was usually child's play, but it remained stubbornly fetid. The stability was enough to suggest that something of considerable power dwelt here.
He looked down at his own hands, turning them over so he could see first the palms, then the knuckles. Extraordinary. Even he had never dreamed—but there were other things to worry about. More important things, strange as that sentiment felt. He needed to find the others. If they were lucky, they'd fallen into Estella's rift just the same as he had. If they were unlucky, well... best not to think about that.
Cyrus thought he could sense something ahead; it seemed like the best direction to start, in any case. Shaking his head a bit, he started forward, footsteps sloshing through the water until he hit dryer landscape.
He didn't make it far before the sounds of demons ahead reached his ears. Before long, a pale green light opened up in the ground some distance in front of him, and a terror came screeching through. But it was not alone. Apparently Romulus had hung on for the trip, straddled around the demon's back with his blade at the creature's throat while his other limbs tried to pin it down. There was a brief struggle before the Inquisitor sliced clean through the terror's head, and pulled it off, leaving the demon quite still.
Romulus exhaled a heavy breath, rolling off the creature and getting to his feet, tossing the head aside. He spared a few glances for his new surroundings, but judging by the somewhat blank stare, all of this was quite beyond him. He offered Cyrus a half-hearted nod of his head in greeting.
"This can't keep happening to us," he muttered, wiping the terror's blood from his blade. "Where... or when, are we this time?"
“I regret to inform you that it's really more of a how in this case." He'd intended a little more levity than he got with the comment. Perhaps it was the atmosphere. The presence of demons always caused Cyrus physical pain—a rather unglamorous side-effect of being what he was. In the Fade, it was worse. Apparently, having a physical presence here made it yet more bothersome. “We're in the Fade. One of the more stable parts, which is both good news and bad news, I'm afraid."
The muscles around his eyes and mouth tightened until he was almost, but not quite, frowning. “Congratulations, Romulus. Once again, you and I seem to be making history."
Romulus blinked at him. "The... the Fade? You mean we're dreaming? Are... did we die?"
“We did not, thankfully." Cyrus shook his head. “Nor are we dreaming, in fact. We seem to be wholly physically present. Believe me when I say I've dreamed often enough to tell the difference." He scanned this new portion of landscape. One would be foolish to expect it to remain entirely unchanged from moment to moment, but for now it seemed rather stable.
“Normally this would actually be quite the advantage for us, but whatever lives here is powerful enough to shape the Fade as I do. And I would have to work very hard to alter its domain, which does not bode well." He crossed his arm. “I suspect it is some form of Fear demon. Something of a universal weakness, unfortunately." There were those resistant to Desire or Pride or Rage, but Fear was primal, and something everyone had in common.
Romulus looked to be struggling mightily with everything he was hearing, but that was hardly surprising. "A Fear demon." He began to pace back and forth, avoiding the corpse of the terror at his feet. "Can we kill it? Would that help us?"
Cyrus considered that. “Perhaps. But the real trick is going to be finding a way out of here. If we can find a place where the Veil is thin, that will be easier, but any such place is likely to have attracted the demon itself. So... we're probably going to have to, whether it's otherwise helpful or not."
He started forward again; a faint path had begun to materialize in front of them. Likely drawing them closer to the demon. For now, though, that was where they needed to go. “If we can find the others we'll have a better chance. Fear has a hard time in the face of any kind of fellow-feeling. Acting for the sake of others makes just about anyone braver, don't you think?" Romulus nodded his agreement, committing easily enough to following Cyrus's lead.
Not that he wanted to lead, exactly. Cyrus had always been perfectly content to leave that sort of thing to the people with the temperament for it. But he was the one who had some idea where they were going, and if there was any situation in which his expertise would be more relevant, he lacked the imagination to conceive of it. And he did not usually lack for creativity.
The path took them over a shifting landscape; here the form of their surroundings was much more malleable. He was not comforted by that, particularly not when he felt something brush over the surface of his mind, like a lover might draw a finger over bare skin. Minus anything desirable about it, of course, but the pressure was analogous, as was the lazy languidity of it. A breath hissed out from between his teeth; he heard low rumbling laughter in the back of his mind.
No—no, that was audible to his ears, as well, though it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Glancing up, Cyrus stopped short. Where before there had been almost-empty landscape before them, there was now an entire building standing in the way, one he knew quite well. It was made of the same pale grey stone as the cathedral it was attached to, though that part was absent here. The roof was steeped considerably, shingled with terra cotta tiles that made the rain sound even louder when the winter thunderstorms grew violent. Wisps, formed into the shape of small bodies, ran about outside, chasing each other in some game he'd long forgotten the rules to.
He kept his face carefully blank as he took it all in; the way the air shimmered and blurred to either side of it made the ultimatum clear: the only way out was through.
“Lovely." His tone suggested rather the opposite.
"Did you do this?" Romulus asked, though his eyes did not stray from the building in front of them. There was a definite amount of recognition there, far more than he'd shown thus far in the Fade. As though he was looking upon the first thing that he actually understood here. "You said you can shape the Fade. Why would this building be here?" He stepped forward a few paces, stopping in time to watch one of the wisps rush by, faintly echoing laughter.
"We both know this place."
“We do?" Cyrus supposed it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. The orphanage was, after all, attached to the Grand Cathedral in Minrathous, a place that both of them were assuredly from. But... he detected that Romulus's familiarity went a bit deeper than that. “This isn't... I didn't decide for this to be here. Whatever creature dwells here—" he cut himself off. Cyrus hated little more than admitting his own weaknesses, even when they were obvious. But it wasn't fair to hoard what could be important information. Not in this case.
“Took it from my mind. My memory, I expect. But if it is also significant to you, perhaps I am mistaken."
"It's where I was taken after Tevinter marines found me in the Ventosus," Romulus explained, looking up at the height of the recreation of the building. "It's... larger than I remember it. But I lived here until I was nine. You and Estella were there as well." He looked back at Cyrus. "She never told you? We spoke about it once at Haven. At the time I took it as some sign of fate, that the two of us would be marked together, after having not seen each other since we were children..."
“She probably assumed I knew." Estella had a tendency, in the course of underestimating her own capacities, to overestimate those of everyone else in comparison. Truthfully, his memory for names and faces was not half of what hers was—even Cyrus understood that this was a consequence of spending so much time completely absorbed by the abstract and the theoretical. But, come to think of it...
Cyrus squinted at Romulus for a moment. It was hard to see past their more recent stages of acquaintance: first as Chryseis's acquaintance noting the presence of her shadow-agent, and then as a member of the Inquisition, well-aware of Romulus's identity as one of its two faces. “Wait a moment. You're..." Something niggled at the back of his mind, from a time in his life he seldom cared to remember but could not wholly impel himself to forget. He snapped his fingers. “Yes. I remember now. I remember you."
He blinked, shifting his eyes to the building itself. It was, he recognized, slightly disproportionate. Larger than it should be. “I'm surprised it didn't strike me sooner, but I was quite young." He grimaced slightly and shook his head. “Unfortunately, there's really no way around. We must go through. I think... it's best to be prepared for demonic interference inside. Subtler than merely being attacked. And if this is from my memory... I may well be fooled by it more easily than you, so... feel free to second-guess anything I say or do in there, please."
"If you say so." Romulus looked unsurprisingly disdainful of entering an area of demonic interference, as Cyrus had put it, but he took a few steps forward, stopping before the door. Perhaps he'd sensed Cyrus's own unease, as he was willing to push open the door himself and be the first one to set foot inside.
Though the outside had been populated by wisps wearing the forms of children, the inside was truer to Cyrus's actual recollection. He stepped in behind Romulus, almost wishing there were something in his grip to occupy his hands with. Cassius had always carried a staff, but Cyrus rarely bothered with anything like that. Now, he would have been rather grateful for something to lean against a bit. Disguise any waver that might make itself known.
The interior of the building was just as it had always been, save that the ceiling was vaulted a little too high overhead. An open room with a desk at the front for the administrator of the place, some poor fellow without either enough magic or demonstrable command of the Chant to warrant anything but a minor clerical position keeping track of children no one wanted.
Decimus, his name had been. Rather dour man, but not cruel. Unfortunately, he was not here now, but Cyrus knew why, somehow, without having to ask. And knew, in turn, where he was. The path presented itself before his eyes, drawing him onto it without actually appearing in any way different from ordinary walls and floor. Such was the power of the Fade.
“This way." Carefully, he stepped around Romulus and took the left hallway behind the desk. “It wants us to go to the infirmary." He suspected Romulus still knew where that was.
“What was it like, when they took you out?" The question was out of his mouth before he'd properly considered it. Perhaps because he could not help but find such queries on his mind, knowing what he was likely about to see. “Did you know, what you were going to?"
"They told me I was being adopted." Romulus's words were little more than a murmur. He touched a few things, running his hand along the desk and rapping his knuckles lightly against some of the walls, frowning all the while. As though the feel and the sounds weren't quite right. "I was stupid, but I still suspected. There was little reason for anyone to want me at the time." He glanced down a hallway they passed, watching a wisp twirl out of their sight. "One of Cassius's servants came to collect me in the night. I didn't see the exchange of coins, but I doubt I sold for much. I didn't even see anyone from House Viridius for the first month. I had to be properly broken of certain attitudes first."
“I remember." Cyrus reached out to run his hand along the wall, a huff of breath escaping him that might have been a snort, if there were a little more strength behind it. “You were braver than I was. I remember thinking so. Wanting to be more like you, in fact, and fearing the consequences if I did." He had not been uninformed about where any of them could end up. That the Chantry orphanage did business with the slave trade was an open, but unprovable, secret. Cyrus had been small and insignificant and quiet enough to hear things, back then. And smart enough to figure out what they might mean.
His fingers skipped lightly over a doorway. It wasn't the one they were after and he knew it. “They didn't tell us what happened to you, but I think I must have known. I began to suspect that my fate would be the same. It was one thing to have no family, thought I, but another to have family with the means to take you and... no inclination nevertheless." The whole time he and Estella had been there, they'd had living relatives who knew perfectly well who and where they were. And left them there anyway. If blood wasn't enough reason to keep them, well... what would do it? There was only one answer, and it was one he'd hit upon eventually.
Not without its own problems. “I suppose in the end we were only a small step from living a life much more like yours than the one we actually got." Cyrus, at least, had never quite managed to forget that.
"When did you leave?" Romulus asked. "Or rather, when did you discover your magic? I imagine the answers are similar enough."
“You imagine correctly." Cyrus didn't quite answer the question, as it was about to get a much more accurate reply than he would be able to muster. He drew to a stop outside the infirmary door and sighed heavily. With some visible reluctance, he pressed his fingertips to the wood panel. “If there's a demon involved, it's most likely in here."
Having said it, he pushed the door open, and they both stepped fully into a memory.
It always seemed to be raining, when significant things happened in his life. This day had been no different; drops of it pattered against the infirmary's singular glass window, tracing jagged lines down the pane when the accumulation became too much for adhesion to hold in place.
The room was unwisely dense with people: a man with greying hair lay on one of the narrow beds, bandaged from his neck to his chest, and presumably further beneath the blankets. His face had several pads of gauze as well, held in place by sticky bandages. He was speaking as well as he could to a more official-looking woman, the cut of her robes pressed and severe in a way that suggested greater importance than those who more often passed through the place. She was backed by several lesser-looking individuals; a lot of nervous hand-wringing and so on in that group.
On another bed, unhurt but looking quite shellshocked, was a younger version of himself: round-faced and wide-eyed, with a mess of thick black curls. He couldn't have yet reached seven. Leaning into him with her arms wrapped around his waist was dear Stellulam, every bit as young and vulnerable. Neither of them had yet learned to lie or obfuscate or conceal anything, and so it was perhaps understandable that the anxiety and fear rolled from them in waves. Cyrus's had been threefold.
"It was lightning. Chain lightning, almost certainly." Decimus's words were slurred mostly due to damage from a bitten and swollen tongue. Unexpected electrocution could do that to a person. "The boy didn't mean to hurt me, Magister. It was only meant to be playacting."
True, but ultimately irrelevant, something the Magister's look confirmed. "I see," she said, exchanging a look Cyrus could only now properly read with the other administrators present. Her eyes, cold and dark, moved to Cyrus.
He clung tighter to his sister.
"He will need to be moved to the Circle, at least until such time as further accidents can be prevented."
"Surely there's no need for—"
The Magister's eyes narrowed. "That is my assessment of the situation, serah." Her tone did not soften even when speaking directly to a child, as she did then. "You will assemble your possessions, boy, and move to the Circle tomorrow."
“But what about my sister?" His own voice was tremulous and weak, pitiful even in his recollection of it.
The way the Magister looked at Estella would become typical in Cyrus's world. Even at this stage of things, he'd been an unwanted child with promise. She'd not been granted even that.
"She stays." Abruptly, the Magister shifted, so that she was looking at what in memory was an empty corner of the room, but now contained Romulus and Cyrus. "She can't save you from yourself, you know. Can't stop you from being exactly the thing you hate the most. Not even you can do that, anymore. It's far too late."
“Ah. I'd wondered when you planned to show yourself." Cyrus went for levity, but wasn't sure if he'd gotten there. “Fear, I presume? Admittedly, my childhood wasn't that spectacular, but I can't say it was especially horrifying, either." He wasn't actually sure about that, but left it be.
The rest of the scene around them faded away, the building around them evaporating with it. For a moment, the demon retained its shape, then shifted, until it looked like Cassius. Despite himself, he hesitated to attack it. It had power here, and if it wasn't trying to kill him, it might simply be better to try and get past it some other way.
"I'm not foolish enough to try and overpower a Dreamer. Not here. Though the Nightmare I serve might." The image of Cassius tilted its head. "I'm only here to deliver... a piece of advice."
“Oh?" Cyrus let an arched eyebrow and a single syllable make the inquiry.
"Turn back. Your fears are many, and my master sees them all. You will not like what you find, if you venture any closer." Cassius flickered, and Cyrus stared at a mirror-image of himself. "You will not like what you see, if you look any closer."
Pursing his lips, Cyrus directed his attention at Romulus. “Are there any reasons you can think of not to kill this creature? Aside from the fact that at this point I'd be ruining a rather dashing face?"
"Yes, tell me," the demon said, turning its gaze on Romulus. "You've been seeking reasons not to kill of late. You fear it's all you are, all you'll ever be. You fear that there are a great many things that separate good men from... creatures such as yourself."
Romulus exhaled a strained breath through his nostrils and looked at the real Cyrus. "Get rid of it."
“Oh good. We're in perfect agreement." Actually destroying the creature was hardly more than an act of willing, here, though he did have to form a spell to do it. A blue blade formed in his hand, and Cyrus stabbed himself in the chest.
Well, the doppelgänger of himself, anyway. It was much slower than he, and the wound ruptured its very constitution, dissolving it at the seams. They were left in what looked like ordinary Fade. “Well. That was annoying."
"It said it served a Nightmare?" Romulus said, stating it as a question with his arms crossed. "Is that a different kind of demon?"
“Mm. Powerful demon, in the general fear-despair-terror neighborhood of things. It takes an entity of considerable strength to make any part of the Fade obey the ordinary laws of physics, or stabilize in any fashion, actually. The Black City, for example, is always in the same place, and looks the same. Other locations are much more malleable. I'd have to work for a considerable period of time to make myself a domain like this, if I wanted to. This one also seems to be populated with henchmen, which is the more striking accomplishment. Few demons will consent to serve another, and only then with considerable... persuasion, usually."
Romulus rubbed at his forehead, as though he was developing a headache. "Wonderful. We should find the others before they run into any more of these henchmen. If all of us are still alive."
“Oh I suspect they are." Cyrus started forward again, keeping the blade in his hand where it was in case they came across more demons or anything of the kind. “We have a resilient little group, as I'm sure you've noticed." He suspected any one of them was considerably more resilient than he was, and he wasn't doing so badly, at this stage of things.
The landscape that passed by didn't do much to stick in memory. That was the way of the Fade, most of the time. But gradually, the greenish sky overhead began to darken, and Cyrus could spot something more fixed in the area ahead. He furrowed his brows. “A graveyard. This really is a charming little corner of eternity, isn't it?"
"And such fear you have brought me today..."
The voice echoed around in Cyrus's head, but judging by the reaction from Romulus, he heard it too. A deep, sinister tone, similar almost to the way Corypheus had supposedly sounded from the reports of what had happened the first time they had attempted to close the Breach.
"A veritable feast. I will enjoy this... greatly."
"Show yourself!" Romulus demanded to the air, but the air did not comply, merely responding to him with a rumbling chuckle. Romulus's blade was in hand, and he looked like he sorely wished for something to plunge it into.
"I welcome you, Romulus. You are an agent of fear yourself, are you not? A murderer, inflicting pain, suffering, and death where you walk. You create fear as much as you harbor it yourself. Your mind is rife with fears..."
One of the tombstones in the graveyard shifting and moved, rising up, the stone becoming the edge of some sort of table, and from the earth a pair of feet rose, large and thick, and skinned of their flesh. They were strapped to the slab. Up and up the table rose, until it became apparent that the figure of a Qunari man was bound to it. A warrior of some kind, by the looks of it. He was flayed nearly to his knee caps, worn down to the bones in other areas, his skin pale and sickly, and he was naked, too. Romulus paled a bit at the sight of him, and averted his gaze.
"One of many. Your work. Work you did not hesitate to perform, to excel at. That is the depth of your soul, and you fear you will sink to it again, that you will lose your way and drag those you care for to such an end..."
The Qunari was suddenly replaced with Khari, as she'd appeared when they encountered her in the future in Redcliffe, then Estella, then Cyrus, Zahra, a young elven man Cyrus did not recognize, Asala, Leon... then it burst, into nothingness. Romulus took several slow, controlled breaths.
"Is there any way we can avoid being subjected to this?" he asked Cyrus.
“Not really." Cyrus could try to silence the voice, but it was likely to be a waste of effort. “I suspect it's my turn, though, so for now just keep walking."
"Cyrus Avenarius. So clever, little mage-child." The demon had certainly learned the nuances of dramatic delivery. That note of condescension was quite superb. "Prodigy, they call you—genius. The wonder of the age, a Dreamer's power and savant's intellect. So many expectations to live up to. So many predictions to satisfy. So many hurdles to jump. So many chances to fail."
Cyrus felt his mouth twist into a frown, but he said nothing. It had struck him, but the hit had glanced. He could protect himself, to an extent, even here.
"But we know better, don't we, Cyrus? We know what you are, what you fear. And we know that they are one and the same. You're just a Magister like any other, a cruel, twisted thing with a cruel, twisted heart. All your power has ever done is hurt, and now it's all you know. At least someone like Romulus might rise above his past. You... you can go no higher, and you are still just like the rest of them."
Cyrus gritted his teeth so hard they creaked. “Yes, yes, good show. Can we do you next? I think you might be afraid of being stabbed in the face. Am I right about that? Because it does seem rather imminent."
The Nightmare chuckled, low and dark, but it did not dignify his comment with a response.
Cyrus swore under his breath, but he kept on towards the graveyard. Until it was physically present, all it could do was taunt. He'd heard worse.