World of Stone

by erlkid

How does a man, mage or otherwise, reconcile being gifted with the soul of a dream and a body of earth? How do you?

World of Stone

The joke goes that I am half in the Fade already, that instead of dying I will simply disappear entirely one day.

It could be true. I have spent a good portion of my life in the Fade, and there is still so much about it that I don't understand. That's why I keep this journal, of every visit I have made to the Fade and the influence that strange realm continues to have on my life. I would hope someone finds it of use one day, but the more I learn of the Fade the more I come to understand that I personally will never fully understand it. I'll leave this journal in the keeping of the Collective when I die (or fade, if so it goes) that some other voyaging soul might make use of it in my stead.

But the future will take whatever shape it will; I have a different story to tell. This is a story I need to tell, the story of a few months past, which I have until now avoided even recalling. I need to tell you why the refuge in South Reach is, ah...no longer a refuge. I need to tell you how they all died. I need to remind you that the realm of dreams is no less real than the waking world.

Here follows the account.

*****

The Fade is a treacherous place, even at its most quiescent. The air is thick with something otherworldly, something oppressive, as if you've found yourself drowning alive, but slowly, ever so slowly. Colours are distorted, sound made to bend, and things do not feel as they should; a rock to the touch may enclose your fingers like sap, or you find the air to be a solid wall in front of you. There is only one constant: the Black City, floating shrouded in the strange mists, ever unreachable, always distant from you no matter where in the Fade you find yourself.

Perhaps 'where' is itself a redundant concept in the Fade. For those unfamiliar with the nature of the Fade, it feels much the same in waking life as it does in dreams; distorting itself upon a whim to something altogether different. It is more unnerving than this, in a way. In dreams I feel the Fade is reshaping itself to the pattern of my thoughts, but here in the waking Fade, the Raw Fade, you feel always at the whim of something else. Perhaps it's the elusive Maker, or perhaps demons, maybe other spirits. You have stepped into their home, and they regard you as a trespasser. You know this whenever you are in the Fade; you cannot forget it.

Like a dream, however, the Raw Fade is filled with all manner of strange things. Broken half-thoughts float upon the air, as do bitter childhood memories. The dead and the lost wander here, and upon a wrong turn you might find yourself in the fief of a powerful spirit, or even in dream-shards of Thedas itself.

If you spend enough time in the Fade, you may learn how to seek such strangeness out. These things call to you, mind to mind, beacons in the soup of spiritual essence that composes the Fade, and you can learn to listen. I have recounted a number of them in previous journals, but for every one I have described, ten or twenty more exist only in my memory, perhaps even lost now to the nature of the Fade. I have not before written of the King of the Lost and the Child-Of-Trees. I have not written of the vast raptor I once spied soaring through the mists (it gave one plaintive call before vanishing), or of the colossal wandering hound (do not feed it; it will only follow you around). I have not written of Arren, a could-have-been mage unnoticed by the Templars, his gift manifesting only in dreams (and it was his grim lot to stave off demons every night, not knowing the reason). Neither have I written of the strange dreamers: a darkspawn (do they all dream? Was he unique?), a demon ("Shhh," it said, "I dream of being a man.") and the dreaming city (every one of its citizens a dreamer. How did it relate to Thedas, I wonder?). And so many other scattered things: an old man who believed himself the Maker, and the islet of the Raw Fade so travelled by souls it had itself begun to think, and imbued its will into a golem of its own making, that it might learn what it is to live as mortals and spirits do.

On this occasion, one such mind called to me in the Fade. As I approached it, and looked down on it from a vantage, I discovered it was a man, a mage. There was a moment of doubt, of course. Demons readily take human form if it will serve their purposes, even within the Fade. I approached with caution, and spoke from a distance.

'You there! Mage!'

He made no sign that he heard. The mage was sat on the ground, on one of the bland earthen lumps that make up the matter of the Raw Fade, unconditioned by a dreamer. He was hunched, and as I observed him I noticed his shoulders hitching, as if he wept. I reached out with senses attuned to the shapes of the Fade, looking for any sign that this was some demon's trick. I found none.

I clambered from my vantage and approached the mage. As I drew nearer his sobs came to my ears, distorted by the sensory fog of the Fade.

'Mage,' I said again, as I reached him. His sobs silenced, and for a moment he was motionless. Then he raised his head to meet my eyes. His face was a picture of awe. His hair was lank about his head, brown with early signs of greying. I thought him perhaps forty years of age. His squashed face was haggard, drawn and pale, and it seemed he had not slept in many days. His lips were thin and dry, and his breath whistled over them unsteadily.

'You're no demon,' he rasped.

I smiled; reassuringly, I hope.

'That makes two of us,' I said.

He nodded slowly, but his expression remained cautious, as if he thought me a simple phantom of the Fade. His caution was reasonable: the Fade is a place of the mind, and in wandering there one finds it shifting to echo his thoughts and the thoughts of its other occupants, sometimes in subtle ways, other times in grand ones. The mage suspected me a mirage, a reflection of his mind.

'W-Who are you?' the mage asked.

'My name is Joffen, of the Mages Collective.'

'The Mages--?' He shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs. 'The Circle?'

I hesitated. Most knew of the Collective by reputation, usually of the sort given us by the Circle and the Chantry.

'We're outside of the Circle,' I replied. 'You don't know of us?'

'I have been here for...' the mage's eyes unfocused, and he gazed off into the mists of the Fade. The answer was a long time coming, and I wondered if I dared even ask the question that came to me. But ask it I did.

'You don't know, do you?'

'No,' he groaned, and let his head fall into his hands, defeated. 'No, I do not.'

'Ten years?' I offered. 'Fifty? A hundred? ...five hundred?'

He heaved his shoulders in a desolate shrug.

'When last I was in Thedas,' he said, raising his head, 'Orlais held sway over Ferelden.'

I had met older souls than he. After a time, however, it seems even mortal souls cast adrift in the Fade lose themselves, becoming something closer to spirits and demons. Younger souls are of little interest, for most of them are simply dreamers, desiring only to return to their bodies. This man was of a strange balance between the two.

'You're from a generation or two ago,' I replied. 'It could be worse for you.'

I offered him a hand, and he took it, hauling himself up. 'A friend once told me,' I said, 'that he dreamt an entire life within the space of one night. It's the way of the Fade.'

'I know. I studied the Fade, before the accident that trapped me here. I just want to go home.'

I froze.

'You studied the Fade?'

Here was an opportunity to learn from one who had lived a life as I had, diving into the secrets of the Fade. Even greater, he had studied the Fade and then become trapped here: I knew he had much to share.

'Yes. I spent decades travelling its ways.' His expression turned bitter. 'When I still had a body to go to at the end of the journey.'

'There must be a way to get you home,' I said. 'Your body will be long dead, but all we need is a fitting host. The Collective makes use of powers the Circle refuses. We could get you home, I know it.'

He looked at me, his exhausted features clouding with doubt.

'Why would you do this for me?'

I looked away. 'It's not right for you to be trapped here,' I replied, and I wish now that it had been my true sentiment. That I all but exploited this man does not rest easy on my conscience, you may be assured.

So eager at the thought of returning to Thedas was he that he let my feeble lie slide, and he took little convincing before he allowed me to try.

*****

I found the Overseer in his chambers. I had all but sprinted through the refuge on my return to the world, and despite the late hour I was determined he would hear my case. I told him my tale breathlessly, but mastered myself when I saw the suspicion in his eyes. I did what I could to ease his concerns. He knew I was no fool, that being so familiar with the Fade I knew demons for what they were. In the end he relented somewhat:

'I mislike this,' he said, and paused, chewing the thought over, 'and if the solution were not apparent to me I would not allow it.'

I waited, breath held, for him to continue. He looked way, at a shelf of strange treasures mounted on the wall.

'But the solution is apparent,' he continued. 'Lath.'

I blinked. Lath was a young mage, a mere apprentice, who had undertaken a risky experiment some months ago. The experiment had backfired, and stripped Lath of all signs of conscious thought. He slept, comatose, in his chamber in the refuge. I had entered the Fade myself to look for any sign that Lath as we knew him still lived. I had found none.

The Overseer seemed to wait for me to take his meaning, and then returned his gaze to me.

'Lath is a shell,' he said. 'There is no hope of return for him. This past week his closest friends met with me and asked that we release his body from its imitation of life. I refused.' He smiled sadly. 'Not on my principles, understand. I won them over to the notion that Lath may in his state be of worth to magical research. They agreed, in the end. They said he would have wished it this way. Yet I told no one of this, for reasons I cannot explain. Perhaps it was fated.'

'Then we do it,' I said, eagerly. 'We allow this man to use Lath's body to return to Thedas!'

The Overseer's lip curled. 'The rational understanding of Lath's worth is one thing. Callous disregard is quite another. Are you perhaps too close to this matter?'

I looked away. 'I'm sorry. I'm not too close, I swear. It's all in the interests of the Collective.'

'Is that so?' This time his smile was grim. 'Then tell me this mage's name.'

Ice ran through my veins, and my skin crawled.

I did not know.

I gave no answer. There was no answer to give, and no excuse worth its weight.

Finally the Overseer let out an exhausted sigh.

'Do as you will,' he said. 'Return to the Fade. Find this mage, find his name, and return him here, to Lath's body. Forewarn him that we will be watchful; at the first sign he is not to be trusted in Thedas, he will be destroyed. There is one further condition: his first day with us shall be spent within a ward.'

'Very well.'

So it was done. I sought him again in the Fade, finding him swiftly and without great effort (learning in the process that his name was Dannel). We returned him to Lath's body without incident, and as the Overseer commanded, we maintained a magical prison within Lath's—that is, Dannel's—chambers. I stayed with him even through the watches of my colleagues, asking him endless questions of the Fade. When my turn came to guard him, I was elated, and asked him of even deeper mysteries, ones I would jealously guard for myself. He answered every question, giving me such information as he could. There was much that he simply did not know, and I was patient, for I knew the Fade was not a thing easily understood. I have no wish to share all that he told me, even now. In part the jealousy is still at work, but the other part is consideration, for I know now how very dangerous the Fade can be. A man's potential in Thedas can reform kingdoms; how much more damage might it cause in the Fade, a world in which potential is everything?

Upon his release from the prison we became inseparable, speaking late into the night and all through the day, at meals and at rest, at work and at training. In hindsight I see he spoke very little of himself. His subject was always the Fade, or of the differences between Thedas and the Fade. He reminded me of a traveller from a foreign nation, constantly pointing out the strange cultural peculiarities of this new place.

It disturbed me, in a way. Ferelden, after all, was his birthplace.

This should have been an early sign, and perhaps everything that flowed from there was inevitable. After perhaps a week with us, Dannel began to leave the refuge for long periods, going abroad into the surrounding countryside. At first this seemed a normal thing, but soon his short walks became long treks, and he would leave in the morning to return at night. He spoke less when with me, and seemed less enraptured by Ferelden. He spoke only of the Fade, no longer drawing his comparisons, and his eyes were distant, his thoughts turned inward.

One day, he did not return. I went to his chamber one morning to find his bed empty.

I sought him for some time, afraid that he had vanished entirely, either into Ferelden at large or back into the Fade. Nearly the entire day had passed before I found him, on an embankment a few miles from the refuge. The embankment overlooked a river, beyond which were a forest and a line of distant hills. He was gazing over this view as I climbed the embankment. He did not hail me, nor I him, and when I arrived at the crest neither of us spoke for a moment.

'Something's troubling you,' I said at last, heavily. 'Tell me, mayhap I can help.'

He looked up at me, but it was a distant look, as if he saw me through a haze.

'This is the real world,' he said, and I don't know whether he spoke to me or himself. 'This is real. Why does it feel so distant? I feel that I have left the waking world and entered a dream. Yet the Fade is the dreamworld.'

'This is real,' I said, but I knew it was a hollow placation. His eyes seemed to focus, finding me.

'Have you ever dreamed a dream that seemed more real than the following day? Have you ever dreamed of something so vivid and so close to your heart that you would have slept forever to maintain that dream, given the chance?'

'I suppose we all have, once or twice. But I know this is real.'

He waved his hand dismissively, and looked away.

'It doesn't matter. Real is just a word. Know this: every day in the Fade felt that way. Real. Vivid. Personal. As if I lived in a world meant for me, made from my own thoughts, crafted by the only person in the world who might ever understand me: myself. What is this, by comparison?' He looked out over the forest and the hills. 'Just shapes. Every moment I am here I feel as though I am reading from a text written in a foreign tongue. Perhaps I have been too long away; when last I was in Ferelden, Orlais still held its reigns.' He shook his head. 'But no, it runs far deeper than this. The Fade calls to me. I miss its song. This...is not my world.'

And I knew what he meant. The call of the Fade, the cry of home. It's something indefinable, as if in entering the Fade and leaving it again, you find a piece of yourself left behind. The thought scared me. It was not something I had before considered, but I discovered then that I had always known it.

The joke, being half in the Fade already, suddenly did not seem so funny.

'I miss it,' he continued. 'Against all rational thought, I miss the Fade.' He gave a single bark of laughter. 'Homesickness.'

'But you were so desperate to return,' I replied. I thought back on that man I had found weeping in the Raw Fade. I knew his anguish then had called to me, rolling from him in waves, conducted by the spiritual nature of the Fade, pulling me towards him. 'You wanted to go home.'

'What of it?' he sneered. 'What a man desires one moment he may find repulsive the next. It is the mortal manner that our minds shift in treacherous ways we barely perceive, betraying us at every turn. Does this remind you of anything? It should: this is the Fade's nature. Ah, and they say the Fade was the first world the Maker crafted, and in the Fade was his abode. The Fade, in truth, is home.'

He was silent for a moment, and then began to recite some familiar words:

Then the Maker said:
To you, my second-born, I grant this gift:
In your heart shall burn
An unquenchable flame
All-consuming, and never satisfied.
From the Fade I crafted you,
And to the Fade you shall return
Each night in dreams
That you may always remember me.

'He shaped us of the Fade,' he said, when it was done, 'and cloaked us in flesh. And from this, our nature, springs all dissatisfaction with the world. We see the world of earth and stone, unchanging and unrelenting, with a soul built from and for the shifting Fade. What we find lacking in life, we discover instead in the imagination, in the realms of the mind, the realms of the Fade, in tales and dreams and songs, and if something torments us here, it is the Fade, the imagination, to which we escape. We were built from the Fade, and for it, and so we were never meant for this place.'

'And to think,' I said with a wry smile, 'that the demons envy us our world of stone. But I know you, my friend. You are wiser than any of us, wiser than the Overseer. You'll find some means to overcome this.'

He said nothing, and eventually I sat down beside him. Another silence followed, but finally he began to speak once again. He told me all of Ferelden as once he knew it; of its life under the Orlesian Empire, and gave no further mention to the Fade. He told me of his childhood, and his discovery of his magical talent, and of his coming of age. I let him talk, and prompted him for more information at times, trying in some small way to rekindle his connection to the world. When we returned to the refuge that evening, he gave no sign of his malaise, though I knew it afflicted him still.

*****

I awoke to screams, and the smell of blood and fire was on the air.

I knew instinctively that Dannel was the cause of it.

I found him in the main hall, surrounded, inevitably, by corpses. I say it was him, but in truth it was a poor likeness. He had become an abomination, and now a demon wore his flesh draped loose over its form as if melting, threatening to slough off entirely. I recognised the bodies, of course; mages of the refuge all, and the Overseer among them.

I looked the creature in the eyes. It made no move to attack me. Instead, it smiled.

'Why?'

This was the only thought I could shape then, confronted with that sight.

'Please, just tell me why,' I begged. I begged not just that I would know him, but also that I might know my own future. Here was a mage who had invested himself in the mysteries of the Fade, and it had turned him into this. Was this all that lay in store for me?

'I found a means,' it said, speaking through layers of flesh. I swayed as if struck with a blow. My own words in the mouth of the demon were all the proof I needed that this truly was the man I had rescued and befriended.

'Is it not perfect?' it asked. Its words are etched in my mind. When all around me is silent, I still hear them. 'The uncertainty, the transmutation, the ruin and the rebirth. Is it not unlike the Fade?'

'But why?'

'To return home! Home is here, and home is the Fade; like the Maker I am torn ever between the two. So here a union: a demon and a man, the Fade and the earth beneath our feet. A world of stone singing to the song of the Fade; in two half-homes, a whole. Our perfect world...'

Our? What did he mean by this? Was it himself and the demon he spoke of, or myself and him? Was there any distinction between man and spirit beneath that warped flesh?

I knew I had no power by which to match him. I turned and fled. Still he made no move to attack me. Perhaps it was his final gratitude given for my earlier understanding. I made it at last to the nearest town, and there I heard the stories, of the destruction of the entire refuge and the loosing of a demon. The templars, it was said, had dealt with the creature in the end, though at great loss of life.

I returned to the Collective in another location, as did a few scattered survivors, and have been reassigned. None know my role in the abomination's rampage, and it was assumed to be simply an unfortunate accident, of the sort experienced by those who push at the boundaries of magical knowledge. Such accidents are not altogether unknown in the Collective. I have decided that this will be my last entry in this journal, and once it is done I will secrete the book in the archives here, to be discovered as destiny wills. Perhaps I will receive some sort of retribution, or perhaps I will be dead and gone before the truth is ever revealed.

My future, however, is a question in itself.

Having seen what I have seen, I must make a choice. I cannot continue the life I have lived. I've seen what will become of me should I continue to slip through the Veil. I do not wish to be forever stuck between two worlds, calling neither of them home, until my only satisfaction comes in driving the two together. I must find a home, or make a home. So the choice is this: surrender the Fade for all time, and live and die as a man in a world of stone, or go into the Fade and never return, and live as a spirit hereafter. I will awaken, finally and completely, or I will fade at last into the dreamworld, as I have threatened to do for so many years.

I wonder.

--final entry from a journal confiscated following the templar cleansing of a Mages Collective stronghold, 9:30 Dragon. Entry dated 9:13 Dragon.