Isn't my mother Language, so, if you find any mistakes, please, warn me ;)
No, it isn't a sequence of "Of Balls and Wreaths". Not yet. I'm planning that fanfiction better. But this one here, "Not About Angels"... Hell, it's just write and broke your hearts xD
Oh, thanks to my friend Camila Monteiro, she helped me with the tittle and is some kind of beta reader :D
Aaand Dragon Age, Cole and all the Dragon Age elements belongs to Bioware. The Inquisitor Nidhögg, Alessandra, Mary, the Hospital and everything of this another world is mine. In a way xD
I made the cover. It's "The Page of Swords", in a version agreeing with the fanfic and etc.
Good Reading! I hope you enjoy!
EDIT: LadyStoic read the chapter and correct a lot of mistakes and made some suggestions. I take mostly of them. Many thanks, really :) I'm making corrections on chapter 2 and 3 too (by myself, without cribbing corrections made by LadyStoic xD), and writing 4. When I finish the corrections, I pretend to have the 4 already written, just to be posted.
Chapter 1
My Destiny Coming to Pass
"Within these walls of devastation
I'm passing through degeneration
Confined in utter desolation
In vile perpetuation I scream in desperation."
(My Destiny Coming to Pass – Sirenia)
There was something different. A call in the air, but… Different. Oh, he recognized the feelings – despair, loneliness, sadness, waiver, and pain, a lot of pain – but not the source nor the reasons. It was… Strange.
That day, he could not stop from walking through Skyhold, trying to figure out where the person spreading those feelings was, but it was difficult; the intensity stayed the same wherever he was, as if the feelings were only in his mind. But… No. He knew it. Someone needed help.
Almost everyone was already asleep when Cole decided to ask for help. Nidhögg Trevelyan was the only one awake, beside him; she was always awake when someone needed her. Like him, she always knew when someone needed her help, but no one, nor even him, knew how. She never talked about it. He had the feeling that was something the Anchor allowed and it had grown stronger after Corypheu's defeat.
He knocked on the door almost fearfully, even with the knowledge that the human on the other side wouldn't mind someone knocking so late.
The door opened with a soft creak, letting Cole see the young woman with the straight long hair, stained a luminous red that gradually became yellow and with blue tips that tapered off into white; it made him think of fire. Her eyes held the same color as the tips, with a spark of defiance; most people never looked her in the eyes. Cole had saw in their minds the reason: to them, the eyes held an air of danger as if she could kill them with a single move of her fingers, even if they didn't know she was a Mage or the Herald..
The dark-red tattoo covering her face in stark contrast with her pale skin, probably didn't make things easier; it was the skull of a dragon, empty scales lined in that dark-red covering the skin. Horns were tattooed on the sides of her scalp where the hair was shaved and dragon eyes transformed into her own eyes, surrounded by tiny scales. The mouth had long sharp teeth that opened when she opened her own mouth, since they were tattooed into her lips, black and white on a red canvas. It terrified most people.
"What happened?" she asked, letting him enter the room and closing the door at his back, before walking barefoot on the fuzzy carpet. When she reached her desk.,Niddhögg picked up a bottle of wine and her large silk sleeve slipped down her arm, revealing more scales lined in dark-red. He had never seen her naked, but that made him wonder if the dragon-like tattoos covered her entire body.
That must have hurt.
Cole sat down on the sofa, watching Nidhögg open the bottle and drink directtly from it. He sighed before starting to speak.
"Someone needs help, but… I can't find who. I don't even know who need help. The… calling… stays the same, wherever I am."
The Mage frowned, staring at him and her fingertips – tattooed with dragon claws that slowly became her own nails, as long and sharp as a real dragon claw – beat rhythmically on the glass. He knew that she was carefully thinking about what he had said, considering all the possibilities.
"You are a spirit. More human now, but a spirit. Perhaps… This call for help is coming from the Fade. Perhaps a Mage trapped by demons, or someone who fell into a rift I didn't close yet."
It was time for Cole to frown.
"But… If it is what you're saying… It's never happened before."
"There's a first time for everything, Cole." She said, shrugging. She put the bottle on the table before walking toward the sofa to sit at his side. "It's the only thing that seems possible to me." The Inquisitor breathed deeply. "You need to enter the Fade. Physically, not how Mages enter, using lyrium, but how we did in Adamant."
Cole blinked at her. The Fade… He shuddered, looking to the glass' Serault on her windows, breathing deeply, feeling like if he was trying to pass the glass and fly into the cold night above Skyhold. Enter the Fade again, now that he was more human… It was scary just to imagine.
Suddenly, a warm hand grabbed his and gave a light squeeze. He turned to face her, seeing a warm, gentle smile on Nidhögg lips.
"Don't worry. I will go with you and we'll find this person together." She left his hand goes, and then rose. "Just give me some time to prepare. We'll enter the Fade, after all…"
With Mary's help, the girl sat down, her back supported by the soft pillow, the only thing really comfortable in her room between bed, sofa and chair. The other nurse put a plate with a supermarket cake and a lit candle on her knees, carefully.
The needle in her arm caused a twinge with the movement; Alessandra bit her lip, putting the pain to the side and leaning forward so she could blow the candle out.
In the distance, she could barely hear the news coming from the TV in the next room; some scientists in Sweden had opened a gate to another dimension, they claimed; they also had claimed that the mineral samples they brought back were totally unknown. That was the moment news. Everyone was talking about it. She felt like she should do it, too, after all her parents were some of these scientists.
But the only thing in her mind, as she blew the candles out, was to have someone, a real friend, to help her in those final months of treatment. No, not really help, but to be with her; someone who cared about her and what would become of her.
And then the candle was cleared, and the two nurses, with apologetic smiles for not being her stupid parents whom already considered her dead, cut the small chocolate cake. They gave her one slice before leaving the room with the cake to give the rest out to other patients who could eat a little.
Swallowing back the tears in her light-brown eyes that begged to run down her haggard and pale face, Alessandra ate the cake, bit by bit, and forced the sweet and dry morsel down her throat until it reached her queasy stomach. She wished that the nurses had remembered to put more water in the mezzanine's jar before leaving the room.
The Fade wasn't the answer. The thoughts were louder, yes, but it wasn't there.
They walked around the Fade, sometimes fighting Demons, sometimes finding spirits, but found no other real person besides them. The calling was louder than in Thedas, but like there, it didn't change as they moved.
After some time, Cole and Nidhögg sat on a soft green-glowing rock, looking at the strange sky of the Fade. He wanted to leave soon; it felt wrong being there when he was so human.
Suddenly, the Inquisitor rose and looked around before putting the eyes on him.
"Take my hand. I have an idea." She extended a hand to him; Cole looked at it, a sigh rushing out of his mouth, but he rose anyway and grabbed the hand. "You can feel the callin? I want you to focus your entire mind on them, let them fill you. Literally. Understood?"
"Yes." The glow of Nidhögg prevented him from truly knowing her plan, but he trusted her; he closed his eyes, tightening his grip on her hand, and put his own thoughts away to let the loneliness and the pain fill him. The whole thing was giving despair in Cole, but he managed to keep this away too. Despair wasn't something the person was feeling that moment.
"Now I want you to feel from whom they are coming from and let that guide you." He heard the Inquisitor's voice, and frowned.
"But I can't say who it is."
"Not say, feel. Feel all the singularities in them. Even if two people are feeling pain because of the same thing, there is a difference between them, because the people are different. Have you forgotten that? You taught me that." Anger and exasperation in her voice. He could not blame her.
Breathing deeply, Cole let his mind navigate through those feelings, let them guide him by the unique things in them that separated them from another person.
And then he felt the Fade began to spin around them like a whirlwind, wild and almost out of control, all pure energy. He knew that Nidhögg was opening a rift; to where, Cole hadn't any idea. Suddenly, the Inquisitor pulled him with her, and he felt as if a part of him wanted to stay in the Fade, before he felt a strange breeze carrying the smoke's smell and the Fade vanished behind him.
The place was strange, so strange…. Cole felt despair behind the glow of Nidhögg's mind before her hand tightened his with enough strength to make his bones ache. Her reaction worried him; it didn't seemed like the Inquisitor.
He noticed her looking around, then to him, and her boiling-blue eyes were filled with fear.
"I… Can't felt the Fade. Not the way I felt it before… The energy is more… Distant."
He could understand. If he had struggled to see through her mind before, it was even more difficult to read her now. But before she told about her difficult in felt and touch the Fade, Cole hadn't think that that difficult was for being distant from it.
The rift was already closed behind them. Around the couple lay sad grey buildings, covered with stained drawings, and trash, lots of it, was covering the ground.
A dead beggar lay in the alley, the body cold and being gnawed by rats, rats so big they appeared to be giant nugs. Beyond Nidhögg and Cole, these rats and some insects appeared to be the only living things there.
It was difficult to hear not only Nidhögg's mind, but all the other minds around the place seemed dipped in mist, the thoughts and feelings running from him. He needed to put more effort into capturing them.
Yet, the one who had called him and guided them was louder, almost shutting out the other minds. The difference was a bit frustrating.
Now he could say it was the mind of a girl that was screaming for help, and in that exact moment it was filled with physical pain. He felt the physical pain push the mental pain to the deepest recesses of her mind. That pain… Cole wanted to scream as if was feeling it: agonizing, maddening, mind-blowing, stealing sleep from me. No food today, please, I won't be able to keep it in my stomach. Don't make me eat. I know I need to, but I can't.
"Can you still hear the mind that brought us here?" Nidhögg's voice dragged him out of the pain; it was one of the worst he'd ever felt. Nodding softly, he pulled her hand and guided them, letting the thoughts and the pain take him through the dirty streets, but not diving in it; not yet. Now, he needed to be conscious so he could find her.
They passed some strange people, who were either walking around or just lying on the ground. Their clothes were as strange as the world, dirty and torn, and their faces talked of fatigue and vices, not seeming to see them walking between them. Cole picked up some glimpses of their minds, besides the mist and the feeling of absence around them, and what he saw reminded him of the way Templars felt due to lyrium. Whatever did this to them, didn't sing to their mind like the lyrium did with the Templars.
Cole stopped in front of a very tall but dirty light-blue building, its top. It must have been at least ten floors, and its top was surrounded by a dark and clouded sky with just a soft moon's gloom beginning to appear through the clouds. At the top, Samaritan Hospital glowed with a burst sun at the side where some rays lighted off. For a moment, Cole tried to figure out what "Samaritan" meant.
"It's coming from here. This… Hospital." Eyebrows lowered when Cole felt the different kinds of pain spreading from the building. So much pain. Some of them similar to the pain that had called him, he could say this even with the mist. The lad turned to the Inquisitor, letting her hand go. "Return to Skyhold, Nidhögg. I… I will stay. And help."
She pursed her lips, unsatisfied and worried about him; he felt thankful for her worry.
"Varric will go crazy if you don't return with me." Cole nodded in agreement, lowering his head a bit, and the hat dove his blue-iced eyes in shadows. Then, he removed the dagger's sheath from his body and gave it to the Inquisitor. She opened her mouth to say "no", but he didn't let her.
"I still have my throwing knifes. And…" he looked again to the Hospital. "These daggers will make things difficult. They'll draw attention." He turned his face to her. "Take care of them, will you?"
And then she breathed, giving up on trying to convince him. With a hand on her waist, she put the sheath on her shoulder, and then slowly nodded.
"I'll be back in two days, to see if everything's ok. Please, don't leave this Hospital. I'll turn this place on ashes if I have to."
She waited until Cole agreed; then, Nidhögg hugged him quickly and turned back, walking to where they had landed in that strange world.
Cole faced the Hospital. The front doors had a sign written "Emergency" on them, and strange white vehicles, with "Ambulance" printed on their sides stopped all the time to drop off physically hurt people.
Some steps away from the Emergency doors was another one signed as "Reception"; from it, mentally hurt people were coming in and out.
Shuffling his feet, Cole walked to the Reception; some people looked at him, but never really saw him. It wasn't like he was doing anything to not be noticed, they were simply deeply lost in their own pains…. Loved ones dying; loved ones already dead. Doctors with no good news.
Breathing deeply to focus his mind, he put that pains aside for now; with no details, he would just make it worse.
Cole entered in a sterile room; some people were sat uncomfortably, reading and waiting. Behind a balcony, a woman dressed in a white shirt and pants waved to him, a graceful smile on her face. She reminded him of Josephine, in a way.
With small steps, Cole approached, hands in pants pockets and looking a bit confused at the woman.
"Are you a volunteer? Came to tell stories to the kids?" she asked, fingers intertwine on the balcony.
Tell stories to the kids. He could hear their mind, bored and full of pain and loneliness. The calling wasn't coming from them, but… He could and he would help.
"Yes. But I… I've never been here before." The woman's smile grew.
"They'll love you." She stopped to look around carefully. "I shouldn't let you in so late, past visiting hours, but it's been such a long time since they had a distraction. And you seem like a cool guy; one that will pretend to be a storyteller from a magical kingdom." That was the reason no one stared at his clothes; they had just assumed he was there to entertain the kids.
Cole liked the woman. Dalila, he saw from her mind. He could see glimpses of her life, and they showed a woman who liked to hold the hands of the elderly in her free time, letting them know that even if their children and grandchildren didn't care about them anymore, she cared. Someone that liked to help.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome." Her voice lowered when she took a strange piece of hard colored paper and held a strange tool in her hands. Pen. It was a pen, he picked from her mind; used to write. "What's your name?" Before her hand covered the paper Cole saw the word "Volunteer" written.
"I'm Cole." She was breaking the rules, he saw, and depending on who met him on the highest floors, she would be in a lot of trouble. He lowered the voice too, and she smiled.
"It's a beautiful name, Cole." She said, writing his name on the paper; she rose and stuck it to his coat. "All right. You take the elevator" she pointed to a couple of metal doors with a button on the wall. "and go the 9th floor. From there, just follow the signs written 'Children Sector'."
Coled thanked the woman, and with the help of glimpses from the minds around him, he entered the large box called 'elevator' and managed to make it work without drawing attention to himself.
It surprised him; it didn't seem to move at all, but few seconds later, the doors opened into another hall, where people in white coats and carrying clipboards like Josie walked between rooms and corridors.
A sign, like Dalila had said, pointed to the right "Children Sector".
But the calling was coming from the left.
No one noticed him walking through the corridors, searching for the girl who had leaded him there.
It was the last room. A woman – a nurse, he picked up from her thoughts – was leaving it. She carried a tray full of small strange cups with names written on them and pills inside. She nodded to him, serious and not really seeing him, and entered in another room.
Looking around, Cole opened the door and snuck into the room the nurse had just left. The thoughts, the call for help, were slowing down, the physical pain being transformed into a distant memory as a wrong and artificial sleep spread through the girl's mind. That was the only way to make her sleep that day.
He drew closer to the high bed, without lightning the thing called lamp he had saw in the minds around, just the light from the street cutting through the darkness of the room.
He could barely see the girl lying in the bed, eyes closed and a needle breaking the skin in her arm. It had some kind of tube bonded to it, leading to a bag full of cloudy liquid that was apparently penetrating her veins. From the last conscious thoughts of her mind, he knew that it was a poor attempt to take the pain away, but that it didn't work as well anymore.
Carefully, he grabbed her hand and tightened softly.
He could not do anything for her in that moment.
But the children still needed and wanted a story.
Nidhögg fighting the Envy Demon… That was a good story.