To Be Fearful of the Night
By: SurreptitiousFox245
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls. All rights go to their respective peoples. I'm simply someone with too much time (*cough* tendency towards procrastination) on her hands and an overactive imagination.
Quick Author's Note: Wohooo! It's here! The remake of All Fall Down! For those of you new, welcome! TBFOTN is a rewrite of a previous fanfic of mine called All Fall Down, which is still posted if you are at all inclined to check it out! If not, that's fine - this is going to take its place, anyway. If you're here because you read AFD, then hello again and I hope I do not disappoint with this.
The only real changes are POV (I went from second to first to keep consistency with some of my other stories that are in first person - I found myself getting confused between the two and it was getting troublesome), tense, and I'm changing where and how Lys meets the Inquisition. I didn't like how I did it in AFD, so it's going to me mixed and matched a bit. But shouldn't be anything too major. A fresh coat of paint, if you will.
Also, yes, the opening quote is by a sociologist. And I'm going to be that sociology student and say - it's not pronounced "web-err", it's "vay-ber". Yeah. I went there.
Without further adieu, enjoy!
"The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world."
-Max Weber
~Nirn – 4E 204~
I can't think of much else aside from my failure as I watch the sky fall. Of all the places for them to choose to force me to watch the chaos, the Throat of the World is eerily appropriate. I can see the cracks of light emerging from the sun like a spider web, darting along in a familiar pattern following where the constellations should be beyond the day. Noon is a symbol, and it is a good one. It is a reminder, a slap in the face—the god of magic, their god, beholden to a much higher regard than the god of mortals, undoing His mistake and cleansing a sour taste from Existence. And it serves to remind me that I fail, that I am failing in the moment. Nirn is dying, if a world even can, no new one ready to be birthed in its place, and it is as much my fault as it is theirs.
A few spindly hands hold my arms and shoulders in iron grips that shove me to my knees, surely bruising them, but what does it even matter anymore? Golden sneers not unlike my own cast amused, if aghast looks at the haphazard, cobbled set of leathers adorning my person. Their robes in comparison are much more immaculate, not a string or stitch out of place. I have long since stopped the disparaged staring at the large, draconic bones that are even now half-buried in the snow. Mourning the loss at this point will do me no good. He is already long dead, just I am bitterly late in finding out.
Fading is not actually an apt description of what the sky is doing—dissolving perhaps fits better, though even it is a bit far from the mark. I can't tell if the light that is left behind is comforting or more of a void. It engulfs everything, creeping down to the tip of the mountain and causing stone to roar across stone as matter by its very nature resists being torn apart in such a manner. I want to fight, want to scream, but all I can do is shy away from the light as it grows ever nearer until it engulfs me, too.
I am fading, I realize with an absentminded sense of awe that feels detached, when I should not be fading in the first place. It gives me some hope then, that maybe, just maybe, they had been wrong.
